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NUCLEAR
U.K. Labour Leaders Call Election Loss a `Protest' by Voters
PROBE INTO GULF WAR I
Europe thinks again on scrapping nuclear power
Iran defiant but UN agency increasingly united over Tehran nuclear program
Iran wants entree to nuclear club
U.S. pushes Europe to get tougher on Iran nuke plans
Why the world's eyes should be on Iran's nuclear programme
Nuclear agency IAEA urges Iran to comply
U.N. Agency Poised To Rebuke Iran on Nuclear Program
U.N. Atomic Energy Chief Faults Iran on Disclosures
Navies of two Koreas in radio contact for first time
Davos forum urges US to soften stand on North Korea
U.S., Japan, S.Korea Discuss N.Korea Nuclear Program
Smarter technology for port defense
Manufacturing Terrorism
Dirty Bomb - Not
Bond to offer amendment to help former Mallinckrodt workers
Waste takes long way home
MILITARY
Military Alters Afghan Prison Procedures
Karzai's plan to utilize Taliban draws ire
Afghan President Ready for Elections
Sudan Hinders Aid Groups Going to Darfur -UN
Zimbabwe reveals China arms deal
France, Israel to sign $150m-$200m weapons deal
Israel, France to sign multi-million dollar defense deal
Malaysia to deploy new paramilitary marine force
Land Mine Kills 22 Nepal Police Officers
Japan's Parliament Boosts War Readiness
Independent inquiry into Gulf war illnesses
Britain's Blair Limits NATO Role in Iraq to Training
Halliburton 'mismanaged $8bn in Iraq'
EADS and Dassault Aviation to cooperate on drone programs
Boeing Wins Navy Contract to Build Plane
Contracts Awarded States News Service
Federal Contract Updated Computers for the B-52
White House Officials and Cheney Aide Approved Halliburton
Financially ailing companies point to Iraq war
Vietnam's war against Agent Orange
Second Iraqi government official assassinated in 24 hours
Car Bomb Kills Five Foreigners in Iraq
Baghdad Blasts Kill 12 Iraqis, Soldier
In Race to Give Power to Iraqis, Electricity Lags
Shiite Cleric Is Forming Party That May Play Role in Elections
Truck Bombing in Baghdad Follows Violent Weekend
Israel Confiscates Swaths of West Bank
Israel to Begin Controversial Phase of Barrier Construction
Israeli Strike Kills Palestinian Leader
Israel's Sharon Survives No-Confidence Vote
Victims in Riyadh Had Military Link
Saudi Security Forces Search for a Missing American
Ukraine not ready to join NATO: Kuchma
Pakistan Arrests Key al-Qaida Figure
Abu Ghraib relatives rail against US as prisoner release continues
Red Cross wants prisoners freed on June 30
Rights Groups Say Hussein's Status Will Change on June 30
"A Temporary Coup"
CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report
Recruiters Try New Tactics to Sell Wartime Army
GIs marching away from re-enlistment
Contractor Immunity a Divisive Issue
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Richard Clarke: 'Iraq could be much more of a problem for America
The Son of Patriot Act Also Rises
House OKs Official Homeland Security Home
In rare public dialogue, Saudi women talk rights
FBI's 9/11 Team Still Hard at Work
Red Cross Clarifies Saddam Detention
Somali Charged in Plot on Ohio Mall
Torture, Incorporated Oliver North Joins the Party
Rumsfeld: 'No wiggle room' in torture ban
POLITICS
War spending 'has made country more vulnerable'
Whistleblowers ask federal workers to come forward with 9/11 evidence
Lawyer wants Rumsfeld to testify in prison-abuse case
America's Last Chance: Congressional Oversight and "Torture-gate"
CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report
9/11 Commission Set for Final Hearings
Cheney Claims al-Qaida Linked to Saddam
Dubya's Dilemma: Daddy Doesn't Support the Iraq War
Trying on Reagan's Mantle, but It Doesn't Exactly Fit
Cheney's office 'briefed on Pentagon deal'
Bush Leagues
Was Reagan the First Neoconservative?
Senate Leaders' Financial Disclosures
26 Former U.S. Officials Oppose Bush
Group Urges Voters Not to Choose Bush
ENERGY
Enron Said to Gouge Customers for $1.1B
ACTIVISTS
Ellen Thomas Speech for Wash the Flag Day,
Ratings row over Moore Iraq film
'Big Brother' Cast Member Stages Sit-In
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
U.K. Labour Leaders Call Election Loss a `Protest' by Voters
(Bloomberg)
June 14 2004
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=aQIJ2Y1lJy8Q&refer=uk
June 14 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. voters used European elections to protest the policies of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, cabinet ministers including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Education Secretary John Reid said.
In contests for members of the European Parliament, Labour had 22.3 percent of the vote, trailing the Conservatives, who won 27.4 percent. It was Labour's lowest share of the vote since before World War I.
``Sitting governments received significant protest votes against them,'' Straw said in Luxembourg, where he was attending a meeting of his European Union counterparts. Reid, speaking to the British Broadcasting Corp., said the disapproval registered with governments ``across Europe; it presents us a challenge.''
Blair, who won office in 1997 and a second term in 2001, must call another general election by mid-2006. Yesterday's results leave him open to a challenge from within the Labour Party. They also may leave him fighting for support from voters at a time when interest rate increases by the Bank of England are beginning to clamp down on consumers' wealth.
``Labour are clear favorites for a third term with a reduced majority,'' said Robert Waller, who co-wrote ``The Almanac of British Politics.'' ``The damage done to Blair's image is more permanent. If the Bank of England succeeds in making people hurt, on debt and mortgages, that's the biggest single threat.''
Economic Pinch
The U.K. central bank boosted rates last week for a fourth time since November, citing concerns that house prices were rising too rapidly and threatening to boost inflation. The bank's benchmark rate at 4.5 percent is the highest in the Group of Seven industrial nations.
Blair, 51, fought this campaign on the strength of the economy, noting unemployment in the U.K. is at the lowest in a generation. Britain's economy kept growing through 2001 and 2002 as the U.S., Germany and Japan tipped into recession.
Voters used this poll to protest Blair's backing of the war in Iraq and his efforts to deepen political links with the European Union. The U.K. Independence Party, which advocates withdrawal from the European Union, had 16.8 percent of the vote. Liberal Democrats, who opposed the Iraq war, had 15.1 percent.
``By historical standards, this is really a pretty appalling night for Labour,'' Anthony King, author of ``Britain at the Polls'' told BBC television. ``It may not tell us what's going to happen in the general election but it can't be good.''
Labour Meeting
This evening, Blair will tell Labour members of parliament they should stick with his leadership through the next election even though he's had to take ``difficult'' decisions on Iraq and the nation's relationship with Europe.
``What we have got to do is to hold our nerve and see it through,'' Blair told reporters in Washington on Saturday after the polls closed. ``Of course it is a difficult time, and these things happen to governments. But the basic commitments we have made, we are delivering on these things.''
Labour Party Chairman Ian McCartney said concern about Blair's backing for the Iraq war hurt the party's standing. He said voters probably will focus on other issues that will benefit the party in the next election.
``The next election is going to be about the economy, public services, education -- key bread-and-butter issues,'' McCartney said in a BBC interview.
Conservative Party Losses
As bad as the results were for Labour, the elections aren't benefiting the Conservatives, the main opposition party. They had their lowest share of the vote since 1832. Fringe parties will find it more difficult to make their mark in the next general election, when parties must win seats in each district instead of a share of the vote to get their candidates into Parliament.
For Blair, the results also suggest he won't be able to fulfill his goal of deepening the nation's political links with the European Union. That may prevent him from signing up to a European constitution when he meets with fellow EU heads of state later this week in Brussels.
``Blair simply hasn't got a mandate to sign the constitution,'' Michael Ancram, the Conservatives' spokesman on foreign affair, told the British Broadcasting Corp. ``If the prime minister goes off and pretends these elections haven't happened, he will be flying in the face of a very clear vote.''
Rick Nye, a poll analyst at Populus Ltd., which conducts surveys for London's Times newspaper, said the Conservatives dwindling support should be a concern to Michael Howard, the party's third leader since Blair took office.
``What it says about the Conservatives is that they have yet to establish themselves as a sufficiently credible alternative for government so that everybody is prepared to rally around that party's flag,'' Nye said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Reed Landberg in London landberg@bloomberg.net.
-------- depleted uranium
PROBE INTO GULF WAR I
Jun 14 2004
By Don Mackay,
UK Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14330917&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=probe-into-gulf-war-i-name_page.html
AN INDEPENDENT inquiry is being set up to probe Gulf War syndrome - 14 years after the first Iraqi conflict ended.
The Government has consistently refused to hold a formal public inquiry despite 2,585 veterans, many terminally ill, getting war pensions and more than 5,000 others suffering a wide range of undiagnosed illnesses.
Former Appeal Court judge Lord Lloyd of Berwick is to chair a panel into the causes of sickness arising from the 1991 conflict to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
Many believe it was caused by anti-chemical multi-jabs, depleted uranium shells, the destruction of a chemical arms dump or even locally-bought pesticides used in setting up camps.
Lord Alf Morris, honorary parliamentary adviser to the Royal British Legion, claimed: "Many veterans are in broken health, yet 14 years on, still find themselves locked in a long hard battle to have their illnesses accepted as war related.
"They were all classed as medically A1 when they were deployed."
-------- europe
Europe thinks again on scrapping nuclear power
Story by Stuart Penson
REUTERS UK:
June 14, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25508/story.htm
LONDON - Europe is finding it harder to rule out a future for nuclear power as governments face the need to tackle climate change without risking the future security of energy supplies.
Nuclear's ability to generate power round the clock without sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is testing the resolve to abandon a hugely expensive industry still tainted by the legacy of past disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Helping the industry's case are doubts that the current attempt by governments to spark a green power revolution by building hundreds of windfarms can deliver big enough cuts in CO2 or ensure that the lights stay on after existing reactors have shut down.
"Nuclear power has gone from being very peripheral to being taken seriously again," said Dieter Helm, a fellow in economics at Oxford University.
"The exclusive focus on renewables and energy efficiency in several social democratic governments in Europe is not delivering enough carbon savings to keep on track with the ambitious climate change targets."
Rising prices for fossil fuels and Europe's growing reliance on gas imported from outside the region have also encouraged policymakers to think again about phasing out nuclear, which has high initial capital costs but low production costs thereafter.
Industry sources say Britain is likely to conduct a serious reappraisal of nuclear power but because of the issue's sensitivity the question will not get a public airing until after a general election expected next year.
Britain put on hold its nuclear building programme with the completion in 1995 of the Sizewell B station in eastern England and is scheduled to close its last reactor in 2035.
A sharp drop in power prices recently forced the government to rescue privatised nuclear giant British Energy from bankruptcy, although prices have since recovered.
Despite the BE debacle ministers were careful to leave the door ajar to a new generation of reactors when they updated their thinking on energy policy earlier this year.
REACTORS GET CHEAPER Analysts say the up-front costs of new reactors are dropping because they are smaller than earlier models.
"I think there is evidence beginning to build that the capital costs of nuclear plants will be substantially lower than in the past," said Philip Ruffles, vice president of The Royal Academy of Engineers in London. "Plants would be smaller, roughly half the physical size of current plants."
Crucial to the viability of new reactors would be the cost of capital and the length of time taken to build the plants, other analysts said.
Nuclear costs must include the management of waste, problems with which remains central to the argument of the industry's widespread opponents.
"The biggest problem for nuclear is the disposal of radioactive waste in a politically and publicly acceptable way," said Frank Barnaby, a nuclear security specialist at the independent Oxford Research Group.
Nuclear power is making headway in some countries. Finland is building a three-billion-euro reactor, its fifth. France, which already relies heavily on nuclear power, is pressing ahead with plans to build a prototype pressurised water reactor as it looks beyond the retirement of its existing plants.
Shifts in opinion are also evident in Sweden. A majority voted in 1980 to phase out atomic plants by 2010 but a recent Gallup poll showed more than 55 percent in favour of keeping existing plants.
The Swiss last year voted not to scrap nuclear power after the government argued it would be premature to shut down a cheap energy source that meets 40 percent of its power needs.
-------- iran
Iran defiant but UN agency increasingly united over Tehran nuclear program
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614020013.zp7zaaq6.html
Iran was defiant as the UN atomic energy agency prepared to meet Monday but the hardline United States and more conciliatory Europe were drawing closer to insist Tehran dispel suspicions it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, diplomats said.
Even non-aligned nations sympathetic to Iran seemed ready to sign on to a draft resolution Europe's big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- are to present when the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board of governors opens what could be a week-long meeting in Vienna.
The resolution raps Iran for hiding sensitive nuclear activities but also presses for continued cooperation with Tehran.
Iran is preparing itself for a souring in ties with the IAEA as Tehran refuses to renounce its right to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, Seyed Hossein Mussavian, a member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told the Iranian student news agency ISNA Sunday.
"We are entering into a second phase which is the challenge posed by enrichment," Mussavian said, adding that this was difficult since "the Americans and the Europeans are on the same side".
"The Europeans are saying that in order to be sure that nuclear fuel is not used to produce nuclear weapons, Iran must renounce enrichment.
"But Iran considers enrichment to be an absolute right in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Iran is not ready to renounce this," Mussavian said.
Highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be used as nuclear fuel but also to make a nuclear bomb.
Tehran has agreed to suspend enrichment as a confidence-building measure but has insisted the suspension is only temporary and continued to work on other key parts of the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle.
Mussavian said the Euro-3 draft resolution signifies "that the Europeans, the IAEA and the Americans have a tacit agreement to keep the dossier at the top of the agenda so that the suspension of enrichment is longer."
He demanded it be amended, and Iranian diplomats were lobbying for this in Vienna.
"Everyone realizes what's at stake," a diplomat close to talks on the resolution told AFP about the need to determine whether Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons program, as the United States claims, or developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes, as Tehran says.
The diplomat said "no one questions the work of the agency" in finding omissions and discrepancies in Iran's reporting on its atomic activities.
And no one, except Iran, thinks the Iranian issue can be decided this June, the diplomat said, as the investigation is far from being completed.
The board meeting will also review Libya, with the IAEA vowing to persist in investigating Tripoli's now abandoned nuclear weapons program, as much to discover new facts about Libya as about the international smuggling network that supplied it, as well as Iran.
A tough Washington-inspired IAEA board resolution in March had condemned Iran for omitting to report its work into sophisticated P-2 centrifuges which can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.
But it drew protests from Iran that included delaying crucial agency investigations, a delay that makes it difficult for the IAEA to draw conclusions this June.
The United States looks ready to sign on this time to the Euro-3 draft resolution as it feels the tough language is "moving towards where the United States wants to be."
The United States wants to cut off cooperation with Iran and take it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions but Washington does not have support at the IAEA for its hardline stance.
Diplomats said however that even the EU-3 were getting impatient with Iran, as the IAEA has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003 with Iran consistently failing to deliver on promises for full disclosure.
----
Iran wants entree to nuclear club
By David Wastell
June 14, 2004
Telegraph, Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/13/1087065030907.html?oneclick=true
London - Iran has flatly rejected European demands to scale back further its nuclear program, insisting the world must recognise it had now become a nuclear nation.
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said: "We won't accept any new obligations. Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognised by the international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an irreversible path."
His comments, delivered in Tehran on Saturday before today's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, raise the stakes in a confrontation with the United States, Britain, Germany and France over Iran's nuclear program.
Iran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear program is geared towards generating electricity, not making weapons. But the US and its allies say Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program. The IAEA has wrestled for more than a year with what to do about the issue.
A tough draft resolution by Britain, Germany and France, to be debated by members of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, asks Iran to freeze operation of a uranium conversion plant near Isfahan and cancel plans for a heavy-water reactor near Arak. Advertisement Advertisement
It also deplores Iran's refusal to co-operate fully with the IAEA's nuclear inspectors, including its failure to clarify the origin of traces of highly enriched uranium found by inspectors at two sites. Iran says the equipment was bought abroad and was already contaminated.
Mr Kharrazi condemned the draft resolution, which is due to be debated at today's IAEA board meeting.
Last year Iran promised to suspend its uranium enrichment after a diplomatic drive led by Britain, Germany and France, but it has dragged its feet over implementing the pledge.
The call for a halt to work at Isfahan and to drop plans for the Arak reactor - which would be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium - reflects fears that Iran is using last year's agreement to buy time as it prepares to build its first nuclear weapon, using domestic uranium ore.
----
U.S. pushes Europe to get tougher on Iran nuke plans
Monday, June 14, 2004
ABS-CBN
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=WORLD&oid=53119
VIENNA - Washington is pressuring France, Germany and Britain to toughen their draft resolution rebuking Iran for lax cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, whose board will vote on the text this week, diplomats said.
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) begins meeting on Monday. On their agenda is the agency's investigation of Iran's nuclear program and the draft resolution.
Washington says Tehran's nuclear power program is a front to make atomic weapons, but Iran denies this, insisting its ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.
"The Americans want a deadline," a diplomat from one of the 35 nations on the IAEA board told Reuters. "A deadline would be to keep the pressure on Iran."
Another diplomat said a deadline could be used to force Iran to finally keep some of the promises it made to the Europeans in October 2003, when Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities in exchange for peaceful atomic technology.
Washington would also like a "trigger mechanism" that would call for the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if its cooperation remains sluggish.
In September 2003, the IAEA passed a resolution setting an October 31 deadline for Iran to submit a complete declaration of its nuclear program. Tehran submitted the declaration on time, though it was later shown to be incomplete.
Last week, the European trio circulated a toughly worded draft resolution that "deplores" Iran's failure to fully cooperate with the IAEA and urged Tehran to urgently "resolve all outstanding questions."
The text, to be voted on by the IAEA board this week, also "deeply regrets that Iran has not fully implemented (the enrichment suspension)...including by taking steps to produce UF6, and by continuing to produce centrifuge components."
UF6 is uranium hexafluouride, the form of uranium that is fed into gas centrifuges, machines that purify it for use as fuel in power plants or weapons. Iran insists that producing UF6 is not part of the suspension deal, but the Europeans disagree.
Iranian negotiators are pushing the Europeans to remove the word "deplores" and generally soften the text, which already has the support of most of the 35 board members, diplomats said.
Deadline
Valerie Lincy, an analyst at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a U.S.-based think-tank, said a deadline would make the European draft even stronger.
"The resolution could set out a specific definition of what such activity includes and set a deadline, before which Iran must truly suspend all such activities," Lincy told Reuters.
She said the draft could go further in demanding Iran halt operations at a uranium conversion plant, which makes UF6, and scrap plans to build a heavy water research reactor experts say would yield little electricity but ample bomb-grade plutonium.
The IAEA is most concerned with two outstanding issues -- the scale of Iran's advanced P-2 centrifuge program and traces of enriched uranium the IAEA found in Tehran, which diplomats said could mean Iran was secretly enriching uranium for weapons.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on Saturday he hoped the IAEA board would not only resist U.S. pressure to toughen the draft resolution but would drop Iran's case from the board's agenda.
"It is not fair that Iran's case remains on the agenda for two minor issues," he said.
Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com
----
Why the world's eyes should be on Iran's nuclear programme
By Anton la Guardia
14/06/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/06/14/do1401.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/06/14/ixopinion.html
With Saddam Hussein gone, one could be forgiven for thinking that the world was finally done with the business of WMD and accusations of secret nuclear arsenals. But look at what is happening next door to Iraq, and the wranglings over Iran's nuclear programme are all too reminiscent of the 12 years of crisis that culminated with the war to topple Saddam.
Some of the personalities at the forefront of last year's Iraq saga - notably Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA) - have returned to centre-stage in the Iran nuclear affair. Mr ElBaradei's categorical assessment that Iraq's nuclear programme was dead and buried, and that intelligence on its revival was either faulty or fabricated, fell on deaf ears in Washington and London last year. In the case of Iran, however, Mr ElBaradei offers no such reassurance. The world should take note.
Reading the IAEA's reports on Iran in the past year, there are good reasons to fear that the mullahs, behind the guise of a civil nuclear power programme, are secretly trying to build an atomic bomb or at least develop a "just in time" capability to build one at short notice.
A nuclear Iran would precipitate a Middle East arms race that could prompt Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to secure their own nukes. Israel is unlikely to sit idly by while Iran arms itself with atomic weapons and long-range missiles.
As the IAEA's governors meet in Vienna this week to decide how to deal with Iran's latest evasions, Mr ElBaradei has told the Telegraph that Teheran keeps "changing its story". Despite good progress, the IAEA chief said inspections "cannot go on forever". Sound familiar?
By President George W Bush's own doctrine of the "axis of evil" - which asserts that the greatest danger to the world is posed by states developing WMD and supporting international terrorists - the first candidate for American "pre-emptive action" should have been Iran, not Iraq.
There is no doubt that Iran's nuclear facilities are much more advanced than Iraq's were last year. According to the IAEA, Iran lied systematically for 18 years. It secretly mastered the most sensitive techniques of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium - either of which provides a route to nuclear weapons.
It has bought equipment from the same "nuclear supermarket", operated by the Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, that provided uranium enrichment centrifuges for the Libyan and North Korean atomic weapons programmes.
There is also a much stronger terrorist connection to Iran than to Iraq.
Iran sponsors Palestinian extremist groups, as well as Lebanon's Hizbollah movement. Western intelligence agencies believe that at least some parts of the regime are harbouring some of Osama bin Laden's senior lieutenants, although Iran says al-Qa'eda figures that slipped into the country are all "under arrest".
Had America and Britain had even half of this evidence to pin on Saddam Hussein, they would have had no problem securing that elusive second United Nations resolution authorising war.
So will America go to war with Iran? Washington has not ruled out using force, and the idea of effecting "regime change" in Iran is attractive to many in Washington.
But the reality is that for the coming six to 12 months, President Bush has his hands full with fighting the insurgency in Iraq and overseeing the country's political transition. He does not want to stand for election in November as a warmonger. Having failed to find WMD in Iraq, Mr Bush will find it harder to argue for military action to stop Iran's nuclear programme.
For the moment, the Iranian question is being handled by diplomacy at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
In contrast with the bitter rows over Iraq, the "Big Three" of the European Union - Britain, France and Germany - have joined forces to exert pressure on Iran. Acting as the "good cop" to America's "bad cop", they have achieved some important successes - such as convincing Iran to agree to more intrusive inspections, suspend "temporarily" uranium enrichment and reveal at least some of its nuclear secrets. But it is not enough.
America has long demanded that Iran be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The Europeans would rather use the threat of referral to prod Iran along the road of co-operation. They believe that by maintaining international "consensus", the mullahs can be boxed in ever tighter - to the point where either they decide that pursuing a nuclear weapons option is too costly or the Iranians commit a breach so egregious that it will be easier to rally support for punitive action.
"Iran is a medium-term problem," said a senior British official. But this game of "strategic patience" rests on a key assumption: that Iran is still some years away from having an atomic bomb and that the nuclear programme is effectively frozen by the current inspections.
What if Iran has a secret enrichment programme that the IAEA has yet to detect? America, or Israel, could try to bomb Iran's nuclear infrastructure - assuming they know the location of any secret facilities.
Military action would be extremely risky. It could destabilise an already precarious situation in the Middle East, especially in Iraq. It could deepen the war on terrorism, or suck America into an all-out war with Iran. It need not come to military action. The Europeans can do more to back up their tough words with credible threats of action. They should draw up a menu of EU sanctions that could be phased in if Iran does not comply with the IAEA by, say, September.
Iran also needs incentives if it is to give up the option of a deterrent against its many potential foes. If Teheran gives up its nuclear weapons aspirations permanently and submits to rigid international controls, it should be assured of technical assistance for developing nuclear power to generate electricity. Teheran could also be given a guarantee that it will not be attacked by the US.
America is ready to give such a security assurance to North Korea, and is negotiating with Pyongyang despite its open repudiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There is good reason for America to begin talking to Iran. It is now the most important regional power in the Gulf. By deploying troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq, America has become Iran's close neighbour - and hostile neighbours can make life hell.
--------
Nuclear agency IAEA urges Iran to comply
(AP)
6/14/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-14-iran_x.htm
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - A key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency moved Monday toward a sharp rebuke of Iran for delaying a probe into its suspect nuclear activities. Delegates said Tehran would likely get off with a reprimand instead of sanctions.
Diplomats at the 35-nation IAEA board of governors' meeting took their cue from agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who urged Tehran to replace foot-dragging with "full cooperation," saying his agency's inquiry "can't go on forever." (Video: More from ElBaradei)
A resolution calling for increased cooperation and disclosure is likely to be presented at the meeting, which will also review an agency report noting that Iran granted IAEA inspectors access to sites, but otherwise failed to eliminate international concern that it is attempting to make nuclear weapons.
Any resolution is unlikely before midweek, giving Iran time to press for softer language - and for the United States and its allies to try to toughen the wording.
France, Germany and Britain, the authors of the draft, met Monday to rework sections, taking into account suggested changes from developing nations allied with Iran and the United States and its backers.
Diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the nonaligned nations sought to ease the harsh tone of the draft and wanted a paragraph removed that called on Tehran to abort plans to build a heavy water reactor.
The Americans were looking for a time limit for Iran to answer all outstanding questions. That would, implicitly at least, hold out the threat of future sanctions, said the diplomats.
The agency is chiefly concerned with contradictory, missing or withheld information on the scope of Iran's uranium enrichment program, and the source of enriched uranium found in the country.
"These are two issues where we need accelerated and proactive cooperation," ElBaradei told reporters. "The way they have been engaging us on these issues has been less than satisfactory."
In the meeting, ElBaradei said Iran's responses to IAEA requests about its centrifuge enrichment program have been "changing and at times contradictory."
Kenneth Brill, the chief U.S. delegate, said ElBaradei's comments amounted to a "very firm message that Iran needed to do much better than it has been doing."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed ElBaradei's report, saying it provided "further evidence that Iran's troubling lack of cooperation with IAEA continues." A senior Western diplomat said ElBaradei was clearly unhappy the Iran dossier contained blank pages a year after the start of the probe.
While the Iran resolution will not directly threaten sanctions, any toughly worded document will maintain pressure on Iran to come clean on what was a covert nuclear program for nearly 20 years until discovered two years ago.
Since the start of international scrutiny, Iran has suspended uranium enrichment, stopped building centrifuges and has allowed unannounced IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Iran has denied being uncooperative and rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is a smoke screen for making weapons. The country says its uranium-enrichment program is geared solely toward generating electricity.
The IAEA report says Iran inquired about buying thousands of magnets for centrifuges on the black market - casting doubt on assertions that its P-2 centrifuge program was purely experimental and not geared toward full uranium enrichment.
On the traces of enriched uranium - which include minute amounts of weapons-grade material - Tehran says they were not domestically produced but inadvertently imported in purchases through the nuclear black market.
But IAEA investigators have not been able to verify that claim because Pakistan, the main source of the equipment, has blocked free access to its nuclear material, so the agency has been unable to match isotope samples to the traces found in Iran.
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U.N. Agency Poised To Rebuke Iran on Nuclear Program
Cooperation on Inspections at Issue
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39094-2004Jun13.html
TEHRAN, June 13 -- Eight months after celebrating a diplomatic breakthrough designed to address concerns about Iran's nuclear program once and for all, Iranian officials are bracing for a fresh rebuke from the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency.
The board of governors of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency convenes for a three-day meeting in Vienna on Monday, and the U.N. body is likely to officially "deplore" Iran's erratic cooperation with IAEA inspectors, who will continue exploring the country's atomic infrastructure for months, according to diplomats and Iranian officials.
The resolution would echo a March warning by the same board and a resolution last week by the Group of Eight leaders who met in the United States. The sting of the language is all the sharper because it is being pushed by three leading European nations that last October coaxed Iran to unveil its clandestine nuclear program.
"We now see the Europeans and the Americans have come together against us," Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and now a senior government official, said at Friday prayers at the University of Tehran, the weekly showcase for hard-line doctrine in this theocracy.
The air of official complaint was palpable in the Iranian capital this weekend, after state-run media heightened expectations that the IAEA would issue Iran the clean bill of health that its leaders insist it deserves. Despite 18 years of secrecy and the country's vast oil and gas reserves, senior Iranian officials declare that the country's nuclear program is intended to produce only electricity, not weapons.
"We are against using it for military purposes," Rafsanjani said, warning that "if they are going to put pressure on us, everybody knows his duty."
The issue shows no sign of going away. U.S. officials, who insist Iran is pursuing atomic weapons, have been pleased that IAEA inspectors have emerged from Iranian nuclear facilities with new questions about Tehran's intentions. The inspectors' latest report noted that Iran had failed to disclose the purchase of magnets needed to enrich uranium and that Iran insists on preparing feed stock for centrifuges, despite its October vow to suspend enrichment activities as a "confidence-building" measure. The IAEA also continues to investigate the radioactive contamination of centrifuges.
Diplomats added that they are concerned by Iran's announced intention to build a heavy-water reactor to produce isotopes for benign applications that could also be produced by a light-water reactor. The heavy-water version would also be able to produce plutonium, used in bombs.
The continuing controversy is testing Iran's pledge to adhere to the October agreement that opened its nuclear program to inspection in the first place.
Each additional disclosure has irritated Iranian opponents of the agreement. Senior conservatives have publicly suggested following the example of North Korea, which last year withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) after its weapons program was discovered.
"If IAEA gives in to U.S. pressure, we will react strongly to defend Iran's national interest," said Mahdi Kouchakzadeh, one of several members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards elected to parliament in February, after conservative overseers disqualified about 2,400 reformist candidates, thereby ensuring conservative control.
"As a lawmaker, I think Iran has to stop cooperation with IAEA and seriously consider withdrawing from NPT," he said in remarks quoted by the Associated Press.
"Pinpricks are hardening the core," said one foreign diplomat resident in Iran. "The way they're circling the wagons, they obviously have something they're protecting there."
The suspicions intensified after the February discovery that Iran had failed to disclose it was assembling P2 gas centrifuges, which would enrich uranium far more efficiently than the model cited in the "comprehensive" declaration it submitted in December. After documenting other apparent deceptions and contradictory explanations, inspectors were delayed for weeks from entering workshops operated by Iraq's Defense Industries Organization.
Diplomats here now say they expect that Iran's file at the IAEA board will remain open until at least November and likely into early 2005. Absent information that conclusively reveals a weapons program, Iran might avoid a referral to the U.N. Security Council, which the Bush administration wants to impose sanctions. But the extended process might aggravate frictions among Iran's ruling elite.
"There's a lot of anger around, based on their unreasonable expectation they would get the issue put behind them in June," said another resident diplomat.
"I don't think they'll cut off their links to the EU-3," the diplomat said, referring to France, Britain and Germany. "There is an element of risk in putting forward an honest resolution."
A senior Iranian official, who asked not to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter, suggested that the government was unlikely to leave itself without a negotiating partner. "I personally believe this ultimately is going to be managed somehow between the Europeans and the Iranians," the official said.
--------
U.N. Atomic Energy Chief Faults Iran on Disclosures
June 14, 2004
By MARK LANDLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14CND-IRAN.html
FRANKFURT, June 14 - Frustrated with Iran's "changing and at times contradictory" stories about its nuclear program, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency demanded today that Tehran provide a full accounting "within the next few months."
The remarks by the director, Mohamed ElBaradei, were uncharacteristically blunt, according to diplomats meeting in Vienna this week to review Iran's compliance with the United Nations watchdog agency.
Iran is likely to be sharply criticized in a resolution that the United States and other members of the agency's board are scheduled to vote on later this week. The White House said it shared Dr. ElBaradei's "serious concerns," and urged Iran to "come clean and abide by its international agreements."
The American ambassador to the agency, Kenneth C. Brill, said Dr. ElBaradei's statement "showed how clear the contrast is between what the Iranians say and what the I.A.E.A. finds the reality is."
Bush administration officials expressed hope that Dr. ElBaradei's comments would add to pressure from Europe and Russia - as well as the United States - to force Iran to disclose its nuclear activities. They said they would still leave open the possibility of seeking action at the United Nations Security Council if current efforts fail.
"Our view is that the I.A.E.A. has documented already 18 years of clandestine nuclear activities in Iran," said Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "Tehran has repeatedly failed to declare significant, troubling aspects of its nuclear program. It's interfered with and suspended inspections, and it's failed to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in resolving outstanding issues related to its program."
"It's clear that the agency's investigation and verification work in Iran must continue for the foreseeable future," he added. "We once again urge Iran's full cooperation with the agency and call on Iran to make good on its repeated pledges of cooperation."
Much of the debate in Vienna has centered on whether the agency should impose a deadline for Iran to cooperate - something the United States has pushed for. Dr. ElBaradei has not called for a deadline, though his statement to the agency's board suggested he was running short of patience.
Nor is it considered likely that the resolution, which is being drafted by Britain, France and Germany, will set a deadline, according to a diplomat involved in the deliberations.
Iran says it has cooperated with the agency and is trying to soften the resolution. It insists its activities are geared toward producing commercial nuclear energy. In Turkey, where he was attending a foreign ministers' conference of the Organization of Islamic States, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, disputed suggestions that Iran had been less than forthcoming.
"We gave all the information to the international atomic energy institution," Mr. Kharrazi said on CNN Turk television, according to Reuters. "We will continue to cooperate. We expect the other side to fulfill its undertakings."
But feelings toward Tehran have soured in the wake of fresh disclosures, according to diplomats.
The agency said in a recent report that Iran was continuing to produce parts for centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium to a grade suitable for weapons. It is also preparing to make uranium hexafluoride, the material that is fed into centrifuges to produce enriched uranium.
Dr. ElBaradei said it was "premature to make a judgment" about whether Iran's program was military. But the agency has been in an increasingly tense standoff with the Iranians in the two years since it began investigating a program that Iran covered up for nearly two decades.
In his report today, Dr. ElBaradei said Iran had allowed United Nations inspectors access to its nuclear facilities. Those were his only words of praise in an otherwise harsh assessment.
Dr. ElBaradei said Iran had not been forthcoming about the source of enriched uranium detected at several sites.
He also said Iran offered conflicting explanations of its work with P-2 centrifuges, a sophisticated, second-generation model from Pakistan. First, he said, Iran did not disclose the program. Then it denied buying parts from abroad. Finally, it admitted it had imported thousands of magnets to build P-2 centrifuges.
That disclosure is critical because it is part of a broader investigation into the suspected black market in nuclear parts organized by Abdul Qadeer Khan, known in Pakistan as the father of its nuclear bomb.
"Clearly, this pattern of engagement on the part of Iran is less than satisfactory if it wishes to build confidence in the international community," Dr. ElBaradei said, adding that Iran "needs to be proactive."
-------- korea
Navies of two Koreas in radio contact for first time
SEOUL (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614072700.xakf1mga.html
The South and North Korean navies established radio contact for the first time Monday in a major step towards easing tension on the Cold War's last frontier, officials said.
Warships from the two sides successfully communicated using a common radio frequency, flags and light signals along a disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea as part of new measures to prevent accidental clashes, navy officials said.
"Navy ships from both sides have been in radio contact from 0000 GMT, sailing along the sea border off the west coast," a South Korean navy spokesman told AFP.
The first exchange of radio messages was made near Yeonpyeong Island when navy ships from both sides sailed close to the sea border. Similar contacts were made at four other locations for two hours.
The unprecedented contact comes a day before the two Koreas hold a series of joint events to mark the signing of a landmark rapprochement agreement at a summit between them in 2000.
A North Korean civilian delegation arrived in South Korea Monday to attend a marathon and other reconciliation events. Pyongyang will also send a government delegation to Seoul this week for a symposium on a railway project linking the peninsula with Europe.
The 2000 summit prompted a thaw between the North and South but ties have been disrupted by naval skirmishes in the rich fishing grounds off the western coast.
Since 1999 dozens of casualties have been reported on both sides. The last clash in June 2002 left six South Korean sailors dead.
Clashes usually occur when fishing boats from one side cross an unmarked maritime border into the other side while chasing fish.
A temporary sea border, called the Northern Limit Line, was drawn in 1953 at the end of the three-year Korean War but North Korea has never recognized it, insisting the sea border should be redrawn.
Monday's contact followed a military deal on June 4 to reduce tensions along the heavily fortified and tense border.
In terms of the accord, the two sides are from midnight Monday to stop propaganda broadcasts along the 248-kilometer (154-mile) land border.
They have also agreed to dismantle all propaganda materials aimed at enticing opposing soldiers to defect.
South Korea has about 100 propaganda billboards along the land border. North Korea has erected 200 huge signs and drawings praising their leader and communism or denouncing the United States.
The border is dotted with loudspeakers, slogans, electronic displays, posters and religious facilities.
The rapprochement comes at a sensitive time, with an international diplomatic drive under way to encourage the Stalinist North to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea has a 1.1 million-strong force against South Korea's 690,000 troops, who are backed by 37,000 US soldiers.
The United States, however, plans to reduce its troop levels on the peninsula and move US forces away from the border to locations south of Seoul. The plans have triggered security jitters in South Korea.
----
Davos forum urges US to soften stand on North Korea
SEOUL (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614092606.8jg7vowv.html
The United States was urged at an international forum Monday to support a plan to supply energy to North Korea in return for a nuclear freeze at the next round of six-party talks in Beijing.
The nuclear crisis is the "greatest security challenge facing the world," New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson told a regional session of the World Economic Forum here.
He said the peace process that has involved two rounds of six-party talks so far in the Chinese capital was deadlocked and in danger of failure.
The next round, expected in Bejing within weeks, was "critical," he said at a plenary session of the forum.
"I believe that if these talks do not show progress ... that a window of peace will be lost," said the former Clinton administration official and frequent envoy to North Korea.
South Korea has proposed providing electricty to the power-starved Stalinist country in return for a freeze of its plutonium-producing nuclear facilities.
Washington has refused to reward North Korea unless it dismantles all its nuclear programmes, including an alleged uranium-based scheme.
Richardson said the talks should focus on the plutonium issue at first in a step-by-step process that should also include one-on-one talks between Washington and Pyongyang. The United States has ruled out bilateral meetings so far.
Former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung -- who four years ago launched a new era of reconciliation with North Korea at a summit in Pyongyang -- said Washington should be prepared to take parallel steps to meet North Korean demands for a security guarantee and an end to economic sanctions.
"Because there is distrust between the two countries, both countries must act simultaneously or in parallel," sid Kim.
UN envoy Maurice Strong, who has just visited North Korea, said it was ready to give up its nuclar weapons under pressure from China.
"They now understand that they will not get their nuclear capability accepted by the international community in the way that India and Pakistan did," he said.
"They have accepted that they need to dismantle their nuclear capability."
But North Koreans will not do so unless the price is right, including a security guarantee and economic help, the UN envoy said.
The Seoul forum is working out an agenda for Asia's future economic growth which can be discussed at the annual WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
----
U.S., Japan, S.Korea Discuss N.Korea Nuclear Program
Reuters
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41405-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States held talks on Monday with Japan and South Korea on North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program and said it hoped to have broader six-way talks on the matter next week.
"Our objective in these talks is to coordinate our positions on the next session of the six-party working group and plenary, which may take place during the week of June 21st," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"We do understand that China is consulting with North Korea to confirm that timing, and we would look to see an announcement soon," the spokesman told reporters, referring to what would be a third round of six-way talks expected to begin on June 23.
