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NUCLEAR
White House Hails Freeze on Nuclear Moves
Just DU It: Depleted Uranium and the Real Costs of Conquest
Nuclear-armed Iran would be more vulnerable, top official says
Iraq could eventually have civilian nuclear power: US official
Banned Iraqi Missile Engines Found in Jordan - UN
Items That Could Make Illict Arms Gone From Iraq, U.N. Told
Israel announces first surface-to-surface cruise missile: Jane's
U.S. researcher warns MOX fuel plan is too costly
N. Korea May Be Relaxing Position
Plan to Secure Nuclear Weapons Opens Sea Island G8 Summit
Scientists Say Dirty Bomb Would Be a Dud
White House hails freeze on nuclear moves
House Panel Rebuffs White House on Nukes
House Panel Votes to Block New Nuclear Weapons
Nev. Nuclear Waste Project Faces Problems
Kerry puts getting votes ahead of national interest
A Routine Drill at a New York Power Plant
N.Y. Nuke Plant Drill Includes Plane Crash
MILITARY
Global Military Spending Soars in 2003
World Military Spending Surges But Hard to Sustain
US seeks new African peace force
Czech government approves lease of 14 Gripen fighter jets from Sweden
Reagan's Defense Buildup Bridged
Private Sector Has Firm Role at the Pentagon
Japan to send experts to NE China to retrieve WWII chemical weapons
European nations tighten laws to oust extremists
Saboteurs Blow Up Key Iraqi Oil Pipeline
Iraqis assume control of oil industry
Rebels Launch an Array of Attacks Across Iraq
Kurds Threaten to Walk Away From Iraqi State
Saboteurs May Be Aiming at Electrical and Water Sites as Summer Nears
Occupation tanks poised to enter Falluja
U.S. General: Iraq Police Training a Flop
Report: Israel Develops Cruise Missile
Israelis to Quit Gaza Industrial Zone
Sharon Loses His Majority When 2 Ministers Resign
Poll of Saudis shows wide support for bin Laden's views
Buoyed by U.N. Victory, Bush Tries to Shore Up NATO Support
France, allies, stage big military drill in New Caledonia
California Works To Retain Leadership in Space
Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks
Allawi organized sabotage in Iraq in 1990s
U.N. Backs Plan to End Iraq Occupation
Security Council, in a 15-0 Vote, Backs Measure on Iraq Turnover
Army Now Says G.I. Was Beaten in Role
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Hide-and-Seek Among the Coca Leaves
ACLU membership spikes in wake of Patriot Act
Ashcroft Refuses to Release '02 Memo
Documents Build a Case for Working Outside the Laws in Interrogations
Interrogations Are Criticized
Calif. Guardsman alleges abuse in Iraq
The torturers among us
Report alleges abuse outside Iraq
POLITICS
Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink
Pentagon Wasted Millions on Airline Tickets, GAO Says
Senators Urge C.I.A. to Declassify Critical Report
Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush
Soldier Described White House Interest
Subpoenas in CIA Leak Probe Opposed
Final 9/11 report slams FBI, CIA
Bush Didn't Order Any Breach of Torture Laws
Bush ignored Pentagon lawyers over tactics in war on terror
Ashcroft rebuffs Senate questions
Political cartoonist defends anti-Reagan Web tirade
Bob Woodward Criticizes Iraq Reporting
Chomsky on Reagan's Legacy
Reagan's Bloody Legacy
Moon Over Washington
Bush Policies Led to Abuse in Iraq
ENERGY
Calif. hydrogen cars lack service stations
Farmington, Maine-area residents oppose planned wind-turbine
OTHER
U.S. Considers Forgiving Poor Nations' Debts
ACTIVISTS
Activists cite poor record on rights
-------- NUCLEAR
White House Hails Freeze on Nuclear Moves
June 9, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Summit-Weapons.html
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- The United States has won agreement from other powerful nations for a one-year freeze on the sale of nuclear enrichment equipment that can be used for weapons to countries now without such technology.
But President Bush's hope of making such a halt permanent was blocked by concerns from European nations with companies that sell such equipment, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
White House officials nevertheless called the deal among the industrialized countries that make up the Group of Eight a breakthrough.
``It's a huge deal,'' said Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton. He said the United States would work to make the ban permanent.
The White House did not name the countries that resisted a permanent freeze because of what one senior administration official called ``commercial issues.'' The official, who has knowledge of administration efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, spoke on his customary condition of anonymity.
Nor did administration officials voice any disappointment with their inability to win a permanent freeze. In February, Bush called for banning any additional countries from having the ability to enrich or process nuclear material, a step he said would deprive additional nations of being able to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.
He had hoped to advance that goal by persuading other participants in the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga., this week to endorse it.
But European resistance resulted in Bush instead securing a one-year freeze on any countries that possess the equipment to take steps toward transferring it to countries that don't. They agreed to revisit the issue at next year's G-8 summit in Great Britain.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was written more than 30 years ago to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond countries that already had them. Under the treaty, nuclear states agreed to help non-nuclear states develop peaceful atomic energy if they renounced the pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But Bush contends the treaty has a loophole that has been exploited by nations such as North Korea and Iran.
Those governments were allowed to produce nuclear material for civilian nuclear programs, but the material also can be used to build bombs, U.S. officials say.
-------- depleted uranium
Just DU It: Depleted Uranium and the Real Costs of Conquest
By Mickey Z.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Press Action
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz06092004/
"Let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw." --Ludwig Wittgenstein
Roughly 100,000 misguided souls lined up to catch a glimpse of Ronnie Raygun's coffin. I wish I could've stood just past his corpse and shown all those mourners these photos: http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/
This is the other side of Raygun's American morning, his optimism...the end result of U.S. foreign policy as practiced by our two-party (sic) system.
I could also stand outside voting booths in November and hold up photos from the above link to help make the connection between pulling the lever for Kush or Berry and the actions we are sanctioning in our name. How about at the gas pumps, too? At the movie theaters where blockbuster army flicks rake in the dough.
The photos at http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/ provide a stark reminder of who is on the other end of all those cool weapons Hollywood glorifies. Not just when the bombs hit (which is bad enough) but for years and years afterwards...they illustrate the impact of depleted uranium (DU) armor-piercing shells, of spreading the radioactivity.
"When fired," writes James Ridgeway in the Village Voice, "the uranium bursts into flame and all but liquifies, searing through steel armor like a white hot phosphorescent flare. The heat of the shell causes any diesel fuel vapors in the enemy tank to explode, and the crew inside is burned alive."
As grisly as that may sound, the effects of DU did not end with the scorched bodies of Iraqi conscripts. "The uranium-238 used to make the weapons can cause cancer and genetic defects when inhaled," says Ramsey Clark.
"Depleted uranium burns on contact," adds Helen Caldicott, "creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled." These minute particles can travel "long distances when airborne," she explains.
See: http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/
"There is no safe dose or dose rate below which dangers disappear. No threshold-dose,'" John Gofman, a former associate director of Livermore National Laboratory, one of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, and co-discoverer of uranium-233, told The Progressive. "Serious, lethal effects from minimal radiation doses are not 'hypothetical,' 'just theoretical,' or 'imaginary.' They are real."
The photos at http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/ will induce nightmares. You will have to look away. I guess I should warn those who might venture a look...but who warns those on the other end of American bombs paid for by oblivious and/or supportive American citizens?
Who talks about the fact that the United States has waged many nuclear wars...against Japan in 1945, against Iraq from 1991 to present, in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and on military bases like Vieques?
Look at the photos. Share them. Print them out. Then imagine how you'd feel if this happened to your country, your city, or your family. To paraphrase Ward Churchill: If we really want to end terrorism, we have to stop killing other people's babies.
(Thanks to J. Giza for supplying the link.)
Mickey Z. has two new books just released. For more information, please visit http://www.mickeyz.net.
-------- iran
Nuclear-armed Iran would be more vulnerable, top official says
TEHRAN (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040609063411.wnw1ivcj.html
Iran would be less safe if it acquired nuclear weapons because it cannot hope to match the arsenals of existing nuclear powers such as Israel and the United States, the Islamic republic's former envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog was quoted as saying Wednesday.
"Suppose we have a nuclear weapon, our nuclear weapon of course will not be as good as those developed by the Russians, nor will it be able to compete with the nuclear weapons of Israel and by extension of the US," Ali Akbar Salehi told Iran Daily.
Furthermore, Salehi emphasised that Iran "has absolutely no problem with India or Pakistan".
"A country like Iran cannot have prestige by acquiring nuclear weapons. I think a country like Iran would raise more threats against it, and not get security, by having nuclear weapons," he argued.
"We cannot buy more security by having nuclear weapons, only invite more threats against ourselves," said Salehi, whose tenure at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was marked by increasing suspicions that Iran is seeking the bomb.
The United States and Israel accuse Iran of using an atomic energy programme as a cover for the development of nuclear weapons, a charge Iran angrily denies.
Salehi, who was Iran's envoy to the IAEA for five years up to late last year, did however stress in the interview that civil nuclear power was a matter of national prestige.
"If a country has access to the cutting edge nuclear technology, it can be proud," said the former envoy, now a top advisor to the regime on national security and nuclear issues.
"Take Switzerland which has about six million people. Can one compare this country with the volume of knowledge and technology it has with another country that can hardly feed its people but boasts that it has a nuclear bomb," Salehi told the paper.
The IAEA's board is to hold a fresh meeting on Iran next Monday, amid fresh concerns the clerical regime has been hiding important aspects of its nuclear programme.
-------- iraq
Iraq could eventually have civilian nuclear power: US official
SAVANNAH, Georgia (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040608230221.m2bj3j7d.html
The United States, which has said oil-rich Iran has no legitimate use for a civilian nuclear program, would not raise the same objections in a transformed Iraq, a senior US official said Tuesday.
"That's a ways down the road," US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton said in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the annual summit of seven major industrialized nations plus Russia, the G8.
But "when the day comes when there is a representative government, and the (UN) Security Council says that, in fact, Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, a really transformed Iraq, there's no reason, it seems to me, unlike some other countries, there's no reason why you couldn't contemplate a civilian nuclear power program," he said.
Bolton's comments came as he explained that the United States is in "a race against time" to find new jobs for some 400-500 weapons scientists left idle by Saddam Hussein's ouster in the US-led March 2003 invasion.
"People are going to have to be creative to make sure that these people have something to do," the diplomat said.
Although US-led troops have not found any of the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for war, Washington worries that Iraqi scientists who once worked on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear programs might be hired off by terrorists or so-called rogue states.
----
Banned Iraqi Missile Engines Found in Jordan - UN
June 9, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-un-weapons.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Engines for long-range missiles have turned up in Jordan from unguarded sites in Iraq that were once monitored for materials that could produce banned weapons, U.N. inspectors said on Wednesday.
In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, Demetrius Perricos, the acting director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, warned that too many pieces of equipment were leaving Iraq, some as scrap.
``We found a few more engines and a few other items in Jordan,'' Perricos told Reuters. ``It is getting bad. Too many things are coming out.''
UNMOVIC, using photographs and serial numbers, previously reported discovering SA-2 engines among scrap in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. They were used in Iraq's Al Samoud 2 banned missile program.
The motors found in Jordan were also SA-2 engines ``and that is why we were interested,'' Perricos said.
U.N. inspectors left Iraq shortly before the war in March 2003 and have not been allowed to return since. The United States has sent its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction. The fate of the search teams is not known under the new Iraqi interim government that takes office on June 30.
Perricos briefed the Security Council on his recent report that showed satellite pictures of the engines discovered in the Netherlands and a site in Iraq stripped of its equipment, possibly by looters.
The site, called the Shumokh stores, northwest of Baghdad, had contained equipment that could be used for chemical and biological weapons and was once monitored by UNMOVIC.
PAKISTAN PROTESTS
Perricos suggested that UNMOVIC's arms experts could be used in other international disarmament areas, such as a new council anti-terrorist program that seeks to punish black marketeers who traffic in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons components.
But Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram, lashed out at Perricos, saying his commission should be shut down and had no right to propose other tasks, diplomats reported.
``We see this as an organization which is unable to do its job,'' Akram told reporters afterward. ``The job may not be there to be done, and therefore we think that the quicker we find some way to certify that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the better it is.''
Other delegations, notably Russia and Germany, disagreed, arguing that UNMOVIC's expertise in Iraq should not be wasted.
Pakistan admitted this year that Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist revered as the father of the country's nuclear bomb, had smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and was under house arrest.
In order to get Pakistan's support, the council's resolution setting up the new non-proliferation program said any action would not be retroactive.
Romanian Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc was chosen on Wednesday to head a new council committee that would monitor unconventional weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.
--------
Items That Could Make Illict Arms Gone From Iraq, U.N. Told
June 9, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09CND-NATIONS.html?hp
UNITED NATIONS, June 9 - Equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since the war and shipped abroad, the head of the United Nations inspectors office told the Security Council today.
Demetrius Perricos, deputy to the former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and now the acting executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told a closed-door session of the council that many of the items bear tags placed by United Nations inspectors as suspect "dual use" ones having capabilities for creating harmless consumer products as well as unconventional weapons.
Mr. Perricos accompanied his briefing with a report showing satellite photos of a fully built-up missile site near Baghdad in May 2003 and the same site denuded in February 2004.
His spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said that items removed from the site included fermenters, a freeze drier, distillation columns, parts of missiles and a reactor vessel - all tools suitable for making biological or chemical weapons.
"It raises the question of what happened to the dual use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Mr. Buchanan said.
He said that a fermenter was a good example of a dual use item that was potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter," he said. "You can also use it to breed anthrax."
Another photo showed an engine from a banned SA-2 surface-to-air missile that had been tagged by the United Nations in Iraq in 1996 and recently discovered in a scrapyard in Rotterdam, the Dutch port.
The report said that workers there had told inspectors from UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency that as many as 12 such engines may have passed through the yard in January and February 2004 and that additional items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys with the inscriptions "Iraq" and "Baghdad" had been observed since November 2003.
"This is only a snapshot," said Mr. Buchanan. Two inspectors, he said, acting on information from the Netherlands, went to scrapyards in Jordan this past week and found 20 more such engines in addition to tagged processing equipment such as chemical reactors, heat exchangers and a solid propellent mixing bowl.
"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," he said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors." Inspectors are hoping to check scrapyards in Turkey, he said.
Last month, The New York Times reported that large quantities of new reconstruction equipment and sensitive military material was being plundered in Iraq and trucked to Jordan to be sold as scrap. Mohamed El Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the Security Council in April that nuclear facilities were unguarded and that large amounts of material, some of it contaminated, were being smuggled out of the country.
The United Nations inspectors were removed from Iraq just before the war broke out in March 2003, and, the report says, have been ignored by the American-led Iraq Survey Group that has been searching for arms since then.
In the negotiations leading to Tuesday's passage of a Security Council resolution on Iraq, Russia pressed for inclusion in the measure of language promising to reinvigorate the United Nations inspectors, but the final version simply pledged to "revisit" their mandate.
-------- israel
Israel announces first surface-to-surface cruise missile: Jane's
LONDON (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040608222816.fl8kgr7w.html
Israel's main arms manufacturer, Israel Military Industries (IMI), has announced the creation of the country's first surface-to-surface missile, Jane's Defence Weekly reported on Tuesday.
The new weapon, an adaptation of the air-launched Delilah cruise missile, would be able to reach all nearby capitals including Damascus and Beirut, but not Israel's main regional rival Iran, according to the military publishers.
IMI said the Delilah-GL missile had a range of 250 kilometers (150 miles) but Israeli defence sources told Jane's that it went "well beyond 300 kilometers".
The report by the British military publication, which will be published in its magazine on June 16, said Israel has long sought to acquire the capability to fire cruise missiles from land. This is the first time Israel has publicly acknowledged its ability to do so.
IMI and Israel would not comment on the missile's payload capacity, but the Delilah air-to-surface missile on which it is based can carry up to a 30-kilogram (66-pound) high-explosive warhead or a range of other payloads.
The Jewish state is also reportedly seeking to develop longer-range cruise missiles which could be deployed from submarines, Jane's said.
-------- japan
U.S. researcher warns MOX fuel plan is too costly
By ERIKO ARITA Staff writer
The Japan Times:
June 9, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040609f3.htm
Japan should rethink its plans to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and consider the much cheaper alternative of disposal, according to a nuclear power expert from the United States.
Resource-poor Japan plans to turn the plutonium and uranium gained through reprocessing into mixed oxide uranium-plutonium fuel, known as MOX, for use in conventional nuclear reactors, but this process is more expensive than disposing of the fuel, says Steve Fetter, a professor at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland.
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. is currently building a fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, where it hopes to begin producing MOX fuel in 2006.
But Fetter says his studies show the price of electricity generated from burning MOX fuel at a conventional nuclear reactor is about 10 percent higher than electricity derived from uranium.
"If Japan wants to reconsider reprocessing, now is a good time -- before (the plant in) Rokkasho operates," Fetter said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.
The government's Atomic Energy Commission is currently reviewing its long-term nuclear power development plan amid calls for closer scrutiny of the nuclear fuel recycling program.
Although MOX fuel is planned for use in conventional and fast-breeder reactors, nuclear power plant construction has met with stiff resistance in recent years, and Monju, the only fast-breeder reactor in Japan, has been shut down since an accident in 1995.
Fetter gave a presentation to the commission last week in Tokyo on the results of his study -- conducted jointly with Harvard University researchers -- on the cost comparison of reprocessing and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Fetter does not object to using nuclear energy, as it would help alleviate global warming, but he explained how spent fuel reprocessing at the Rokkasho plant is not economically viable.
The current price of uranium is about $40 per kg, but unless the figure tops $1,650, the cost of electricity generated by MOX fuel from the Rokkasho plant will continue to be more expensive than that from conventional nuclear power generation, he said.
"Advocates (of reprocessing) argue that the cost difference is small and will disappear soon if demand for nuclear power grows," Fetter said. "But we argue that the cost difference is significant and is likely to persist for a long time -- at least 75 to 100 years."
Japan's decided in 1967 to use nuclear fuel recycling as a way to secure a stable energy supply. At that time, Fetter noted, it was believed that nuclear energy demand would grow quickly and that uranium resources were relatively scarce.
In fact, the demand for nuclear power has grown slowly in the last four decades, and the price of uranium has decreased due in large part to the discovery that it is more abundant than was previously estimated, the professor said.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, uranium deposits worldwide are estimated at 16 million tons, enough to last about 270 years at the current rate of consumption, he added.
Most of Japan's spent nuclear fuel is now being stored at nuclear power plants. However, some plants are beginning to reach maximum capacity.
Fetter blasted the argument that fuel reprocessing would help solve the nuclear waste problem, saying that heat and radioactivity levels are still high in the waste from the recycling process and it too has to be stored somewhere.
"In fact, spent MOX fuel is hotter and more radioactive than spent LEU," the low-enriched uranium fuel used at conventional nuclear power plants, he said.
The U.S. government has decided to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in a geological repository currently under construction at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Fetter recommended that Japan also build a geological repository or an interim storage facility for spent fuel, but he acknowledged that local opposition often makes it difficult to find such a site.
Antinuclear activists argue that such resistance is not surprising. According to the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization, it would take millions of years for the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel to decay.
Japan Nuclear Fuel has said it plans to start trial operations with depleted uranium at its Rokkasho plant this month, but Fetter said Japan should halt the reprocessing program before trials take place.
"The facility will become radioactive (from the trials), and you will have to spend a lot of money to decontaminate it," he said.
-------- korea
N. Korea May Be Relaxing Position
Leader Pressed to Drop Nuclear Arms
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26243-2004Jun8.html
SAVANNAH, Ga., June 8 -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, meeting with President Bush on Tuesday before the start of the Group of Eight summit, provided a cautiously upbeat assessment of his recent discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, suggesting North Korea's resolve to keep its nuclear weapons programs may be weakening, U.S. and Japanese officials said.
Koizumi said he stressed to Kim the economic benefits that would be available to North Korea if it gave up its weapons, and told Bush he detected that this message was beginning to get through to the mercurial North Korean. He suggested that in advance of the next round of multination talks on North Korea, Bush stress the advantages that would flow to Pyongyang if it dismantled its weapons. Bush has repeatedly said he does not want to reward North Korea.
Buoyed by the approval of a new Iraq resolution by the U.N. Security Council, Bush also held bilateral sessions with three leaders of countries critical of the Iraq war -- Russia, Germany and Canada -- as he prepared for the start of the high-level economic and political summit at Sea Island, off the Georgia coast. One senior official described the meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as the "warmest meeting" the two leaders have had since before the Iraq war.
All day, planes carrying the leaders landed at nearby Hunter Army Airfield, where they were whisked under tight security to the exclusive resort.
The summit, which ends Thursday, began Tuesday night with an informal dinner hosted by Bush. The leaders of Britain, Italy and France are also attending.
Reporters are being kept nearly 100 miles away in Savannah, in a massive media center on its own island. U.S. and foreign officials either shuttle back and forth to brief the media, or are piped in via teleconference from the resort. The White House, eager to portray Bush as a leader comfortable on the world stage, scheduled a series of nonstop briefings and interviews with officials to tout agreements on stemming proliferation of nuclear weapons, expanding global peacekeeping efforts, combating diseases such as polio and AIDS, and ending poverty through private-sector initiatives.
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, in an interview, said the G-8 would issue an "action plan" on nonproliferation, which he expected would include agreeing to expand a program for the retraining of former Soviet nuclear scientists to include other nations that have given up their weapons such as Iraq and Libya.
Moreover, he said, the leaders appear poised to agree to a one-year suspension of new nuclear reprocessing deals with other nations as they work out an agreement on how to prevent additional countries from obtaining uranium enrichment reprocessing technology. Such technology can form the basis for weapons programs.
Bolton said there are few of these deals in a given year but "it's a very significant thing for the leaders to say we're going to set a target for ourselves for one year and in the meantime not launch any new initiatives."
During a lunch with Bush, Koizumi reported that Kim said he did not want nuclear weapons, a senior administration official said, adding that Koizumi said Kim did not include the usual language that North Korea was forced to have such weapons because of the administration's "hostile policy."
A senior Japanese official provided a slightly different version. He said Koizumi reported that Kim said his goal is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula but he feels uneasy about the administration's attitude.
When Koizumi pressed the case that giving up weapons would be beneficial, Kim replied that "he sees the point but he feels unease about U.S intentions and the use of threatening words by the U.S., as North Korea and Kim Jong Il interprets them," the Japanese official said. Kim added that "in order to solve this lack of communication, he wants to have a direct dialogue with the United States," the official said.
Both the U.S. and the Japanese officials spoke about the Koizumi-Bush session under condition of anonymity at the insistence of their respective governments. Another U.S. official, also speaking under the same conditions, was dubious about any shift in North Korean attitudes, saying the country is a "very successful propagandist."
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry, has attacked Bush for refusing to hold direct talks with the North Koreans, except on the sidelines of multilateral talks. Kerry has pledged to immediately begin bilateral negotiations, a stance that some experts believe reduces the incentive for North Korea to strike any deal before the presidential election in November.
The U.S. official said Koizumi agreed with Bush that "we'd throw away all the leverage we have on them" if bilateral discussions were held. But the Japanese official said "the prime minister believes the United States actually judges whether it is a good idea to have bilateral discussions with North Korea. On this specific point Prime Minister Koizumi does not have any advice."
-------- terrorism
Plan to Secure Nuclear Weapons Opens Sea Island G8 Summit
SAVANNAH, Georgia, June 9, 2004 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-09-04.asp
The leaders of the world's eight most industrialized countries are close to agreement on a plan to expand international efforts to locate and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, National Security Council spokesperson Jim Wilkinson said Tuesday.
Briefing reporters in Savannah, as the G8 leaders gathered on Sea Island for their annual Summit meeting, Wilkinson, speaking for the White House, said the plan would expand the Proliferation Security Initiative and strengthen the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Although the summit began Tuesday as President George W. Bush welcomed the other leaders to Sea Island, summit negotiations have been going on for some time, and a range of agreements already have been reached. The G8 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. A ninth entity, the European Union, is represented in all discussions as well.
Heading to the G8 summit at Sea Island, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and his wife Sheila Martin wave during their arrival at Hunter Army Airfield Tuesday. (Photos courtesy The White House except where noted) Today, the G8 leaders are joined for lunch by the leaders of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey and Yemen. On Thursday, the G8 leaders will have lunch with the leaders of Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.
Briefing reporters, a senior administration official noted that 62 countries gathered in Krakow, Poland last week to endorse the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and a set of principles that seek to prevent international trade in nuclear weapons materials and technology. At that meeting, Russia was named a member of the PSI core group, so now all eight of the G8 countries are part of the core group.
The official also expects the G8 leaders to endorse an expansion of the global partnership initiated at the 2002 G8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, to secure or eliminate weapons of mass destruction in the states of the former Soviet Union.
The G8 leaders are expected to welcome the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which calls on UN member states to criminalize activity related to weapons of mass destruction and improve export control systems in an effort to prevent international trafficking in these weapons.
The G8 leaders are expected to adopt measures aimed at closing loopholes in the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The Bush administration is concerned that "under the guise of so-called peaceful nuclear programs, many states around the world have acquired very sensitive technologies that permit them, together with a clandestine weapons program, to draw very close to having nuclear weapons capability" without apparently violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the senior official said.
He said that President Bush is working to "cut off the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology to any states that don't currently have it."
The senior official said the G8 leaders are expected to adopt a one year freeze on inaugurating new technology transfers to additional states until the G8 committees can develop a comprehensive strategy for regulating such transfers.
The official also said that the G8 leaders have agreed that safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be tightened by making the adoption of the additional protocol a condition to the importation of certain nuclear technologies, even if those technologies are destined for legitimate civil power applications.
Wilkinson told reporters that the G8 leaders already have endorsed initiatives to end famine in the Horn of Africa, eradicate polio by the end of 2005 and expand micro-finance programs targeting entrepreneurs. Such programs are key to poor countries' economic development, Wilkinson said.
In addition, the leaders have committed to help poor countries develop local institutions to finance access to housing and clean water, he said.
The G8 leaders are expected to announce a new initiative to help prevent famine by improving worldwide emergency assessment and response systems, with the goal of raising agricultural productivity, and helping five million people who live in a chronic state of insecurity over food. Wilkinson said the leaders have set the goal of helping people in Ethiopia to attain food security by the year 2009.
"Millions of people face hunger or food insecurity in places like Eritrea, Somalia, the Sudan, Kenya and Uganda," said Wilkinson. "Five million Ethiopians are unable at some time in any year to secure an adequate supply of food for their survival. The President believes that famine is a preventable tragedy, and he is determined to commit the international community and the United States to do more to help alleviate it."
Being called "Ending the Cycle of Famine in the Horn of Africa," the initiative is the first to be wholly agreed. In Ethiopia it will work by supporting land reform, rural infrastructure development, regional economic integration and integrating and making more efficient some comprehensive famine prevention programs.
President Bush and the other G8 leaders also have agreed to establish a global HIV vaccine enterprise, a consortium that would accelerate the development of an HIV vaccine, Wilkinson said.
The G8 leaders will also act to combat polio, which endemic to six countries and has re-emerged in nine additional nations. "You can expect the G8 this week to announce that they will take all necessary steps to help eradicate polio by the end of 2005," Wilkinson said.
There will be a G8 commitment to help finance housing and clean water access by developing local mortgage and municipal bond markets, he said. There will be a U.S.-African Mortgage Markets Initiative, which, as you know, was launched in 2003 and is already assisting Botswana, Nigeria, Zambia, South Africa and others in designing and implementing mortgage finance programs.
"The U.S. $1 billion Water for the Poor Initiative is working to bring clean water to some 50 million people globally," Wilkinson said.
At previous summits, on these issues reporters have had direct access to the nongovernmental organizations who have been working on these issues for many years. This year, they are not at the press center, instead they have been replaced by representatives of companies such as Verizon and Cingular.
There were a few anti-G8 demonstrators in Savannah. On Tuesday, about 150 people marched from Forsyth Park to the Civil Rights Museum and back for a rally and festival in the park.
"It's a victory just to have this event," said local organizer Kelly Gasink. "If we didn't have a place for people to do their art, make their statements, they would just walk around and maybe break things, which doesn't accomplish anything."
Although the City of Savannah was more forthcoming with a permit than the City of Brunswick, the march organizers complained of barriers thrown up by all levels of government and law enforcement.
The Savannah marchers and rally speakers represented a range of views and causes, from local liberals, Greenpeace, and members of the Libertarian and Green parties.
In Brunswick, Georgia on Tuesday morning, 150 global justice activists and almost as many members of the press gathered at the old courthouse in downtown Brunswick for a "March Against the War in Iraq and the War at Home."
In San Francisco, some 200 people joined the Mutant Street Fest that was organized by a group that called itself West Coast G8 on Tuesday.
--------
Scientists Say Dirty Bomb Would Be a Dud
June 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Dirty-Bomb-Dud.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The ``dirty bomb'' allegedly planned by terror suspect Jose Padilla would have been a dud, not the radiological threat portrayed last week by federal authorities, scientists say.
At a June 1 news conference, the Justice Department said the alleged al-Qaida associate hoped to attack Americans by detonating ``uranium wrapped with explosives'' in order to spread radioactivity.
But uranium's extremely low radioactivity is harmless compared with high-radiation materials -- such as cesium and cobalt isotopes used in medicine and industry that experts see as potential dirty bomb fuels.
