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NUCLEAR
False Alarms on the Nuclear Front
French decision to build new reactor
Iran again turns to Russia
US Device Seen at Supected Iran Atomic Site
Iran Says It Will Renew Nuclear Efforts
U.S. Meets With N. Korea Over Nuclear Program
U.S. official says North Korea threatened to carry out nuclear test
Little Progress Made in U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Talks
Australian government vows to build nuclear waste dump
Los Alamos Lab Keys Lost for 16 Hours
Officials: VY warning system has problems
Coalition seeks probe of VY fire
Series of problems led to Yankee fire
MILITARY
Leaders to Discuss Central Africa Crisis
Powell to Go to Sudan Over Regional Strife
Iran Frees British Servicemen Seized in Boats
British Sailors Freed, but Issues Remain
100 Iraqis Killed in Wave of Attacks
Adversary's Tactics Leave Troops Surprised, Exhausted
New U.S. Airstrike on Suspected Rebel Hideout in Falluja
Facing Eviction, Some Gaza Settlers Are Defiant and Some Pragmatic
Arafat Agrees to Appoint Security Chief
Bush Seeks NATO Help on Iraq
NATO Envoys Strike Tentative Deal on Iraq Training
Putin plans to bolster forces in Caucasus
Bush Considers Goss for CIA Director
House Committee Says C.I.A. Is Courting Disaster
Report: Turkish FM leaked story of Mossad in Kurd regions
MP Captain Tells of Efforts to Hide Details of Detainee's Death
New Job in Iraq Will Be as Top U.S. Military Leader
Testimony Ties Key Officer to Cover-Up of Iraqi Death
U.S. Seeks a Deal to Shield Americans From Iraq's Courts
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Jury Role In Raising Sentences Affirmed
Justices reject decision on Cheney panel
High Court Backs Vice President
Justices' Ruling Postpones Resolution of Cheney Case
Court Won't Make Cheney Energy Papers Public
Death Sentences Will Stand
A 4-3 Ruling Effectively Halts Death Penalty in New York
U.S. Efforts to Protect D.C. Area Faulted
New York to Close Area Near G.O.P. Convention to Traffic
Drone Takes to Sky Above Arizona Desert
Los Angeles Moves to Ease Tensions
Detention Dilemma
Legal Scholars Criticize Memos on Torture
POLITICS
Senate Unanimously Approves $417 Billion Defense Bill
Senate Approves $416 Billion for the Pentagon Next Year Without Dissent
Senate Approves $416 Billion for Pentagon
Iraq, Afghan Wars Will Cost Up to $60B
Bush Interviewed About CIA Leak
Bush Questioned at White House on CIA Leak
Wolfowitz Offers Apology to Journalists Covering Iraq
Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam
Changing world poses test for chief Bush speechwriter
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity
Gore Says Bush Lied About Iraq Link to Al Qaeda
ACTIVISTS
Takashi Hiraoka: Host A-bomb exhibitions around the world
Frosty Reception to Greet Bush in Ireland Ahead of Summit
Rally to Demand Unearthing of Mass Graves of Franco Era
Thousands in Ireland Protest Bush Visit
Should we welcome a champion of freedom or sun a warmonger?
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
False Alarms on the Nuclear Front
by Geoffrey Forden,
June 25, 2004
(PBS Nova)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/falsealarms.html
The Cuban missile crisis is the best-known example of narrowly avoiding nuclear war. However, there are at least four other less well-known incidents in which the superpowers geared up for nuclear annihilation. Those incidents differed from the Cuban missile crisis in a significant way: They occurred when either the U.S. or Soviet or Russian leaders had to respond to false alarms from nuclear warning systems that malfunctioned or misinterpreted benign events.
All four incidents were very brief, probably lasting less than 10 minutes each. Professional military officers managed most of them. Those officers had to decide whether or not to recommend launching a "retaliatory" strike before possibly losing their own nuclear first strikes. In three of the four incidents, the decision not to respond to the alarm was made when space-based early-warning sensors failed to show signs of massive nuclear attacks. The fourth incident was caused by an inadequate early-warning satellite system that was fooled into thinking that reflected sunlight was the flames from a handful of ICBMs.
As the following brief history of those four incidents makes clear, space-based early-warning systems played a major role in avoiding nuclear war. During the 1980s, a few specialized articles in the media hinted at the presence of those systems. However, it was only during the Gulf War that the American public truly became aware of U.S. capability to detect missile launches using space-based assets. During that crisis, U.S. Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites, first orbited in 1970, detected the launch of every Iraqi Scud missile. The satellites made the detections from their orbits by "seeing" the infrared light that the missiles' motors gave off during powered flight. The warning of launches was transmitted to Patriot air defense missile batteries in Israel and Saudi Arabia to support attempts to shoot down the incoming warheads.
The association with the fighting of conventional war has obscured the more important strategic role those systems have played: reassuring leaders of the United States and Russia that they were not under nuclear attack. A review of the four nuclear crises will better highlight that role.
The training tape incident Shortly before 9 a.m. on November 9, 1979, the computers at North American Aerospace Defense Command's Cheyenne Mountain site, the Pentagon's National Military Command Center, and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, all showed what the United States feared most -- a massive Soviet nuclear strike aimed at destroying the U.S. command system and nuclear forces. A threat assessment conference, involving senior officers at all three command posts, was convened immediately. Launch control centers for Minuteman missiles, buried deep below the prairie grass in the American West, received preliminary warning that the United States was under a massive nuclear attack.
The alert did not stop with the U.S. ICBM force. The entire continental air defense interceptor force was put on alert, and at least 10 fighters took off. Furthermore, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, the president's "doomsday plane," was also launched, but without the president on board. It was later determined that a realistic training tape had been inadvertently inserted into the computer running the nation's early-warning programs.
However, within minutes of the original alert, the officers had reviewed the raw data from the DSP satellites and checked with the early-warning radars ringing the country. The radars were capable of spotting missiles launched from submarines close to the U.S. shores and ICBM warheads that had traveled far enough along their trajectories to rise above the curvature of the Earth. The DSP satellites were capable of detecting the launches of Soviet missiles almost anywhere on the Earth's surface. Neither system showed any signs that the country was under attack, so the alert was canceled.
The computer chip incident On June 3, 1980, less than a year after the incident involving the training tape, U.S. command posts received another warning that the Soviet Union had launched a nuclear strike. As in the earlier episode, launch crews for Minuteman missiles were given preliminary launch warnings, and bomber crews manned their aircraft. This time, however, the displays did not present a recognizable or even a consistent attack pattern as they had during the training tape episode. Instead, the displays showed a seemingly random number of attacking missiles. The displays would show that two missiles had been launched, then zero missiles, and then 200 missiles. Furthermore, the numbers of attacking missiles displayed in the different command posts did not always agree.
Although many officers did not take this event as seriously as the incident of the previous November, the threat assessment conference still convened to evaluate the possibility that the attack was real. Again the committee reviewed the raw data from the early-warning systems and found that no missiles had been launched. Later investigations showed that a single computer chip failure had caused random numbers of attacking missiles to be displayed.
The autumn equinox incident On September 26, 1983, the newly inaugurated Soviet early-warning satellite system caused a nuclear false alarm. Like the United States, the Soviet Union realized the importance of monitoring the actual launch of ICBMs. However, the Soviets chose a different method of spotting missile launches. Instead of looking down on the entire Earth's surface the way U.S. DSP satellites do, Soviet satellites looked at the edge of the Earth -- thus reducing the chance that naturally occurring phenomena would look like missile launches. Missiles, when they had risen five or ten miles, would appear silhouetted against the black background of space. Furthermore, when the edge of the Earth is viewed, light reflected from clouds or snow banks has to pass through a considerable amount of the atmosphere. That view reduces the chances that clouds and snow may cause false alarms.
A satellite has to be in a unique position to view a recently launched missile silhouetted against the black of space. To get that view, the Soviet Union picked a special type of orbit that it had used for its communications satellites. Those orbits, known as Molnyia orbits, come very close to the Earth in the Southern Hemisphere but extend nearly a tenth of the distance to the moon as the satellite passes over the Northern Hemisphere. From that position high above northern Europe, the Soviet Union's Oko ("Eye") early-warning satellites spend a large fraction of their time viewing the continental U.S. missile fields at just the right glancing angle. However, shortly after midnight Moscow time on September 26, 1983, the sun, the satellite, and U.S. missile fields all lined up in such a way as to maximize the sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds.
Whether that effect was a totally unexpected phenomenon is hard to know. That may have been the first time this rare alignment had occurred since the system became operational the previous year. Press interviews with Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, the officer in charge of Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker from which the Soviet Union monitored its early-warning satellites, indicated that the new system reported the launch of several missiles from the U.S. continental missile fields. Petrov had been told repeatedly that the United States would launch a massive nuclear strike designed to overwhelm Soviet forces in a single strike.
Why did that false alarm fail to trigger a nuclear war? Perhaps the Russian command did not want to start a war on the basis of data from a new and unique system. On the other hand, if the sun glint had caused the system to report hundreds of missile launches, then the Soviet Union might have mistakenly launched its missiles. Petrov said that he refused to pass the alert to his superiors because "when people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles. You can do little damage with just five missiles."
The Norwegian rocket incident Early on the morning of January 25, 1995, Norwegian scientists and their American colleagues launched the largest sounding rocket ever from Andoya Island off the coast of Norway. [Sounding rockets collect data on atmospheric conditions from various altitudes.] Designed to study the northern lights, the rocket followed a trajectory to nearly 930 miles altitude but away from the Russian Federation. To Russian radar technicians, the flight appeared similar to one that a U.S. Trident missile would take to blind Russian radars by detonating a nuclear warhead high in the atmosphere.
That scientific rocket caused a dangerous moment in the nuclear age. Russia was poised, for a few moments at least, to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States. In fact, President Boris Yeltsin stated the next day that he had activated his "nuclear football" -- a device that allows the Russian president to communicate with his top military advisers and review the situation online -- for the first time.
However, we can be fairly confident that Yeltsin's football showed that Russia was not under attack and that the Russian early-warning system was functioning perfectly. In addition to the string of radars surrounding the border of the former Soviet Union, Russia had inherited a complete fleet of early-warning satellites that, even by 1995, still maintained continuous 24-hour coverage of the U.S. continental missile fields. In the early 1990s Russia had still managed to launch replacement satellites for its early-warning system as the previous ones died out -- thereby retaining continuous coverage. Because of those satellites, Yeltsin's display must have shown that no massive attack was lurking just below the horizon.
Towards reliable early warning
The danger posed by those incidents was not the unauthorized or accidental launch of a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles but the possibility that either country might misinterpret a benign event -- a computer training tape mistakenly inserted into an operational computer or sunlight glinting off clouds during a rare lineup of the sun, Earth, and satellite -- and decide to launch a full-scale nuclear attack.
Each incident caused officials to take steps to solve a specific problem. After the training tape incident, the U.S. Department of Defense constructed a separate facility to train operators so that a training tape could not again be inserted into the computer running the nation's early-warning system. Apparently, the Soviet Union launched a new fleet of early-warning satellites into geostationary orbit simply to provide a second angle from which to view U.S. missile fields. That expensive and redundant system ensured that at least one satellite could search for missile launches free from sun glint.
After three of the four incidents, the U.S. government maintained that steps were taken that would prevent any future false alarms. However, it had to wait only seven months after the first incident (the computer tape incident) to see that complex organizations, relying on even more complex machinery, can find new and unexpected ways to fail. In fact, a comprehensive study of nuclear accidents has shown convincing historical evidence that, despite measures taken to prevent them, such accidents are inevitable.
The most recent example of solving the "last problem" was the Clinton administration's initiative to share early-warning data with Russia. The jointly manned center has been presented by the American side as a solution to the decline of Russia's early-warning facilities. Russians familiar with the negotiations, however, maintain that the center has no military significance. That view is underscored by the choice of the site for the center: an old schoolhouse nearly an hour away from downtown Moscow. In fact, U.S. Department of Defense officials familiar with the Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC) admit that, even if the center had been active during the Norwegian rocket incident, its only effect would have been to facilitate the launch notification issued before the NASA launch.
Any assistance the United States provides must increase Russia's confidence in the validity of its own early-warning systems. The JDEC fails that test. Russia would never believe that the United States would pass along launch indications if a U.S. nuclear attack had been launched. Dr. Geoffrey Forden is a senior research fellow with the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article was adapted with permission from a longer article Forden wrote entitled "Reducing a Common Danger: Improving Russia's Early-Warning System." Published by the Cato Institute, a Washington D.C.-based public policy research foundation, the article originally appeared on May 3, 2001 as Cato Policy Analysis No. 399. To see the full piece, go to http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa399.pdf.
--
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au> Subject: False Alarms on the Nuclear Front (Just a few occasions when we nearly blew up the world)
This includes the training tape incident of 1979, various other US near- misses, the Sept 26 1983 incident starring Colonel Petrov as world saviour, and the 1995 Norwegian research rocket incident, starring Boris Yeltsin as world saviour. Actually, my understanding of both the Sept 1983 incident and the 1995 incident is a little more hair-raising than this nontheless very useful account, and I have heard from one quarter that Yeltsin was in fact, drunk at the time of the 1995 incident, which shocked him deeply - deeply enough in fact, for him to urge the establishment of the (still non-operational) joint strategic stability centre when he next met Clinton.
Colonel Petrov's Sept 1983 alert did in fact, pass automatically to his superiors - Petrov's credit coes from the fact that he managed to persuade them that it was in fact a glitch. Petrov's refusal to press the red button was in fact deeply intuitive as well as rationally based:'I had a feeling deep in my belly that it was a mistake'.