The two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China have met in Beijing twice at senior levels without reaching an agreement on dismantling the North's suspected nuclear arms programs.
Washington has insisted Pyongyang agree to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its programs.
The crisis over the secretive, Communist nation's atomic ambitions began in October, 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted to a uranium enrichment program to develop nuclear weapons.
-------- terrorism
Smarter technology for port defense
Livermore lab's neutron beam would expose atomic bombs in ship cargo
Keay Davidson,
San Francisco Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/14/MNG9H75MJG1.DTL
It would be the ultimate Trojan Horse: a nuclear weapon smuggled into the United States inside an innocent-looking cargo container, like those stacked atop freighters that routinely slip under the Golden Gate Bridge.
To prevent terrorists from smuggling atomic bombs into the ports of Oakland, Los Angeles-Long Beach, New York or other U.S. harbors, Bay Area scientists are developing a unique kind of bomb detector this summer that uses subatomic particles called neutrons to detect highly enriched uranium or plutonium. They hope it'll be ready for scanning imported cargo containers as early as 2007.
Just as a doctor uses an X-ray machine to scan a patient's insides, the bomb-detector under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory would scan a cargo container for a hidden nuclear device. The Department of Homeland Security is spending $4 million on the project this year alone.
Each year, aboard transoceanic freighters, 6 million of these truck-size cargo containers arrive at U.S. ports packed with Japanese DVD players, French wines, Chinese circuit boards and other foreign goods.
Even before Sept. 11, U.S. security officials feared that terrorists might hide a nuclear weapon or "dirty bomb" inside a cargo container. A worst- case result might resemble that portrayed in the 2002 film "Sum of All Fears" starring Ben Affleck: Terrorists hide a stolen nuke inside a soft-drink machine and sneak it into Baltimore. The bomb explodes, vaporizing much of the city.
"If you wanted to do the one thing that would damage the whole fabric of our society, this is probably the one," said Eric Norman of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's nuclear astrophysics division, a key player in the project.
An August 2003 report from Livermore, titled "Detection of Special Nuclear Material in Cargo Containers Using Neutron Interrogation," states:
"The rate of container arrivals at U.S. ports is expected to increase dramatically over the coming decade. The West Coast ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach, Oakland and Seattle are currently processing 11,000 containers per day, or eight per minute on a 24/7 basis," says the report, authored by Livermore nuclear physicist Dennis Slaughter and 12 colleagues.
"Because successful delivery of just one such weapon can have catastrophic consequences it is essential that all cargo containers entering the U.S. be screened with an extremely high probability of detecting any (bomb) hidden within. The cost of failure is very high," adds the unclassified report.
Ordinary X-ray scanners, like those in airports, can't reliably detect nuclear or fissionable materials transported in the cargo containers. That's because of the cargo containers' sheer mass: they weigh up to 27 tons, says Stan Prussin, an applied nuclear chemist at UC Berkeley and a central participant in the Livermore project. The containers' mass and contents -- everything from Korean tennis shoes to Brazilian nuts to Russian vodka -- provides a tremendous amount of shielding, which could frustrate ordinary scanners.
So this month, a team of about 20 investigators from Lawrence Livermore, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley hope to begin calibration tests on a crude prototype of the nuke-detector inside a barn-size, mundane-looking manufacturing building at Livermore.
Later in the summer, if all goes well, they'll begin testing the ability of the device to detect a small sample of highly enriched uranium concealed inside a simulated cargo container. The container will be filled with sheets of plywood, aluminum, steel and other material, to simulate materials that terrorists might use to shield a bomb from detection.
In theory, the Livermore detector would work by firing a neutron beam through a cargo container as it rolls along a conveyor belt between two large, flat arrays of detectors. (The scientists jokingly call it a "nuclear car wash. ") The high-speed neutrons would split atoms within concealed uranium or plutonium. Bursting like eggs, the atoms would then expose their presence by emitting their own telltale electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays) and neutrons, which could be sensed by the detector arrays.
Scientists want to be able to detect at least 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of uranium or 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of plutonium. Those amounts are significantly less than is required to make a bomb. Security experts fear that some terrorists, rather than smuggling a fully operational bomb all at once, might try to evade security scanners by bringing fissionable materials into the country in small chunks, then assembling the bomb inside the United States.
Although the detector sounds pretty simple, it isn't. Scientists face a number of technical headaches, including:
-- Figuring out how to detect enriched uranium or plutonium even if terrorists have shielded the materials with lead, which absorbs gamma rays, or with materials rich in hydrogen (such as water, wax or wood), which absorb neutrons.
-- Figuring out how to discern the signal of a bomb against the background noise of natural radioactivity in the environment. A special source of concern is cosmic rays: These high-speed, electrically charged particles routinely fall to Earth from outer space. (As you read this passage, they're zipping harmlessly through your body like bullets through fog.)
The trouble is, bomb-detectors could be confused by the steady "noise" of cosmic rays as they plunge to Earth. To determine how much cosmic rays might confuse a nuclear detector, the scientists have hired a physics student to spend part of this summer measuring the cosmic-ray intensity in the Bay Area.
In interviews and an internal Livermore report, the scientists caution that not all the challenges are technical in nature. Rather, some of the questions are political, diplomatic, economic -- even moral. For example:
-- Can the scanner scan an entire cargo container reliably enough and fast enough (ideally, within one minute) to avoid delaying shipments? The detector must have an extremely low rate of false alarms. Otherwise, repeated scares could paralyze commerce, especially if it results in unnecessary public panic.
-- Illegal immigrants sometimes sneak into the United States by hiding inside cargo containers. Can the scientists develop a bomb-detector that emits neutrons, and possibly gamma rays, intense enough to detect fissionable materials without being severe enough to harm human stowaways?
-- The scanner's neutrons would temporarily "radioactivate" -- make radioactive, by shattering an atom so that it gushes its energy and particles into the environment -- materials inside the cargo container, including food. Would importers of French wines and other products tolerate even brief radioactivation of their shipments? And would consumers later shun such products, even after their radioactivity has decayed to a safe level?
Based on what Slaughter calls "back-of-the-envelope" calculations, he is "very confident" that the radioactivity would be short-lived and normally no more dangerous than natural background radioactivity in plants and food. However, he acknowledges that some consumers might not be reassured by such calculations.
-- Should the U.S. demand the right to install and use the nuclear bomb- detectors at foreign ports of embarkation, before the ships set sail for the United States? There's a potential diplomatic downside: Other countries might resent the continual presence of U.S. inspectors who are empowered to delay and scan suspicious-looking cargo containers. "How likely is (a terrorist nuclear attack) to happen? I have no idea," says Berkeley's Norman. "But in terms of what might happen, it's extremely scary, and we have to do everything we can to prevent such a thing from happening. I look out my window at the Port of Oakland, and you see how many cargo containers come in every day."
E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.
--------
Manufacturing Terrorism
antiwar.com
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1050
Led by the United States, global "defense" spending has risen 18 percent since 2001, presumably justified by an increase in global terrorism. According to a U.S. congressional study, terrorism has risen 35 percent since 2001. The increase in spending has coincided with an increase in terrorism. With every dollar, the U.S., which accounts for 47 per cent of the spending, manufactures new terrorists, which will, in turn, lead to demands for increased defense spending.
The Iraq war and occupation certainly led to the hideous Madrid train bombing. The astute U.S. reaction was to increase its military presence in Iraq. U.S. troop levels in Iraq, originally scheduled to decrease to 105,000 by this summer, are now going to be at 145,000, with several Army units having their tours extended 90 days. The Pentagon has pulled 3,600 troops out of South Korea to help in Iraq. Since U.S. troops in enemy territory provoked North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, removing the provocative troops would be a positive and necessary step toward a negotiated disarmament between the North and South - but sending the troops to the Iraqi quagmire is not what libertarians had in mind.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the current morass was predicted in many quarters. In a policy study for the Cato Institute two days after the attacks, Charles V. Peña wrote,
But how exactly will increased defense spending on tanks, airplanes, and ships remedy the situation?
The answer is that it won't. To be sure, military action is the appropriate response to the heinous terrorist acts committed on American soil. But a larger military would not have prevented that devastating tragedy. And it won't prevent future terrorist actions. Why?
Because terrorists are not traditional adversaries deterred by traditional military force. If that was the case, then terrorism should not exist in Israel. The Israeli military is bigger and better equipped than any of the Palestinian terrorist groups, yet terrorism persists. So the answer is not that simple. Terrorism - by its nature - is not traditional warfare. Terrorists pick and choose the times and places of their attacks, and they are not on military battlefields. Terrorists do not wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from their adversary. In other words, terrorists are the antithesis of the kind of enemy that armed services are designed and trained to fight.
Like trying to swat a fly with a machine-gun, fighting terrorism with massive military force is inappropriate and destructive, leading to the creation of more fanatics willing to sacrifice anything for their cause. As Justin Raimondo put it on September 28, 2001,
The interventionist response to the massacre of September 11 is to launch a massacre of our own, albeit on a much larger scale. Theirs is an agenda of military conquest, to go in and stay in - to spread "democracy" throughout the Middle East, to impose it by force of arms - and, coincidentally, make the world safe for Israel. On the other hand, the anti-interventionist response is quite different: it is roughly congruent with Powell's arguments, as expressed to date, that we need to go in, kill 'em, and leave - without playing into Osama bin Laden's hands. For the radical Islamists would like nothing better than a full-scale invasion of the Middle East, as recommended by [Bill] Kristol - all the better to spread his jihad far and wide.
And in a column on September 14, 2001, Raimondo on how to stop terrorism:
There is one and only one way to stop this sort of terrorism, and that is to keep out of the affairs of other nations. We should be neither pro-Israel, nor anti-Israel; neither pro-Albanian, nor anti-Albanian; neither pro-Taiwan, nor anti-Taiwan. Our foreign policy should consist of the following principle, one handed down to us by the Founders: entangling alliances with none, free trade with all. It is a foreign policy that puts America first - not Israel, not Kosovo, not Taiwan, not "human rights," nor "democracy," but America's interests, narrowly conceived. Failing that, we reap the whirlwind.
The results of increased defense spending were predicted long ago by libertarians here and at Cato, Old Right conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Old Left liberals such as Alexander Cockburn. President Bush didn't listen to these people; instead he opened his ears to superhawk Paul Wolfowitz, the Office of Special Plans and other war-crazy neocons.
What has increased defense spending (i.e., war, occupation, regime change, etc.) given us? Not surprisingly, more terrorism.
Understanding the enemy, while not condoning his actions or agreeing with his views, is the first step toward achieving peace. Nations like Britain and the U.S. don't really have to do anything to fight terrorism; they only have to stop doing things that provoke terrorist responses. Stop the flow of money to Israel, end the occupation of Iraq, pull troops from foreign soil, close foreign bases, trade freely with every country in the world. The moral crusade to end terrorism can only begin with a realistic assessment of its cause. The U.S. must put down the machine gun and try a flyswatter for a change.
-----
Dirty Bomb - Not
WorldNetDaily
by Gordon Prather
June 14, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/prather.php?articleid=2810
Jose Padilla was arrested two years ago at O'Hare International Airport by the FBI on a "material witness" warrant. Padilla was alleged to have met with senior al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, received training in the use of high explosives, and sent back to the United States "to reconnoiter potential sites" for detonating a radiological dispersal device - sometimes referred to as a "dirty bomb."
A month later, President Bush accepted the recommendations of Attorney General Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Padilla - a U.S. citizen - be treated as an "enemy combatant." So Padilla has been held in solitary confinement in a military prison ever since.
Because the issue of Padilla's confinement is now before the Supreme Court, Deputy Attorney General Comey decided he'd better "brief" the rest of us in on what military interrogators have gotten their imprisoned "enemy combatant" to reveal about his "dirty bomb" intentions.
According to Comey, Padilla, while in Afghanistan, had suggested to his al-Qaeda "handler," Abu Zubaida, that they construct a real nuke, using "plans" Padilla had found on the internet. Zubaida didn't think Padilla - or anyone else in al-Qaeda - was capable of doing that. However, he did think they might be able to construct a "dirty bomb."
According to Comey, the al-Qaeda radiological dispersal device would have consisted of uranium wrapped with explosives.
Now, if uranium is actually the "radiological agent" that Zubaida suggested be used, then he doesn't know diddley-squat about nukes, dirty or otherwise.
And, apparently, Comey doesn't, either.
In fact, if Padilla had proposed to use lead, rather than uranium, his "dirty bomb" would have made a bigger mess.
You see, uranium is only weakly radioactive, emitting principally alpha particles, which won't even penetrate rubber gloves. True, uranium is a heavy metal, but unlike lead, is not a "bone seeker." In fact, if ingested in any form other than a fine aerosol, it passes right through the body.
Two years ago, before Comey revealed what radiological agent Padilla intended to use, the dirty bomb "experts" at the Federation of American Scientists decided to scare the pants off you soccer moms.
The FAS "dirty bomb" was a "coffee jar" containing about a thousand curies of a true radiological material such as Cobalt-60. That's about the radiological source-strength of a medical radio-therapy unit used to irradiate cancer patients.
"A successful bomb would have to be designed with great sophistication, first to break open the 'coffee jar,' then to gradually heat the radioactive source so that it vaporized, and finally to scatter it to the winds."
Sophistication?
Padilla?
Actually, the FAS scenario sounds like the 1986 Chernobyl accident. A graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor at Chernobyl was being deliberately operated in a zone where the reactor was known to be unstable. The operators lost control, the reactor ran away, melting the core, setting the graphite moderator on fire and vaporizing the coolant, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen gases. The fire then ignited the hydrogen-oxygen gas mixture, which exploded, blowing the roof off the reactor building.
About a hundred million curies of radioactivity was spread over a wide area by invisible gases and thick black smoke. The fire burned for 10 days. Downwind, Soviet citizens could see the smoke and the sooty "fallout." But there was no terror, no panic. In fact, one of the other power plants at Chernobyl continued to operate throughout the entire ordeal.
Many of those downwind, who were forced to evacuate, didn't want to go. And except for an increase during the first several years after 1986 of thyroid cancer in small children, there has been no significant increase in cancer incidence among the downwind population.
But the FAS apparently scared some of you. So, we and the Russians - in cooperation with the IAEA - have decided to help other countries enhance their own radiological safeguards and physical security. There are estimated to be more than 10,000 medical radiotherapy units and 12,000 industrial radiographic units in operation, worldwide.
Thieves - not terrorists - have stolen several medical radiotherapy units - which weigh about a ton - and sold them as scrap metal.
In the worst incident - in 1987 in Brazil - the thieves removed the highly radioactive source from the shielded unit. Result? Five persons died within days and others got life-threatening doses of radiation.
Hence, the FAS thousand-curie dirty-bomb scenario results in a dead dirty-bomber and very little terror.
But, Padilla could survive his micro-curie uranium scenario. That is, if he wore rubber gloves.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- missouri
Bond to offer amendment to help former Mallinckrodt workers
June 14, 2004
St. Louis Business Journal
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2004/06/14/daily44.html?jst=b_ln_hl
U.S. Sen. Kit Bond plans to offer an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would allow some former Mallinckrodt workers to get federal compensation for medical costs tied to factory-related illnesses.
The amendment would make about 3,500 former workers who have one of 22 specific types of cancer to receive a "Special Exposure Cohort" designation that would allow workers at the St. Louis and Weldon Spring sites to be eligible for expedited compensation of $150,000.
Bond said the workers' circumstances are similar to sites that have already received that designation and also processed plutonium and involved the loss or destruction of records.
Hazelwood-based Mallinckrodt is now a division of Tyco Healthcare.
-------- tennessee
Waste takes long way home
June 14, 2004
Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/061404/new_20040614016.shtml
MAYOR: 'I just have a terrible, terrible time understanding how they can justify appeasing Oak Ridge and bringing it the long way around through Oliver Springs.'
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
When it comes to shipments of waste cylinders, Oak Ridge's loss is apparently Oliver Springs' and Clinton's gain, according to at least one official.
Oliver Springs Mayor Ed Kelley confirmed that shipments of depleted uranium hexafluoride cylinders have been coming through his town, hitting Highway 61 to Clinton and ending up on Interstate 75 to Ohio. He also noted that one of the trucks hauling the material was involved in a minor traffic accident last month.
On the other hand, Clinton Mayor Wimp Shoopman said he was unaware that the waste was being shipped through his city.
The depleted uranium hexafluoride in question is a byproduct of an operation where uranium was ultimately processed into nuclear reactor fuel and weapons-grade material. Stored in cylinders at the Oak Ridge K-25 site, the material is being shipped to Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio.
Transport of the waste cylinders was met with a little controversy last year when it appeared the material would be hauled through the city of Oak Ridge. Though DOE and its cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., have declined to disclose transport routes, some officials have suggested that Oak Ridge Turnpike was never considered for use in transporting the material to Clinton and I-75.
"I just have a terrible, terrible time understanding how they can justify appeasing Oak Ridge and bringing it the long way around through Oliver Springs," said Kelley, who added the shipments come out of K-25 and hit Blair Road en route to Oliver Springs.
The Oliver Springs mayor said the early morning waste shipments stopped at least three times at the school crossing in front of Norwood schools. Kelley also said at least one of the transport trucks has been involved in a traffic accident.
A report filed by Oliver Springs Police Officer Tim Elmore indicates a vehicle ran into one of the trucks while it was preparing to turn onto Highway 61 to go to Clinton. The driver of the cylinder truck was not at fault, and neither the transport truck nor its load was reportedly damaged.
Kelley said DOE had a "screaming fit" because Oliver Springs officials released the truck involved in the accident so it could proceed to its destination.
"We didn't have any idea what we were supposed to do," Kelley said.
Both DOE spokesman Walter Perry and Bechtel Jacobs spokesman Dennis Hill said they were unaware of any other accidents involving the cylinder transport trucks. They also declined to confirm the transport route mention by Kelley or comment on whether multiple routes are being utilized.
Hill said more than 700 cylinders have been shipped to date, with about 5,200 remaining to be transported to Portsmouth. The goal is to have all of the cylinders out of Oak Ridge by the end of fiscal year 2005.
"The frequency and size of individual shipments is security sensitive information," Hill said. "Because of that, we don't want people to have enough information to calculate how many or how often cylinders are shipped."
With more shipments ahead, Kelley has sent a letter to DOE requesting that the federal agency make some kind of payment to Oliver Springs because the "large and heavy trucks" will be using roads through the town. The mayor said the payments would be used to maintain and upgrade streets in addition to various other projects to improve the town.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Military Alters Afghan Prison Procedures
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
Jun 14,
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_US_PRISONER_ABUSE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. military promised Monday to improve its prison regime in Afghanistan after a top general inspected the network of 20 secretive jails, where allegations of abuse include the deaths of at least three detainees.
The military refused to say how procedures will be changed at the jails - amid accounts from former prisoners of hoodings, beatings and sexual abuse. But a spokesman promised "comprehensive" information on the general's findings would be made public within weeks.
Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, urged commanders to release the findings to convince Afghans - shocked by graphic pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq - that abuse in Afghanistan was not widespread.
"We're not satisfied, but hope all the results of the review will be made public, or at least shared with the Afghan government and the human rights commission," he said.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, ordered the prison review last month. He pledged rapid action if faults were found, but said details of techniques used on suspects will remain classified.
Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby, Barno's deputy operational chief, visited all the U.S. holding facilities, most of them at bases in the south and east where American troops are still battling - and detaining - Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said some changes were being implemented at the jails based on Jacoby's interim findings.
"We're taking action on those (findings) as they come forward, evaluating them, implementing some of them, deferring some of them and planning some of the rest of them out," he told a news conference in Kabul.
Mansager said the final report will be complete within days, and some findings will be made public by early July.
"It'll come out as a consolidated, cohesive and comprehensive package," Mansager said.
Of the three confirmed detainee deaths in Afghanistan, two were at the main U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, in December 2002. Both were ruled homicides after autopsies found the men had died from "blunt-force injuries."
The CIA is investigating the death of another detainee in eastern Afghanistan in June 2003.
The military says it already made a raft of changes to its prison regime as a result of the two Bagram deaths, but it has not announced any results of its criminal investigations.
It is also probing allegations of mistreatment brought by two former detainees last month. One, an Afghan police colonel, told The Associated Press he was beaten, stripped naked and sexually abused while in U.S. custody for nearly 40 days last year in Gardez, Kandahar and Bagram.
The allegations are similar to those against several U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and were submitted in a complaint to the Afghan rights commission in August 2003, well before the Iraqi cases became public. The military says some 2,000 prisoners have been held at the jails since U.S. troops entered Afghanistan in late 2001 to topple the Taliban regime for granting sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
Those suspected of fighting for the Taliban or al-Qaida are deemed "illegal combatants" rather than prisoners of war, and denied the full protection of the Geneva Conventions. Many have been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for further questioning.
Mansager said about 390 people are in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, and 90 others were recently detained in southern Zabul province, where fierce fighting since May 25 has killed more than 80 militants.
Mansager said all prisoners would be treated with "dignity and respect." Some may be released after initial questioning, while those identified as enemy fighters will be transferred to Bagram, he said.
The U.S. military announced last week it would allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit its holding facility in the main southern city of Kandahar. It has previously allowed the group access only to its main jail at Bagram.
But Nadery said Barno, the U.S. military chief, had still not responded to a letter sent several weeks ago asking for the Afghan rights commission to have access to prisoners.
--------
Karzai's plan to utilize Taliban draws ire
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By John Jennings
June 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040614-123631-3741r.htm
GHAZNI, Afghanistan - Outside the commander's guest room, soldiers crouched around a paperback-sized shortwave radio in the twilight, listening to a Western news service's Persian-language broadcast.
The report described a campaign trip by President Hamid Karzai to his hometown, Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan.
During the late April visit, the security-conscious Mr. Karzai, who narrowly escaped assassination there in 2002, inspected highway construction projects - from a helicopter.
The president, who visits Washington this week, also made a speech in which he invited former Taliban militants to join his government, suggesting that only "about 150" top-ranking leaders closest to al Qaeda would be considered unacceptable.
He elaborated in an interview with CNN yesterday:
"With regard to the former Taliban, we want to bring back those Taliban that are not criminals. They're from Afghanistan. They should come back to this country and live a normal life. They should come back away from Pakistan. They should come and stay in Afghanistan. We want normalcy to return to Afghanistan."
In response to Mr. Karzai's latest initiative, the commander - a senior provincial security official - shook his head in disgust.
"Isn't that a half-baked policy?" he said. "We fought to drive out those ignorant [people] and their Pakistani and Arab masters. Now the government is groveling and inviting them back."
Mr. Karzai's effort to bring militants into the fold has not been limited to the Taliban. He also has courted officials of the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) faction, whose 1992-95 artillery bombardments damaged much of Kabul and killed about 40,000 noncombatants.
In 2002, HIA chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar allied himself with Taliban remnants and is now thought to be hiding in remote mountains along the Pakistani border.
A delegation of midranking HIA officials, purportedly at odds with Hekmatyar, visited Kabul in mid-May at Mr. Karzai's invitation to discuss participation in the government after elections scheduled for September. But some security officials are questioning the wisdom of cooperating with the group.
"There's no way of knowing whether they have really had a change of heart," said a senior intelligence official in Kandahar.
"It's more likely Hekmatyar is simply pursuing a dual approach, fighting alongside the Taliban in case they get the military upper hand, and meanwhile infiltrating his officials into the government to keep that [political] option open."
"Like the [Irish Republican Army's] 'hard men,' " says David Isby, author of an overview of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan titled "War in a Distant Country," Hekmatyar's followers "will keep their guns, while trying to get representatives elected to parliament."
Police in the Afghan city of Kunduz said yesterday there were signs that Hekmatyar followers were involved in the killing of 11 Chinese construction workers as they slept last week.
Mr. Karzai, who enjoys the broad backing of Washington and the United Nations, faces no serious opposition in his bid for another term as president in September elections, assuming a credible vote can be held in all parts of the country.
But with little debate, he has assumed autocratic prerogatives such as appointing provincial governors from Kabul instead of allowing local elections.
His latest appointments have included a former HIA commander, Bashir Baghlani, in southwestern Farah province, and a former Taliban collaborator, Kheyal Mohammad, in southeastern Zabul.
The Ghazni official's remarks reflect alarm among Afghans who played the key role in defeating the Taliban and bringing Mr. Karzai to power - the leaders and grass-roots supporters of the Northern Alliance.
Most of its members spent more than two decades battling Soviet, Pakistani and Arab intruders and the Afghans who worked with them. Most still call themselves mujahideen, or holy warriors - just as they did in the 1980s when the enemy was the Red Army.
Many now hold official posts, especially in the security forces, throughout the countryside under Mr. Karzai's provincial governors.
Concern that former Taliban members and their supporters will find their way back into positions of influence is sharpest among officials from the non-Pashtun ethnic groups, who make up 60 percent of the Afghan population.
But even among Pashtuns - the southern- and eastern-based ethnic group from which the Taliban drew its members - there are similar qualms. Most Afghan officials spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing their wariness about offending Mr. Karzai's backers in Washington.
Ghazni's arid high plains are broken occasionally by lava ridges and green croplands. The outlying districts are predominantly Pashtun, but Ghazni city is dominated by Persian-speaking Hazaras and Tajiks and there are many Hazara villages in the countryside as well.
Ghazni is also a front-line province in Afghanistan's antiterror campaign, adjacent to Pakistani border areas where U.S. and Afghan troops clash regularly with militants.
"[The Taliban] have really stepped up their activities during the last few weeks," said one provincial security official, speculating that the militants are trying to disrupt voter registration for the September elections.
Backers of the Northern Alliance say they are not surprised to see Mr. Karzai reaching out to the Taliban militants, noting that the movement was born in his hometown.
Although it was principally Northern Alliance forces, backed by U.S. air support, that overthrew the militants in 2001, Cabinet members such as Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani repeatedly have branded them "war criminals" and said they are "as bad as the Taliban."
Mr. Ghani and many other members of Mr. Karzai's inner circle are sons of the feudal Pashtun aristocracy that ran Afghanistan before the communist takeover in 1978.
"Hostility to the Northern Alliance is widespread among ... returning exiles, who are finding they have limited power on the ground," said Mr. Isby, the Afghanistan specialist.
Northern Alliance members are stung by charges from the new technocrats in Kabul accusing them of "warlordism" and war crimes.
They challenge the now-accepted wisdom among Kabul-based diplomats and aid workers that they ruled irresponsibly after driving out the Soviets in 1989.
Anthony Davis, who has reported from Afghanistan for Time magazine, Jane's Defense Weekly and others since the early 1980s, has described as a "pervasive myth" that the Taliban came to power because of "lawlessness and anarchy" in the areas it conquered.
"Administration, services and schooling in these regions were far in advance of anything delivered by the Taliban, [whose] energies were focused almost exclusively on war," he wrote.
The Taliban militants, he adds, "fought their way into regions that were at peace and in many instances recognized as being relatively well-administered."
By the end of last month, news reports say, Mr. Karzai was scrambling to mollify Northern Alliance leaders upset at his overtures to the Taliban. Some reports said he had promised key ministries to Northern Alliance members in return for supporting his election bid.
This, in turn, dismayed the same U.N. election consultants and Kabul-based diplomats who had been largely silent over Mr. Karzai's overtures to the Taliban remnants.
Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, they echoed the complaints of technocrats in the government that the meetings with Northern Alliance officials involved "backroom" deals and would promote public cynicism by unjustly rewarding armed warlords.
Northern Alliance loyalists retorted that it was the technocrats who were trying to coax the worst thugs of all - former Taliban and Hekmatyar followers - to join the government.
As for the armed power of the regional warlords, they noted, the entire populace of Afghanistan is heavily armed.
The real issue, argued Mohammad Es'Haq - a confidant of late anti-Soviet and later anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, is that Mr. Karzai is struggling to extend his authority and win re-election with no popular base of his own.
"Local leaders can't be imposed on the people. They emerge and are tested in times of crisis," said Mr. Es'Haq, who was director of state-run Kabul Radio and Television until December.
"The [Northern Alliance] mujahideen will remain leaders in their communities for a long time, because of historic, linguistic and ethnic ties, and the sense of security they project at a time when the people are not very sure about the future."
-------
Afghan President Ready for Elections
By WILLIAM C. MANN
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 5:51 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41354-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON - President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said Monday he hopes NATO will send more peacekeeping troops before September when his country is scheduled to hold its first free election.
"To fulfill the promise that we have been made, we are hoping that NATO will come to Afghanistan before the elections of September," he said at a joint news conference with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
NATO already is running the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as a reconstruction operation in the northern city of Kunduz. The alliance has pledged to expand its security operations to cities elsewhere in the war-torn country this summer.
Karzai and Rumsfeld addressed reporters beside a memorial plaque on a section of the Pentagon's western wall that marks the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building on Sept. 11, 2001, killing all 64 aboard the hijacked plane and 125 people in the building.
Karzai was scheduled to meet with President Bush on Tuesday.
Asked about the chances of capturing Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida network is blamed for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Rumsfeld said he was certain he would be caught eventually. Karzai said bin Laden was on the run and could not stay hidden indefinitely.
"Has a fugitive run forever? No, at least not in my country," he said. "We will catch him one day, sooner or later."
Karzai, who is president by vote of a loya jirga, or grand council, under traditional Afghan practice, is running for the presidency in the September election against a number of challengers.
He said he was satisfied that the U.S. government has remained focused on its commitment to help Afghanistan establish a national government and to rebuild from years of war.
"We would not be having a specific request for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan," he said. "The United States is already busy in Afghanistan helping us in reconstruction and helping us fight terrorism and helping us secure our borders."
The United States in recent months has increased its force in Afghanistan, which now stands at about 20,000 troops.
In an impromptu quip, Karzai seemed to hint at being weary of the heavy U.S. military presence in his country. As a helicopter flew overhead, prompting Karzai to interrupt his opening remarks, he said with a smile while pointing to the sky, "You see that too often in Afghanistan."
-------- africa
Sudan Hinders Aid Groups Going to Darfur -UN
Reuters
Monday, June 14, 2004
By Evelyn Leopold
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41445-2004Jun14.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sudan is blocking aid groups from getting food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people in its western Darfur region, despite promises to the contrary, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator, said most U.N. relief groups had access, but the world body also relied on partnerships with non-governmental organizations, which face bureaucratic and procedural obstacles.
"Some ministers are helping us, but some of their subordinates are sabotaging us," he told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council on civilians in war zones.
Groups such as Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) are experiencing undue delays in getting visas and bringing in equipment, medicine and food.
For example, Egeland said, radios needed for emergency communications were stripped from vehicles because Sudanese authorities believed they were a security liability.
"If they have no radio, they cannot go into Darfur," he said. "They see this as a security risk for the government. We see it as a security necessity for us."
The United Nations estimates fighting in Darfur has affected more than two million people. More than half have been driven from their homes, with 130,000 fleeing into neighboring Chad to escape Arab militia that have killed, tortured and raped African villagers.
Despite a cease-fire, Egeland said, "We are still seeing grown men attacking defenseless woman and children with their automatic rifles," he said. Some U.N. officials have accused Sudanese troops of acting in concert with the militia, a charge Khartoum has denied.
Egeland estimated that 800,000 people would receive food rations by the end of the month and this figure would increase to 2 million by October.
But he feared epidemics would break out because water was scarce, wells were dry and health facilities were scarce.
Doctors without Borders said late in May it had 50 pending visa requests and had medical supplies impounded when they arrived by sea and not by emergency air transport.
"Even though insecurity is a factor limiting our access, bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the government of Sudan are also a critical factor in limiting the access we have," it said in a statement to the Security Council.
Egeland said Sudan was not alone in preventing access to conflict zones, which had left 10 million people in 20 nations without basic necessities. They include areas of the Central Africa Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, the northern Caucuses and northern Uganda.
And he said Somalia had almost entirely disappeared from the world's radar screen.
-------- arms
Zimbabwe reveals China arms deal
BBC
14 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3804629.stm
Zimbabwe's opposition has condemned a government decision to order fighter aircraft from China and other military equipment worth an estimated $200m.
The defence ministry confirmed it was buying defence equipment from China.
Opposition defence spokesman Giles Mutsekwa said 12 fighter jets and 100 military vehicles were being bought.
Mr Mutsekwa suggested that the move was intended to intimidate Zimbabweans ahead of parliamentary elections due to be held in March next year.
Tendering
Defence Ministry Secretary Trust Maphosa reportedly revealed the purchase during a quarterly review of the defence ministry budget in parliament.
Under questioning he also admitted tendering procedures had been breached.
He blamed this on security reasons and on an arms embargo slapped on Zimbabwe by the European Union and the United States which he said was making it difficult to find spare parts for the current fleet.
Mr Mutsekwa said he was deeply concerned that parliament had not been informed.
"We believe this is a kind of intimidatory tactic because we are going towards very crucial elections next year," he said.
"The idea is that whatever the public does, there is a possibility of it being subverted by the military," he told AFP news agency.
Zimbabwe is suffering a major economic crisis, with inflation at more than 400%, unemployment at about 70% and millions of people surviving on foreign food aid - blamed by critics on a controversial land reform programme.
--------
France, Israel to sign $150m-$200m weapons deal
Haaretz Correspondent
By Amnon Barzilai
14/06/2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/438887.html
France and Israel are expected to announce the signing of the biggest weapons deal between the two countries since the French embargo on weapons sales to Israel prior to the Six-Day War. The $150 million-$200 million deal, to be signed during the Eurosatory 2004 international exhibition for land and land-air defense that opens Monday at Villepinte, north of Paris, will formally commission Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) to sell expertise for the manufacture of drones for France's major defense industries, combat aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS).
Defense Ministry director-general Amos Yaron will participate in the ceremony marking the opening of the Israeli pavilion at the exhibition, along with the Israeli ambassador to France, Nissim Zvilli. French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie is due to visit the Israeli pavilion.
According to the contract, IAI will supply the expertise to manufacture the Eagle 1 drone, whose development is based on the strategic drone now in the service of the Israel Defense Forces. Three years ago, IAI sold this type of drone to the French army as part of cooperation with EADS. Now, with the encouragement of the French Defense Ministry, a consortium of French industries is to be established to manufacture drones in France - for, among other purposes, export to other countries.
Israeli security sources emphasize that in contrast to relations with the French Foreign Ministry, relations between the defense establishments of the two countries have been on the upswing since the mid-1990s.
A delegation of the IDF's technology and logistics wing, headed by Brigadier General Yaakov Nakash, visited France this week to meet with senior officers in the technology and logistics wing of the French army, to discuss options for various cooperative ventures.
-------
Israel, France to sign multi-million dollar defense deal
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614095205.mh6pklwr.html
France and Israel are set to sign their biggest defense deal in decades which will see the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) transfer its know-how for the manufacture of military drones, the Haaretz daily reported Monday.
The deal, worth between 150 and 200 million dollars, is the largest clinched between the two countries since France declared an embargo on Israeli weapons on the eve of the Six Day War in June 1967, the paper said.
It will be signed during the Eurosatory 2004 international exhibition for land and land-air defense that opens Monday in Villepinte, north of Paris.
Under the deal, France's combat aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) will acquire the necessary technology to mass-produce the Eagle-1 strategic drone.
Haaretz said France would manufacture the pilotless reconnaissance planes for export to foreign markets.
France had been buying the Eagle-1 from IAI under a 2001 arms sale agreement.
-------- asia
Malaysia to deploy new paramilitary marine force
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614123738.kudswh5i.html
Malaysia Monday said it would deploy a new paramilitary force in its territorial waters following international pressure to tighten security in the vital Malacca Straits.
The uniformed maritime agency would act as a law enforcement body in peacetime and a combatant during war, parliament was told by the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz.
The new agency, to be placed under armed forces jurisdiction to help defend Malaysia in an emergency, crisis or war, would begin operations next March, he said.
It was created to bring maritime enforcement under one roof to ensure a more effective and orderly control of territorial waters and to use available resources to the maximum, Nazri said.
Maritime law enforcement was currently carried out by 11 government departments and agencies involving 5,000 personnel and more than 400 vessels, Nazri was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
Malaysian waters include part of the Malacca Straits -- a narrow waterway slicing it from the Indonesian island of Sumatra -- which carries half the world's oil and a third of its trade.
The United States and neighbouring Singapore recently expressed concern about security in the piracy-prone straits, suggesting that terrorists could hijack a huge oil or gas tanker and use it as a floating bomb in a maritime version of September 11.
But Malaysia has ruled out the idea of US marines helping to patrol the waterway, saying such a move would merely provoke Islamic militants.
Defence Minister Najib Razak has said Malaysia would work more closely with the US against regional terrorism, but insisted US forces would not be allowed to join "interdiction" operations in the straits.
Malaysia, a mainly-Muslim nation, has detained more than 90 alleged Islamic militants, most of them accused of membership in the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group responsible for a series of bombings in the region.
-----
Land Mine Kills 22 Nepal Police Officers
Associated Press Writer
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA
June 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NEPAL_MAOIST_ATTACK?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- A land mine planted by suspected rebels blew up two police trucks in western Nepal, killing at least 22 officers, police said Monday.
Fifteen policemen also were wounded in the explosion in Khairekhola, a village 310 miles west of Katmandu, the capital of this Himalayan kingdom, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
The police were returning to their base after a patrol searching for rebels.
"The first truck was blown apart and most of the occupants were killed," Milan Thapa, one of the injured policeman told The Associated Press while being carried from the helicopter to the emergency room.
Thapa and others in the second truck were wounded. Rebels then opened fire on the second truck, wounding more police and sparking a gunbattle. Some rebels were shot during the fight but were carried away into the jungle, Thapa said.
A dozen of the injured were airlifted to the Birendra Army Hospital in Katmandu for treatment. There were in critical condition, doctors said.
The rebels, who say they're inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, want to replace Nepal's monarchy with a communist state. The insurgency has left more than 9,500 dead since it was launched in 1996.
Fighting between the rebels and government soldiers has escalated since the insurgents withdrew from a cease-fire last year.
--------
Japan's Parliament Boosts War Readiness
BY AUDREY McAVOY
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39836-2004Jun14.html
TOKYO - Japan's Parliament enacted legislation Monday aimed at improving the country's ability to protect itself if attacked, allowing troops to commandeer private property and boosting their cooperation with U.S. forces.
The legislation, which the upper house passed by a vote of 163 to 31, clarifies when Japanese troops can use their weapons. It also would enable the government to swiftly evacuate civilians in an emergency.
The lower house approved the measure last month.
The seven bills expand on readiness measures enacted last year. Long studied by successive ruling Liberal Democratic Party governments, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi submitted the bills amid Japan's heightened military readiness since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and growing concern about North Korea's long-range missile and nuclear capabilities.
The new legislation allows Japanese and American militaries to appropriate seaports, airports, roads, radio frequencies and other public property for military use to respond to an emergency. It also gives Japanese soldiers the right to raid ships suspected of carrying foreign military supplies.
The legislation allows the government to set aside private property for use by the U.S. military, and imposes penalties on owners who refuse to let authorities looking for such places to inspect their land.
About 50,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan under a security treaty that commits Washington to protecting its ally in the event of an attack.