``I used a 20-pound brick of uranium as a doorstop in my office,'' American nuclear physicist Peter D. Zimmerman, of King's College in London, said to illustrate the point.
Zimmerman, co-author of an expert analysis of dirty bombs for the U.S. National Defense University, said last week's government announcement was ``extremely disturbing -- because you cannot make a radiological dispersal device with uranium. There is just no significant radiation hazard.''
Other specialists agreed. ``It's the equivalent of blowing up lead,'' said physicist Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists.
When Padilla was arrested in June 2002, after returning to Chicago from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the ex-Chicago gang member and Muslim convert had planned a dirty bomb that could ``cause mass death and injury.'' Washington, D.C., was the likely target, his department said.
But it wasn't until Deputy Attorney General James Comey's briefing for reporters last week that authorities said Padilla had uranium in mind for his radiological dispersal device, or RDD, the technical term for such a weapon. Comey said the detainee disclosed he'd also been sent to set off natural gas explosions in U.S. apartment buildings.
``Just saying the word `uranium,' the public automatically assumes, `Oh, it sounds bad,''' said physicist Charles Ferguson of the Washington office of California's Monterey Institute of International Studies. He co-authored one of the most detailed reports on the dirty-bomb threat.
Those studying the RDD potential envision a combination of explosives with a lethal radioisotope, such as cesium-137, diverted from use in cancer radiotherapy, for example, or from machines that irradiate food. Particularly if in powder form, it could spew intense radioactivity over a section of a city, making it uninhabitable.
Radiation from uranium, on the other hand, is billions of times less intense than that of cesium-137, cobalt-60 and other radioisotopes. It's not radioactivity but another property of uranium -- its ability in some forms to sustain atomic chain reactions -- that makes it a fuel for nuclear power and bombs.
The Justice Department didn't respond directly when asked this week whether it had consulted with experts and knew that uranium wouldn't make a dirty bomb.
Instead, spokesman Mark Corallo said Padilla's statements, in view of his al-Qaida links, made clear that he was ``willing to cause devastating harm to innocent Americans.''
Padilla has been held by the U.S. military since 2002 as an enemy combatant, without charge and with little access to lawyers. The Bush administration has been criticized for denying a U.S. citizen normal access to the courts. The Supreme Court is considering whether the government, in defending against terrorism, has such power.
Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, said Wednesday of the dirty-bomb allegation that U.S. authorities ``should have known that this was nonsense.''
``When they frightened everybody, what were they trying to do, if they knew better? To show the administration is on top of things?'' she asked.
She wants the government to attempt to indict and try her client. ``Maybe the problem is the evidence is so weak, it's laughable,'' she said.
Comey said the news conference was called ``to help people understand the nature of the threat'' Padilla posed.
Based on what he said were Padilla's admissions to interrogators, he described a ``highly trained al-Qaida soldier'' who accepted an assignment to blow up U.S. apartment buildings, and ``planned to do even more by detonating a radiological device, a dirty bomb, in this country.''
Spokesman Corallo reaffirmed this week that it was Padilla who said uranium would be used.
``If that's what he planned,'' physicist Oelrich said of Padilla, ``it shows he doesn't know what he's talking about and hasn't done even rudimentary homework.''
He wasn't the only one, according to a Justice Department summary of interrogations.
It said Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaida lieutenant now in U.S. custody, also envisioned a uranium device when urging Padilla to mount a U.S. attack. At another point, however, the summary said Zubaydah told Padilla the dirty bomb was ``not as easy to do as they thought.''
Padilla claims ``he was never really planning to go through with'' any of the terrorist assignment, Comey told reporters.
As a heavy metal, like lead, uranium poses one health risk: If ingested or inhaled, it can damage kidneys or other organs. But unlike radioisotopes, byproducts of nuclear reactors, uranium doesn't emit penetrating gamma rays that cause acute radiation poisoning. Instead, it slowly radiates weak alpha particles, which don't even penetrate skin.
``Granted, it (uranium) could have a psychological effect'' because of unfounded fears, said physicist Ferguson. But he said a government information campaign should quell any panic if such a weapon appeared.
-------- treaties
White House hails freeze on nuclear moves
By SCOTT LINDLAW
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Wednesday, June 9, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1151&slug=Summit%20Weapons
SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The United States has won agreement from other powerful nations for a one-year freeze on the sale of nuclear enrichment equipment that can be used for weapons to countries now without such technology.
But President Bush's hope of making such a halt permanent was blocked by concerns from European nations with companies that sell such equipment, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
White House officials nevertheless called the deal among the industrialized countries that make up the Group of Eight a breakthrough.
"It's a huge deal," said Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton. He said the United States would work to make the ban permanent.
The White House did not name the countries that resisted a permanent freeze because of what one senior administration official called "commercial issues." The official, who has knowledge of administration efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, spoke on his customary condition of anonymity.
Nor did administration officials voice any disappointment with their inability to win a permanent freeze. In February, Bush called for banning any additional countries from having the ability to enrich or process nuclear material, a step he said would deprive additional nations of being able to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.
He had hoped to advance that goal by persuading other participants in the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga., this week to endorse it.
But European resistance resulted in Bush instead securing a one-year freeze on any countries that possess the equipment to take steps toward transferring it to countries that don't. They agreed to revisit the issue at next year's G-8 summit in Great Britain.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was written more than 30 years ago to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond countries that already had them. Under the treaty, nuclear states agreed to help non-nuclear states develop peaceful atomic energy if they renounced the pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But Bush contends the treaty has a loophole that has been exploited by nations such as North Korea and Iran.
Those governments were allowed to produce nuclear material for civilian nuclear programs, but the material also can be used to build bombs, U.S. officials say.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
House Panel Rebuffs White House on Nukes
June 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Weapons-Cuts.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House subcommittee told the administration Wednesday to rethink some of its plans for nuclear weapons, including development of a ``bunker buster'' warhead.
The panel refused to provide money for development of a nuclear bunker buster, a weapon that can destroy a deeply buried target. It also denied funding for research into the feasibility of a low-yield ``mini-nuke'' warhead and for work on a new plant to produce plutonium triggers for the warheads.
The programs, while relatively small in terms of funding during the fiscal year beginning in October, have been a priority of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency responsible for the nation's nuclear stockpile.
``We put the brakes on a number of new nuclear weapons initiatives,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the subcommittee chairman.
``The NNSA needs to take a time-out on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relations to security needs, budget constraints and a (recently completed) new stockpile plan,'' continued Hobson.
The programs, which were left with no money, had been proposed as part of the $28 billion spending bill for energy and water programs approved by Hobson's Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.
The panel eliminated $27.6 million for the bunker buster, $9 million for the mini-nuke research and $29.8 million for preliminary work on a trigger factory.
It also rejected $30 million the administration wanted so that the Energy Department could more quickly prepare for actual nuclear bomb testing, although Energy officials have emphasized there are no plans for resumption of testing.
Linton Brooks, head of the NNSA, has denied that the initiatives are aimed at anything other than better preparing the nuclear stockpile for future needs. There is no plan for renewed testing or development of new warheads, he has said.
But nonproliferation advocates have viewed these programs as signs of a more ominous agenda. Some programs -- such as development of the bunker buster -- may make it more likely that the nuclear option will be used, opponents say.
``The Bush administration is laying the groundwork for recurrent nuclear testing and deployment of new nuclear weapons. This is a clear response from Republicans in the House saying we don't need that,'' said Stephen Young, an analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The House subcommittee slashed nearly in half the amount of money for beginning work on a new plant to convert plutonium to mixed-oxide fuel that can be used in commercial power reactors. The administration had wanted $368 million, but lawmakers cut that by $165 million.
The program is part of a joint venture with Russia for each country to get rid of 34 tons of excess plutonium in their weapons programs.
The action Wednesday makes it likely the funding will not be approved by the House. The Senate has yet to decide on whether it will make similar cuts.
--------
House Panel Votes to Block New Nuclear Weapons
June 9, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-congress-nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee defied the Bush administration on Wednesday and slashed funds to study a new generation of deep-earth penetrating nuclear weapons and so-called low-yield nuclear weapons.
The House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee denied the $36 million the administration sought to study the nuclear weapons it says may be needed to confront emerging threats since the end of the Cold War.
It took the measure while considering a $28 billion bill to fund energy, water and nuclear weapons programs.
The subcommittee also cut the funds last year, but the full Congress in later House and Senate votes restored them.
The administration has said it has no plans to develop the weapons. But it does not want to close the door to the ``bunker-busting'' nuclear weapons it said may be needed to bore into underground facilities and the smaller weapons with less than half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Critics contend that just considering such weapons will spur a renewed arms race and takes nuclear warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable.
In a vote last month on a bill authorizing defense programs, the House narrowly defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to block the study.
The Senate is expected to debate the issue next week in an amendment pushed by Democrats on its defense authorization bill, and later when it takes up its version of the bill to fund energy, water and nuclear weapons programs.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Nev. Nuclear Waste Project Faces Problems
June 9, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House panel approved only a fraction of the money the administration says it needs to keep a proposed nuclear waste project in Nevada on schedule, jeopardizing its planned completion by 2010.
While the facility at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has widespread congressional support, a budget glitch forced a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday to provide only $131 million for the program in the next fiscal year.
The Energy Department had requested $880 million it says it will need to begin seeking permits for the waste repository, go ahead with design work and develop a plan for transporting waste to the site from nuclear power plants around the country.
``I think we have an obligation to get (the facility) opened and funded,'' said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee. ``But I don't have the tools right now to get that done.''
The Yucca Mountain money is part of a $28 billion spending bill for energy and water projects that the subcommittee approved by voice vote Wednesday. While there may be opportunities to increase funds for Yucca Mountain as the bill works its way through the House, Hobson was not optimistic about the prospects.
Hobson said funding for the program has been put in jeopardy because the administration, in requesting the funds, linked the remaining $749 million to Congress passing separate legislation on how lawmakers use a special nuclear waste fund for the Yucca project.
Congress has used that fund, which now totals nearly $15 billion, to help shrink the federal deficit, and there is little prospect that the legislation offered by the administration will pass this year.
Given the tight budget situation, Hobson could not find the money elsewhere, so Yucca Mountain funding for the 2005 fiscal year, beginning in October, was limited to the $131 million allocated for defense waste.
The government wants to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste -- used reactor fuel now held at power plants in 31 states as well as defense waste -- at Yucca Mountain. Next year has been described as pivotal for the program since the Energy Department will begin the process for getting a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and developing a transportation plan for the waste.
Margaret Chu, director of the Energy Department office that heads the program, has told lawmakers that if it does not get the full $880 million it would be impossible to meet the 2010 deadline for accepting the first load of waste.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also a strong supporter of the Yucca project, said it would take ``something extraordinary'' to find the funding the administration says is needed given the legislative box that the White House Office of Management and Budget has created by linking the funding to separate legislation.
The administration has always relied on the House to come up with the needed money for Yucca Mountain and counter problems in the Senate, where Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, an ardent Yucca opponent, is in the leadership and has the ability to sidetrack legislation or keep funding down for the waste project.
Although Congress overrode Nevada's objections to the waste facility in 2002, the state and its congressional delegation continue to fight the project in the courts and anywhere else possible.
Domenici said he planned to discuss with administration officials ways to get out of the budget problem and ensure full funding for the program. But he said finding the money may be ``very, very difficult.''
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[To reply: online@chron.com and readerrep@chron.com]
NUCLEAR POLITICS
Kerry puts getting votes ahead of national interest
June 9, 2004,
Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/2619275
Sen. John Kerry is playing politics with the nation's nuclear safety in telling Nevada voters he would shut down the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste storage site if elected president. Closing Yucca Mountain would threaten the nation's safety and the security of its energy supplies.
Yucca Mountain will become the country's principal repository for spent nuclear fuel rods and deadly radioactive waste produced by defense programs when it opens in 2010. Until then, storage areas for these dangerous materials in about 40 states are vulnerable to terrorist attacks, thefts and accidents.
The mountain site, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was chosen after an exhausting 20-year search as the nation's safest permanent repository for the deadliest radioactive wastes. Kerry might gain a few Nevadan votes by promising to close it, but he would ensure greater danger for the rest of the nation, where nuclear wastes are piling up at worrisome rates in above-ground storage sites. While rejecting Yucca Mountain, Kerry offers no alternative.
Four years ago Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush won Nevada by 4 percentage points over Democrat Al Gore. President Bush approved the Yucca Mountain storage site, and the facility is supported in the party platform of Nevada's Republicans.
Closure of Yucca Mountain would pose another barrier to the expansion of the nuclear power industry. The demand for natural gas is outstripping new reserves, and the owners of coal-fired power plants resist pollution controls. With the waste storage problem solved, nuclear generation is one nonpolluting way to reduce this nation's ever-growing dependence on foreign energy sources.
Kerry is playing the most cynical politics to gain Nevadan votes. A better way to get the votes necessary to be elected president is for Kerry to show more regard for the national interest.
-------- new york
A Routine Drill at a New York Power Plant, With a New Focus on Terrorism
June 9, 2004
By IAN URBINA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/nyregion/09indian.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BUCHANAN, N.Y., June 8 - The crisis was coming fast and furious at the Indian Point nuclear power plant. First came a report that weapons, maps and documents concerning the plant had been found in a car on a highway in Connecticut. Then a Boeing 767 jet crashed near a transformer, causing a major fire and damaging several buildings.
"People were really scrambling and the mood was intense," said Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who is now a risk management consultant for Entergy, the owner of the plant, and was in its command center during Tuesday's simulated emergency.
The emergency drill was the same exercise performed every other year at the plant, but for the first time, the script involved terrorism. The event, which involved more than 1,000 state and local officials in addition to the F.B.I., Norad and the White House, challenged local governments, including Putnam, Westchester, Rockland and Orange Counties, to respond to a staged crisis that started around 8 a.m. and lasted until 4. The possibility that a plane could crash into the plant has been a source of concern ever since Sept. 11, 2001, when a 767, the same type of plane used in Tuesday's exercise, flew over the plant on its way to the World Trade Center.
During the drill, officials pretended to mobilize firefighters, dispatch helicopters and redirect traffic. Evacuations of parts of Westchester, Rockland and Orange Counties were simulated. Operators at the plant were confronted with mechanical malfunctions that caused Indian Point to shut down, and they also faced a major valve rupture, which leaked radioactive water. But much to the disappointment of those who are skeptical of the plant's emergency plans, there was no simulated leak of radiation, leaving many unconvinced of the drill's effectiveness.
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat and a longtime critic of the plant, dismissed the exercise as an "elaborate cartoon," calling it "a simulation of entertainment but little more."
Andrew J. Spano, the county executive of Westchester, where Indian Point is located, said he was unimpressed by the drill. "We asked for a scenario which would involve a fast-breaking release of radiation so that we could really be tested," he said. "Instead, we got a slow-motion drill with no actual radiation release into the environment."
But Michael J. Slobodien, director of emergency programs for Entergy, dismissed the criticism. "The whole critique that the drill was inadequate because there was no actual radiation released into the environment is unfounded," he said. "There was a leak at the plant which could have affected the population at large, which meant that all the counties had to be ready for a general release of radiation into the environment."
Mr. Spano also noted that gridlock, a major concern in a real crisis, was addressed only before the drill's evacuation stage. "It hardly came as a surprise that they reported that there was no gridlock," he said.
Around 30 protesters, some dressed in head-to-toe anticontamination suits, held signs saying "What About the Gridlock?" and "Forget about an Evacuation!" Kyle Rabin, a policy analyst from Riverkeeper, one of the organizers of the protest, said local hospitals had never had to treat the huge number of casualties that a real emergency would entail. He also questioned why the simulation did not consider the potential for contamination of a larger area. "In a realistic case, the emergency would last long enough that the wind might change directions," he said.
Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Westchester Democrat whose district includes the plant, which is 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, said she was glad the drill included an air-based attack. But she added she was still concerned that the plant had not proven its ability to deal with a fast-breaking release of radiation.
Part of the drill involved a mock media center at the Westchester County Airport, which provided updates throughout the day about the unfolding emergency. People posing as reporters sat in the front and asked officials questions, while other observers, including actual reporters, stood in the back of the room and were told to remain silent so as not to interfere with the drill.
Federal observers said the terrorism script made Tuesday's drill much more difficult than previous ones. "Something instantly happened,'' said Joseph F. Picciano, the acting regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "and as a result the counties had to get on their feet really quickly." In earlier drills, problems typically began with a small mechanical malfunction and took hours to build up to a major crisis. "This was, 'Boom, the plane hits,' and we need to see decisions made," he said in a telephone interview.
Nils J. Diaz, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, speaking from his office in Washington, said he thought that the drill went well.
"There's always things we can do a little better," he said. "That's why we drill."
Dr. Diaz said that the drill was conducted in real time, without compressing several days' events into a few hours, at the request of the county executives, who said that this was more realistic.
He said the drill included placing calls to the White House Situation Room and receiving communications back. Besides the F.B.I. and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Homeland Security participated, he said.
At one point, he said, when the "attack" appeared to have cut off the plant from outside power, the federal agencies prepared to bring in truck-mounted emergency generators, although eventually this was not needed, he said.
Around the plant there was little sign of activity. Three heavily armed men stood sentry at the front gate, but a pickup truck and a string of sedans went in and out with little seeming rush.
Traffic was light through the entire morning on Broadway, where the plant sits, as well as in neighboring areas and on Route 9, which leads to and from the plant.
On a residential street in downtown Buchanan, Tate Avenue, lawns were decorated with signs saying "Indian Point. Safe. Secure. Vital."
At Phil's Barbershop, Phil Nisi, the owner, shrugged dismissively at news of the emergency drill. "It's just a normal day," he said. "This is a quiet town, and it's a quiet day."
Matthew L. Wald and Marek Fuchs contributed reporting for this article.
--------
N.Y. Nuke Plant Drill Includes Plane Crash
June 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Indian-Point.html
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- For the first time, a fake terrorist attack was included in a drill of emergency plans at a nuclear power plant near New York City, with crews grappling with a pretend crash of a 767.
Tuesday's fake crash set off an ever-worsening cascade of simulated events for Indian Point plant operators and emergency responders. By the time the drill ended, a containment building was portrayed as filling with radioactive steam and portions of surrounding counties had been ``evacuated'' and residents advised to swallow anti-radiation pills. The actual residents, however, had no part in the drill.
Plant owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast and federal regulators have been criticized for not taking terror into account in emergency planning since the World Trade Center attack, 40 miles to the south in lower Manhattan. At the site are the mothballed Indian Point 1 plant and the active Indian Point 2 and 3 plants.
The critics were not assuaged by Tuesday's drill. The scenario did not include a simulated release of radiation into the atmosphere -- an omission that ``speaks to the farcical nature of this exercise,'' said Kyle Rabin, of Riverkeeper, one of the organizations in the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition.
``We want to know if the public can be protected from a release of radiation,'' he said.
He also criticized as ``unbelievable'' the announcement that there were no traffic control problems during the simulated evacuations.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will evaluate the exercise at a public meeting on Thursday.
The drill began with word that a group of men had been stopped on a Connecticut highway in a car laden with weapons and documents pointing to an attack on Indian Point. Then the North American Aerospace Defense Command alerted the NRC that a 767 cargo jet seemed to be heading for Indian Point.
The ``crash'' wiped out offsite power to the reactor as it was being shut down. Backup generators failed and a leak of reactor coolant raised the specter of a meltdown.
A fake general emergency was declared, and Westchester County ordered the evacuation and advised those who have potassium iodide to ``swallow one dose now.'' Potassium iodide is meant to inhibit the effect of radiation on the human thyroid.
The scenario of the crash included no damage to the reactor's concrete containment building. Brian Holian, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said recent studies showed ``most plane crashes into containment buildings would not result in significant releases of radiation.''
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who has called for a shutdown of the Indian Point plants, took part in the drill but ``still feels the evacuation wouldn't work in a fast-breaking scenario of radiation escaping,'' said his chief adviser, Susan Tolchin.
A group of about 30 protesters, some in make-believe moon suits, were kept behind barricades outside the airport conference room where reporters -- real ones and simulated ones -- received intermittent briefings on the drill. One demonstrator carried a sign that said, ``Westchester's A-Glow, Where Do We Go?''
On the Net:
http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/Nuclear/
http://www.riverkeeper.org/
-------- MILITARY
Global Military Spending Soars in 2003
By MATT MOORE
Associated Press Writer
June 9, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SWEDEN_ARMS_REPORT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- World military spending surged during 2003, reaching $956 billion, nearly half of it by the United States as it paid for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror, a prominent European think tank said Wednesday.
The money has been effective in waging war, but threats of terror and weapons of mass destruction still exist, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Military spending rose by 11 percent, which the group called a "remarkable increase." The amount was up 18 percent from 2001.
The $956 billion spent on defense costs worldwide corresponded to 2.7 percent of the world's gross domestic product, according to the annual report.
"It's very close to the Cold War peak in 1987," said SIPRI researcher Elisabeth Skoens, who co-authored the report.
SIPRI also warned of fears that biotechnology research, particularly concerning human genes, could lead to the development of a new class of biological weapons.
"The free access to genetic sequence data for the human genome and a large number of other genomes, including for pathogenic micro-organisms, is a great scientific resource, but it could pose a significant threat if misused," the report said.
Researcher Richard Guthrie said developments in mapping the human genome, which could lead to improved medicines and vaccines for heart and neurological problems, also could be used by terrorists.
"It is something to be concerned about," he told The Associated Press, but added that no plausible threats have been made.
The United States led the world in defense spending, accounting for 47 percent of the total, followed by Japan with 5 percent and Britain, France and China, with 4 percent each.
The figures were in line with estimates by Jane's Information Group, a spokesman from the company's London office told the AP.
The 2003 rise in defense spending coincided with a decrease in the number of conflicts worldwide, which fell to 19, the second-lowest since the think tank began issuing the reports 35 years ago.
SIPRI also noted that 14 separate peace missions began last year, the most since the end of the Cold War.
The report had mixed reviews about efforts to contain weapons of mass destruction.
It warned that attempts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons were hampered last year when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and cited Iran's apparent possession of nuclear material and information.
Guthrie said those developments were offset by Libya's acknowledgment that it was developing its own nuclear program and its decision to abandon the program voluntarily.
"Perhaps luckily, evidence of past and present WMD problems in ... Iran, Libya and North Korea was strong enough to maintain the momentum of international cooperation against the proliferation menace - and many states were motivated to work for less violent solutions," said Alyson J.K. Bailes, the think tank's director.
Guthrie said that while the invasion may have served as warning to other states with weapons of mass destruction, it could have the reverse effect in that some states may see an increase in arsenals as the only way to prevent a forced regime change.
As for North Korea, Shannon Kile, who follows nuclear issues for the think tank, said the communist country isn't likely to follow Libya's lead.
"Quite frankly, this cabal of elderly generals that sit around (Kim Jong Il), sometime ago made the same cost benefit calculation, but came up with the conclusion that the benefits of acquiring nuclear weapons outweigh not having them," said Kile, who visited North Korea in 2002.
He added that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in a bid to find WMDs affected North Korea. North Korea, Kile said, "sees nuclear weapons as being very much a security guarantee."
Bailes said Iraq was the biggest factor of 2003.
"It's been an illustration of how quickly history moves these days. Many of the lessons that people initially drew from that invasion, many of the ways they thought it would change the world, look quite different from the vantage point now," she said.
The report said the March 2003 invasion highlighted the U.S. military's lethal effectiveness, but said the postwar occupation, which has seen more than 800 U.S. soldiers killed in attacks by insurgents, was evident that control in Iraq remained haphazard at best.
Andrew Cottey, whose report detailed the effect of the invasion and its aftermath, warned that instability in Iraq was likely to continue and could spread and bring civil war to neighboring states.
On the Net:
SIPRI: http://www.sipri.org
--------
World Military Spending Surges But Hard to Sustain
June 9, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-sipri.html
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - World military spending leapt 11 percent in 2003 due to a ``massive increase'' from the U.S. war on terror but the pace may slow down as Washington's pre-emptive strike policy comes under pressure, says a leading think-tank.
The United States accounted for almost half the $956 billion total, which grew by 18 percent in real terms during 2002 and 2003, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said on Wednesday.
SIPRI, whose security data is widely respected, said in its 2003 Yearbook the U.S.-led war in Iraq had not helped democracy in the Arab world but instead opened ``new fronts and incentives for terrorism'' which had ``outweighed any deterrent effect.''
While not ruling out that Washington ``could yet succeed in building a democratic Iraq,'' it warned ongoing violence could lead to it ``becoming a failed state or even descending into civil war.''
U.S. military spending has been driven up by President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes in response to the al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001. The trend reverses a decade's decline from 1987-98 and moderate growth in 1998-2001.
U.S. arms outlays will continue to grow, SIPRI said, but the pace may slow as the pre-emptive war doctrine is challenged ``on both ethical and international law grounds, as well as because of the large costs and dubious successes associated with it.''
The White House has proposed a steady increase in military spending over the next five years to $487.8 billion, starting with a 7.0 percent rise for financial 2005. But with federal budget deficits mushrooming, there is pressure for cuts.
VICTORS' JUSTICE
Three-quarters of world military spending is done by rich countries accounting for 16 percent of the planet's population. Their military budget is more than the foreign debt of all poor countries combined and 10 times what is spent on aid.
But despite the rise in world military spending, 2003 also registered the second lowest number of armed conflicts worldwide -- 19 -- and highest number of new peace missions launched -- 14 -- in any single year since the end of the Cold War, SIPRI said.
International law also made advances, with the International Criminal Court moving ``from a paper court to a fully functioning one'' and $1.0 billion spent on international courts.
But a Special Tribunal set up in Iraq to try ousted leader Saddam Hussein and his followers ``could arguably be seen as a reversion to a system based on victors' justice,'' SIPRI said.
The United States and Russia remained the world's major weapons suppliers, arming Taiwan, Egypt, Britain, Greece, Turkey and Japan in the U.S. case and China and India in Russia's case.
Efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons suffered a setback in 2003, with North Korea becoming the first country to withdraw from the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty and evidence that Iran had acquired nuclear technology, SIPRI said.
But Libya's decision to abandon weapons of mass destruction, and Iran's to disclose its nuclear program, could mean ``a unique opportunity to work toward the goal of establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.''
Control of ballistic missiles had been improved by tighter checks on weapons and money transfers between suppliers and recipients including some of ``the most secretive countries in the world'' like China, Iran, North Korea and Syria, SIPRI said.
It underlined the risk of biotechnology being used for ``a new class'' of weapons targeting cardiovascular, immunological, neurological and gastrointestinal systems in the human body.
But such attacks by aerosol and on water supplies or crops would not cause mass casualties, and reports that al Qaeda and the Taliban might use biological attacks were ``ambiguous,'' it said.
-------- africa
US seeks new African peace force
BBC
9 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3789949.stm
UN peacekeepers are deployed in several African trouble-spots United States officials have outlined plans to train and equip more than 50,000 peacekeepers over the next five years, mostly for deployment in Africa.
The idea is expected to be announced at the Group of Eight (G8) summit of the world's richest countries in the US.
The initiative had grown out of African requests for assistance in ending civil wars, the officials said.
State Department official Glyn Davies said the plan was not intended to supplant the work of the UN.
But he pointed to the UN's failure to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as an example where a rapid peacekeeping response could have saved lives.
He said peacekeepers need to react speedily in the early stages of crises - and "very often that is before the United Nations has actually come together and issued a mandate."
'Better job'
More than 30,000 UN peacekeepers are deployed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Western Sahara.
Last week, there were anti-UN riots in DR Congo, when the peacekeepers did not intervene to stop rebels capturing the town of Bukavu.
"We do a better job today I would say of peacekeeping and getting together the resources to do it than we did, say, 10 years ago," Mr Davies said.
But he said the peace missions were not as well organised as the US would like.
US President George W Bush would ask congress for $600m to train and equip the peacekeepers, other official said.
Italy is expected to offer training facilities at a police college, while other G8 members will offer funding and logistical support, the officials said.
-------- arms
Czech government approves lease of 14 Gripen fighter jets from Sweden
PRAGUE (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040609163552.x3h32jzi.html
The Czech government agreed on Wednesday a final contract to lease 14 JAS-39 Gripen fighter planes from Sweden, Defence Minister Miroslav Kostelka said.
The contract for the 10-year lease of the supersonic fighters manufactured by a BAE Systems and SAAB consortium, which will renew the airfleet protecting the Czech Republic's airspace, is worth 19.65 billion euros (629 million euros, 757 million dollars).
"The government approved the purchase of 14 supersonic Gripens, I am very happy that... the protection of the Czech Republic's airspace will be so secured and that our country will be able to fulfill its international obligations, in the integrated defence system of NATO," Kostelka told reporters.
While the government agreed in principle to lease the planes six months ago, it has been ironing out the final price and conditions and only gave the green light at a closed meeting Wednesday.
Initially the cost was expected to be 21 billion koruna, but the Czechs later negotiated a lower price.
The agreed contract also includes a so-called "offsets" programme of investment into the Czech economy, worth 130 percent of the value of the contract, in return, Kostelka added.
Of that, 20 percent will be in the defence industry.
Under the contract Czech pilots and support staff will also be trained in Sweden.
The first Gripens should come into use by the Czech military in spring 2005, replacing the Soviet MiG-21s, whose service life expires next year.
They will be based at Caslav, 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of Prague
The government opted for Gripens over the Belgian offer of updated F-16 fighters from Lockheed-Martin and similar planes from the Netherlands. Canada offered F/A-18 fighters by Boeing and the United States offered an older variant of F-16s.