John Hallam
-------- europe
French decision to build new reactor
25 June 2004
World Nuclear Association Weekly Digest
Significant nuclear-related news items in perspective
http://www.world-nuclear.org/news/2004/wd_jun25.htm
The board of Electricité de France has decided to build the first demonstration unit of an expected series of European Pressurised Water Reactors (EPRs). Construction of France's first 1600 MWe Framatome ANP reactor is expected to start in 2007, following public consultation which will include finalising the site, and licensing. Construction is then expected to take 57 months. EdF is aiming to firm up an industrial partnership with other European utilities or power users for construction of the initial EPR before the end of the year. (Finland is also building an EPR unit at Olkiluoto.)
EdF is to announce its preference of site in August following discussions with representatives from several places eager to have it. The leading candidates are apparently Penly and Flamanville in Normandy and Tricastin in Rhone-Alps. After experience with the initial EPR units, a decision would be taken about 2015 on whether to build more of them over 30 years or so to replace the present EdF fleet, or switch to alternative designs such as Westinghouse's AP1000 or GE's ASBWR.
Meanwhile the Senate has approved by a large majority the energy policy bill which was passed by the National Assembly at the end of May. It endorses nuclear energy as a priority and supports construction of a demonstration EPR. Nucleonics Week 17 & 24/6/04, NucNet news # 137/04.
-------- iran
Iran again turns to Russia
By Sergei Blagov
Jun 25, 2004
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FF25Ag01.html
MOSCOW - Despite American criticism, Russia has pledged to continue its nuclear ties with Iran. Yet it remains unclear whether Moscow is driven by mainly commercial motives, or if it is making a point in favor of global "multi-polarity" against American unilateralism.
Russia has a good chance of winning the contract to build the Bushehr-2 nuclear site in Iran, Center for Modern Iran Studies head Rajab Safarov told journalists in Moscow earlier this week. Moscow and Tehran are expected to sign a protocol of intent on building Bushehr-2 during Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev's visit to Iran in July or August, Safarov said. The plant would be Iran's second nuclear facility.
In fact, Safarov reiterated and clarified earlier pledges by Russia's federal nuclear agency, which indicated that Moscow would continue building the Bushehr nuclear reactor despite criticism of Iran by Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the United Nations watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The US is pressing for Iran to be taken to the UN Security Council for allegedly secretly developing nuclear weapons, but has not won support for this yet at the IAEA. But earlier this month, ElBaradei hardened the tone of the IAEA's investigation into Iran's nuclear program.
Yet Russia still insists on its nuclear ties with Iran. "Russia has no reasons for curtailing its cooperation with Iran in completing the construction of the first Bushehr reactor, scheduled to be launched in 2005," Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency spokesman Nikolai Shingaryov said earlier this month, adding that "negotiations will be continued on Russia's participation in the construction of a second Bushehr reactor. No convincing evidence that the Iranian nuclear program may have a military aspect have been found."
Earlier in June, first deputy chairman of Russia's State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, told Iranian news agency IRNA that Russia seeks to expand its ties with Iran. "We should not heed US views in expansion of our ties with other countries around the globe," she said. "The Russian president knows better how and where to establish friendly ties and cooperation with others."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia sees no reason to halt cooperation with Iran in the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. On June 10, Putin told reporters at the end of the Group of Eight (G8) summit on Sea Island in the US state of Georgia that Russia would halt cooperation only if Iran refused to be transparent and stopped cooperating with the IAEA. "But for the moment, we have no reason to do that," he said.
Putin's comments came as G8 leaders - even Putin - said they were "deeply concerned" about Iran's compliance with IAEA requirements and stressed: "We deplore Iran's delays, deficiencies in cooperation, and inadequate disclosures." Iran rejected the G8 statement, saying there is no proof Iran has done anything wrong.
Russia has long been under fire for its help in building the first Bushehr nuclear plant on Iran's Gulf coast. The US insisted that the Russian technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons, but Moscow and Tehran argued that the plant could be used only for civilian purposes. Moscow has brushed off repeated US demands that it cancel the US$1 billion Bushehr 1,000 megawatt light-water nuclear reactor project.
Meanwhile, Russia has said it would freeze construction on the Bushehr nuclear plant and it would not begin delivering fuel for the reactor until Iran signs an agreement that would oblige it to return all of the spent fuel back to Russia for reprocessing and storage. This agreement was reported as close to being signed last September but so far the deal has failed to fully materialize.
Last October, Russia announced a delay for the launch of the Bushehr nuclear reactor till 2005, and urged Tehran to improve disclosure of its nuclear plans. However, there has been no talk about dropping the Bushehr agreement. Nonetheless, the Kremlin has repeatedly argued it abides by international agreements banning the proliferation of nuclear technologies.
Russian officials have also complained that the criticism of the Bushehr project was in part sparked by commercial considerations. Russia's nuclear executives have claimed that unnamed "competitors" were trying to undermine Russia's nuclear energy exports, which could eventually bring Moscow up to $3 billion a year.
Tehran seemingly appreciates Russia's stance on Bushehr. Coincidence or not, earlier this week Iran approved enlargement of Russia's preferred project, the North-South transport corridor agreement: Tehran approved the membership of Turkey and Ukraine in the project. Russia is trying to make the North-South transport connection a viable alternative to Red Sea routes as well as US-backed Eurasian transport links. Russia, India and Iran signed an agreement on the development of the North-South corridor in 2000 and the agreement also includes Kazakhstan, Oman, Tajikistan and Belarus.
On the other hand, Russia's insistence on nuclear ties with Iran indicates an absence of double standard approaches, which still allow some chosen nations to rely on nuclear weapons but ban other countries from any nuclear ambitions.
Russia makes no secret of its reliance on atomic weapons. Russia now has three missile armies and 16 divisions that have a total of 735 intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with 3,159 nuclear warheads, according to Russian media reports. Only Russia's missile-nuclear shield "can safeguard our sovereignty and national security", Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said.
Moscow argues it strictly follows international agreements banning the proliferation of nuclear military technologies. But Russia concedes that other nations may also have civilian nuclear ambitions of their own: this argument could also serve to back up Moscow's preference of global "multi-polarity", a concept that opposes American unilateralism.
In the meantime, hypocrisy and double standards have become a matter of concern for the IAEA. In a speech in Washington earlier this month, ElBaradei urged nations to "abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on them". The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty signed more than three decades ago called on the declared nuclear states - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France - to move toward full nuclear disarmament. Meanwhile, these nuclear powers pressuring Iran and North Korea to stick with non-proliferation and abandon nuclear arms are themselves still actually relying on the weapons.
----
US Device Seen at Supected Iran Atomic Site
Louis Charbonneau
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
June 25, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25683/newsDate/25-Jun-2004/story.htm
VIENNA - A radiation monitoring device spotted in Iran at a razed site where Washington suspects Iran conducted covert atomic bomb-related research was itself made in the United States and sold directly to Tehran, sources said.
A Western diplomat and an independent nuclear expert who follow the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters the radiation detection device - called a "whole body counter" - was identified as having been made by the Connecticut-based firm Canberra Industries, Inc.
The disclosure could prove embarrassing to Washington which has accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and has called on countries to crack down on exports of even seemingly innocent machinery that could be used in weapons programs.
Tehran says it only wants nuclear power for electricity.
"There is no doubt that the whole-body counter came from Canberra Industries and under a legal export," said the nuclear science expert, who has analyzed satellite images of the site taken by the U.S. firm DigitalGlobe's Quickbird satellite.
The counter, used to measure radiation contamination in humans, was sold directly to a university or hospital in Iran in the early 1990s with a U.S. export license, the sources said.
The device was seen at Lavizan, situated near a military installation in Tehran. Satellite images of Lavizan show Tehran razed buildings and removed a significant amount of topsoil. Ironically, the U.S.-made device is the reason U.S. officials are convinced Iran pursued undeclared atomic activity there.
"The presence of the whole body counter there is weird and out of place, but it doesn't prove that there was any weapons activity going on at Lavizan," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former U.N. weapons inspector.
"We need to know how it got there (from the hospital or university) and why," he added.
Lavizan was first mentioned in May 2003, when a group of Iranian exiles said it was a biological weapons research site.
Iran vehemently denied that it has conducted any undeclared nuclear or weapons-related activities at Lavizan. But a diplomat close to the IAEA said inspectors would go there "very soon."
NEW DEMOLITION WORK AT SUSPECT SITE
Canberra Industries declined to comment, but an industry source familiar with devices like whole-body counter said it was a "totally innocuous" device designed for peaceful activity.
Asked if the counter could be modified to detect plutonium or other substances to make it usable in weapons-related activity, the source, who declined to be identified, said:
"Very theoretically speaking, all kinds of things can be done," the source said.
Last week, Reuters obtained from ISIS and GlobalDigital two satellite photos taken in August 2003 and March 2004 that showed Iran had dismantled buildings and removed rubble and topsoil at the site, called the Lavizan-Shiyan Technical Research Center.
The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, accused Iran of using "the wrecking ball and bulldozer" to sanitize Lavizan prior to the arrival of U.N. inspectors.
"This destruction at the site raised concerns because it is the type of measure Iran would need to take if it was trying to defeat the powerful environmental sampling capabilities of IAEA inspectors," ISIS said in an analysis of the images.
Last week the IAEA Board of Governors unanimously passed a resolution that sharply rebuked Iran for not cooperating fully with a U.N. investigation of Tehran's nuclear program.
The IAEA began investigating Iran after an Iranian exile group reported in August 2002 that Tehran was hiding a massive uranium enrichment facility and other sites from the IAEA.
----
Iran Says It Will Renew Nuclear Efforts
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3921-2004Jun24.html
Iran made good on recent threats yesterday and announced that it will resume building equipment essential for a nuclear weapons program, despite its agreement with three major European powers.
The decision does not violate international treaties that allow Tehran to make centrifuge parts for peaceful nuclear energy. But the move does break an agreement Iran signed with France, Britain and Germany, in which it promised to suspend nuclear efforts as a goodwill gesture toward earning trade incentives with the European Union.
European officials and arms-control specialists called Iran's move a major setback and a reflection of the difficulties faced by those working to check Iran's nuclear ambitions as evidence mounts that the country is concealing information from international inspectors.
John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, told Congress that Iran's move is a "thumb in the eye of the international community." Bolton said the United States is determined to take the matter soon to the U.N. Security Council.
Iranian officials, who threatened to restart nuclear programs in response to a harsh rebuke last week by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, insisted their efforts remain peaceful.
"We assure European countries Iran is not searching for nuclear weapons, but we will never abandon nuclear technology and the mastery of this science," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top leader, said in a statement.
In a letter to the French, British and German foreign ministers, Iran said it will resume centrifuge production -- a move that would bring the country a significant step closer to making highly explosive nuclear material.
"All Iran would have to do now is put uranium into the centrifuges, and then they can start producing a key ingredient for nuclear weapons," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector.
In diplomatic terms, Iran's defiance was seen as a direct challenge to the United States, which is trying to convince allies that it is time to punish Iran at the Security Council.
U.S. and European officials, working in concert, claimed a victory last week when the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board censured Iran for failing to comply fully with agency inspectors trying to determine whether the country is hiding a weapons program.
The board asked Iran to stop all enrichment production and to reconsider design and construction of a heavy-water nuclear reactor. In the past 18 months, inspectors have uncovered an escalating series of contradictions in Iranian statements, along with evidence that nuclear specialists consider strongly suggestive of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, as the United States has asserted.
European allies do not disagree with the assessments but believe that diplomatic incentives could help persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has taken a tougher line, but at the same time it has supported the Europeans in their approach.
Iran was initially responsive, and in April it halted centrifuge construction. But it has since accused Germany, Britain and France of reneging on their promise to help end the matter within the IAEA.
Yesterday, diplomats conceded that Iran's latest move had thrown their efforts into doubt.
"This is certainly a negative development," said one European diplomat, who acknowledged that the deal is now in serious jeopardy.
Albright, who revealed satellite images last week showing newly destroyed Iranian facilities, said: "The whole program to suspend ways to enrich uranium is unraveling, and unless it's put back together again, the international community will come under pressure to isolate Iran and impose economic sanctions."
In remarks to the House International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, Bolton said the United States believes that Iran is also working on biological and chemical weapons programs.
The State Department is searching shipments to Iran for material that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, Bolton said later yesterday to the American Enterprise Institute.
-------- korea
U.S. Meets With N. Korea Over Nuclear Program
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4190-2004Jun24.html
U.S. and North Korean officials met yesterday for 2 1/2 hours on the sidelines of six-nation talks in Beijing, the longest meeting between senior officials of the two nations since the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions began 20 months ago.
U.S. officials stressed that the discussions were not negotiations or even bilateral, because the contents of the discussions were immediately shared with delegations from the other countries at the talks: South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
But the length of the private session -- when the Bush administration is under attack by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry for not having direct talks -- indicated the administration is more willing to engage directly with the North Koreans.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is considering a brief meeting with his North Korean counterpart when both attend a regional conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, next week, officials said.
The North Korean delegation, still awaiting instructions from Pyongyang, was not prepared yesterday to respond in detail to the more specific proposal advanced by the administration on the opening day of the talks Wednesday, U.S. officials said. The administration offered North Korea the possibility of energy aid from South Korea, security assurances and other benefits during a three-month test period if it promises to disclose and end its nuclear weapons programs.