Japan's pacifist constitution, written during the post-World War II U.S. occupation of Japan, renounces the use of force to resolve disputes and limits the scope of Japan's armed forces.
Reflecting the restricted role of the military, the bills spell out Japanese soldiers' right to use their weapons for self-defense and to defend others with them, including U.S. soldiers.
The package also outlines the humanitarian treatment of prisoners of war, punishment for destruction of cultural property and government coordination to protect and evacuate Japanese citizens.
-------- britain
Independent inquiry into Gulf war illnesses
James Meikle, health correspondent
Monday June 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,1238167,00.html
An unprecedented independent inquiry into whether more than 5,000 veterans of the first Gulf war became ill as a result of their service will be announced today. Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the former law lord, will conduct hearings in central London in the next few months and pose a political dilemma for the government which has refused to authorise a public inquiry for the past six years.
He is expected to invite current and former ministers, civil servants, health and scientific experts, as well as veterans and their families to establish the medical consequences of their service.
It is understood that Lord Lloyd, a law lord until 1999 and a former attorney general to the Prince of Wales, is determined to begin with no preconceptions about the veterans' claims that they were made ill, but believes an inquiry will help settle the long-standing sores between former service personnel and the Ministry of Defence.
"I was delighted to be invited to conduct an independent public inquiry into Gulf war illnesses. My intention is to open the inquiry as soon as possible and to hold hearings in public," he said yesterday.
The arrangements for an inquiry have been prepared in confidence, leaving the government little time to decide how to react. Although Lord Lloyd will not have formal legal powers, ministers will have to consider how to respond to invitations to give evidence. Refusal to cooperate could be damaging politically.
The pressure for an inquiry, first made by the Royal British Legion in 1998, has intensified since February when an eight-year legal battle by more than 2,000 veterans collapsed because there was insufficient scientific evidence to pursue their case. The Legal Services Commission which paid an estimated £4m in legal aid, withdrew further funding after reviews of research could find no specific cause for the veterans' health problems.
But their lawyers said there was no doubt many of them were ill and that their suffering was genuine. They called for an independent inquiry and urged the government to instigate a "process of conciliation" with veterans' groups.
It is thought the inquiry will be funded by anonymous independent donations by people not directly involved in the controversy.
Lord Morris of Manchester, who has been involved behind the scenes, said last night: "I hope this will clear an impasse that has been of deep concern to the ex-service community. There is no one more suited or well-qualified to lead aninquiry."
Other eminent figures are expected to help in the inquiry. They include Sir Michael Davies, former clerk to the parliaments, who chaired the management board of the House of Lords. Former presidents of the General Medical Council are also thought to be involved as medical advisers.
Many former troops who served in the Gulf during the 1991 conflict have reported symptoms such as muscle weakness, neurological symptoms, headaches, depression, skin rashes and shortage of breath.
The suggested causes have ranged from the pre-conflict injections which Lord Morris has referred to as "a veritable blitzkreig on the immune system" to pollution from burning oil wells, stress, depleted uranium, organophosphates and the effect of low-level exposure to chemical agents destroyed during and after the war.
A US congressional investigation has suggested that far more troops and civilians were exposed to chemical agents than was previously estimated by the Pentagon and the CIA.
The government has not ruled out an inquiry, but it does not regard one as useful. It has instead stressed the value of its £8.5m research programme, much of which has compared the health of veterans with those who did not serve in the Gulf.
This has failed to find any single Gulf war syndrome, although veterans are twice as likely as non-veterans to report symptoms when asked about them. Death rates are similar between the groups.
Lord Morris accepted the value of research, but said: "We are now 13 years on. None of us wants to see the afflicted and bereaved of the conflict made to suffer added strain and hurtful and demeaning indignities that preventable delay in dealing with their concerns might impose."
About 2,000 Gulf veterans have been awarded "no-fault" war pensions: the onus in these was on the MoD to prove that the illness was not linked to service in the Gulf war, and there was no need for the claimants to prove negligence. There has been pressure from MPs and peers for the government to introduce ex-gratia payments for veterans to avoid further proceedings.
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Britain's Blair Limits NATO Role in Iraq to Training
Reuters
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40823-2004Jun14.html
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday he expected any further NATO role in Iraq to be limited to training security forces, rejecting talk of a split between the United States and Europe over NATO involvement.
"I don't believe we will see further troops come through NATO," Blair told parliament. "But I hope, and if the new Iraq government wishes it, we will see assistance with training provided for the Iraqi security forces."
President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac clashed over NATO's role in Iraq at a summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations on Sea Island in Georgia last week.
Bush said he wanted NATO to be more involved in Iraq and suggested some NATO countries could send more troops. Chirac, a fervent opponent of the U.S.-led war, replied that it was not NATO's "mission" to intervene in Iraq.
Chirac remained reticent about NATO involvement even when Bush sought to clarify his earlier remarks by saying he expected NATO to train Iraqi forces rather than offer more troops.
Blair said the idea had always been that NATO soldiers would help with training. He said he did not think NATO members would oppose that role provided the request came from the Iraqi government.
"There may still be a disagreement about that, I don't know, but I don't think so," he added.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq split the alliance last year. Since then NATO has limited itself to providing logistical support for a Polish-led division in south-central Iraq as part of coalition occupation forces.
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Halliburton 'mismanaged $8bn in Iraq'
By Joshua Chaffin in Washington
June 14 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1086940210386&p=1012571727088
A Pentagon audit has found wide-spread deficiencies in the way Halliburton tracks billions of dollars of government contracts in Iraq and Kuwait, leading to "significant" overcharges.
The findings have been bolstered by graphic accounts from former employees who have told a US congressman that the company's subcontractors charged $100 (€83, £55) to launder a 15-pound bag of clothing and abandoned $85,000 trucks when they suffered flat tyres.
Critics say Halliburton, an oilfield services company formerly headed by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, has mismanaged more than $8bn of Iraq contracts. They will also raise further questions about the Pentagon's increased reliance on private contractors to handle services, from providing meals to fuel delivery.
Henry Waxman, a Democratic congressman, published the findings before a hearing on Tuesday in the House committee on government reform. Mr Waxman wrote on Monday to Tom Davis, the Republican committee chairman, that the whistleblower testimony and the findings of the Pentagon and congressional auditors "portray a company and a contracting environment that has run amok".
Mr Waxman also said the committee was neglecting its duty by not allowing the whistleblowers to testify, with the majority undecided whether they are credible. A spokesman for the committee said they were checking the whistleblowers' credibility. "We have never said 'no', just 'not yet'," he said, in reference to the possibility that they might testify before the committee.
Halliburton has been a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration since it emerged in March 2003 that the politically connected company was awarded a contract worth up to $7bn to fight oil fires in Iraq without competition. The company's Kellogg Brown & Root division has billed the Pentagon $4.5bn under a separate logistics contract for work in Iraq and Kuwait.
The latest Pentagon audit, prepared in May, follows a January report that found "systemic deficiencies" in the way the company accounted for costs in Iraq that were passed on to the US government. The new report says the company failed to monitor subcontractors adequately. "The cost impact to the government is indeterminable; however, we consider the potential impact to be significant based on the size of KBR's operations," it concludes.
KBR said in written responses to the Pentagon audit that it was in the process of upgrading accounting procedures in Iraq. The company did not immediately respond to the whistleblowers.
Marie de Young, a Halliburton logistics specialist, told Mr Waxman's office she was discouraged by managers when she raised questions about the exorbitant prices for laundry and five-star hotels. Ms de Young was told, she said, that she was providing too much information to Pentagon auditors, and concluded that the corporate culture was one of "intimidation and fear".
James Warren, a former KBR truck driver, claims he was fired a few weeks after he called Randy Harl, the division's chief executive, to complain about widespread theft and the abandoning of trucks because of simple maintenance problems.
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EADS and Dassault Aviation to cooperate on drone programs
PARIS (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614085431.763mazej.html
The European Air Defence and Space Companyand France's Dassault Aviation have signed a cooperation agreement on the development of drones, or pilotless aircraft, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced on Monday.
"EADS and Dassault have signed a founding agreement on MALE and UCAV drones, which prefigures the future of the European industry for reconnaissance and combat military aircraft," Alliot-Marie said at the opening of the week-long Eurosatory defence fair north of Paris.
Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones are designed for observation and reconnaissance missions only, while Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are designed for combat.
EADS will become a partner in a year-old program to develop a demonstration combat drone, being led by Dassault Aviation and the French government, the two groups said in a joint statement.
EADS will also be placed in charge of a new government program to develop a new prototype drone called "EuroMale", capable of carrying out lengthy and complex missions, Alliot-Marie said.
France announced in June last year the launch of a project to build prototype combat drones, and has already given 300 million euros (370 dollars) towards the building of the demonstration drone whose first flight is planned for 2008.
The Swedish and Greek governments have both announced their intention to participate in the project.
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Boeing Wins Navy Contract to Build Plane
By MATTHEW DALY
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 6:31 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41447-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON - The Boeing Co. has won a $3.9 billion contract for a new U.S. Navy patrol plane, the Pentagon said Monday.
The contract to develop and demonstrate the new plane could lead to Boeing building 109 of the aircraft, said John Lockard, senior vice president/general manager Boeing Naval Systems
"Obviously, this is a terrific day for us and our customer the U.S. Navy," he said.
Boeing was in fierce competition with Lockheed Martin for the contract for the multimission marine planes, which will be used to hunt submarines, maritime patrol and other functions.
Boeing's entry is based on converting its popular 737 commercial jet for military use.
Under the contract, Boeing and its subcontractors - engine-maker CFM International, Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co. and Smiths Aerospace - will produce seven test aircraft. Plans eventually call for the Navy to replace its aging fleet of 223 P-3 Orion aircraft with 109 of the new planes.
Aerospace analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research called it Boeing's biggest contract victory this year, even though the planes will contribute only a small percentage to company revenues and estimates of Boeing's earnings are unlikely to be altered. The contract should boost production of the 737 line by about 5 percent, he estimated.
"It's a great win and it'll go for many years, as long as those planes are alive, and that's probably 40 years from now," Nisbet said.
Lockheed Martin had based its proposal on an extensive upgrade of its propeller-driven P-3, long the Navy's primary patrol plane.
The Navy's decision comes as Boeing is waiting to hear whether it will be able to move forward with its deal to supply 100 airborne tankers to the U.S. Air Force, based on a conversion of its 767 passenger jet.
Taken together, the contracts could mean billions of dollars for Boeing, at a time when its commercial airplane division badly needs the business.
"I'm so proud that the Navy has decided that Boeing is the company to build this new plane, which is so vital to our long-term safety and security," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said Boeing's entry showed greater range and speed than the Lockheed Martin model.
Boeing shares rose 8 cents to close at $48.83 on the New York Stock Exchange before the contract news. They gained 90 cents, nearly 2 percent, in the extended session.
On the Net:
Boeing: www.boeing.com
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Contracts Awarded States News Service
Monday, June 14, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39352-2004Jun13?language=printer
Walsh/Davis Joint Venture of Washington won a $28.53 million contract from the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service for the construction of a building.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Baltimore won an $18.49 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for design agent engineering services in support of the MK41 vertical launching system.
Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems Inc. of Bethesda won a $16.58 million contract from the Air Force Materiel Command for materials for the C-130 Pakistan program.
Ashbury International Group Inc. of Sterling won a $13.03 million contract from the Army for Laser Target Locator Systems.
Consolidated Engineering Services Inc. of Arlington won an $8.64 million contract from the Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision for maintenance and operation.
BAE Systems Applied Technologies of Rockville won a $7.48 million contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center's Aircraft Division for technical and engineering services to support the development, procurement, integration, testing, installation and certification of shipboard communication systems.
EarthData International of Frederick won a $7.35 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for Ortho-rectified Imagery and Digital Elevation Model data sets and derived imagery products from GeoSAR and/or ISTAR Remote Sensing and Mapping Systems.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $1.6 million contract from the Air Force Materiel Command for radar systems.
Science Applications International Corp. of McLean won a $752,456 contract from the Air Force Materiel Command to develop directed energy weapons.
Avtec Systems Inc. of Chantilly won a $509,780 contract from NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center for furniture.
Phoenix Contracting Services Inc. of Baltimore won a $373,000 contract from the Veterans Affairs Department to replace roofs.
Limitorque Corp. of Lynchburg won a $338,864 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for motor units.
Dynamic Aviation Group Inc. of Bridgewater, Va., won a contract valued at up to $312,288 from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for aircraft services to support the deployment of the Airborne UV-Dial Ozone Lidar in the New England Air Quality Study.
Kop Flex of Hanover, Md., won a $282,460 contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center to refurbish high-speed coupling shafts.
Science Applications International Corp. of McLean won a $258,896 contract from the Air Force Materiel Command to develop directed energy weapons.
Modern Technology Solutions Inc. of Alexandria won a $243,413 contract from the Air Force Rome Research Laboratory for operational analysis for advanced sensor technology.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Charlottesville won a $151,965 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for ring laser gyros.
Peake Printers Inc. of Cheverly won a $145,477 contract from the Government Printing Office for entrance counseling guides for direct loan borrowers.
Rockwell Collins of White Marsh won a $134,650 contract from the Naval Surface warfare Center for microwave receivers and display digitizers.
Logistics Solutions Group Inc. of Hopewell won a contract valued at up to $125,000 from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for professional, administrative and management support services.
Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly won a $122,914 contract from the Air Force Space Command for IBM laptops.
Cartridge Technologies Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $114,677 contract from the Navy's Military Sealift Command for printer maintenance services.
Schmitz Press of Sparks, Md., won a $114,441 contract from the Government Printing Office for a reference guide for Medicare physician and supplier billers.
IQuest Solutions Inc. of Rockville won a $109,760 contract from the Department Department for AppDetective for Oracle.
East Coast Repair & Fabrication Inc. of Norfolk won a $107,360 contract from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration for insulation installation and overhead modifications at NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson.
LEICA Technologies Inc. of Leesburg won a $104,044 contract from the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command for miscellaneous fire control equipment.
Alphatech Inc. of Arlington won a $100,000 contract from the Air Force Materiel Command's Wright-Patterson Research Laboratory for fast detection and location of spoofing.
Intelligent Automation Inc. of Rockville won a $100,000 contract from the Air Force's Wright-Patterson Research Laboratory for ultra-wideband collision avoidance technologies.
State Electric Supply Co. of Richmond won a $99,988 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Supply Center for motor starters.
Ibide International Corp. of Woodstock won a $99,890 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense General Supply Center for storage batteries.
Sigma Research & Engineering Corp. of Lanham won a $99,819 contract from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Research Laboratory for a 3-D imaging and Polarimetric Lidar applicable to Mini/Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Robbins-Gioia LLC of Alexandria won a $98,933 contract from the Army Materiel Command for program management support.
Whipp and Bourne Inc. of Norfolk won an $81,200 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for circuit breakers.
Quality Communications Group of Baltimore won an $81,000 contract from the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt for audit report writing courses in Washington, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Kan., Arlington, Texas, Denver, Seattle and Los Angeles.
THR Enterprises of Norfolk won a $79,200 contract from the Homeland Security Department's Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit for heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment.
Engineering & Management Executives Inc. of Alexandria won a $77,562 contract from the Army Field Support Command for research and development.
VGA Inc. of Laurel won a $74,290 contract from the Veterans Affairs Department's John D. Dingell Medical Center for patient transportation.
Smiths Aerospace Inc. of Germantown won a $73,964 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for program loaders.
AAI Corp. of Hunt Valley won a $73,859 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for power supply.
Total Networks of Woodstock won a $71,210 contract from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for telephone networks and television cabling upgrades at NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson.
Johnson and Towers Baltimore Inc. of Baltimore won a $70,452 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Supply Center for electrical plug connectors.
Kaydon Ring and Seal Inc. of Baltimore won a $62,334 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Industrial Supply Center for metal seal rings.
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Va., won a $60,796 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense General Supply Center for rudder balance weights.
T Strom Inc. of Hampton, Va., won a $60,000 contract from NASA's Langley Research Center for generic transport model training.
Management Solutions of Orange, Va., won a $54,463 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense General Supply Center for special purpose electrical cable assemblies.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $53,235 contract from the Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command for specialized circuit board manufacturing machinery.
Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. of Newport News won a $50,000 contract from the Navy to install TEMPALT 2003050A on SSN 68 class submarines.
These contracts were awarded by the federal government to companies in Maryland, Virginia and the District. For more information, call States News Service at 202-628-3100, Ext. 266.
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Federal Contract Updated Computers for the B-52
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38995-2004Jun13.html
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda won a $30 million contract to deliver new computers for the aging B-52 bomber that will enable the Air Force to continue flying the plane until 2050.
The B-52 was developed in the 1950s to carry nuclear bombs over long distances. The Air Force used the bomber, with wings that span 185 feet, to drop conventional bombs during the Vietnam War. The bomber began carrying cruise missiles for attacks on far-away targets in the 1980s.
The bomber's latest computers will give it the ability to carry even more types of weapons, said Louis DeSantis, a vice president at Lockheed Martin overseeing the contract.
Lockheed Martin declined to give more details about the bomber's future capabilities, but the plane's greater flexibility is part of the Pentagon's efforts to make the military lighter and faster.
The Air Force first installed computers that helped navigate the plane and coordinate weapons in the early 1970s. The new computers designed by Lockheed are the first replacements for the bomber's original computers. Faster, more powerful and with lots more memory, two of the new computers will replace four old computers on each bomber.
The new computers will allow the aircraft to give up its reliance on the custom-built software now running the electronic insides of the bomber and instead take advantage of standardized software sold by private companies. The aircraft is also likely to be outfitted with new screens in the cockpit to display the data generated by the computers.
Lockheed has already delivered 21 computers to the Air Force for evaluation on test planes. The current contract signals that the Air Force is satisfied with the prototypes and has hired Lockheed Martin to build operational computers for working bombers. The company said it expects to begin installing the computers next year and complete the work by 2009.
Engineers at a Lockheed plant in Owego, N.Y., will build more than 180 computers for the fleet. Workers at the same plant, then owned by International Business Machines Corp., also designed the bomber's first computers.
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PROCUREMENT
White House Officials and Cheney Aide Approved Halliburton Contract in Iraq, Pentagon Says
June 14, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/14PROC.html
In the fall of 2002, in the preparations for possible war with Iraq, the Pentagon sought and received the assent of senior Bush administration officials, including the vice president's chief of staff, before hiring the Halliburton Company to develop secret plans for restoring Iraq's oil facilities, Pentagon officials have told Congressional investigators.
The newly disclosed details about Pentagon contracting do not suggest improper political pressures to direct business to Halliburton, the Houston-based company that Vice President Dick Cheney once led.
But they raise questions about assertions by Mr. Cheney and other administration officials that he knew nothing in advance of the Halliburton contracts and that the decisions were made by career procurement specialists, without involvement by senior political appointees.
Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for the vice president, would not comment on the disclosure, except to say, "We stand by our earlier statements on this matter."
As American forces stormed into Iraq in March 2003, Halliburton's role as an inside planner put it in place to receive, without open competition and in the shrouds of classified war planning, the major contract to carry out the oil strategy it secretly wrote months earlier. The deal yielded $2.4 billion in revenue. These oil and other war-related contracts with Halliburton, an oil services company, have been contentious because of accusations of overcharging and waste, and because Mr. Cheney was formerly the company's chief executive.
On the oil-field pacts, the Pentagon officials said they had not been pressured by political leaders to choose Halliburton, which they regarded as best qualified of the few companies that could do such a task. Rather, these officials said, they had sought to notify senior administration officials to ensure that they did not object to the politically delicate plan.
In November 2002, a Pentagon energy group led by Michael H. Mobbs, a political appointee and adviser to Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense, gave Halliburton a $1.9 million "task order," under another contract, to develop secret contingency plans for the Iraqi oil industry.
The proposal was had been described at a meeting in late October of the Deputies Committee, a foreign policy body. Participants included the deputy national security adviser, deputy secretaries of state and defense, deputy director of central intelligence and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff.
Pentagon officials, including Mr. Mobbs, provided the new details of the oil contracting to staff members of the House Committee on Government Reform at a June 8 briefing.
In a letter faxed Sunday to Mr. Cheney and given to reporters, Representative Henry A. Waxman, the minority leader of the panel, asked him for all records of his office's communications on the oil contracts and for records of Deputies Committee meetings where the Halliburton deals had been discussed.
"These new disclosures appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts," Mr. Waxman, Democrat of California, wrote. "They also seem to contradict the administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of the contracts to Halliburton."
Appearing on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, 2003, Mr. Cheney said, "And as vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government." He referred to the Army Corps of Engineers, which has managed oil infrastructure contracts.
Asked if he had been aware of Halliburton's noncompetitive awards, Mr. Cheney said, "I don't know any of the details of the contract because I deliberately stayed away from any information on that."
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said of Iraq contracting in a news conference last October: "The decisions are made by career procurement officials. There's a separation, a wall, between them and political-level questions when they're doing the contracts."
On March 8, 2003, the Pentagon chose Halliburton to carry out the plan for strengthening Iraqi oil production. Mr. Cheney has denied any role in this contract, but critics have asked about a Pentagon memo that described the plans as "coordinated" with his office.
The administration revealed the contract later that month, describing it as mainly a deal to put out oil-well fires. Pentagon officials later revealed that it was much broader, and could involve billions of dollars. But they promised that it would be temporary and would be superseded by competitively bid contracts.
After repeated delays, the contracts were awarded on Jan. 16, providing $800 million to the Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, Calif., and $1.2 billion to Halliburton.
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Financially ailing companies point to Iraq war
USA TODAY
By James Cox
6/14/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-06-14-iraq_x.htm?POE=click-refer
Hundreds of companies blame the Iraq war for poor financial results in 2003, many warning that continued U.S. military involvement there could harm this year's performance. In recent regulatory filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission, airlines, home builders, broadcasters, mortgage providers, mutual funds and others say the war was directly to blame for lower revenue and profits last year.
Many list ongoing hostilities between U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents as a "risk factor" threatening their 2004 performance.
Companies blame poor performance on Iraq war
In annual and quarterly filings with the SEC, companies are blaming the war in Iraq for poor performance and warning that it could harm earnings in the future.
Cavalier Homes Home construction
" ... the Company's gross margin has been negatively impacted by (1) escalating lumber prices, between May 2003 and 2004 to date, due to military demand in Iraq, weatherrelated factors, and strong new home sales, ... "
Journal Communications Media company
" ... for example, the threatened outbreak of hostilities in Iraq in March 2003 and the war itself had a negative impact on our broadcast results due to reduced spending levels by some advertisers, cancellations by some advertisers for the duration of war coverage and elimination of advertising inventory available from our television networks during their continuous coverage of the war.
"... the war in Iraq, additional terrorist attacks or other wars involving the United States could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations."
PlanetOut Gay entertainment/travel Web site
" ... lower than expected advertising revenue due to the war in Iraq and its effect on business confidence ..."
Hewlett-Packard Computer manufacturer
"The potential for future attacks, the national and international responses to attacks or perceived threats to national security, and other actual or potential conflicts or wars, including the ongoing military operations in Iraq, have created many economic and political uncertainties that could adversely affect our business, results of operations and stock price in ways that we cannot presently predict."
Moneygram International Travel Recreation Services
"These businesses were negatively impacted by a continued decline in the world travel market due to ongoing threats of terrorism, the war in Iraq, health issues (SARS, Mad Cow Disease and West Nile virus), Air Canada's financial difficulties and wildfires in and around Glacier National Park, Montana."
The war led to sharp decreases in business and leisure travel, say air carriers, travel services, casino operators, restaurant chains and hotel owners.
Delta Air Lines (DAL), JetBlue (JBLU), Northwest Airlines (NWAC) and Alaska Airlines (ALK) blame the war for a decline in air travel. Dutch carrier KLM says the likelihood of a U.S. invasion last year prompted it to postpone delivery of new aircraft.
Steakhouse proprietor Morton's says the war contributed to weak results. Rival Smith & Wollensky says the conflict could hurt profits.
Online travel services Orbitz (ORBZ) and Priceline.com (PCLN) say the war hurt earnings. Airline reservation system Sabre Holdings says the fighting lowered bookings for flights. Also damaged: Superclick (SPCK), provider of hotel room Internet systems; and Worldspan (WS), which processes travel agency transactions.
Worldspan blamed the war, the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus known as SARS and a weak economy for its decision to lay off 200 workers. Falling first-quarter revenue was "due primarily to the impact of both the Iraq war and SARS on air travel," it said.
Hoteliers Jameson Inns (JAMS), Uptowner Inns, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts (FHR) and Host Marriott (HMT) either blame the war for disappointing performance or caution it could dampen 2004 results. When the U.S.-led invasion geared up, casino traffic dropped, say gaming operators and developers Atlantic Coast Entertainment, CSNO and Waterford Gaming.
Is harm real?
The SEC has been pressing companies to be more explicit about the reasons for variations in financial performance from one reporting period to the next. But many companies plainly are using external events - war, terror attacks, the SARS virus, Y2K - as a crutch to explain poor results, says Greg Taxin, CEO of Glass Lewis, an independent proxy advisory firm.
"They can divert attention from what may, in fact, be bad management, bad planning, bad performance," Taxin says. "For some companies, (the war) was no doubt an important cause for a change in results. For others, it's something thrown in as part of a laundry list."
Particularly blunt are fund managers, many of whom traditionally share their views with shareholders in annual letters.
"The war in Iraq created a quagmire for corporations," David J. Galvan, a portfolio manager for Wayne Hummer Income Fund, says in his letter to shareholders.
Vintage Mutual Funds concludes that "the price of these commitments (in Iraq and Afghanistan) may be more than the American public had expected or is willing to tolerate."
Could war angst erode President Bush's support among business? "One surprising thing is that some corporate executives I talk to, who I would assume to be supportive of the (Bush) administration, have expressed concerns about the impact of Iraq policies on business," says Carol Bowie, director of governance research at the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a proxy research company.
War hasn't been hell for all.
Several companies have reported a boost from sales to the military or contracts stemming from the Iraqi reconstruction effort. The war has lifted sales of: gas masks from Mine Safety Appliances (MSA); bio-weapons detection kits and training from Response Biomedical; air cargo from Atlas Air (AAWHQ); port dredging by JDC Soil Management; packaging by TriMas; body armor and vehicle protection kits from Armor Holding (AH); telecom services and communications gear from Globalnet (GLBT), CopyTele (COPY) and I-Sector(ISR).
"Since the situation in Iraq does not seem to be improving, Kroll expects the demand for its security services in the Middle East, Africa and Europe to increase," says Kroll, which trains and supplies bodyguards and offers security advisory services.
Booksellers tell conflicting stories. Borders Group (BGP) says earnings were hurt by the war. Barnes & Noble (BKS) CEO Steve Riggio says war-related books helped drive "healthy gains" in the first quarter of 2003.
Ads squeezed out
Still, most companies said the war's effect was a negative one.
War-related news pre-empted TV and radio commercials, and led many advertisers to cancel ads, broadcasters say. Station owners Sinclair (SBGI), Young (YBTVA), Hearst-Argyle (HTV), Granite (GBTVK), Journal Communications (JRN), Nexstar and Emmis Communications (EMMSP) detail losses in advertising revenue.
Ad revenue also fell at PlanetOut, which operates Web sites aimed at gay consumers.
Cisco (CSCO), PeopleSoft (PSFT) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) say hostilities in Iraq hurt results or could harm performance.
Mortgage providers and sellers of mortgage-backed securities are spotlighting another war-related factor: a federal law intended to aid service personnel. During conflicts, the law puts a 6% cap on mortgage-interest payments by troops and makes it tough to foreclose on property owned by delinquent borrowers in the military.
Home builder Hovnanian says the occupation could hurt the housing market. Cavalier Homes says military demand for building materials - copper wire, lumber and gypsum - has driven up costs.
Others warning about whiplash from the Iraq conflict: casino company Mandalay Resort Group (MBG); retailer Restoration Hardware (RSTO); cosmetics giant Estée Lauder (EL); eyewear retailer Cole; Longs Drug Stores; golf club maker Callaway.
Continued hostilities in Iraq could harm Callaway if "consumers' attention and interest are diverted from golf," it says.
In an SEC filing, Domenic Colasacco, manager of the Boston Balanced Fund, calls the ongoing U.S. occupation "sad and increasingly risky." He says the Bush administration is "in danger of losing its credibility with moderate voters" as U.S. forces face an "increasingly virulent" Iraqi resistance.
H&Q Life Sciences Investors said the conflict is "most concerning" to its management. "We are unclear about the exit strategy in Iraq and worry about the intermediate term impact on the economy."
-------- chemical weapons
Vietnam's war against Agent Orange
BBC
By Tom Fawthrop
14 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3798581.stm
Tran Anh Kiet's deformities have been blamed on Agent Orange The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but the scourge of dioxin contamination from a herbicide known as Agent Orange did not.
"The damage inflicted by Agent Orange is much worse than anybody thought at the end of the war," said Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan, the vice-president of the Vietnam Victims of Agent Orange Association (VAVA).
Between 1962 and 1970, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across parts of Vietnam.
Professor Nhan, the former president of the Vietnamese Red Cross, denounced the action as "a massive violation of human rights of the civilian population, and a weapon of mass destruction".
But since the end of the Vietnam War, Washington has denied any moral or legal responsibility for the toxic legacy said to have been caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The unresolved legacy and US denials of responsibility triggered three Vietnamese to take unprecedented legal action in January 2004.
The plaintiffs alleged war crimes against Monsanto Corporation, Dow Chemicals and eight other companies that manufactured Agent Orange and other defoliants used in Vietnam.
The case has been brought by VAVA, which was set up to promote an international campaign to gain justice and compensation for Agent Orange victims.
Preliminary hearings began in January at the US Federal Court in New York, presided over by senior judge Jack Weinstein.
Birth defects
Agent Orange was designed to defoliate the jungle and thus deny cover to Vietcong guerrillas.
It contained one of the most virulent poisons known to man, a strain of dioxin called TCCD.
First it killed the rainforest, stripping the jungle bare.
In time, the dioxin then spread its toxic reach to the food chain - which some say led to a proliferation of birth deformities.
In a small commune in the heavily sprayed Cu Chi district, the family of 21-year-old Tran Anh Kiet struggles with the problems of daily living.
His feet, hands and limbs are twisted and deformed. He writhes in evident frustration, and his attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts.
Kiet has to be spoon-fed. He is an adult stuck inside the stunted body of a 15-year-old, with a mental age of around six.
He is what the local villagers refer to as an Agent Orange baby.
In Vietnam, there are 150,000 other children like him, whose birth defects - according to Vietnamese Red Cross records - can be readily traced back to their parents' exposure to Agent Orange during the war, or the consumption of dioxin-contaminated food and water since 1975.
VAVA estimates that three million Vietnamese were exposed to the chemical during the war, and at least one million suffer serious health problems today.
Professor Nhan met Bill Clinton to press his claims Some are war veterans, who were exposed to the chemical clouds. Many are farmers who lived off land that was sprayed. Others are a second and third generation, affected by their parents' exposure.
Some of these victims live in the vicinity of former US military bases such as Bien Hoa, where Agent Orange was stored in large quantities.
Dr Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the US, sampled the soil there in 2003, and found it contained TCCD levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set by the US environmental protection agency.
Calls for US help
Professor Nhan is sadly disappointed by the US response to calls to help Vietnamese sufferers.
"Vietnam can't solve the problem on its own. Hanoi helped the US military to track down remains of MIAs (US servicemen missing in action), and we asked them to reciprocate with humanitarian aid for victims of Agent Orange," he said.
Around 10,000 US war veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange receive disability benefits for various types of cancer and other serious health problems that have been linked to dioxin.
"American victims of Agent Orange will get up to $1500 a month. However most Vietnamese families affected receive around 80,000 Dong a month (just over $5 dollars) in government support for each disabled child," Professor Nhan said.
According to Vietnam's Red Cross, 150,000 children have problems resulting from Agent Orange When former US President Bill Clinton visited Hanoi four years ago, Vietnamese president Tran Duc Long made an appeal to the US "to acknowledge its responsibility to de-mine, detoxify former military bases and provide assistance to Agent Orange victims".
But Washington offered nothing beyond funding scientific conferences and further research.
Chuck Searcy, vice-president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund based in Hanoi, said: "I am baffled that the US has not offered even a small gesture of cooperation and assistance to the Vietnamese, beyond the endless talk about scientific research. Such a step would eliminate any talk of war crimes liability, or victim lawsuits."
The Vietnamese legal battle against formidable US corporate opponents is being heard in the same court as previous action by American war veterans.
It accuses the US companies of knowingly permitting Agent Orange to be sprayed for military purposes, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological agents.
But the legal teams representing Monsanto and other US companies are hoping to stop the case going to trial.
-------- iraq
Second Iraqi government official assassinated in 24 hours
AFP
14 June 2004
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/89819/1/.html
BAGHDAD : A senior official at Iraq's education ministry was shot dead in Baghdad, the second such attack here in 24 hours, officials said.
Kamal Jarrah, the ministry's director of cultural relations, was gunned down in front of his home in the west of the capital as he left for work, a ministry official said.
The attack bore similarities to the killing a day earlier of deputy foreign minister Bassam Kubba, who was the first official of Iraq's new interim government to be assassinated.
"Unknown attackers opened fire on Kamal Jarrah in front of his house in the Ghazalia quarter," the ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
The education ministry's cabinet chief said the wife of the 60-year-old official had witnessed the attack, which took place as he left for work in his car.
"He was hit by several bullets in front of his wife and he was taken to Yarmuk hospital, where he died," Abdel Khalek al-Amer told AFP.
"We have no information on the number of attackers or their motive because we don't know any enemies of Kamal Jarrah, who did not belong to any party," he added.
Kubba was also shot outside his home on Saturday morning, less than two weeks after the formation of Iraq's new provisional government, which is due to take power by the end of the month.
The latest deaths follow the killing of Shiite politician Ezzedine Salim, who was rotating head of the now disbanded interim Governing Council, by car bomb on May 17 and come amid a rash of attacks on high-profile figures.
Kurdish Sunni religious leader Sheikh Iyad Kurshid Abdel Razzak was shot and killed by assailants at his home in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk on Saturday.
Abdel Razzak, 37, imam at the Almaza al-Thaniya mosque, was known for defending the rights of Kurds in the ethnically mixed city where Sunni Arabs were heavily favoured under Saddam Hussein's regime.
Tensions between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkmen have flared since Saddam's ouster by US-led forces in April last year, but a local police colonel said this was the first attack on a Kurdish cleric.
A district official was shot and killed by gunmen in his home in Kirkuk on Saturday evening, while a geography professor was gunned down as he left a Baghdad university campus at 12:15 pm (0815 GMT) on Sunday.
Meanwhile General Hussein Mustapha, who heads Iraq's border guards, narrowly escaped an ambush on Saturday as his two-car convoy was sprayed with bullets on a Baghdad highway.
A senior police officer in Baquba, 60 kilometres (nearly 40 miles) north of Baghdad, said he was shot and wounded by unknown attackers late on Saturday.
No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks but a foreign ministry spokesman blamed Kubba's assassination on fighters loyal to Saddam, under whom the Shiite diplomat had served as ambassador to China.
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Car Bomb Kills Five Foreigners in Iraq
By ROBERT H. REID
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 9:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40133-2004Jun14?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb tore through a convoy Monday in central Baghdad, killing at least 12 people, including an American and four other foreigners working to rebuild Iraq's power plants. A crowd gathered, shouting "Down with the USA!" and dancing around a charred body.
The foreigners killed in the blast were three General Electric employees and two security contractors, a company spokeswoman said. Three of the victims worked for Granite Services Inc., a wholly-owned GE subsidiary, said Louise Binns, a GE spokeswoman in Brussels.
The two others killed were security contractors, Binns said.
"Nothing is more important than the safety of our employees and those supporting our efforts," Binns said in a statement. "We have taken extraordinary measures to keep them safe and we will continue to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi authorities to protect our people. We remain committed to the reconstruction of Iraq."
Passions boiled over as the crowd of youths taunted American troops and Western journalists who rushed to the scene near Tahrir Square. American troops beat one man with a stick, but after failing to restrain the crowd, the troops and police withdrew. The blast, which destroyed eight vehicles and turned nearby shops and a two-story house to rubble, is the second bombing in as many days to kill a dozen people and comes nearly two weeks before the formal end of the U.S.-led occupation,
Some of the victims were in shops devastated by the blast. One elderly Iraqi man, still wearing bloodsoaked night clothes, was carried from the destruction.
Frantic Iraqis scooped up the wounded and loaded them into private cars to be taken to hospitals.
The U.S. military said the dead included two Britons, one Frenchman, one American and a foreigner of undetermined nationality. More than 60 people, including 10 foreign contractors, were injured, the military said.
The bomb went off as three SUVs carrying the contractors were passing through the square. Five other vehicles were also destroyed. Scattered around one of the damaged SUVs were manuals that appeared to be for energy turbines, including one titled, "GE Energy Products, Europe."
The attack unleashed fresh anger at the United States, with crowds chanting "Down with the USA!" and burning an American flag.
"We deplore this terrorist act and vow to bring these criminals to justice as soon as possible," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said.
He said the foreign victims were helping to rebuild power plants, but did not identify them further.
Capt. Issam Ali, security officer at the Neurological Hospital, said three dead and 14 injured had been brought there, many with serious burns and lost limbs. Al-Kindi Hospital reported receiving 29 injured.
A second car bomb went off Monday near the town of Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad. Police said a gray Opel drove between police vehicles and exploded, killing four people and injuring four others.
There have been 17 car bombings and a near-daily string of other attacks in Iraq this month. On Sunday, 12 people were killed by a car bomb near a U.S. garrison in Baghdad, and gunmen assassinated another member of the new Iraqi government, an Education Ministry official.
The bloodshed has stunned Iraq's new government, which had hoped to gain public support as the legitimate representatives of the Iraqi nation.
U.S. authorities had feared an escalation of violence before the June 30 handover of sovereignty, but they hoped the recent establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government would drain support for the insurgency, allowing security to improve so that balloting for an elected administration can be held by the end of January.
Two members of the interim government have been assassinated since its establishment on June 1. Kamal al-Jarah, 63, an Education Ministry official in charge of contacts with foreign governments and the United Nations, was fatally shot outside his home Sunday; and Deputy Foreign Minister Bassam Salih Kubba was gunned down while driving to work Saturday.
Two other top Iraqi officials - both with the police force - narrowly escaped death over the weekend.
Allawi accused Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of trying to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty.
"Al-Zarqawi and his followers are earnestly working to prevent the success of this measure," he said.
"I want our people to be patient this month against those forces which are trying to assault them, and I promise the people that we are going to get rid of them and victory will be ours to build the a free and decent Iraq life."
Rather than going after top government figures who are well protected, the insurgents appear to be targeting middle and upper level officials who lack adequate security.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. forces would do "everything we can to try to defeat these murderers." However, Powell told "Fox News Sunday" that "it's hard to protect an entire government."
Also Monday, U.S. Marines made a rare trip into Fallujah - only their second visit to the restive Sunni Muslim stronghold since they relinquished control to a local security force.
As Iraqi forces lined the streets, about 10 Marine vehicles rolled into the city for meetings at the mayor's office.