The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999; Sweden is not a member of the alliance.
The manufacturer insists however that the Gripens are capable of fully cooperating with NATO's air forces.
"The planes are perfectly interoperable within the NATO framework," insisted Kostelka, refuting claims in the media that the planes would not be NATO-compatible.
There was been widespread opposition to the purchase.
Petr Necas, the shadow defence minister for the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), described the decision as rash, and said it was a negative move for the Czech Republic and its army.
"The government did not even try to look for other alternatives, it did not try to use the subsonic L-159s temporarily, it did not try to negotiate with allies on the temporary cover of Czech air space," Necas said.
A date for the signing of the contracts has not yet been announced.
-------- business
Reagan's Defense Buildup Bridged
Military Eras Huge Budgets Brought Life Back to Industry
By Greg Schneider and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26273-2004Jun8?language=printer
The U.S. military has a lot of planes, ships and tanks thanks to Ronald Reagan, but also a lot fewer companies remaining to make such weapons.
The Reagan defense buildup was a hallmark of his presidency, a free-spending crusade that lifted the nation's military industry out of the doldrums after the Vietnam War. He created a war-machine economy in a time of uneasy peace, with defense spending in amounts not seen since the heights of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and sustained for longer than either of those wars.
Most of the fighter planes and armored vehicles used by today's U.S. military were purchased during the Reagan years.
"At the time it was going on it was a whole resurgence of the defense industry," said Kent Kresa, the former chairman of Northrop Grumman Corp., which won the contract to build the world's most expensive aircraft -- the $2 billion B-2 Stealth bomber -- from the Reagan administration.
Military spending levels are near Reagan-era levels, but for a very different type of military and world. Gone is the Soviet Union and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, and with it the World War II-style defense industry that had its last hurrah during the Reagan years. Today's Pentagon budget is aimed partly at cleaning up the remnants from that era: paying for maintenance on aging weapons systems, paying for costly programs from the days when money seemed no object, and catching up to private sector technology that has raced past Defense Department labs.
"The Reagan buildup was important from both the Pentagon's and the industry's perspective in terms of building back up a strong posture, but the problem is that . . . it was almost as though the way to strengthen the Pentagon was to give it a lot more money" instead of investing in long-term strategy, said Jacques S. Gansler, interim dean of the school of public policy at the University of Maryland and an undersecretary of defense in the Clinton administration. "The emphasis was much more on building stuff."
Once the money stopped flowing so freely by the early 1990s, the defense industry had too many factories and too many workers to support. So it went through a decade-long restructuring, with companies that had been around since the dawn of aviation snatched up by competitors until only a handful of giant companies were left. A Pentagon report last year found that the 50 largest defense suppliers of the early 1980s have become today's top five contractors.
The Reagan administration's drive to have the best of everything drove up prices for weapons systems. Some of the programs got so expensive they disappeared or shrank -- the A-12 bomber was canceled because of excessive cost, as were the Comanche helicopter and Crusader artillery gun. The B-2 and the F-22 fighter were drastically cut back. Missile defense, which as "Star Wars" was the emotional centerpiece of the Reagan buildup, has survived but as a much smaller, ground-based system rather than the grand, space-based umbrella that Reagan envisioned. And it still doesn't work.
So while some credit the great buildup with driving the Soviet Union to bankruptcy and collapse, its ramifications for today's defense industry have been mixed.
"While he was certainly more good than bad for the defense industry, there were some down sides as well," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. The defense buildup "was less good for the defense industry than most people presumed."
Coming out of the Vietnam War, the defense industry was much as it had been since World War II, with scores of companies competing for work, but Pentagon budgets declined. Stores of weapons had been depleted by the war and not replaced. The companies were venturing into new areas of innovation -- such as radar-evading stealth technology -- and had developed two fighter planes that would be the finest in the world, the F-15 and the F-16.
Reagan came along and brought such programs to life with an infusion of money. Defense spending hit a peak of $456.5 billion in 1987 (in projected 2005 dollars), compared with $325.1 billion in 1980 and $339.6 million in 1981, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Most of the increase was for procurement and research and development programs. The procurement budget leapt to $147.3 billion from $71.2 billion in 1980.
"It was more during the Nixon and Ford era that key programs were developed that are the backbone of today's military, and during the Reagan era they were procured," said Norman R. Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp.
Even the most memorable of Reagan's defense programs -- the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars" -- had been around since the late 1960s until Reagan embraced it and made it into something bigger. Or, at least, seemingly bigger.
Missile defense "had less impact on the industry than many might think," Augustine said. "Although it was a highly publicized and certainly controversial program, in the grand scheme of defense spending it wasn't that large, and much of it was spent on research and development, a relatively smaller part of the defense budget."
The people it really affected were the Soviets, he said. "They were much more convinced we could make it work than many of us were, frankly, and certainly more than much of our media."
The Soviets felt they couldn't keep up with such technology, Augustine said, and came to believe that Reagan would spend more on weapons than they could ever match -- pushing them to effectively surrender in the Cold War.
Critics question whether Reagan outsmarted his adversaries. Military officials in both the United States and the Soviet Union were bluffing about one another's capabilities to help fuel a push for more and more weapons, said Pierre Sprey, a Pentagon consultant in the 1970s and 1980s.
"What we had was two huge defense apparatuses busily propagandizing their governments to spend the absolute maximum amount of money," said Sprey, who was prominent in a group of reformers inside and outside the Pentagon who argued against increased military spending.
"It wasn't a buildup, it was just a spend-up," Sprey said. Reagan gave money to defense contractors for weapons while funds for troops, maintenance and training languished. For example, not only did Reagan approve construction of the costly B-2 bomber, Sprey said, he also resurrected the B-1 bomber, a problem-plagued program that the Air Force didn't want and the Carter administration canceled.
Reagan's generosity also bred waste and excess in the defense industry, Gansler said, leading to scandals after which Congress scolded the military for spending hundreds of dollars on spare parts such as hammers and toilet seats. That led to the formation of the Packard Commission during Reagan's second term, a group led by computer executive David Packard on which Gansler served.
The group recommended changing how the Pentagon does business, aiming it toward commercial practices in hopes of efficiency. A 1999 government study found that contracting efficiency got worse after Packard's reforms were put into practice, but many of them -- such as giving companies more freedom to oversee their own subcontractors -- continue to this day.
For all the criticism, some experts credit the Reagan administration with fostering the last real renaissance in Defense Department technology. Advances in stealth, the use of composite materials, software for increasingly sophisticated computer control systems, and the development of "smart" munitions all advanced because of heavy spending during the Reagan years, said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
That marked the end of a long period, dating at least to World War II, when the military was the nation's big technological innovator, said John E. Pike of Globalsecurity.org. Soon after Reagan left office, the rise of the Internet sent commercial technology zooming past the military, which has struggled to catch up.
"The defense sector has become a consumer of technological innovation rather than a leader of technological innovation," Pike said.
Fresh from a wave of consolidations, the defense industry is remaking itself again by absorbing information technology companies and working to develop networks and systems instead of machines that fly, crawl or explode. So while weapons spending is beginning to increase again, the Pentagon is not buying the same stuff that Reagan bought.
General Dynamics built 947 M1 tanks in 1987; it has not built one since 1993. The Reagan administration advocated the purchase of 29 Seawolf-class nuclear submarines, but only three have been built. Reagan was spending his way toward a 600-ship Navy and almost got there, with 591 ships in 1989; today the Navy has 295 ships.
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
--------
Private Sector Has Firm Role at the Pentagon
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26316-2004Jun8?language=printer
The Defense Department is paying a firm called AECOM Technology Corp. to do work in Iraq once reserved mostly for military managers and other public employees, an arrangement that shows how far the government has gone in its decade-long effort to turn over much of its work to private contractors.
Under the $22 million contract, awarded in March, the Los Angeles-based engineering firm's subsidiaries will help the Pentagon buy goods and services, plan projects and administer contracts in Iraq related to reconstruction work. The firm will also monitor other contractors who are overseeing billions of dollars worth of electrical, water and communications projects. And the firm will assist on audits of projects, according to company documents.
The AECOM contract is the latest example of a transformation of the military acquisition system that started more than a decade ago and has contractors making decisions once made by government staffers. From 1990 to 2000, the Defense Department cut its procurement and acquisition staff from about 461,000 to 231,000, according to a 2000 report by the Defense Department's inspector general. Many duties that had been handled by the government were gradually shifted to the private sector.
David J. Nash, head of the Program Management Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said the shift is crucial to the complex task of Iraq reconstruction. "What we have is a bit of a private-sector model," he said in an interview from Iraq. "What we've tried to create here is a very agile approach" that uses private-sector management expertise.
Some procurement and military experts contend that the expanded use of contractors has made accountability more difficult. The government is investigating whether Halliburton Inc. charged the government improperly for meals and gasoline. The military is examining allegations that civilian contract interrogators were involved in abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Concerns also are growing about the use of private armies following the deaths of armed guards working for Blackwater Security Consulting, a company hired to protect L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, several military facilities and other companies operating in Iraq. Congress has raised questions about conflicts of interests among the companies hired to help the government manage the $18.4 billion allocated to help rebuild Iraq.
"How much control do we have over these organizations?" said Conrad C. Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "It's at a point that it's here to stay. You can't go back. We have to make sure it's going to work."
The roots of these changes go back to the early 1990s, when Congress and the Clinton administration were trying to cut costs and making federal contracting more efficient. In 1992, when Congress pressed the Defense Department to cut back on nonessential personnel and focus resources on the fighting forces, the acquisition staff was reduced. Two years later, Congress passed the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, giving agencies broader authority to buy goods and services, while narrowing their responsibility to negotiate. In 1996, Congress approved the Clinger-Cohen Act, which allowed the use of multi-agency contracts, easing the way for one agency to handle contracts for others.
Behind all that activity was a document, revised many times, called the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. "Competition enhances quality, economy, and productivity," and government has an obligation to use contractors whenever possible, it says.
As the personnel cuts at the Pentagon accelerated in the 1990s, there was a fierce debate inside the government. Some Pentagon officials warned that a lack of oversight could result. One of them was Dennis H. Trosch, who worked for more than two decades in the Defense Department's general counsel's office. Though he agreed that some outsourcing could improve efficiency, Trosch said he and others warned that reliance on private companies would probably lead to problems.
"From where I was, I felt the government was losing control and accountability," said Trosch, who retired in May 1996 as the department's deputy general counsel for acquisition and logistics.
Meanwhile purchases have been soaring. The Defense Department said it spent almost $209 billion on goods and services in fiscal 2003, compared to $153 billion in fiscal 2001.
Steven L. Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University, said the government has left itself unable to provide proper oversight at a critical juncture in Iraq. "Quite simply," he said in a recent paper, "the Government lacks sufficient qualified acquisition, contract management, and quality control personnel to handle the outsourcing burden."
The oversight issue has been complicated by a new generation of large, all-purpose contracts that were permitted because of the legislation that Congress passed in 1994 and 1996 to make contracting more efficient.
For example, the Army awarded Premier Technology Group Inc. an umbrella contract designed to allow the Army to get quick help on inventory control and systems integration. PTG was acquired last year by CACI International Inc., and the contract was used for intelligence and interrogation work. The task orders used to hire private interrogators for Abu Ghraib prison were never publicly disclosed by the Defense Department.
Another broad contract was won by Halliburton Co.'s subsidiary, KBR, a $1.9 million deal to plan the reconstruction of Iraqi oil pipelines. In March 2003, KBR landed an even broader sole-source contract to do work worth up to $7 billion.
For help on contracting, the Defense Department sometimes turns to other government agencies, who take on such work for the money, keeping a fraction of the total value of the contract in the form of a fee. Between 1999 and 2001, for instance, the General Services Administration -- which handles more than 90 percent of the contracts the Defense Department processes through other agencies -- generated $151.3 million by extracting a 1 percent fee for such management deals, according to a General Accounting Office report in 2002.
The Defense Department maintains that outsourcing the procurement work saves money, but some contracting experts are skeptical. The department paid other agencies $126 million to handle $12.5 billion in purchases in fiscal 2002. The Defense Department spent $180.2 billion on goods and services in fiscal year 2002.
The use of such arrangements, sometimes called government-wide acquisition contracts, increased sharply from 1997 to 2001, when the value of contracts awarded by one agency but managed by another tripled to $14.4 billion, according to a GAO report to Congress last year. The goal of the arrangements is to ease the administrative burden carried by departments and to let agencies buy goods and services in bulk. But it raises accountability questions, critics say. "Where does responsibility lie and who is accountable for ensuring that taxpayers are getting their money's worth," said Bill Woods, director of GAO's acquisition and sourcing management team.
After an internal Army report accused a CACI employee of encouraging soldiers to set conditions for interrogations and said he "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," it took more than a week for the government to track down and release details on the CACI contract, which was originally an Army contract but was turned over to the Interior Department.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, questioned whether the Interior Department could decide whether it was appropriate to use that CACI systems integration contract to hire an interrogator. "How can a person at Interior know what qualities you're looking for in a contractor doing something as sensitive as interrogating prisoners of war?" Brian said.
Nash and other government and business officials say the reconstruction projects will be closely audited, which will prevent mismanagement problems.
Lester M. Hunkele III, a senior vice president at AECOM subsidiary DMJM, said he had been skeptical about the use of contractors years ago when he was deputy assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs. He now thinks it makes sense in Iraq, although he adds that the tenuous security situation makes the outcome hard to predict.
"My take is this does make sense [in Iraq]," Hunkele said. "It doesn't always make sense."
-------- chemical weapons
Japan to send experts to NE China to retrieve WWII chemical weapons: media
BEIJING (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040609170355.f4b2nruc.html
Japan is to send a team of experts to northeast China to retrieve chemical weapons left there by its troops during World War II, state media reported the Chinese Foreign Ministry as saying Wednesday.
The ministry said the work in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province, would begin on June 16 and experts from China would offer assistance, Xinhua news agency said.
Reports said dozens of discarded World War II bombs were found in the city's Angangxi District on May 23, according to Xinhua.
The ministry said the weapons would be excavated, sealed and kept temporarily in a storeroom in Qiqihar until a destruction centre was ready for operation in the city, the agency reported.
Late last month, Xinhua reported that eight workers at a construction site in Qiqihar had been treated in hospital after digging up a canister suspected of being a Japanese chemical weapon.
Strong odours led local military experts and police to believe it was mustard gas and they sealed the site, the agency reported previously.
Tokyo estimates that 700,000 chemical bombs and grenades were abandoned in China by its retreating armies, although Chinese experts put the figure at up to two million -- the world's largest stockpile of abandoned chemical weapons.
-------- europe
European nations tighten laws to oust extremists
June 09, 2004
By Jennifer Joan Lee
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040609-121244-3113r.htm
PARIS - Western European countries are tightening their laws to facilitate the expulsion of Islamist extremists, a response to court rulings overturning several high-profile deportation orders.
In France, an imam expelled for publicly advocating violence against women won a court ruling last month that allowed him to return.
"Under the cover of religion, individuals present on our soil have been using extremist language and issuing calls for violence. These are statements that favor the installation of terrorist movements on French territory," French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said recently.
"It's necessary therefore to oppose this together and by all available means," he said.
The French government is drafting legislation that would allow for the expulsion of foreigners who spread hate and racism through speech.
Moves to tighten immigration laws come amid efforts by several European countries to avert attacks similar to the March 11 train bombings in Spain that killed 191 persons.
Yesterday, a manhunt spread over three countries - Spain, Italy and Belgium - resulted in the arrest of at least 17 persons, including an Egyptian thought to be involved in the Madrid bombings.
At present, no legal mechanism exists in France allowing for people to be expelled for what they say. Also, expulsions are determined by the Interior Ministry, not the courts. So although the government believes that extremist speeches are connected to terrorism, without hard evidence, the courts can rule only that there is no link.
"We have to be very clear on the grounds under which we can expel somebody," said Olivier Roy, a French government consultant and authority on radical Islam.
"Because we are dealing with two conflicting principles - freedom of speech and public order - the rules of the game have to be clear," he said.
Similarly murky rules are preventing Germany from carrying out expulsions.
A court there ruled last week that a radical Islamic cleric could be extradited to Turkey, where he is wanted in a conspiracy to blow up a memorial with an explosive-laden airplane.
Another court then ruled that the cleric, Metin Kaplan, could stay in Germany for an additional two months pending an appeal.
In an interview published by Der Spiegel last month, German Interior Minister Otto Schily said it should be possible to arrest a terrorist plotter in extreme cases.
"Is there not a right of self-defense against terrorists who plan mass murder?" Mr. Schily asked.
In Spain, the newspaper El Pais reported that the government recently deported two Muslims it deemed threats to national security, applying a new immigration law enacted after the bombings in Madrid.
Although both were legal residents of Spain and have not been accused of any crime, they were indirectly connected to the bombings.
The paper quoted an official as saying, "With March 11, there is a before and an after. What can we do when there is no evidence to charge a person, but all signs are that the person knew of, encouraged or supported terrorist activities?"
Expulsion seems to be the answer for many European Union governments, despite such a move being barred under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The convention prohibits extraditing suspects to countries where they face torture or the death penalty.
In arresting high-profile radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri earlier this month, Britain applied an extradition law that it adopted last year.
Islamic groups oppose efforts to deport Muslim extremists, fearing that it will result in increased discrimination against ordinary Muslims.
"Expulsions only cultivate the idea that Islam is a foreign concept preached by foreigners," said Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France.
Mr. Breze instead is proposing that radical imams be handled first by French Islamic organizations that could take appropriate disciplinary measures.
France has stepped up efforts recently to teach the country's imams, most of whom are foreign-born and do not speak French, to preach a version of Islam that is compatible with French society.
"There are about 1,500 mosques in France, and we need to manage their activities to make sure they are run by qualified people," said Mahmood Zuhair, director of France's European Institute of Human Sciences, a Muslim-funded organization.
Efforts to tackle extremism by engaging the Muslim community also are under way in Britain.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, the government plans to provide subsidized training for British imams and require radical preachers to speak good English and pass new "civic engagement tests."
-------- iraq
Saboteurs Blow Up Key Iraqi Oil Pipeline
By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press Writer
June 9, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saboteurs blew up a key northern oil pipeline Wednesday, forcing a 10 percent cut on the national power grid as demand for electricity rises with the advent of Iraq's broiling summer heat.
Meanwhile, gunfire rang out Wednesday night in the Shiite holy city of Najaf for the first time since an agreement last week to end weeks of bloody fighting between American soldiers and militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Residents said gunmen attacked a police station near the city's Revolution of 1920 Square, and it appeared American troops were not involved.
Clashes persisted Wednesday around Fallujah, a rebellious Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. Four members of an Iraqi force in charge of the city since April were wounded when a mortar round exploded. 1st Lt. Amer Jassim speculated the attackers were firing at Americans but missed.
The pipeline blast near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, was the latest in a series of attacks by insurgents against infrastructure targets, possibly to shake public confidence as a new Iraqi government prepares to take power June 30.
The attack on the pipeline - which carries fuel to the Beiji power station, one of Iraq's largest - forced a 10 percent cutback in the country's 4,000-megawatt production, Assem Jihad, an Oil Ministry spokesman, told Dow Jones Newswires.
The U.S.-run coalition had made its ability to guarantee adequate electricity supplies a benchmark of success in restoring normalcy to Iraq. However, sabotage and frayed infrastructure have impeded efforts to eliminate power outages, especially in the capital.
More than a year after the occupation began, power cuts are common nationwide, in some places topping 16 hours a day. Demand is rising with the advent of summer, with temperatures already topping 100 degrees. Elsewhere, Polish authorities said an explosion that killed six European soldiers - two Poles, three Slovaks and one Latvian - south of Baghdad on Tuesday was caused by a mortar attack rather than an accident as first reported.
Gen. Piotr Czerwinski, the head of a special investigating commission, said he suspected that Saddam Hussein loyalists were responsible for the deaths - the first in Iraq for the small Slovak and Latvian contingents.
U.S. and other multinational forces will remain in Iraq after the new government takes power at the end of the month under terms of a resolution approved unanimously Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi described the vote as a victory for Iraq because it declares an end to the military presence when a constitutionally elected government takes power in 2006 - or before, if the Iraqi government requests it.
"The resolution is very clear that once Iraq stands on its feet, then we would ask the multinational forces to leave Iraq," Allawi said. "This is ... an entirely a government issue."
In Rome, three Italians returned home Wednesday, a day after they and a Polish hostage were freed by coalition forces. Kidnappers had held the Italians for two months.
"We're home, we're home," shouted Maurizio Agliana, a towering, burly man who gave the thumbs-up sign after embracing his sister on the tarmac of Ciampino airport.
Foreign Ministry official Alessandro Cevese said the hostages were not beaten but had been made to sleep on the floor, and were twice held for several days in a bathroom measuring 6.5 feet by 6.5 feet.
One of the hostages, Salvatore Stefio, challenged a captor who ordered him to take off his wedding band, declaring: "Well, then shoot me," Cevese said. Stefio was eventually forced to give up the ring.
The men did not know that a fourth hostage abducted with them, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, had been executed, Cevese said.
Quattrocchi may have been killed "because he was identified as someone close to the American structure, since he had a pass released by the CPA," the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that governs Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. officer in Iraq, said the men were freed south of Baghdad. However, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said they were found in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency 75 miles west of Baghdad.
At the G-8 summit in Sea Island, Ga., President Bush said he envisions a wider role for NATO in the volatile country. Fifteen NATO countries have troops in Iraq.
"We believe NATO ought to be involved," Bush said. "We will work with our NATO friends to at least continue the role that now exists, and hopefully expand it somewhat."
Last year, NATO took over the 6,400-strong international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
In other developments:
- A group holding two hostages - a Turk and an Egyptian - threatened to kill the captives after Friday prayers unless their home governments condemn U.S. actions in Iraq. The threat was made in a statement distributed in Fallujah.
- Insurgents attacked a Baghdad city council member Tuesday, wounding him and killing two of his bodyguards, the military said.
(c) 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
----
Iraqis assume control of oil industry
June 09, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040609-120347-1308r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraqi officials said yesterday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry before the June 30 turnover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
"Today, the most important natural resource has been returned to Iraqis to serve all Iraqis," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "I'm pleased to announce that full sovereignty and full control on oil industry has been handed over to the oil ministry today and to the new Iraqi government as of today."
The announcement came as Mr. Allawi and Oil Minister Thamir Abbas Ghadban toured the al-Doura oil refinery in southern Baghdad. "We are totally now in control, there are no more advisers," Mr. Ghadban said. "We are running the show, the oil policies will be implemented 100 percent by Iraqis."
Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, with more than 110 billion barrels of crude oil and about 100,000 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
Mr. Allawi said the turnover of the oil ministry before June 30 reflects "our full confidence in the oil minister. It's evidence that oil ministry has worked perfectly."
Referring to the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Allawi said that "in the past, Iraqi oil was used in building palaces, buying weapons to achieve one person's goals."
Iraqi crude oil sales since the war last year have hit more than $10.3 billion, the Coalition Provisional Authority said yesterday.
Of the total oil proceeds put in the Development Fund for Iraq since it was set up on May 28, 2003, $372 million was deposited during the week ending Thursday, compared with $493 million the previous week, according to the provisional authority's Web site.
Iraq has set up a special force of about 14,000 troops to protect oil infrastructure, Mr. Allawi said yesterday.
Insurgents resisting the U.S.-led coalition have been bombing oil facilities across Iraq, dealing a severe blow to the country's oil industry.
In the latest incident, saboteurs attacked the Kirkuk-Turkey pipeline on Sunday, the security chief for Iraq's Northern Oil Company (NOC) said yesterday, shortly after another official of the firm had denied any such attack.
"Assailants detonated sound grenades on the pipeline Sunday at dawn, [75 miles] east of Kirkuk, causing damage, and a loss of a huge quantity of oil," said company security chief Ghazi Talabani.
"The oil loss has been stopped and a group of technical experts are repairing the pipeline and the damage could be repaired by Tuesday night. Restarting production depends on the decision of the coalition and the oil ministry," he said.
Earlier, NOC's project manager Abdullah al-Rubai said there had been no new attack on the Kirkuk-Turkey pipeline since May 24 and that the main export artery was about to reopen.
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Rebels Launch an Array of Attacks Across Iraq
June 9, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 9 - Insurgents staged attacks on American forces and their allies on several fronts today, firing mortars at Iraqi militiamen west of here, setting two critical oil pipelines in the north ablaze and ambushing a military convoy in the capital.
In the holy city of Najaf, in the south, fighters loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr moved to seize a police station tonight despite a declared cease-fire, the second such attack in two days.
Today, the cleric's militia, the Mahdi Army, still controlled the holiest Shiite site in Iraq, the golden-domed Shrine of Ali. An aide to Mr. Sadr asserted that officials linked to the militia would have the right to take part in future elections despite a recent order from the American administration saying otherwise.
The various assaults underscored the fact that the United States was still engaged in a wide-ranging war, one that American officials say will likely get worse as the White House tries to return some measure of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.
The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution on Tuesday that recognizes the sovereign status of Iraq after June 30. Whether the approval will dampen the insurgents' resolve is one of the biggest questions confronting Iraqis and Americans. With the spate of attacks on Wednesday, the insurgents gave the impression that for the moment they were determined to carry on the fight.
The attacks on the pipelines came after an assault on fuel and transmission lines that forced the shutdown last weekend of an enormous power plant south of Baghdad. The continuing sabotage of infrastructure shows that fighters are cannily picking targets that deliver basic goods and whose destruction can quickly wreck Iraqi confidence in the occupation and the new government.
An occupation spokesman said that one of the pipeline explosions resulted in a temporary drop in power output from an electricity plant in the northern town of Bayji.
An attack on Iraqi forces allied with the Americans took place in the area of the volatile town of Falluja, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. Insurgents lobbed mortars at a camp housing members of the Falluja Brigade, which was created by the Marines in late April to try to pacify the virulently anti-American city. The attack wounded a brigade member, a spokesman for the occupation forces, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said.
The 2,000-strong brigade is itself composed partly of guerrilla fighters who were fighting the Marines and is led by Gen. Muhammad Latif, a former Baath Party member who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein. The attack on the brigade highlighted the complex fractures among various insurgent groups in the Falluja area, which has essentially become a safe haven for anti-American forces since the Marines relinquished control. Foreign civilians still get shot at and taken hostage in the area, while marines are killed regularly by roadside bombs.
The Marines appeared to be conducting an operation at Falluja today. They used concrete barriers to block off two roads leading to the city from Baghdad. Tanks, Humvees and other armored vehicles were seen parked or driving around pastures on the side of the main highway just outside Falluja.
A wooden sign by the barrier on the highway said in Arabic: "No entry into the city."
In Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, many members of the Mahdi Army appeared to have hidden their weapons in order to show compliance with a cease-fire announced on June 4 by the governor of the region. Iraqi police officers were patrolling parts of Najaf and the adjoining city of Kufa, where Mr. Sadr's support is strongest. But militiamen still maintained a perimeter around the Shrine of Ali, dedicated to the martyred son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ahmad Shaibani, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said in an interview that it was not the right of the occupation forces or the Iraqi police to decide who would control the shrines. "Holy shrines were excluded from the agreement," he said.
He added that in regard to the shrine issue, Mr. Sadr will answer only to the marjaiyah, the most senior ayatollahs in Iraq.
Mr. Shaibani also said that L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator for Iraq, had no power to bar any Iraqi from participating in upcoming general elections. Earlier this week, Mr. Bremer signed an order saying members or leaders of illegal militias would not be able to run for office in the near future. That would presumably bar Mr. Sadr from campaigning.
Mr. Bremer "has no right to determine the nature of the elections and whether militias have the right to participate or not, especially since his authority will end as per the U.N. Security Council resolution," Mr. Shaibani said.
Members of the Mahdi Army attacked the Ghari police station in Najaf late Monday, but failed to seize it, said Adnan Zurfi, the American-installed governor. He added that he had ordered more police forces to the area and had given permission to fire on any attackers. Tonight, insurgents attacked a different police station, but officers were reported to be repelling them.
The inability of the American military to disband insurgents so far in both Falluja and the Najaf area highlights the difficulties the occupation has had in dealing with the country's various militias. Many fighters in Najaf appeared to have put away their weapons for now, but Mr. Sadr still remains in power and could mobilize his army at any time.
"The true solution should be to disarm the militias completely and not just settle for hiding them," said Abu Muhammad al-Jazaeri, 40, a schoolteacher living in Najaf. "The Iraqi police is incompetent. We can see that because they have not been able to control the shrine."
Sabah Mahdi, a manager in a hotel in the city, said that "the whole process is disappointing" because "Mahdi Army fighters are still here, and their weapons are still here despite the latest agreement."
In northern Iraq, insurgents staged an attack in the early morning on a pipeline connecting the oil fields of Kirkuk to the large refinery and power plant in the town of Bayji, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry, Asam Jihad, said. Insurgents also set ablaze an export pipeline leading from Kirkuk to a Turkish port city. The fire was still raging on this afternoon, and video footage showed thick clouds of black smoke filling the sky.
In northeastern Baghdad, gunmen raked an American military convoy, setting one truck ablaze, according to Agence France-Presse. There was no immediate report of casualties.
The American military said today that gunmen killed two bodyguards of a local politician in Baghdad on Tuesday and seriously wounded the politician.