In a plenary session Wednesday, North Korea reiterated its demands for significant aid in exchange for freezing its plutonium program. North Korea also again denied it has a secret uranium-enrichment program, as alleged by the United States.
During the private session, the North Korean officials described the revised U.S. plan as a "constructive proposal," according to a White House official speaking under the condition of anonymity. The North Koreans then asked a few questions before reverting to what the official called the "same-old, same-old" complaints about the administration's "hostile policy."
At one point, officials said, North Korean officials appeared to raise the possibility of testing a nuclear device, a threat made at the first six-nation talks last August. North Korean officials had not repeated the threat since, in part because the U.S. delegation immediately reported it to the other delegations.
According to the White House official, the North Koreans offered to freeze all of their country's activities, including testing nuclear weapons.
But when the Americans asked whether Pyongyang is planning to test its weapons, the North Koreans backed away from the statement, he said. The officials, from the North Korean Foreign Ministry, suggested they had little control over the wishes of the North Korean military, who they added want to test and test soon.
Another senior U.S. official briefed on the talks said that James Kelly, the chief U.S. negotiator, responded that North Korea already does not have much trust in Washington and that its performance in the meeting would only worsen the impression.
----
U.S. official says North Korea threatened to carry out nuclear test
Friday, June 25, 2004
(AP)
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/6/25/latest/17774USoffic&sec=latest
BEIJING - Talks Friday on Washington's demand that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program may be headed toward failure after the North threatened to test a bomb if its conditions on freezing the program are not accepted, a senior U.S. official said.
North Korea reportedly has submitted a massive demand for energy aid in exchange for the freeze.
Two previous rounds of six-nation talks on the dispute have made little headway, and the North Korean threat of a nuclear test suggested the latest round may be unsuccessful, said a senior U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. The other participants are South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
On Friday, the start of a group meeting was delayed while Chinese and North Korean envoys met privately, said a South Korean official who asked not to be identified further.
China canceled plans for media coverage of a closing ceremony Saturday for the talks, but the event will go ahead as scheduled, said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. He wouldn't give a reason or his name.
The North Korean envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, spoke with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly in a 2 1/2-hour private discussion on Thursday.
The United States has been insisting on complete disarmament by the communist state and submitted a proposal to this week's conference in Beijing outlining a step-by-step plan and the benefits North Korea could receive if it complies.
North Korea's own proposal reportedly calls for energy aid in exchange for freezing its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon. It was unclear whether that included a commitment to dismantle the program.
"The most concrete ... and specific proposal on the table is that made by the United States yesterday with the support of other governments who were there,'' U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. "We look to the North Koreans to study that proposal seriously.''
There was no indication of when North Korea might carry out its reported threat to test. The United States thinks North Korea has at least one or two nuclear weapons, with the potential for several more.
Near the end of their discussion, Kelly told Kim that there was little trust in Washington for North Korea and that Kim's statements wouldn't improve matters, the senior U.S. official said.
Thursday's discussion with Kim was not the first time that a North Korean diplomat issued a nuclear test threat. A similar warning came during a meeting between North Korean diplomat Ri Gun and Kelly 14 months ago, also in Beijing.
Ahead of this week's talks, the United States had been hoping that North Korea would be willing to meet disarmament demands in return for a brighter economic future for its impoverished people and broader diplomatic acceptance in the region and beyond.
On Thursday, North Korea demanded massive energy aid in exchange for a nuclear freeze, the Kyodo news agency of Japan reported, citing diplomatic sources.
The report said Pyongyang asked for the equivalent of 2,000 megawatts of power per year _ comparable to an estimated one-fourth of its current total consumption.
Both Japan and South Korea say they would consider giving the North fuel oil if it freezes its nuclear program as a step toward its eventual dismantling.
Russia would be willing to help provide energy aid and security guarantees, said Russian envoy Alexander Alexeyev, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass. The report did not say what conditions Russia might attach to that offer.
Kim said earlier that his government was developing nuclear weapons for protection from possible U.S. attack.
"If the United States gives up its hostile policy toward us ... we are prepared to give up in a transparent way all plans related to nuclear weapons,'' he said.
----
Little Progress Made in U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Talks
June 25, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/asia/25CND-NUKE.html?hp
BEIJING, June 25 - Bush administration officials said today that the United States and North Korea had made little headway in resolving their standoff in nuclear talks here, describing the discussions as "some good, some bad and some ugly." But they said they intended to keep trying.
Both countries presented new proposals for ending North Korea's nuclear program at the six-nation talks, which concluded today, with a formal closing ceremony set for Saturday. But administration officials said the two sides "remained far from an agreement" and engaged in no substantive bargaining at the three-day session.
"There is no question the North Koreans would like to offer as little as possible for as high a price as possible," said a senior administration official involved in the talks. "It is still not clear if they are ready to discuss giving up their nuclear program on a serious basis."
The talks were jolted Thursday afternoon when the chief North Korea negotiator, Kim Kye-Gwan, told the leader of the American delegation, James A. Kelly, that hard-liners in North Korea might conduct a nuclear test. Such a move would substantially escalate the country's confrontation with the United States and alarm its neighbors.
American officials said that they did not view the statement, made in a lengthy bilateral meeting, as a threat, expressing skepticism that North Korea planned to test a nuclear weapon soon. But they said the statement hinted at a power struggle in Pyongyang and was "not helpful" in creating conditions for a settlement.
United States officials acknowledged rejecting the idea of issuing a communiqué at the conclusion of the talks, arguing that not enough progress had been made to justify a joint statement. China, which hosted the talks in Beijing, had urged all the parties to agree to a common statement as a way of generating momentum for future negotiations.
Still, several administration officials described the session as partly positive, arguing that North Korea had at least broadly accepted the principle of dismantling its nuclear program. The North's representatives also promised to "carefully study" the American plan for ending the dispute, which began in 2002.
Both sides said they agreed with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia that talks should resume soon.
American officials say the reclusive Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-Il has continued to expand its nuclear program while the talks are under way. Vice President Dick Cheney has said that "time is not on our side" in negotiating with the country, implying that the administration's patience is limited.
The dispute is also complicated by the presidential campaign. John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee, has argued that the United States should engage in intensive, bilateral discussions with North Korea in addition to the six-party talks. He has criticized the Bush administration for being slow to enter serious negotiations.
American participants in the talks said they were repeatedly asked about the politics of the North Korean issue back home, and tried to persuade all the parties that the discussions should proceed without reference to potential policy changes after the November election.
The most significant development here was the Bush administration's decision to back off on its most hard-line demands and offer a concrete proposal for ending the dispute.
The plan the United States put on the table calls for a step-by-step dismantling of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programs, in return for aid and security guarantees and the easing of political sanctions. Previously, President Bush had rejected the idea of compensating North Korea for dismantling its nuclear weapons, saying that would be caving in to blackmail.
North Korea, in turn, offered to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid, including enough ongoing energy assistance to supply about one-fourth of the country's annual power consumption.
American officials said North Korea had offered to discuss dismantling its weapons programs in addition to the freeze. But they said the North put far more emphasis on a temporary freeze - and the aid it would get in return. Moreover, the North Koreans repeatedly denied using uranium enrichment to make nuclear fuel in addition to its acknowledged plutonium program. The United States says it has strong intelligence information that shows that the North has a secret uranium program, and that no agreement can be reached unless the country owns up to having two methods to make nuclear fuel.
-------- pacific
Australian government vows to build nuclear waste dump despite court setback
Friday, June 25, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-25/s_25251.asp
CANBERRA, Australia - The government vowed Thursday to fight a court decision that scuttled its plan to build a low-level nuclear waste dump in the Outback in South Australia state.
Earlier Thursday, the Federal Court unanimously ruled in favor of the state government, blocking the federal government from using the "compulsory urgent acquisition" provision of the Lands Acquisition Act to buy land for the dump in Woomera in the state's arid north.
Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran said the government would appeal the ruling in the High Court or change the law to ensure the dump goes ahead.
"The government remains totally and utterly committed to the safe and secure storage of low level radioactive waste," McGauran told reporters. "One way or another, the national repository will proceed at Woomera, and I believe sooner rather than later."
The Act provides for the compulsory acquisition of land by the federal government when there is an urgent need for its acquisition or if it would be contrary to public interest for that acquisition to be delayed.
The federal government made a "compulsory acquisition" of the land after learning that the state government planned to designate it a public park to prevent the dump from being built there.
The Federal Court judges unanimously ruled Thursday that there was no urgent need for that acquisition.
McGauran said it was the first time the provision for compulsory urgent acquisition of land had been used, and he suggested the Lands Acquisition Act could be amended.
"We do have a number of options open to us," he said.
McGauran accused the state government of prolonging a hazardous situation in which nuclear waste - mostly the byproducts of nuclear medical procedures - is stored in hospitals and universities.
The federal government wants low-level nuclear waste from throughout Australia to be deposited at a single dump. The country sends its higher level radioactive waste to repositories overseas.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Lab Keys Lost for 16 Hours
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Lab-Missing-Keys.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The keys to a Los Alamos National Laboratory research center containing nuclear materials were missing for 16 hours last week before a security guard noticed.
Two shift changes of security guards passed without accounting for the set of keys, said Kevin Roark, a lab spokesman.
An investigation determined that no security breach occurred before the keys to Technical Area 18 were found, Roark said.
After the keys were reported missing, an immediate sweep of the area was ordered, according to a report from Protection Technology Los Alamos, the subcontractor that provides security for the area.
A guard known to have had the keys last on June 16 reported that he returned them and inventoried them on that date, according to the incident report.
Security personnel confirmed the keys were missing by 9 a.m. June 18.
The locks were reconfigured after the discovery, Roark said.
The keys were found Tuesday in a security vehicle, lodged under some equipment that had not been moved during earlier searches, he said.
The center, a canyon-bottom testing site, contains plutonium, enriched uranium and other ``special nuclear material,'' Roark said. He declined to say how much nuclear material is kept there.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said he is committed to moving the nuclear materials out of the research center because the area is difficult to defend and vulnerable to terrorist attack. Shipment of the nuclear materials to a site in Nevada is scheduled to begin in September.
Lab Director Pete Nanos has called for the security company to be held responsible, but not to the extent of losing its contract, Roark said.
The lab, operated by the University of California under contract with the Energy Department, has suffered a string of embarrassing management failures in recent years. They include reports of financial abuse by employees, two misplaced computer hard drives with secret nuclear-related material and the firing of two lab investigators who raised concerns about management.
-------- vermont
Officials: VY warning system has problems
Friday, June 25, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2234152,00.html
BRATTLEBORO (AP) -- Operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant were 15 minutes late in notifying the state of Vermont about an emergency at the plant last week, officials say.
In addition, the town of Brattleboro, which is located within the plant's emergency evacuation zone, was notified 20 minutes after Keene, N.H., which is not.
By federal law, Entergy should have notified Vermont by 7:05 a.m., 15 minutes after the unusual event was declared at 6:50 a.m. Friday. Instead the call from Entergy was verified at 7:17 a.m. by Vermont's Office of Emergency Management.
Plant spokesman Robert Williams said Thursday that Vermont Yankee's logs showed that the plant had notified the state of Vermont at 7:11 a.m. last Friday, with word going to New Hampshire and Massachusetts officials shortly after that.
Meanswhile Thursday, an anti-nuclear group, the New England Coalition, asked the Public Service Board to investigate whether last Friday's fire should be attributed to recent work at the plant done as part of its plan to boost its power output by 20 percent.
Under an agreement with the state, plant owner Entergy Nuclear has agreed to pay the state's retail utilities the extra cost if a plant outage related to the power boost forces the retail companies to buy more expensive power elsewhere.
"The real possibility that the electrical fault, fire, and thus the outage, resulted from extended power uprate modifications made in the switchyard area cannot be excluded," the coalition said in papers filed at the Public Service Board.
Entergy Nuclear control room operators failed to correctly use a new nuclear alert telephone system during last Friday's low-level emergency, resulting in delays in notifying the state about the emergency, state and Entergy officials said Wednesday.
Albert Lewis, director of the Vermont Office of Emergency Management, said the problems were not Vermont's fault, although he declined to point the finger directly at Entergy.
"Let's just say it was 'operator error,"' Lewis said, who said the state was reviewing its overall emergency response.
Saying safety remains his number one concern, Republican Gov. James Douglas on Thursday stated he was disappointed that the notification failed.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to meet in Montpelier with the Public Service Board next week, Douglas added, and the failure will likely be discussed.
Douglas stopped short of saying Entergy is no longer trustworthy, instead saying he is waiting for a debriefing from Department of Public Safety Commissioner Kerry Sleeper on the communications failure to get all the information.
Williams acknowledged there were problems in the plant's control room in using the new nuclear notification phones. He said Entergy officials were investigating the problem and the plant personnel's response to the emergency.
At the same time, the town of Brattleboro raised questions about Vermont's notification system, which they said lags far behind the New Hampshire emergency alert system.
Lewis said the new phone system involved a dedicated telephone line that linked the emergency management offices of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with the Yankee control room. The new system was installed in May.
No one was hurt in the fire, which was confined to the non-nuclear part of the plant. Yankee remains shut down, and Williams had no timetable for repairs or how soon the plant would be back on line.
Reformer reporter Daniel Barlow contributed to this report.
----
Coalition seeks probe of VY fire
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
Friday, June 25, 2004
Brattleboro Reformer Staff
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~2234151,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- The New England Coalition filed a motion with the Public Service Board requesting that the board investigate Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee's current outage to determine whether it was connected to modifications made in preparation for the proposed "uprate."
Last Friday morning a transformer caught fire, causing the plant to shut down immediately. According to Yankee spokesman Rob Williams, it is not known when the plant will return to power.