Marines besieged Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, for three weeks in April after four American civilian contractors were killed in an ambush and their bodies mutilated. Ten Marines and hundreds of Iraqis, many of them civilians, died in the fighting, which unleashed widespread criticism among Iraqis, foreign governments and even America's coalition allies.
The siege was lifted when Marines announced a deal to create the Fallujah Brigade, commanded by officers from Saddam Hussein's army, to patrol the city and restore calm.
Elsewhere, the U.S. military released hundreds of prisoners Monday from Abu Ghraib prison, the focus of the scandal over U.S. abuse of Iraqi detainees.
The release - the fifth major one since the scandal broke - came a day after the U.S. military pledged that as many as 1,400 detainees will either be released or transferred to Iraqi authorities by June 30. The Americans will continue to hold between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners deemed a threat to the coalition.
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Baghdad Blasts Kill 12 Iraqis, Soldier
Wave of Violence Claims Top Education Official
By Jackie Spinner and Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38023-2004Jun13.html
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- A pair of car bombings killed a U.S. soldier and 12 Iraqis on Sunday and gunmen assassinated a senior Education Ministry official. The attacks continued a wave of violence against the U.S. occupation and Iraqis who cooperate with it as the June 30 transfer of power approaches.
Three rockets were fired into the heavily guarded compound where U.S. authorities live and work in downtown Baghdad. A senior U.S. military official said that only one of the rockets detonated, causing minor damage and no deaths or injuries. But the blast, heard by Iraqis through much of the city during morning rush hour, underlined the city's lack of security.
About 15 vehicles rigged with explosives, some driven by suicide bombers, have been sent against U.S. occupation and Iraqi government targets so far this month, U.S. military officers said -- an average of at least one car bombing a day somewhere in Iraq.
The bombings were among a variety of violent engagements, occurring at the rate of 35 to 40 a day, in a campaign designed to demonstrate a lack of U.S. and government control in the days leading to the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty June 30, the officers said.
As the attacks persisted in Baghdad Sunday, a senior spokesman for the insurgent Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr said in Najaf that Sadr intends to "found a party to participate in political events." The spokesman, Qais Khazali, did not say whether Sadr also intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and abandon his military resistance to the U.S. occupation.
The suggestion of a political organization was in line with intense efforts by Shiite religious and political figures to persuade the young cleric to end his military challenge and turn instead to politics.
Despite a declared U.S. determination to force Sadr to stand trial on charges that he conspired in a fellow cleric's murder, these Iraqi Shiite leaders repeatedly have said that the solution to the Sadr crisis is to draw him into the political process and that confrontation can lead only to more bloodshed.
The first car bombing, which took place in the eastern part of the capital as Iraqis drove to work in a morning traffic jam, killed four policemen and eight civilians, the U.S. military said. Witnesses told reporters that an Iraqi police patrol tried to stop the vehicle as it sped toward Camp Cuervo, but it crossed the median and detonated in a suicide attack, demolishing the police car.
The second bombing, which came later in the day near the northern suburb of Taji, killed one U.S. soldier, who was not identified, and wounded two others, spokesmen reported.
The assassinated Education Ministry official, Kamal Jarrah, 63, was responsible for cultural relations with foreign countries and the United Nations. Gunmen shot him as he left for work from his home in the Ghazaliya district, police said.
Jarrah was the second high-ranking government professional to be killed by gunfire in the last two days. Assassins killed Deputy Foreign Minister Bassam Salih Kubba, a career diplomat, in a hail of gunfire Saturday as he drove away from his home on the way to work.
The killings appear to be aimed at frightening away Iraqis who take part in the U.S.-supported interim government and its institutions, particularly the police and armed forces but also including universities. With government ministers and senior officials increasingly restricted to life behind concrete barriers and a U.S. security belt, the killings have begun to descend the official hierarchy to lower-ranking officials with less protection.
Iraqi police reported Sunday that Sabri Bayati, a professor who headed the geography department at Baghdad University, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen as he left the campus. Amer Nayef Hiti, who teaches in the university's language department, said a number of professors had received written threats from unknown people warning them that if they continued teaching, they would be killed.
In Baqubah, 35 miles to the northeast, the dean of Diyala University, Khosham Atta, escaped injury when gunmen shot at his car as he went to work.
In northern Iraq overnight, four gunmen broke into the house of Iyad Khorshid, a Kurdish religious leader, and killed him, the Reuters news service reported. Khorshid had condemned violence against occupation forces.
"These random, senseless acts of violence only prove that anti-Iraqi forces have no regard for the people of Baghdad or the future of this country," said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division based at Camp Cuervo. "The Iraqi people will not be denied their future or their freedom."
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ENERGY
In Race to Give Power to Iraqis, Electricity Lags
June 14, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14POWE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 13 - Tripped up by problems ranging from sabotage to its reliance on by-the-book engineering, the United States has failed by a wide margin to meet its long-stated goal of reviving Iraq's electricity output for the start of the searing summer.
The American-led occupation missed its goal by as much as 30 percent, starving air-conditioners, lights, factories and oil pumps. That has damaged the occupation's efforts to foster stability and good will among a populace already traumatized by the failure to guarantee their security.
The goal, one of the American-led civilian administration's highest priorities, was set soon after occupation forces overran the country in the spring of 2003. It seemed within reach, but with little progress so far, the occupation is now talking about succeeding well into this summer.
The United Nations estimated that before the war, Iraq could produce 4,500 megawatts of electricity at any given time. With the fighting and looting, the production capacity plunged wildly, before beginning to rebound.
Capacity has been stuck in a range around 4,000 megawatts for months. Not only is that less than during the Saddam Hussein era, but it is also far below the American promise of 6,000 megawatts.
Even if that level is attained, demand is leapfrogging higher. That could portend a difficult season, just when the interim government takes up its duties and tries to claim popular support.
The reasons for the shortfall are both obvious and subtle. They include insurgents' attacks on plants and power lines, the harassment and killing of engineers, pullouts by companies doing repair work, and problems finding spare parts for outdated Iraqi equipment.
Some Iraqis also complain that Western engineers have been unable to grasp the complexities of a creaky electrical grid that is a patchwork of ancient Russian, German, Yugoslavian, Chinese and American equipment. The Iraqis say that the engineers, often Americans, reflexively reach for fancy new gear costing tens of millions of dollars that can take months or years to order, ship and install.
Iraqis are skilled at balancing the vast swirl of electrical supply and demand on their grid with phone calls and intuition, while Americans rely on computerized sensors and automatic control circuitry.
The Iraqi way of doing business is equally strange to American engineers. Beneath a yellowed, sagging drop ceiling in the control room of one electricity plant in Baghdad, a swarm of technicians in grimy blue jumpsuits laughed at a man sleeping on cardboard as an alarm for high oil temperature in an ancient turbine began to sound.
Another man sat finishing a cigarette, his feet in a puddle of dirty oil, before throwing the glowing butt into the middle of the puddle and then crushing it out. A nearby banner called for revenge for the death of Imam Hussein, a martyr of the year 680. Meanwhile, two huge turbines groaned away, and workers struggled to fix another.
The shortage has left ordinary Iraqis seething, particularly in Baghdad. The city was generously supplied with electricity at the expense of the rest of the country under Saddam Hussein, but now receives a more proportional share of the smaller pie, and is subject to frequent cutoffs.
"They said early March, and then they said early May, and finally they said early June the electricity would be perfect," said Feras al-Rubae, a money changer who sat sullenly in his shop in the middle-class shopping district of Outer Karada during a power failure. "But now it is early June, and where is the promise?"
As for how important electricity is for resuming a normal life and getting his business back on its feet, Mr. Rubae said: "I would put it first. No. 1."
As reconstruction money flows in, that importance to the political and economic life of Iraq has hardly been overlooked.
L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, has long emphasized the importance of restoring electricity, engineers and construction managers said. In an interview last Monday, Mr. Bremer said it was for that reason that $5.5 billion of last fall's $18.4 billion emergency spending bill was apportioned to restoring electrical power.
"It's quite important, mostly because, first of all, it affects our capacity to deal with other problems like being able to pump oil," Mr. Bremer said. Electricity is needed to produce the oil, exports of which are the lifeblood of the economy. Besides that, Mr. Bremer said, "it's important because it affects the lives of ordinary Iraqis."
The money from the emergency bill comes on top of hundreds of millions of dollars that were dedicated to the power grid last year. The United States Agency for International Development budgeted $1.3 billion for work on the grid, and $500 million of that was budgeted earlier last year.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers, which began some of its work as early as the spring of 2003, has budgeted $1.36 billion for electrical work.
Estimates of the ultimate cost of restoring the Iraqi grid have varied wildly. In an assessment last year, the United Nations and the World Bank estimated that Iraq would need about $12 billion to repair its electrical system through 2007. The Iraqi electricity ministry has quoted numbers as high as $35 billion for the overall cost, without giving specific dates.
The money is being spent rapidly, but the goal is unmet. Mr. Bremer said he now expected capacity to reach 6,000 megawatts during the summer. (By contrast, a single American plant often produces 1,000 megawatts, and production in Texas can soar to 60,000 megawatts during an exceptionally hot day.)
Tom Crangle, the Coalition Provisional Authority's acting senior adviser for electricity, said, "We see the air-conditioners in the back of pickup trucks, and we see a lot more economic activity. So we're chasing an upwardly rising target."
The lower-than-expected output was the result of "a combination of factors," said Mr. Crangle, who was a senior manager at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power company in the United States.
Rebuilding older generators, ordinarily time-consuming, has been drawn out further after engineers discovered that Saddam Hussein's government had left them in a decrepit state, Mr. Crangle said. Importing new generators into a country in chaos meant new challenges.
Sabotage has been directed at transmission lines, power plants and some oil and gas pipelines that provide fuel for the plants. According to an internal Iraqi government report obtained by The New York Times last week, more than 100 of the main electrical lines and nearly 1,200 of the towers supporting them have been damaged or destroyed since the invasion.
Mr. Crangle said that about 90 percent of that damage has been repaired, and that the destruction from new attacks is being fixed nearly as fast as it occurs.
A Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority used to give daily scores of electricity production beginning Aug. 1, 2003. But it abruptly stopped giving updates on May 18, when the peak production was listed at 4,039 megawatts.
Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority say they halted the updates so that saboteurs could not see the impact of their strikes.
In an interview this month, Abdul Wahab, chief engineer at the General Establishment for Electricity Generation within the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, said that current production was running at just under 4,000 megawatts, but that because of damaged transmission lines, not all of that could be delivered and used.
A spokesman for the provisional authority, Dallas Lawrence, said Iraq was producing 4,273 megawatts on June 7, compared with 3,222 megawatts exactly one year before.
"No matter how you dice this," Mr. Lawrence wrote in an e-mail message, "either by peak megawatts or by megawatt-hours, we are providing 24 to 25 percent more power today than one year ago."
But those numbers failed to impress many Iraqis.
"The Americans, all of them, move very slowly," said Raad al-Haris, the deputy minister of electricity. "We thought before that the Americans will do some excellent job and they can cover the demand," he said, spitting out the words in slightly imperfect English. "But until now," he said, his voice rising, "we have only peanut."
Mr. Haris, the deputy minister, said that demand was running at just over 5,000 megawatts and that he expected it to rise to 7,000 this summer. Mr. Wahab, the chief engineer, said demand could soar even more, to 8,000 megawatts.
"In July and August there will be a huge demand," said Raqi Rahem, director of the Baghdad South power plant.
Although some Iraqis congratulate the Americans and their allies for technical successes, like replacing hundreds of the damaged transmission towers and shipping new parts that were unobtainable under Mr. Hussein, many others suggest that engineers from economically developed countries do not have the jury-rigging skills of Iraqi colleagues.
Iraqis engineers are masters at taking from one damaged piece of equipment to make another piece work. Instead of employing the careful American method of erecting wooden poles to support lines while towers were rebuilt, Mr. Crangle noted with undisguised admiration, Iraqis had found a way to do it safely with mobile cranes.
Carrying out a project by the book, with brand-new equipment, "might take you six months," said Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an engineer at the Iraqi Ministry of Industry who is involved with several power plants.
"You need power because it's the people's lives," Dr. Tawfiq said. "I don't care about the book; you need power. Just do it, the basics, with what you've got."
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POLITICS
Shiite Cleric Is Forming Party That May Play Role in Elections
June 14, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 13 - Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery Shiite cleric whose fighters have waged a 10-week insurgency against the American-led occupation, is starting a political party that will probably take part in elections early next year, a spokesman for him said Sunday.
The move is the most significant sign that Mr. Sadr is trying to become involved in the mainstream political process. Last week, he softened his militant stance when he conditionally approved the new Iraqi interim government, which he had mocked.
But Mr. Sadr's spokesman, Qais al-Khazali, said in an interview in Najaf that Mr. Sadr would not disband his militia, the Mahdi Army. Mr. Khazali argued that the militia was not an organized force but a popular uprising, and so there was no way to break it up. Mr. Sadr's stand runs counter to demands by the Americans and the new interim government that all illegal private armies be dissolved.
"A militia is a group of trained fighters supplied with weapons that has military rankings," Mr. Khazali said. "We don't have any of these things in the Mahdi Army."
If Mr. Sadr does take part in general elections scheduled for January 2005, then he will do so in defiance of an order last week by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq. The edict barred people associated with illegal militias from taking part in elections in the near future. The Americans have also been trying to execute an arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr in connection to his role in the murder last year of an American-backed cleric.
The participation of Mr. Sadr in mainstream politics and possibly in the elections could both help and hinder the Americans and the interim government.
Critics of the American administration have denounced Mr. Bremer for trying to marginalize Mr. Sadr, 31, early in the occupation and excluding him from occupation political posts. These moves, they say, drove Mr. Sadr to build a militia and ignite the armed struggle. Allowing him to become involved in politics could cool his insurgency, they say.
But Mr. Sadr's hard-line religious positions - his followers have established strict Islamic law in parts of the country - and anti-American vitriol are antithetical to the Bush administration's goal of a primarily secular Iraqi government. Mr. Sadr also has strong ties to Iran and a zealous following based on the popularity of his martyred father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr.
The younger Mr. Sadr's willingness to fight the American occupation forces has increased his stature in many parts of Iraq, even if residents of the holy cities in the south criticize him for bringing violence to their streets. A recent poll found that Mr. Sadr was the second-most popular figure in Iraq after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite cleric.
"I certainly expect the Sadrists to contest the election, and I also expect
them to do relatively well," said Juan R. Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and an authority on Shiite Islam. "If Bremer does succeed in sidelining some of the Sadrist leaders from running for office because of their association with the Mahdi Army, that really doesn't matter, since they will just put up proxy candidates."
Ahmad Shaibani, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said it was too early to say for sure whether Mr. Sadr would run in the 2005 elections, in which Iraqis will choose members of a constitutional assembly. "It's an important issue, and it requires a lot of discussion," Mr. Shaibani said.
Evidence has emerged of Mr. Sadr's wish to enter the political sphere. On June 5, he met with the more moderate Ayatollah Sistani, an indication of reconciliation. Then an aide to Mr. Sadr said at Friday Prayers last week in the mosque in Kufa, a Sadr stronghold, that Mr. Sadr supported the new interim government if it set a timetable for the occupation forces to leave.
That appeared to be a face-saving way for Mr. Sadr, whose militia has suffered hundreds of deaths in combat against the Americans, to negotiate a new role for himself in the political arena.
Hamid Majid Mousa, leader of the Iraqi Communist Party and a member of a panel that helped to start organizing the elections, welcomed Mr. Sadr's potential involvement. "If this is true, then it's a positive step," he said. "Everybody should be able to participate in the elections, especially if they pledge to comply with the rules of the political process."
Mr. Mousa added that the issue of Mr. Sadr's militia is one for the courts and should be divorced from whether Mr. Sadr may take part in politics.
A senior occupation official said that despite Mr. Bremer's order, it was up to the Iraqi interim government to define whether someone was involved with a illegal militia and therefore should be barred from elections.
Last Monday, American and Iraqi officials said they had won commitments from nine of the militias to disband. But the agreement did not include the Mahdi Army, which has thousands of fighters.
The Mahdi Army has continued to fight American and Iraqi security forces in the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf, where Mr. Sadr lives, despite two recent truces reached by the parties. The first cease-fire, announced on May 27, was promptly broken. The second, announced on June 4, was violated last week when members of the Mahdi Army overran a Najaf police station.
But a representative of Mr. Sadr, Sheik Jabir al-Khafaji, told followers last Friday to "obey the supreme leader's orders," indicating that Mr. Sadr wanted those guerrillas still carrying on the fight to quell their hostilities.
Mr. Sadr is not especially charismatic, but he has made his political mark with his relentless anti-American talk. He stands in contrast to the more reserved Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics. Mr. Sadr's followers are generally destitute young men from areas such as Sadr City, a slum in northeastern Baghdad.
Mr. Sadr's father had denounced the other ayatollahs for their lack of political involvement. The elder Mr. Sadr was initially supported by Saddam Hussein, but then turned against him and called for resistance to Mr. Hussein's laws. The father and two of his sons were killed in 1999 on orders from Mr. Hussein.
As the leader of the avowedly secular Communist Party, Mr. Mousa said he was not afraid to let a radical Islamist like the younger Mr. Sadr run in the elections because that was what democracy was all about.
"You can't learn swimming by reading a book about it," he said. "You have to throw yourself into the water."
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf for this article.
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Truck Bombing in Baghdad Follows Violent Weekend
June 14, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14CND-BAGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, June 14 - A truck packed with explosives rammed into a convoy of foreign contractors and exploded in a massive fireball today, killing at least 13 people during morning rush hour.
Minutes later, a crowd of young men poured into the streets and rushed toward the wreckage.
As Iraqi police officers stood by, the mob stomped on the hoods of the crushed vehicles and smashed the windows, and lit American flags on fire.
"Oh Ali!" some yelled.
"Long live Sadr!" shouted others, referring to radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
A squad of American soldiers arrived shortly afterward and was greeted by a hail of rocks. The soldiers stayed for a few minutes and then pulled back.
It was the second car bomb in 24 hours, following an attack on Sunday that killed 12 Iraqis. It had been months since car bombs so fatal had been detonated in Iraq, and the incidents marked a surge in violence as a sweltering summer filled with political tensions began to set in. With no end to the insurgency in sight, many Iraqis - including those who once supported the ouster of Saddam Hussein - profess to having no confidence in the occupation.
The target of the bomb was a convoy of three sport-utility vehicles carrying foreign contractors working on Iraq's power system, Iraqi and foreign government officials said. A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said two British nationals were among those killed, and another official told Agence France-Presse that an American, a French national and a Filipino were among the victims. Dozens of people in the area were injured.
The scene revealed not just the continuing anti-American resentment but the growing tolerance for disorder. Iraqi police officers watched as men lit the contractors' vehicles on fire, causing a huge secondary explosion in the middle of one of Baghdad's busiest neighborhoods. Even as angry men ran past them hurling bricks at the American soldiers, none of the more than 50 policemen intervened.
"What are we to do?" asked Lt. Wisam Deab of the Iraqi police. "If we try to stop them, they will think we are helping the Americans. Then they were turn on us."
Arab television crews filmed the mayhem, sending out images reminiscent of the scene in Falluja in March when a mob attacked the vehicles of four American contractors who had been killed and dragged their corpses through the streets.
American and Iraqi officials have said they are trying to improve security cooperation in the run-up to the June 30 transfer of authority. But today, there was very little communication between American soldiers and Iraqi police.
As clouds of black smoke boiled up from the street, American soldiers waited in their humvees 50 yards behind Iraqi policemen.
"The Americans say we are working together," said one police colonel who asked not to be identified. "But I am confused. Nobody is in control here."
Iyad Alawi, Iraq's new prime minister, said five of the people killed were foreign workers assigned to electricity projects.
"These people were helping to rebuild our country," Mr. Alawi said at a news conference today. "It was an unfortunate and cowardly act."
A policeman who carried some of the bodies away from the scene in his pickup truck before the mob came showed a British passport he found on one of the victims. The bed of his police truck was smeared with blood.
Iraqi hospital officials said eight Iraqi civilians were killed by the attack and dozens wounded.
Also today, American officials announced that three more court martial proceedings connected to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal will start next week. Pre-trial motions will be heard next Monday in the cases of Sgt. Javal Davis, Sgt. Ivan Frederick and Cpl. Charles Grainer, all accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners.
The attack today followed an especially violent weekend.
On Sunday, a suicide car bomber killed at least 12 Iraqis, 4 of them police officers, and wounded 13 others in southeast Baghdad, the American military said.
The target of that bomb was apparently a police patrol in the neighborhood of Rustanmiya, a military spokeswoman said. The explosion occurred near an American military base and a large sewage-treatment plant.
Later, as American soldiers and Iraqi police officers turned traffic away from the scene, the blackened shells of three cars sat on one side of the street, near a sedan with a shattered windshield and blood across the hood while another wrecked car sat on the median. Scraps of metal littered the road. A separate car bomb exploded Sunday in the nearby town of Taji, killing an American soldier and wounding two others. There was an exchange of small-arms fire. Soldiers killed one attacker, a military spokeswoman said.
Also on Sunday, an Iraqi ministry official was assassinated, the second to be killed this weekend. Insurgents shot Kamal al-Jarrah, 63, the cultural affairs director at the education ministry, at his home in the Sunni-dominated western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya. Mr. Jarrah died in Yarmouk Hospital.
On Saturday, gunmen killed Bassam Salih Kubba, a deputy foreign minister. Officials of the interim government were appointed by the United Nations on June 1, and assassinations are feared ahead of the transfer of limited sovereignty on June 30.
In mid-May, a car bomb killed Ezzedine Salim, the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, and six others at an entrance to the American headquarters in Baghdad. Ten days later, gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying Salama al-Khafaji, a council member, and killed her 18-year-old son and her chief bodyguard.
Two senior police officers escaped ambushes on Saturday. Insurgents sprayed a two-car convoy carrying Maj. Gen. Hussein Mustafa Abdul-Kareem, head of the Iraqi border police, as he traveled on a Baghdad highway, according to various news agencies. Maj. Gen. Majeed Almani Mahal, a police official, was fired at in the restive town of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of the capital.
A series of other ambushes and killings were reported by news agencies on Sunday.
According to these reports, a geography professor at the University of Baghdad, Sabri al-Bayati, was fatally shot after leaving a campus in western Baghdad.
Also, in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a 52-year-old district official, Dalil Jabir, was shot eight times late Saturday at his home, said Hussein Allawi, a police officer. Mr. Jabir had moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein's program to relocate Arabs to the region to lower the percentage of Kurds in the population. Violence continues to flare up between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen there.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Confiscates Swaths of West Bank
By MARK LAVIE
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 3:50 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41023-2004Jun14?language=printer
JERUSALEM - Israel has expropriated thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland deep in the West Bank for the most controversial segment of its separation barrier, Palestinian officials said Monday.
The military, meanwhile, said it is taking down a few of the roadblocks that have disrupted West Bank life for more than three years - though the main obstacles to Palestinian travel remain in place.
In violence Monday, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a car in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata, killing two Palestinians, including Khalil Marshoud, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group loosely linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.
Israel began building the barrier last year, to keep out Palestinian militants who have killed hundreds of Israelis since the outbreak of fighting in 2000. In some areas, the trenches, walls and fences run near Israel's old frontier with the West Bank, but elsewhere dip deep into the territory claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
The latest land seizures are part of construction of a barrier segment near the Israeli settlement of Ariel, in the heart of the West Bank.
Palestinians charge that the barrier project is meant to swallow up large parts of the West Bank, pointing to the Ariel sector as a prime example.
If Israel builds the barrier to include Ariel on the "Israeli" side, it would mean cutting a wedge halfway through the northern part of the territory, because Ariel is in the middle.
With 18,000 residents, Ariel is the second-largest West Bank settlement. Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, has 26,000.
The United States is opposed to adding Ariel to Israel by means of the barrier, and Israel has so far avoided making a clear decision.
Asaf Shariv, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, said that for now only an east-west section of the barrier is being built, leaving the option of encircling Ariel separately - a concept the Americans apparently do not oppose.
A U.S. official said there are ongoing consultations about the Ariel issue.
The Ariel barrier project is already causing hardships for Palestinians.
Residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Azawiya were informed that 4,500 acres of land are being expropriated for a 2-mile stretch of barrier, said Annan Elashkar, a Palestinian liaison officer with Israel.
Azawiya resident Khader Abdel Raouf, 65, said he had his 32 acres of olive groves seized.
Abdel Raouf said his family of 15 lives off the olive oil produced by the trees. "I have been planting and harvesting these olives since I was a small boy," Abdel Raouf said in tears. "This land belongs to me and I belong to it."
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said building a barrier around Ariel would "mean the destruction and devastation of the road map," an internationally backed peace plan for a Palestinian state next year, because of the confiscation of Palestinian land.
For months, Palestinians and their supporters have been demonstrating at many construction sites along the length of the barrier, making similar complaints. Thousands of acres of land have been confiscated for the barrier.
Despite the tension, the military began easing restrictions in the West Bank by starting to remove about 40 ramparts and gates that blocked West Bank roads, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said obstacles can be lifted in areas where the barrier has been completed. The military released a statement saying the easing is in keeping with its policy to "to make a clear distinction between the terrorists who hide among civilians and those not involved in terror."
Shortly after violence erupted in September 2000, Israeli forces erected dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank, choking travel.
Israel said the restrictions were necessary to stop Palestinian attacks, but Palestinians charged they were part of a plan to ruin their economy and force them to surrender.
In the Israeli parliament, meanwhile, Sharon's government survived three motions of no confidence when the opposition Labor Party abstained.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority while ramming a plan to pull out of Gaza through his Cabinet. Labor has pledged to give him a "safety net" in parliament votes as a gesture of support for the Gaza plan.
Also Monday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Arafat is considering bringing militant groups into the Palestinian Authority's security forces as part of a reform program.
Arafat has offered members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades to join the official forces, while the Islamic militant group Hamas has "asked for a role within the security institutions," Shaath said.
However, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad on Monday criticized efforts to reform the Palestinian security forces, indicating it would not cooperate.
--------
Israel to Begin Controversial Phase of Barrier Construction
June 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, June 14 - Israeli officials said today that they were moving ahead with a long-delayed plan to build new segments of a barrier around Jewish settlements that would mark the deepest penetration yet into the West Bank. Palestinians quickly denounced the move.
"If the Israelis build the wall around Ariel, what is left to negotiate?" the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said, referring to one of the settlements. "I think Sharon is doing this now because he realizes President Bush is in the middle of a tough election campaign."
President Bush has called the fence's route a "problem," and United States officials have raised objections in ongoing talks with the Israelis.
However, Israel insists that Washington has not opposed the first phase of construction around Ariel and nearby settlements that are more than 10 miles inside the West Bank.
The Israeli plan, approved by the government last fall, calls for building a barrier around three sides of Ariel, which is about 20 miles north of Jerusalem and is one of the largest Jewish settlements, with nearly 20,000 residents. This same building pattern would be carried out for several other settlements in the same area.
After that work was completed, Israel would consult with the United States about joining these sections together and linking up with the main barrier, which runs closer to the West Bank boundary, said Asaf Shariv, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"This is exactly what we agreed to with the Americans," Mr. Shariv said.
The American Embassy did not immediately confirm the statement by Mr. Shariv and other Israeli officials.
"We accept Israel's right to build a fence for security, but when the route goes deep into the West Bank, it has political dimensions, and we have concerns about that," an embassy spokesman, Paul Patin, said. He declined to comment specifically on the Israeli plan to build around Ariel.
The Bush administration says it does not object to the barrier in principle, but believes it should track, or be very close to, Israel's borders had before the 1967 Mideast war. Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during that conflict.
The Israeli plan to include Ariel inside the fence is one of the most controversial aspects of the entire project because it would mark the deepest incursion yet into the West Bank. The Israeli decision to proceed with the plan was first reported today by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israel has built about a quarter of the planned barrier, which would eventually put about 15 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side, according to United Nations calculations.
Israel says it is strictly a security measure, intended to prevent Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks, and that it could be moved or torn down at a later date. Palestinians denounce it as a land confiscation that would greatly disrupt the lives of many Palestinians and complicate efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
Israel's Defense Ministry, which is in charge of constructing the barrier, has not broken ground in the area around Ariel. But the ministry has informed Palestinian residents in the area that it will be appropriating Palestinian-owned land, according to Haaretz.
And the mayor of Ariel, Ron Nachman, confirmed that the project was moving forward.
The initial phase of the building, sometimes described as the "fingernails," is to be completed by May 2005, Netzah Mashiah, a Defense Ministry official, told Haaretz. Construction on the "fingers" that would connect the fence to the main West Bank barrier, is tentatively planned to begin next year, he told the newspaper.
Palestinians and Israelis opposed to the barrier have filed multiple lawsuits in the past year that have slowed or suspended work in several areas, particularly around Jerusalem.
Any construction near Ariel is likely to be met with legal challenges, said Marc Luria, spokesman for the Security Fence for Israel. The group supports the swift construction of the barrier, regardless of the route, and Mr. Luria predicted that a new round of lawsuits would probably delay building in the area for at least six months.
Mr. Sharon's government has approved in principle a proposal to evacuate all 7,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza by the end of next year as part of a plan to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians.
However, Mr. Sharon says he is also working to consolidate Israel's hold over the much larger settlements in the West Bank, where the Jewish population totals some 230,000.
The barrier's planned route would put the majority of the West Bank settlers on the Israeli side of the fence. In most areas, the barrier consists of an electronic fence accompanied by razor wire, trenches and guard towers. Some sections include concrete walls more than 20 feet high.
--------
Israeli Strike Kills Palestinian Leader
By MARK LAVIE
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42146-2004Jun14?language=printer
JERUSALEM - An Israeli air strike in the West Bank late Monday killed two Palestinian militants, including a local leader, as Israel started building the most controversial section of its separation barrier, confiscating Palestinian land.
An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a car in the Balata refugee camp next to the city of Nablus, killing Khalil Marshoud, the local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The military said Marshoud was behind a number of attacks against Israelis.(AP) -
Another militant was killed and a third person was seriously wounded, witnesses said.
Israel began building the barrier last year to keep out Palestinian militants who have killed hundreds of Israelis since the outbreak of fighting in 2000. In some areas, the trenches, walls and fences run near Israel's old frontier with the West Bank, but elsewhere dip deep into the territory claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
The latest land seizures are part of construction of a barrier segment near the Israeli settlement of Ariel, in the heart of the West Bank.
Palestinians charge that the barrier project is meant to swallow up large parts of the West Bank, pointing to the Ariel sector as a prime example.
If Israel builds the barrier to include Ariel on the "Israeli" side, it would mean cutting a wedge halfway through the northern part of the territory, because Ariel is in the middle.
With 18,000 residents, Ariel is the second-largest West Bank settlement. Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, has 26,000.
The United States is opposed to adding Ariel to Israel by means of the barrier, and Israel has so far avoided making a clear decision.
Asaf Shariv, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, said that for now only an east-west section of the barrier is being built, leaving the option of encircling Ariel separately - a concept the Americans apparently do not oppose.
A U.S. official said there are ongoing consultations about the Ariel issue.
The Ariel barrier project is already causing hardships for Palestinians.
Residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Azawiya were informed that 4,500 acres of land are being expropriated for a 2-mile stretch of barrier, said Annan Elashkar, a Palestinian liaison officer with Israel.
Azawiya resident Khader Abdel Raouf, 65, said he had his 32 acres of olive groves seized.
Abdel Raouf said his family of 15 lives off the olive oil produced by the trees. "I have been planting and harvesting these olives since I was a small boy," Abdel Raouf said in tears. "This land belongs to me and I belong to it."
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said building a barrier around Ariel would "mean the destruction and devastation of the road map," an internationally backed peace plan for a Palestinian state next year, because of the confiscation of Palestinian land.
For months, Palestinians and their supporters have been demonstrating at many construction sites along the length of the barrier, making similar complaints. Thousands of acres of land have been confiscated for the barrier.
Despite the tension, the military began easing restrictions in the West Bank by starting to remove about 40 ramparts and gates that blocked West Bank roads, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said obstacles can be lifted in areas where the barrier has been completed. The military released a statement saying the easing is in keeping with its policy to "to make a clear distinction between the terrorists who hide among civilians and those not involved in terror."
Shortly after violence erupted in September 2000, Israeli forces erected dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank, choking travel.
Israel said the restrictions were necessary to stop Palestinian attacks, but Palestinians charged they were part of a plan to ruin their economy and force them to surrender.
In the Israeli parliament, meanwhile, Sharon's government survived three motions of no confidence when the opposition Labor Party abstained.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority while ramming a plan to pull out of Gaza through his Cabinet. Labor has pledged to give him a "safety net" in parliament votes as a gesture of support for the Gaza plan.
Also Monday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Arafat is considering bringing militant groups into the Palestinian Authority's security forces as part of a reform program.
Arafat has offered members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades to join the official forces, while the Islamic militant group Hamas has "asked for a role within the security institutions," Shaath said.
However, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad on Monday criticized efforts to reform the Palestinian security forces, indicating it would not cooperate.
-------
Israel's Sharon Survives No-Confidence Vote
Reuters
Monday, June 14, 2004
By Matt Spetalnick
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41237-2004Jun14?language=printer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survived a no-confidence vote over his Gaza pullout plan in Israel's parliament on Monday, boosted by reports he would avoid charges in a bribery scandal.
Hours after Sharon comfortably won the vote, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants, including a local leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in a missile attack on their car in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian sources said.
The Israeli army confirmed it had attacked the car. Khalil Marshoud and another member of his group were killed when a missile ripped through the roof of their car, blasting a crater into the road, Palestinian security officials said.
Sharon passed his first parliamentary test since his cabinet on June 6 approved his plan in principle to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza, a decision that triggered far-right defections that stripped his ruling coalition of its majority.
In a sign Sharon wants to couple a Gaza withdrawal with a tighter grip on West Bank settlement blocs, Israel began issuing orders to confiscate large tracts of Palestinian land for a controversial new segment of a giant barrier it is building.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie condemned the seizures for the barrier, which Palestinians call a land grab but Israel says is needed to keep out suicide bombers.
The army said it was easing some restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank -- something the United States, Israel's main ally, has long demanded.
Sharon, whose coalition now controls just 59 seats in the 120-member legislature, kept his government afloat on Monday helped by a safety net from the opposition Labour Party, a supporter of withdrawals from occupied territory.
He easily won all three no-confidence motions presented in parliament, including one by a far-right party against his plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians, which drew only 22 votes in favor in the 120-seat parliament.
But about 10 members of Sharon's Likud party, including cabinet minister Uzi Landau, angered Sharon by staying away.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL DECISION IMMINENT
The prime minister was buoyed by reports that Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz had decided not to charge him in a corruption scandal.
Dubbed "the Greek island affair" by Israeli media, it concerned payments made by an Israeli land developer to Sharon's son Gilad, hired as an adviser on a never-completed project to build a Greek resort.
Indictment would probably have forced Sharon from office and derailed his U.S.-backed Gaza plan.
Israeli media said Mazuz was about to close the case for lack of evidence but would admonish Sharon for his conduct. The prime minister denies any wrongdoing. Mazuz was expected to make his decision public on Wednesday or Thursday.
Removal of the indictment threat would give Sharon a boost in his plan to scrap all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of the 120 in the West Bank by the end of 2005.
"Uncertainty on his future will be gone," a Sharon confidant said. "He will use this to make progress on leaving Gaza."
It could make it easier for center-left Labour to join Sharon's coalition after it lost its majority. Labour has been reluctant to join while the scandal lingers on.
Dropping the charges could strengthen Sharon's hand in his own rightist Likud party, where he had to placate ministers by agreeing to hold off on evacuations until March 2005.
Polls show most Israelis are willing to part with Gaza's hard-to-defend settlements where 7,500 Jews live.
It would be Israel's first removal of settlements built in the West Bank and Gaza, seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
Sharon has left no doubt he wants to keep West Bank land where settlement blocs like Ariel have been built -- a move that Palestinians say would deprive them of a viable state.
Political sources said orders had been issued to expropriate land where the barrier will loop around Ariel. (Additional reporting by Atef Saad, Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Dan Williams)
-------- mideast
Victims in Riyadh Had Military Link
3 Americans Kidnapped or Killed Were Singled Out as Contractors, Officials Say
By Craig Whitlock and Renae Merle
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38241-2004Jun13.html
LONDON, June 13 -- The three Americans killed or kidnapped by Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia in the past week were likely selected as targets many days or weeks in advance and singled out because of their work as military contractors, U.S. and Saudi officials said Sunday.
Authorities continued to search for the kidnapped American, Paul M. Johnson Jr., 55, an employee of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., whose family reported Saturday that he had vanished in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
A group calling itself Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula issued a statement Saturday saying it had captured Johnson and would treat him in the same way that U.S. troops treated Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
Although Johnson was employed by Lockheed Martin, the telephone number on his business card indicated that he worked at the Riyadh headquarters of Advanced Electronics Co., a Saudi technology firm that manages a number of defense contracts for the Saudi government.
Advanced Electronics was the employer of Kenneth Scroggs, another American, who was gunned down by three assailants as he pulled into the garage of his Riyadh home Saturday afternoon, Saudi officials said.
A third American was fatally shot in his Riyadh home on Tuesday after leaving the Riyadh office of Vinnell Corp., a Fairfax-based subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Inc. Robert C. Jacobs, 62, worked for Vinnell on a project to train the Saudi National Guard. Seven Vinnell personnel were killed in May 2003 in a suicide bombing of a residential compound for Westerners in Riyadh.
On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh warned Americans in the kingdom to pay close attention to their surroundings and to avoid predictable workday routines that could make them easy targets. The embassy statement said last week's attacks on Americans "appear to have involved extensive planning and preparation and were likely preceded by extensive pre-attack surveillance."
In its statement Saturday, the al Qaeda-affiliated group said Johnson was one of four experts in Saudi Arabia on the Apache attack helicopters used by the U.S. military elsewhere in the Middle East. The statement indicated that Scroggs also advised the Saudi government on the use of Apaches.
Advanced Electronics, located in an industrial park near King Khalid International Airport outside Riyadh, was awarded a five-year, $10 million U.S. Army contract in 1999 for repair work on Apache systems. The program was scheduled to expire in March, according to a contract announcement issued at the time.
It was unclear whether Scroggs had been involved in Apache work.
Executives at the firm declined to be interviewed Sunday, but released a statement confirming that a U.S. employee had been killed "at the door of his house" in Riyadh on Saturday. The firm did not identify Scroggs by name, but called him "a very serious and sincere employee of the company for over 12 years."
In a statement to its own employees, Lockheed Martin said that Johnson had worked in Saudi Arabia on the Apache program, specializing in a targeting system known as Target Acquisition and Designation Sites/Pilot Night Vision System. Known as the "eyes of the Apache," it enables the helicopter's pilots to fly at low altitudes in the dark and in bad weather.
Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's largest contractor, began evacuating its employees' dependents from Saudi Arabia in mid-April after the State Department issued a strongly worded warning urging Americans to leave the country.