A deputy defense minister in Poland said that six Eastern European soldiers serving under the Polish command south of Baghdad were killed on Tuesday by at least one enemy mortar round hitting a munitions dump. The soldiers were involved in an operation to defuse mines.
In Geneva, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the organization had resumed visits to Abu Ghraib prison, Reuters reported. The spokeswoman, Antonella Notari, said the initial return took place between May 30 and June 3 and that the group had been given full access. Well before the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public, the American military had tried to place severe restrictions on visits by the Red Cross.
The group issued a report last year criticizing the military for its treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and said some procedures were "tantamount to torture."
Jim Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Falluja and Najaf.
--------
CONSTITUTION
Kurds Threaten to Walk Away From Iraqi State
June 9, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09KURD.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 - A crisis for the new Iraqi government loomed Tuesday as Kurdish leaders threatened to withdraw from the Iraqi state unless they received guarantees against Shiite plans to limit Kurdish self-rule.
In a letter to President Bush this week, the two main Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, wrote that the Kurds would "refrain from participating in the central government" in Baghdad if any attempt was made by the new government to nullify the interim Iraqi constitution adopted in March.
Shiite leaders have said repeatedly in recent weeks that they intend to remove parts of the interim constitution that essentially grant the Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution, which is scheduled to be drafted and ratified next year.
The Shiite leaders consider the provisions undemocratic, while the Kurds contend they are their only guarantee of retaining the rights to self-rule they gained in the past 13 years, protected from Saddam Hussein by United States warplanes.
In their letter, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani wrote that the Kurdish leadership would refuse to take part in national elections, expected to be held in January, and bar representatives from going to "Kurdistan."
That would amount to something like secession, which Kurdish officials have been hinting at privately for months but now appear to be actively considering. "The Kurdish people will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq," the letter said.
The two leaders also asked President Bush for a commitment to protect "Kurdistan" should an insurgency compel the United States to pull its forces out of the rest of Iraq.
To assure that Kurdish rights are retained, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani, whose parties together deploy about 75,000 fighters, asked President Bush to include the interim Iraqi constitution in the United Nations security resolution that governs the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
But American officials rejected the Kurdish request after appeals from Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation's most powerful Shiite, who threatened "serious consequences" if any such move was undertaken. That seemed to set the stage for a showdown between Kurdish and Shiite leaders over the future of the Iraqi state.
A senior American official in Washington cautioned against reading the letter as a firm threat to abandon the central government, saying he expected the Kurds and Shiites to reach an agreement ultimately.
But in Baghdad, a rupture seemed quite possible. The Shiite leaders, whose people make up a majority in Iraq but who have been historically shut out of power, say the provisions that would allow the Kurdish minority to nullify the constitution would diminish the Shiites' historic opportunity to claim political power.
Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's finance minister and a leader of one of the country's largest Shiite parties, said Tuesday that the country's Shiite leadership was determined to remove the provisions that could allow the Kurds to veto the permanent constitution, even at the risk of driving them away. "It's not against the Kurds, it's against the procedure," Mr. Mahdi said.
Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman, did not offer details on the American decision to refuse the Kurdish request regarding the United Nations resolution. But he offered general assurances that Kurdish rights would be protected. "We in the international community will work with you to make this democracy a success, to ensure that the rights of all Iraqis are honored and respected," he said.
But a senior United Nations official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American officials rejected the Kurdish request because of concerns over offending the country's Shiite leaders.
In a letter released Tuesday by his office, Ayatollah Sistani warned the Security Council against incorporating the interim constitution into the United Nations resolution.
"This law, which was written by a nonelected council under occupation, and under the direct influence of the occupation, would constrain the national assembly," Ayatollah Sistani wrote. "It is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people."
The signing of the interim constitution, shepherded by American officials here, was regarded as a historic achievement that tried to reassure the country's long-suppressed Shiite majority without alienating the Kurds.
The crucial compromise was contained in the provision that the permanent constitution would pass with a majority vote of the Iraqi people unless voters in three of the country's 18 provinces opposed the constitution by a two-thirds vote. Ethnic Kurds, who make up a fifth of the Iraqi population, are a majority in three provinces.
Kurdish leaders say they are concerned that the new Iraqi government will not honor the interim constitution unless it is forced to.
Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials say that under generally accepted principles of international law, the new Iraqi government will not be bound by any of the laws passed during the American occupation.
A source close to the Kurdish leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Kurdish leaders concluded that the interim constitution needed some sort of reaffirmation to compel the new government to adhere to it. The Kurds say they do not expect the Shiite-dominated interim government to provide such reaffirmation, so they asked the Bush administration to make sure it was included in the United Nations resolution.
Bush administration officials have maintained publicly that the interim constitution, as well as all the laws approved during the occupation, will continue to have legal force in Iraq after June 30. But privately, a senior official acknowledged that the interim constitution would need to be reaffirmed to have legal force.
The turning point for the Kurds, the source close to the leadership said, came last month when Robert Blackwill, President Bush's special envoy to Iraq, told the two Kurdish leaders that no ethnic Kurd would be considered for the post of either president or prime minister.
After that, Kurdish leaders began preparing to cut their ties to Baghdad. In an ominous sign, most of the senior leadership of both Mr. Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Mr. Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party had left Baghdad Tuesday and gone to the Kurdish areas.
Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
--------
INSURGENTS' STRATEGY
Saboteurs May Be Aiming at Electrical and Water Sites as Summer Nears
June 9, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09POWE.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 - An enormous power plant south of Baghdad was shut down last weekend by coordinated attacks on fuel and transmission lines, American and Iraqi government officials said Tuesday. The sabotage raised new fears that insurgents were beginning to make targets of major sectors of the infrastructure as part of an overall plan to destabilize the interim Iraqi government.
At full production, the plant is capable of supplying nearly 20 percent of the entire electrical output of Iraq. But after the war, the plant's output plunged to nearly zero, and it is still generating only a fraction of its maximum output, said Raad al-Haris, deputy minister for electricity.
An official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30, confirmed that an oil pipeline south of Baghdad was struck in the last week. A second senior official in the Electricity Ministry said that the weekend attack was the latest in a series in the same area, and that repairs on the lines had repeatedly been followed by new strikes. This official said the pipeline also delivered crude oil to at least one major refinery, whose operations had also been affected.
By Tuesday, enough repairs had been done to bring the plant's output to about 300 megawatts of electricity out of a possible 750 megawatts for most of the day, the Iraqi official said. Power plants around the country put about 4,000 megawatts on the electrical grid, although demand is much higher - leading to frequent blackouts, both scheduled and unscheduled - and is expected to soar even further this summer.
"As we have been saying for some time, international terrorists and Saddam loyalists continue to try to derail the emergence of a modern democratic Iraq," Dallas Lawrence, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in a statement. "These terrorists hope that by damaging Iraq's infrastructure, by depriving Iraqis of basic services, they will be able to impoverish the Iraqi people and capitalize on a sense of frustration."
He added: "They will not succeed."
More worrisome than this specific act of sabotage, said Mr. Haris, the Iraqi minister, is the pattern of attacks on the country's electrical grid. He estimated that the high-tension lines that are the backbone of the grid had been attacked an average of twice a week recently, and he expressed irritation at what he said was a refusal by the Coalition Provisional Authority to provide security for the lines.
"They did nothing about the transmission line security," Mr. Haris said. "They should. They say, `We have no such capability.' "
When the Electricity Ministry asked for a helicopter to patrol the lines, it was turned down, he said.
But the American official who confirmed the weekend attack said that the authority was helping train thousands of Electricity Ministry guards, but that no force could provide 24-hour-a-day security for the more than 10,000 miles of major power lines in Iraq.
The electrical turbines, power lines and other equipment at the plant south of Baghdad have been the focus of major reconstruction work as part of the overall rebuilding of the country, largely financed by billions of dollars of American money and revenues from Iraq's oil fields.
Even before the weekend strike, the area around the plant had been the subject of violence, including a drive-by shooting that killed two European engineers and a bomb attack on a police station.
A senior United States military intelligence official said insurgents in Iraq had begun to realize that with summer coming on, damaging the electrical and water infrastructure could sow widespread distrust and discontent with the occupation and its allies, including the new Iraqi government.
"This is a very big priority for them right now," said Ray Salvatore Jennings, representative in Iraq for the United States Institute of Peace, who often meets with American officials here. "They see this insurgency getting very sophisticated about targeting this to delegitimize the new regime."
Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an engineer who worked on the rehabilitation of the grid in 1991 and now leads a government-owned center in the Iraqi Ministry of Industry that is doing some work at several power plants, said the insurgents' effort aimed "to distract the American-backed government."
"If there is no electricity, no water, whatever, the government will fail," Dr. Tawfiq said.
--------
Occupation tanks poised to enter Falluja
AFP
09 June 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E8E5D69B-FF87-4E8C-9CF8-637197702743.htm
US tanks have taken up positions around Falluja and appear to be preparing to enter the Iraqi city.
At least 15 tanks were seen on Wednesday taking up temporary stations one kilometre past the US checkpoint that leads into the city.
Iraqi officials in Falluja confirmed that American troops had asked local authorities to provide them with safe passage through the city.
A Sunni Muslim bastion, Falluja was rocked to its foundations in April by some of the heaviest fighting in Iraq since the US-led invasion began last year.
The last US troop patrol in the city was on 10 May, shortly after they struck an agreement with resistance fighters to end a weeks-long siege and allow Iraqi police and ex-army figures to maintain security.
The tank patrol follows an attack overnight on an Iraqi general charged with imposing security in Falluja.
The raid killed 12 members of General Muhammad Latif's militia and wounded 10 more, though Latif is not believed to have been injured.
Pipeline targeted
Earlier, saboteurs ruptured an oil pipeline linking the Kirkuk oil fields with Iraq's largest fuel refinery at Baiji, 200km north of Baghdad.
Iraqi officials confirmed that the night attack on Wednesday forced a 400-megawatt power station near the refinery to shut down.
The Kirkuk pipeline attack caused a power station to be shut down
Firemen were still battling on Wednesday to put out the fire on the line.
On Sunday, the main oil export artery from the north was also ruptured with sound grenades - causing a sharp rise in world oil prices.
Northern Iraq's pipeline, which takes crude from the Kirkuk oilfields to Turkey's Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan, has not been at full capacity use since the US-led invasion last year.
Convoy ambushed
Elsewhere, resistance fighters raked a US military convoy on Wednesday. One of the trucks exploded, an Iraqi witness and a US soldier said.
The attack was launched on a road in the northwestern Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Khadra.
A crowd gathered and cursed the firemen dousing the blaze and demanding they let it burn.
"One soldier ran away from the truck and got into another vehicle," said Burhan al-Din Husain, who was getting his car fixed at a mechanics shop when the speeding car shot up the convoy.
He said it happened between 10:30 and 11:00 GMT. A US soldier said the truck caught fire when a a Molotov cocktail was thrown at it.
The stretch of road is the site of frequent attacks on occupation troops.
-----
U.S. General: Iraq Police Training a Flop
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
June 9, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-fixing-security,0,5806843.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
TAJI, Iraq -- Misguided U.S. training of Iraqi police contributed to the country's instability and has delayed getting enough qualified Iraqis on the streets to ease the burden on American forces, the head of armed forces training said Wednesday.
"It hasn't gone well. We've had almost one year of no progress," said Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who departs Iraq next week after spending a year assembling and training the country's 200,000 army, police and civil defense troops.
"We've had the wrong training focus -- on individual cops rather than their leaders," Eaton said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A credible, well-equipped national security force is crucial to America's plans to pull its 138,000 troops out of Iraq, along with the 24,000 soldiers from Britain and other coalition countries.
As U.S. occupation leaders prepare to hand power to an Iraqi government in less than three weeks, Iraq's own security forces won't be ready to take a large role in protecting the country. A U.N. Security Council resolution approved Tuesday acknowledges Iraq's lack of a developed security force and provides a continued multinational troop presence until 2006.
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy U.S. defense secretary, wrote in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that the Iraqi army -- including the Taji-based Iraqi National Task Force, which focuses on internal strife -- will begin assuming some security duties over the next few months.
Iraqi forces could soon "take local control of the cities," with U.S. troops moving into a supporting role, Wolfowitz wrote.
In April, Iraqi security forces failed their first big test, when about half the police and military forces deserted during rebel uprisings in Fallujah, Najaf, Karbala and elsewhere.
Eaton, a plainspoken officer who didn't shirk responsibility for his role in the problems, said soldiers of Iraq's 2nd Brigade simply ignored U.S. orders to fight their countrymen.
"They basically quit. They told us, 'We're an army for external defense and you want us to go to Fallujah?' That was a personal mistake on my part," Eaton said.
When the uprising broke out in Fallujah, Eaton said he saw a chance to begin transferring the security mission to Iraqi forces. He agreed to allow the Iraqi army's just-created 2nd Brigade to take on guerrillas that had seized control of the restive western city.
"We were premature," said Eaton, 54, of Weatherford, Okla. "I could have stopped it. I had a bad feeling and I should have acted on it."
The lesson learned was that the soldiers needed an Iraqi command hierarchy. Eaton said the soldiers may have battled Fallujah's Sunni Muslim rebels if Iraqi leaders were spurring them on.
Wolfowitz also cited the importance of Iraqi commanders and said the April desertions shouldn't have been a surprise because of the Iraqis' shortcomings in training, equipment and leadership.
"No one had any expectation that Iraqi security forces would be ready this past April to stand up to the kind of fighting they encountered in Fallujah and in the Najaf-Karbala region," Wolfowitz wrote.
One U.S. military official said Wolfowitz was partly to blame for those shortcomings.
Some $257 million in spending authority was held up by Wolfowitz's office for two months, delaying construction of Iraqi army barracks for four brigades awaiting training, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The desertions could have happened in any country, said Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Khaled al-Sattar, the commander of the army brigade training at the Taji camp.
"The soldiers didn't want to fight their own countrymen. Would you?" al-Sattar said as he and Eaton lunched on stewed beef and beans in the base mess hall. "Once there are division commanders and an Iraqi defense minister, the soldiers will start obeying orders because the orders come from an Iraqi leadership."
U.S. trainers are currently instructing 550 new soldiers in the training camp in Kirkush to replace troops who deserted in April, Eaton said.
U.S. leaders, too, arrived in Iraq unprepared for the type of insurgency that began to flare last summer, Eaton said.
"We thought we were going to be nice and comfortable in a benign environment and rebuild this country," he said. "Not everyone wanted to get Iraqi leaders in fast. I'd have been more aggressive early."
Now, the U.S. military is reconfiguring the training mission. Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division when it occupied a large part of northern Iraq, returned to the country to head the Office of Security Transition, which oversees recruiting and training of Iraq's five security forces.
Brig. Gen. James Schwitters, who has an Army special operations background, will take over the Iraqi army training mission from Eaton, who will become head of training at the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va.
British Brig. Gen. Andrew Mackay will head police training.
By January, the Iraqi army is expected to count 35,000 soldiers, with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps expected to number 40,000 by fall, according to Wolfowitz. There are now close to 90,000 Iraqi police officers and tens of thousands more Ministry of Interior forces, many have little or no modern police training, he wrote.
-------- israel / palestine
Report: Israel Develops Cruise Missile
June 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Cruise-Missile.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel has developed its first surface-to-surface cruise missile with a range of at least 180 miles, according to a report to be published in Jane's Defence Weekly and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Jane's will publish the report June 16.
Called the Delilah-GL (ground launch), the missile could reach the territory of all of Israel's neighbors. Iran, however, would be out of range. The weapon fulfills Israel's 10-year quest for a such a missile, experts told the London-based publication.
The Delilah-GL (ground launch) is an adaptation of the Delilah, its air-launched predecessor, Jane's said, quoting officials at Israel Military Industries, where the missile is made.
The missile powered by a turbojet engine has a range of 155 miles, IMI said, but defense officials told Jane's that the missile could reach ``well beyond 300 kilometers (180 miles).''
The advanced missile includes a high explosive 66-pound warhead and is guided by a global positioning system. The missile can also hover over an area before confirming its target through real-time visual intelligence transmitted back to the operator, Jane's reported.
The missile can be fitted with various payloads. One is an infrared device with electro-optical seekers for target acquisition and guidance. It can identify a target from a range of nine miles, Jane's said.
Israel developed the new technology after a decade of trying to obtain surface-to-surface cruise missiles. The United States has twice denied Israeli requests to purchase the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile, Jane's reported.
In the 1980s, Israel deployed its own long-range surface-to-surface missile, called Jericho II. Foreign reports say it has a range of at least 900 miles, can carry a payload of 2,200 pounds and is suitable for nuclear weapons.
--------
Israelis to Quit Gaza Industrial Zone
Many Palestinians Will Lose Jobs at Border Site
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26259-2004Jun8?language=printer
JERUSALEM, June 8 -- Israeli businesses will be withdrawn from an industrial zone on the border with the Gaza Strip that has been a source of employment for thousands of Palestinians for more than three decades, a high-ranking Israeli official announced Tuesday.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said lack of security in the Erez industrial zone, which has led the Israeli army to shut factories there for most of the past three months, had reached a point where Israeli firms had to be pulled out for their own protection.
"It's an emergency action to save the Israeli plants from collapse," said Olmert, who serves as minister of industry and trade in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet.
Palestinians and Israelis alike have said the security situation was intolerable in the Erez zone, where 187 businesses -- including carpentry shops, textile factories, metal works and garages -- employ about 5,000 Gazans. As one of the few remaining places in Gaza where Palestinians and Israelis come into contact, the Erez zone has in recent months become a target for Palestinian attacks. Israeli employers said they feared the Palestinians working for them, and the workers said they were humiliated by body searches before work that took hours to complete.
At least 11 Israelis have been killed in the industrial zone and at the adjacent Erez border crossing since November 2001. The most recent attack, in April, killed a border policeman and wounded three others.
Still, Israeli analysts and Palestinian workers expressed surprise at the sudden decision to close the zone. "We were all shocked by this hasty decision," said Sami Abu Zarifa, an economic adviser to the Palestinian Authority.
When the zone opened in 1970, three years after Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and long before any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the project was hailed as an example of cooperation for mutual benefit. Palestinians from Gaza found desperately needed jobs, while Israeli companies had lower labor costs and taxes than they faced in Israel.
Even after the recent violence, one opposition politician said Tuesday, the industries at Erez were among the few remaining sources of goodwill between Israelis and Palestinians.
"It is too easy to give up so quickly on such a huge project," said Yossi Beilin, a member of parliament who heads the Economic Cooperation Foundation, through which he helped initiate the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
"Who's going to pay for this?" Beilin said. "These people who become unemployed. These people will become our enemies in no time. And we will pay, too."
Palestinian workers, walking past an armored personnel carrier to waiting taxis at the entrance of the industrial zone on Tuesday, said the closure of the nearly 100 Israeli companies there would mean disaster for them.
"They are going to destroy thousands of Palestinian families," said Abu Musa, who owns a clothing factory. "This is an unwise decision."
Olmert did not specify when the Israeli firms would leave, but his announcement came at a time when jobs in Gaza are already scarce. Nearly 30,000 Gazans employed in Israel have lost their jobs since the current Palestinian uprising broke out in September 2000. About 28 percent of Gaza households, which average eight members, have no one employed, according to the World Bank, and about 18 percent of children in Gaza are malnourished.
Sharon's proposal to pull Israeli settlements and troops out of Gaza, which won initial approval from the cabinet on Sunday, stipulates that "the area of the Erez zone will be transferred to Palestinian or international responsibility."
Olmert said his decision to relocate the Erez zone's Israeli companies to Israel did not contradict these efforts. He said that Israel would not demolish the buildings and infrastructure, but leave them to Palestinians.
"There was supposed to have been continuity after the withdrawal," said Zarifa, the Palestinian Authority adviser. "A special mechanism was going to be established to maintain the rights of workers and the rights of businesses for the benefit of all parties."
Oded Tyrah, president of the national Manufacturers Association, said businesses in the zone had lost a total of $8.8 million and that dozens were failing.
Tyrah, who had lobbied to keep the zone open, said he had become disillusioned by events of recent years. "I was naive to believe that we could follow the model of the European Union: first a common market, first businesspeople join forces, then countries join forces," he said.
"It's hard to believe that two countries -- one relatively rich and the other poor, the Palestinians on the other side of the wall -- can live in peace with such gaps in the standard of living," Tyrah said.
But Yosef Alpher, an Israeli strategic analyst, said the government's decision appeared to be motivated by something other than despair. "At a certain level, it is punitive," Alpher said. "Enough of us have been murdered by extremists in Gaza that we're locking the gate and throwing away the key."
He added, "There is an attempt to release Israel of responsibility for the Palestinian population, which is nonsense, because as long as you control all the entries and exit points -- the land and air and sea -- even if there's no Israeli inside, you bear a certain responsibility for the welfare of people in there."
"We are joined together, we can't abandon each other," said a Palestinian tailor in the industrial zone who gave his name as Abu Mohammed. "They need us to do these jobs, and we need them for money."
Special correspondent Islam Abdelkarim in Erez contributed to this report.
--------
Sharon Loses His Majority When 2 Ministers Resign
June 9, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09mide.html
JERUSALEM, June 8 - Two senior members of a far-right party quit the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday, dealing him a fresh setback as he attempts to maintain his shaky coalition.
Effie Eitam, the housing minister, and Yitzhak Levy, a deputy minister in the prime minister's office, announced their resignations and indicated they would oppose Mr. Sharon's government after a cabinet vote last Sunday approving in principle a plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
"This government and this prime minister must no longer remain in leadership," Mr. Eitam told a news conference.
Mr. Eitam and Mr. Levy are leaders in the National Religious Party, a strong advocate of building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Sharon wants to leave all settlements in Gaza by the end of 2005, though the government will have to hold another vote before settlements are actually removed.
A Gaza pullout "will result in the establishment of a Hamas terror state," said Mr. Eitam, referring to the Islamic faction behind many suicide bombings against Israel.
Mr. Sharon fired two ministers on Friday, and they removed their own far-right party from the coalition, leaving Mr. Sharon with 61 of 120 seats in Parliament.
Also on Tuesday, Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, said he would permanently close the large Israeli-Palestinian Erez industrial park along the northern border of Gaza, which has been a frequent target of attack.
Erez, with 4,000 Palestinian workers, has been one of the few symbols of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, and has mostly remained open despite the violence, although it has recently been closed temporarily.
Mr. Olmert did not mention a date, but said he would attempt to move the park's factories to southern Israel.
In violence on Tuesday, the Israeli military and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon exchanged artillery fire in the border region, and the military said one soldier was slightly wounded.
A day earlier, rockets were fired from Lebanon toward an Israeli naval vessel in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel responded with an air strike on a base south of Beirut belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, according to Lebanese news reports. Group members said the base was empty and there were no injuries, the reports added.
The Israeli air force also carried out a missile strike late Tuesday night on a target the military described as a weapons workshop and warehouse in Gaza City.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. The raid came several hours after Palestinians fired a homemade rocket from Gaza at Sederot, a town in southern Israel. No one was hurt in the incident.
Also on Tuesday, Turkey, perhaps Israel's closest Muslim ally, called home its ambassador to Israel and its consul general in Jerusalem for consultations.
"The violent policies that Israel is following cannot be accepted," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in a report by the Anatolia news agency.
-------- mideast
Poll of Saudis shows wide support for bin Laden's views
CNN
By Henry Schuster
June 9, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/08/poll.binladen/index.html
Almost half of all Saudis said in a poll conducted last year that they have a favorable view of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric, but fewer than 5 percent thought it was a good idea for bin Laden to rule the Arabian Peninsula.
The poll involved interviews with more than 15,000 Saudis and was overseen by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi national security consultant.
It was conducted between August and November 2003, after simultaneous suicide attacks in May 2003 when 36 people were killed in Riyadh.
Obaid said he only recently decided to reveal the poll results because he felt the public needed to know about them.
"I was surprised [at the results], especially after the bombings," Obaid told CNN. The question put to Saudi citizens was "What is your opinion of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric?"
"They like what he said about what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or about America and the Zionist conspiracy. But what he does, that's where you see the huge drop," said Obaid, referring to the bombings that had already begun taking place inside Saudi Arabia at the time the poll was conducted.
He also said he would like to update the poll numbers in the wake of the recent series of terrorist attacks that have taken place in Saudi Arabia.
Forty-one percent said they favored strong and close relations with America, while only 39 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the Saudi armed forces, both results that Obaid also termed "surprising."
"They don't trust their army," said Obaid, who noted that the security forces fared far better.
He noted that less than a third of Saudis polled had a positive opinion of militant clerics, although government-appointed religious figures did better.
The poll showed strong support for political reforms and allowing women to play a greater role in society. Almost two-thirds said they favored allowing women to drive, something they are currently banned from doing.
While support for political reforms, particularly elections, was high, few Saudis viewed liberal reformers with much favor.
Obaid said he shared the poll results -- some of which were published today in The Washington Post -- with members of the Interior and Foreign ministries, as well as the royal court.
Some were "a bit wary" about the questions, Obaid said, particularly the ones relating to bin Laden, but he received support from the government when he conducted the poll.
The margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.
-------- nato
Buoyed by U.N. Victory, Bush Tries to Shore Up NATO Support
June 9, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09CND-PREX.html?hp
SAVANNAH, Ga., June 9 - President Bush, buoyed by his diplomatic victory Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council, said today he would like to see NATO play a larger role in Iraq once sovereignty is transferred to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
His comments, issued on the first full day of Group of Eight meetings on Sea Island near here, came as Mr. Bush and other leaders of the seven richest countries, plus Russia, offered a warm embrace to the interim Iraqi president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar.
Mr. Bush's comment on NATO was guarded, and immediately drew expressions of reservation from France and Spain.
"We believe NATO ought to be involved," said Mr. Bush, who scored a major victory when the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of an American and British plan for ending the occupation in Iraq. "And I think we have a good chance of getting that done."
"There's going to be some constraints, obviously," he said. "A lot of NATO countries are not in a position to commit more troops."
President Jacques Chirac of France, a leader of the anti-war faction of the Security Council when the United States was preparing to go to war last year, resisted the suggestion that NATO become more involved.
Though he insisted that relations with the United States were now "very good," Mr. Chirac said, "I don't think it's in NATO's vocation to intervene in Iraq," adding "Nor do I think it would be relevant or well understood in Iraq."
He said he did not believe such an intervention would be "opportune."
A French spokesman said earlier that France did not consider the G-8 to be the place for a discussion of NATO. But Mr. Chirac did say he was open to discussing the matter should the interim Iraqi government request help.
In Madrid, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that a NATO role in Iraq would be a mistake, Agence France-Presse reported. Even under a NATO umbrella, he added, Spain would not send troops back to Iraq, after withdrawing its 1,400-strong contingent last month.
Mr. Chirac said he had thanked Mr. Bush for what he said had been a "great openness of spirit" by the American diplomats who resolved doubts over the resolution.
And Mr. Bush also seemed to be laying a small cornerstone for the NATO summit in Istanbul at month's end.
A United States official, speaking on condition of anonymity like many of those who briefed reporters, noted that while France and Germany had expressed what he called "strong reluctance" to sending troops to Iraq, "they have not been quite as categorical about NATO's role in Iraq."
Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed, in a morning meeting, to continue working on the matter until the Istanbul summit, the official said. "There may be things that NATO can do," he said.
All in all, diplomatic progress and the general level of goodwill on sunny Sea Island seemed to be running at healthy levels so far. But how lasting a benefit Mr. Bush might gain from what so far has been a smooth show of international unity remained unsure. Violence and sabotage have not slackened in Iraq, and Kurdish leaders have threatened to upset the political process that the United States and the interim government are trying to put in place, if Shiites are given what the Kurds believe is too much power.
Also today, the leaders were discussing and close to approving a United States plan for promoting change and development in the Middle East and North Africa. European leaders through the day said they had pressed Mr. Bush to move energetically at the same time to revive efforts to resolve Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, and to do so more multilaterally.
The Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin, was asked earlier whether the initiative for Middle East reform did not represent a United States attempt to divert attention from lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. He said both could "go hand in hand."
The broader initiative is "worthwhile," Martin said, and "we all want to participate."
Stefano Sannino, diplomatic adviser to the European Commission, said that the Israeli-Palestinian problem needed to be addressed "in a substantial manner" in conjunction with the Middle East initiative.
Sheik Yawar, the interim Iraqi president, had lunch with Mr. Bush and the leaders of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen, before meeting with the other G8 leaders.
Before the lunch, Mr. Bush said he would tell Sheik Yawar that "we're pulling for him, pulling for the people of Iraq, particularly those who have a deep desire to live in a free society."
Mr. Blair, standing with Mr. Bush said that "we are there to help them and make sure the Iraqis ultimately can take care of their own security and defense."
Officials also said the G-8 would agree to establish a global peacekeeping force with "well in excess" of 50,000 troops meant at first to intervene in African conflicts before they become genocidal. Italy has offered to provide a training center, and United States officials said Mr. Bush would provide $660 million.
Another agreement sets out 28 steps to improve border security and international travel safety. The steps include developing tamper-proof travel documents, simplifying visa processing, more carefully assessing airport and seaport security, and sharing passenger information.
Off Sea Island, things remained remarkably quiet by the standards of past such international meetings. Protesters, mostly kept away from Sea Island, showed up in scores or hundreds rather than thousands. A demonstration Tuesday at Savannah's stately Forsyth Park drew 75 protesters and nearly three times as many reporters.