The transformer was replaced during a shutdown in the fall of 2002. Williams said the transformer was due to be replaced regardless of the uprate, but one that could handle uprated conditions was installed in anticipation of the power increase.
Ray Shadis, technical advisor to the coalition, said that time is an issue as Vermont Yankee documents regarding the fire still exist and the information is fresh.
"There is basic raw information that has yet to be bent, spun, folded and mutilated," said Shadis.
The coalition has accused Entergy officials of manipulating information throughout the uprate process that began last year.
Vermont Yankee has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to amend its license, allowing the plant to produce 20 percent more power. Known as an extended power uprate, 20 percent is the maximum that is allowed.
While the NRC has sole jurisdiction over the plant's license, Vermont law stipulates that any electricity-producing plant must apply for a certificate of public good from the Public Service Board before making modifications to the plant.
On March 15, the board gave conditional approval for the uprate-related modifications. Among the conditions listed was the completion of an independent engineering assessment by the NRC, which would determine the reliability of the plant under uprated conditions.
In the March order, the board retained jurisdiction over the case until all of the conditions were met.
Because the case is still under the purview of the Public Service Board and the board has the right to make decisions regarding the reliability of the plant, the coalition contends that it has the authority to investigate this current outage to determine whether it is related to the modifications.
The plant is currently conducting its own investigation into the cause of the fire, which will be reviewed by the NRC.
Vermont utilities have been purchasing power elsewhere while VY is offline. Under the power purchase agreement that was part of the 2002 sales contract, Vermont Yankee agreed to sell a fixed amount of power to the state utilities at a fixed price. As long as the plant is not running, the utilities are buying power on the market at a higher rate.
If the root cause of the fire is tied to uprate modifications, then the ratepayer protection plan will go into affect. Under the plan, agreed to as part of the uprate memorandum of understanding between the state and Vermont Yankee, the plant will reimburse the utilities for the extra cost of buying electricity on the market.
If it is discovered that the fire is not connected to changes made for the power increase, ratepayers could ultimately be the ones to shoulder the burden of the current outage.
In the motion, the coalition stated that while it would be routine for the Department of Public Service to investigate such matters, it urges the Public Service Board to rely on its own investigation, charging that the department has been compromised by the agreement struck between the state and the company.
"Even if an argument to the contrary were to prevail, the public perception is that the current administration and department have bought into the uprate. Public trust and public confidence are at issue," reads the motion.
The coalition has long been critical of the department and the Douglas administration for accepting what the coalition claims amounts to a bribe for supporting the uprate. The memorandum of understanding includes a multi-million dollar payment from Vermont Yankee to the state.
David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, could not be reached for comment.
Williams said Vermont Yankee was prepared to respond to the board in this matter, if so requested.
Shadis said that he hoped that the board would act quickly.
"That information is best served up fresh. Period," he said.
----
Series of problems led to Yankee fire
By SUSAN SMALLHEER,
Rutland Herald Staff
Jun. 25, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Story/85751.html
A cascading set of problems at Vermont Yankee nuclear plant caused last week's fire and low-level emergency, the state's nuclear engineer said Friday.
William Sherman, an engineer with the Department of Public Service, said Entergy Nuclear engineers believe they know what caused the problem which spawned the spectacular fire. But he declined to say what they were, pending Entergy's own report.
But Sherman said three problems, not one, were responsible for the fire that sent a giant column of black smoke - fueled by a 1,000-gallon tank of cooling oil - into the sky over the plant last Friday. Firefighters said flames shot up about 35 feet over the plant.
Sherman attended briefings by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy on Thursday while visiting the Vernon reactor with the state electrical engineer, Steve Litkovitz.
Sherman and Litkovitz said two of the three phases of power coming out of the plant's generator building short-circuited, one quickly followed by the other. The result was a "giant short-circuit," they said, causing damage to a joint or flange in a 1-inch oil line that feeds cooling oil to the transformer.
The oil line leaked onto metal that had been super-heated by the short-_circuit, creating the fire, Sherman said.
Entergy has so far declined to identify the root cause of those short-circuits, and has also refused to say whether alterations made to the transformer this April during the plant's outage were responsible for the fire.
"It's not a mystery," Sherman said. "But the investigators want to review all the data before they state opinions."
Entergy spokesman Robert Williams said electrical engineers continued to review and analyze a lot of data that had been collected digitally.
If the problems can be traced back to the work in April, Entergy would be on the financial hook for paying for replacement power to its Vermont customers, according to an agreement hammered out last year by the state's Public Service Department.
Under the agreement, which went into effect after the April refueling outage and maintenance shutdown, Entergy will pay for the extra costs if they are related to the work done in expectation of the power increase or uprate.
To that end, the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition has petitioned the Public Service Board to conduct its own investigation into the fire, due to suspicions that the uprate renovations were responsible for the fire and outage.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for NEC, said he wants the board to conduct an independent investigation "while memories are fresh."
He also said he prefers the quasi-judicial board to conduct the investigation, rather than the PSD. Shadis said the department's independence has been compromised because it has endorsed the so-called uprate.
"We want to give them the opportunity to do the right thing," he said. "The issue is they've made the plant less reliable," he said of Entergy.
Diane Screnci, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the cause of the fire and low-level emergency remains under investigation. The NRC sent a special inspector, who specializes in electrical problems, to the plant earlier in the week to help with the investigation.
Stephen Costello, spokesman for Central Vermont Public Service Corp., Entergy's largest Vermont customer, said the costs for the first week since the emergency have been substantial, but not as high as originally feared.
Costello said the company has so far been able to avoid the high-cost spot market, contracting with another utility. He said that agreement will probably only last through next week.
He said Entergy had given CVPS no indication of how long the plant will be shut down. He estimated CVPS' extra costs at "hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Likewise, Dorothy Schnure, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power Corp., said the state's second-largest utility had continued to line up replacement power, at least through next week. During the first week, Schnure estimated additional costs at $300,000.
Despite the spectacular blaze and flames, the transformer was not seriously damaged by the fire, due in large part to a water deluge system over the transformer and a water curtain on the side of the turbine building.
The nuclear side of the plant was not directly affected by the fire.
However, Vermont Yankee has been shut down since the fire, and a plant spokesman said Friday there was no timetable for the repairs to be completed and for the plant to resume making power.
Williams, the Entergy spokesman, said engineers and repair crews were working around the clock in shifts to get the problems analyzed and repaired.
Sherman saw a silver lining. He said the sale of Vermont Yankee two years ago by a consortium of New England utilities led by CVPS and GMP continued to save Vermonters money on their electric bills.
If Vermont utilities were still part-owners of Yankee, he said, the costs would be three-fold: paying for the repairs, paying for the plant staff even though the plant wasn't generating power, and paying for replacement power.
This time around, Sherman said, the Vermont utilities are paying only for replacement power.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Leaders to Discuss Central Africa Crisis
Reuters
Friday, June 25, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4378-2004Jun25.html
KINSHASA, Congo, June 24 -- President Joseph Kabila of Congo and the leader of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, will hold talks in Nigeria on Friday to try to defuse a crisis that has sparked fears of a new war in Central Africa's troubled Great Lakes region. Aid workers said recent fighting in eastern Congo had displaced about 85,000 people.
Separately, Kagame officially launched a traditional court system to expedite cases against suspects in the country's 1994 genocide. The village courts have been running on a pilot basis since 2001 to try some of the 100,000 defendants charged in the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists.
--------
Powell to Go to Sudan Over Regional Strife
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4134-2004Jun24.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will travel to Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region next week to press Khartoum to disarm pro-government Arab militias that have displaced more than a million black Africans through attacks that have left thousands dead.
The announcement of Powell's unexpected trip came as U.S. officials disclosed that the Bush administration was drafting a U.N. Security Council resolution that would sharply criticize Sudan for failing to halt the violence and demand that it grant broader access for humanitarian relief workers. Senior U.S. officials met in Washington yesterday to flesh out details of the new resolution, which could coincide with Powell's visit.
U.S. officials said they are considering a range of measures, including an arms embargo and a freeze on the financial assets of individuals linked to the atrocities. But they say they have not decided whether to impose the sanctions on Sudanese government officials or just on commanders of the Janjaweed militia responsible for most of the violence.
Administration officials said that while they believe Sudan continues to hinder the efforts of aid workers seeking to provide relief in Darfur, they are confident that Sudan will bow to international pressure to respond to the humanitarian crises.
"The Sudanese government does respond to unified international pressure," said Andrew S. Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "We want to put more public pressure on the Sudanese government to restrain the Janjaweed."
Powell's visit next Tuesday and Wednesday -- which was approved by President Bush -- is also designed to increase the pressure. Powell would be the highest level U.S. official to visit the Sudan since President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, Cyrus R. Vance, met briefly with Sudanese officials during a refueling stop in 1978.
Powell's trip "is intended to continue to call attention to the dire humanitarian situation in Darfur, to do whatever we can to stop the violence there and to make sure that the needy people of that region are receiving whatever supplies we can get to them," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said.
Boucher added that Powell will place the onus on the Sudanese government. "We believe that much of the hardship is being caused by the violence perpetrated by the militias, that we know the militias are being supported by the government and that the government needs to bring those militias under control," he said.
U.S. officials are also actively considering whether to declare that genocide is taking place in Darfur. Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. war-crimes ambassador, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday that "we see indicators of genocide, and there is evidence that points in that direction."
At least 10,000 people have been killed and as many as a million displaced in Darfur since black African rebels rose up in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of discrimination and neglect. The government's response was to give the militias free rein, and they have been accused of conducting a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army.
Natsios yesterday presented U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and representatives of the five permanent members of the Security Council on Wednesday with aerial photographs of hundreds of villages that have been burned to the ground.
Natsios said the State Department and USAID purchased commercial satellite photos showing 576 villages, including 300 that have "been completely destroyed" and 76 that have been "severely damaged. The rest are fine, and they are all Arab. It's clear that ethnic cleansing is going on here," Natsios said.
Annan, who so far has been reluctant to describe the forced displacement of black African civilians in Darfur as genocide or ethnic cleansing, will fly to Khartoum on Wednesday before visiting a camp for displaced civilians in Darfur. He will then travel to Chad to talked to Sudanese refugees and return to Khartoum on July 2.
U.S. officials said they face a battle to persuade Sudan's strongest supporters on the council, China and Pakistan, to back the resolution.
Algeria, the council's sole Arab country, indicated it was willing to consider a new U.S. resolution. "The international community is getting impatient, and they have to act quickly and efficiently," said Algeria's U.N. ambassador Abdallah Baali.
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
-------- iran
Iran Frees British Servicemen Seized in Boats
June 25, 2004
New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/middleeast/25SAIL.html
TEHRAN, June 25 - The eight British servicemen who spent three nights in Iranian custody after their boats strayed into Iranian waters were freed Thursday and flew to Dubai Friday morning.
British diplomats met with the six marines and two sailors in southern Iran and flew with them to the British Embassy here.
"Obviously, I'm very pleased indeed as I know their families and service colleagues will be," said the British foreign minister, Jack Straw. "These things do sometimes take time. Would that it had taken less, but at least now we can be pleased that they're happy and released. I'm told that they are in very good spirits and were well cared for."
The eight men were detained Monday morning by the hard-line Revolutionary Guards after their three boats crossed into Iranian waters on narrow the Shatt al Arab river, which separates Iraq from southern Iran. British Navy officials said the men were delivering one of the three boats to Iraqi river patrol forces.
The case touched off a diplomatic dispute with Britain.
The servicemen were shown on Iranian television blindfolded and marching along the banks of the river in single file. Two of them were shown reading written apologies.
After interrogating the men, Iranian officials said they were satisfied that the members of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines had crossed into Iranian waters by accident and agreed to release them. They were also expected to release the seized boats.
Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from London for this article.
--------
British Sailors Freed, but Issues Remain
Associated Press Writer
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
June 25, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_BRITISH_BOATS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LONDON (AP) -- Iran's diplomatic standoff with Britain over eight captured Royal Navy sailors showed the hard-line regime flexing its muscles over its border with Iraq and the ongoing international row over its nuclear program, analysts say.
London's relations with Tehran have run hot and cold for years. But they dipped significantly last week when Britain helped draft an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution deploring Iran's lack of cooperation with nuclear inspectors.
When three British river patrol boats apparently strayed across the Shatt al-Arab waterway into Iranian territory Monday, the situation provided Tehran with a timely opportunity to punish Britain and remind the United States not to ignore its voice in the region.
After top-level British-Iranian talks, the sailors were turned over to British diplomats on Thursday and taken to the British Embassy in Tehran under tight security.
"I think Iran felt that now was the time to remind the U.S. and Britain that it is a power to be reckoned with, it is not a power to be pushed around," Rime Allaf, an associate fellow at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, said Thursday.
Allaf said both Iranian hard-liners and reformists were upset that Britain had apparently shifted from its policy of "quiet diplomacy" on the nuclear issue. Britain, like France and Germany, has tried to coax Iran toward greater cooperation. Washington, by contrast, believes Iran is pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program and should be referred to the U.N. Security Council.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes and not geared toward making bombs. "Iran has been expecting a fully fledged apology from Britain," said Allaf.
Davoud Hermida Bavand, a political analyst in Tehran, agreed. He said Iran was "showing its displeasure over Britain's failure to fulfill its promises" to help take Iran off the IAEA agenda and help it develop peaceful nuclear technology.
By blindfolding and parading the British servicemen on state-run television, Iran also sent a powerful message to nearby Arab states, the pro-Western United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which last month confiscated Iranian fishing boats that strayed into their waters.