The company declined to disclose how many of its employees were stationed in Saudi Arabia or what security measures were being provided to them. "As courageous and brave as they are, they go over there as volunteers," said Tom Jurkowsky, a Lockheed spokesman. "Security is paramount, we're aware of the warnings, the intelligence provided by the embassy. We take necessary precautions."
Lockheed also declined to comment on its work in the kingdom, citing security concerns. Lockheed manages international aircraft depots in Saudi Arabia, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Advanced Electronics has a contract with Lockheed to provide electronics for the F-16 fighter jet, according to Advanced Electronics' Web site.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was satisfied with the Saudi government's efforts to investigate the recent attacks and to prevent future bloodshed. "The Saudis know that this is an enemy that is coming after them," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "The killing of foreigners, whether they're Americans or Brits, or what are they, is a direct attack against the Saudi regime." Mohsen Awajy, a Saudi lawyer and former Islamic radical who now advises the government on dealing with militants, said al Qaeda cells were targeting individual Westerners involved with the military in a bid to regain popular sympathy in Saudi Arabia. He said many Saudis were appalled by recent al Qaeda bombings that resulted in the deaths of Muslims and of expatriates who were seen as important cogs in the country's economy.
"The militants are trying to show some justification for what they're doing," he said. "They are also trying to choose the easiest targets because they are finding it harder and harder to do anything on a bigger scale."
The recent attacks are evidence that for contractors, "the risks are much higher than people anticipated," said Peter Singer, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Basically, if companies are going to keep people in Saudi, they are going to have to provide better security guarantees. The pay is going to have to reflect the higher danger."
On Sunday, Lockheed's main Web page was dedicated to the kidnapping. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Paul M. Johnson, Jr. and his family," the Web site said.
Whitlock reported from London, Merle from Washington.
--------
Saudi Security Forces Search for a Missing American
June 14, 2004
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14saud.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CAIRO, June 13 - The Saudi Arabian security services hunted Sunday for an American electronics engineer believed kidnapped in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, during a seemingly choreographed operation in which one of his American colleagues was shot dead elsewhere in the city.
The kidnapping, which would be the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia, and the rising toll of dead Westerners raise the stakes in the militants' goal of driving non-Muslims from the kingdom, damaging its economy and causing the collapse of the ruling family.
Most of the details about the kidnapping of the American, Paul M. Johnson Jr., a specialist in Apache helicopters who is originally from New Jersey, came from a statement posted on an Islamist Web site by a group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed responsibility for much of the violence of the past two months.
"They don't really know much about it right now," the man's son, Paul M. Johnson III, said in a telephone interview from Florida, referring to efforts by the State Department and the Saudi authorities to find his father. "They said that they are trying to follow leads."
The younger Mr. Johnson said he spoke to his father last weekend and although his father expressed concerns about the mounting violence, he did not say anything about being worried about his own safety.
Mr. Johnson, an employee of Lockheed Martin, had worked in Saudi Arabia at a local company whose specialty included manufacturing elements of electronic warfare systems. One of the company's American employees, Kenneth Scroggs, was shot in the back outside his home in a Riyadh residential neighborhood on Saturday afternoon, becoming the third Westerner gunned down in a week and the 29th killed since May 1.
A statement on Sunday from the company, Advanced Electronics, said the slain man was the firm's business development manager, who had worked there for 12 years, training some of its Saudi staff members. Advanced Electronics was portrayed on the Web site of the Saudi Embassy in Washington as an example of a successful small Saudi private company. But what apparently drew the attention of the militants was the company's work with military aircraft, specifically the Apache helicopter.
"Everybody knows that these helicopters are used by the Americans, their Zionist allies and the apostates to kill Muslims, terrorizing them and displacing them in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq," said the Web site statement by the group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.
The man who was kidnapped, Mr. Johnson, 49, had a picture of an Apache helicopter on his business card, which was posted on the Web site notice announcing his abduction, along with a Saudi driver's license that said he worked in a military area. The card listed his specialties, including a pilot night-vision system for the helicopters. The kidnappers' statement threatened Mr. Johnson with violence like that suffered by Iraqi prisoners held by the American military at Abu Ghraib prison. It referred to him as a Christian "parasite," using an obscure Arabic word made popular by the former spokesman for Saddam Hussein's government.
Mr. Johnson's business card identified him as an employee of Lockheed Martin, but the telephone number was for Advanced Electronics. The company did not respond to telephone or e-mail messages on Sunday.
In the United States, Lockheed Martin confirmed that Mr. Johnson was an employee and was believed kidnapped, but a company spokesman had no other details.
The militants' statement said Mr. Johnson was one of four experts in Saudi Arabia working on the helicopter systems. Mr. Johnson, whose son said he had worked in the kingdom for more than a decade, was apparently grabbed from his car, which was found abandoned.
In addition to his son, Mr. Johnson has a daughter, three grandchildren and a former wife living in Florida. His current wife, a Thai citizen, was with him in Saudi Arabia, his son said. "It is just a wait-and-see thing," said the younger Mr. Johnson, 28. "I am praying that everything is going to work out. I just want him to be safe."
The militants' Web site statement did not identify Mr. Scroggs, but noted that the other American had been killed at his house.
The kidnapping and killing showed signs of careful planning, as the American Embassy noted in a new statement to residents warning them about the growing threat.
"The recent terrorist attacks on Westerners in Riyadh appear to have involved extensive planning and preparation and were likely preceded by extensive pre-attack surveillance," the embassy said in a warning to all American citizens to be on the lookout for strangers following them.
Only one militant has been arrested in a string of violent attacks, including four recent shootings in Riyadh and the attack on a Western expatriate compound in Khobar on May 29, which left 22 people dead, including 19 foreigners. One of the four Saudi gunmen was captured but the others have eluded capture.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, appearing on Sunday news programs in the United States, said there was a "dangerous situation" in Saudi Arabia but that the country was not unraveling. He said the Saudis could be doing more to fight terrorism, but praised their efforts thus far.
"They can build up their forces; there is probably more that we can do with respect to intelligence exchange," Mr. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." The American Embassy greatly reduced its staff in April and suggested then that all Americans leave.
"The Saudis now know that they have a very serious problem within the kingdom and they know that it is going to require all their resources - not only their military and police resources," Mr. Powell said. "They have to cut off funding to the kinds of organizations that might have given comfort to these sorts of terrorists activities."
Material posted on Islamist Web sites late Saturday included images that seemed to show the shooting death of a third American, Robert Jacobs, 62, apparently singled out because he worked for the Vinnell Corporation, an American company training the Saudi National Guard.
Mr. Jacobs was killed last Tuesday at his home in Riyadh. The short videotape, introduced as the "beheading of a Jewish American," opens inside a garage in which a man is heard yelling in English, "No, no, please!" before shots ring out and a heavyset Westerner tumbles to the ground in one corner of the frame.
Two gunmen then rush to his side and fire an additional 10 or so shots into the man's back, then kneel and make a cutting motion as if beheading him. Everything was filmed from the back of the action, and there were no reports at the time that Mr. Jacobs had been beheaded. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the videotape.
The violence over the past six weeks has prompted a steady stream of Westerners to quit Saudi Arabia, although it is difficult to gauge the extent of the flow, and American businesspeople say it has not become an exodus. The kingdom, with a population of 17 million people, relies on some 6 million foreign workers, but most are laborers.
The approximately 35,000 Americans and 30,000 Britons are the largest Western groups, most working in the oil or financial sectors. Westerners tend to be employed in the more technical engineering aspects of oil production, like oil field management, so their departure would not immediately affect the vast Saudi oil output, but might in the longer term.
-------- nato
Ukraine not ready to join NATO: Kuchma
KIEV (AFP)
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040614150428.jaqij8p5.html
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma on Monday said that his country was not yet ready to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), despite its wish to do so.
"As far as joining NATO is concerned... we are at the same stage as with the European Union," Kuchma said during a visit to the southeastern town of Melitopol.
"We are not ready today to say yes," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 48 million people sandwiched between Russia and expanding European blocs, announced in 2002 that it planned to join the North Atlantic alliance.
It has also set 2011 as a target date for starting negotiations on joining the European Union.
On June 7, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned Ukraine not to expect a timetable for joining the alliance.
"NATO knows about Ukraine's ambitions. But I think it will go a bit far to give an exact timetable for the next steps," Scheffer said.
Kuchma has been invited to the NATO summit in Istanbul at the end of the month, the first meeting of alliance leaders since the military bloc admitted seven new ex-communist bloc countries, including three former Soviet Baltic republics, in March.
Kuchma, who has been in power since 1994, and has been repeatedly criticised in the West for his authoritarian rule, turned up uninvited to NATO's last summit, in Prague in November 2002.
He was given a frosty reception over accusations that Kiev had sold military radar systems to the ousted Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
Ukraine is a member of the Partnership for Peace program that NATO has set up for Eastern European republics, and has staged a series of joint military exercises with the alliance.
It has contributed to a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo and opened its airspace and provided Antonov aircraft to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
It has also contributed some 1,650 soldiers to a NATO-supported Polish-led multinational force which is patrolling a large swathe of southern Iraq.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan Arrests Key al-Qaida Figure
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 7:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41508-2004Jun14.html
ISLAMABAD Pakistan - Pakistan claimed successes Monday on two fronts in its war on terrorism, ending an assault against al-Qaida hideouts near the Afghan border and announcing the arrest of the alleged mastermind of attacks on Shiites.
The arrested man, Daud Badini, leads an al-Qaida-linked militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and police say he is a brother-in-law of Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life term in the United States for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
Badini was among 11 terrorist suspects - also including a nephew of former al-Qaida No. 3, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - captured over the weekend in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.
The U.S. military, which is counting on Pakistan to hunt down al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives along the Afghan border, hailed the Karachi arrests and the offensive in South Waziristan, in which officials said at least 72 people were killed, including 55 militants.
The five-day assault on al-Qaida hideouts was the second major counterterrorism offensive in South Waziristan in three months. Another operation in March left at least 120 people dead.
"It is a large blow against terrorism in Pakistan," Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager told reporters in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
However, he said the U.S. military was not aware that any al-Qaida leaders had been captured in South Waziristan, a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The operation began Wednesday when foreign militants attacked Pakistani paramilitary soldiers, triggering a barrage by artillery, helicopter gunships and jet fighters against rebel mountain hide-outs.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said that when the operation ended late Sunday, 72 people had been killed, including 55 militants and 17 security forces. Some of the militants were foreigners, although he declined to reveal their nationalities.
He told state-run television that security forces now have complete control of the area, with militants either dead or dispersed.
An Associated Press reporter in South Waziristan saw a convoy of about 60 military vehicles including trucks, jeeps and ambulances heading toward the area of the conflict on Monday, but no fighting was reported.
However, hostilities continued elsewhere.
A bomb hit a vehicle carrying paramilitary soldiers in North Waziristan, killing two soldiers and a driver. Also Monday, Pakistani intelligence agents killed an al-Qaida suspect in a gunbattle near the northern city of Abbottabad.
Officials suspect the lawless border region has not only been a sanctuary for rebels fighting the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, but also a training area for militants who have launched attacks inside Pakistan, including some of the 11 terrorist suspects arrested in Karachi over the weekend.
Eight of the suspects, all Pakistanis, appeared in a Karachi court Monday. They were ordered held for questioning for 14 days over a failed assassination attempt on a top general last week - that left 10 other people dead - and other acts of terrorism in the city, including a foiled effort to bomb the U.S. Consulate in March.
Meanwhile, a CIA official speaking on condition of anonymity, said the authenticity of an audiotape thought to be from al-Zawahri could not be verified. The tape, which aired Friday on Arab television, alleged that the U.S. plan for democratic reform in the Middle East is really a scheme to replace Arab leaders.
On Monday, authorities announced the capture of Badini, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant who is accused of orchestrating three attacks in the past year against Shiites in southwestern city of Quetta that killed 99 people - including devastating suicide raids on a mosque and a religious procession.
Badini's family denied he is Ramzi Yousef's brother-in-law, saying his sisters were either single or married to cousins.
Badini's brother said the family would get lawyers to defend him. "We cannot believe he could kill anyone," Hafiz Abdur Rashid Badini told AP at the family's mud-walled compound in Killi Badini village.
He said that as a child, Badini, a Sunni Muslim, had made friends with Shiites and was not particularly religious. "How can we believe the government that he has killed hundreds of people?"
Sunni Muslims make up about 80 percent of Pakistan's 150 million population, and Shiites 17 percent. Most live peacefully together but small extremist groups from both sects often stage attacks.
-------- prisoners of war
Abu Ghraib relatives rail against US as prisoner release continues
Mon Jun 14,
AFP
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AFP) - Several buses carrying more than 400 prisoners left Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison on Monday but many relatives were left waiting in the searing heat for news of detained loved ones.
On the same day, the US-led coalition announced upcoming pre-trial hearings for three US soldiers charged with abusing prisoners at the jail.
Abu Ghraib, a dreaded detention centre under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, shot to notoriety again last month when graphic images were broadcast around the world of US soldiers abusing Iraqi inmates.
The buses carrying 405 prisoners began leaving the facility west of Baghdad under armed escort shortly after 8:00 am (0400 GMT), apparently headed for outlying cities.
A military official said another 112 would be set free on Tuesday.
But the number fell short of a plan announced earlier to release 650 prisoners on Monday and hundreds of family members continued their vigil on the highway.
Many complained bitterly that their relatives, many of whom were rounded up by coalition forces after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, were being kept without charge or access to lawyers.
Jawad Kadom, 44, a merchant from the Aadumya area of Baghdad, said his 15-year-old son was arrested a month ago while playing with friends.
"The Americans are arresting kids from our streets -- is that American power?" he said, adding that he had only seen his son once since his detention.
"Is this freedom? Is this democracy, to arrest kids from the streets under the excuse that they are part of the resistance?"
Farmer Khalid Abbas said his 16-year-old son had been detained for nine months after a coalition raid on his home in Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad.
"They took my money, destroyed my car and took my son. I have nothing -- they even hit my wife and broke her leg," he said, adding that he had been part of the resistance to Saddam's toppled regime.
All the relatives interviewed said they had had little access to the detainees and no word on when they would be released. Most said they had visited the prison several times to wait for their relatives to be set free.
Hassam Rahim, 53, claimed he had waited outside the prison for his brother every day for the past 11 months.
"We come in the morning and we leave in the evening," he said.
Others were waiting despite not knowing whether their relatives were inside Abu Ghraib or elsewhere.
"We don't even know if he's here," said Zuher Abdullah, a 55-year-old businessman, referring to his brother who was detained last July.
He said he had visited prisons all over Iraq searching for his brother Mohammed, who was arrested at checkpoint for carrying a weapon.
"Even if he's dead we want his body," he said.
Some also alleged that the detainees, many of whom live in tents inside the sprawling prison, had been badly treated by their captors.
"They take two people from the tent from midnight until about 2:00 am for investigations and when they give them back they have marks on their bodies," said, Jasim Wali, 36, an employee at the trade ministry.
--------
Red Cross wants prisoners freed on June 30
By Sam Cage
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040613-111807-5900r.htm
GENEVA - All Iraqi prisoners of war and interned civilians should be released when sovereignty is transferred to a new Iraqi government according to rules governing warfare, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross said yesterday.
"If we consider that the occupation ends June 30, that would mean it's the end of the international armed conflict," Nada Doumani of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said from Baghdad.
According to article 118 of the third Geneva Convention, prisoners of war should be repatriated without delay at the end of hostilities. Article 133 of the fourth convention says interned civilians also should be released when a conflict ends.
The ICRC's position sets up a potential conflict with U.S. military officials, who said yesterday they plan to keep thousands of Iraqi detainees in custody and to continue operating the Abu Ghraib prison after June 30.
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said in Baghdad that as many as 1,400 detainees will be released or transferred to Iraqi authorities by the end of this month, but that the United States will continue to hold between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners who are deemed a threat to the coalition.
Besides Abu Ghraib, U.S. officials also plan to continue using Camp Bucca, a detention facility near Umm Qasr in the far south of the country and other short-term detention facilities, he said.
Iraqi President Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer yesterday turned down President Bush's offer to tear down the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, where U.S. military abused Iraqi detainees, telling ABC's "This Week": "We need every single dollar we have in order to rebuild our country instead of demolishing and rebuilding."
Miss Doumani said it remains to be seen whether the occupation effectively ends with the turnover of sovereignty and stressed that "the situation on the ground determines the facts."
"This is the legal situation: When the conflict ends, the prisoners of war should be released according to the Geneva Conventions," she explained. "Therefore ... all people detained in relation to the conflict should be released unless there are penal charges against them."
Although Iraqis will run their own affairs after June 30, about 150,000 U.S. and other coalition troops will remain in the country to help improve security under a U.N. resolution approved unanimously by the U.N. Security Council last week.
After the turnover of sovereignty, detainees held by the Iraqi authorities will be subject to Iraqi law. But current prisoners who are not released because they face penal charges will remain under the protection of the Geneva Conventions, Miss Doumani said.
In an interview published Saturday in the daily Neue Zuercher Zeiting, Jakob Kellenberger, president of the ICRC, said it was not clear which authorities the Red Cross should deal with after the transfer of sovereignty.
The ICRC is empowered under the 1949 Geneva Conventions to visit prisoners of war and other detainees to make sure their care meets international standards.
--------
Rights Groups Say Hussein's Status Will Change on June 30
June 14, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14CND-SADDAM.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14 - The United States government should bring charges against Saddam Hussein soon because his prisoner-of-war status technically means the Americans must release him after the handover of limited sovereignty at the end of the month if he is not charged with any crimes, officials with human rights and aids groups said today.
None of the officials advocated releasing Mr. Hussein. They said they want him to stand trial. But they also said that since the United States asserts that the occupation is formally ending on June 30, when limited powers will be handed to the interim Iraqi government, then the Geneva Conventions mandate that the Americans must in theory bring charges against their prisoners of war or release them.
"We're not making any ultimatums or calls for release," Antonella Notari, chief spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told The Associated Press in Geneva. "What we're saying is, Saddam Hussein, as far as we understand today, is a P.O.W, prisoner of war, protected by the third Geneva Convention, as all prisoners of war are.
"In theory, when a war ends and when an occupation ends, the detaining force has to release prisoners of war or civilian detainees if there are no reasons for holding them."
But she added that a prisoner of war who is suspected of committing criminal acts should be prosecuted and tried rather than simply released.
"If they continue to hold him, at some stage they will have to charge him," Ms. Notari said. "They can also hand him over to the Iraqis, who can charge him and try him."
The State Department said the United States will have to negotiate terms with the Iraqi interim government for holding on to prisoners deemed to be threats. Mr. Hussein certainly falls into that category.
Wilder Tayler, the legal director for Human Rights Watch, echoed Ms. Notari's statement that in theory, prisoners of war should be released at the end of a conflict or occupation if they are not charged with any crimes.
"I wouldn't say there is much time for retaining somebody after that," he said by telephone from New York.
But several technical issues can shift that rule. For one, Mr. Tayler said, the Geneva Conventions allow some room for practicality, so there is leeway to hold someone for a short time if that period is required for charges to be brought against the prisoner.
In the case of Iraq, the question also arises of whether the occupation will actually end on June 30. In crucial matters like the oversight of armed forces, Iraq actually does not have sovereignty. One could interpret Iraq's limited powers as an indication that the occupation has not ended, Mr. Tayler said.
"The technical issue is, at the moment the United States transfers sovereignty, we will have to see how sovereignty works out, to be fair," he added.
Furthermore, depending on the level of violence and military action in the country, one could also argue that an international armed conflict still existed.
The main problem with using those arguments to hold on to prisoners of war is that both the Bush administration and the Iraqi government maintain that despite evidence to the contrary, Iraq will actually have "full sovereignty" on June 30.
So the current position of the White House and the interim Iraqi government actually undermines one possible reason for holding on to prisoners of war, like Mr. Hussein, Mr. Tayler said.
But he added that there was no realistic chance of Mr. Hussein's being released. "He was such a monstrosity," Mr. Tayler said. "Letting go of him is not a possibility."
When Mr. Hussein was yanked from his spider hole in northern Iraq in December, many Iraqis clamored for him to be tried in Iraq, by Iraqis. American officials agreed with that.
But with so much violence erupting there since then, the security situation growing more precarious each day and simple survival dominating most people's thoughts, few Iraqis now give much thought to Mr. Hussein's future trial.
-------- spies
"A Temporary Coup"
June 14, 2004
By Mark Follman
salon.com
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/salon23.htm
Author Thomas Powers says the White House's corruption of intelligence has caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history -- and sparked a civil war with the nation's intel agencies.
June 14, 2004 | The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.
Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence. From failing to anticipate 9/11 to pressuring the CIA to produce bogus justifications for war, from abusing Iraqi prisoners to misrepresenting the nature of Iraqi insurgents, the Bush White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies they corrupted, coerced or ignored have made extraordinarily grave errors which could threaten our national security for years. By manipulating intelligence and punishing dissent while pursuing an extreme foreign-policy agenda, Bush leaders have set spy against U.S. spy and deeply damaged America's intelligence capabilities.
"It's a catastrophe beyond belief. Going into Afghanistan was inevitable, and in my opinion the right thing to do. But everything since then has been a horrible mistake," Powers says. "The CIA is politicized to an extreme. It's under the control of the White House. Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis -- what really amounts to a constitutional crisis."
The bitterest dispute, though not the only one, is between the CIA and the Pentagon, whose own secret intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, aggressively promoted the war on Iraq. While departing CIA Director George Tenet played along with the Bush administration -- a fact which Powers says reveals the urgent need for a truly independent intelligence chief -- much of the agency is enraged at the Pentagon, which put intense pressure on it to produce reports tailored to the policy goals of the Bush White House. The simmering tensions between the Pentagon, with its troika of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, and rank and file CIA personnel boiled over in July 2003, when the White House trashed the career of veteran CIA operative Valerie Plame by leaking her identity. The move was a crude retaliation against Plame's husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had exposed the Bush administration's specious claim that Saddam had sought "yellowcake" from Africa to build a nuclear bomb.
The struggle between the CIA and the Defense Department reached a bizarre climax a few weeks ago when Ahmed Chalabi's office was very publicly ransacked by officers working under the command of the CIA; the Iraqi exile leader was later accused of leaking vital information to Iran, among other allegations. The abrupt fall from grace of the man hand-picked by neoconservative policymakers to lead post-Saddam Iraq, says Powers, lays bare the brutal turf war between the two sides.
"It reveals an extraordinary level of bitter combat between the CIA and the Pentagon. It's astonishing that the CIA actually oversaw a team of people who broke into Chalabi's headquarters -- which was paid for by the Pentagon -- and ransacked the place. The CIA single-handedly destroyed him."
The collapse of U.S. intelligence and the arrogance and extremism at the top of the Bush administration are also at the root of the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, Powers says. With U.S. troops facing a mounting insurgency from an enemy they couldn't find, Powers believes Bush officials signed off on a systematic policy of hardcore interrogation in a frantic attempt to deal with the problem. He says that while it's unlikely Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave specific orders as to what type of abuse should be meted out to the Iraqi prisoners, there is strong reason to believe Rumsfeld "issued blanket permission for them to turn up the heat."
In an explosive conjecture, Powers also speculates that the Israelis, "who've had the most experience," cooperated with the U.S. on the techniques used to humiliate and break Arabs, including sexual degradation.
As for the dubiously timed Tenet resignation -- with its fairy-tale like cover story of "I'll be spending more time with my family" -- Powers thinks one possibility is that the CIA director may have been forced out after Pentagon officials, enraged by the Chalabi debacle, pressured Bush to get rid of him.
But what troubles Powers the most, he says, is that the Bush administration completely subverted American democracy, browbeating Congress and the national security agencies to launch a war. "They correctly read how the various institutions of our government could be used to stage a kind of temporary coup on a single issue: Whether or not to go to war with Iraq."
Salon reached Powers by phone at his office in Vermont.
Let's start with the problems inside Iraq itself. We know there was a dearth of intelligence assets on the ground for years before the war. What's your assessment of the situation now?
This is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the agency, and I don't know anybody outside of it who really has a sense of the assets they had inside the country then, or what they have there now. But I don't think that was the biggest problem.
The biggest problem has to do with the decision at very high levels to look at things in a certain way. There was no shortage of warnings in the U.S. government from various branches and offices that the postwar period was going to be complicated and difficult. In that respect there was no failure of intelligence. But for institutional reasons -- political reasons -- the White House and the Defense Department didn't want to hear it. The Defense Department was very explicit that they weren't going to pay attention to those studies, that they wouldn't seriously consider increasing their estimate of how much money and troops would be required -- because once that went down on a piece of paper Congress would want to see it.
There is already ample evidence that the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners proceeded from systematic policy at some level. With U.S. forces facing a rising insurgency and a severe lack of intelligence infrastructure there, do you think Bush policymakers decided that the situation required a kind of dragnet interrogation system? That in order to deal with the problem they had to round up anybody remotely suspicious and "take the gloves off" -- as Rumsfeld ordered done with American Taliban John Walker Lindh -- in order to figure out who and where the enemy was?
Well, we know Gen. [Geoffrey D.] Miller went from Guantánamo to Iraq [last August] in order to beef up the whole intelligence gathering apparatus so that we could try to begin to understand who we were fighting there. For a long time the administration had been claiming we were fighting Baathists and dead-enders, or foreign terrorists pouring in across Iraq's borders. Part of the reason for those claims was that politically that's what was needed to explain the continuing resistance. It was also clear that we didn't really know who we were fighting.
Fallujah is a good example: The administration has never given a clear answer as to who we've been fighting there. Our behavior suggests that when we finally decided to back off, we had concluded that whoever it was didn't pose a direct threat to us. It was a resistance to us -- but we were perfectly prepared to live with it. We turned it over to an Iraqi officer and said, "Hey, you deal with this." They didn't have to shoot all the Iraqi insurgents, they reached an agreement and the fighting appeared suddenly to just stop.
How would you connect that to the administration's broader interrogation policy?
I think the attempts at Abu Ghraib -- and in many other places, I'm sure -- to extract information about what was happening on the ground were based on a real need. But the military had at least one success that suggested how they might do it correctly: tracking down Saddam Hussein. As far as I understand it, that was essentially a bookkeeping success. They really paid attention to detail, kept very good files and eventually identified and located everybody who was connected to Saddam, to 10 degrees of separation. They realized that somebody would tell somebody else in that network where he was. So that kind of complete encompassing of the subject appears to have been effective.
But the notion that Abu Ghraib prison was chaotic and out of control, that's what people say who don't want to take responsibility for it. I don't believe that for a second. Rumsfeld wouldn't sit down and say, "The best way is to photograph these guys pretending to masturbate," but I think he did create the circumstances and the pressure for that kind of thing -- in effect issued blanket permission for them to turn up the heat.
Then you have to ask who actually instructed U.S. interrogators in Arab psychology and suggested this would be a good way to get Arabs to feel powerless and vulnerable and tell you what you want to know. My guess is the people who've had the most experience in that, namely the Israelis, who've been at war with Arabs for decades, must've cooperated with us on a method. Of course, that's pure speculation on my part.
Clearly this kind of treatment shatters the U.S. relationship to the Geneva Accords, not to mention the professed morality of our mission. What do you make of the latest Pentagon memo to come to light, which said the president could ignore the anti-torture laws?
The answer seems pretty clear to me. The U.S. government has people who specialize in interrogation, and they have a long list of things they can't do. But when you're feeling desperate, you simply take some of the things from list B, what you're not allowed to do, and you move them over to list A, the things you are allowed to do.
What do you make of the Byzantine twists of the Ahmed Chalabi story? By the time photos of his ransacked Baghdad compound filled the newspapers, the tale of his rise and fall seemed almost unbelievable, the stuff of a spy novel.
I think it reveals an extraordinary level of bitter combat between the CIA and the Pentagon. It's astonishing that things would get to such a level, where the CIA actually oversaw a team of people who broke into Chalabi's headquarters -- which was paid for by the Pentagon -- and ransacked the place and carried away his computers. Who do you think bought those computers? Those are your American tax dollars at work.
That level of internal animosity is amazing. Look at the chronology: First you have a moment when the Pentagon announces that it's cutting off the funds to Chalabi's intelligence operation. A few days later this raid takes place. Well, it looks pretty clear that somebody warned the Pentagon this was going to happen, so that they could at least cut off his funding and not be caught with their pants down. Chalabi was the Pentagon's candidate to run Iraq. Richard Perle [the influential neoconservative advisor to the Pentagon] still says that the single greatest mistake we've made so far was not putting Chalabi in power as soon we got there.
And who has actually gone into power now? The CIA's man: Iyad Allawi [the interim Iraqi prime minister]. That's a dramatic shift. As it was, Chalabi didn't appear to be the candidate that [U.N. envoy] Lakhdar Brahimi was going to choose, but that invasion of Chalabi's office made it an impossibility. The CIA single-handedly destroyed him by doing that.
Chalabi is clearly a shady figure, but given the timing and chronology here, do you find the recent charges that he could be working for the Iranians believable? Or is it ultimately a smear campaign? What's at the center of all this?
Who knows! [Laughs]. We can only try to follow the logic of where the information about the leaked Iranian code would've come from. The conversation between Chalabi and the Iranian intelligence office was likely collected by the National Security Agency, which is normally in charge of that kind of data, who would've then passed it on to counterintelligence in the CIA. Or, the CIA might have actually sent a team into Chalabi's office to plant bugs or broadcasting devices, they might have conducted that type of black-bag operation in order to get access to that communication traffic. It's also conceivable the [Pentagon's] Defense Intelligence Agency was involved.
The information about Chalabi could certainly be real, but meanwhile, the CIA's guy Allawi apparently benefits by the removal from the scene of a principle rival -- right before Brahimi gets to choose the new government.
So this is ultimately the CIA fighting back against the Pentagon?
I think so -- can it really be a coincidence that this happens right before Brahimi announces the new government? U.S. intelligence knew about the compromised Iranian code about six weeks before the raid. So why wait till just before Brahimi's announcement? And why the large team of people and the very public display of trashing Chalabi headquarters and carting everything away? Regardless of the truth, when something like this happens, Brahimi is incapable of sorting it out. He just has to step away. It's one of those things you can't touch with a 10-foot pole.
I don't know exactly what it all represents, but I'm certain that it involves bad blood between the CIA and the Pentagon. It puzzled me at first why Tenet would be resigning after this apparent CIA triumph. I did wonder if the Pentagon had mustered enough high-level fury to reach the president.
How else do you view Tenet's resignation? The innocuous framing of it accompanies perhaps the biggest series of intelligence disasters in U.S. history.
There is no question that over the last couple of years it's become clear that the various U.S. intelligence agencies have numerous weaknesses and institutional deficiencies. But the biggest problem is really the politicization of intelligence under Bush. It's happened in two ways. First, because of the politics surrounding 9/11, the intelligence agencies have not been able to speak about it honestly and directly. Iraq is the other big issue: The intelligence agencies have not been able to speak about that honestly and directly either, because they've been pressured by the White House, especially before the war, to take a certain view.
That's where all this internal trouble with the intelligence system comes from. It's not as if they're all Keystone Kops who can't figure out where their left shoes are. It's all about the politics of it.
And that's only further complicated by the long history of turf wars between the agencies, between the FBI and CIA, and now apparently between the State Department and the Pentagon intelligence operations.
Exactly, and now they're all fighting over a policy which represents perhaps the single most aggressive and resolute endeavor in the history of U.S. foreign relations. It's astonishing, not just that President Bush got a bee in his bonnet that he had to invade another country and establish a major new American military presence in the Middle East, but that he would do it in this way.
Do you think Tenet essentially was pushed out by the White House?
Tenet was pushed out by the accumulating circumstances, not because he failed to do what Bush wanted him to do, which was essentially two things: The first was to not speak too clearly about the warnings that he'd given the White House before 9/11. You can be certain that it was not easy for Tenet to do that. Tenet has never spoken out clearly and said, "I told the president everything he needed to know to at least start responding to the threat."
Secondly, Tenet hasn't spoken clearly on the reason why they got Iraqi WMD wrong. And it's not because people in the bowels of the agency had it all balled up, it's because in the process of writing finished intelligence -- which was required to extract a vote for war from congress -- it got turned on its head at the upper levels of the CIA. They found certainty where there wasn't any; the evidence for WMD stockpiles and programs was extremely thin. Who else could have created this situation besides the policymakers themselves?
What about the timing of Tenet's departure? It comes in tandem with more alerts about terrorist attacks this summer, and right around the June 30 transition of power in Iraq. Do you think Tenet was explicitly asked to leave?
I think he was definitely asked to leave. He showed every sign of extreme distress.
And there's been plenty of speculation that has to do with the forthcoming congressional reports on 9/11 and Iraq intelligence, which won't look good for him.
The obvious answer is probably the correct one. Tenet would spend all his time defending himself against the reports. Everybody knows that another guy could run the agency just as well and could run it the same way. Bush has even made sure it'll be run the same way by keeping the same leadership, with [Deputy Director] John McLaughlin taking over. Bush would end up spending a lot of political capital fighting for Tenet; it's much simpler just to get him off the stage -- just like they did with Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in Iraq. Once somebody made clear that Sanchez knew about Abu Ghraib, they didn't argue about it. They got rid of him.
What does Tenet's departure say about the state of the agency at a critical time for U.S. national security operations?
The agency is politicized to an extreme. It is under the control of the Bush White House. Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis -- what really amounts to a constitutional crisis. It's somewhat like Iran-Contra, though on a totally different scale. The president wanted to go to war. He's supposed to have the support of the Congress. How did he get it? Well, his administration made up a scary story about imminent dangers.
Doesn't Tenet's departure make him the fall guy implicitly, even if President Bush delivered him cordially?
Of course the implicit blame is there, and that's one of the reasons why he looked and sounded so distressed. He had plenty reason to be; there was a cumulative insistence that the CIA had to be at fault. He could change that picture dramatically by standing up and saying, "Look, you want to know what I really told the president before 9/11? Here it is." Obviously that would be quite a bombshell and you can be sure the president would never speak to him again.
I think the truth about what happened at the policy level will eventually come out. We know, because it was on paper, that on Aug. 6, 2001 the CIA gave the president a very explicit warning. When 9/11 actually occurred, you would expect to look back and see, once the distress light was on, various U.S. intelligence and police organizations scurrying around frantically responding to the warning. But what do you find? Nothing.
While Tenet appears to have equivocated about Iraqi WMD in some instances, we also know that the CIA expressed significant doubt about specific intelligence on Iraq long before the war -- the bogus Niger-uranium report, for example -- that the Bush administration still used to make its case. How can the administration possibly continue to promote the idea that the CIA got it all wrong?
Well, who else is the administration going to blame? If they don't say that, then they would have to ask, "Why did the CIA write a report that went in certitude beyond the evidence?" The answer is very likely to be, "Because that's what the president wanted, and he made sure that was understood."
Is the war inside the U.S. intelligence system completely off the charts historically? Is there any precedent for this?
I can't think of any. It's not uncommon for the various secret branches of the U.S. government to be at odds with each other. The CIA quarreled with the Defense Department for years over Soviet missiles, but I don't remember anything like this. The CIA was present when that team of Iraqi police went in and ransacked Chalabi's compound. I mean, that's amazing. The only thing that would've made it more amazing was if it had happened in Washington.
In a way it reminds me of the "Night of the long knives" in 1934, the night when Hitler got rid of the Brown Shirts, the street fighting organization that had helped the Nazi Party come to power. It was a highly organized institution bitterly hated by the army. It was run by a bunch of people who were politically ambitious and were direct rivals of the group that came into power with Hitler. Literally in one night the offices and headquarters of this group were raided and many of them were killed in their beds. Immediately all kinds of propaganda came out about their low behavior and betrayal. It was an internal government bloodletting where one faction just simply swept the other off the scene.
What the CIA did to Chalabi isn't exactly the same, but it makes me worry even more about the level of covert fighting inside our own government.
Just last week the New York Times reported that the CIA is still struggling with a "major flaw" in its operations. A senior agency official, Jami Miscik, described conditions still ripe for the distortion of information, and similar problems reportedly plague the Defense Intelligence Agency. What's your view of the rising chorus within Congress to overhaul the intelligence system?
I think it's a good idea, and I never thought that before. It ought to be set up with a devoted Cabinet post, a secretary of intelligence who would have a wide range of powers and authority to oversee the whole system. But that person can't run everything; each of the agencies is distinct for good reasons, and each one has to be run by its own chief.
Separating intelligence and police operations is absolutely essential. If you put it all under a single authority it would represent the greatest threat by far to American democracy. Other countries have proven that. A single intelligence organization will abuse the power of secrecy to protect itself -- all intelligence organizations routinely abuse the power of secrecy to protect themselves.
Just look back at the way we got into this war: There was nobody in the public who had the capacity to seriously question the CIA's evidence and arguments. We just had to take it on trust.
And that's a dangerous prospect when you have a White House with an inflexible agenda that's in control of the system.
I think so. I don't know how else to explain getting it completely wrong. If you go back and look at Powell's speech at the U.N., he makes dozens of claims and not one of them was ever robustly confirmed -- in fact, almost all of them were completely false. I mean, how could he get it that wrong?
The most important thing to do now is to alter the chain of command. I think it makes sense to have the secretary of intelligence serve for a four-year term that overlaps presidential terms, an appointment that begins at the end of the first year of every presidential term. In other words, each president coming into office inherits the previous intelligence leader for at least a year. That provides continuity and avoids election year politics.
How do you view the Bush administration in terms of dealing with this whole series of intelligence problems that have come to light?
It's a catastrophe beyond belief. Going into Afghanistan was inevitable, and in my opinion the right thing to do. But everything since then has been a horrible mistake, one that has made it more difficult to fight the war on terror, has driven away allies and diminished the degree of cooperation from a number of intelligence services and governments in the Arab world. And it promises to get worse. This was a completely unnecessary, distracting, expensive war that has isolated the United States.
It seems like there has almost never been direct acknowledgement by the White House of any policy problems.
Yes, but they've done something else which troubles me more than anything. They correctly read how the various institutions of our government could be used to stage a kind of temporary coup on a single issue: Whether or not to go to war with Iraq.
President Bush used the intelligence system as a blunt instrument, and they forced Congress to go along -- the Congress was in an almost impossible position. When the president uses the maximum power of his own office and says, "I am soberly telling you that this is necessary for the safety of the country," you gotta listen to the guy. At least once.
About the writer Mark Follman is an associate news editor at Salon.
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CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report
By Tabassum Zakaria
Jun 14, 2004
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5419518
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has nearly finished declassifying a highly critical report about prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and returned most of it to Congress on Monday with parts it believes should be kept secret marked in brackets, government sources said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report examines one of the main reasons used by the United States for going to war against Iraq -- intelligence that said Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. No large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons have been found.
The committee will meet on Tuesday behind closed doors to discuss the report including its conclusions and the CIA's redactions. The panel was expected to vote on whether to approve the roughly 400-page report.
Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican chairman of the committee, has been adamant about making public as much of the report as possible.
The panel's options include negotiating with the CIA over passages that the intelligence agency determines would be harmful to national security if they were publicly released.
The committee could rewrite those portions or it could override the CIA and issue the report in its full original form -- but that option was considered unlikely.