-------- pacific
France, allies, stage big military drill in New Caledonia
NOUMEA (AFP)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040609074108.648vzt3m.html
Troops from Australia, France, New Zealand and Tonga were staging a major military exercise in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia Wednesday in an effort to boost co-operation, officers said.
The drill to last until June 13, simulates an evacuation of foreigners from a fictitious troubled territory where an earthquake has added to regional instability.
"The aim of this exercise is to strengthen our inter-operability and our familiarity with each other," said a spokesman for the French forces in New Caledonia.
"We have different methods and ways of working but things are going fine," he said.
The drill codenamed Croix du sud, French for Southern Cross, takes place once every two years and was kicked off this year in the Lifou island of the Loyalty islands chain.
Some 1,200 troops, including 400 non-French, eight naval ships and several aircraft were taking part in the exercise which began Sunday.
Australia has deployed 150 troops along with two Caribou aircraft, a landing craft and a troop carrier. New Zealand has sent 150 troops, two helicopters and a patrol boat while Tonga has weighed in with 60 men and a patrol boat.
Australian Defense Forces (ADF) contingent Commander Nick Bramwell said the exercise provided an excellent opportunity to undertake realistic training while enjoying the experience of a different culture in the Pacific region.
"There have been some real challenges provided by the scenario and the language barrier," said Bramwell. "So far, though, the ADF contingent has demonstrated its ability to integrate into the Pacific Island Coalition."
The manoeuvres demonstrate the goodwill prevailing among French forces and those of the regional neighbours, the French spokesman said.
France's controversial nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in the French Pacific in the mid-1990s had drawn fierce criticism from regional neighbours.
-------- space
California Works To Retain Leadership in Space
Los Angeles (SPX)
Jun 09, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/industry-04o.html
At a press conference Tueday, the California Space Authority (CSA) unveiled the 2004 California Space Enterprise Strategic Plan. "The California space enterprise community now has a plan to achieve the vision of California leading the world in all aspects of space exploration and development, a goal which no other state and few nations can reach, and which has great significance for California and its citizens," stated the Honorable Andrea Seastrand, CSA's executive director.
Currently supporting over 250,000 jobs, California's high-tech public and private space enterprise community is spread throughout every county in the state. According to the Plan, California has captured $20 billion, or 24% of a current worldwide space market valued at $83 billion. The Plan anticipates a global space market of $130 billion by 2006, a growth rate of over 50% in three years.
CSA has identified over 1,500 companies with space activities in the state and major space assets including three NASA facilities, numerous space-related military bases and space product manufacturing and operations sites, as well as a network of world-class universities. Californians' everyday lives are supported by space activities and technologies in a myriad of ways, many of which are identified in the Plan.
The strong statewide space enterprise represented by this Plan will create even more high-paying jobs in California, attract and retain talent that catalyzes growth, inspire our youth, attract and retain space business, enhance the many benefits Californians enjoy as a result of space activities and solidify space as California's competitive frontier.
"This unique public/private cooperative planning process, facilitated by CSA, brought together nearly 300 space enterprise stakeholders from all domains and sectors, to strategize the future of California's leadership role in this fast growing, high-value market," stated Dr. Stanley G. Rosen, chairman, CSA Board of Directors and director, Strategic Development and Integration, Boeing Satellite Systems.
"This process identified the major opportunities and threats to our future success. As described in the Plan, the California spirit of innovation and space systems engineering expertise have played a leading role in ensuring U.S. space mission success on the battlefield, on the moon, in earth orbit, on the International Space Station and now on Mars," stated CSA Space Enterprise Advisory Council (SEAC) honorary chairman Lt. General Eugene L. Tattini, USAF (ret.) and deputy director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"The goal of the planning team was to highlight California's unique network of space enterprise capabilities, and, more importantly, identify and address any impediments to ongoing space technology and market innovation and leadership."
John R. Parsons, SEAC co-chair and senior vice president, Engineering and Technology Group, The Aerospace Corporation, described the five priority strategic initiatives which form the centerpiece of the 2004 California Space Enterprise Strategic Plan:
1. Space Enterprise Business Development, Retention and Growth Goal: Provide a positive, supportive business climate and space enterprise environment, addressing obstacles to and opportunities for California space enterprise competitiveness
2. California Space Industrial Base Vitality
Goal: Sustain and enhance California's space-related manufacturing and infrastructure
3. Space Science, Research and Technology Development
Goal: Foster and support space-related science, research, technology development and innovation
4. Space Education and Workforce Development
Goal: Enhance space-related education and ensure appropriate 21st century space workforce
5. Public and Policymaker Awareness
Goal: Educate the general public and California policymakers -- local, State and Federal -- about the benefits, scope and needs of California space enterprise
"Many other states and foreign countries are targeting the space market. For California to keep and grow its unparalleled capability and remain competitive, we need to assure a space enterprise-friendly business environment," said former astronaut Richard Searfoss, SEAC co-chair and speaker, consultant and representative of Space Camp at the Queen Mary.
"The Plan includes over 110 performance objectives within all five cross-cutting strategies to ensure a healthy space enterprise community."
"CSA is establishing, for each strategic initiative, a statewide group ("collaborative") charged with accomplishing the performance objectives within each initiative," said Ms. Seastrand.
"Participants of the collaboratives will draw upon California's vast network of public and private space enterprise stakeholders for guidance and resources regarding implementation. The five collaboratives will report periodically to the Space Enterprise Advisory Council, which will serve as the coordinator of the Plan's implementation."
Governed by a statewide board of directors, the California Space Authority (CSA) is a nonprofit corporation representing the interests of California's diverse space enterprise community in all three domains: commercial, civil and national security.
Working closely with the State of California, CSA partners with industry, government, workforce-related entities and academia to facilitate statewide space enterprise development.
-------- spies
NEW PREMIER
Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks
June 9, 2004
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09ALLA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 8 - Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.
Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign varied, although the former officials interviewed agreed that it never threatened Saddam Hussein's rule.
No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. They could not even recall exactly when it occurred, though the interviews made it clear it was between 1992 and 1995.
The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.
One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.
Other former intelligence officials said Dr. Allawi's organization was the only resistance group involved in bombings and sabotage at that time.
But one former senior intelligence official recalled that "bombs were going off to no great effect."
"I don't recall very much killing of anyone," the official said.
When Dr. Allawi was picked as interim prime minister last week, he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other insurgent attacks in Iraq - an idea several former officials familiar with his past said they found "ironic."
"Send a thief to catch a thief," said Kenneth Pollack, who was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the C.I.A. during the early 1990's and recalled the sabotage campaign.
Dr. Allawi declined to respond to repeated requests for comment, made Monday and Tuesday through his Washington representative, Patrick N. Theros. The former intelligence officials, while confirming C.I.A. involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.
An American intelligence officer who worked with Dr. Allawi in the early 1990's noted that "no one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," adding, "I don't think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."
Dr. Allawi was a favorite of the C.I.A. and other government agencies 10 years ago, largely because he served as a counterpoint to Ahmad Chalabi, a more prominent exile leader.
He "was highly regarded by those involved in Iraqi operations," Samuel R. Berger, who was national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. "Unlike Chalabi, he was someone who was trusted by the regional governments. He was less flamboyant, less promotional."
The C.I.A. recruited Dr. Allawi in 1992, former intelligence officials said. At that time, the former senior intelligence official said, "what we were doing was dealing with anyone" in the Iraqi opposition "we could get our hands on." Mr. Chalabi began working with the agency in 1991, and the idea, the official added, was to "decrease the proportion of Chalabi's role in what we were doing by finding others to work with."
In 1991, Dr. Allawi was associated with a former Iraqi official, Salih Omar Ali al-Tikriti, whom the United States viewed as unsavory. He and Dr. Allawi founded the Iraqi National Accord in 1990. Both were former supporters of the Iraqi government.
Some intelligence officials have also suggested that Dr. Allawi, while he was still a member of the ruling Baath Party in the early 1970's, may have spied on Iraqi students studying in London. Mr. Tikriti was said to have supervised public hangings in Baghdad. The former officials said the C.I.A. would not work with Dr. Allawi until he severed his relationship with Mr. Tikriti, which he did in 1992.
Several intelligence officials said the agency's broad goal immediately after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 was to recruit opposition leaders who had senior contacts inside Iraq, something Dr. Allawi claimed. The Iraqi National Accord was made up of former senior Iraqi military and political leaders who had fled the country and were said to retain connections to colleagues inside the government.
"Iyad had contact with people the agency thought would be useful to us in the future," Mr. Pollack said. "He seemed to have ties to respected Sunni figures that no one else had." The Hussein government was dominated by Sunni Muslims.
The bombing and sabotage campaign, the former senior intelligence official said, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability."
Another former intelligence officer who was involved in Iraqi affairs recalled that the bombings "were an option we considered and used." Dr. Allawi's group was used, he added, "because Chalabi never had any sort of internal organization that could carry it out," adding, "We would never have asked him to carry out sabotage."
The varied assessments of the bombing campaign's effectiveness are understandable, the former senior intelligence official said, because "I would not attribute to the U.S. sufficient intelligence resources then so that we could perceive if an effective bombing campaign was under way."
Dr. Allawi is not believed to have ever spoken in public about the bombing campaign. But one Iraqi National Accord officer did. In 1996, Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National Accord and as being based in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, recorded a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained that he was being shortchanged money and supplies. Two former intelligence officers confirmed the existence of the videotape.
Mr. Khadami said that "we blew up a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000" but got only $1,000, according to an account in the British newspaper The Independent in 1997. The newspaper had obtained a copy of the tape.
Mr. Khadami, it added, also said he worried that the C.I.A. might view him as "too much the terrorist."
--------
Allawi organized sabotage in Iraq in 1990s
middle-east-online
2004-06-09
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=10230
WASHINGTON - Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, under the CIA's direction, ran an organization that carried out a bombing campaign in Iraq in the 1990s aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein, The New York Times said Wednesday.
The campaign of sabotage against government facilities did not topple Saddam and there were conflicting reports on whether it caused any casualties, former Central Intelligence Agency officials told the daily.
The officials said they could not remember exactly when the bombing campaign took place, but the daily estimated from their interviews that it was between 1992 and 1995. Apparently there are no public records of Allawi's effort.
Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, rigged up cars and other devices with explosives smuggled from northern Iraq, the official said.
The CIA recruited Allawi in 1992 to serve as a counterpoint to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, the former intelligence officials said.
"What we were doing was dealing with anyone (in the Iraqi opposition) we could get our hands on," one official told the daily, adding that the intention was to "decrease the proportion of Chalabi's role in what we were doing by finding others to work with us."
Chalabi, a former Pentagon ally and a Shiite member of Iraq's disbanded Governing Council, has been accused of informing Iran that the United States had broken its intelligence code.
-------- un
U.N. Backs Plan to End Iraq Occupation
Bush Heralds Unanimous Security Council Endorsement That Closes Deep Divisions
By Peter Slevin and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26300-2004Jun8?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, June 8 -- The U.N. Security Council moved beyond its bitter fight over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to deliver unanimous support Tuesday to a new Iraqi government and a vow to help steer the country toward democratic elections next year.
By a vote of 15 to 0, the council endorsed a resumption of Iraqi control over the nation's political and economic affairs for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-dominated military occupation of Iraq will end formally on June 30, although 160,000 foreign soldiers will remain to battle insurgents.
The vote on the latest Iraq resolution opened the door to a fresh, if uncertain, stage of the Bush administration's project to remake Iraq. After months of insisting on control, the White House calculated that Iraqi leaders backed by a more united international community could turn back the militant opposition that has beset the occupation.
President Bush, preparing to welcome leaders of the world's most industrialized economies to the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga., hailed the vote as a "catalyst for change." He called it "a very important moment in seeing that our objective is achieved."
In a spirit far different from that of 18 months ago, leaders from Russia, Britain and Germany followed with hopeful words after reaching compromises on a resolution designed to strengthen the interim government and show skeptical Iraqis that the United States will no longer dominate Iraqi politics.
"Without any exaggeration, I would state that it is a major step forward," said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opposed the invasion of Iraq. But he added, "Naturally, it will take quite a long time before the adoption of the document will have any impact on the real change on the ground in Iraq."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally in the coalition that deposed Hussein, said: "We all now want to put divisions of the past behind us and unite behind the vision of a modern and stable Iraq that can be a force for good, not just for Iraqis but for the whole region and thus the whole world."
The Bush administration considers the Security Council vote a victory, particularly after failing to win U.N. support for the March 2003 invasion. It took five versions and a battery of U.S. concessions to make the vote unanimous -- and to produce it on the American schedule, before the G-8 summit began Tuesday night.
With each version, the resolution delivered more assurances of Iraqi authority over Iraqi affairs and more precise details about how the U.S.-controlled occupation would end. Compared with recent diplomatic battles, this one went smoothly, diplomats on all sides said.
The final version backs a measure of sovereignty for Iraq that gives its leaders the authority to make political decisions and control the economy, including oil-industry revenue that foreigners have managed for more than a decade. Contracts signed by the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority will be honored, the resolution states.
An interim government headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite once supported by the CIA, will command Iraq's security forces and will have the right to order the exit of foreign troops, although he said he does not intend to do so.
On the most delicate issue, the United States preserved the authority to wage offensive military operations as American commanders see fit. The Bush administration promised "close coordination" and "full partnership" with the Iraqis, who may opt to keep Iraqi forces out of such operations.
"Iraq's sovereignty will be undiluted," U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte told the Security Council after the vote. "The government of Iraq will have the sovereign authority to request and to decline assistance, including in the security sector."
Speaking in Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, interim Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar said Iraqis "cannot afford to be pessimistic" despite the violence that has slowed reconstruction. He said he is "counting on our friends in the U.N. and international community to help us."
Yawar said he feels confident about the role of U.S. forces in Iraq and their pledge to consult on sensitive military operations.
"We will be working together," he said. "These people are in our country to help us against bad elements. They are not going to be part of doing negative or having negative impact on the . . . law-abiding Iraqi citizens."
It remains unclear how the resolution will translate into additional concrete support from other nations -- a fervent desire of the Bush administration, long criticized for not giving other countries more substantive roles earlier. Top U.S. officials have conceded that additional foreign security forces are likely to remain unattainable until the violence diminishes.
Diplomats said Tuesday's vote resulted from a newfound flexibility on the part of a Bush administration that had steadfastly insisted on doing things its own way in Iraq.
Heraldo Munoz, Chile's U.N. ambassador, credited the administration with making "a U-turn on the U.N. role."
A senior State Department official said the administration took a different tack this time. The White House was prepared to give away more than it was previously.
"To some extent, the way we got this resolution was different from the past," the official said. "It's now a question of what the Iraqis want and no longer a debate about the United States."
Before and after the war, the Bush administration had largely sidelined the United Nations on political decisions in Iraq despite White House assurances that the world body would have a "vital role." In recent months, as American forces found themselves again at war and taking heavy casualties, U.S. authorities emphasized the need for U.N. help in creating a political solution.
The interim government is intended to hold power until Iraqis choose their own leadership, a task the United Nations is now committed to overseeing. Diplomats said it will be crucial to provide security for U.N. workers. They said much of the rest will be up to the Iraqis.
"We want to send a message to the Iraqis," one council diplomat said. "This is opening a new chapter, with your own fate in your hands. Please get it done."
Wright reported from Washington. Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report from Georgia.
--------
UNITED NATIONS
Security Council, in a 15-0 Vote, Backs Measure on Iraq Turnover
June 9, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09NATI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
UNITED NATIONS, June 8 - The Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday in favor of an American and British resolution to end the formal occupation of Iraq on June 30 and transfer "full sovereignty" to an interim Iraqi government.
Along with giving international legitimacy to the caretaker government and outlining the United Nations' role in a post-June 30 Iraq, the measure authorized an American-led multinational force, now at 160,000 troops, to use "all necessary measures" in "partnership" with Iraqi forces to bring peace.
The 15-to-0 vote on the measure, co-sponsored by the United States and Britain, gave President Bush a major diplomatic win as he gathered with leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized powers for a summit meeting at Sea Island, Ga.
It provided stark contrast with the bitter division that arose at the Security Council last year over the American campaign in Iraq. "Today we are united on Iraq," said Lauro L. Baja Jr. of the Philippines, the Security Council president. "Yesterday we were divided on Iraq."
It also enabled the United States to cite support for its program to stabilize Iraq from Council countries like France, Germany and Russia that were vigorously opposed to American military action there.
John D. Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations who is to become the United States envoy in Baghdad, said the vote "is a vivid demonstration of broad, international support for, and I quote from the text, `a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq in which there is full respect for political and human rights.' "
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the vote showed the international community was "coming together again to support the Iraqi people."
The Iraqi people, however, are not themselves unified; Kurds in particular fear the resolution may leave the Shiite majority too much power.
A number of the Security Council countries which had faulted the United States for disdaining the United Nations before the war praised it on Tuesday for its willingness to accept suggestions and revisions in the five weeks of negotiations over the draft.
Gunter Pleuger, the German ambassador, said the United States and Britain had shown a welcome "flexible and constructive approach."
While the resolution put an international stamp on the American-led military force in Iraq, American diplomats said they had reined in their earlier hope that it might attract more nations to contribute troops.
Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Monday that the United States no longer expected to draw in additional troops but that it did hope that the resolution would persuade countries with military forces already there not to remove or reduce them.
There were indications, however, that countries with no disposition to join the multinational force might be drawn to a separate military force to protect United Nations personnel that is called for in the resolution.
Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, said Tuesday that three or four nations that do not now have troops in Iraq had signaled their willingness to join the separate force, which is estimated to number 4,000 soldiers.
In passages that were the most contested during the last two weeks in which there were four reworkings of the text, the resolution empowered an American-led multinational force to "take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq," but strictly in "security partnership" with the Iraqi interim government.
The Iraqi military and police, the measure said, would be under Iraqi commanders, and American commanders would have to work in "full partnership" and "close coordination and consultation" with them.
France and Germany had pressed for language giving the Iraqis a veto over participation in combat operations that they objected to, but in the end the two nations settled for an expanded paragraph that honored the Iraqis' right to take part in all security decisions "including policy on sensitive offensive operations." The reference was to military operations like those in Falluja and Najaf where Iraqis were unwilling to join allied troops in fighting.
Those words emerged first in letters that were introduced in debate on Sunday and adopted Tuesday as amendments to the resolution.
The letters, one from Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of the interim government, and the other from Mr. Powell, described the steps the two governments meant to take to solidify the partnership between Iraqi forces and the American command. Dr. Allawi said he would create and lead a new security ministerial committee to help coordinate decision-making at "sensitive" moments.
The resolution says the American-led multinational force is in Iraq at the request and with the consent of the Iraqi interim government, and it gives the government the right to order the force's withdrawal. Both Dr. Allawi and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who addressed the Council last week, said they wanted the foreign troops to stay.
The resolution calls for elections no later than Jan. 31, 2005, to choose a national assembly to draw up a permanent constitution that would mandate direct elections for a full-term government by Dec. 31, 2005.
In another move intended to broaden Iraq's politics, the resolution calls for a national conference of political, religious and tribal representatives to select a consultative council to advise the interim government. This idea was suggested by the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, who said he imagined a gathering of as many as 1,000 people, to take place in mid-July.
Kurdish leaders had asked the United States to include in the resolution a guarantee of Kurdish rights, but American officials rejected the request after it was strongly opposed by prominent Shiites. The absence of such a guarantee threatened to create a serious split between the Kurds and the new Iraqi government.
In its security sections, the resolution said the mandate for the multinational force would be reviewed a year from now, or sooner if the government to be elected in January seeks a review.
The resolution also puts the new Iraqi leaders in charge of the nation's oil and gas revenues.
The United Nations will advise the Iraqis on the development of civil and social services, the coordination of relief and reconstruction efforts, and the protection of human rights.
It will help the Iraqis plan a census, set up elections and draft a constitution. Carina Perelli, head of the United Nations electoral assistance division, has developed the plans for elections in January 2005, and oversaw the appointment last week of a new electoral commission.
-------- us
Army Now Says G.I. Was Beaten in Role
June 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOUISVILLE, Ky., June 8 - Reversing itself, the Army said Tuesday that a G.I. was discharged partly because of a head injury he suffered while posing as an uncooperative detainee during a training exercise at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The Army had previously said Specialist Sean Baker's medical discharge in April was unrelated to the injury he received last year at the detention center, where the United States holds suspected terrorists.
Mr. Baker, 37, a former member of the 438th Military Police Company, said he played the role of an uncooperative prisoner and was beaten so badly by four American soldiers that he suffered a traumatic brain injury and seizures. He said the soldiers only stopped beating him when they realized he might be American.
Bruce Simpson, Mr. Baker's lawyer, said his client is considering a lawsuit.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
LETTER FROM THE AMERICAS
Hide-and-Seek Among the Coca Leaves
June 9, 2004
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/americas/09lett.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SANTA MARTA, Colombia - Eager for good results on at least one battlefront, the Bush administration has lately been pointing to its success in the war on drugs, specifically its crop-eradication plan in Colombia.
In March, after a string of setbacks that saw Colombia's coca crop expand threefold to more than 400,000 acres from 1995 to 2001, authorities said new estimates showed a startling 21 percent decrease in the cultivation of coca in 2003. Coming on top of a more modest decline in 2002, the development validated for American authorities the $3.2 billion spent here since 2000, mostly for crop eradication.
"In Colombia, we're creating real deterrence to plantings," said Robert Charles, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics. "This is the first time in 10 years we have a chance of tipping the balance."
Yet, like any big business used to highs and lows, with shifting demand and impediments to supply, the cocaine trade has shown it can adapt. And so it has, again, developing new markets, abandoning the coca plantations that made an easy target for aerial spraying and developing new and more potent strains of coca plants.
Consider recent production figures. American estimates peg potential cocaine production in the Andes at 835 metric tons, down from the 2001 high of 1,155. But that level remains nearly as high as in the 1990's, when the bustling cocaine trade prompted President Bill Clinton to embark on the biggest military buildup in the Andes ever, called Plan Colombia.
The amount of cocaine produced here is, in fact, more than enough to satisfy demand in the United States, estimated at 250 to 300 metric tons annually, and in the rest of the world, for that matter. One result is that on American streets, the price of cocaine remains low - just $20,000 in New York for a kilogram, 2.2 pounds - and the purity level remains high, what drug experts say are indicators of a perfectly healthy business.
The Bush administration and its ally in Colombia, President Álvaro Uribe, say the spraying has already paid dividends by cutting into the drug money Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries have used to finance their long-running war. Though coca planting continues, American officials contend that they have the spray planes, the will and the tactics to continue hitting coca, wherever it might sprout up.
"There's a race, and you spray and they replant, you spray and they replant," said David Murray, drug policy analyst at the White House drug czar's office. "But at some point, they fall behind. They cannot replant as fast as we eradicate."
The overall decline in coca in Colombia and the rest of the Andes is indisputable, and the strategy appears to have controlled the so-called balloon effect: the recurring phenomenon that once saw huge fields of coca pop up in one region after being stamped out in another.
But if the eradication program is so successful, why is production still booming, albeit at somewhat reduced levels? Because, as a generation of anti-drug warriors has learned, nothing in the war on drugs is straightforward; every seeming victory comes with an unintended consequence.
In Colombia, that lesson is never more true than in places like the national park in the Sierra Nevada, just east of Santa Marta, where the world's tallest coastal mountain range has recently seen the emergence of tiny tracts of coca in its gullies and valleys.
It is a sign, drug experts say, that instead of the balloon effect, what is happening is the atomization of drug farms into numerous small plots, often in isolated spots that would be hard, if not impossible, to spray. Perhaps 25,000 acres of coca, nearly 10 percent of Colombia's crop, have been planted recently in state parks and in the vast Amazonian region once thought too remote for coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking.
"What we have is an enormous fragmentation," said Sandro Calvini, director of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Bogotá, which tracks spraying efforts and tries to prod coca farmers into farming legal crops. "It's hard to detect, and it's obvious they are looking for areas that are hard to detect."
In the past, growers have shown great skill in creating coca plants resistant to chemicals and adaptable to difficult climates. Now, drug experts say, they are busy developing new strains of coca, yielding more cocaine from fewer plants.
"They're going for varieties that will yield very quickly, lots of leaves per bush, more bushes per hectare, more alkaloids in the leaves," said Adam Isacson, who closely tracks counternarcotics efforts for the Washington-based Center for International Policy and in April met with small-town officials throughout two of Colombia's main coca-growing provinces. "It's small, scattered, and people are getting better at growing in the shade."
But that is not all.
It also turns out that the adage about demand driving supply does not fully apply to the cocaine trade.
While demand from occasional users has steadily dropped in the United States, it has picked up with a vengeance in other countries, like Brazil, now the No. 2 consumer.
"What's happening is they're adapting to the market, helping create demand," said a senior Congressional aide in Washington.
New cocaine routes are traversing the heart of the Andes into Brazil, the flow heading into Brazilian cities or simply hopscotching to Europe, where cocaine consumption has shot up in recent years to as much as 200 metric tons, not far off the total consumed in the United States.
In the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the crack trade has such a tight hold that military-style police patrols armed with assault rifles have been repelled by drug gangs. Multi-ton loads of cocaine are headed to Europe, and poor African countries are experiencing a boom in trafficking and drug use.
Even this country, which for years has defiantly asserted it was Americans who were consuming Colombian cocaine, not Colombians, is experiencing a troubling, home-grown surge in consumption.
"The days when the vast majority of cocaine was bound for the United States are long gone," said a Drug Enforcement Administration official in Washington who works on policy in Colombia. "The cocaine trade has gone global."
-------- human rights
ACLU membership spikes in wake of Patriot Act
Associated Press
06/09/2004
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D833O4BO0.html
The American Civil Liberties Union is experiencing record-high membership, and membership in the Washington state chapter has increased at a greater rate than any other state in the country.
The state chapter's membership jumped from 10,000 to nearly 20,000 between 2001 and 2004 - an increase the group largely attributes to a backlash against the Patriot Act.
The act expanded the government's surveillance and detention powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since its adoption, more than 250 town councils, village boards and city governments across the country have passed resolutions of protest.
Before the act was passed, about 60 invitations a year were sent to the ACLU's downtown Seattle office from schools and clubs requesting speakers to discuss civil liberties. By 2003, that number had tripled, with most seeking someone to explain the Bush administration's new homeland security laws.
"It's because of (U.S. Attorney General) John Ashcroft more than anything else," said Doug Honig, a spokesman for the state chapter of the organization - a network of lawyers and others dedicated to defending personal privacy, due process and political freedom. "People really feel that their rights are under fire, so for us, these are the worst, but also the best, of times."
The ACLU - which has 400,000 dues-paying members nationwide - also saw spikes in membership during the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. But the recent jump in membership has surprised even veteran staff members.
"Whenever the body politic gets uneasy about what the government is doing, we see a rise, but nothing like this, to be sure," said Jerry Sheehan, who has been a lobbyist with the state group for 21 years.
Washington has a tradition of progressive liberalism, an equally strong libertarian bent and a plugged-in youth population likely to join the ACLU via the Web, said Emily Whitfield, a spokeswoman for the national office.
The group is also gaining the respect - and membership - of some unlikely supporters. Lifelong Republican Katie Phelps said she never expected to join forces with activists who support gay marriage and liberalized drug laws. But six months ago, she joined the Washington state chapter after the group filed a lawsuit on her behalf that succeeded in getting her elected to Medina's City Council.
Phelps, who ran a last-minute write-in campaign, discovered that poll workers had failed to count 31 handwritten votes, giving the election to her opponent. The ACLU intervened and Phelps was installed as the victor.
"It really opened my eyes to see the ACLU come over here to suburbia, to Republican land, based on 31 ballots," Phelps said. "It seemed like such a blip on the screen, and yet the ACLU was there for me in my tiny little race. A lot of people over here were surprised by that, and impressed."
Although U.S. Attorney John McKay called the ACLU's legal work superior, he defended the Patriot Act, calling its provisions essential in light of the intelligence failures prior to the terrorist attacks.
"There are those who believe that any time government power is increased, civil liberties are hurt, and I reject that," McKay said.
-------- justice
Ashcroft Refuses to Release '02 Memo
Document Details Suffering Allowed In Interrogations
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24867-2004Jun8.html
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told Congress yesterday that he would not release a 2002 policy memo on the degree of pain and suffering legally permitted during enemy interrogations, but said he knows of no presidential order that would allow al Qaeda suspects to be tortured by U.S. personnel.
Angry Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Ashcroft to provide the document. They said portions that have appeared in news reports suggest the Bush administration is reinterpreting U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the memo on interrogation techniques permissible for the CIA to use on suspected al Qaeda operatives "appears to be an effort to redefine torture and narrow prohibitions against it." The document was prepared by the Justice Department's office of legal counsel for the CIA and addressed to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales.
The 50-page Justice Department memo said inflicting physical or psychological pain might be justified in the war on terrorism "to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network." It added that "necessity and self defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability."
The Bush administration has said that the discussion in the memo notwithstanding, al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, including those held at Guantanamo Bay, have been treated in accord with international conventions prohibiting torture.
The memo and a second written by Pentagon lawyers surfaced in news reports this week amid the ongoing abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The documents reflect discussions on the legality of softening prohibitions against inflicting pain on al Qaeda suspects abroad, saying the practice may sometimes be justified.
Ashcroft's hard-line approach to the war on terrorism has drawn criticism from civil libertarians. This time, he came under fire during a scheduled oversight hearing on a day that brought news of the memos.