"The action tells UAE and Qatar that we (Iran) can blindfold military personnel of your boss (Britain), so mind your business and avoid treating Iranians badly," Bavand said.
Charles Tripp, a Middle East specialist at the University of London, said the incident reflected Iran's sensitivities over its much disputed border with Iraq.
The Shatt al-Arab waterway has long been a source of tension between the neighbors. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war broke out after Saddam Hussein claimed the entire waterway, ripping up a 1975 agreement that the deepest part of the channel, the Thalweg Line, marked the border.
The arrests were a "very symbolic act," Tripp said. "It is a very sensitive border for which three-quarters of a million Iranians died."
Rosemary Hollis, head of the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Middle East program, said Iran was showing Washington and London its importance in the region.
Iran's message, she said, was that "we are here, we are a sovereign country, we have interests at stake in the decisions you take in Iraq," ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty.
British diplomats, relieved at the sailors' release Thursday, played down the nuclear issue and said the arrests had probably been made by an overzealous local Iranian commander.
One diplomat with several years' experience in Tehran said the length of time it took to resolve the standoff reflected the complex power play between hard-line clerics, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who has called for expanding democratic rights and easing strict Islamic social rules.
The sailors, detained while delivering a patrol boat for the new Iraqi river patrol service, had been in the custody of the Revolutionary Guard, he added.
Britain's Foreign Office said Anglo-Iranian ties had allowed the standoff to be resolved "with the minimum of fuss."
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who helped negotiate the men's release with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi, said Britain's relationship with Iran was sometimes complicated. "But I'm in no doubt that our policy of engagement with the government of Iran ... is the best approach," he said.
Associated Press writer Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this story from Tehran.
-------- iraq
100 Iraqis Killed in Wave of Attacks
Insurgents Target Government Sites; 3 U.S. Soldiers Dead
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1272-2004Jun24?language=printer
BAGHDAD, June 24 -- Insurgents launched a coordinated offensive against police and U.S. occupation forces in six Iraqi cities and towns Thursday, exploding car bombs and assaulting police strongholds in a string of attacks that killed scores of Iraqi police officers and civilians, as well as three American soldiers.
The attacks, which began at dawn and raged through the morning, were the broadest and among the bloodiest in an insurgency that has intensified markedly in the weeks leading up to the transfer of limited authority to the Iraqi interim government, scheduled for Wednesday.
Reports by the Iraqi Health Ministry, which received tallies from hospitals around the country, and the U.S. military indicated that about 100 Iraqis were killed and about 320 injured.
The widespread attacks, in a country still trying to reorganize its ripped-up government and security services, generated a flood of confusing and contradictory reports in Baghdad. But through the fog emerged a clear impression that insurgent forces have the strength, organization and support to mount multiple attacks in the face of 138,000 U.S. military personnel, about 25,000 other foreign troops and, by Pentagon count, more than 200,000 members of Iraqi security forces trained under U.S. supervision.
The interim government's prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said the attacks were not as well planned as they appeared and had been carried out by disparate groups united only in their opposition to the occupation. These, he said, included die-hard supporters both of toppled president Saddam Hussein's secular government and of Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group that sprang up in northern Iraq in the years before Hussein was pushed from power in April 2003 by invading U.S. troops.
Ansar al-Islam has been connected to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked by U.S. officials to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. But Zarqawi's recent declarations have been issued in the name of another group, Monotheism and Jihad. Some of the militiamen who attacked Iraqi police posts Thursday said they belonged to Monotheism and Jihad, which also issued a statement asserting it was behind the day of violence.
"Your brothers in the Monotheism and Jihad Group launched a wide assault in several provinces in the country, which included strikes against the apostate police agents and spies and the Iraqi army alongside their American brothers," said the claim, posted on an Islamic Web site and relayed by the Reuters news agency.
Allawi, responding to questions about the attacks, asserted as he has on several recent occasions that his government was preparing to strike hard against the insurgents as soon as it takes over Wednesday. Despite his declarations, which Iraqi officials have explained as an attempt to buck up the nervous public, U.S. military officers have made it clear that they, not the Iraqis, will be in charge of security for the foreseeable future.
"I'm sure that the unity of the Iraqis will stop these criminal operations, and Iraqis will win," Allawi said in front of television cameras. "I want to tell the Iraqis that there is no need to be afraid, that these are criminal operations. . . . I declare that the security forces -- the police and the army -- will defeat these criminal actions of the infidels, the killers of the Iraqi people."
The most sustained attack came shortly after dawn in Baqubah, a farming hub about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Gunmen firing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades took over the town's main police station and three other government buildings. Others attacked a patrol of U.S. soldiers, setting off a clash in which two of the Americans were killed and seven were wounded, the U.S. military announced.
Militiamen wearing black uniforms and black masks were seen later patrolling the city center; policemen were nowhere in sight, despite Allawi's attempt to portray his new government as able and willing to assume authority. As the provincial police chief moved about the city seeking to rally his men, the insurgents set fire to his home, the U.S. military said. The triumphant insurgents then erected black flags atop government buildings that they had occupied and proclaimed themselves to be followers of Zarqawi's Monotheism and Jihad Group.
But their air of triumph dissipated when U.S. warplanes dropped three 500-pound bombs on a pair of buildings where the insurgents had gathered near the city's soccer stadium, said a report from the 1st Infantry Division, which has responsibility for the area. Smoke rose over the city, and the insurgent gunmen vanished from downtown Baqubah.
The Health Ministry in Baghdad said it received reports from Baqubah hospitals that 13 Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded. Local correspondents for Arabic-language television channels put the toll at 20 killed and 25 wounded, including a number of Iraqi policemen.
By far the deadliest attack came in Mosul, 220 miles north of Baghdad. Local police said five car bombs hit several police stations and a police academy near a hospital in a succession of blasts that began shortly after dawn. The U.S. military said late Thursday that 62 people were killed, including an American soldier, and more than 220 others were wounded.
Local leaders imposed a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew, and the city television station warned residents to stay indoors for the "general good," Reuters reported.
U.S. Marines, meanwhile, clashed for several hours with gunmen from Fallujah, the restive city about 35 miles west of Baghdad that is home to various Muslim militias and, U.S. officials charge, a band of foreign Arabs drawn to Iraq to fight American forces out of sympathy with bin Laden and Zarqawi.
Maj. Gen. Zibar Zobaie, a former Iraqi army officer who speaks for the Fallujah Brigade, said the fighting began when a convoy from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was attacked by gunmen two miles east of the city. The gunmen were not from Fallujah but launched their attack from the city, said Zobaie, whose brigade is supposed to ensure security in Fallujah under an agreement with Marine forces.
Marines responded to the attack with snipers, helicopter gunships, artillery and armored vehicles, knocking down houses and killing and wounding civilians, Zobaie complained. As a result, Fallujah residents fired back, he said. A Marine AH-1H Cobra helicopter gunship, apparently hit by gunfire, was forced to crash-land, but its crew walked away unhurt, a Marine spokesman said.
"These were not fighters," Zobaie said on al-Arabiya satellite television. "These were Fallujans. Fallujans, when they come under attack, they defend their city, their women and their children."
In a statement to the al-Jazeera satellite television channel, Fallujah militia leaders threatened to set Iraq's oil pipelines and wells ablaze if the Marines continued firing on Fallujah. By mid-afternoon, however, a truce was worked out under which the Marines would cease firing and the Fallujah Brigade would guarantee that Fallujah's gunmen and militias would also stop firing and stay in the city.
The Health Ministry initially said hospital reports indicated nine Iraqis were killed and 37 were wounded in Anbar province, which includes Fallujah. The ministry later reported 20 killed in the province's capital, Ramadi, but did not specify a casualty count in Fallujah.
Insurgents in Ramadi attacked a police station at dawn, seizing control and gunning down seven policemen and seven civilians before planting explosives and blowing up the station, police told reporters. A bomb also exploded at another police station in Ramadi, but no one was reported killed.
In Mahaweel, near Hilla about 60 miles south of Baghdad, insurgents fired mortars at a police checkpoint, killing one Iraqi officer.
A man wearing the uniform of a police lieutenant carried a briefcase toward a joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoint in southern Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, then went up in a tremendous explosion that killed him and four Iraqi policemen, bystanders and police recounted. The passenger cabin of a small pickup truck was reduced to scrap by the blast, but its load of fresh green beans was only slightly charred.
"This was a most cowardly attack, coming this way to kill the National Guardsmen," said Lt. Walid Ali, a 26-year-old guardsman who was directing traffic at the scene.
No U.S. casualties were listed, but reporters saw several U.S. soldiers tending to a comrade lying in the street nearby shortly after the explosion.
At about the same time, militiamen wielding automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers attacked four police stations around the capital. The U.S. military said all were driven back by return fire from the police with assistance from U.S. troops.
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baqubah and special correspondent Khalid Saffar contributed to this report.
--------
Adversary's Tactics Leave Troops Surprised, Exhausted
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3843-2004Jun24?language=printer
BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 24 -- The 1st Infantry Division soldiers who walked off the battlefield Thursday, exhausted by the frantic pace of combat and a baking summer sun, had seen nothing like it in their three months here.
In dawn-to-dusk fighting, more than 100 armed insurgents overran neighborhoods and occupied downtown buildings, using techniques that U.S. commanders said resembled those once employed by the Iraqi army. Well-equipped and highly coordinated, the insurgents demonstrated a new level of strength and tactical skill that alarmed the soldiers facing them.
By the end of the day, infantry and armored patrols had driven the insurgents from the battered center of the city, though some remained in control of two police stations in districts long hostile to the U.S.-led occupation. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in the fight, including a company commander struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
"They were definitely better than what we normally face," said Lt. T.J. Grider, 25, whose platoon fought for more than 12 hours. "But I think what we did today was pretty significant."
Coming less than a week before the U.S. occupation formally ends, the attacks brought into sharp focus the threat that lies ahead for Iraq's interim government and the challenge that remains for U.S. forces who will stay here to defend it. The U.S.-trained Iraqi police were routed or abandoned their posts rather than face a more capable foe, and military commanders here said the battle for this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad was far from over.
The insurgents fought in large, coordinated squads, set complex ambushes and occupied downtown buildings from which they apparently planned a long fight, U.S. military commanders said. Striking first along two key avenues bracketing the city, the insurgents intended to isolate and overrun the local Coalition Provisional Authority compound and other downtown government buildings, the commanders said.
Several U.S. commanders suggested the insurgents had learned the tactics in recent weeks from skilled guerrilla commanders from outside the city, perhaps led by foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the occupation. They noted that the city's merchants received no warning of the attack, as they had before an armed uprising here in April. Many people struggled through rush-hour traffic, only to be turned away by the fighting.
The preparation had apparently been underway for weeks, with the attacks timed to be part of a series across Iraq on Thursday. After a powerful U.S. airstrike stopped the insurgents' momentum here before noon, soldiers found large weapons stockpiles in the rubble of a building and machine-gun positions set up at a technical college nearby.
"He's still in the city, and he's hiding. But he'll be back," said Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, the task force commander responsible for Baqubah, referring to his enemy. "I'm regrouping and waiting for the next fight. But I don't know when that will be." Baqubah, which sits amid groves of date palms and scorched plains, has troubled U.S. forces throughout the occupation. Its political life was controlled for years by tribal leaders and former military officers, who lived well when Saddam Hussein was in power. Now many of them are the foot soldiers and mid-level commanders of the local insurgency, U.S. commanders here said.
In what they believed was a major blow to the insurgents here, Bullimore's troops killed a man suspected of being the local leader of the insurgency, Hussein Ali Septi, in a gun battle last week in the rebellious village of Buhriz, south of the city. Thirteen insurgents and one U.S. soldier were killed in the fighting. But the attacks on troops have continued.
For the past several weeks, Bullimore has been sending sniper teams into the city to kill insurgents planting roadside bombs under cover of darkness. The bombs, made of artillery shells or tank rounds and detonated by remote control, have ravaged his soldiers as they move along main supply routes.
Late Wednesday night, Grider, the platoon leader, worked with a sniper team in the Tahrir district, just south of the government center. Overlooking Canal Street, a main avenue through the city of 250,000 people, the sniper on the team fired on two men setting bombs. Grider said both fell dead -- the fourth and fifth of the week.
Soon afterward, AK-47 assault rifle fire whistled around the neighborhood. It would continue for several hours, lighting the predawn sky with tracer bullets. But Grider and his men pulled into their camp safely at 4:30 a.m., heading to bed.
Two hours later, as a platoon of Bradley Fighting Vehicles moved along the western edge of town sweeping for roadside bombs, Capt. Travis Van Hecke was awakened by a screeching radio in the office next to his room.
"We're hit," the voice screamed. The ambush with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades killed two soldiers, including the captain commanding the company.
"The group that came down here today was more accurate and a little more feisty than we have seen," said Van Hecke, 29, of Lomira, Wis. "Today this place just blew up."
Over the next few hours, groups of insurgents took over police stations in Buhriz and in the western district of Mufrek, where they killed seven Iraqi police officers.
Meanwhile, soldiers rushed the wounded from the ambushed Bradleys to a hospital across the city. A convoy carrying several wounded soldiers was ambushed several times by insurgents who appeared to be expecting them. Two Bradleys were disabled and had to be towed away.
By 9 a.m., the insurgents had seized three buildings on the eastern edge of the city near the soccer stadium. Bullimore said he tracked groups of men entering the buildings and taking up fighting positions inside. He called in an airstrike.