The CIA was still working to declassify two remaining sections of the report and was expected to complete that in the next day or two, an intelligence official said.
It was unknown whether the committee would ask CIA Director George Tenet, who earlier this month said he would leave his position for personal reasons in July, to respond to the report before it is released.
Speculation circulated at the time of Tenet's resignation that it might have been due to the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the 9/11 Commission report that is due at the end of July. Both are expected to criticize the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report will detail problems in prewar U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but be less critical of the intelligence on terrorism, government sources said. It was expected to specifically criticize Tenet in some instances.
The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold hearings which will be followed by recommendations for changes to the U.S. intelligence community.
-------- us
Recruiters Try New Tactics to Sell Wartime Army
NYTimes
By MONICA DAVEY
June 14, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/national/14RECR.html?ex=1088179822&ei=1&en=4b1ca8d9eb3a558d
YNDON, Kan., June 13 - Katherine Jordan, who marched self-consciously across a basketball court in a black robe and orange flip-flops the other afternoon to collect her diploma, has just a few days left to fill the high school scrapbook she keeps here on the floor of her bedroom.
Then she is off to join the Army, because, she says, she wants to be part of something bigger than herself, bigger than Lyndon High School, Home of the Tigers, and bigger than her hometown of 1,000.
Thirty miles from here, in Topeka, James Nelson, 19, got the idea of enlisting from his probation officer. He says he hopes the Army will be his chance to straighten out his life and to stop, as his mother says, doing nothing all day aside from playing CD's and smoking cigarettes.
And down the road, in Lawrence, Julie Reese mows lawns to make money but says she is still sorting out her future and feels the Army will help her find her way. Yet she has struggled with the entrance examination and hauls around two thick study guides, marked and worn, in her car trunk. She is hoping the Army will overlook her low scores and allow her to enlist on Monday.
Ms. Jordan, Mr. Nelson and Ms. Reese are a few of the people being recruited this month in an unremarkable office building in an anonymous strip mall in Kansas, just one of more than 1,600 Army recruitment stations across the country, where, every year, thousands of young people hear the sales pitch, take a test, weigh in and sign papers.
But the world of recruiting has shifted significantly. Gone, recruiters here say, are the people looking mainly for easy cash to pay for college. Gone also, they say, are those who covet signing bonuses of up to $20,000 but hope to never leave their base. And gone are those who think enlisting in the Reserve or the National Guard will mean a few weekends training in a park.
The war in Iraq has changed the implications of signing up, and these potential soldiers' families, especially some who came of age during the Vietnam War, have tougher questions when recruiters call - or do not want to hear the pitch at all.
"Parents will tell us all the time that `Johnny's not joining!' and just hang up on us," said Sgt. First Class John J. Stover, who says he has "put in" some 35 soldiers in his two years as a recruiter at the station in Topeka. "The difference," Sergeant Stover said, "is that no one has ever recruited during a sustained war."
Officials at Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky., say the Army is on pace to bring in nearly 100,000 soldiers for active duty and the Reserves by October. Army National Guard officials, meanwhile, are in the midst of reviewing whether their efforts will be sufficient to meet this year's recruiting goals, said Scott Woodham, a Guard spokesman.
Yet with the Army's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing, with plans for a temporary increase of 30,000 troops in the Army's reserve, and with soldiers' tours being extended in Iraq, a top Pentagon official this month expressed concern about military recruiting in the years ahead.
On June 2, Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional committee that he was "not satisfied" with what the National Guard and Reserve recruiting and retention numbers might portend. "We need to be very attentive to the way that we're using especially our Guard and Reserves," General Pace said.
But here, not far from Fort Riley, Kansas' largest Army post, the challenge is immediate.
"It has definitely gotten harder out here," Sergeant Stover said from his desk in Topeka. "I look at some of the things I used to do and say, 'Hey, this isn't working now.' I have to come up with new ways to approach them."
More than ever, recruiters are pitching a broad range of options: a shorter enlistment, of 15 months instead of 2 years; a buddy option, which lets enlistees serve alongside a friend; and a reminder that there are 211 Army jobs (euphonium player in the band, for instance) far beyond "just shooting at people" as Capt. Erik O. Hinckley said. And recruiters are spending more time with their prospects. In Topeka, that means group workout sessions on Saturdays at 8 a.m., even before the papers are signed.
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GIs marching away from re-enlistment
War may have some Fort Carson troops leaving the ranks
Rocky Mountain News
By Dick Foster
June 14, 2004
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/america_at_war/article/0,1299,DRMN_2116_2961385,00.html
COLORADO SPRINGS - Army re-enlistments have dropped suddenly and dramatically at Fort Carson and several other posts where combat units have recently returned from Iraq.
The surprising decline within the past 21/2 months has jolted recruiters and military analysts and provoked questions about the war's effect on the Army's recruiting ability.
Since Fort Carson units began coming home in April, post recruiters have met only 57 percent of their quota for re-enlisting first-term soldiers for a second hitch, according to an Army report.
More disturbing, recruiters say, is they're re-enlisting only 46 percent of the quota for "mid-career" noncommissioned officers. These are the young sergeants with four to 10 years of experience who are the backbone of the Army - its skilled soldiers, mentors and future senior NCOs.
"That's a lot lower than where we want to be, especially on mid-careers," said Master Sgt. Scott Leeling, a Fort Carson recruiter.
"But I don't see this as being a trend," he said. "Last quarter, we were unbelievably successful. I look to see a dramatic increase in the next 30 to 45 days."
Fort Carson is just about meeting quotas for re-enlistments of smaller numbers of older career soldiers - those serving 10 or more years.
Quotas are set quarterly by the Army for each installation. The numbers reflect the current quarter, which ends June 30. The Army as a whole is close to its year-to-date goal, the Pentagon said.
Fort Carson's re-enlistments could be lagging because some soldiers are still on 30-day leave after Iraq deployment and might sign up when they return to duty, Leeling suggested.
But others familiar with the Army think the numbers could signal growing discontent. Iraq may be exposing some vulnerabilities of an undersized, overstretched Army.
"It sounds to me like the Army is voting with its feet," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va., think tank.
Married soldiers, who now make up half of the Army, are growing weary of repeated, yearlong deployments away from their families, Pike and others believe.
"We've gone from an unmarried Army to a married Army. These guys have come back from Iraq now, but you tell them they're going back within a year, and the wives are raising hell," said Dennis McCormack, a retired helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam and Desert Storm.
Fort Carson isn't alone with sharp re-enlistment drops during the past 90 days. According to Army figures:
• At Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the 82nd Airborne Division, recruiters have met 65 percent of their goal of first-termers and 80 percent of the goal for mid-career soldiers.
• At Fort Riley, Kan., whose 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division remains deployed in Iraq, re-enlistments are off sharply. Recruiters have signed only 50 percent of its quota for first-term re-enlistees, and 57 percent for mid-career soldiers.
• Across the Army's massive III Corps, which includes Fort Hood's 4th Infantry and 1st Cavalry divisions as well as Fort Carson's combat units, only 51 percent of first-termers and 54 percent of the mid-career soldiers are signing up.
At Fort Stewart, Ga., where the 3rd Infantry Division returned from Iraq, the Army used cash bonus incentives to re-enlist 95 percent of its first-term quota and reach 100 percent of its mid-career goal.
No cash incentives have been authorized at Fort Carson or other posts, Leeling said. And there's no guarantee the money would lure everyone.
"I've been away more than I've been home. I want to live my life with my kids and my family," said Jimmy Ray Sandoval, who has been to Korea, Bosnia and Iraq.
After missing his son's birth and his daughter's birthday in Iraq, Sandoval came home last Christmas and left the Army with the rank of corporal.
McCormack has heard it from other soldiers. "These guys have come home and had some time to be with their families. Then the rumors start flying that they're going back within a year," he said.
"They've asked themselves, 'Do I really want to do that again?' You're making $20,000 or $25,000 a year and liable to get killed. They lost a lot of guys," he said.
As of Friday, 827 U.S. troops had died in Iraq, 45 from Fort Carson. More than 5,000 have been wounded.
The improved economy also may play a role in a soldier's decision to leave the military.
The Army said that despite the recent downturn, enough soldiers re-enlisted through May to make 98 percent of its year-to-date retention goal, 56,100 re-enlistments.
And new enlistments nationwide aren't a problem, the Army said. It was on track to meet its goal of 77,000 new recruits this year, with 48,939 on May 26.
"We're guardedly optimistic. A lot of things could happen, but right now we're in good shape," said Lt. Col. Frank Childress, a Pentagon spokesman.
Sgt. David Cramer, a 10-year Army veteran, was among four mid-career sergeants who re-enlisted Thursday at Fort Carson. "The biggest thing is the feeling you get that you're doing something historic, that you're helping to make those things come about," he said.
But the recent declines at Fort Carson and elsewhere are the first weakness in enlistments since the war began. Pike believes the Army "is in a race" against time to reduce Iraq troop commitments before larger numbers of soldiers begin leaving.
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Contractor Immunity a Divisive Issue
Interim Government Resists U.S. Proposal to Exempt Foreigners From Iraqi Law
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39159-2004Jun13.html
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq's new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources.
The U.S. proposal, although not widely known, has touched a nerve with some nationalist-minded Iraqis already chafing under the 14-month-old U.S.-led occupation. If accepted by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, it would put the highly visible U.S. foreign contractors into a special legal category, not subject to military justice and beyond the reach of Iraq's justice system.
The U.S. request, confirmed Sunday by Allawi's office, is one of a number of delicate issues revolving around government authority that will confront the incoming U.S. ambassador, John D. Negroponte, when Allawi's interim government assumes formal sovereignty June 30.
Although the Bush administration repeatedly has promised that Iraqis will receive authentic sovereignty, the U.S. military has made it clear that U.S. officers will remain in charge of security, the country's top concern. People here widely assume that U.S. influence will remain decisive for a long time in almost every domain.
The in-control status of U.S. troops and officials -- from Humvee drivers who demand priority in traffic to civilian administrators intervening in the choice of Iraqi leaders -- often has been cited by Iraqis who oppose the occupation on nationalist grounds. The civilian contractors, particularly armed security personnel, have generated similar resentment from Iraqis, many of whom long ago tired of having foreigners tell them where they can and cannot go.
The question of the contractors' status also has arisen because of two U.S. contract employees at Abu Ghraib prison who were accused in a Pentagon report of participating in illegal abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The two -- Steven Stephanowicz of CACI International, an Arlington-based defense firm, and John B. Israel of the Titan Corp. of San Diego -- have not been charged with any crimes in Iraq or the United States, although some of their Army colleagues face military tribunals.
As an occupying army, the 138,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq have been outside Iraqi law since U.S.-led forces took over the country in April of last year. The troops will remain exempt in the future on the basis of a June 8 U.N. Security Council resolution and an accompanying exchange of letters between Allawi and the U.S. government in which Iraq requests their continued presence, according to a senior U.S. military official.
As a result, there will be no need for an immediate status of forces agreement -- the kind that usually governs U.S. military presence in foreign countries, the official said. U.S. soldiers will continue to be subject to U.S. military justice only.
"We will continue to operate more or less as before," the official added.
But the status of civilian contractors has become a special question because the contractors are not covered by the Security Council resolution or the letter from Allawi requesting that U.S. forces remain in Iraq for an undetermined time. Moreover, they do not come under U.S. military jurisdiction because they are not part of the military, although some are hired by the Pentagon.
In that light, the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority has asked Allawi to grant the contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraq similar to that granted soldiers, said George Sada, Allawi's spokesman. "They have made that demand," Sada said. "We think it is a bit too much. It is under discussion."
The Coalition Provisional Authority did not respond to questions for comment on the proposal.
The number of foreign contractors in Iraq has fluctuated greatly over the months. Many civilians working in the reconstruction effort have left in the last few months because of rising violence and the taking of foreign hostages. But many have remained, particularly security guards, who are highly visible around Baghdad and other cities with their armored four-wheel-drive vehicles, automatic rifles and flak jackets.
Because no central authority registers foreign contractors, their presence has not been tallied with precision, according to security consultants. Estimates of the total number of foreigners working here -- from Americans to South Africans to Chileans -- have ranged from 20,000 to 30,000. "But no one really knows," said a civilian security executive.
The U.S. proposal was believed to cover only U.S. citizens. The senior military official said that after June 30 it would be up to the embassies of each country to work out arrangements for their own nationals. "Every foreign citizen will have a certain status in Iraq," he said.
A civilian official in the U.S. occupation authority said some security contractors have begun to ask about their status after June 30, particularly since the campaign of violence by insurgents that, over the last two months, has made life here more dangerous for foreigners. But it is unlikely that the interim Iraqi government would seek to arrest civilian security personnel or interfere with their work, the official said.
"Are some Iraqi security people going to move in and arrest our cooks and bottle washers?" he said. "I don't think so."
Sada, Allawi's spokesman, said the U.S. proposal was put forth, along with other issues, in regular meetings Allawi had with L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority; David Gompert, a senior Bremer aide for national security issues who is about to leave; and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.
Allawi, a secular Shiite who headed a CIA-funded exile group that opposed former president Saddam Hussein, has said repeatedly since assuming office June 1 that he wants to cooperate with the United States and believes U.S. troops should remain in the country to help restore security. In line with U.S. thinking, he has qualified Iraqis who fight U.S. occupation troops as terrorists and dismissed their claims to be Iraqi nationalists.
At the same time, he and other members of the 36-member interim government have Iraqi constituencies to think about as well as the United States. Any move likely to bruise Iraqi sensibilities -- or stoke the bloody rebellion against U.S. occupation troops -- carries a political price they would be reluctant to pay.
Moqtada Sadr, a militant young Shiite Muslim cleric who has opposed the U.S. occupation with his Mahdi Army militia, said Friday, for instance, that he would lay down his arms and support Allawi's government only if it sets a timetable for ending the occupation.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Richard Clarke: 'Iraq could be much more of a problem for America than if Saddam had stayed in power'
The Monday Interview: Former White House security chief
independent By Andrew Buncombe
14 June 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=531365
Richard Clarke is the man who put the cat among the pigeons. This year, in the same week as the former counter-terrorism chief was giving evidence to an independent commission investigating the attacks of 11 September, Mr Clarke's scathing account of the failure to deal with al-Qa'ida was published.
In his tell-all memoir, Against all Enemies, and in his public testimony, Mr Clarke could barely have been more provocative. Much of the blame for failing to stop the attacks of 11 September, he said, could be laid at the feet of the Bush administration. They ignored his warnings about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and - after al-Qa'ida had wreaked havoc and death in New York and Washington - President George Bush was distracted from taking on the terror network by his groundless wish to invade Iraq.
"Your government failed you," Mr Clarke told the hearing, turning to the relatives of those who died and who had come to Washington to hear his testimony. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed."
Not surprisingly, the administration hit back immediately. Mr Clarke was wrong, said officials. He was out of the loop, said Vice-President Dick Cheney. The White House now considered Mr Clarke an outcast.
He is a blunt, plain-spoken man, accused by some former colleagues of arrogance and even rudeness. But does he regret speaking out. "No, not at all," he said. "I always thought, particularly in a White House job if you placed a high value on being liked by the bureaucracy, if that was one of your primary goals, then you probably should not be in that job.
"The job of a White House NSC [National Security Council] staff person is to be an enforcer of presidential policy. The bureaucracy does not naturally do what the President tells it to do."
But Mr Clarke's complaint is that the President and his senior staff, in the spring and summer of 2001, failed to listen to what he advised them about the dangers posed by al-Qa'ida "when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11". The day after the attacks, Mr Bush was already focusing on Iraq. "Look into Iraq, Saddam," Mr Clarke says he was told angrily as his officials briefed him on al-Qa'ida being almost certainly responsible for the attacks.
Mr Clarke, who now has a consultancy firm in Arlington, Virginia, remains uncertain whether al-Qa'ida could have been stopped. "I don't think we know. It's very facile to say it could have been or could not have been. There is absolutely no way of knowing. What I do believe is that had we known about the two al-Qa'ida individuals who were among the hijackers ... Had we known they were in the country, which the FBI at some level knew and which the CIA at some level knew, had my counterparts at the FBI and CIA known, had I known, then I firmly believe we could have caught those two.
"Now, you can draw all sorts of conclusions from that. One, is that, simply, there would have been 17 hijackers. Another conclusion is that we might have been able to pull strings on those two and find more of the 19. But even if we had rounded up all 19 there would have been another 19. There would have been another major attack. The point is that al-Qa'ida was on a march to have a major terrorist attack ... They would not stop until they succeeded in having one. So yes, we might have been able to stop a particular attack."
Apart from the missed opportunities he highlights, what might be of potentially greater concern is Mr Clarke's belief that al-Qa'ida could easily attack again, and America and Britain remain exceedingly vulnerable. Another attack is not inevitable ("I think almost nothing is inevitable," he said) but possible.
He added: "I think it is harder but I can think of ways of them doing it and I'm sure they can imagine ways of doing it. It's entirely possible there will be another major attack." A dirty bomb, he believes, is probably in the "too hard" category. It is more likely terrorists would use suicide-bombs to attack softer targets, such as casinos or shopping malls. "Those are the two scenarios I use all the time when discussing it," he said. "If you do eight guys in eight shopping malls you have an enormous effect on the economy ... so much of the US economy is tied up with retail sales.
"If you did four casinos with four guys you could destroy the economy of Las Vegas. There are lots of low-end ways of doing things. And the reason they have not done some of the low-end threats, I think, is because they set the barrier for themselves very high with the 9-11 attacks. They may want another major attack; they may feel that if they do less than a major attack [they] will look like a lesser force."
Richard Clarke has made a career out of telling uncomfortable truths. He was born in Boston, his mother a nurse and his father a worker in a chocolate factory. In 1961, aged 12, he won a chance to attend the prestigious Boston Latin School, whose famous former pupils include Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams. From there, Mr Clarke - an active opponent of the Vietnam War - went to the University of Pennsylvania to study for a career in national security. "I wanted to get involved in national security in 1973 as a career to make sure that Vietnam did not happen again." He spent five years in the Pentagon and then moved to the State Department. In 1992, he was taken on by the White House as a national security staffer. One of the first things he did there was to exert greater influence on the Counter-terrorism Security Group. Though his career stretched over four presidencies - Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr - it is the last for whom he reserves his most outspoken criticism. The American people were duped, he believes, by Mr Bush who came to office with a plan to invade Iraq but hid it during the election campaign. "It was very clear on 9/11, on the days immediately following when we had been attacked, that attention turned to Iraq, even as the smoke was still coming out of the World Trade Centre."
Mr Clarke believes Mr Bush's decision to invade Iraq undoubtedly damaged the hunt for al-Qa'ida. He also believes it has diverted much-needed resources from Homeland Security, leaving the country unnecessarily vulnerable. "[Iraq] is a fiasco," he said. "We can only hope there is a way of minimising the losses and getting out in a way that allows us to leave behind some sort of stable government. If [it stays as it is] now there is a high risk that what we leave behind will be worse than what was there before ... Iraq could easily be much more of a problem for us than it would have been if Saddam Hussein had stayed in power."
The whistleblower highlights three ways in which the invasion of Iraq diverted resources from the real "war on terror". Money is not available for the Department of Homeland Security to protect potential targets such as trains and chemical plants adequately, funds are not available to help countries such as Pakistan and Yemen, which could do more to counter terrorism.
Finally, the war was a great propaganda coup for the jihadist movement. "It probably greatly increased its recruitment," he said. "There was a period of time as well ... where resources in the hunt for Bin Laden were pulled away, satellite resources, special forces, Predator [drones] were sent to Iraq, rather than sent to Afghanistan. That has been somewhat rectified but not entirely. If Bin Laden had written the scenario it would have been identical to what happened."
One of Mr Clarke's friends from the national security council, is foreign policy adviser to the Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry. Mr Clarke has refused to endorse Mr Kerry in his bid for the presidency. "I do not want to be seen simply as a politically partisan commentator," he said. "I was a career civil servant. We don't have as much a tradition of career civil servants as you do [in Britain] but we have senior executive service and I was a member of that for a long time. I have a lot of Republican friends and they agree with me on most of what I say.
"So I don't want to lose the support of large numbers of Americans by my choosing sides, by choosing parties. I think this issue should be non-partisan. A large number of Republicans agree with me and I want them to speak out."
THE CV
Age: 53
Education: Boston Latin School and University of Pennsylvania
Career: 1985-88: Deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence
1985-92: State Department
1989-92: Assistant secretary for politico-military affairs
1998-2000: National co-ordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism
1992-03: Chair of the counter-terrorism group, National Security Council
March 2004: Testified to national commission on terrorist attacks
Author of 'Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror - What Really Happened'
-----
The Son of Patriot Act Also Rises
wired.com
By Kim Zetter
Jun. 14, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,63800-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
While activists and politicians work to repeal or change parts of the Patriot Act that they say violate constitutional rights, Patriot Act II legislation -- which caused a stir when it came to light last year -- is rearing its head again in a new bill making its way through Congress.
The bill would strengthen laws that let the FBI demand that businesses hand over confidential records about patrons by assigning stiff penalties (up to five years in prison) to anyone who discloses that the FBI made the demand. The bill would also let the FBI compel businesses to cooperate with record requests, and it would expand the government's secret surveillance powers over noncitizens in the United States.
"There is no reason for this legislation," said lawyer Chip Pitts, head of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee of Dallas and a former constitutional law professor. "Given the expanse of powers and secrecy already granted in the Patriot Act, and given the unclear security benefits and possible security detriments of that legislation, why do we need a further amendment of the law to grant more powers to the government?"
The bill, known as the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003, or HR 3179, was introduced last September by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and was co-sponsored by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a possible contender to replace departing CIA chief George Tenet.
It contains four sections that first appeared in a proposed piece of legislation dubbed Patriot Act II. That proposed law was discovered last year by the Center for Public Integrity just weeks before the invasion of Iraq. Patriot Act II, or "Son of Patriot" as critics called it, was written by the Justice Department to expand Patriot Act powers, but the department was forced to shelve the proposal after news of it created an uproar.
But critics, like conservative former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), say that rather than abandoning the legislation altogether, the department has been extracting provisions and having sympathetic lawmakers slip them one by one into new bills to pass the legislation piecemeal. At least five other bills pending in Congress also contain provisions from Patriot Act II, but HR 3179 is the one that's in imminent danger of being passed under the radar.
Last year, a Patriot Act II provision was slipped into the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004 at the last minute and passed quickly before legislators opposed to it had time to fully examine it. The Intelligence Authorization Act, an annual bill that allocates funds for intelligence agencies, is a must-pass bill that generally gets drafted and passed quickly in secrecy.
The new bill, HR 3179, was set to pass through Congress without a hearing last year, but the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sensenbrenner, changed its mind and held a hearing May 18. The bill is waiting for markup in that committee, but critics fear that Rep. Goss and the House Intelligence Committee will slip the bill into this year's Intelligence Authorization Act during a closed-door hearing on June 16, and pass it quickly before lawmakers can revise or further debate it.
Proponents of HR 3179 say critics are overreacting to the bill. They say the bill will simply "plug a few gaps" in the Patriot Act by establishing penalties for noncompliance that were never specified in the Patriot Act.
But opponents say the bill grants the government more power to investigate people without probable cause and to do so under a cloak of secrecy. As a result, individuals being investigated will have no chance to protest unconstitutional searches and seizures.
Under the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II provisions passed in the Intelligence Authorization Act last year, the FBI doesn't need a court order or probable cause to obtain the transaction records for patrons of libraries, Internet service providers, telephone companies, casinos, travel agents, jewelers, car dealers or other businesses.
The FBI can simply draft a "national security letter" stating records are needed for a national security investigation, without being specific about the data being sought or the people being investigated. A nondisclosure provision prevents the letter recipient from telling anyone about it, including patrons whose records may be investigated.
Under HR 3179, anyone who knowingly violates the secrecy clause could be imprisoned for up to a year, and anyone who violates it with "the intent to obstruct an investigation or judicial proceeding" could be imprisoned up to five years. The bill also lets authorities force individuals and companies to comply with security letters under contempt-of-court threats.
Jeff Lungren, spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee where the bill currently resides, said HR 3179 simply gives teeth to the Patriot Act.
"Right now you can't disclose if you receive a national security letter," he said. "But if you do disclose it, there is no penalty for that. There's (also) no stick to deal with a person that refuses to comply with a national security letter."
But Jim Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the bill tips the balance of power further into government hands while hampering the ability of people "to push back" and provide balance to government powers.
--------
House OKs Official Homeland Security Home
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41328-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON - The House voted Monday to establish a permanent home for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency created after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Under the legislation, approved by voice vote, the department would take over the Nebraska Avenue Naval Complex that it has used as its temporary headquarters since it started operations in March 2003.
District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said the complex, in northwest Washington near American University, comprises 38 acres in 33 mostly unconnected buildings. She said the department ultimately plans to have nearly 2,000 personnel on the site.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the one-year cost of relocating Navy activities on the complex will be $26 million, and that it will cost $75 million to renovate the complex over the next five years to meet Department of Homeland Security needs.
The department, headed by Secretary Tom Ridge, consolidated 22 security-related agencies under one roof.
The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.
The bill is H.R. 4322
On the Net:
Congress:http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- human rights
In rare public dialogue, Saudi women talk rights
The Christian Science Monitor
By Faiza Saleh Ambah
June 14, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0614/p01s04-wome.html
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi women cannot check into a hotel without a male family member. Stories about the right to drive and spousal abuse are often kept out of the kingdom's media by editors concerned for their jobs.
But in the past year, some of those taboos have been lifted, at least temporarily. In fact, when the first government-sponsored conference on women's issues was announced early this year, there was a spontaneous and unprecedented outpouring of public support. Groups of women, individuals, and members of charitable and cultural societies from across the country flooded the council's offices with working papers, surveys, suggestions, and demands. "The announcement made women act on a need that has been building up for years," says Fatima Naseef, an Islamic scholar and university lecturer. Dr. Naseef got together with 32 women from different parts of Saudi Arabia and put together a seven-page document of their requests, including a safe house for battered spouses and a female-staffed office to advise women on their rights under Islamic law concerning divorce, child custody, support and alimony.
The three-day conference on women, which ends Monday, is the third in a series of forums initiated by the country's reform-minded Crown Prince Abdullah. It follows previous meetings on political reform and combating terrorists. The forums' recommendations are nonbinding, but are part of the House of Saud's strategy to pressure militant religious figures and the extremists who have attacked the vital Saudi oil sector, killing and kidnapping foreigners. The fact that the conferences are being held at all, say some analysts, is an indication that conservative clerics are on the defensive.
Spurred by the coming conference, women's issues have been given unprecedented attention on Saudi television programs, radio shows, newspapers, and private meetings in recent weeks. Saudis have seen debates on the pros and cons of women driving, how the court system and divorce laws are skewed in favor of men, the high unemployment women suffer, and whether desegregated workplaces violate Islamic law.
Earlier this month the Council of Ministers - the most powerful government body - issued a nine-point plan urging the creation of more job opportunities for women.
Saudi authorities have just approved the establishment of an all-women industrial city that will host training centers and employ approximately 10,000 women at more than 80 factories, the city's main investor announced Saturday. Hessa Aloun, who runs an investment company and is also a member of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, told the Associated Press that two companies, one Chinese and one Malaysian, have already signed agreements to start training programs in early 2005. "We have a large women cadre that wants to work in the industrial field, but without proper training this is not possible," Ms. Aloun said.
Still, even the nine-point plan includes the caveat that all reforms must be in accord with sharia or Islamic law. And what is permissible in Islam is open to interpretation. Saudi activists say that is precisely why progress has been so hard to come by.
"In Saudi Arabia it's taking us a long time to move forward because we're still discussing basics. We're still debating whether it's permissible in Islam for women to drive or to work alongside men. Neither is against our religion, the taboo has only been passed down through local traditions and customs," says Maha Fitaihi, one of the conference's participants.
Though reform has been on the Crown Prince's agenda for years, the events of Sept. 11, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, and a campaign of violence by militant extremists in Saudi Arabia that has taken the lives of at least 80 people, have accelerated the need for change.
While just as many females graduate from college as men, they have limited job opportunities, and make up just 5 percent of the private work force. Most women work as teachers but there are a growing number of doctors, journalists, and television presenters. The problem is not only minimal work opportunities, but also logistics, argue women. Saudi women are not allowed to drive cars, and cannot travel, marry, or get identification papers without the permission of a male guardian.
"This extreme dependence on a male guardian is a handicap," says Johara al-Angary, head of the family section of the newly formed Human Rights Commission. "The women who most need work are often those who don't have a husband or male children, and there are many of them," says Mrs. Angary, who's been working with charity organizations for more than 20 years.
According to a survey of 150 women printed in the al-Madina newspaper, women complained about the lack of a judicial entity to help them learn about and apply their rights, unemployment, the inability to travel and represent themselves in court and other official offices without a male guardian, and a lack of recourse in case of violence against them.
Television anchor Rania al-Baz says one of the most important things Saudi women need is social awareness. Mrs. Baz gained notoriety in April when she was brutally beaten by her husband, and photos appeared in the local papers of the TV personality lying unconscious in a hospital bed, her face battered and bruised. The fact that she allowed her picture to be published and was willing to talk to the press broke a social taboo and shed a spotlight on the widespread problem of physical abuse.
"The reason more women don't complain about physical abuse by their husbands is social conditioning. We're not taught to speak out and ask for our rights. We need to change the way we view ourselves and our lives. We need change from the inside out," says Mrs. Baz. She is now working as a consultant with the Human Rights Commission and the Committee of the Muslim Woman and Child.
Mrs. Baz, who suffered eleven fractures and will undergo another operation next week, is optimistic about the future.
"I'm not sure I can go back to television because my face might not be the same again," she says. "But I will continue to try to educate women. The fact that we're even having this conference on women is a big step forward. It's a success not only for the 35 [female] participants but for all Saudi women," she says.
But not everyone in Saudi is pleased about the prospect of empowering women. On Saturday, a petition in the name of 32 women was circulated among the conference participants, al-Watan newspaper reported.
The paper printed a copy of the petition which asked the conference's participants to stand against "the coming flood of negative changes facing women.... The purpose of women working and driving cars is to get women out of their homes, which would have negative social effects and ... lead to immoral behavior," the statement said. Mixing between the sexes and desegregation of schools is against Islam, the statement said. Those asking for change were a minority not representative of the majority of Saudis.
Despite such views, Mrs. Angary says that change is coming. "For the first time I feel really optimistic. I think now's our time. Rights are not given, they're taken. And we're at a turning point. This is our moment. We need to seize it now. Otherwise future generations will never forgive us," she says.
-------- police
FBI's 9/11 Team Still Hard at Work
Dwindling Group Wants to See Probe Through to the End
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39160-2004Jun13?language=printer
The name was little more than a scribble, entered in a shaky hand on a U.S. visa application by Ahmed Alnami. In the space for traveling companions, he scrawled: "My frind MOSH A BAB." It was April 2000, 17 months before Alnami would help commandeer the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
After the attacks, FBI investigators puzzled over the entry. Was Alnami's mysterious friend part of the terrorism plot? And were there others?
The discovery came in the spring after the attacks. A search through thousands of visa applications revealed that MOSH A BAB was Moshabab Hamlan, a Saudi national who had obtained a U.S. visa on the same day and in the same place -- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia -- as Alnami. Saudi authorities interviewed Hamlan and his family and sent back a report: He was meant to be part of the hijacking mission, but his mother confiscated his travel documents when he lost his nerve and decided to drop out of the plot, said those familiar with the case.
Hamlan's identification, which has not been revealed previously, is one of numerous discoveries made over the past 33 months by PENTTBOM, the FBI's sprawling investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks.
Working from the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, next to the fumes and clatter of a print shop, a dwindling team of FBI agents and analysts has conducted the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history, a probe that continues to this day. Until now, members of the team have not publicly discussed their work.
For nearly three years, the team has endured the tedium and frustration of chasing thousands of dead-end leads in pursuit of information about the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. The group has shared the anguish of the families of attack victims, quietly briefing them on their discoveries and returning personal items from the wreckage.
"The victims are really what keep us going," said Joan Marie Turchiano, 34, who became head of the team earlier this year. "We want to see it through. We've been here since the beginning, and we'd like to see some sort of finality."
Originally numbering more than 70 people, the team chased more than a quarter-million leads in the months after the attacks, dispatching thousands of FBI agents worldwide. FBI agents have conducted more than 180,000 interviews, and reviewed millions of pages of immigration records, parking receipts, airline manifests, al Qaeda membership rolls, interrogation transcripts and other documents.
The team's job, said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, is to "find the needle in a haystack. . . . You spend most of your time disproving the theories that people are postulating."
Two other panels that have investigated the terrorist attacks fault the PENTTBOM team for not pursuing some aspects of their probe aggressively enough, and for discounting some information because it could not be thoroughly proven. The team has also feuded with the CIA and other agencies over access to information.
Now, as the independent commission investigating the attacks prepares to reveal its findings about the plot Wednesday, the FBI's team is down to 10 regular members who are exploring the remaining mysteries of that day. The team's leaders said investigators have identified new al Qaeda associates, helped prevent attacks and shed light on how the terror network functions.
PENTTBOM agents still comb through daily military and CIA intelligence reports; work closely with prosecutors in the Zacarias Moussaoui case; and analyze interrogation reports from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other U.S. facilities where suspected al Qaeda operatives are being held.
"Every single thing that we can learn about al Qaeda, whether [it is] how they behave, how they act, what their modus operandi is, is a little bit more ammunition in the war on terrorism," said Mary Galligan, 42, who headed the PENTTBOM team until January. "We don't know six months from now what might be important."
Still, there is much they do not know. Why did the lead hijackers decide to pass through Las Vegas? Why did terrorist leader Mohamed Atta and another hijacker start their day in Portland, Maine, nearly missing the flight from Boston to Los Angeles that they crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower? Are there still undiscovered accomplices?
All they have, for now, are theories.
Unprecedented Effort
On a recent visit to FBI headquarters, hand-lettered signs point the way with a wink: "Kennedy Assassination," reads one; "Hoffa Case," says another.
They lead to a poorly lit back room in the basement. Notes and newspaper clippings cover the walls; manila files and personal computers spill off the desks. Blue tubing pokes from a groaning HVAC unit in an attempt to improve the air.
The office, like the investigation itself, was set up on the fly. After the twin towers fell, Mueller announced the formation of PENTTBOM, which in the FBI's arcane nomenclature stands for "Pentagon and twin towers." "BOM" usually refers to traditional bombings such as the Oklahoma City bombing, or OKBOM. On Sept. 11, 2001, the bombs were fueled jetliners.
The FBI's effort, unprecedented in bureau history, threw experienced counterterrorism investigators together with rookies barely out of the FBI academy. They were uprooted from their homes and families and brought to Washington to work for months at a time.
The probe, first headed by then-Deputy Director Thomas J. Pickard, began with one group of investigators for each of the four hijacked planes and one agent for each of the 19 hijackers. Galligan, a longtime FBI agent with a master's degree in psychology, took over in October 2001. Her deputy, Turchiano, is a Brooklyn native who has been tracking terrorists almost since she started at the bureau in 1997.
Other members have included a former soldier and state trooper who became an expert on Atta; an Arabic-speaking Special Forces member who came to the FBI after fighting in Afghanistan; a rookie who became the team's point person on the plot's origins in Germany; and a longtime New York police detective who worked two years past retirement "to see it through to the end."
The New York field office, cradle of the FBI's al Qaeda expertise, largely ran the show in those early days. The attacks had forced agents out of their offices downtown; they worked first from a parking garage and later from the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid.
By October, Mueller, who had been on the job for a week when the hijackings occurred, made a controversial decision: PENTTBOM would be run from Washington and, for the first time in anyone's memory, an operational investigation would be based at headquarters.
The hijackers had been identified within hours, and many of their financial transactions and movements were confirmed within days.
The investigation was divided into groups focused on the flights; on elements of the plot in Germany, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; on the use of computers; and so on. One group focused solely on Atta.
The leader of the Atta group is Jim Fitzgerald, the former soldier and Massachusetts state trooper. He was a member of the SWAT team that protected the FBI team that traveled to, and was expelled from, Yemen after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000.
Others made similar roundabout journeys to the FBI and to PENTTBOM. Matt Gutierrez, 37, a former Marine with more than six years at the FBI, was a classified information expert responsible for overseeing an estimated 130,000 files produced for discovery in the case of Moussaoui, the only person in the United States charged in connection with the terrorist attacks. Another agent, Aaron Zebley, had been transferred out of counterterrorism to work on criminal cases on Sept. 10, 2001. The transfer lasted a day.
Jackie Maguire, 30, was three months into a counterterrorism posting under Galligan when the planes hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "I was told I was going to Washington for 30 days," Maguire recalled. She is still on the team.
A few members are not FBI agents. Robert F. Sassok, 43, a New York City police detective, gave up a lucrative pension to work on PENTTBOM. As a member of New York's joint terrorism task force, he had previously worked on the case of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.
"We hoped we'd put a dent in them," Sassok said of the earlier case. "But the way they operate, we couldn't be sure. . . . You felt a sense of satisfaction putting people away in the embassy bombings. Then you think, here we go again."
The Evidence
The list hangs from a divider in the team's basement redoubt, nearly five feet long. In Project Backtrack, FBI investigators drew upon millions of passenger records turned over voluntarily by airlines to tally more than 180 flights taken by the 19 hijackers since 1991.
They include surveillance flights in the United States in the summer of 2001. Six hijackers, at least one from each plane, took the practice flights in the United States between May and August 2001, the PENTTBOM team has concluded. All went from the East Coast to California and back, and each made a stop in Las Vegas. On at least one leg, the traveler occupied a seat near the one he would take on the day of the attacks.
From the broader universe of all hijacker flights, the team has also identified the "dirty 44," names that appeared on the same 180 flight manifests more than once. In many cases, however, authorities cannot tell whether the individuals are the same because of spelling differences and a lack of personal information, and few answers have been gleaned from the mysterious list, investigators said.
The team has logged more than 155,000 items of evidence, including debris from the attack and crash sites. Investigators also assembled a timeline more than 8,000 lines long of the hijackers' activities in the United States. Pasquale "Pat" D'Amuro, a former FBI counterterrorism chief and head of the New York field office, calls the list "one of the most significant things the investigation did" because it serves as the primary framework for understanding how the plot was organized and why it was successful.
The linchpins of the probe are bank and telephone records, which allowed PENTTBOM investigators to rapidly reconstruct the activities of the hijackers and their associates, and to continue tracking al Qaeda movements to this day.
The team has played a central role in the aggressive tactics used since the attacks to monitor and apprehend suspected al Qaeda associates, including would-be hijackers such as Hamlan, who is in custody in Saudi Arabia.
Another probable hijacker identified by the team, Mohamed Qahtani, was foiled in his attempt to enter the United States a month before the attacks. Qahtani, a Saudi national whose existence was first revealed earlier this year by the Sept. 11 commission, had been picked up in Afghanistan and was being held in Guantanamo Bay in the summer of 2002 when authorities got a hit on his fingerprints. He had attempted to enter the United States at Orlando on Aug. 4, 2001.