"There is no presidential order immunizing torture," Ashcroft told the Judiciary panel. He cited President Bush's statement that al Qaeda captives should be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions, even though the administration chose not to designate detainees as prisoners of war.
Under questioning, Ashcroft said he could not discuss whether the president issued any orders on the interrogation of detainees, but said: "I want to confirm that the president has not directed or ordered any conduct that would violate any one of those enactments of the United States Congress or that would violate the provisions of any of the treaties as they have been entered into by the United States."
Ashcroft said he would not discuss the contents of the Justice and Pentagon memos, and would not turn over the Justice memo to the committee. "I believe it is essential to the operation of the executive branch that the president have the opportunity to get information from the attorney general that is confidential," he said.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) warned Ashcroft that his refusal might place him in contempt of Congress.
"If such a memo existed, would that -- is that good law? . . . Do you think that torture might be justified?" Biden demanded.
Ashcroft responded, "I condemn torture. I don't think it's productive, let alone justified."
Biden told Ashcroft that prohibitions against torture are intended to "protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."
Ashcroft said he needed no reminder, because his own son has been on active military duty in the Persian Gulf.
Ashcroft added that although he would not comment on the contents of the memo, "it is not the job of the Justice Department or this administration to define torture."
That, he said, has been done in explicit fashion by Congress in enacting law that bars intentional infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Ashcroft said he would not be drawn into a discussion of the legal boundaries of aggressive interrogation.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has taken a tough line against terrorism suspects, alluded to the "high dudgeon" of his Democratic colleagues, saying he wanted to "interject a note of balance here.
"We ought to be reasonable about this," he told the crowded committee room. "I think there are very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake."
Bush, Schumer told Ashcroft, "can hardly be blamed for asking you or his White House counsel or the Department of Defense to figure out when it comes to torture, what the law allows." But, Schumer said, the debate and decisions should be public.
Ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy (Vt.) , angry that Ashcroft had not been before the panel in 15 months, released a fusillade of criticism about his handling of the war on terrorism.
"Mr. Attorney General, your statement lists accomplishments of the Department of Justice since 9/11. But you leave out a number of things. For example, of course, the obvious: Osama bin Laden remains at large," Leahy said. He said that Ashcroft's "practices seem to be built on secret detentions and overblown press releases."
But Republicans, particularly committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), lauded the Justice Department's efforts. Ashcroft was unapologetic about his department's efforts to jail or deport suspected terrorist sympathizers.
"We have been criticized for these tough tactics, but we will continue to use every means within the department and its reach and within the Constitution and the statutes to deter, to disrupt, destroy terrorist threats," he said.
--------
THE MEMORANDUMS
Documents Build a Case for Working Outside the Laws in Interrogations
June 9, 2004
NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09TTEX.html
JANUARY 2002 A series of memorandums from the Justice Department, many of them written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. The memorandums, principally one written on Jan. 9, provided legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the war in Afghanistan.
JAN. 25 Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice in the Jan. 9 memorandum was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law that carries the death penalty.
JAN. 26 In a memorandum to the White House, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the advantages of applying the Geneva Conventions far outweighed their rejection. He said that declaring the conventions inapplicable would "reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the laws of war for our troops." He also said it would "undermine public support among critical allies."
FEB. 2 A memorandum from William H. Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, to Mr. Gonzales warned that the broad rejection of the Geneva Conventions posed several problems. "A decision that the conventions do not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan in which our armed forces are engaged deprives our troops there of any claim to the protection of the conventions in the event they are captured." An attachment to this memorandum, written by a State Department lawyer, showed that most of the administration's senior lawyers agreed that the Geneva Conventions were inapplicable. The attachment noted that C.I.A. lawyers asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.
AUGUST A memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department provided a rationale for using torture to extract information from Qaeda operatives. It provided complex definitions of torture that seemed devised to allow interrogators to evade being charged with that offense.
MARCH 2003 A memorandum prepared by a Defense Department legal task force drew on the January and August memorandums to declare that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security. The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.'
APRIL A memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill outlined 24 permitted interrogation techniques, 4 of which were considered stressful enough to require Mr. Rumsfeld's explicit approval. Defense Department officials say it did not refer to the legal analysis of the month before.
DEC. 24 A letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross over the signature of Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was prepared by military lawyers. The letter, a response to the Red Cross's concern about conditions at Abu Ghraib, contended that isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their significant intelligence value was a "military necessity," and said prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.
OTHER MEMORANDUMS Some have been described in reports in The Times and elsewhere, but their exact contents have not been disclosed. These include a memorandum that provided advice to interrogators to shield them from liability from the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty and the Anti-Torture Act, a federal law. This memorandum provided what has been described as a script in which officials were advised that they could avoid responsibility if they were able to plausibly contend that the prisoner was in the custody of another government and that the United States officials were just getting the information from the other country's interrogation. The memorandum advised that for this to work, the United States officials must be able to contend that the prisoner was always in the other country's custody and had not been transferred there. International law prohibits the "rendition" of prisoners to countries if the possibility of mistreatment can be anticipated.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Interrogations Are Criticized
Lawyers Fault Tactics Used on Witnesses Against Detainees
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26240-2004Jun8.html
Military lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay prisoners designated to face military tribunals have complained to the Senate that witnesses against their clients may have faced coercive tactics during interrogations, according to letters the attorneys released yesterday.
The five military defense lawyers said in the letters that under Pentagon rules for the tribunals, they probably would not have the right to ask in court about the circumstances under which prosecution witnesses offered evidence against their clients. This, they said, would violate the rights of their six clients, the first detainees scheduled to face the special military trials.
"It is likely that evidence obtained from prisoners abused while in U.S. custody will be introduced as evidence in these military commissions [or tribunals] at Guantanamo Bay, and that neither defense counsel nor the members of the commissions would ever be told about the circumstances under which such evidence was obtained," the lawyers wrote the Senate Armed Services and Judiciary committees.
The five attorneys -- Lt. Col. Sharon A. Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel, Maj. Mark A. Bridge and Maj. Michael D. Mori -- indirectly referred to the scandals involving abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
The defense lawyers have not alleged that their clients were abused in interrogation, but they harbor suspicions that some prosecution witnesses have been mistreated or manipulated into helping the government, said sources close to the attorneys who demanded anonymity because of military rules governing the tribunals.
There have been occasional allegations of coercion in interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Recent revelations of U.S. officials' decisions to authorize some types of aggressive interrogation techniques under certain circumstances have heightened concerns that abusive methods were employed.
Defense officials said that in April 2003, the Pentagon approved interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay permitting the reversal of detainees' normal sleep patterns, as well as exposing them to heat, cold and loud music.
The defense attorneys asked the two Senate committees to investigate the interrogation techniques used on detainees who will testify against their clients.
The Pentagon's rules for conducting tribunals are silent on whether the defense is allowed to inquire into the circumstances of prosecution witnesses' interrogation, unlike standard military legal procedure, which grants the defense that right. The rules leave the decision up to tribunal judges.
Six of the 595 detainees at the prison for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have been deemed eligible for trial before a tribunal. But only two of the six have been formally charged: Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen, both alleged bodyguards for Osama bin Laden. They are charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, charges their lawyers deny.
-------- torture
Calif. Guardsman alleges abuse in Iraq
6/9/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-09-guardsman-abuse_x.htm
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A California National Guardsman says three fellow soldiers brazenly abused detainees during interrogation sessions in an Iraqi police station, threatening them with guns, sticking lit cigarettes in their ears and choking them until they collapsed.
Sgt. Greg Ford said he repeatedly had to revive prisoners who had passed out, and once saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee's neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets.
"I had to intervene because they couldn't keep their hands off of them," said Ford, part of a four-member team from the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion that questioned detainees last year in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He said the abuse took place from April to June.
Ford's commanding officers deny any abuse occurred, and say investigations within their battalion and by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division determined they had done nothing wrong.
"All the allegations were found to be untrue, totally unfounded and in a number of cases completely fabricated," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Drew Ryan.
Ford's allegations are being further investigated by the CID, which would not comment on the probe.
Ford told The Associated Press that when he reported the problems last June to his commanding officers, they pressured him to drop his claims.
"Immediately, within the same conversation, the command said, 'Nope, you're delusional, you're crazy, it never happened.' They gave me 30 seconds to withdraw my request for an investigation," Ford said. "I stood my ground."
When he insisted on an official investigation, they ordered him to see combat stress counselors, who sent him out of Iraq, he said.
Ford said he did not hear from investigators until the release of photographs of mistreatment inside the Abu Ghraib prison provoked worldwide outrage and prompted a review of other allegations of abuse.
Ford, 49, said has worked for 18 years as a state prison guard and has more than 30 years of military experience. He was sent out of Iraq last June and, after about six months in Fort Lewis, Wash., returned home to the Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks.
He said his three fellow team members were not properly trained to do interrogations and got carried away with their power.
"You weren't supposed to stand on their neck or put lit cigarettes in their ears. Twice I had to pull burning cigarettes out of detainees' ears," Ford said. "I said, 'Look, this is not going to go over well with the community of Samarra.' Our people basically ignored all the warnings."
Ford said the soldiers routinely brought guns into the interrogation room, and he once saw his team leader pointing a pistol at a detainee's head.
The three accused soldiers were not available for comment, a California National Guard spokesman said.
Ford was one of about 100 members of the San Francisco-based 223rd who arrived in Iraq last spring and spread out in teams of three to six interrogators, Arabic linguists and counterintelligence officers. The battalion returned home in March.
Whenever a prisoner collapsed, his team's leader would emerge and say, "Greg, I think we've got another accident," said Ford, who has medical training. "Then I'd have to bring them out and revive them."
Ford said he told the team leader that if one of the Iraqis died, he would testify against him in a court-martial. "He basically laughed it off. At that point, I was persona non-grata," the sergeant said.
So Ford asked to be relieved from his position, prompting a visit by his commander, Capt. Vic Artiga, and Lt. Col. Ryan, who "were too busy threatening me to do any proper investigation," Ford said.
Ryan and Artiga would not discuss the details of Ford's allegations but denied pressuring Ford to drop his claims. They said they did an immediate investigation, which cleared all the soldiers.
"I'm very confident that my soldiers acted professionally, ethically and within the law, as did I," Artiga said.
But Ford said nobody interviewed him while he was in Iraq and he does not think anyone has interviewed the Iraqi detainees. Artiga also said he does not believe Iraqis were interviewed for the battalion's investigation.
After leaving Iraq, Ford underwent psychiatric evaluations at military installations in Germany and San Antonio, and said those evaluations found nothing wrong with him.
--------
The torturers among us
Globe
By Robert Kuttner
June 9, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/09/the_torturers_among_us/
WHAT HAVE we learned so far about officially sponsored torture by the US government?
First, it is unambiguously clear that the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, and at Abu Ghraib was official policy. Lawyers for the Pentagon and the White House, reporting directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush, wrote contorted legal briefs trying to define a category of person immune to both due process of law and the Third Geneva Convention. As recently disclosed Pentagon memos divulge, one explicit purpose was to justify torture as a technique of interrogation.
Second, the grotesque abuses at Abu Ghraib were therefore not the work of a few renegade freaks. Official policy was that coercion should be used to pry information out of prisoners. The torture techniques were at first wielded by military and CIA interrogation specialists and limited to "high value" captives.
But as torture moved down the chain of command, it further degenerated from a twisted and illegal means of interrogation into a sadistic sport for ordinary soldiers to apply to ordinary prisoners. This deterioration is predictable. It has happened under every totalitarian regime, from Stalin to Hitler to Torquemada. When torture is official policy, ordinary soldiers and police let their frustrations and imaginations run wild. This is why civilized nations ban torture categorically.
Third, as details of the freestyle tortures at Abu Ghraib reached Rumsfeld and other top officials, they treated it mainly as a potential public relations problem, not as a sign that the entire policy was flawed and illegal. Indeed, even as the then-secret report by General Taguba on Abu Ghraib was being discussed internally, the government's lawyers continued to contend that the Third Geneva Convention on prisoners of war did not apply to alleged terrorists and that even US citizens, if accused of certain crimes, could be treated outside the law.
For nearly three years, the Bush administration has resorted to the most preposterous fictions to define either locales or categories of people to whom the law does not apply. If you connect the dots, the torture at Abu Ghraib is part of a larger slide toward tyranny as the Bush administration tries to exempt itself from the rule of law.
White House lawyers have contended in court briefs that the US base at Guantanamo, which the United States governs in perpetuity under a treaty, is actually under Cuban sovereignty. They contend that the president's powers as commander in chief override both international and domestic laws and even constitutional due process protections for US citizens as well as aliens accused of "terrorism."
These legal claims are complete fabrications. The Third Geneva Convention is airtight. Its language allows for no special cases where torture is permitted and no gradations of acceptable forms of torture. Prisoners are not required to give their captors information beyond name, rank, and serial number, period. Captors are not allowed to resort to coercion, either physical or psychological. There is no category of alleged crime beyond the rule of law.
Moreover, the legal protections of the US Constitution do not speak of citizens; they speak of "persons." And even if there were some special justification for torturing alleged terrorists -- and there is none -- most prisoners in Iraq are not "illegal combatants" but POWs from a defeated army, exactly those whom the Geneva Convention was intended to protect. Indeed, the United States demands that any American captive abroad be treated with scrupulous respect. (This is the whole point of a universal agreement to ban torture -- it covers everyone.)
US officials darkly mention war crimes prosecutions whenever there are hints that American captives have been abused. Yet the US government, in every official forum, tries to negotiate special exemptions so that US personnel abroad are exempt from any such prosecutions. By definition, we are the good guys; so by definition, Americans cannot be guilty of war crimes.
After Abu Ghraib, even America's allies are no longer willing to grant Washington special exemptions. Major human rights groups have scheduled a national conference for June 21 on the question of how international human rights standards must be applied to the United States. This is overdue, but how shameful that America has fallen to a state where we need international constraints to protect our own liberties and rule of law.
It is appalling that a few grunts are taking the fall for torture that was official government policy. Donald Rumsfeld should not just be impeached. He should be tried as a war criminal. As for Bush, he can be dispatched by the electorate while we are still a democracy.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
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Report alleges abuse outside Iraq
6/9/2004
By Donna Leinwand,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-09-prison-abuse_x.htm
Nine people recently released from U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and Cuba claim that they were abused as early as 2002 and that abuses were not unique to Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report released today by Human Rights Watch.
The Bush administration has described the Abu Ghraib abuses as isolated conduct by a few out-of-control soldiers. But prisoners interviewed in Pakistan and Afghanistan said they were abused in detention facilities at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere in Afghanistan. They were beaten, kept awake for as long as 96 hours and held naked and in isolation for days, the report says. Human Rights Watch is a U.S.-based, privately funded non-governmental organization that investigates human rights abuses.
One prisoner in Afghanistan, called "A" in the report, says he was threatened with electric shocks and was placed in a frigid isolation room for a month. A prisoner in Guantanamo, Mohammad Saghir of Pakistan, says he witnessed seven guards beating and kicking an Arab prisoner as punishment for spitting. Prisoner Abdul Razak said another prisoner at Guantanamo who had gashes on his head told him that guards were responsible, according to the report.
Razak, who spent 13 months in Cuba, says he was interrogated at least 10 times at Guantanamo. He says his interrogators, dressed in plain clothes, would shackle him to a chair and question him but did not abuse him.
Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Commander Barbara Burfeind said investigations into allegations of abuse are underway. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are treated humanely, she said.
"We are a nation at war and we are also a nation of laws," McClellan said.
The report says that several Bagram prisoners describe being exposed to winter temperatures for 10 to 12 hours and kept awake for 40 to 96 hours before interrogations.
The report also says that at least 13 "high value" prisoners have "disappeared" into U.S. custody. The prisoners named in the report are all top level al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives whom the U.S. government has acknowledged capturing. Human Rights Watch says holding these prisoners in undisclosed locations without oversight by the Red Cross or notification of families creates a climate for abuse.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26402-2004Jun8?language=printer
The line is not likely to make this week's eulogies to Ronald Reagan, but when Vice President Cheney allegedly declared, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he summed up an enduring argument from the former president's economic legacy.
In late 2002, Cheney had summoned the Bush administration's economic team to his office to discuss another round of tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill pleaded that the government -- already running a $158 billion deficit -- was careering toward a fiscal crisis. But by O'Neill's account of the meeting, Cheney silenced him by invoking his take on Reagan's legacy.
It wasn't that Reagan's policies proved that government borrowing had no impact on the economy. But his administration's record -- particularly with some years of hindsight -- did give reason to question traditional thinking and provided a new context for future arguments about deficit spending.
"The lesson we should have learned [from those years] is that deficits have little or no short-term economic impacts," said William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.
As important, they appeared to have no impact politically, said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist at the Club for Growth who worked in Reagan's budget office.
"Voters and politicians became anesthetized to big deficits," Moore recalled. "Reagan was running these big deficits, and liberals argued it was going to be Armageddon. We were going to ruin the economy. Interest rates were going to go through the roof. And none of these things happened."
The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.
To some economists, the impact was clear. Interest rates rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the economy slowed, then slipped into recession, and productivity barely advanced. Americans feared their nation had slipped into the shadows of Japan and Germany.
Reagan's "economic policy . . . was a disaster," University of California at Berkeley economic historian J. Bradford DeLong wrote this past weekend on his Web site. "The tax cuts made America a more unequal place, and the deficits slowed economic growth in the 1980s significantly."
But after the boom years of the 1990s, and the steady economic slides of those international rivals, some economists are reevaluating that version of history. The argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics, they say.
The Reagan "experience changed the debate dramatically," said Kevin A. Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. "Back then, it seems that everybody believed Reagan must be some kind of kook and the people who agreed with these views were flimflam artists. Not so anymore."
Indeed, since the Reagan years, the argument over the deficit has been turned on its head. In the 1980s, prominent liberal economists dismissed the significance of government red ink to head off the slashing of social welfare spending. Now, many liberal economists have become the fiercest deficit hawks to head off still more tax cuts.
But the shifts go beyond politics. For nearly a century, economic orthodoxy has held that federal borrowing harms the economy by driving up interest rates, diminishing investment and productivity, and placing an unfair burden on future generations, who will finance the spending and tax cuts of the present.
Traditional economists argue that as the government enters private capital markets to finance its deficits, it competes with private borrowers. A deficit equal to 1 percent of the size of the economy -- about $110 billion today -- would slap as much as a full percentage point on the interest rates consumers pay to finance a new home or new car. By that measure, today's deficit would account for nearly 4 percentage points of a 6 percent mortgage.
But the new argument holds that interest rates are set on a vastly larger global marketplace. With rising global prosperity, even a federal deficit as large as the United States' would present little competition for would-be investors. A soon-to-be-published paper by American Enterprise Institute economist Eric M. Engen and Columbia University economist R. Glenn Hubbard, the first chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the record budget deficit of 2004 should raise interest rates by 0.12 percent.
"The world's capital markets are lot more sophisticated and flexible than they were then," said N. Gregory Mankiw, the current chairman of Bush's economic council. "That probably means that other things being equal, changes in domestic fiscal situations have less impact."
Indeed, this school of thought is becoming something of a consensus, Engen said. Deficits equal to 1 percent of the size of the economy should raise interest rates by 0.3 percent, he said. That is the low end of the 0.3 to 0.6 percent range postulated by Brookings Institution economists William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag when they argued deficits are economically significant.
Benjamin M. Friedman, a Harvard University economist who lamented Reagan's fiscal policies in his 1988 book "Day of Reckoning," said the expansion of foreign credit has tempered the feared hikes in long-term interest rates that he thought would cripple the economy. But, he said, "that doesn't let deficits off the hook."
"It's important to realize that interest rates are set on world capital markets; therefore, a large deficit need not impact capital formation," he said, referring to economic investments in new plants and equipment that drive growth. "But that's identical to saying we will continue to do capital formation, but we'll do it by forever borrowing abroad."
And that spells trouble, said Niskanen of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Debt does have to be repaid, and foreign investors -- primarily the central banks of Japan, Britain and China -- own $1.7 billion of federal debt. That, he said, has made the country "terribly dependent" and "terribly vulnerable."
That is a bipartisan fear. "The key point is, even if it were sustainable, it's not desirable," said Orszag, a prominent Democratic economist. "We still will owe the money to foreigners. We're still mortgaging our future national income. Just because you can take out a larger mortgage to buy a bigger house doesn't mean you should."
-------- fraud
Pentagon Wasted Millions on Airline Tickets, GAO Says
By Larry Margasak
Associated Press
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26307-2004Jun8.html
The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over six years and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable, congressional investigators say.
The department compounded the problem by reimbursing employee claims for tickets the Pentagon bought, the investigators said.
To demonstrate how easy it was to have the Pentagon pay for airline travel, the investigators posed as defense employees, had the department generate a ticket and showed up at the ticket counter to pick up a boarding pass.
The General Accounting Office of Congress issued the findings in two reports on the Pentagon's lack of control over airline travel, copies of which the Associated Press obtained yesterday. A prior report, issued last November, found that the Pentagon bought 68,000 first-class or business-class airline seats for employees who should have flown coach.
"At a time when our soldiers are patrolling the streets of Iraq in unarmored Humvees, and when the Bush administration is asking for record defense spending, Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld is letting hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to protect our troops and our country go to waste," said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), one of three lawmakers -- along with Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Susan Collins (Maine) -- who ordered the studies.
The GAO estimated that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department bought at least $100 million in tickets that were not used or used only partially by a passenger who did not complete all legs of a flight. The waste went undetected because the department relied on individuals to report the unused tickets. They did not.
The Pentagon said in a written statement that it is working to ensure it receives credit in the future for each unused ticket. "We take this deficiency in our procedures very seriously and are moving swiftly to establish proper management controls. The long-term answer will be the automated Defense Travel System [DTS] that controls the travel order and payment process from beginning to end," the statement said. "DOD is researching the data presented in the GAO report and will continue to pursue the amounts we determine are recoupable."
The reimbursable tickets had no advanced purchase requirements, minimum or maximum stays or penalties for changes or cancellations under department agreements with the airlines.
While one GAO report focused on the unused tickets, the second investigation found potential fraud. It said the department paid travelers for tickets the department bought and reimbursed employees for tickets that had not been authorized.
A limited review of records for 2001 and 2002 identified 27,000 transactions totaling more than $8 million in reimbursements to employees for tickets bought by the government. These figures represent only a small portion of the potential fraud, the GAO said.
It is a crime for a government employee knowingly to request reimbursement for goods and services he or she did not buy.
-------- investigations
INTELLIGENCE
Senators Urge C.I.A. to Declassify Critical Report
June 9, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09INTE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 8 - The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee are pressing the Central Intelligence Agency to agree to a broad declassification and release of the panel's 400-page report, which is highly critical of the agency's prewar performance on Iraq.
The agency and, ultimately, the White House have the power to decide how much of the report should be declassified, giving them great influence over a document that will focus on mistakes related to Iraq and its illicit weapons. The Senate could vote to release classified material even over White House objections, but such a step would be rare.
The jockeying pits Senators Pat Roberts of Kansas and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Republican and Democrat on the panel, against the top C.I.A. officials who must approve decisions involving declassification. Both senators have signaled their belief that the fullest possible disclosure of the agency's performance on Iraq is in the public interest.
A senior intelligence official said Tuesday that the report was "heavily laden" with classified material and that portions would require significant rewriting or deletions before it could be released to the public. But in an interview, Mr. Rockefeller said flatly, "We cannot have this as a heavily redacted document."
Mr. Roberts, the committee chairman, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that he planned "a full court press" to encourage the C.I.A. to release the document in near original form, and he said he had asked White House officials to exert "all possible cooperation" in that effort.
"I feel very strongly that the great majority of this report should be made public," Mr. Roberts said. "Our report is a good one. It's right, and the American people certainly deserve to see it."
The C.I.A. has been reviewing the report for nearly four weeks, and the Senate staff had expected the document to be returned to Capitol Hill by last week. The committee had planned for a public release next week and had tentatively planned a final vote to approve the document this week. At a closed meeting on Tuesday, the panel approved a set of recommendations to be included in the report, Mr. Roberts said, but it is not scheduled to meet again until next week.
A senior intelligence official said Tuesday that there had been discussions in recent weeks between some C.I.A. analysts and Congressional staff members in which the C.I.A. had raised objections "to some things in the report that we know to be factually incorrect." But the official said the analysis that must precede any decision about declassification had not been completed.
"It's being done entirely by career civil servants whose job it is to determine what remains classified and what can be declassified," the official said. The official said that neither George J. Tenet, the departing director of central intelligence, nor any other top C.I.A. official, had yet been involved in the decisions about declassification and release of the document. But he said that senior-level officials at the C.I.A. would ultimately sign off on the decision. The jockeying over the declassification of the report had not previously been disclosed. It parallels the months of wrangling last year over the declassification of another report that was critical of the C.I.A., by the joint Congressional inquiry on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In the interview, Mr. Rockefeller acknowledged that the report "covers very controversial subject matter." Other government officials have said it describes in detail a number of mistakes, including what it portrays as an overreliance by the C.I.A. on uncorroborated sources of information, like those provided by defectors aligned with Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
Mr. Rockefeller said he recognized that some material from the version of the report sent by the committee to the C.I.A. must remain secret to protect intelligence sources and intelligence-gathering methods. But he said the report "has continuity to it" that would be disrupted by heavy redaction of its passages.
While the document is critical of the C.I.A., Mr. Rockefeller said it provided an important accounting of how the agency reached the decisions that led its prewar judgment that Iraq possessed illicit weapons, a conclusion that the administration cited as a principal justification for going to war.
"This is what the war on terrorism is all about, and we need to be getting it out," Mr. Rockefeller said.
Because the report is still classified, members of the committee and its staff have declined to discuss its findings. But its highly critical tone and its focus on mistakes and miscalculations by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies have been described by current and former government officials who have read the document.
Some people close to Mr. Tenet have said the report may have hastened his resignation, which he announced last week. It takes effect on July 11. While Mr. Tenet had long wanted to step down from the post for personal reasons, he was also aware of the negative thrust of the report, one of three due this summer that are expected to be critical of the agency's performance on issues related to Iraq's supposed illicit weapons, the Sept. 11 attacks, or both.
In a public speech last month, Mr. Roberts said, "I can tell you that our report does not paint a flattering picture of the performance of our intelligence community as they developed their prewar assessments."
Under the process that will apply to the Senate report, the C.I.A. is expected to highlight the passages in the Senate report that it deems to be classified and therefore prohibited by law from being released to the public, a senior intelligence official said. It would be up to the Senate committee to decide whether to release a report that blacks out those passages or to rewrite the report around those deletions, the official said.
The Senate could also vote to release a version of the report containing classified material, and Congressional officials have said that approach remains an option that the panel may pursue. But in the interview, Mr. Rockefeller described that approach as "a very tricky thing to do" and "not necessarily a great precedent."
The Senate report is based on interviews with more than 200 intelligence analysts from the C.I.A. and other agencies. Mr. Tenet and other administration officials have said that it is still too soon to say whether the agency was mistaken in its prewar assessment that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons.
While no such weapons have been found, Mr. Tenet has noted that the search for them is still continuing under the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles A. Duelfer, a senior adviser to the intelligence chief.
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Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush
Aide Says President Set Guidelines for Interrogations, Not Specific Techniques
By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26401-2004Jun8.html
The disclosure that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 that the torture of al Qaeda terrorist suspects might be legally defensible has focused new attention on the role President Bush played in setting the rules for interrogations in the war on terrorism.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush set broad guidelines, rather than dealing with specific techniques. "While we will seek to gather intelligence from al Qaeda terrorists who seek to inflict mass harm on the American people, the president expects that we do so in a way that is consistent with our laws," McClellan said.
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said in a May 21 interview with The Washington Post: "Anytime a discussion came up about interrogations with the president, . . . the directive was, 'Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.' "
An Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, addressed to Gonzales, said that torturing suspected al Qaeda members abroad "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation" conducted against suspected terrorists.
The document provided legal guidance for the CIA, which crafted new, more aggressive techniques for its operatives in the field. McClellan called the memo a historic or scholarly review of laws and conventions concerning torture. "The memo was not prepared to provide advice on specific methods or techniques," he said. "It was analytical."
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday refused senators' requests to make public the memo, which is not classified, and would not discuss any possible involvement of the president.
In the view expressed by the Justice Department memo, which differs from the view of the Army, physical torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For a cruel or inhuman psychological technique to rise to the level of mental torture, the Justice Department argued, the psychological harm must last "months or even years."
A former senior administration official involved in discussions about CIA interrogation techniques said Bush's aides knew he wanted them to take an aggressive approach.
"He felt very keenly that his primary responsibility was to do everything within his power to keep the country safe, and he was not concerned with appearances or politics or hiding behind lower-level officials," the official said. "That is not to say he was ready to authorize stuff that would be contrary to law. The whole reason for having the careful legal reviews that went on was to ensure he was not doing that."
The August memo was written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as agency operatives began to detain and interrogate key al Qaeda leaders. The fact that the memo was signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office Legal Counsel, who has since become a federal judge, and is 50 pages long indicates that the issue was treated as a significant matter.
"Given the topic and length of opinion, it had to get pretty high-level attention," said Beth Nolan, commenting on the process that was in place when she was President Bill Clinton's White House counsel, from 1999 to 2001, and, previously, when she was a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel.
Unlike documents signed by deputies in the Office of Legal Counsel, which are generally considered by federal agencies as advice, a memorandum written by the head of the office is considered akin to a legally binding document, said another former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer.