Minutes later, three 500-pound guided bombs fell through the buildings, collapsing them in heaps of rubble. Van Hecke's company, which had been ordered to secure the area around the stadium, picked through the sites. They found dozens of 50mm rockets, boxes of AK-47 ammunition and an array of mortars.
"It looked like he planned to fight there for a while," Bullimore said. "It was more than just a hit-and-run attack."
Early in the day, a group associated with Jordanian-born guerrilla Abu Musab Zarqawi asserted responsibility on Arabic-language satellite television channels for taking the police stations. But Bullimore, who said he thought people from outside the city may have organized the attacks, said the tactics did not fit the pattern of Zarqawi's past operations. Those allegedly include car bombings and the beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun Il.
By early afternoon, fighting in the streets had ebbed. After hours in tanks and Bradleys, in temperatures that reached 111 degrees, dozens of soldiers were feeling the effects of heat exhaustion. Many in Van Hecke's 115-man company received fluids intravenously.
Across several downtown blocks, damage was extensive. At the university, the scene of heavy fighting early in the day, glass from blown-out windows littered the campus. A group of people began looting the buildings when U.S. troops left the site, but they stopped once the troops returned.
In the early afternoon, Apache helicopters skipped over the city's edges, firing rockets that sent up columns of black smoke when they detonated. Bullimore said later that their target was a black sedan that had been carrying men wearing the insurgency's black uniforms.
Hours after the fighting calmed, only a few people had returned to the streets.
In recent weeks, young company and platoon commanders here have been told to prepare for the June 30 handover to the interim Iraqi government by giving the Iraqi police more authority on the streets. But the inability of the police to stand up to the insurgency Thursday will slow the process, soldiers said.
"That changeover is going to be a little tougher," said Van Hecke, a West Point graduate. "But I guess some can say the only reason they are doing these attacks is because we are here. There are two sides to every coin."
With only two hours of sleep over the past two days, Grider cleaned his M-4 rifle on the sofa of a common room as night fell. "Jeopardy" played on the television as he tested the infrared scope. He said he was on standby, prepared to lead his platoon out if called on later in the evening.
"I don't know what's going to happen," said Grider, a West Point graduate from Chicago. "You have to give Iraqis a chance to do it themselves. That's going to happen over the next few weeks, and they'll prove they can do it or our mission will stay pretty much unchanged."
--------
New U.S. Airstrike on Suspected Rebel Hideout in Falluja
June 25, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/middleeast/25CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 25 - The United States military made its third airstrike in a week today on what it says was a known terrorist safe house in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja.
The operation used precision weapons to target a suspected hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a known militant leader, "based on multiple confirmations of Iraqi and coalition intelligence," said a statement issued in Baghdad by a spokesman for the occupation forces, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
An American-led coalition official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that "somewhere between 20 and 25 people were killed in today's strike." It was not immediately clear who was among the dead.
The coalition press center in Baghdad said it could not immediately confirm the figures.
Reuters quoted residents as saying that the house, in southeast Falluja, was reduced to rubble.
The airstrike came as a second day of clashes erupted in Falluja and a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded another, witnesses said.
American tanks and armored vehicles on the edges of Falluja fired in several directions, while armed men in an eastern suburb returned fire, witnesses told The Associated Press. Seven people have died in two days of exchanges there, hospital officials said, the agency reported.
The new violence followed a day that saw fighting raging in five cities across Iraq as insurgents unleashed a surge of apparently coordinated attacks that killed at least 105 people and wounded hundreds more.
Meanwhile, Iraq's interim vice president warned that a drastic deterioration in security could lead to emergency laws or martial law, which could put the new government scheduled to take over next Wednesday at odds with the United States.
"Announcing emergency laws or martial law depends on the nature of the situation," the interim vice president, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite and member of the Islamic Dawa Party, told The A.P. in an interview on Thursday. "In normal situations, there is clearly no need for that" he said. "But in cases of excess challenges, emergency laws have their place."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was reported today as arguing against martial law. "It would make our task more complex," a German newspaper quoted him as saying, according to a Reuters report.
A United Nations Security Council resolution approved this month gives the United States a primary security role in Iraq even after the transfer of sovereignty. Washington has made it clear that it feels martial law is undesirable.
In Basra, southern Iraq, eight British servicemen detained for straying into Iran's territorial waters have returned to a military base in southern Iraq, ending their four-day ordeal.
On Thursday plumes of smoke boiled up from the streets of Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul and Baghdad as masked insurgents battled American and Iraqi security forces in what several officials said could be the opening salvo in a violent push to derail the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.
"We were expecting such an escalation, and we will witness more in the next few weeks," said Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, whom terrorists have threatened to assassinate. "We will deal with it and crush it."
The heaviest carnage on Thursday was in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where a battery of car bombs leveled two police stations and ripped into a police academy and a hospital, killing at least 62 people, including an American soldier.
In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, black-clad insurgents flooded into the streets after taking over police stations and killing two American soldiers. The insurgents, thought to be an alliance of Shiite and Sunni fighters, proclaimed their loyalty to Mr. Zarqawi, the suspected mastermind of dozens of suicide attacks and two recent beheadings.
American military officials said it was not clear what role Mr. Zarqawi might have played in Thursday's mayhem. The car bombs in Mosul were most likely Mr. Zarqawi's handiwork, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for occupation forces.
"Whether the other attacks were orchestrated by Zarqawi or one of his proxies, we're not yet sure," the general said. "But we can say there was some level of coordination."
Mr. Zarqawi, a 37-year-old Jordanian who has shifted across deserts and mountains eluding the authorities for several years, has become enemy No. 1 for the occupation authorities in Iraq. American officials said they believed that he was now somewhere in Iraq, planning more attacks, though they concede they are no closer to finding him.
As the days edge up to June 30, the air is thick with tension. In Baghdad, American troops have positioned Bradley fighting vehicles at key intersections with their cannons pointing into traffic. In Mosul, a curfew has been called. Across the country, Western security consultants are warning foreign workers not to set foot outside their compounds and to brace themselves for a major offensive.
In Falluja, a flash point of anti-occupation violence, fighting erupted at dawn on Thursday. American helicopters fired missiles into several houses, and armored personnel carriers and several dozen soldiers stormed into the city, which had been off limits to American troops for the last seven weeks after a truce was declared.
By midafternoon, another uneasy truce was struck, with a message blared from mosque minarets for insurgents to put down their weapons and go home. Jasim Muhammad Saleh, a former Iraqi Army general in Falluja, said, "The big people of the city - the sheiks, the tribes, the police and the mayor - met with Americans to stop their fire, and the Americans agreed to withdraw to their base."
During the Falluja fighting, insurgents hit a Cobra attack helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, forcing the chopper down, though none of crew were hurt, the American military said. Falluja officials estimated that 10 people had been killed in the fighting, which American commanders said had been started by insurgents.
American warplanes bombed Falluja twice previously in the last week in strikes aimed at Mr. Zarqawi's network, which is thought to operate several safe houses in the city. American officials have said the airstrikes killed more than 40 foreign fighters.
In Ramadi, gunmen pounded a police station with rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the building. At least eight people were killed, American military officials said.
In Baquba, about 150 insurgents seized two police stations and began storing weapons in buildings around a stadium downtown in preparation for another strike. United States military officials said American troops had killed 23 insurgents.
A statement quoted Thursday by an Islamist Web site said Mr. Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad movement was responsible for the Baquba attacks.
If true, the attacks marked a shift, or at least an expansion, of Mr. Zarqawi's tactics, from suicide bombings to more classic guerrilla warfare.
In an intercepted letter that American officials say Mr. Zarqawi wrote to the leadership of Al Qaeda sometime this winter, he took responsibility for 25 suicide attacks and added: "There will be more in the future, God willing. We did not want to publicly claim these operations until we become more powerful and were ready for the consequences."
Mr. Zarqawi is steeped in Islamic militant traditions. In his teens, he fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan, where it is thought he met Osama bin Laden.
His real name is Ahmed Fadil al-Khalaylah, but he created a nom de guerre from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, where he was born.
In the early 1990's, he returned to Jordan, where he was accused of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy and trying to blow up a tourist hotel in Amman.
In 1999, Mr. Zarqawi fled back to Afghanistan. Intelligence officials said Al Qaeda's leaders placed him in charge of a training camp, where he experimented with chemical weapons. Until recently, he was known as the "one-legged terrorist" because American intelligence indicated he was wounded in a missile attack on Afghanistan and received medical treatment in 2002 in Baghdad, where he was fitted with an artificial leg.
American officials said he had also spent time in Iran and in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, working with Ansar al-Islam, a militant group that Prime Minister Allawi blamed Thursday for the suicide attacks in Mosul.
Mr. Zarqawi and his followers have taken responsibility for the beheadings of Nicholas Berg, the American contractor killed in May, and Kim Sun Il, the South Korean hostage decapitated this week.
Intelligence officials say it is not clear if Mr. Zarqawi is an associate or a rival of Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Zarqawi has organized several attacks on Shiite Muslims, which is thought to go against the grain of Mr. bin Laden's attempts to unify the Muslim world against the West.
Still, Mr. Zarqawi remains an inspiration for the resistance in Iraq.
"His operations may have inspired other groups to come over to his organization," General Kimmitt said. "Clearly Zarqawi has tried to expand his network. Success breeds success."
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Baghdad for this article, and Terry Neilan reported from New York. Edward Wong contributed from Baquba, and Fooad Al Sheikhly from Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Facing Eviction, Some Gaza Settlers Are Defiant and Some Pragmatic
June 25, 2004
By JOSEPH BERGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/middleeast/25gaza.html
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, June 20 - If Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pushes ahead with his evacuation of the 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, he will find settlers like Roni Bakshi a lot harder to pry away than settlers like Ami Shavit.
Both Mr. Bakshi and Mr. Shavit are ardently wedded to the leafy suburban homes they built in the sand dunes here along the Mediterranean and to the tight-knit communities they helped spawn. But Mr. Shavit, who lives in the tiny hamlet of Dugit in the strip's northwestern corner, is willing to depart peaceably with his wife and four children if he can negotiate enough government money for an equitable replacement for his house, preferably with a sea view, as he has now.
Mr. Bakshi, on the other hand, is in Gaza for reasons of manifest religious destiny. This is land, he said, that the Bible commands him to hang on to. He is prepared to battle Israeli soldiers to hold on to his family's and his neighbors' plots in Neve Dekalim, a more flourishing community of 600 families south of Dugit.
Far more of the 7,500 settlers in Gaza share Mr. Bakshi's fervor than share the pragmatism of Mr. Shavit. "You can't talk about receiving money when someone talks about chopping off your hand, and living in trauma for the rest of your life," Mr. Bakshi said. "You can't tell someone who raised his kids here and has his life here to say goodbye and get on a bus. I will resist, and resist with force."
"I call this taking of money prostitution," he added, "and they are soliciting us to be prostitutes."
From the perspective of the 1.3 million Palestinians among whom they live in heavily armed settlements, controlling about 20 percent of the land and forcing numerous stops at military checkpoints, the settlers are insufferable intruders. The Palestinians, too, consider the land of Gaza sacred and theirs alone.
Mr. Bakshi, a 41-year-old Orthodox teacher, circumciser and ambulance driver, saw the destruction of a settlement by the government once before. He was a student in Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 when that large settlement was returned to Egypt in a peace treaty.
Residents barricaded themselves in apartments or clung to rooftops to make it difficult for soldiers to drag them away. Some re-established themselves in Neve Dekalim with walls from their prefabricated homes in Yamit.
It will also not be easy to uproot Neve Dekalim, the largest of 18 settlements in an ideologically linked group known as Gush Katif.
The Neve Dekalim residents, most of whom are religiously observant and work in Israel or at nearby greenhouses, have turned a barren outpost of trailers into a bedroom community of Florentine tile-roof houses. They have also put up a four-story yeshiva, or religious school, in the shape of a Star of David, and two synagogues.
"We built a yeshiva like a Mogen David to tell everybody: 'That's it. From here nobody will take us,' " Mr. Bakshi said.
Two weeks ago Mr. Sharon's cabinet approved a unilateral disengagement that sets the date for final evacuation as September 2005. Israeli officials have said there are likely to be inducements for those who leave early, and newspaper reports here say settlers will receive up to $300,000 for transplantation costs. Officials said Sunday that settlers' houses would be turned over to Palestinian refugees.
Mr. Bakshi, a man of Iraqi Jewish descent who wears a goatee, is furious at a succession of Israeli governments for promising him a future in Gaza. Mr. Sharon himself, the defense minister at the time of Yamit, vowed no more "concessions."
Mr. Bakshi and his wife raised seven children in Neve Dekalim. One, his 17-year-old son, Eliya, will be entering the army and may, he said, face a stark dilemma. He said Eliya told him, "This is where all my life was spent, and how do you expect me to join the army to chase away my family from my home and land?"
For Gaza's Palestinians, the Jewish settlers represent a source of humiliation. Mr. Bakshi said Neve Dekalim had been hit by mortar fire 2,000 times. [On Monday a Thai worker at a greenhouse in nearby Kfar Darom was killed by mortar fire.]
In contrast to Neve Dekalim, Dugit, whose name means fishing boat, is small - just 18 families. Some live in what has begun to look like a pricey California cul-de-sac.
Their roots in Gaza are more practical than religious. Mr. Shavit, a shaggy-haired man of Libyan Jewish descent, went to Dugit with his wife, Miri, 15 years ago seeking a place by the sea.
He feels that Mr. Sharon is misguided in yielding land Israel fought for. Still, he said, "we want to make a deal with the government."