PENTTBOM investigators, aware that Atta was in Central Florida about the same time, manually searched parking and telephone records and determined that Atta was on a payphone in the Orlando airport at the same time Qahtani was detained for questioning by a suspicious immigration inspector. The call was made to a phone used by Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster in the terrorism plot.
Qahtani, the team concluded, was meant to be part of the hijacking plot, foiled only because the inspector refused to grant him entry. The discovery prompted a mobilization of field agents to search for other accomplices. They sifted by hand through months of parking receipts at eight major airports and compared them with license plates of cars the hijackers used.
"At every [U.S.] airport that we knew a hijacker had been to, we went through the same exercise," Galligan said. But no additional matches were found.
The PENTTBOM team also played a leading role in the 20-month investigation of Bradley University graduate Ali Saleh Kahlah Marri, who was put in a military brig in June 2003 after President Bush accused him of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent. PENTTBOM and Illinois FBI agents surveilled Marri in the months after the terrorist attacks after discovering that he had called a United Arab Emirates phone number associated with Hawsawi.
Marri was arrested as a material witness in late 2001. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks who was apprehended in Pakistan in March 2003, has told U.S. authorities that Marri was an al Qaeda agent, said sources familiar with the interrogations, leading to Marri's designation as an enemy combatant.
In another case, the PENTTBOM investigators pieced together the identity of Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a suspected al Qaeda member and trained pilot who remains at large, from information provided by detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere. Last month, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft renewed calls for public help in finding Shukrijumah, saying: "He has been involved in terrorist planning with senior al Qaeda leaders overseas and has scouted sites across America that might be vulnerable to terrorist attack."
Congressional Criticism
In the first retrospective look at the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, released publicly last summer, House and Senate intelligence committee investigators concluded that the team had not worked aggressively enough to investigate some strands of the plot, particularly in connection with a small group of immigrants associated with two of the hijackers in San Diego.
In its scathing report, the joint inquiry argued that intelligence sources and the FBI's own investigation had revealed contacts between the lead hijackers and at least 14 suspected terrorist associates in San Diego and elsewhere in the United States -- including several whom the FBI was monitoring at the time of the contacts.
The FBI has staunchly disputed the committee's claims, arguing that the 14 individuals referred to in the report have been cleared of terrorist connections and, in many cases, were several steps removed from contact with any of the hijackers. But Eleanor Hill, the inquiry's staff director, said in a recent interview that she was taken back by what she viewed as the team's lack of thoroughness.
"We didn't feel they knew a lot about issues we were pretty concerned about," she said. "I know they worked very hard, and there were a lot of FBI agents working very hard after 9/11, but part of my view was that they were playing catch up. . . . I still think there were several issues we came across that we felt should have been handled more aggressively."
Hill and others criticize, in part, the organization of the investigation itself, which featured a constantly revolving cast of agents on temporary assignments. The tumult may have made it difficult to keep up with the sheer volume of material collected during the probe, she and others argue.
"They clearly had their hands full," Hill said. "I think they were overwhelmed after 9/11 just in the scope of what they had to look at."
The independent commission investigating the attacks, whose own investigators have gone over much of the same ground as the FBI, is largely impressed with the PENTTBOM team's work, said the panel's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow. But the commission investigators disagree with the bureau on a number of key points, which will become evident when the panel releases its report.
"Overall, PENTTBOM displayed all of the FBI's characteristic strengths," Zelikow said. "They are a superb investigative organization, with a culture that very much respects facts and values hard evidence. . . . But there are things that they didn't check out as aggressively as we might have liked. . . . and they have not always been as creative as they could have been."
Unanswered Questions
Like the families of attack victims, the PENTTBOM investigators agonize over questions they cannot answer. "Two and a half years later, when there's still questions out there, of course that is frustrating," Maguire said.
On a bracing day in early January, Galligan is joined by Michael E. Rolince, a longtime senior FBI counterterrorism official, for a question-and-answer session in an FBI auditorium. The audience members are relatives of those killed when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. A reporter was allowed to observe part of the gathering, but was barred from taking notes.
Galligan and Rolince walked the families through much of what is known about the events aboard Flight 77 that day. They discussed the plane's trajectory as it crashed; the response of emergency vehicles and fighter jets; and what was known about their loved ones' last minutes aboard the jetliner.
The team's role as a liaison of sorts to victims' relatives has gone largely unnoticed. Galligan and others have briefed the families, members of Congress and their staffs and investigators for the House-Senate inquiry and the independent commission investigating the attacks.
The FBI and the PENTTBOM team set up a secure Web site and telephone number to provide information to loved ones about the case. The bureau began a program last fall to return belongings that had been held as potential evidence, from identification tags to jewelry.
One man from the Midwest brought the FBI an answering machine tape of his son's last words, which he hoped could be restored; FBI technicians were unable to rescue the recording. On another day, members of the PENTTBOM team aired a security tape from Dulles International Airport for a woman whose husband was killed in the Pentagon crash. The grainy footage showed the man walking down a corridor, minutes after she had dropped him off to board the plane.
"When she saw him, she reached out to touch the screen and just held her hand there," FBI agent Jane Rhodes said. "There wasn't a dry eye in the house."
"A lot of these contacts with families are very intense, very personal," said Kathryn Turman, the FBI's victim representative. "They come to us. We try to get the answers for them as much as possible. . . . The message I try to get across to victims is: Life will never be the same again, but it can be good again."
The families' thirst for details is undiminished nearly three years after the attacks. Mueller said the PENTTBOM investigation will continue as long as there are leads to pursue.
"There is still information coming in," Galligan said, "and we still have so many unanswered questions."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Red Cross Clarifies Saddam Detention
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40850-2004Jun14.html
GENEVA - Saddam Hussein should be held for trial even though most Iraqi prisoners of war are entitled to immediate release at the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Red Cross said Monday.
"Any prisoner of war suspected of having committed any type of crime can be charged and tried," said Antonella Notari, chief spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Notari said she wanted to make clear the neutral ICRC has no desire to see the release of any POWs, including Saddam, who are suspected of criminal acts.
"Nobody in the ICRC is calling for the release of Saddam Hussein. Absolutely not," Notari told The Associated Press from the Geneva headquarters of the humanitarian agency, which serves as a watchdog to ensure adherence to the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare.
Earlier Monday the Baghdad-based ICRC spokeswoman, Nada Doumani, told Associated Press Television News that under international and military law, Saddam and other prisoners of war and civilian prisoners should be released at the end of the conflict and occupation unless there were charges against them.
Notari said the ICRC was unable to speculate on what would happen July 1 because it didn't know how the United States would proceed with the handover of sovereignty.
"We're not making any ultimatums or calls for release," Notari said. "What we're saying is: Saddam Hussein, as far as we understand today, is a POW, prisoner of war, protected by the third Geneva Convention as all prisoners of war are.
"In theory, when a war ends and when an occupation ends, the detaining force has to release prisoners of war or civilian detainees if there are no reasons for holding them."
But that assumes they were just interned because they were combatants participating in a war.
American forces say that as many as 1,400 detainees will either be released or transferred to Iraqi authorities by the June 30 handover of power. The Americans will continue to hold between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners deemed a threat to the coalition, the military said.
Although Iraqis will run their own affairs after June 30, tens of thousands of coalition troops will remain in the country to maintain security under a resolution approved unanimously last week by the U.N. Security Council.
After the handover of sovereignty, detainees held by the Iraqi authorities will be subject to Iraqi law.
"Now, of course, a prisoner of war who is suspected of having committed a crime must not just be released," Notari said. "Of course, he must be prosecuted, tried, through a legal proceeding.
She said it was up to U.S. authorities to decide what they will do about Saddam.
"If they continue to hold him at some stage they will have to charge him," Notari said. "They can also hand him over to the Iraqis, who can charge him and try him."
Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, told Al-Jazeera television Monday that he received official confirmation that all detainees, including Saddam, would be "handed over to the Iraqi government" within two weeks.
-------- terrorism
Somali Charged in Plot on Ohio Mall
By CURT ANDERSON
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42132-2004Jun14?language=printer
WASHINGTON - A Somali man has been charged with plotting to bomb an Ohio shopping mall, the type of vulnerable target in the nation's heartland that U.S. officials have warned that terrorists want to strike.
The four-count grand jury indictment unsealed Monday in Columbus, Ohio, alleges Nuradin Abdi conspired with Iyman Faris, a convicted al-Qaida operative who sought to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge, and others to detonate explosives at an unidentified mall in the Columbus area.
The alleged conspiracy began shortly after Abdi, 32, returned in March 2000 from training camps in Ethiopia to "ready himself to participate in violent jihadi conflicts" overseas and in the United States, the government charged in court papers. "Jihad" is the Arabic word for holy struggle.
Abdi, who operated a small cell phone business, was arrested at his Columbus apartment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Nov. 28. He had been under surveillance for months and initially was held on immigration violations, authorities said.
FBI officials and prosecutors in Ohio said no specific mall was targeted and there was no imminent threat of an attack when Abdi was arrested.
"The point here is that this plot was foiled while it was still in the planning stages," assistant U.S. attorney Bill Hunt said at a news conference in Cincinnati.
Charges in the indictment, originally returned Thursday but kept secret until Monday, include providing material support to al-Qaida, conspiracy to provide material support and document fraud. If convicted on all charges, Abdi could be sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison.
The FBI repeatedly has warned al-Qaida might shift away from attempting to hit tightly guarded installations, such as government buildings or nuclear plants, to more vulnerable targets such as malls, apartment buildings or hotels.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the charges serve as a reminder that al-Qaida is determined "to hit the United States and hit us hard."
"We know our enemies will go to great lengths to lie in wait and to achieve the death and destruction they desire," he said at a news conference in Washington.
Asa Hutchinson, the top Homeland Security Department official for border and transportation security, attended the Washington news conference because the department's bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement was heavily involved in the case. Members of Congress of both parties criticized Ashcroft last month when he and FBI Director Robert Mueller held a news conference to describe a growing al-Qaida threat but did not invite any Homeland Security Department officials.
Abdi's 17-year-old brother, Mohamed AbdiKarani, said his brother loved the freedom of the United States and never spoke out against the U.S. government. Abdi has a son and daughter and his wife is pregnant, his brother said.
"He really hated terrorists," AbdiKarani said. "He loved it here. He never had as much freedom. He said it's good to raise his kids here."
AbdiKarani said Abdi was friends with Faris because they attended the same mosque. Columbus is home to more than 30,000 Somalis, the second-largest Somali community in the United States, after Minneapolis.
Faris is serving a 20-year federal sentence after pleading guilty last June to providing material support to al-Qaida. Faris, an Ohio-based truck driver originally from Kashmir, admitted plotting to sever the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and to derail trains in New York or Washington.
Faris had received instructions from top al-Qaida leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed for what might have been a second wave of attacks to follow those of Sept. 11, 2001, investigators say. Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijackings, is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed overseas location.
According to U.S. immigration records, Abdi first entered the United States in 1995, lived for a time in Ontario, Canada, and then returned to the United States in August 1997. Abdi was granted asylum in the United States as a refugee in January 1999 after giving false information to immigration officials, the government charges.
Later that year, he used that refugee status to apply for a travel document by falsely claiming he was planning to visit Germany and the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
In fact, prosecutors say, Abdi used the document to travel to Ethiopia to obtain "military-style training in preparation for violent jihad." The training included guns, guerrilla warfare, bombs and radio usage. One co-conspirator not in U.S. custody provided money for the trip, the indictment says.
The part of Ethiopia referenced in the indictment is known as a remote and lawless region that shares a highly porous border with Somalia. It is believed that the Al-Ittihad Al-Islami terror network, which is affiliated with al-Qaida and is fighting the Ethiopian government, operates on both sides of the border in that area.
Abdi returned to the United States in March 2000 - again using fraudulent documents, prosecutors say - and was met at the Columbus airport by Faris. The shopping mall plot was hatched a short time later, officials said, with one of the unidentified co-conspirators providing Abdi with bomb-making instruction.
On the Net:
Justice Department:http://www.usdoj.gov
Immigration and Customs Enforcement:http://www.ice.gov
-------- torture
Torture, Incorporated Oliver North Joins the Party
CounterPunch
By JOHN STANTON and WAYNE MADSEN
June 14, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton06142004.html
The U.S. Army has employed as many as 27 contractors to run its interrogation operations, according to media reports. But while CACI and Titan are getting all the mainstream media play, it appears that far more than 27 contract employees were involved in recruiting and placing interrogators in various locations. Some of the firms involved in the Bush administration's "TortureGate" include an odd assortment of telecommunications companies and executive placement firms that have jumped into the lucrative torture business in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and at secret locations throughout Central Asia and North Africa.
Interrogators can earn up to $120,000 per year plying their trade and most are former military and law enforcement personnel. More ominously, these so-called "private military contractors" are nothing of the sort. They are paramilitary organizations that are funded by the US Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State, and assorted other agencies through contract vehicles known as Basic Ordering Agreements or "BOAs" hidden throughout the vast US government bureaucracy. It now is well known that CACI got its money through a BOA with the Department of the Interior.
Ollie -- He's Baaack!
On January 12, 2004, United Placements ran an advertisement for Army Interrogators. "Job State: IRAQ, Job Number: 8. Interrogators: 30 Positions. Compensation to $120,000. Individuals must be trained Interrogators with at least five years of experience in interrogation. Individuals must be knowledgeable of Army/Joint interrogation procedures, data processing systems such as CHIMs and SIPRNET search engines. Knowledge of the Arabic language and culture a plus...Candidates must have documented in their resumes five years of Humint collection and/or interrogation experience. This is a requirement of the client. Some locations require individuals to work and live in a field environment with minimum medical facilities. Must possess the ability to work extended work hours in difficult surroundings for up to one year."
United Placements' lists none other than Oliver North--a member of Ronald Reagan's NSC and focal point of the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980's--as one of its two "Industry Associates." North is currently the host of Fox News Channel's "War Stories." United Placement's second "Industry Associate" is Intelligencecareers.com run by former intelligence analyst Bill Goldman.
While TortureGate festers, it is noteworthy that as late as May 7, 2004 the same posting for interrogators was listed through Design Staffing LLC. Evidently, a new batch of interrogators is needed to replace those now under criminal investigation. "Job Nr 85832--Conduct interrogations. Conduct pre-brief and debrief preparation which includes researching, compiling, and preparing supporting material; prepare all-source target overview/summaries to include cultural, religious, and sociological factors; and identify information required for immediate processing and dissemination including support to ongoing and planned operations and force protection. This listing opened 07-May-04 and is valid for 90 days." The listing goes on to say that the openings will be available "until filled." It was listed under the categories "Analyst (Intelligence) & Knowledge Specialists.
Another company, ZKD, Inc. ran advertisements for interrogators on February 4, 2004. "This listing opened 10-Feb-04 and is valid for 180 days. The company's closing date comments for this listing are: "Open Till Filled. Category: Military Arts, Operations and Science. Send resume to careers@zkdinc.com." It seems interrogators are not only knowledge specialists but artists too.
Who Are Those Guys?
Just who are these people? It shouldn't be a surprise that Oliver North is back in the war crimes business, but some of the organizations getting into the act seemingly don't belong in the murky field of recruitment for the US military's shadow paramilitary force. But, then again, some of these groups have some of the trademarks of CIA or other intelligence agency cut-out operations. Flush with seed money from existing government contracts, small and medium-sized government contractors and recruiting firms were able to launch major drives to draft language-capable interrogators from the ranks of America's ex-military, law enforcement, and intelligence cadres and the immigrant community.
ZKD, Inc., located in Fairfax, Virginia, bills itself as a veteran-owned, minority owned and women owned firm that provides "Staffing Solutions, Security and Language Services." It's President and CEO is Zachary K. Duck. The May 2004 issue of Black Enterprise states that ZKD, "as a staffing agency, analyzes current labor market trends and matches qualified applicants with employment opportunities. After 9-11, the company doubled its efforts to provide security services to meet increased demand. ZKD also offers a comprehensive communications service." ZKD has seen a meteoric rise in profits thanks mostly to the Pentagon and Transportation Security Administration. Black Enterprise states that ZKD was founded in 2001 with only two employees but now has more than 250 people with revenues totaling more than $ 10 million in 2003.
ZKD has a growing roster of clients, including the Transportation Security Administration and McNeil Technologies. In January of this year, ZKD was awarded a five-year, $ 53.7 million contract from the Department of Defense. The company now enjoys a solid $34.5 million in contracts for 2004 with another $13 million in the contracting queue.
It is noteworthy that according to The Washington Post, CACI and McNeil Technologies are the recipients of Federal contracts to process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Federal agencies, including the Pentagon and Homeland Security and Justice Departments. In what could be a major conflict of interest, any FOIA request from the public or the media for information on Pentagon or intelligence agency contracts with CACI or ZKD on their interrogation/translation work abroad could be handled by employees of CACI, an interrogation contractor, or McNeil, a client of ZKD, another interrogation contractor.
Design Staffing, LLC is located in Boyds, Maryland has all the trademarks of an operation run by an ex-military or intelligence agency veteran. The language is classic military gangland style "Beyond [the] core categories, we also assist companies with those hard-to-fill positions that do not fit in the traditional molds. Our method, which we call the Design Staffing Approach, DSA, is critical to the success of our business - and yours. The DSA model is an innovative systematic, seven-tier approach..."
A search of the U.S. Business Directory reveals Design Staffing, LLC is an "employment agency & opportunities firm" and has one employee, an unknown credit status, and a business address at 14024 Clopper Road, Boyds, Maryland. Its principal-listed by email as mpoage@designstaffing.com -is very particular about what he/she is looking for in an interrogator.
"For interrogators I look for experience conducting interrogations, conduct of personnel screenings of local nationals and conduct of tactical debriefings."
He/she goes on to imply that embellishment of experience may not be a bad idea to make the resume look stronger to the customer.
If North is There, the Carlyle Group Can't be Far Behind
Then there's CalNet, a Vienna, Virginia-based company that says it provides "Agile Solutions for the New Customer Economy." It is run by President and CEO Kaleem Shah. The U.S. Business Directory provides the following sketchy information on CalNet: its description is "Computer-Systems Designers and Consultants," and it has four employees. A CalNet Ltd., also listed as a "computer related" company and located in West Yorkshire, England, was dissolved on March 20, 2001.
According to its website, "Since 1989, CalNet has used its business and technology consultancy to help many of the largest telecom, financial, public sector, high-tech and services organizations remain agile by obtaining explicit business results through the rapid application and delivery of advanced information and telecom solutions." That may be so, but CalNet posted the same interrogators-wanted ad that United Placements ran in January of 2004. Interested parties are encouraged to apply for a position with the Iraq Survey Group. "...please send resume to bcoleman@CALNET.com. Reference job number DISG2."
USIS, or U.S. Investigations Services, bills itself as "one of the largest Intelligence and Security Services companies in North America." Hoover's Company Capsules has a very unusual descriptive background for the firm. "Formally a US government agency, USIS was spun off as a private company in 1996." A recent job fair it hosted in Falls Church, Virginia, sought "Interrogators, Strategic Debriefers and Protection Specialists for Overseas Assignments."
One of the USIS investors is the omnipresent Carlyle Group, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm with close ties to George H. W. Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major, and former Secretary of State James Baker, and past ties to the Saudi Bin Laden Companies, which has its tentacles into many of the Bush administration's major foreign adventures. USIS also owns a subsidiary, Total Information Services, Inc., of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which ironically is similar to the name of the defunct Pentagon program to glean personal information from databases on U.S. and foreign citizens. That program, called the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system was headed by Iran-contra felon retired Admiral John Poindexter before he resigned. TIA, according to media reports, is alive and well in the offices of DARPA in Northern Virginia.
Since the US Congress, the Pentagon, the White House and US Department of Justice seem determined to sweep the entire TortureGate disaster under the rug before the November 2004 elections, the only check on their power appears to be the financial markets. As was recently reported by the Washington Post, directors of one of CACI's pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, planned to meet with CACI in early July "...to discuss concerns about [CACI] management controls, training and legal procedures at the Arlington-based government contractor... What the management of this company owes [shareholders] is a full explanation of exactly what has occurred, exactly who was responsible and a full accounting of what will be done to reform its practices."
Maybe if the money talks, Bush--and the Gordon Gecko's of the defense contracting world--will walk.
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer specializing in national security and political matters. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "A Power, But Not Super." Reach John at cioran123@yahoo.com.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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Rumsfeld: 'No wiggle room' in torture ban
AFP
Mon Jun 14
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040614/pl_afp/us_iraq_prisoners_040614220453
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said there was "no wiggle room" in a US ban on torture, although others might characterize the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo as torture.
"There is no wiggle room in the president's mind or my mind about torture," Rumsfeld told reporters after meeting at the Pentagon with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"That is not something that is permitted under the Geneva Conventions or the laws of the United States," he said.
"That is not to say that somebody else couldn't characterize something in a way that would fit what I described," he added.
By way of illustration, Rumsfeld noted that some have suggested that the indefinite detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba creates a state of uncertainty that is a form of mental torture.
"Therefore, that word is used by some people in a way that is fair from their standpoint, but doesn't fit a dictionary definition of the word that one would normally accept," he said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the detentions at Guantanamo Bay with regular visits, warned publicly in October of a "worrying deterioration in the psychological health" of a large number of detainees at Guantanamo because of the uncertainty of their fate.
At a news conference Thursday at the end of a G8 summit in Georgia, President George W. Bush raised eyebrows when he refused to say at a press conference whether torture is permitted under US law.
"I'm going to say it one more time. Maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you," he said.
A military spokesman in Kabul on Monday said changes were underway in the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, after a report on abuses of prisoners in military custody prompted a review.
Karzai said he had not been briefed on the changes in his meeting with Rumsfeld.
"Whatever changes they are making to make life easier and better for them is something we would appreciate and welcome," he said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
War spending 'has made country more vulnerable'
independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
14 June 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=531338
America is "massively vulnerable" to another big terrorist attack because of President George Bush's insistence on diverting resources from internal security to the war in Iraq, Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief has said.
He told The Independent the war in Iraq had taken focus and financing not only from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'ida supporters but from homeland security programmes in the US. "America is massively vulnerable," Mr Clarke said. "Its chemical plants are vulnerable; its train systems are all vulnerable. We are a target-rich environment. There are lots of targets that could be made harder to attack but we are not doing that."
The invasion of Iraq, which Mr Clarke believes presented no threat to the US, had created three serious security problems, he said. Insufficient aid was being given to countries such as Yemen and Pakistan, where there were known to be terrorists, to help them strengthen security measures. Second, troops and resources such as satellite imaging, special forces and unmanned Predator drones, had been moved from the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to help the troops in Iraq. Third, the billions of dollars that had been spent in Iraq had used money that could have been spent on security within the US.
"The department has a long list of things they want to do - to secure trains for example, to prevent another Madrid [bombing] happening ... to secure chemical plants, to train first-responders. They are massively under-funded."
Mr Clarke served presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush snr and Bill Clinton, then was kept on as counter-terrorism chief by President Bush.
The administration denies the invasion of Iraq diverted resources and attention from the hunt for al-Qa'ida.
-------- investigations
Whistleblowers ask federal workers to come forward with 9/11 evidence
June 14, 2004
By Chris Strohm cstrohm@govexec.com
govexec.com
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0604/061404c1.htm
Two government whistleblowers on Monday called on federal workers to come forward if they have information that could help investigations of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The request was made by Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who alleges that the government knew more details about the 9/11 plot than it has admitted, and Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War to the media in 1971.
"If there are people right now who know either the same information that Sibel had and [believe] that it's wrongfully being withheld, or comparable information, then I believe that they should go to Congress, but also to the press and put that out even at great risk to their careers," said Ellsberg, who gave the Pentagon Papers to Congress and the media. "Many, many lives are at stake here, and it's well worth telling the truth, even at personal sacrifice."
Edmonds, a Turkish-American, worked in the FBI's Washington field office from Sept. 20, 2001, to March 2002 as a contract linguist. She was given top-secret security clearance and hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations relating to the plot. She concluded that documents clearly showed that the 9/11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles to carry out an attack in a major city. She said documents also included information relating to terrorist financial activities.
On Oct. 18, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted "state secrets privilege," essentially placing a gag order on Edmonds that prevents her from discussing what she did or what information she obtained. The government argued that Edmonds' information "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States."
Edmonds has since filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and FBI to lift the gag order.
Last month, Ashcroft took the unusual step of retroactively classifying information that his department gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding Edmonds. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the move "ludicrous," because so much information has already been distributed in the public domain through thousands of Web sites.
Edmonds has testified in private before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the federal 9/11 commission. That panel will hold its final public hearings this week, and is scheduled to issue a comprehensive report at the end of July on the how the attacks occurred and how future attacks can be prevented.
The Justice Department has also prevented Edmonds from testifying in a class-action lawsuit over the Sept. 11 attacks. Earlier this year, she was subpoenaed by a group of Sept. 11 relatives and survivors who filed a civil suit against international banks and two members of the Saudi royal family for allegedly aiding al Qaeda.
Edmonds was scheduled to have a hearing on Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to determine if she could testify in the lawsuit. However, Judge Reggie Walton decided last week to postpone the hearing. A spokesman for Walton's office said the Justice Department submitted its argument on June 9 for why Edmonds should be prevented from testifying. The argument is under review. The spokesman said the hearing tentatively has been rescheduled for July 9.
Edmonds noted that her hearings have been postponed four times since the fall of 2002.
She said her testimony would help people have "a complete picture" of the terrorist attacks, especially with regard to what she called "semi-legitimate organizations."
"They would see the real picture of activities before 9/11 and the involvement of certain semi-legit organizations. I know many people automatically assume we're talking about only religious or charity organizations, but it goes way beyond that," she said.
"I cannot specifically say what type," she added. "However, I can say that [the] investigations involve when certain money laundering and intelligence activities and drug activities converge with terrorist activities. Terrorists want to buy information, too, and they have known connections to certain drug-related [groups]."
The Justice Department refused to comment on any matters related to Edmonds' case.
The Justice Department's inspector general's office began investigating Edmonds' case in the summer of 2002. IG spokesman Paul Martin said the investigation would be completed "within the next several weeks." He could not be more specific. Once completed, the results will be reviewed by the FBI to determine what material should be classified.
Edmonds said she wants to testify publicly, under oath, about what she knows, and she hopes that other people in the Justice Department will come forward.
"First of all, their duty is first to the country, not their loyalty to a certain organization or a bureau," she said. "Number two, they would be doing it not only for the public; they would be doing it for themselves because these issues involve all of us."
Ellsberg said he faced a similar dilemma when he decided to come forward with information about the Vietnam War.
"All citizens have to choose in the merits of this case," he said. "Do I believe Attorney General John Ashcroft's judgment of what comprises national security and what information the public must not know? Or do I rely on the judgment of a very intelligent and conscientious government employee at the time, experienced in dealing with classified materials and who had been trusted with large amounts of highly sensitive material?"
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Lawyer wants Rumsfeld to testify in prison-abuse case
USA TODAY
By Dennis Cauchon
6/14/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-13-graner-defense_x.htm
The attorney for an Army reservist who allegedly led the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison says he wants to force top Defense Department officials and at least three generals to testify at the soldier's upcoming court-martial.
To try to prove that Army Spc. Charles Graner was acting legally, defense attorney Guy Womack wants testimony not just from Graner's immediate supervisors, but also from those well up the chain of command. Womack says his list of potential witnesses includes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
'Can't go on a fishing expedition'
Womack says he wants top military leaders to testify about what orders were given about how to treat detainees. "We're going to prove the chain of command knew (the abuse) was going on and did nothing to countermand it," says Womack, a veteran military attorney now in private practice in Houston.
Getting testimony from the nation's highest-ranking military leaders would be difficult but not impossible, military-law analysts say. Womack would have to show a military judge that such testimony would be relevant to what Graner knew and how he behaved.
Analysts say that prosecutors are likely to oppose efforts by Womack to shift responsibility for the abuse up the chain of command. The Defense Department declined to comment.
If successful, Womack could focus the spotlight on the sensitive issue of whether the abuse at Abu Ghraib stemmed from aggressive interrogation policies endorsed by U.S. military leaders.
"His challenge is that he has to prove that the testimony is relevant. He can't go on a fishing expedition," says retired Army major general Michael Nardotti, who was the military's top lawyer from 1993 to 1997 and now is a partner in Patton Boggs, a prominent law firm in Washington, D.C.
Several military-law analysts say they do not know of any precedent for compelling top officials to testify in military trials. In 1999, a military judge refused to make an Army general who was commander of a task force in Haiti testify in a court-martial case involving a soldier who disobeyed orders trying to stop prison abuse in that country.
Graner, 35, of Uniontown, Pa., is accused of being a ringleader in the abuse of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. In the now-famous photos of abused prisoners that were taken by U.S. soldiers, Graner appears more often than any other soldier. Witnesses have identified him as a leader of the abuse.
Graner is charged with abuse, cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners; committing indecent acts, and obstruction of justice. He also is charged with adultery because of his alleged affair with Pfc. Lynndie England, another reservist charged in the case. If convicted, Graner could face up to 241/2 years in prison.
Womack says that he needs to call high-ranking officials to prove that Graner's actions were part of an official policy to get information from suspected terrorists and insurgents.
"The government is trying to make it seem like nobody approved of this or knew of this, and that it was seven rogue military policeman suddenly went crazy and flipped out," Womack says. "I'll be able to prove that's a lie."
He says he is considering calling Rumsfeld as a witness and definitely will subpoena Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.
Trial may come in August
Cambone recently told Congress that he pushed for more coordination between intelligence officers and military police working as guards. But he testified that he did not approve of sexually humiliating and intimidating prisoners.
Womack also plans to call three generals: Sanchez; Maj. General Geoffrey Miller, who now runs the prison, and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the prison when the abuse took place.
"I won't attack these witnesses unless they lie or conceal something. I just want to them to say, 'Yeah, we loosened the reins (on interrogations) to get more information, and it was the right thing to do,' " Womack says.
Walter Huffman, dean of Texas Tech University's law school, says that Womack might have to prove that Graner had direct contact with witnesses Womack wants to call - or at least show that Graner was influenced by something he heard Rumsfeld or a general say.
"It's not a bad tactic to try to spread blame around on everyone but his client, but he'll have to offer some proof that what happened above (Graner's) rank was directly relevant to what he did," says Huffman, a retired major general who was the Army's top lawyer from 1997 to 2001.
Graner will have a hearing next Monday in concerning what evidence and witnesses he will have access to. Womack expects a two-week trial, probably in August.
Graner, who in civilian life is a guard at a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania, e-mails Womack six to eight times a day about his case, Womack says. Graner also has a military attorney, Capt. John Heath, in Iraq.
Womack says that Graner is confined to an Army compound in Iraq, where he has been assigned menial tasks such as picking up trash and answering phones.
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America's Last Chance: Congressional Oversight and "Torture-gate"
Independent Institute
By Brigid O'Neil
June 14, 2004
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/040614ONeil.html
Recent testimony by administration officials on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal have all but cemented the U.S. Executive's reputation for stonewalling the truth regardless of fact or consequence.
First, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to comment on whether the president directed an order on the interrogation of detainees. Then after a flurry of press leaks made it obvious the president had some involvement, the White House press secretary quickly acknowledged that President Bush set "broad guidelines" for interrogation techniques, but refused to give specific details. Meanwhile Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly resisted calls to release memos that-if the Wall Street Journal is correct-sanction the use of torture by military personnel. All of these administration officials have acted in a way that holds the interests of the Bush administration above those of the American people. The Attorney General did so even when faced with the threat of being held in contempt of Congress. After promising the American people a full and proper investigation into the torture at Abu Ghraib, the administration is instead doing everything it can to obstruct congressional investigation and sidestep any culpability.
This shameful political maneuvering was embodied all too well by the Attorney General's recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. When pressed to justify why he would not disclose a memo on the level of pain legally permitted during interrogation, Ashcroft replied that it was his "belief" that certain presidential communications should remain confidential. At the same time, he refused to cite which statute-including executive privilege-would protect his silence before Congress. At this, Senator Richard Durbin snapped: "Sir, Attorney General, with all due respect, your personal belief is not law . . . and you are not citing a law and you are not claiming executive privilege. And frankly, that is what contempt of Congress is all about."
Not surprisingly, the Attorney General obstinately responded that during wartime such policies need to be shielded from any outside review-including, as it were, congressional oversight. Yet underlying the Attorney General's comments is a long-standing administration doctrine that "trust" and "loyalty" carry a greater importance than "accountability." For instance, although we know U.S. soldiers followed the standards of interrogation set out in FBI and Pentagon policy briefs, the administration maintains that none of its officials either sanctioned or condoned those policies of torture. The briefs were merely, we are told, "legal opinions" regarding abuse, yet the administration has refused to release the documents in question. Given the administration's poor record on questions of accuracy and honesty, this hardly seems to be an appropriate time for our nation to engage in a game of trust.
While the administration plays hot potato with the ticking bomb of "Torture-gate," the consequences of legalizing torture are wreaking havoc with America's reputation. Official memos sanctioning the use of torture dangerously undermine U.S. foreign policy and place the lives of every American abroad at risk. As Senator Joseph Biden recently reminded the Attorney General, "There's a reason why we sign these treaties: to protect my son in the military."
According to recent news reports, Biden has plenty of reason to worry. In retaliation for U.S. torture of prisoners in Iraq, insurgents have already beheaded one American. It also follows that "Torture-gate" will unravel decades of hard-earned U.S. diplomatic work against prisoner abuse around the world. The chronicle of U.S.-sanctioned torture does nothing less than tarnish our very identity as a free and just people.
Now that the executive has abdicated any responsibility for the scandal, Congress needs to pick up the reins and fulfill its constitutional mandate as a check against unbridled executive power. Congress has repeatedly invoked the U.S. Constitution in its criticism of the administration. Now it has a chance to set the example by holding the administration accountable under constitutional and international law. At the very least, Congressional committees need to call the administration on unlawfully withholding information. The stakes are too high for Congress to surrender its check against the executive any longer. As the first constitutional republic the world has ever known, we cannot afford to let the United States carry the legacy a despot.
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CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report
Reuters
Monday, June 14, 2004
By Tabassum Zakaria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41532-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has nearly finished declassifying a highly critical report about prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and returned most of it to Congress on Monday with parts it believes should be kept secret marked in brackets, government sources said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report examines one of the main reasons used by the United States for going to war against Iraq -- intelligence that said Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. No large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons have been found.
The committee will meet on Tuesday behind closed doors to discuss the report including its conclusions and the CIA's redactions. The panel was expected to vote on whether to approve the roughly 400-page report.
Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican chairman of the committee, has been adamant about making public as much of the report as possible.
The panel's options include negotiating with the CIA over passages that the intelligence agency determines would be harmful to national security if they were publicly released.
The committee could rewrite those portions or it could override the CIA and issue the report in its full original form -- but that option was considered unlikely.
The CIA was still working to declassify two remaining sections of the report and was expected to complete that in the next day or two, an intelligence official said.
It was unknown whether the committee would ask CIA Director George Tenet, who earlier this month said he would leave his position for personal reasons in July, to respond to the report before it is released.
Speculation circulated at the time of Tenet's resignation that it might have been due to the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the 9/11 Commission report that is due at the end of July. Both are expected to criticize the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report will detail problems in prewar U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but be less critical of the intelligence on terrorism, government sources said. It was expected to specifically criticize Tenet in some instances.
The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold hearings which will be followed by recommendations for changes to the U.S. intelligence community.
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9/11 Commission Set for Final Hearings
By HOPE YEN
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41940-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON - Relatives of Sept. 11 victims suspect government and military leaders were too lethargic during critical moments of the catastrophe and said Monday they hope the panel reviewing the attacks will find out the truth.
The Sept. 11 commission holds its 12th and last hearing Wednesday and Thursday. Its focus: the genesis of the plot from the perspective of the hijackers, and the national emergency response by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. air defenses on the day of the attacks.
"I want to see a clear timeline. What time did the FAA officially know a hijacking was taking place? What time did the president understand this was a hijacking? Why was there a delay in scrambling fighter jets?" said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband, Alan, was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
"I'm hoping at the end of this two-day hearing, we will have a picture of the defensive posture on Sept. 11," she said.
Some commissioners have said this week's hearings could be among the panel's most politically sensitive because they will explore communication gaps and decision-making by the nation's top leaders on the day of the 2001 attacks.
In particular, families of Sept. 11 victims have wondered whether military jets could have intercepted American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon and killed 184 people, since that attack came more than 50 minutes after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center.
In addition, the relatives want to know why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, was not notified of the attacks until after the Pentagon was hit, and why President Bush didn't appear to take immediate action when he was notified. Bush was visiting with schoolchildren in Florida and was told of the attacks during a program.
Myers will testify Thursday.
As to the Sept. 11 plot, the relatives hope the commission will ask whether U.S. officials were justified in refusing to provide German authorities access to suspected Sept. 11 conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh, the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 independent commission said in a statement.
In February, a German court, citing lack of evidence, acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi, a longtime acquaintance of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. The Justice Department had barred sworn testimony from Binalshibh and other al-Qaida prisoners on national security grounds.
Matthias Krauss, the German prosecutor who headed the investigation into the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, will testify Wednesday.
The commission, which faces a July 26 deadline for its final report, is winding down its 1 1/2-year investigation in which it interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including Bush, and reviewed more than 2 million documents.
On the Net:
Sept. 11 panel:
http://www.9-11commission.gov
-------- propaganda wars
Cheney Claims al-Qaida Linked to Saddam
Associated Press
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Mon Jun 14
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040615/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_terrorism_1
ORLANDO, Fla. - Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had "long-established ties" with al Qaida, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.
The vice president offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida.
"He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long established ties with al Qaida."
In making the case for war in Iraq, Bush administration officials frequently cited what they said were Saddam's decade-long contacts with al-Qaida operatives. They stopped short of claiming that Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but critics say Bush officials left that impression with the American public.
Cheney listed what he described as the accomplishments of the Bush administration in the war on terror, including fledgling democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the decision by Libya's leader, Moammar Gadhafi, to abandon his nuclear ambitions.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., countered that the Bush administration had "a sorry record in the war on terror." Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke Sunday in a conference call arranged by John Kerry's presidential campaign in anticipation of Cheney's speech.
The State Department said last week it was wrong in stating that terrorism declined worldwide last year in a report that the Bush administration initially cited as evidence it was succeeding against terrorism, Graham noted. Both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department acknowledged.
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Dubya's Dilemma: Daddy Doesn't Support the Iraq War
Capitol Hill Blue
By TERESA HAMPTON
Jun 14, 2004
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4685.shtml
The Iraqi war that has so divided Americans is also causing a rift in the family of President George W. Bush.
The President's father, George H.W. Bush - 41st President of the United States - disagrees with his son's decisions in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which is why the former President has not commented in public on the war.
"The President and I discuss the war privately," the elder Bush said in an interview earlier this year. "That is the way it will remain."
But sources close to the Bush family say the elder Bush thinks his son has mishandled the war in Iraq.
"They disagree on the war," says a family confidante. "Former President Bush believes the U.S. should have sought more support before invading Iraq and feels his son did not work hard enough to secure the support of allies."