The former administration official said the CIA "was prepared to get more aggressive and re-learn old skills, but only with explicit assurances from the top that they were doing so with the full legal authority the president could confer on them."
Critics familiar with the August 2002 memo and another, similar legal opinion given by the Defense Department's office of general counsel in March 2003 assert that government lawyers were trying to find a legal justification for actions -- torture or cruel and inhumane acts -- that are clearly illegal under U.S. and international law.
"This is painful, incorrect analysis," said Scott Norton, chairman of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association, which has produced an extensive report on Pentagon detentions and interrogations. "A lawyer is permitted to craft all sorts of wily arguments about why a statute doesn't apply" to a defendant, he said. "But a lawyer cannot advocate committing a criminal act prospectively."
The August 2002 memo from the Justice Department concluded that laws outlawing torture do not bind Bush because of his constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign. "As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy," said the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.
Critics say that this misstates the law, and that it ignores key legal decisions, such as the landmark 1952 Supreme Court ruling in Youngstown Steel and Tube Co v. Sawyer, which said that the president, even in wartime, must abide by established U.S. laws.
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Soldier Described White House Interest
Staff Requested Data From Abu Ghraib, Probers Told
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26814-2004Jun9.html
The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by "White House staff," according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post.
Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, an Army reservist who took control of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center on Sept. 17, 2003, said a superior military intelligence officer told him the requested information concerned "any anti-coalition issues, foreign fighters, and terrorist issues."
The Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, asked Jordan whether it concerned "sensitive issues," and Jordan said, "Very sensitive. Yes, sir," according to the account, which was provided by a government official.
The reference by Jordan to a White House link with the military's scandal-plagued intelligence-gathering effort at the prison was not explored further by Taguba, whose primary goal at that time was to assess the scope of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The White House was unable to provide an immediate explanation.
During the period in question, the last quarter of 2003, virtually every senior military officer in Iraq, as well as at the Pentagon, was intensely interested in determining who was behind the rising insurgency in Iraq and using that information to squelch it. But no reference has previously been made in the publicly available Abu Ghraib investigative documents to a special interest by White House staff.
The precise role and mission of Jordan, who is still stationed in Iraq and through his attorneys has declined requests to speak with the news media, remains one of the least well understood facets of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.
Jordan has been described by other military personnel as playing a key role at Abu Ghraib in overseeing interrogations; they have described him as being deeply involved in an incident on Nov. 24, 2003, when a detainee was confronted in his cell by snarling military dogs, which Taguba deemed a violation of the prisoner's rights.
In a March 9 report on the abuse scandal, Taguba listed Jordan as one of four military intelligence officers he suspected were "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib." He also said Jordan had "failed to ensure that soldiers under his direct control were properly trained" in interrogation techniques and were aware of Geneva Conventions human rights protections for detainees.
Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the chief military intelligence officer at the prison, said in his statement to Taguba that Jordan was working on a special project for the office of Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top U.S. intelligence official in Iraq. He also described Jordan as "a loner who freelances between military intelligence and military police" officers at the prison.
Asserting that Jordan repeatedly took part in searches of detainee cells without notifying military police commanders -- an activity that fell outside the customary duties of an intelligence officer -- he also told Taguba that "I must admit I failed in not reining him in."
But Jordan, in the statement to Taguba, described himself as more of a functionary than a rogue operator. He said that Pappas was really in charge, as evidenced by the fact that he was not responsible for rating other military intelligence officers in reports to superiors and "had no input . . . no responsibility . . . no resources" under his control. He said he was just a "liaison" between Fast and those collecting intelligence at the prison.
"My direction when it came to the [center] . . . was to set up a structure [of] target folders on individuals," he said, evidently referring to specific detainees. He said he was aware of the "rules of engagement" approved by commanders for interrogations, which have been a topic of controversy. But the rules changed several times, and he did not clarify which set he relied on.
Pappas, he said, was the officer who approved lengthy sleep deprivation or keeping detainees in isolation for more than 30 days. He also said that an "OGA" team -- or Other Government Agency, a euphemism for the CIA -- known as Task Force 121 had caused problems by bringing detainees they had captured to Abu Ghraib and essentially dumping them without conducting any follow-up. "It's a very cowboy kind of affair," he said of Task Force 121.
Some of Jordan's statements to Taguba were not consistent. He said at one point, for example, that "I can never remember seeing an actual interrogation going on at this site." But then he admitted being present during questioning of a detainee in the prison's shower stalls before the use of guard dogs on Nov. 24. One of his civilian attorneys, John Shapiro, described Jordan last night as "a fine soldier who was serving his country and is cooperating in every way with the investigations" into the abuse.
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Subpoenas in CIA Leak Probe Opposed
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26343-2004Jun8.html
Two news media organizations have filed motions to quash subpoenas that were issued by a special prosecutor investigating the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity, attorneys in the case said yesterday.
The motions, filed under seal Friday as part of ongoing grand jury proceedings in Washington, ask a judge to throw out the subpoenas or issue a protective order blocking testimony, according to Robin Bierstedt, deputy general counsel for Time magazine.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has subpoenaed Tim Russert, host of NBC News's "Meet the Press," and Time reporter Matt Cooper as part of the inquiry into whether White House officials leaked the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson, a harsh critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, has suggested that Plame's undercover status was revealed as retaliation.
Bierstedt said the government has until June 16 to respond to the motions by Time and NBC News. An attorney for the network declined to comment, and an NBC spokeswoman did not return a telephone call.
The move by prosecutors to seek testimony from journalists may signal that the six-month investigation is nearing its end, because Justice Department guidelines require that all other avenues of inquiry be exhausted first. Vice President Cheney was recently interviewed by representatives of Fitzgerald, and President Bush has consulted with a private attorney regarding the investigation.
Plame's identity was first revealed by columnist Robert D. Novak on July 14, and the episode was subsequently explored by other news organizations.
Fitzgerald has also sought to interview Newsday and Washington Post reporters.
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Final 9/11 report slams FBI, CIA
6/9/2004
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-06-09-911-report_x.htm
WASHINGTON - Hoping to avoid partisan attacks, the Sept. 11 commission has drafted a final report that avoids placing blame on individuals in the Bush or Clinton administrations but sharply criticizes the FBI and intelligence agencies for missteps prior to the catastrophe.
The 10-member panel has been reviewing portions of the draft, the bulk of which is a factual accounting of events, including intelligence failures that could lead readers to conclude the attacks were preventable, four commissioners told The Associated Press in separate interviews.
A separate section detailing the panel's recommendations remains under intense review, with no agreement yet on the widespread measures needed to shore up the communications breakdowns that allowed the hijackers to succeed, the commissioners said.
"There's broad consensus that major changes are needed. This is not just a question of running faster, jumping higher," said Republican commissioner John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy. "We need to ensure the fusion and sharing of all intelligence that could have helped us to avoid 9/11."
Among the ideas under consideration is a domestic intelligence agency modeled after Britain's MI5.
Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer said FBI Director Robert Mueller's recent proposal to improve domestic surveillance by creating an intelligence service within the bureau is another option under review by the panel but might not be enough.
"Certainly there's consensus the FBI has not done a good job prior to 9/11, and they have a long way to go," said Roemer, a former Indiana congressman.
The commission was established by Congress in 2002 to investigate government mistakes before the attacks and recommend ways to improve the nation's protection against terrorists. It has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including President Bush, and reviewed more than 2 million documents.
The bipartisan panel's final report is due July 26. However, portions of it, dealing with factual findings leading up to and including the attacks, already have been drafted and sent to the White House for vetting and declassification, commissioners said.
CIA Director George Tenet, who has submitted his resignation effective next month, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been harshly criticized by some lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11 victims for not doing more to combat the threat of terrorism.
The commissioners who spoke to the AP said the panel wants to avoid blaming individuals to avert charges of partisanship that could undermine their work.
"We're going to say everything we need to say, but there's not going to be a political gotcha," said Republican commissioner Slade Gorton, a former senator from Washington. "It's very important that it be factual and leave major conclusions to the people of the United States. There are huge numbers of facts which are not in dispute."
One example of the FBI's troubles was seen in the case of Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were linked by the CIA to al-Qaeda and were found to have entered the United States in summer 2001. FBI agents involved in the criminal probe couldn't track the men down because intelligence officials weren't allowed to share information on the case.
The two would later board American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.
"The restrictions on the FBI after Watergate prohibiting them from modernizing and computerizing their data systems (and) from keeping track of watchlists and investigations" were among the biggest obstacles to terror prevention, Lehman said. "It made it impossible for the FBI to share information even within the bureau."
Democratic commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste said members remain hopeful they can produce a unanimous report, although some are holding out the option of inserting editorial notes if commissioners disagree on certain points or want to flag a particular individual as blameworthy.
"The failure to thwart the 9/11 catastrophe was in part the result of the failure to communicate both internally and externally about information collected by our intelligence agencies," he said. "Had there been effective use of the information, the possibility exists the 9/11 plot could have been disrupted."
Officials with the FBI and CIA declined to comment until agency officials had an opportunity to review the report. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said cooperation between the CIA and FBI on counterterrorism has never been better.
Other sections of the final report will detail the CIA's missteps, including a failure to recognize the threat posed by al-Qaeda and an overreliance on suspect sources for information. The commission has attributed the problems in part to the loose-knit nature of the intelligence community, which didn't always cooperate because CIA Director George Tenet lacked adequate authority.
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QUESTIONS IN CONGRESS
Bush Didn't Order Any Breach of Torture Laws, Ashcroft Says
June 9, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09TORT.html
WASHINGTON, June 8 - Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose subordinates have written confidential legal memorandums saying the administration is not bound by prohibitions against torture, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that President Bush had "made no order that would require or direct the violation" of either international treaties or domestic laws prohibiting torture.
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Ashcroft was questioned about a cascade of recently disclosed memorandums in which lawyers from his department as well as those from the Defense Department and other agencies provided legal arguments that inflicting pain in interrogating people detained in the fight against terrorism did not always constitute torture.
In heated exchanges with Democrats on the committee, Mr. Ashcroft refused to provide several of the memorandums, saying they amounted to confidential legal advice given to the president and did not have to be shared with Congress.
For the nearly three hours of Mr. Ashcroft's appearance, the committee room became the stage for a debate that has ranged across all three branches of the government since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about the proper reach of a president's power in wartime.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who is a committee member, challenged Mr. Ashcroft on his unwillingness to release the memorandums and said that the reported abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison were the inevitable outcome of the administration's efforts to find ways to evade legal responsibility.
Mr. Kennedy cited one of the memorandums reported in newspapers on Tuesday that concluded President Bush was not bound either by international treaties prohibiting torture or by federal anti-torture law because as commander-in-chief Mr. Bush was responsible for protecting the nation.
"In other words, the president of the United States has the responsibility," Mr. Kennedy said, holding up a photograph of prisoners cowering before American guards and dogs at Abu Ghraib. "We know when we have these kinds of orders, what happens. We get the stress test, we get the use of dogs, we get the forced nakedness that we've all seen on these and we get the hooding. This is what you get with those kind of memoranda out there."
The administration has responded to the memorandums by saying they were merely legal opinions offered as policies were being formulated.
"First of all," Mr. Ashcroft said, "this administration opposes torture," adding that the "kind of atrocities displayed in the photographs are being prosecuted by this administration."
Mr. Ashcroft strove to make a distinction between memorandums that may have provided theoretical legal justifications for torture and his assertion that there had never been any directive that actually authorized its use.
But the memorandums, by their numbers and their arguments - aimed at justifying the use of interrogation techniques inflicting pain by spelling out instances when this did not legally constitute torture and the inapplicability of international treaties - have produced outrage from international human rights groups and members of Congress, mostly Democrats.
Over the past few weeks, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have disclosed memorandums that show a pattern in which administration lawyers set about devising arguments to avoid constraints against mistreatment and torture.
Mr. Ashcroft's appearance before the committee had been scheduled before most of the memorandums were disclosed, and he looked deeply uncomfortable under the harsh questioning.
He said several times that critics consistently failed to take into account that the United States was at war.
Mr. Kennedy challenged Mr. Ashcroft, telling him he could not withhold the memorandums from Congress unless there was an invocation of executive privilege, something only the president himself can do. Mr. Ashcroft seemed uncertain when he was asked if he had spoken to the president about invoking it.
He eventually said he was not invoking the privilege but that it was simply not good policy to openly debate what powers a president had in wartime.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, in a heated exchange with Mr. Ashcroft, asked him if he believed torture was ever justified. When he first declined to answer, Mr. Biden accused him of being evasive, and Mr. Ashcroft replied: "You know I condemn torture. I don't think it's productive, let alone justified."
But Mr. Biden persisted, saying: "There's a reason why we sign these treaties: to protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties, so when Americans are captured they are not tortured. That's the reason in case anybody forgets it."
One of the recently published memorandums, dated March 6, 2003, provides elaborate and tightly constructed definitions of torture in an effort to to allow interrogators to avoid being charged with that offense. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," the report said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."
Another memorandum, written in August 2002 and disclosed Tuesday by The Washington Post, appeared to establish a basis for the use of torture for senior Al Qaeda operatives in custody of the C.I.A. That memorandum was written by Jay S. Bybee, then the associate attorney general. Mr. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in California, did not respond to telephone messages.
Mr. Ashcroft said proof that the administration was opposed to torture in practice, despite any legal memorandums, could be seen in the establishment of a task force to prosecute charges of abuse against United States contractors and soldiers.
While most Republican committee members defended Mr. Ashcroft, Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, told Mr. Ashcroft that he was disturbed by the growing power of the executive branch.
"I hope that in the end," Mr. Craig said, "Saddam Hussein will not have taken away from us something that our Constitution, in large part, granted us, and that we have it taken away in the name of safety and security."
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Bush ignored Pentagon lawyers over tactics in war on terror
No consultation on detention without charge
The Guardian
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
June 9, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1234629,00.html
The Bush administration routinely bypassed or overruled Pentagon experts on international law and the Geneva convention to construct a sweeping legal justification for harsh tactics in the war on terror, the Guardian has learnt.
In one instance, President George Bush's military order of November 13 2001, which denies prisoner-of-war status to captives from Afghanistan and allows their detention without charge or access to a lawyer at Guantánamo, was issued without any consultations with Pentagon lawyers, a former Pentagon official said.
The revelation follows reports in the US press this week of a Pentagon memo that argued that Mr Bush was not bound by laws against torture, and that interrogators who torture detainees at Guantánamo cannot be prosecuted.
The military order issued by Mr Bush in November 2001 was the first such directive since the second world war, and the administration's failure to seek the Pentagon's advice on what would emerge as the entire system of detention at Guantánamo surprised Pentagon officials.
"That came like a bolt from the blue," the official said. "Neither I nor anyone I knew had any insight, any advance knowledge, or any opportunity to comment on the president's military order."
The Pentagon general counsel, William James Haynes, was also left out of the loop, another official said.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration fought off allegations that it had manipulated the law to justify torture of detainees at Guantánamo, with the attorney general, John Ashcroft, pressed repeatedly at Senate committee hearings yesterday to say whether Mr Bush had ever intervened on the treatment of detainees.
Mr Ashcroft would not answer, saying only: "This administration rejects torture."
However, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers this week obtained copies of a Pentagon report which concluded that some methods of torture were legal, including sleep deprivation and so-called stress positions. The April 2003 report said Mr Bush had the constitutional power to authorise torture - which is against US law - if American lives were in danger.
Mr Ashcroft denied the president had issued an order giving interrogators immunity from prosecution. "The president has issued no such order," he said, but he was adamant that he would not release documents on the issue.
The debate on the Pentagon memo is unwelcome for the Bush administration, which had hoped it had put the scandal about prisoner abuse to rest.
However, Senator Edward Kennedy said yesterday that the Pentagon memo and other such rulings laid the legal foundations for the abuse. "We know when we have these kinds of orders what happens: we get the stress test, we get the use of dogs, we get the forced nakedness that we've all seen and we get the hooding," Mr Kennedy said, holding up pictures from Abu Ghraib prison.
Mr Ashcroft replied: "Let me completely reject the notion that anything that this president has done or the justice department has done has directly resulted in the kind of atrocity which were cited. That is false."
The Pentagon memo was familiar to the former official who said military and civilian lawyers tried to "push back" some of the more extreme interrogation methods.
He and another senior Pentagon official described frequent clashes of opinion since the 9/11 terror attacks, with career military lawyers disturbed by the efforts of political appointees to grant sweeping powers to the administration.
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Ashcroft rebuffs Senate questions
June 09, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040608-114728-1963r.htm
Attorney General John Ashcroft, despite a threat of a contempt of Congress citation, steadfastly refused yesterday to tell a Senate committee whether he sent confidential memos to President Bush justifying the use of torture on captured al Qaeda terrorists.
At a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Ashcroft declined to answer questions on whether he advised Mr. Bush that torture of the terrorists under certain circumstances was justified under U.S. law and international treaties, saying the president had "a right to hear advice from his attorney general in confidence."
"I'm not going to comment on the memos and advice I give to the executive departments of government," he said.
Mr. Ashcroft added, however, that Mr. Bush had given "no order that would require or direct the violation of any law of the United States enacted by the Congress, or any treaty to which the United States is party." He said, "This administration rejects torture."
The Bush administration has described the memos as legal opinions, which were used to formulate policies concerning the conduct of the war on terrorism.
Angry committee Democrats wanted Mr. Ashcroft to explain whether he, through the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, advised the White House in 2002 and 2003 that U.S. authorities might not be bound by laws prohibiting torture.
"You may be in contempt of Congress," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware warned during the three-hour hearing. "You are not allowed, under our Constitution, not to answer our questions. You all better come up with a good rationale, because otherwise it's contempt of Congress."
Challenged by Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois to cite a federal statute to justify his refusal to share the memos with the committee, Mr. Ashcroft said his refusal was "protected by the doctrine of separation of powers in the Constitution."
That response drew an immediate rebuke from Mr. Durbin, who shot back: "You are not citing a law."
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, saying the committee was investigating suspected inmate abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, asked the attorney general directly for copies of three Justice Department memos the senator said advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists might be justified, and that international laws against torture could be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations.
"Will you provide those to the committee?" Mr. Kennedy asked, showing photographs of suspected prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"No, I will not," Mr. Ashcroft sternly responded, denying any connection between the memos and the suspected abuse at Abu Ghraib. He said specific accusations of abuse at the prison were being investigated by the Justice Department and that seven U.S. soldiers had been targeted in connection with suspected atrocities.
"They are being investigated by this administration," he told the committee.
Mr. Ashcroft also refused to tell Mr. Kennedy whether the attorney general had been authorized by Mr. Bush to invoke executive privilege in refusing to release the memos, saying he had not invoked any privilege regarding the documents, testifying only that he would refuse to turn them over.
"I am not going to reveal discussions - whether I've had them or not had them - with the president. He asked me to deal with him as a matter of confidence. I have not invoked the executive privilege today ... I have just explained to you why I am not turning over the documents," he said.
The memos, written for the CIA and addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, reportedly outlined the president's wartime national security authority, saying in certain circumstances it may override antitorture laws and treaties, including the Geneva Conventions.
None of the panel's Republicans challenged Mr. Ashcroft on the memos, taking the lead of Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who said most people "understand the importance of getting good, confidential advice from staff, especially legal advice."
-------- propaganda wars
Political cartoonist defends anti-Reagan Web tirade
June 09, 2004
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040608-114726-8654r.htm
Political cartoonist Ted Rall's comment that the late President Ronald Reagan is "turning crispy brown right about now" provoked a reaction that crashed his Web site for at least 24 hours after the remark was posted on the Drudge Report.
"I think most people view the president as a fair target," Mr. Rall said yesterday in an interview. "Reagan was a public figure, and he was an idiot. And if he were around and lucid, he would probably say that it comes with the territory."
In a column published yesterday, Mr. Rall continued his assault on Mr. Reagan, calling the idea that the late president won the Cold War a "myth" and saying, "Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art."
He also said that both Mr. Reagan and President Bush relied on "Christianist" - which he described as "the radical-right equivalent of Islamist" - "depictions of foes as 'evil.' "
Mr. Rall's cartoons are distributed by Universal Press Syndicate and appear in about 140 publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury-News. He also regularly posts his opinions at www.rall.com.
He attracted invective and even death threats earlier this year when he implied in a cartoon that former pro football player Pat Tillman was a fool for dropping a lucrative career and enlisting in the U.S. Army to fight in Afghanistan.
The cartoon said Mr. Tillman "falsely believed" that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were linked to the September 11 attacks and that Mr. Tillman, who was killed by "friendly fire" on April 22, was a "cog in a low-rent occupation army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources."
"With Tillman, people were offended not so much by what I said, but by the fact that he was a private military guy," Mr. Rall explained. "And to his credit, he didn't try to make hay out of what he was doing."
Mr. Rall defended the "crispy brown" comment and said it was made "to get people to understand that the right is attempting to canonize this guy, and it is ridiculous. If there is a hell, this guy is in it."
"Imagine what would happen when Clinton dies, and they gloss over the fact that he lied under oath," said Mr. Rall, 40, who is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. "I bet there will be conservative writers there to point that out and say something similar to what I said. And I think it is completely appropriate."
"This is journalism, and it is a job, and we are here to tell the truth," said Mr. Rall, who is also the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back from the Right."
"I don't think the media should be in the business of pulling punches from the left or from the right," he said.
The piece from which the original Reagan comments were taken, he said, was an Internet posting, which he said served "for random things that pop into your head."
"Still, I'm not a knee-jerk left-wing guy," Mr. Rall said. "I am an advocate of the Second Amendment; I don't believe in abortion as birth control; and I was the first to call for Clinton's impeachment. I think that this country has shifted so far over to the right that anyone who is a garden-variety Democrat circa 1972 is painted as a Marxist-Leninist."
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Bob Woodward Criticizes Iraq Reporting
By CHAKA FERGUSON
Associated Press Writer
June 9, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-iraq-woodward,0,3999396.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
NEW YORK -- The news media should have been more skeptical of President Bush's "zeal" to go to war with Iraq and the possibly "skimpy" prewar intelligence Bush used to justify the invasion, journalist Bob Woodward said Wednesday.
Woodward, author of a best-selling account of the 16 months leading to the war, said at a lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations that Bush believed it was his duty to overthrow former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"I believe we have a duty to free people and liberate people," Woodward said Bush told him during interviews for his book "Plan of Attack."
Bush, who began his presidency as an opponent of "nation building," now has a "zeal" to liberate oppressed people across the globe, Woodward said. "He wants his work, his administration, his presidency painted on a large canvas," the journalist said.
In a lesser-reported fact from his book, Woodward said, the White House spied on former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who has said that the justifications for the Iraq war were unfounded.
"One of the things that's gone unnoticed (in `Plan of Attack') is ... national intelligence assets spying on Hans Blix," he said. "And Bush was getting these reports and felt that there was incongruity between what Blix was saying publicly and what he was actually doing. It makes it very clear we were wiretapping Hans Blix."
A telephone call to the White House seeking response to Woodward's remarks was not immediately returned Wednesday.
Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who wrote an earlier book on Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and broke the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, blamed himself and other journalists for not being aggressive enough in questioning the pre-war intelligence on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction, a major reason used by Bush for war.
After more than a year of U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, no WMD stockpiles have been found.
"We need to be much more skeptical and inquisitive," Woodward said, recalling how one national security source told him that the "the intelligence was skimpy."
Last month, The New York Times printed a critique of its own reporting on Iraq and said it should have been more skeptical about some claims from Iraqi dissidents and more aggressive in following them up.
-------- us politics
Chomsky on Reagan's Legacy
guerrillanews
Amy Goodman,
June 9, 2004
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc4614.html
The network and newspaper coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan has brought forth a chorus of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike. Much of the reporting and commentary, under the guise of respecting the dead, has represented a dramatic rewriting of the history of the Reagan years in office.
Looking back at the Reagan presidency doesn't mean we actually have to look back. Many of the same people who populated his administration are in the George W. Bush administration as well: James Baker, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, just to name a few.
Democracy Now's Amy Goodman asked leading dissident Noam Chomsky to reflect on the policies of Reagan's administration during his 8 years in power and Reagan's influence on the current Bush Administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, can you talk about this, the people that are now running the administration are some of the very people who ran the Reagan administration more than 20 years ago?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's quite true. The Reagan administration is either the same people or their immediate mentors for the most part. I think one can say that the current administration is a selection of the more extremist and arrogant and violent and dangerous elements of the Reagan administration. So on things like - I mean, that is true on domestic and international policy they are, both in the Reagan years and now, they are committed to dismantling the components of the government that serve the general population -- social security, public schools and so on and so forth, but in a more extreme fashion now. Partly because they think they have achieved a sort of higher stage from which to launch the attack, and internationally it's pretty obvious. In fact, many of the older Reaganites and Bush, number one people have been concerned, even appalled by the extremism of the current administration in the international domain. That's why there was unprecedented elite criticism of the national security strategy and the implementation in Iraq - narrow criticism, but significant.
So, yes, they're there, in fact, you cannot -- some of the examples are remarkable, including the ones that you mentioned. And very timely they picked Negroponte, who of course has just been appointed, the new ambassador to Iraq where he will head the biggest diplomatic mission in the world. The pretense is that we need this huge diplomatic mission to transfer full sovereignty to Iraqis and that's so close to self-contradiction that you have to admire commentators who sort of pretend not to notice what it means, also to overlook, consciously, what his role was in the Reagan administration. He also provided -- he was an ambassador in the Reagan years, ambassador to Honduras where he presided over the biggest C.I.A. station in the world, and the second largest embassy in Latin America, not because Honduras was of any particular significance to the U.S., but because he was responsible for supervising the bases from which the U.S. mercenary army was attacking in Nicaragua, and which ended up practically destroying it. By now, Nicaragua is lucky to survive a few generations. That was one part of the massive international terrorist campaign that the Reaganites carried out in the 1980's under the pretense they were fighting a war on terror. They declared a war on terror in 1981 with pretty much the same rhetoric that they used when they re-declared it in September 2001. It was a murderous terrorist war. It devastated Central America, had horrendous effects elsewhere in the world. In the case of Nicaragua, it was so extreme that they were condemned by the World Court, by two supporting Security Council Resolutions that the U.S. had to veto, after which, of course, they rejected the court judgment and then escalated the war to the point where finally the effects were extraordinary. By the analysis of their own specialists, the per capita deaths in Nicaragua would be comparable to about 2.5 million in the United States, which as they have pointed out is greater than the total number of casualties in all U.S. wars, including the Civil War and all wars in the 20th century, and what's left of the society is a wreck. Since the U.S. took over again, it's gone even more downhill.
Now the second poorest in the hemisphere after Haiti and not coincidentally, the second major target of U.S. intervention in the 20th century after Haiti, which is first. The recent health administration statistics show that about 60% of children under two are suffering from severe anemia caused by malnutrition and probable brain damage. Costa Rica, the United States is trying to - doing enough low-level work so that they can send back some remittances to keep the families alive. It's a real victory. You can understand why Colin Powell and others are so proud of it. But Negroponte was charge of it in the first half the decade directly, and in the second half more indirectly in the State Department and National Security staff where he was Powell's adviser. And now he is -- he is supposed to undertake the same role and similar role in Iraq. He was called in Nicaragua "The Proconsul," and the "Wall Street Journal" was honest enough to run an article in which they headlined "Modern Proconsul" on which they mentioned his background in Nicaragua without going into it much and said, yes he will be the proconsul of Iraq. Now, that's a direct continuity, but there's a lot more than that. What you mentioned is correct.
Elliot Abrams is an extreme case. I mean, he's now the head of the Middle East section of the National Security Council. He was -- as you know, he was sentenced for lying to Congress. He got a presidential pardon, but he was one of the most -- he was in charge in the State Department of the Central American atrocities, and on the Middle East, he is way out at the extreme end of the spectrum. This does reflect the -- in a way the continuity of policies, but also the shift towards extremism within that continuity.
AMY GOODMAN: There was a very little critical comment about President Reagan this weekend on his death perhaps explained by his death, what happens when a person dies, and what people say or perhaps also because there is a kind of rewriting of history that has been going on. But one of the few people who were quoted in the mainstream media was the Mexican foreign minister, Jorge -- the former Mexican Jorge Castenada, whose father served as foreign minister as well in 1979 to 1982 who said Reagan was extremely unpopular in Mexico when he was president because of his policies in Central America, and what was viewed in Mexico as a Mexico-bashing campaign over drug trafficking. Reagan's involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador, viewed in Mexico, he said was unwarranted meddling that was "interventionist, rooted in cold war rivalries and disrespectful of international law." Castenada conditioned, "not only were his policies viewed negatively, but he pressured Mexico enormously to change its foreign policies."
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's correct. Casteneda is being diplomatic. He's understating with regard to the international law and with regard to the intervention. It was - it ended up with a couple hundred thousand people being killed and four countries ruined. And even the world - the US - the people now in office in Washington have the unique honor of being the only ones in the world who have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. That's a little more than what he said, but that's what he's aiming at.
The unpopularity continues. The latest figures show that this George Bush, number two, latest Latin American figures, among Latin American elites, the ones who tend to be more supportive of the United States, I think it was about close to 90% opposition throughout the hemisphere and approximately, if I remember, 98% opposition to him in Mexico. But to be accurate, we should say that this goes way back. So, John F. Kennedy was -- tried very hard to get Mexico to line up in his anti-Cuba crusade. A famous comment by a Mexican foreign minister when Kennedy tried to convince him that Cuba was to join in the terrorist war against Cuba and the economic embargo strangulation, in fact on the grounds that Cuba was a threat to the security of the hemisphere and the Mexican ambassador said he had to decline, the prime minister had to decline because if he tried to tell people in Mexico that Cuba was a security threat, 40 million Mexicans would die laughing, which is approximately the right answer.