Residents, he said, are willing to set up a new community along a beach in Israel proper. But he says the government offers are stinting. His home, he calculated, is worth a half-million dollars.
Moreover, they worry about future evacuations. "Now they are offering us to go to Beersheba," Mrs. Shavit, a Paris-born sculptor, said of the city in the Negev region. "What if in 20 years they tell us it belongs to the Bedouins. So where is my place?"
For now the Shavits seem to be proceeding as if Dugit will remain their home. When a reporter approached him, Mr. Shavit and a neighbor were fashioning a concrete column for a kindergarten building.
Mr. and Mrs. Shavit talk about their lives on the dunes with a kind of melancholy innocence. Until recent years, they said, they had reasonably friendly relations with Arab neighbors, fishing together and sharing the catch.
The Palestinians brought Israelis vegetables and grapefruits; the Israelis gave the Palestinians clothes and shampoo. All that fell apart with the violence that broke out in the intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000. The Dugit men scarcely fish anymore.
"If I knew 14 years ago that this is the future, I would never have come here," Mrs. Shavit said. "To make them angry and to be at their throat, for what?"
--------
Arafat Agrees to Appoint Security Chief
June 25, 2004
By JOSEPH BERGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/middleeast/25mide.html
JERUSALEM, June 24 - After weeks of prodding, the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, has agreed to appoint an interior minister to take charge of security for the Palestinian Authority, Israeli and American officials said Thursday.
The pending appointment of Taid Abdul Rahim for the post, and Mr. Arafat's agreement to consolidate a dozen armed groups into three divisions for the police, military and intelligence under Mr. Rahim's control, appears to satisfy Israeli and Egyptian requirements for the Palestinians to take charge of security after Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip by September 2005.
Palestinian officials would not confirm Mr. Rahim's selection, but acknowledged other details of the plan, saying it would take effect after a cease-fire they hoped would be worked out by this September.
Mr. Rahim, a longtime member of the leadership of Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction who has often acted as Mr. Arafat's emissary in Gaza, would report to Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister. Although Israeli officials suggested they would have preferred someone they did not consider an Arafat lieutenant, an American official indicated that the appointment would be acceptable.
The Israelis are skeptical that Mr. Arafat will do what he says he will do, the American official added.
Word of the appointment came after a series of meetings on Wednesday between Gen. Omar Suleiman, the director of Egyptian intelligence, and Mr. Arafat in Ramallah, and between General Suleiman and Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, in Jerusalem. Mr. Shalom was to meet late Thursday with William J. Burns, the chief Middle East diplomat for the State Department.
In continuing violence, two Palestinians, armed with assault rifles and grenades, were killed Thursday in what the Israeli Army described as an attempt to attack an army roadblock near the seaside settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip. On Wednesday night, soldiers killed a Palestinian militant trying to cross a fence near Gan Or, another Gaza settlement, the army said. In the West Bank, Israeli troops continued a sweep through Nablus's casbah and a nearby refugee camp to arrest members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the Islamic militant group.
-------- nato
Bush Seeks NATO Help on Iraq
President Hopes to Win International Commitment at Summit
By Mike Allen and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4173-2004Jun24.html
President Bush heads overseas today for twin summits amid increasing signs that he will win token -- but politically important -- support from NATO for the fledgling Iraqi government, administration officials said yesterday.
Bush has struggled for months to expand NATO's role in providing security in Iraq, and he was disappointed by the continuing objections of allies during an economic summit in Sea Island, Ga., early this month.
Now administration officials say they are optimistic that Bush will be able to join in an announcement of a new international commitment to Iraq at the end of a NATO summit in Istanbul on Monday and Tuesday. But some member nations -- most notably France -- are demanding clarifications before they sign on.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice signaled there would be an aggressive lobbying campaign, including face-to-face meetings between Bush and leaders of NATO countries. Rice said yesterday during a pre-trip briefing that the United States will ask the leaders "to look back at their own histories and to look at the darkest points in their own history, and to ask what it would have been like if people had abandoned them in those dark moments."
"The Iraqi people, as Prime Minister Allawi said in his opening line, are going through a difficult period now," she said. "They need those who are lucky enough to be on the side of -- who live in freedom -- to stay with them and not abandon them."
The summit -- part of a five-day trip for a European Union summit in Ireland and the NATO meeting in Turkey -- may be one of Bush's last chances to chalk up a victory overseas before he faces reelection. It would come just ahead of Wednesday's handover of control of Iraq from the U.S-led occupation to an interim sovereign government.
Several NATO nations signaled a favorable response to a letter this week from Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who asked for military training and other assistance -- but not troops, which key alliance members such as France and Germany have refused to provide.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at a pre-summit briefing: "NATO should never slam the door in this prime minister's face."
An agreement would be an important victory for Bush, as well as for Allawi. Polls show that voters want Bush to show he can work with other countries, particularly in Europe, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has argued as part of his campaign that the United States must solicit greater international involvement.
Bush's advisers determined that it was crucial to establish a new tone for his international relations. They had looked forward to the three international summits, weekly speeches on Iraq and showcase speeches like those on Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead, Bush has suffered repeated setbacks, including escalating violence in Iraq, which crested yesterday with attacks in six cities as Bush was making final preparations for his trip.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, predicted that Bush will "have some success as relates to Iraq. Mainly the French and Germans can use Allawi as a rationale -- 'We're not giving to Bush but to the Iraqis.' "
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hosheyar Zebari is expected to make personal appeals for help at the Istanbul summit.
A French diplomat said the specifics of the NATO commitment are still being debated. "There are debates which are about whether NATO should have a monopoly on training or whether it should have a direct responsibility for training or whether it should coordinate national efforts for training," the diplomat said.
The diplomat made it clear that France favors a light footprint, showing there is strong resistance to NATO taking as large a leadership role as it has in Afghanistan.
"Small is beautiful," the diplomat said. "Everything should be done that Iraqis are empowered and they have responsibilities. To come with a huge NATO flag is not a solution."
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NATO Envoys Strike Tentative Deal on Iraq Training
June 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-nato-deal.html
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO nations' ambassadors struck a tentative deal on an agreement late Friday to help the interim Iraqi government train its security forces after hours of wrangling over the wording, diplomats said.
``We've agreed it, we've agreed on it tentatively,'' one diplomat said.
He said members of the 26-nation alliance would have until 6 a.m. EDT Saturday to raise objections, after which time the wording of a statement to be released at a NATO summit in Istanbul Monday and Tuesday would be deemed to have been adopted.
-------- russia / chechnya
Putin plans to bolster forces in Caucasus
Assault in Ingushetia prompts new pledge
International Herald Tribune
June 25, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/526457.html
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia would increase its military presence in the troubled Caucasus region after a rebel incursion killed nearly 100 people in a republic bordering separatist Chechnya.
The announcement appears to undermine Putin's effort to portray the war in Chechnya as over and won, with troops - now unofficially reported at some 80,000 around the region - pulling out.
Putin visited a base in the Far East which was supposed to train troops for "antiterrorist" operations - the same term he uses for his Chechen campaign, which began nearly five years ago.
Putin gave conflicting signals about his further strategy for the turbulent region, confirming that he would send in more troops, while insisting that this week's raid did not destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus.
"We will step up our efforts in the North Caucasus and do whatever is necessary, including building up our military presence," he said.
Ninety-eight people were confirmed killed and 104 wounded in the attacks Tuesday in Ingushetia - a republic with close ethnic links to Chechnya - according to a local government official quoted by the Itar-Tass and Interfax news agencies.
Between 200 and 300 fighters simultaneously struck three towns in the republic, attacking police stations, government buildings and checkpoints with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Only two rebels were killed.
According to news reports, a bomb went off early Thursday in Nazran, Ingushetia's largest town, causing no casualties. It was not clear whether that blast was linked to the rebels.
Confirming the deployment of a new regiment in Ingushetia, Putin said that the numbers of both Interior and Defense Ministry troops would be bolstered.
"This was a terrorist attack that caused us grave consequences, but it could not and will not change the situation in Chechnya," Putin said.
He said the "bandits" were being financed by foreign organizations in the Arab world, and that they only carried out the attack to receive a promised payment, suggesting it came from abroad.
"The bandits' efforts are meant to show their power and potential, to make money throughout their sponsors, and to destabilize the situation in the republic" of Ingushetia, he said.
Putin's efforts to resolve the war, which was escalated at his initiative in 1999 when he was prime minister, focused on Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow Chechen president and former mufti who was killed in an explosion last month.
New elections have been set for Aug. 29 and a relatively unknown local interior minister, Alu Alkhanov, who seems to have limited influence in Chechnya, has been picked as the Kremlin's choice to head the republic. Alkhanov registered as a candidate Thursday. He was shown on television being congratulated by well-wishers in the war-ravaged capital, Grozny.
He said he was running for the job because he felt it was his duty to pursue the work Kadyrov had left unfinished.
"To be a member of Kadyrov's team, to continue the work he started is not only my obligation, it is my duty," Alkhanov told supporters.
Alkhanov has the vital support of Kadyrov's son Ramzan, who controls a thousands-strong, and widely feared, militia.
Putin last week gave his public blessing to Alkhanov's bid by meeting him in the Kremlin. But the vote has already been scorned by European officials, with a top representative for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe saying that his group would probably not oversee the vote because of safety concerns. (AFP, Reuters)
-------- spies
Bush Considers Goss for CIA Director
Fla. Congressman, Former Agency Case Officer, Chairs House Intelligence Panel
By Mike Allen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3960-2004Jun24.html
President Bush has decided he needs to choose a new CIA director to replace George J. Tenet before the election, and the leading candidate is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss, senior administration officials said yesterday.
Goss (R-Fla.), who served as a CIA case officer for nine years beginning in 1962, has announced he will retire from Congress at the end of the year. After Tenet announced he would leave in July, Goss, 65, told reporters he had not been approached for the job but "would have to consider it seriously if offered."
Although administration officials predicted yesterday that winning Senate confirmation for Goss would be little more than a formality, some Democrats disagreed and predicted such hearings would assertively probe both the CIA's performance under Bush and Goss's fitness for the job. Democrats have urged Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) to prepare for an extensive confirmation hearing this fall, according to several Democratic congressional aides.
White House officials had said earlier they were contemplating leaving Tenet's top deputy, John McLaughlin, as the acting head of the agency after Tenet leaves July 11. But the White House has been told to expect blistering criticism of the CIA in a report from the Senate Intelligence Committee in the next few weeks, and McLaughlin was intimately involved in many of the decisions and conclusions that will be called into question. Bush aides also said the president wants someone who can play a strong leadership role within the agency and in public.
Administration officials said Bush is focusing on Goss as his choice for the job, although White House communications director Dan Bartlett said last night that no final decision has been made. "The president has not made a decision, and there's more than one candidate," Bartlett told the Associated Press.
Bush advisers said naming a replacement for Tenet would show that the president was taking seriously the need for changes in the intelligence community. But several Democrats noted yesterday that if Kerry won the November election, it would be unlikely that he would keep Goss, should he win Senate approval.
On Capitol Hill late yesterday, as word of the potential appointment circulated, senior Republican and Democratic staff members said there has been no word given to the Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) or to the ranking Democrat, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.). "It is the Democrats that give advance notice to the Senate, not these Republicans," one GOP congressional staffer said. Even high-ranking CIA officials were left in the dark, according to one senior intelligence official.
The administration officials who spoke on a guarantee of anonymity said that if Bush were to choose someone inside the administration, it would risk a drawn-out inquest into the decision making that led to the invasion of Iraq, which is the subject of several investigations.
But Democrats on the Hill disputed the idea that Goss would sail through the process. "We could have a referendum on the CIA," said one senior Democratic staff member yesterday.
Intelligence will come under close scrutiny during the presidential campaign, one reason that led Tenet to leave before the end of the year. While Republicans said choosing Goss would give Bush a clean break and allow him to say that changes were being made, Democrats yesterday responded that some would describe Goss as an attempt to politicize the agency directorship.
Rockefeller has told aides he is concerned that Goss, a vocal supporter of Bush's, has become "too political" for the CIA director job, an aide to the senator said yesterday.
Goss was selected by the Bush-Cheney campaign to critique a June 2 national security speech by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). Goss called Kerry's nonproliferation proposals "unrealistic and dangerously naive," saying they amounted to saying, "We're going to get all the nukes in a lockbox somehow."
As the intelligence authorization bill was on the House floor Wednesday, Goss gave what could be considered a speech in support of his candidacy for CIA director.
"For the past seven-plus years, I have been working to refit the intelligence community for its future . . . to posture it for the days ahead. We have always worked hard on the committee to create a constituency for intelligence inside and outside of this institution. We have insisted that the committee be both supportive advocates and constructive overseers."
The report on the bill by Goss's panel sharply criticized the CIA for "ignoring its core missional activities" and having "a dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action."
In an unusually frank letter, Tenet yesterday wrote Goss that his criticism was "ill informed" and "frankly absurd."
--------
CONGRESSIONAL CRITICISM
House Committee Says C.I.A. Is Courting Disaster by Mismanaging Its Human Spying
June 25, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25SPY.html
WASHINGTON, June 24 - In a scathing report, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has warned that the Central Intelligence Agency is heading "over a proverbial cliff" through mismanagement of its human spying operations.
The report, approved by the full House by a vote of 360 to 61 on Wednesday night, was part of the intelligence authorization bill. Its language was harsher than earlier Congressional criticisms on the subject, and it sharpened election-year battle lines in which Republicans and Democrats are both criticizing the C.I.A. for intelligence failures.