Former President Bush built an unprecedented coalition of allies, including countries in the Middle East, for Desert Storm, the Gulf War that ended Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait. He also enjoyed support from the United Nations. But his son invaded Iraq without UN support or the support of any prominent Middle Eastern nations. Sources also say the elder Bush, who once headed the Central Intelligence Agency, faults his son for pressuring the CIA to provide hastily-prepared and faulty intelligence to support plans to invade Iraq.
Rumors of a rift between father and son have circulated in Washington for months and White House watchers noted, with interest, the lack of public support from the elder Bush for his son's military action against Iraq.
"George H.W. Bush is a pro," says Darlene Atkins, a former campaign worker for the elder Bush. "He makes sure the facts are on his side before he moves. It concerns him that his son did not exercise what he feels was appropriate caution before launching the war with Iraq."
Bush's father has told Republican leaders that he fears Iraq will cost his son a second term in the White House, calling the war "his read-my-lips donnybrook," a reference to the elder Bush's flip-flop on tax increases that many feel led to his defeat in the 1992 elections.
In addition, the former President has told his son that he "messed up big time" in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks against the United States. The elder Bush points out that a State Department assessment released after the September 11 attacks lists 45 countries (including the United States) where al-Qaeda operated and notes that Iraq was not one of those countries.
John McLaughlin, Deputy Director of the CIA, told Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz Iraq was not on the list. A spokesman for the Deputy Secretary confirmed McLaughlin's briefing of Wolfowitz.
"The problem President Bush has when it comes to CIA intelligence is that his daddy knows a lot more about what goes on at Langley than he does," says a former intelligence officer. "He also knows how the White House can drive the outcome of intel assessments."
Former Congressman Lee Hamilton agrees.
"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," says Hamilton, who is now with the Woodrow Wilson Institute, a Washington think tank. "This is not a problem unique to George Bush. It's every president I've known, and I've worked with seven or eight of them All, at some time or another, used intelligence to support their political objectives."
"Information is power, and the temptation to use information to achieve the results you want is almost overwhelming," Hamilton adds. "The whole intelligence community knows exactly what the president wants [regarding Iraq], and most are in their jobs because of the president - certainly the people at the top - and they will do everything they can to support the policy."
This misuse of intelligence is at the heart of differences between Bush, the President, and Bush the father and former President.
As public support for the war wanes, political strategists have urged the former President to come out publicly for his son's war but their arguments have fallen on defiant ears.
"It's easy to see where President Bush got his stubborn streak," sighs one White House political operative.
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WHITE HOUSE LETTER
Trying on Reagan's Mantle, but It Doesn't Exactly Fit
June 14, 2004
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/14letter.html
Washington -- George Bush begins today to try to refocus the nation on his presidency after a week when it seemed, at least from the constant replays of 1980's-era videotape on CNN, that Ronald and Nancy Reagan were fox-trotting in the White House again.
At times it also seemed as if Mr. Reagan were running for president one more time. This past weekend, the White House Web site prominently featured a collection of Reagan remembrances and a photo essay of Mr. Bush at the funeral for the former president. The Bush campaign Web site went one better, offering a video of Mr. Reagan uttering his most famous lines - "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc" - interspersed with Mr. Bush's own words - "He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character."
It was difficult to tell where the 40th president ended and the 43rd began, a blurring further promoted by Ken Mehlman, the president's campaign manager, who told an Iowa Republican Party convention on Saturday that Mr. Reagan's spirit lived on. "Every time an American soldier, sailor, airman or marine risks his or her life to ensure our security and peace, Ronald Reagan will be there," Mr. Mehlman said.
Of course, Mr. Bush's effort to wrap himself in the Reagan legacy drew plenty of skeptics, including a number of top Reagan officials, who said, all anonymously, that the presidencies could not have been more different. Mr. Reagan was pragmatic, they said, but Mr. Bush is ideological. Mr. Reagan was a unifier, they argued, while Mr. Bush has polarized.
"Bush wants to defeat his opponents, Reagan wanted his to join him," one former official of the Reagan White House said.
Leaving aside what many historians call a nostalgic rewriting of the Reagan era - plenty of Democrats despised and derided Ronald Reagan in a highly partisan time -there are still striking and significant contrasts in the politics, artifice and style of the two presidencies.
The first that leaps out is Mr. Reagan's ease with the camera and the way it captured his personality and seemed to enhance who he was. Americans felt they knew Mr. Reagan, who was little different off television than on.
"He had so much experience - he knew the expressions, the posture, the lighting, the angles," said Michael Evans, Mr. Reagan's White House photographer, who recalled that Mr. Reagan, so used to Hollywood sets, had no problems letting him into the Oval Office on historic occasions to shoot through the day.
"I'd say hello in the morning, and then he'd just totally ignore me," Mr. Evans said.
Mr. Bush, in contrast, is stiffer and often more tongue-tied on television than in person. He finds the camera so distracting that his staff quickly shoos photographers away. "He just likes to get it over with," said David Hume Kennerly, who has photographed every president since he was Gerald R. Ford's White House photographer. "If he had his choice, he wouldn't do it."
The second difference is in the business of politics. Mr. Bush, who is his own de facto campaign manager, loves the combat and gossip. His advisers say he knows his exact standing in recent polls, the names of his chairmen in the battleground states and probably the names of important county chairmen.
Mr. Reagan, in contrast, did not. "Are you kidding me?" said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was Mr. Reagan's last White House chief of staff. "He didn't want to hear about the political ups and downs." Mr. Reagan's detachment meant that his operatives handled the dirty work, while Mr. Bush's immersion has helped drive one of the most politically aggressive White Houses in decades.
The third difference is their style in the capital. Both men ran against Washington, but once elected, Mr. Reagan was determined to be different from Jimmy Carter, who had ignored the city's power elite. "When you come to town, there's a tendency as an officeholder to act as if you're a detached servant," Mr. Reagan said at a party he gave at the F Street Club in Washington when he was president-elect in 1980. He invited the capital's political, business and social leaders, many of them Democrats. "Well, I decided it was time to serve notice that we're residents."
The Bushes, in contrast, have gone to bed early and kept largely to themselves, socializing mostly with old friends from Texas and some of the president's Yale classmates. On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush takes frequent swipes at Washington, drawing big applause, but Democrats say his approach has helped polarize the mood in the capital.
In any case, Mr. Bush, not Mr. Reagan, is this year's candidate. After a hiatus of nearly two weeks - when he spent time in Europe, at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga., at the observances for Mr. Reagan and at a celebration in Texas for his father's 80th birthday - Mr. Bush will spend four of five days this week on the campaign trail.
Even so, Mr. Bush will have an odd opening act today, tied to yet another previous presidency: the unveiling of former President Bill Clinton's official portrait at the White House.
-------- us politics
Cheney's office 'briefed on Pentagon deal'
By Joshua Chaffin in Washington
June 14 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1086940186601
Senior members of Vice-President Dick Cheney's staff were briefed at least twice by the Pentagon on a controversial multibillion-dollar contract to oversee Iraq's oil sector before it was awarded to his former company, Halliburton, early last year.
The existence of the briefings, one of which included Mr Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, appeared to undermine earlier claims from Mr Cheney and White House officials that the vice-president and his office were unaware of the Halliburton contract before it was announced.
The briefings were spelled out in a letter sent to Mr Cheney yesterday by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has been a prominent critic of the Bush administration.
Mr Waxman, drawing on recent interviews with Pentagon staff, also said the Halliburton contract was handled by political appointees from the administration and not career procurement officers, as the White House has claimed.
Although Mr Waxman acknowledged in his letter that there was no evidence that Mr Cheney had acted to influence the deal improperly, the information about the briefings is expected to raise new questions about the administration's handling of billions of dollars of contracts to rebuild Iraq.
Critics accused the administration of cronyism after it emerged in March 2003 that the Army Corps of Engineers had granted a contract worth up to $7bn (€5.8bn, £3.9bn) to Halliburton, which was formerly run by Mr Cheney, to manage Iraq's oil infrastructure. The sole-source contract was awarded to the company without any competition.
Mr Waxman revealed in his letter that the decision to award the contract exclusively to Halliburton was made not by career civil servants, as is customary, but by a team of political appointees led by Michael Mobbs, a special adviser to Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's under secretary for defence policy.
Mr Mobbs said he briefed Mr Libby and other top deputies on the plan to award the assignment to Halliburton at a meeting in October 2002. The meeting was chaired by Stephen Hadley, the president's deputy national security adviser.
Mr Cheney's office did not respond to calls yesterday about the matter.
Responding to the furore over the contract in September 2003, the vice-president told NBC's Meet the Press that he had "absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government".
Halliburton has repeatedly said it won Iraq contracts because of its long record of performance.
Mr Waxman also referred in his letter to an e-mail from Stephen Browning, of the Corps of Engineers, to Mr Feith on March 5 2003, three days before Halliburton was notified that it had won the assignment. In it, Mr Browning said action on the Halliburton contract "has been co-ordinated with VP's office".
"It's clear that they were contacted and that they were in a position to influence the deal," a member of Mr Waxman's staff said yesterday.
----
Bush Leagues
Prominent DC Shrink Diagnoses Bush to be a Paranoid, Sadistic Meglomaniac
By Staff and Wire Reports
Jun 14, 2004,
From Capitol Hill Blue
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_4687.shtml
A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable. Dr. Justin Frank, writing in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, also says the President has a ""lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."
Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking ""may have affected his brain function - and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."
Dr. Frank's revelations comes on the heels of last week's Capitol Hill Blue exclusive that revealed increasing concern by White House aides over Bush's emotional stability. [http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml]
Aides, who spoke only on condition that their names be withheld, told stories of wide mood swings by the President who would go from quoting the Bible one minute to obscenity-filled outbursts the next.
Bush shows an inability to grieve - dating back to age 7, when his sister died. "The family's reaction - no funeral and no mourning - set in motion his life-long pattern of turning away from pain [and hiding] behind antic behavior," says Frank, who says Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Other findings by Dr. Frank:
- His mother, Barbara Bush - tabbed by some family friends as "the one who instills fear" - had trouble connecting emotionally with her son, Frank argues.
- George H.W. Bush's "emotional and physical absence during his son's youth triggered feelings of both adoration and revenge in George W."
- The President suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" -- viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.
Dr. Frank has been a psychiatrist for 35 years and is director of psychiatry at George Washington University. A Democrat, he once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
In an interview with The Washington Post's Richard Leiby, Dr. Frank said he began to be concerned about Bush's behavior in 2002.
"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote, and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank told Leiby. Bush, he said, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."
Dr. Frank's expert recommendation? ""Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office . . . before it is too late."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment on the specifics of Dr. Frank's book or the earlier story by Capitol Hill Blue.
"I don't do book reviews," McClellan said, even though he last week recommended the latest book by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward to reporters at the daily press briefing.
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Was Reagan the First Neoconservative?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
antiwar.com
June 14, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2806
Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for "world democratic revolution"? Was Reagan the first neoconservative?
This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.
Ronald Reagan was one of us, a Cold War anti-Communist union leader in the 1940s when neocons were still in mourning for Leon Trotsky. He was a militant free-market conservative in the 1950s when they were still wild about Harry. He was a fiery Goldwaterite in the 1960s when neocons were going all the way with LBJ.
None can say with certitude how Reagan would have responded to 9-11. Yet, it is hard to believe he would have invaded Iraq, absent hard evidence of Saddam's involvement in Sept. 11. For, in spite of Reagan's reputation as a cowboy, prudence, that most conservative of virtues, was a hallmark of his presidency in the Cold War conflict.
In 1981, when Gen. Jaruzelski crushed Solidarity on the orders of Moscow, Reagan refused to put the regime in default on its debts, which would have collapsed the credit rating of the Warsaw Pact.
When he challenged Moscow directly, it was on the battleground of ideas. He declared its ideology, communism, to be an unnatural and evil system, not long for this world, as it denied children of God their human dignity and thus could not and did not work.
When he aided resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua, it was on the periphery of Moscow's empire. And he aligned America again with patriotism, nationalism and anti-imperialism. In Iraq, it is the United States, no matter the purity of the president's motives, that is perceived as the occupying and imperial power.
While Reagan restored U.S. military might and produced the ships, planes, guns, satellites and smart bombs that won the Gulf War in six weeks, he believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
His strike on Libya in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of the Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. soldiers was a measured response. In Grenada, he seized an opportunity to sweep Moscow's most vulnerable pawn off the board. When the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner, he concluded the action had not been ordered by Moscow and declined to turn the atrocious crime into an international crisis.
When the Soviet Union deployed mobile SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe, Reagan countered with Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. But when Gorbachev agreed to take down the SS-20s, Reagan agreed to take out the Pershings. He was proud of the first strategic arms reduction treaty of the Cold War. Among the reasons he loved the Strategic Defense Initiative was that he hated nuclear weapons and wanted to see them gone from the face of the earth. Ronald Reagan was antiwar, because Ronald Reagan was pro-life.
And because he had confidence in himself, his convictions and his country, he was always ready to sit down and talk to the adversaries of the United States.
Where the neocons are implacable enemies of the Saudi monarchy, Reagan sold the Saudis AWACS and F-16s. Where the neocons are fearful of the outcome of our clash with radical Islam, Reagan was serenely self-confident of the outcome of our clash with communism. Where they are bellicose and compulsive interventionists, Reagan was cautious.
The one occasion where he did intervene was Lebanon. It was a blunder to put Marines in the middle of that cauldron of hate. But when the U.S. embassy and Beirut barracks were bombed with hundreds dead, Reagan retaliated, but pulled the Marines out.
For there was never a vital U.S. interest in Lebanon. Ronald Reagan had the courage to concede and correct a mistake, but is today denounced for not going in with massive punitive force.
As for the neoconservative demand that we put incessant pressure on dictators to reform or perish, Reagan got along fine with kings, autocrats, generals and presidents-for-life, as long as they took America's side in the war that mattered: the Cold War. When Congress voted sanctions on South Africa, Reagan vetoed them, the State Department be damned.
He took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us.
Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont. When Dick Allen, his security adviser, asked him what was his basic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union, Reagan replied with a smile, "How about, 'We win, they lose.'"
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Senate Leaders' Financial Disclosures
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41067-2004Jun14?language=printer
Summaries of the 2003 financial disclosure statements of Senate leaders and chairmen and ranking members of Senate committees:
Senate Leaders
Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Senate majority leader.
Earned income: $171,900.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $2,000.
Major assets: Blind trusts, $7 million-$35 million.
Major sources of unearned income: Income from largest blind trust, $100,000-$1 million; capital gain from sale of Matador Petroleum Cor0p. stock, $50,000-$100,000.
Major liabilities: Suntrust Bank line of credit, $50,000-$100,000.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Frist's other listed holdings include real estate, investment funds, loans to small businesses, stock, and part ownership of Hot Hits, Inc., a Nashville music recording company. Besides his own trusts, Frist's wife, Karyn, lists a blind trust worth over $1 million. Each of his three sons - William Jr., Jonathan and Bryan - also have two trusts apiece worth more than $1 million. While Frist is a heart surgeon, his children's listed holdings included small interests in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and fast-food vendor Wendy's International Inc. Frist accepted air travel from Windhoek, Namibia, to Nairobi, Kenya, and back to Washington last summer as part of a medical mission trip. He accepted nine round-trip and one-way air trips domestically for speaking engagements, including travel to Boca Raton, Fla., in February 2003 and travel, food and lodging for himself and his wife for a trip to Beaver Creek, Colo., in June 2003.
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Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Senate Democratic leader.
Earned income: $755,150.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $2,000.
Major assets: Seventeen mutual fund, bond and other investments, including two in the $50,001-$100,000 range.
Major sources of unearned income: Dividends from two mutual fund, $2,501-$5,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Daschle earned total royalties of $583,250 from his book that came out last November, "Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years that Changed America Forever." Net income was $449,021, with all proceeds after taxes and expenses donated to charity. Daschle's wife works in Washington as a lobbyist.
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Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Republican Whip.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Three mutual funds, each $100,000-$250,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Mutual fund earnings, $2,000-$5,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: McConnell's wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, owns a Washington property with a carriage house, and a mutual fund, each worth $500,000-$1 million. Chao's property has a 15-year mortgage of $100,000-$250,000. McConnell is on the board of directors of the associates of Harvard Business School and a member of the visiting committee of the University of Kentucky Law School. The Congressional Institute Inc. paid his lodging and travel expenses for a Senate leadership retreat in December.
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Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Democratic whip and ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $18,000.
Major assets: 160 acres in Bullhead City, Ariz., $500,001-$1 million; Nevada land holdings and mining claims, $715,017-$1.6 million; municipal bonds, $285,012-$750,000; pension plan stock in oil, medical, technology, banking and other companies, $367,045-$1.5 million.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest from municipal bonds, $13,512-$32,500.
Major liabilities: Loan from Harry Reid Ltd., law firm, $50,001-$100,000.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Reid owns portions of more than 200 acres of mining claims in Nevada, including old claims around his hometown of Searchlight, Nev. He serves on the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and is an advisory board member of the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Senate Committee Leaders
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Retirement account, $100,000-$250,000; credit union, $50,000-$100,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest on credit union account, $2,500-$5,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Craig is a director of the National Rifle Association, the lobbying group for gun owners' rights. The NRA flew him to Orlando, Fla., in April to address the group.
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Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La., ranking Democrat on the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $5,000.
Major assets: A Smith Barney money market checking account, $15,000-$50,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest on money market account, $201-$1,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: The senator's wife, Lois, owns partial interests in undeveloped land parcels in Lafayette and Grant Parish, La., worth $15,000-$50,000 each. Lois Breaux also earned more than $1,000 last year as a jewelry consultant to Elegant Traditions of Painsville, Ohio. Breaux is a board member of the Washington Tennis Foundation. Breaux's honoraria was for speeches to the American Burn Association, the Fay Improvement Co., and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
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Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: U.S. treasury bills, $250,000-$500,000; Legg Mason mutual fund, $100,000-$250,000; Real estate partnership in New Albany, Miss., $50,000-$100,000; Bank of New Albany account, $50,000-$100,000; vacant lots in Oxford, Miss., and Ripley, Miss., $15,000-$50,000 each.
Major sources of unearned income: Dividends and capital gains from Legg Mason fund, $5,001-$15,000; Dividends and capital gains on RMK Select High Income mutual fund, $5,001-$15,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: The real estate partnership holdings are through his wife's family. Cochran reported 65 purchases of stocks or bonds, and 49 sales. Of the transactions, 17 were in the $15,001-$50,000 range, and the rest were in the $1,000-$15,000 range.
---
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None
Major assets: West Des Moines State Bank savings, $100,000-$250,000; and Johnson and Johnson stock, $15,000-$50,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest on bank stock, $201-$1,000; Capital gains on stock sales, $1,206-$6,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Harkin's wife, Ruth, is a vice president of United Technologies and serves no the board of ConocoPhillips. She owns United Technologies stock worth more than $1 million and ConocoPhillips stock worth $250,000-$500,000. Harkin and his wife reported 41 sales or purchases of stock during 2003, each in the $1,000-$15,000 range. Companies whose stock they bought or sold include Verizon, Target Corp., United Technologies, Lowes, Oracle, United Parcel Service, Walt Disney, Texas Instruments, Home Depot, Gillette and Dell Computers.
---
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and president pro tempore of the Senate.
Earned income: $171,900.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Alaska real estate, $700,000-$1.5 million; U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union account, $250,001-$500,000; Utah real estate, $100,001-$250,000; Investment fund, $100,001-$250,000; Oil interests in Oklahoma City, Okla., $50,001-$100,000; Riggs Bank money market, $15,001-$50,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Capital gains from sale of Florida real estate, $129,250; Utah real estate, $65,018; Investment fund, $2,501-$5,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: The Kenai River Sport Fishing Association gave Stevens a sled dog in recognition of public service. Stevens purchased the dog's twin for $250.
Narrative: Watchdog groups asked for an ethics investigation after the Los Angeles Times reported that Stevens had grown wealthy from real estate investments with people who benefited from legislation he helped write. His Alaska real estate investments lost a net $43,432.
Stevens sits on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission. He owns a 10 percent interest in a horse.
---
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Earned income: $194,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Individual Retirement Account, $250,000-$500,000.
Major sources of unearned income: IRA earnings, $15,000-$50,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Byrd received a $40,000 advance from publisher W.W. Norton for his book, "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency." Byrd's agreement with Norton calls for the senator to get between 10 percent and 15 percent of royalties from the book, published this year.
---
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Warner requested and was granted an extension of the May 15 deadline to file his disclosure report.
---
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Washington home, $563,000; Michigan real estate, $503,809; mutual fund, $58,125; Credit union account, $49,008.
Major sources of unearned income: Rent on unit in personal residence, $13,200; Rent on commercial real estate in Birmingham, Mich., $32,453.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Levin went beyond the requirements of the law and disclosed the exact value of his assets and unearned income. His wife has mutual funds, savings bonds and bank accounts worth $243,256.
---
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Tuscaloosa, Ala., apartment complex, $5 million-$25 million; 48 shares Tuscaloosa Title Co., $1 million-$5 million; Tuscaloosa house, $500,000-$1 million; Washington town house, $500,000-$1 million; Tuscaloosa office building, $250,000-$500,000; Checking account, $250,000-$500,000;
Major sources of unearned income: Rent on Tuscaloosa apartment, $100,000-$1 million; dividends on Tuscaloosa Title Co. stock, $100,000-$1 million; rent from Tuscaloosa office building, $15,000-$50,000.
Major liabilities: Mortgage on Tuscaloosa apartment complex, $1 million-$5 million.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: For 30 years, Shelby has been chairman of the board of Tuscaloosa Title Co. He owns a 124-unit apartment complex, home and office complex in Tuscaloosa. In past years, he has rented out the basement of a town house where he lives in Washington, but he reported no rent income for it last year. On Nov. 13, Shelby sold 100 shares of Time Warner stock, valued at $1,000-$15,000. On the same date, he sold 2,200 shares of stock from Global Crossing, the telecommunications company that filed one of the biggest bankruptcy cases in U.S. history. The value of that transaction, as well as a smaller sale of Worldcom stock, was less than $1,000. His wife, Annette, owns 460 shares of CISCO and a checking account, each valued at $1,000-$15,000, and 740 shares of NOKIA, valued at $15,000-$50,000. She is a retired professor at Georgetown University.
---
Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union account, $100,001-$250,000; bank account, $50,001-$100,000; mutual fund account, $15,001-$50,000; life insurance policy, $1,001-$15,000; retirement account: $1,001-$15,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest on U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union account, $5,001-$15,000; interest on retirement account, $2,501-$5,000; dividends on mutual fund account, $1,001-$2,500.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
---
Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Diversified portfolio of stocks and money market funds, $120,000-$575,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Stock dividends, $1,600-$8,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Nickles holds shares in a range of technology, energy, financial and health stocks, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, ConocoPhillips, Wachovia Corp. and Merck and Co. No individual investment is worth more than $50,000.
---
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Capitol Hill home, $500,001-$1 million; Bismarck, N.D., apartment building, $100,001-$250,000; a range of investments, including retirement accounts and mutual funds, with a combined value of $105,000-$525,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Interest and dividends, $5,400-$17,000; rent from unit in residence, $5,001-$15,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Conrad's wife, Lucy Calautti, is Major League Baseball's lobbyist in Washington.
---
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Earned income: $313,839.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $7,000.
Major assets: Bank accounts, $3,000-$45,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Pension, $51,763.
Major liabilities: Bank loan, $500,00-$1 million; credit cards; $45,000-$150,000, medical bills, $15,000-$50,000.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: McCain donated to charity $159,139 in proceeds from his books - "Worth the Fighting For," "Why Courage Matters," and "Faith of Our Fathers" - and $7,000 in honoraria for weekly radio commentaries from The Broadcast Group in Palm Springs, Calif. A former prisoner of war in Vietnam, McCain received a $51,763 Navy pension. The McCain family received between $1.2 million and $2.2 million in income from assets held by his wife, Cindy, and their children. Mrs. McCain's assets include a retirement account worth $400,000-$950,000, a money market account worth $50,000-$100,000, property worth $2.6 million-$4.2 million, several trust funds and insurance policies. She and her children also have a share of Hensley & Co., her family's Phoenix-based beer distributorship, valued at more than $1 million; and between $2.35 million and $5.75 million in property and stock held through Hensley & Co., including a share in the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mrs. McCain's liabilities include a bank loan of $500,000-$1 million, credit card debt of $45,000-$150,000 and medical expenses of $15,000-$50,000.
---
Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C. ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Blind trust, $500,000-$1 million; retirement account, $100,000-$250,000; life insurance policy, $50,000-$100,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Blind trust, $5,000-$15,000; retirement account distribution, $8,578; sale of property, $15,000-$50,000.
Major liabilities: Loan on life insurance policy, $10,000-$15,000.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Governor of South Carolina from 1959-63, Hollings has an annual state pension of $5,000-$15,000. He owns half-interest in a lot in Charleston, S.C., which he bought in 1953 for $883. He also owns 15.6 acres of timber in Ravenal, S.C., which he bought in 1957 and 1991 for $2,772, and a half interest in 113 acres of timber in Awendaw, S.C., bought in 1962-63 for $9,183. He did not disclose the current value of any of those properties.
Hollings has been a partner since 1988 in New York-based Evlip Corp., which has a majority interest in a limited partnership that owns 58.37 acres in Lexington, S.C. He values his share at $50,000-$100,000.
---
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Earned income: $154.700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Family land partnership including warehouse and buildings in Albuquerque, N.M., $250,000-$500,000.; Various stocks and investment funds, $30,000-$283,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Rent and interest from family partnership in Albuquerque, $15,000-$50,000; basement rental unit in Washington residence, $2,500-$5,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Domenici is a partner in D&V Land Company, the family partnership in Albuquerque, and serves on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nuclear nonproliferation advocacy group.
---
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, R-N.M., ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: More than 100 investments in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, $1.3 milllion-$4.2 million; half interest in two parcels of raw land, Alamogordo, N.M., $30,000-$100,000; oil lease in Texas, $1,000-$15,000; interest in Sunflower Ventures, $16,000-$65,000; rental unit on 42 acres in Santa Fe, N.M., $1 million-$5 million.
Major sources of unearned income: Earnings from investment funds, $9,999-$29,500; rent on Santa Fe property, $5,000-$15,000.
Major liabilities: Mortgage on Santa Fe property, $1 million-$5 million; life insurance loan, $100,000-$250,000.
Narrative: Sunflower Ventures invests in startup technology and communications companies. Bingaman's wife has investment of more than $1 million in Valor Communications, a privately held company in Irving, Texas, and is chairman of the company's board of directors.
---
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Earned income: $154,700.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None.
Major assets: Wide variety of stocks including Microsoft, L-3 Communications, eBay and XM Satellite, at least $711,039; Texas rental property, $250,000-$500,000; family loans, $200,000-$500,000; Washington, D.C. apartment, $100,000-$250,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Capital gains of at least $2.6 million; rent, $20,000-$65,000; interest on family loans, $10,000-$30,000.
Major liabilities: Two mortgages, $350,000-$750,000; promissory note from Triad Bank, Tulsa, $100,000-$250,000.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Inhofe's stock holdings are independently managed by Capital Advisors, which makes all buying and selling decision without consultation. Inhofe's spouse has bank accounts worth at least $265,000, plus commercial real estate and rental holdings in Tulsa worth at least $600,000, with rental income of more than $100,000.
---
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Earned income: $209,025.
Honoraria, all donated to charity: $1,000.
Major assets: Rental property in Rutland, Vt., $100,000-$250,000; Interest in land and land developments in Brandon and Shrewsbury, Vt., $165,000-$400,000.
Major sources of unearned income: Rent on Rutland property, $5,000-$15,000. Major liabilities: Mortgage, $100,000-$250,000, Chittenden Bank in Burlington.
Gifts: None.
Narrative: Jeffords received $53,800 in royalties on two books, one a memoir and the other about his decision to leave the Republican Party and become an independent. He also received a trustee fee of $525 from the Cora Pratt Trust.
--------
26 Former U.S. Officials Oppose Bush
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40426-2004Jun14.html
WASHINGTON - Angered by Bush administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, does not explicitly endorse Democrat John Kerry for president in its campaign, which will start officially Wednesday at a Washington news conference.
The Bush-Cheney campaign said Sunday it would have no response until the group formally issues its statement at the news conference.
Among the group are 20 ambassadors, appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, other former State Department officials and military leaders whose careers span three decades.
Prominent members include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during the administration of Bush's father; retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under President Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.
"We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential," said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush's ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African countries.
"The group does not endorse Kerry, although it more or less goes without saying in the statement," Harrop said Sunday in a telephone interview.
Harrop said he listed himself as an independent for years for career purposes but usually has voted Republican.
The former ambassador said diplomats and military officials normally avoid making political statements, especially in an election year.
"Some of us are not that comfortable with it, but we just feel very strongly that the country needs new leadership," Harrop said.
He said the group was disillusioned by Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and a list of other subjects, including the Middle East, environmental conservation, AIDS policy, ethnic and religious conflict and weapons proliferation.
--------
Group Urges Voters Not to Choose Bush
June 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/campaign/14diplomats.html
WASHINGTON, June 13 (AP) - Angered by Bush administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired American diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, does not explicitly endorse Senator John Kerry for president in its campaign, which will start officially on Wednesday at a Washington news conference.
The Bush campaign said Sunday that it would have no response until the group formally issues its statement at the news conference. The group's position was reported Sunday by The Los Angeles Times.
Among the group are 20 ambassadors, appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, other former State Department officials and military leaders whose careers span three decades.
Prominent members include Gen. Joseph P. Hoar of the Marines, who was commander of United States forces in the Middle East during the administration of Mr. Bush's father; and Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the ambassador to Britain under President Bill Clinton and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under President Ronald Reagan.
"We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential," said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush's ambassador to Israel and earlier an ambassador to four African countries.
Mr. Harrop said the group was disillusioned by Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and other issues.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Enron Said to Gouge Customers for $1.1B
By GENE JOHNSON
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 11:06 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42101-2004Jun14?language=printer
SEATTLE - Enron Corp. manipulated the energy market practically every day during the 2000-01 power crunch and gouged Western customers for at least $1.1 billion, according to audiotapes and documents released Monday.
The records were uncovered by the same utility that last month released details of profanity-laced conversations in which Enron traders gleefully gloat about ripping off "those poor grandmothers" in California during the power crisis.
The latest release by the Snohomish Public Utility District provides another glimpse into how Enron allegedly rigged the market at the same time millions of Californians were suffering blackouts and paying sky-high electricity bills.
The utility wants an administrative law judge to order Enron to surrender up to $2 billion in ill-gotten gains. California politicians want Enron to reimburse customers there at least $8.9 billion.
The latest documents show Enron manipulated the market on 473 of 537 days from January 2000 to June 2001, the utility said.
In one scheme, Enron made $222,678 in a three-hour period by shipping power from California to Oregon, masking the original source of the power, and then selling it back to California at highly inflated rates.
The records also show that Enron employed at least five other schemes, dubbed "sidewinder," "ping pong," "donkey punch," "spread play" and "Russian roulette."
In one of the transcripts, an Enron employee says, "If the line's not congested I just look to congest it. ... If you can congest it, that's a moneymaker no matter what."
The documents also show that Enron maintained five separate sets of accounting records.
Enron refused to comment on the records except to say it is cooperating with all investigations. Energy traders routinely keep tapes of their phone calls as a record of oral contracts.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., used the evidence to demand a new investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She said the agency's failure to uncover Enron's schemes wound up hurting thousands of customers and that the commission tried to keep the utility district from getting access to Enron's tapes.
"When are you going to give justice to the individuals who have been hurt by this Enron market manipulation?" Cantwell asked. "If the federal oversight regulators aren't going to do their job, then they should get out of the way and quit obstructing justice."
FERC spokesman Bryan Lee said the agency would review the documents to see what new information they contained. He denied that the agency had tried to suppress any information.
An administrative law judge's finding that Enron should forfeit $32.5 million in unjust profits is pending before FERC.
The utility analyzed the records in hopes of defending itself against a $122 million lawsuit filed by Enron, which has accused the district of illegally breaking its contracts with the company. The utility claims the contract was void because Enron engaged in fraudulent business practices to drive up prices.
Enron has sued several other Western utilities for more than $500 million based on similar claims. If the Snohomish PUD loses its case, the average cost to each of its 290,000 customers would be $420, the utility said.
Other companies have reached settlements stemming from the Western energy crisis. California parties have settled complaints with Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Cos. for $1.4 billion and Houston-based El Paso Corp. for $1.7 billion. Dynegy Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. in April struck a deal to wipe out more than $280 million in unpaid electricity bills during California's energy crisis.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 amid devastating revelations of hidden debt, inflated profits and shady accounting - the first in a wave of scandals to rattle Wall Street.
On the Net:
Snohomish PUD:http://www.snopud.com
Ferc:http://www.ferc.gov/
-------- ACTIVISTS
Ellen Thomas Speech for Wash the Flag Day,
Washington, DC, June 14, 2004
I was pleased to be asked to speak today, because my father was born on Flag Day, 1921. He was a sailor in the Pacific, a warrior of the WW-II generation. My beloved stepfather was also a sailor in the Pacific, in China and Korea. They both believed they might have died in Japan if Truman hadn't decided to drop the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It may be true they would have died without the dropping of the bomb, but I'm convinced that Truman could have bombed an uninhabited island and gotten his point across, ending the war. I believe at that point the nuclear arms race could have been nipped in the bud.
But that's not what happened, and we're all much the worse for it. Despite our SUV's and overfed lifestyles, we are all living under the ax of militarism.
World War II warped the thinking of a whole generation. Those who dropped the first nuclear bombs became obsessed with the idea that peace could only be obtained through superior firepower. As a result, the hard-working, loving, well-meaning World War II generation brought us to the brink of extinction, not maliciously, but fearfully industrializing genocidal war.
Since Hiroshima, our country has been building ever-more-sophisticated weapons at a breakneck pace. For policy or profit, revenge or oil, U.S. arms industries and military forces have wreaked havoc on a long list of poorer countries. In the name of 'anti-communism' or 'democracy,' the arms race has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people, mostly brown of skin and poor in pocket. Certain families and corporations have become obscenely wealthy by selling to allies of the moment. Not just conventional weapons, like rifles and machine guns, but biological and chemical weapons (to Iraq), nuclear weapons (to allies such as Israel), and more recently depleted uranium weapons (to all NATO countries, plus other 'special' friends such as Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and soon, perhaps, Pakistan).
Of course, the war in Iraq has again meant huge profits to the arms industries. Just a few days ago an article was published, "Iraq war boosts global military spending" which "on the rise for five straight years, increased by 11 per cent in 2003 to 956 billion dollars."
(That's $150 from each of the 6.35 billion human beings on the planet, this year. Of course, that's a lopsided figure, since the vast majority of people are living in deep poverty.)
"The changes in US military doctrine and strategy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, unleashed huge increases in US military spending in 2002 and 2003. The world's rich countries are also the biggest spenders on weapons. High-income states accounted for three quarters of the world's military spending but just 16 per cent of its population."
[This means a billion people paid 717 billion dollars for weapons. How many family members do you have? Multiply that times $717 dollars, and that's your family's contribution to destruction.]
So what are we going to do about this? How are we going to wash away the bad choices of our forefathers, break free of our country's economic reliance on arms industries? How will we ever transform our militaristic society into one more in tune with the needs of the people?
Those of us who have been maintaining a vigil for global nuclear disarmament north of the White House for the past 23 years support an idea, which we call Proposition One, which has been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives six times since 1994 by our own Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton: the "Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act". What this is asking is that our government commit to the world, we will eliminate our genocidal weapons if everyone else does, and we'll earmark the billions of tax dollars saved each year to accomplish three essential things.
First, those who are making a living in the nuclear industries will still have jobs, cleaning up and guarding the radioactive mess they've made. [applause]
Second, arms industries will be converted to produce solar panels, windmills, hydrogen fuel cells, geothermal taps, and other clean energy systems. Again, people won't have to lose their jobs, just change what they're producing (and in the process begin feeling good about what they're doing for humanity). And we'll be able to wean ourselves from both nuclear power and oil. [big applause]
Third, conversion of the arms industries should take only two or three years, and mass-producing clean energy systems should quickly be profitable. Then the tax dollars no longer spent on arms MUST be earmarked for health care, housing, education, agriculture, and environmental restoration. [big applause]
Only when we bend our minds, our wills, and pir time toward achieving these goals can we begin to wash our flag clean of the mindless destructiveness of militarism. In the meantime, the only flag I'm flying is this one - a Peace Dove. [Display flag. Big applause.]
Work for disarmament! Work for peace!
--------
Ratings row over Moore Iraq film
BBC
14 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3804427.stm
The US distributors of Michael Moore's controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 are to appeal a decision by US censors to give it a restrictive rating.
The Motion Picture Association Of America (MPAA) has rated the film R, meaning nobody under 17 can see it unless accompanied by an adult.
Moore has attacked the decision, saying that teenagers should be allowed to see the film unaccompanied.
The film is due to open on more than 1,000 US screens on 25 June.
Lions Gate, one of two companies releasing the film in the US, called the decision "totally unjustified".
The MPAA said that the rating was given for "violent and disturbing images and for language".
Attacked
The film shows graphic footage of corpses of US soldiers being burnt, dragged behind a truck and strung up, and a scene of US soldiers apparently mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
Moore said: "It is sadly very possible that many 15- and 16-year-olds will be asked and recruited to serve in Iraq in the next couple of years.
"If they are old enough to be recruited and capable of being in combat and risking their lives, they certainly deserve the right to see what is going on in Iraq."
Confident
IFC Entertainment, which is jointly distributing the film in the US along with Lions Gate, said it was confident the decision would be overturned.
"IFC has great concern with this decision and will do everything within its power to fight this unjust rating judgment," said its president Jonathan Sehring.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the British Board Of Film Classification told BBC News Online the film had yet to be submitted to them for consideration.
It is scheduled to open in the UK in the summer.
--------
'Big Brother' Cast Member Stages Sit-In
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 2:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40826-2004Jun14.html
SYDNEY, Australia - Primetime entertainment turned into political protest in Australia when a contestant evicted from hit reality television show "Big Brother" staged a silent sit-in against the detention of asylum seekers.
After being voted off the show Sunday night - or "evicted" as they call it on the program - 24-year-old Merlin Luck was whisked to a nearby television studio for a live post-eviction interview with host Gretel Killeen.
But instead of the usual gushing question-and-answer session, Luck sat silently, his mouth taped shut, holding a poster made from black tape stuck to paper that read "Free th refugees." (The letter "e" from the word "the" apparently fell off somewhere between the "Big Brother" house and the studio.)
There have been protests for years in Australia against the conservative government's policy of locking up asylum seekers caught trying to sneak into the country, but rarely has one been so high profile. Sunday night's show had an estimated 1.5 million viewers.
On Monday, one refugee advocate praised Luck's silent protest.
"A Just Australia congratulates the young man on his courage and on bringing to the Australian public's attention the fact that there are still a number of refugees in detention centers both on Nauru and in Australia, particularly children," said Greg Barns, spokesman for the pro-refugee group A Just Australia.
Luck had spent six weeks locked in the house with other contestants. Each week, viewers vote players off until only one is left. The winner receives $700,000.
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