Here not so. The one point on which I think Casteneda's comment that you quote is really misleading is when he refers to cold war thinking and rivalries. There were no Russians in Latin America. In fact, the U.S. was trying very hard to bring them in. Take, say, Nicaragua, when the terrorist war against Nicaragua really took off, Nicaragua tried to get some military aid to defend itself. And they went first to European countries, France, others. The Reagan administration put extreme pressure on them not to send military aid because they were desperately eager for Nicaragua to get military aid from Russia or indirectly through Cuba. So they could then present it as a cold war issue. Nicaragua didn't fall into the trap as Guatemala had in 1954, basically the same scenario. So, they didn't get jet planes from Russia to defend their airspace against the U.S. attacks. They had every right to do it, but the responsibility to do it, but they understood the consequences.
So, the Reagan administration had to float constant stories about how Nicaragua was getting MIG jets from Russia in order to try to create a cold war conflict. Actually it's very revealing to see the reaction here to those stories. Of course, Nicaragua had every right to do it. The C.I.A. had complete control over Nicaragua's airspace and was using it. It was using it to send communications to the guerrilla army, which was -- guerrilla is a funny word for it, computers and helicopters and so on to send them instructions so that they could follow the U.S. command orders to avoid the Sandinista army, the Nicaraguan army and to attack what are called soft targets, undefended civilian targets. It's a country that doesn't have a right to defend its airspace to protect that, I don't know what you can say. So obviously, they are a right to do it, but they didn't. They allowed the U.S. to have control of the airspace and to attack -- to use it to attack undefended targets.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, you have written about the U.S. as being only country in the world to be convicted in the World Court of terrorism. And this had to do with the bombing of the Nicaraguan harbor, which took place under Reagan. Can you talk about that?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. That, too, is a little misleading. Nicaragua was hoping to end the confrontation through legal means, through diplomatic means.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean the mining of the harbor.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes, the mining of the harbors. They decided to -- they asked a legal team headed by a very distinguished American international lawyer, A. Chayes, professor of law at Harvard who had long government service, and that legal team decided to construct an extremely narrow case. So, they kept to matters that were totally uncontroversial, as the U.S. conceded like the mining of the harbors, but it was only a toothpick on a mountain. They picked the narrowest point in the hope that they could get a judgment from the World Court, which would lead the United States to back off from the whole international terrorist campaign, and they did win a judgment from the court, which ordered the U.S. to terminate any actions, any violent actions against Nicaragua, which went way beyond mining of the harbors. That was the least of it.
So, yes, that was the narrow content of the court decision, although, if you read the decision, the court decision that goes well beyond, they're all conscious of the much wider terrorist campaign, but the Harvard - the Chayes run legal team didn't bring it up for good reasons. Because they didn't want any controversy at the court hearings about the facts. There was no controversy about that, since it was conceded. However, it should be read as a much broader indictment, and a very important one. I mean, the term that was used by the court was "unlawful use of force," which is the technical term for the informal notion, international terrorism. There's no legal definition of international terrorism in the international domain. So I bet it was in effect a condemnation of international terrorism over a much broader domain.
However, we should bare in mind, it's important for us, that horrible as the Nicaragua war was, it wasn't the worst. Guatemala and El Salvador were worse. I suggest that in Nicaragua, the reason was that in Nicaragua, the population at least had an army to defend it. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the terrorist forces attacking the population were the army and the other security forces. There was no one to bring a case to the World Court that can be brought by governments, not by peasants being slaughtered.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Chomsky, I wouldn't want to end this discussion without talking about the Reagan years and Africa, particularly southern Africa.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the official policy was called "constructive engagement." I recall it during the 1980s, by then there was enormous pressure to end all support for the apartheid government. Congress passed legislation barring trade and aid. The Reagan administration found ways to evade the congressional legislation, and in fact trade with South Africa increased in the latter part of the decade. This is incidentally the period when Collin Powell moved to the position of national security adviser.
The U.S. was strongly supporting the apartheid regime directly and then indirectly through allies. Israel was helping get around the embargo. Rather as in Central America where the clandestine terror made use of other states that served as -- that helped the administration get around congressional legislation. In the case of South Africa, just look at the rough figures. In Angola and Mozambique, the neighboring countries, in those countries alone, the South African depredations killed about million-and-a-half people and led to some $60 billion in damage during the period of constructive engagement with the u.s. support. It was a horror story.
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Reagan's Bloody Legacy
David Corn
TomPaine.com
Wednesday 09 June 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/061004J.shtml
Aren't we mature enough as a democracy to memorialize our leaders with clear eyes? While the nation mourns one of its most popular presidents, it must be truthful in assessing his leadership. The very resolve being celebrated on op-ed pages across the country also led Reagan to ignore and sometimes sanction the brutality being committed in the name of fighting the "evil empire."
I have a vision. On the day that the remains of Ronald Reagan are transported from the US Capitol to the National Cathedral for the funeral services, the hearse will pass 800 black crosses.
Each cross will represent one of the men, women and children who were killed by the Salvadoran military in the village of El Mozote in December 1981. Each would be a reminder that the dead man now celebrated in the media as a lover of freedom and democracy oversaw a foreign policy that empowered and enabled murderous brutes and thugs in the name of anti-Sovietism. Many innocents in other lands paid dearly for Reagan's crusade.
Throughout his presidency, Reagan made nice with dictators - no matter how nefarious - as long as they parroted his opposition to communism. As soon as he entered the White House, his administration tried to normalize relations with Augosto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, who was responsible for a bloody coup that overthrew a democratically elected (but socialist) government. The Reaganites also cozied up to the fascistic and anti-Semitic junta of Argentina, which tortured, slaughtered and disappeared its political opponents. And don't forget Reagan's attempt to woo Saddam Hussein, even after it was known that Hussein had used chemical weapons. (Reagan assigned this task to Donald Rumsfeld.)
Reagan may have pushed for democracy and human rights in the Soviet bloc, but he cared little for these values elsewhere. He dramatically urged the destruction of the Berlin Wall and supported the Solidarity movement in Poland. But he sent money and assistance to regimes that repressed and murdered their people. While visiting Ferdinand Marcos, the Filipino dictator, Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, toasted Marcos' "adherence to democratic principles." People lost their freedom or died because Reagan and his lieutenants could not see beyond their ideological blinders and cut deals with miscreants who shared their anti-Moscow mantra. Not only did Reagan embolden torturers and murders, the CIA, following his order to support the contra rebels in Nicaragua (who were trying to oust the socialist Sandinistas), worked with suspected drug traffickers. Who said so? Not conspiracy-theory nuts, but the inspector general of the CIA. Years after the contra war, the agency's IG produced two reports that conceded the CIA had enlisted the assistance of alleged drug-runners. At the same time Nancy Reagan was preaching "Just Say No" to drugs.
As I noted in this column a few months ago - when there was a media hullabaloo over a schlocky biopic of Reagan - Reagan was AWOL on one of the important battles for freedom and democracy in the 1980s: South Africa. He defended the racist apartheid government there and claimed - as wrongly as could be - that South Africa had "eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country." And when Republicans and Democrats joined together in Congress to impose economic sanctions on the government of South Africa, Reagan vetoed the measure. In response to that veto, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, said, "Apartheid will be dismantled, and its victims will remember those who helped to destroy this evil system. And President Reagan will be judged harshly by history." Not this week.
The El Mozote episode is, sadly, only one example of violence borne of Reagan's foreign policy. The troops that did the killing were supported by his administration because they were fighting leftist rebels. A 1992 report produced by a UN-sanctioned truth commission described the awful event:
"On 10 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazan, units of the Atlacatl Battalion detained, without resistance, all the men, women and children who were in the place". Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses."
During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings."
The report noted that "the Atlacatl Battalion was a 'Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion' or BIRI, - that is, a unit specially trained for 'counter-insurgency' warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the [El Salvadoran] armed forces and had completed its training under the supervision of United States military advisors, at the beginning of that year, 1981."
When two reporters - Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post - reported the massacre in January 1982, the Reagan administration denied it had occurred. Reagan's point-man on Latin America, Elliott Abrams, told Congress that these reports were no more than commie propaganda. That is, he lied. (Today, Abrams, that lover of truth and human rights, is a staff member on Bush's National Security Council responsible for Middle East matters.) A forensic investigation conducted in the early 1990s proved that the massacre had happened. And the truth commission's report noted that "two hundred forty-five cartridge cases recovered from the El Mozote site were studied. Of these, 184 had discernable headstamps, identifying the ammunition as having been manufactured for the United States Government at Lake City, Missouri. ...All of the projectiles except one appear to have been fired from United States-manufactured M-16 rifles."
Thanks to Ronald Reagan, American tax dollars supported the murder of hundreds of El Salvadoran villagers. And the UN-backed commission, after examining 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies. Similar patterns transpired in Guatemala and Honduras in the 1980s.
The El Mozote massacre, though perhaps the largest massacre in modern Latin American history, is a minor footnote in the history of the Cold War, but it is, as writer Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote, observed, "a central parable of the Cold War." It is also a telling tale of Reaganism. The lives of the people butchered in this small village by US-trained troops were worth as much of that of the man whose body now lays in a casket draped by the Stars and Stripes. Media commentators have been hailing Reagan as heroic, iconic, patriotic and optimistic figure who led an "American life." It was indeed an American life but one with lethal consequences for others. That is as important a piece of the Reagan story - if not more so - as his oh-so-sunny and cheery outlook.
I doubt the villagers of El Mozote were thinking about Reagan's wonderful disposition when made-in-the-USA bullets supplied to their killers by the US government, in accordance with Reagan's foreign policy, were piercing their bodies and ending their non-American lives.
David Corn writes a twice-monthly column for TomPaine.com. Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).
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Moon Over Washington
Why are some of the capital's most influential power players hanging out with a bizarre Korean billionaire who claims to be the Messiah?
by John Gorenfeld, Contributor
6.09.04
Gadflyer
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131
Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah - with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building?
The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment on April 4, a quote from the keynote speech was in the Web version of its "Reliable Sources" column. The speaker: Sun Myung Moon, 84, an ex-convict whose political activities were at the center of the 1976-8 Koreagate influence-peddling probe. That's when an investigation by Congress warned that Moon, after having befriended Richard Nixon in his darkest hour, was surrounding himself with other politicians to overcome his reputation: as the leader of the cult-like Unification Church, which recruited unwary college students, filled Madison Square Garden with couples in white robes, wed them in bulk and demanded obedience.
That was before he launched the Washington Times - "in response to Heaven's direction," as he would later say - and a 20-year quest to make his enemies bow to him. He has also claimed, in newspaper ads taken out by the Unification Church, that Jesus, Confucius, and the Buddha have endorsed him. Muhammad, according to the 2002 ad, led the council in three cries of "mansei," or victory. And every dead U.S. president was there, too - because Moon's gospel is inseparable from visions of true-blue American power.
Now, this March, Moon was telling guests at the Dirksen Senate Office Building that Hitler and Stalin, having cleaned up their acts, had, in a rare public statement from beyond the grave, called him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."
But not long after it appeared on the Post's web site, the paper erased the quote. Columnist Richard Leiby told me via e-mail that it shouldn't have gone out in the first place. The paper replaced it with breaking news about "Celebrity Jeopardy!" with Tim Russert.
The Return of the King
So no one covered this American coronation, except Moon's own Times, which skipped the Messiah part. It wasn't in other newspapers, which only wink at the influence of Moon's far-right movement in Washington, when they cover it at all.
In fact, the only place you could read about the new king, unless you bookmarked Moon's Korean-language website, was in the blog world. There, dozens of the most CSPAN2-hardened cynics reacted to the screenshots with a resounding "WTF," the sound of dismay and confusion at a scene that news coverage hadn't prepared them for. The images might as well have come from Star Trek's Mirror Universe.
First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball.
Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.
But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation.
Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman."
The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted.
"I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there."
A new world order
The last time someone declared himself Emperor of the United States, it was the Gold Rush's Joshua Norton, a sort of failed dot-commer of the 1850s. But he was broke, whereas a random sampling of Moon's properties might include a healthy chunk of the U.S. fishing industry, the graphic tablet company Wacom, and swaths of real estate on an epic scale. The money-losing Times is paid for by the $1 billion he's sunk into it, along with untold funding for conservative policy foundations like the American Family Coalition.
George Soros has recently gotten lots of coverage as a supposedly eccentric billionaire influencing U.S. politics. But Soros is no Moon. In Moon's speeches, a "peace kingdom" is envisioned, in which homosexuals - whom he calls "dung-eating dogs" - would be a thing of the past. He said in January: "Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not, then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring, but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders."
And ignoring every mainline Christian denomination's rejection of the idea of Jewish collective guilt, Moon's latest world tour calls on rabbis to repent for betraying Christ, the Jerusalem Post reported last week. Speaking in Arlington, VA in 2003, Moon said Hitler killed six million Jews as a penalty for this rejection. And he's frank about calling for democracy and the U.S. Constitution to be replaced by religious government that he calls "Godism," calling the church-state separation the work of Satan. "The church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel," he said in the same sermon.
Towards this end, Moon's "Ambassadors for Peace" have been promoting his goal of a "Religious United Nations" organized around God, not countries. In the June 19, 2003 Congressional Record, Rep. Davis joins Rep. Weldon in thanking Moon and the Ambassadors for "promoting the vision of world peace." He praises their plan to "support the leaders of the United Nations" through interfaith dialogue. Much of the dialogue has consisted of getting Moon's retinue of rabbis, ministers and Muslim clerics to hug each other, and be photographed handing out awards to politicians. The Ambassadors have addressed the United Nations and the British House of Lords. They have also honored at least one neo-Nazi, William Baker, former chair of the Holocaust-denying Populist Party.
And far from the free lunches that Emperor Norton received in San Francisco, Moon's groups have taken home grant money from the Bush Administration, which has given his anti-sex missionaries $475,000 in Abstinence-Only dollars to bring Moon's crusade against "free sex" to both black New Jersey high-schoolers and native Africans. The Centers for Disease Control briefly announced that another Moon foundation was the only group qualified to receive another, no-bid grant for HIV education in Africa. Only after a competitor raised objections did the CDC cancel the grant program entirely. Meanwhile, one of Moon's top political movers, David Caprara, has been appointed by George W. Bush to head AmeriCorps VISTA; and another former church VIP, Josette Shiner, was given a senior trade position.
Friends in high places
In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon's anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event. Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that "brings sanity to Washington," famous guests often spoke at front groups that concealed ties to the Unification Church. Bill Cosby was horrified to discover he'd agreed to speak at one. The reputation of future "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye suffered after his wife accidentally gave Mother Jones a recording of him dictating a fond letter to Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, plotting to replace Vice-President Bush with Jerry Falwell on the 1988 ticket. To many Christians, Moon was offensive, preaching that Jesus failed and that he would clean up the mess.
But now that he's forged unbreakable ties with conservative Christians, Moon has moved on to African-American ministers, and, through them, allies in the Democratic Party. This has been below the radar of the press, but not for lack of outlandishness. Moon celebrated Easter Sunday, 2003 by launching a coast to coast series of "tear down the cross/Who is Rev. Moon?" events, targeting pastors in poor neighborhoods. From the Bronx to L.A., Moon's people were convincing pastors to pull the crosses off their walls and replace them with his Family Federation flag. An old hymn was invoked: "I'll trade the old cross for a crown."
To Congressmen attending earlier stops in this roadshow, all this mysticism may have seemed too murky and exotic to understand. But the storyline is simple enough, if you take a step back.
Moon's newest followers were invited to tear down the traditional symbol of Christianity, told they could swap it for a crown. But unlike the crown in the hymn, it wasn't for them. It was the one that Congressmen gave, March 23 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to a wealthy right-wing newspaper owner, one described by Time magazine in 1976 as "megalomaniacal," not much of an exaggeration for someone who claims to be the Second Coming. Unless of course he actually is.
The next day, according to a speech posted to a Moon mailing list and Usenet by a Unification church webmaster, Damian Anderson, Moon said he was leaving the country. "True Father spent 34 years here in America to guide this country in the right way," he told followers. "Yesterday was the turning point." But you can't buy Moon's high opinion of your country so easily (he's called the U.S. "Satan's harvest").
America, he said, was on the road to its doom. Why? "Homo marriage."
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Bush Policies Led to Abuse in Iraq
Human Rights Watch
June 9, 2004
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/09/iraq8785.htm
(New York, June 9, 2004) - The torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not simply the acts of individual soldiers. Abu Ghraib resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to cast the rules aside. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch The 38-page report, "The Road to Abu Ghraib," examines how the Bush administration adopted a deliberate policy of permitting illegal interrogation techniques - and then spent two years covering up or ignoring reports of torture and other abuse by U.S. troops.
"The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not simply the acts of individual soldiers," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Abu Ghraib resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to cast the rules aside."
According to Human Rights Watch, administration policies created the climate for Abu Ghraib in three ways.
First, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration decided that the war on terror permitted the United States to circumvent the restraints of international law. The Geneva Conventions were sidestepped as "obsolete." Lawyers from the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the White House Counsel's office asserted that the president was not bound by U.S. and international laws prohibiting torture.
Consequently, the United States began to create offshore, off-limits prisons such as Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and maintained other detainees in "undisclosed locations." The Bush administration also sent terrorism suspects without legal process to countries where information was beaten out of them.
Second, the United States employed coercive methods to inflict pain and humiliation on detainees to "soften them up" for interrogation. These methods included holding detainees in painful stress positions; depriving them of sleep and light for prolonged periods; exposing them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light; hooding them; and holding them naked.
These techniques are forbidden by prohibitions against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment contained in international human rights law, the laws of armed conflict, and the U.S. military's own long-standing regulations.
Third, until the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs, Bush administration officials took at best a "see no evil, hear no evil" approach to reports of detainee mistreatment. From the earliest days of the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, the U.S. government has covered up or failed to act on repeated, serious allegations of torture and abuse.
The Bush administration has denied having a policy to torture or abuse detainees. Human Rights Watch called on President Bush to provide evidence for those denials by publicly releasing all relevant government documents.
Human Rights Watch also urged the administration to detail the steps being taken to ensure that these abusive practices do not continue, and to prosecute vigorously all those responsible for ordering or condoning this abuse. "Everyone has seen the Abu Ghraib pictures," said Roth. "It's time President Bush provides the full picture of U.S. policy on torture."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Calif. hydrogen cars lack service stations
June 09, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040609-031518-3250r.htm
Los Angeles, CA, Jun. 9 -- Drivers of hydrogen-fueled cars in California have only 13 places where they can gas up, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
Still, the head of a Los Angeles area dealer of a $150,000 Shelby Cobra that runs on the clean-burning fuel, is confidant sales of his exotic car will not be hurt by a lack of service stations -- even though the vehicle only has a 100-mile cruising range. Inspired by Carroll Shelby, who designed the original sports car, the hydrogen version has the equivalent of 4 gallons of gas in its special pressurized fuel tank and gets about 25 miles to the gallon.
Southern California only has three of the state's 13 hydrogen stations, though another one is set to open later this year at Los Angeles International Airport.
The head of Hydrogen Car, S. David Freeman, 78, says the first Shelbys could be delivered in six months.
"Carroll has assured us that there are people out there who will buy any car he makes, even if it runs on hot air," Freeman said.
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Farmington, Maine-area residents oppose planned wind-turbine generators
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
By Betty Jespersen,
Waterville (Maine) Morning Sentinel
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-09/s_24698.asp
FARMINGTON, Maine - Opponents of a wind farm that would put up to 40 turbines along the tops of its two mountain peaks in unorganized townships in the Carrabassett Valley region asked county commissioners recently to join them in their fight to stop the project in this pristine region.
But two of the three commissioners said wind power was a viable, alternative, nonpolluting energy source that needed to be explored and said it was too early to take a position.
Endless Energy Corp. President Harley Lee said there is misinformation being spread and he hopes to hold a community meeting during which people could get accurate answers and come to a consensus.
Dain and Verna Trafton of Phillips, Basil Powers of Stratton, and Mary Lou Melber of Kingfield told the board they had collected 1,800 signatures on a petition asking the Land Use Regulatory Commission to deny Endless Energy's request to rezone the tops of Reddington and Black Nubble mountains in Reddington Township. Commission approval is needed for the mountaintop project to move forward and the agency will review the application and hold a public hearing.
"This is the worst place to put this," Trafton said. "We have a proposal here to put a huge plant into one of the most beautiful parts of the state ... that will cost a lot and will not do much good." "As long as I live and breathe, I will fight this," Powers said.
The project, in development since 1997, would stretch over about three miles along the ridge lines, with between 26 and 39 lighted towers that would be about 260 feet tall. Each would be equipped with three, 115- to 150-foot blades that rotate nine to 19 times per minute. According to company literature, the farm would produce at least 200 million kilowatt hours a year, enough energy to power 33,000 Maine homes. According to the U.S. Census, there were 19,159 housing units in Franklin County in 2000. That same year, 33,000 homes represented about 5 percent of all Maine residences.
The mountain peaks are located about four miles west of Sugarloaf/USA and eight miles south of Stratton. The turbines would be visible from Sugarloaf, points on the Appalachian Trail, numerous logging roads and snowmobile trails, and Route 16.
Group members said Tuesday that the project would create a net loss of 14 jobs, and the biomass plant in Stratton would not be able to transmit power at the same time as the wind farm. They also said the power generated will be sent out of state and that no environmental advocacy group in Maine supports it.
Lee said the group's charges are "blatantly untrue" and he has communicated with them on their facts. Among them: The project would create short-term construction jobs and five to 10 long-term maintenance jobs; the power would remain in Maine; and it would not compete with the biomass plant for power transmission capacity. Central Maine Power is requiring the company to "re-rate" the lines so they can handle the extra power.
As for community support, he said in a 2003 area survey designed with the help of the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Appalachian Trail Conference that 75 percent of snowmobilers, 79 percent of the hikers, 80 percent of skiers, and 84 percent of locals were supportive or neutral regarding the project.
Also, Jon Hink of the Natural Resources Council of Maine said the organization "sees an important place for wind power and this site may raise some concern. But NRC has not taken a position on it."
Commissioner Gary McGrane of Jay said the board was aware of the opposition and expected it would be the "driving force" before the land use commission. "But we have limited natural resources that will eventually be gone and wind power has valuable possibilities."
Commissioner Fred Hardy of New Sharon said he supported the concept of wind power and wanted to hear from Carrabassett Valley residents since the turbines would be erected there. "There is more than one side to this story," he said.
Lee said he expects the commission application will be submitted this summer now that the real estate transactions and right of way agreements have been made with the many landowners.
-------- OTHER
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
U.S. Considers Forgiving Poor Nations' Debts
By Paul Blustein and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26332-2004Jun8?language=printer
The Bush administration is considering throwing its weight behind a British-backed plan that would eliminate the debt owed by some of the world's poorest countries to international lending institutions, according to people familiar with the matter.
The initiative would significantly deepen the debt relief available to poor countries under a program launched during the 1990s. It may help Washington obtain broad backing for its efforts to forgive most of Iraq's debt, because proposals to grant debt relief to Baghdad have raised questions about why an oil-rich country should get generous terms while poorer nations remain financially strapped.
The initiative is still being debated within the administration, and although advocates had hoped it might get a major push forward at this week's Group of Eight summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga., that is unlikely, administration officials said.
Some critics of the initiative argue that it is unwise to write off poor countries' debts entirely, because the countries' governments may have less incentive to adopt sensible economic policies if they assume their obligations will be forgiven eventually. Another problem is the cost, because it is far from clear that the administration is willing to commit the billions of dollars that would have to be spent in coming years to underwrite the write-off of debt by the World Bank and other international lenders.
Still, the plan has powerful boosters -- top officials in the U.S. and British treasury departments. The British government has been a leading champion of increasing aid and debt relief, and for Prime Minister Tony Blair, getting American backing for the plan would enable him to show a payoff for the support he gave to President Bush on the Iraq issue.
Officials from both governments were extremely guarded in discussing the plan and refused to be quoted by name, citing the fluid nature of the negotiations. Tony Fratto, a Treasury spokesman, declined to comment. A White House official said, "There are a lot of ideas in the U.S. government and in the international community on this issue, but we have not settled on an approach."
Under one option, reported by the British newspaper the Guardian yesterday, the debt owed to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other lenders by 27 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia would be eliminated. About 10 more countries could become eligible for such relief; moreover, future World Bank aid to those countries would be given in the form of grants rather than loans.
A complete write-off would be considerably more generous than the terms that the 27 countries can currently get under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative. The HIPC plan, which was launched in 1996 and expanded in 1999, is aimed at reducing the countries' obligations to a manageable level, defined as a certain multiple of their exports. The world's rich countries have financed much of the initiative by contributing to a trust fund used to pay the debts of the poor countries to the IMF and World Bank as they come due.
Debt-relief advocates who have been talking with officials in Washington and London about the proposal voiced hope that it would get a rhetorical endorsement at the summit. They have been prodding the summiteers to provide at least enough funding to extend the existing HIPC program.
"This summit can and should keep old promises on debt relief," said Jamie Drummond, executive director of DATA, a group founded by the rock star Bono to support aid, debt relief and trade concessions for Africa. "But the proposal of 100 percent relief is something more -- a historic breakthrough, a lasting exit from the shackles of debt for the poorest nations."
The rich nations would have to put up substantially more money -- over $1 billion a year for the next few years, and significantly greater amounts in later years -- to fund the proposed 100 percent write-off plus the conversion of loans to grants. Otherwise, the loss of debt payments from the poor countries would hurt the financial condition of the World Bank and other multilateral lenders, restricting their ability to aid other developing countries that need assistance.
The need to ensure that money will be forthcoming from the rich countries is a potentially major obstacle. The British, in particular, have insisted that a concrete plan must be established to guarantee funding.
"It's very important to acknowledge a point of principle about the need for greater multilateral debt relief," a British official said. "That shouldn't be diminished. But it has to have a credible financing plan to back it."
Although adoption of the plan could help Bush politically by possibly burnishing his image as a "compassionate conservative," a number of economists are strongly opposed to 100 percent debt write-offs, even for very poor countries. Among them is John Williamson, a scholar at the Institute for International Economics, co-author of a book proposing a substantial expansion of HIPC.
"It will go down well with all the debt campaigners, but it's not terribly good development policy," Williamson said. "Once one establishes the principle that at the end of the day a country gets a 100 percent debt write-off, that destroys any incentive" for prompt adoption of the economic reforms required to become eligible for HIPC.
"The other thing is the question of equity," Williamson said. "It's one thing to bring down the indebtedness of HIPC countries, but it seems to me to be terribly inequitable to give them a total write-off" when other poor nations, such as Indonesia, don't qualify because their debt burden isn't quite as overwhelming or their per-capita incomes aren't as low.
For the administration, the more important comparison may be Iraq. Since Bush wants Baghdad's creditors to forgive most of its debt, which the administration estimates at about $120 billion, it might help to show that poor countries are also getting a generous deal.
But White House officials stressed that they consider the Iraqi debt a separate issue. "There is no way there is going to be a grand bargain combining HIPC and Iraq debt," a senior administration official said. "That is not going to happen."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Activists cite poor record on rights
June 09, 2004
By Stephanie Dornschneider
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040608-101151-1159r.htm
Russian activists are warning of a deterioration in human rights under President Vladimir Putin, who arrived in the United States yesterday for the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga.
Despite recent democratic reforms, there remained strong efforts by the government to destroy isolated islands of democracy in Russia, the activists told the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. agency composed of members of Congress and the executive branch.
"We do not see any active liberal political parties in Russia," Arseni Roginsky, chairman of the International Memorial Society, said Monday. "The government was created by presidential forces and has become even more conservative."
Mr. Roginsky added that fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech are limited by Russian authorities, that the Russian parliament was fully under the control of the ruling elite, and that independent businesses are attacked as soon as they tried to develop a social position of their own.
Alexei Simonov, the head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, criticized Russian media. He said that the number of reformist Russian outlets is very small.
"We have glasnost, but its field is growing smaller and smaller," he said, in a reference to the Russian word for "openness" and, more specifically, to political reforms instituted under former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The reformist press in Russia consists of just 50 newspapers, all with circulations of no more than 5,000, and four magazines with circulations of up to 1,500.
Mara Polyakova, the director of the Independent Council for Legal Expertise, said that new democratic laws are being passed in Russia, but that there are no mechanisms to implement them.
Russian judges, for example, are supposed to be independent, but remain subject to appointment by the executive branch, she said.
Ludmilla Alexeeva, the president of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, said various religious groups in Russia are under pressure.
"The Russian Orthodox Church seems to be trying to be the same kind of church it used to be under the czars," she said.
The Russian Orthodox Church claims to represent 85 percent to 99 percent of the population.
But, Mrs. Alexeeva said, only 2 percent of the population actively practices the religion.
The four advocates said they would continue seeking solutions and publicly speaking about their concerns.
Mr. Roginsky said there is a "double approach" by the United States toward Russia at a time of threats by terrorists: First, Russia is a "loyal partner in the struggle against terrorism," and only secondarily, there is "something that isn't quite right with democracy" there.
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