The criticism carried particular significance in that it was drafted by a panel headed by Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is considered a leading candidate to succeed George J. Tenet as director of central intelligence. Mr. Tenet responded with a blunt letter that objected to "the tone and content" of the report, and called some of its conclusions "frankly absurd."
Most of the House criticisms focused on the C.I.A.'s clandestine service, run by its Directorate of Operations. It suggested that prewar mistakes made in the C.I.A.'s assessment of Iraq and its illicit weapons had been rooted in large part on inadequacies in human spying operations run by the operations directorate.
"There was an insufficiency of the right amount of information available on this topic for the analysts," the report said. "The U.S. cannot afford to be in such a position."
A "comprehensive analysis" of how human spying operations were being mismanaged was spelled out in a classified annex to the report that cannot be made public, the committee said. But in the public version of the report, the panel warned specifically about what it called a "misallocation and redirection of resources, poor prioritization of objectives, micromanagement of field operations, and a continued political aversion to operational risk."
The damage resulting inflicted on human spying operations was "in the committee's judgment, significant and could likely be long-lasting," the panel said.
The eight Democrats on the committee, led by Representative Jane Harman of California, all voted against the Republican-backed authorization measure itself, but they did not object to the criticisms of the agency. They argued instead that intelligence spending authorized in the measure, whose total remains classified, was inadequate to the country's needs.
The critical focus on human spying operations reflected vocal criticisms made in recent years by Mr. Goss, who himself served as a C.I.A. officer for about a dozen years, beginning in the late 1950's. James L. Pavitt, the top C.I.A. official in charge of clandestine operations for the last five years, recently announced a decision to retire from the agency this summer.
Among the particular criticisms made in the report were that the C.I.A., despite eight years of rebuilding, had not yet repaired human spying abilities lost because of budget cuts during the 1990's. The report also complained that money and manpower were being devoted to counterterrorism, which the C.I.A. has said consumes about half of the money devoted to clandestine operations, to the neglect of other important activities.
"The nimble, flexible, core-mission-oriented enterprise the D.O. once was, is becoming just a fleeting memory," the report said, referring to the Directorate of Operations. "With each passing day, it becomes harder to resurrect."
Mr. Tenet, who is due to leave his post on July 11, had already been anticipating critical reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the presidential commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Under Mr. Goss, the House panel sent Mr. Tenet a letter last fall that was sharply critical of the agency's performance in prewar intelligence on Iraq, but the committee has not conducted the kind of exhaustive inquiry on that issue that the Senate panel has undertaken over the last year.
Mr. Tenet has long described the rebuilding of the clandestine service as his top priority, and he defended that effort in his response, sent as a letter to Mr. Goss.
"The damage done by inattention to the clandestine service during the first half of the 1990's cannot be repaired in the blink of an eye," Mr. Tenet said. "Just as the military cannot hire people off the street to become instant majors and lieutenant colonels, it takes years for C.I.A. to recruit, train and deploy experienced case officers. That rebuilding process has been going on for more than six years, but only patience, continued resolve and sustained support will see it to a successful conclusion."
--------
Report: Turkish FM leaked story of Mossad in Kurd regions
Haaretz Correspondent
By Zvi Bar'el,
25/06/2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/443112.html
ANKARA - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is apparently the source of the leak to New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh that dozens of Israeli Mossad agents are ostensibly in northern Iraq. The reliable Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet stated on Thursday that Gul, along with two advisers and a spokesman, had a breakfast meeting with Hersh on May 27, on which occasion he gave the information to Hersh.
Official Turkish spokesmen denied the report in Cumhuriyet, dismissing it as "a report by an opposition paper," but sources at the paper insisted the report is "correct, verified, and approved by highly informed sources."
Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani categorically denied Hersh's report on Wednesday.
Turkish sources Thursday confirmed to Haaretz that despite the denials, official Turkey still does not completely believe that no Israeli agents are present in northern Iraq. According to these sources, Israeli and Turkish officials held talks over the past year regarding the possibility of cooperation with the Kurds. The Israeli side indeed declared that any cooperation of this kind would only occur in coordination with Turkey and not behind its back. However, "Turkish sensitivity to the possibility that Israel would exploit an opportunity prevents the Turkish government from relaxing. Perhaps that is why, if it was indeed Gul who passed on the information, his sole purpose was to nip the idea in the bud," they said.
In any event, Israel has made it clear to Turkey that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided not to open a channel of cooperation with the Kurds. For now, that decision is blocking proposals submitted by Israeli intelligence officials to Sharon to try to reestablish the connection with the Kurds.
-------- us
MP Captain Tells of Efforts to Hide Details of Detainee's Death
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2755-2004Jun24.html
BAGHDAD, June 24 -- The company commander of the U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison testified Thursday that the top military intelligence commander at the prison was present the night a detainee died during an interrogation and that efforts were made to conceal the details of the detainee's death.
Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said he was summoned one night in November to a shower room in a cellblock at the prison, where he discovered the body of a bloodied detainee on the floor. A group of intelligence personnel was standing around the body, discussing what to do, and Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at the prison, was among them, Reese said.
Reese said an Army colonel named Jordan sent a soldier to the prison mess hall for ice to preserve the body overnight. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was head of the interrogation center at the prison, but it was unclear whether he was the officer to whom Reese referred.
No medics were called, Reese said, and the detainee's identification was never recorded.
Reese testified that he heard Pappas say at one point, "I'm not going down for this alone."
An autopsy the next day determined that the man's death was caused by a blood clot resulting from a blow to the head, and the body subsequently was hooked up to an intravenous drip, as if the detainee was still alive, and taken out of the prison, Reese recalled. There is no known record of what happened to the body after that.
Reese's testimony came during the first day of an investigative hearing for Spec. Sabrina Harman, one of seven Army reservists from the 372nd charged with abusing detainees at the prison late last year.
During investigations of alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, statements by other witnesses have described the death of the detainee, and the corpse appears in photographs documenting abuse at the prison. But no testimony or evidence had previously indicated Pappas was in the shower room on the night the detainee died.
During an earlier hearing for another soldier in the 372nd, Spec. Jason A. Kenner testified that a Navy SEAL team and officers from other government agencies -- referred to as OGA, a common designation for CIA operatives -- brought the detainee in alive with a bag over his head. Kenner said he later saw that the man had been severely beaten on his face.
Intelligence officers took the detainee to a shower room used for interrogations, Kenner said, and shackled him to a wall. "About an hour later, he died on them," Kenner testified. "They decided to put him on ice. There was a battle between [OGA] and MI [military intelligence] as to who was going to take care of the body. A couple days later, he was finally disposed of."
Harman appears in two photographs that military prosecutors are using as evidence against her, including one in which she is smiling and giving the thumbs-up with the corpse in the shower room.
The Army has accused her of taking photographs of a pyramid of naked detainees and photographing and videotaping detainees who were ordered to strip and masturbate in front of other prisoners and soldiers, according to her charge sheet. She is also charged with jumping on several prisoners as they lay in a pile; with writing "rapeist" on a prisoner's leg; and with attaching wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box with his head covered. She told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box, the documents allege.
A former pizza shop assistant manager from Alexandria, Harman, 26, told The Washington Post last month that members of her military police unit took direction from Army military intelligence officers, CIA operatives and civilian contractors who conducted interrogations at the prison.
She was not called to testify on Thursday, but Reese said military intelligence clearly controlled the cellblock where Harman and other members of her military police platoon worked the night shift.
"My MPs, they were directed by the MI people for what they wanted and how they wanted it," he said.
Earlier this week, a U.S. Army judge accepted a request by attorneys for three other soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib case to question the top commanders in Iraq and their subordinates. The judge issued the rulings at pretrial hearings for Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick.
Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, the first soldier to face a court-martial, pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to a year in prison.
Defense witnesses testified that Harman was a good soldier, quiet and well liked by the Iraqis she encountered when the 372nd was based in Hilla, south of Baghdad, before being transferred to the prison.
"She was very friendly," Sgt. 1st Class Shannon Snider testified at the Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to convene a court-martial. "Anytime we were out on the streets in al-Hilla, people would ask, 'Where's Sabrina? Where's Sabrina?' "
Reese said he never had a problem with Harman. "She did a good job," he said. "I never witnessed anything hostile. I never saw any show of force."
Harman's hearing was held in a small courtroom at Camp Victory, a U.S. Army base near Baghdad International Airport. Harman, petite with her brown hair pulled back into a tight bun, listened quietly as the charges against her were read. When the investigating officer asked her a question, she answered, "Yes, sir," barely above a whisper. Throughout the hearing, she scribbled notes on a white legal pad. Graner and Spec. Megan Ambuhl, also charged with abuse, sat in a corner at the back of the courtroom.
Two other soldiers testified that they saw detainees being abused but only one reported it to a superior. Both said Harman was present the nights they saw detainees being mistreated.
Spec. Matthew Wisdom, a military policeman, said he saw Frederick strike a detainee in the chest.
Spec. Israel Rivera, a military intelligence soldier, said he also was bothered after watching the military police soldiers order three naked detainees to crawl low enough so that their genitals would scrape the floor.
--------
New Job in Iraq Will Be as Top U.S. Military Leader
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4087-2004Jun24?language=printer
His household goods had just been moved into the renovated residence of the vice chief of staff of the Army five weeks ago when Gen. George W. Casey Jr. received word that he was likely headed for a new assignment: commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq.
The sudden shift -- triggered by the prison abuse scandal, which upset an earlier plan to install a different new commander in Iraq -- has left Casey scrambling to prepare for the job.
Yesterday, at a congressional hearing on his nomination, the general deferred answers to a number of central questions about the Iraq mission.
Will he have enough U.S. troops to deal with the surging violence? How will he coordinate with Iraqi authorities after the transfer of limited authority next week? What role will private security contractors continue to play?
Casey promised to get back to Congress when his views are more informed by experience. A soft-spoken, genial officer accustomed to dealing with lawmakers, Casey is a respected figure on Capitol Hill, and senators appeared willing to cut him some slack until he takes up his new post. Several even sounded relieved that someone such as Casey was willing to take the assignment.
"I don't know of a tougher job in regards to our national security than the one you're assuming," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told him.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), citing the rising sophistication of the insurgency in Iraq and the inability so far of U.S. and Iraqi forces to secure the country's borders, impressed on Casey that the situation had reached "a very, very critical" moment. "Success or failure may be dictated by what happens in the next few months," McCain said.
He urged Casey to make his own assessment of troop levels and other needs "as quickly as possible." He cautioned against making promises that cannot be delivered, noting that statements by commanders this spring threatening to subdue the city of Fallujah or kill or capture the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr never came to pass.
Several senators also took the occasion to express frustration at what they said has been a lack of candor on the part of the Bush administration about events in Iraq. They voiced hope that Casey would give them what Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member, called "the unvarnished facts," even if it meant going against the administration's official line.
Casey was not an obvious choice for the Iraq job. Apart from a stint as a U.N. military observer in Cairo in 1981, the general has spent little time in the Middle East. He also has no combat experience.
But Casey receives high marks from many active and retired officers for his thoughtfulness, calm temperament and skill in dealing with Washington and international bureaucracies.
In an interview, Casey cited a lifelong interest in international affairs, stretching back to his undergraduate days at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1970. Time spent as a senior officer in the 1990s sorting out the international jumble in Bosnia and Kosovo has helped prepare him for the political complexities and military challenges of Iraq, he said.
More recent stints at the upper reaches of the Pentagon's Joint Staff and the Army have made him very comfortable dealing at the national level and have given him a good understanding of how to coordinate matters between the Pentagon and State Department, he added.
In preparing for Iraq, Casey said he has talked at length with Ambassador John D. Negroponte, who will be heading the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
"We have a strong feeling that this needs to be one team, one mission," Casey said.
As for his lack of combat experience, he said that did not concern him.
"I've learned how to think competitively and how to operate against a thinking enemy, and that has great carry-over into combat operations," Casey said.
Among the lessons he said he has learned commanding troops in the past is the need to clearly communicate goals and policies to subordinates. He also believes that "the guy in charge must do a lot of heavy lifting himself" and that soldiers should take a break now and then.
"You have to find time to read, sleep, exercise and think, because if you don't, you end up stale and with a short-term focus," he said.
Casey had not intended to make a career of the military. His father, Maj. Gen. George W. Casey Sr., died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1970 -- the year Casey graduated from Georgetown.
Although Casey was commissioned a second lieutenant after graduation, he planned to stay in the Army two years before entering law school. A subsequent decision to extend his military duty for a year to attend airborne school took Casey to Germany, an experience he enjoyed. He has remained in the Army ever since.
As a four-star general, Casey will bring greater authority to the Baghdad assignment than the three-star officer he is replacing, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. The move is intended partly to consolidate U.S. troops -- including Special Operations forces and the Iraq Survey Group, which has been hunting for weapons of mass destruction -- under one command. It also is meant to enable Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, who has responsibility for all U.S. troops in the Middle East, to spend more time on other matters.
In testimony yesterday, Casey rejected the notion that U.S. troops in Iraq, after the handover of limited authority next week, would be shifting from an offensive to a defensive posture. "We have to maintain an offensive mind-set," he told the senators.
Casey said U.S. forces might try to adopt a lower profile, but he said he intends to keep them focused on obtaining intelligence about insurgents and engaged in carefully planned attacks.
He predicted that intensified efforts to train and equip Iraq's fledgling security forces should begin yielding visible results in a few months, adding that the new emphasis will be more on the quality of the forces, not the quantity.
Asked about a possible role for NATO forces, Casey said he would welcome their assistance in training Iraqi troops. What he needs most from the international community, he said, is a brigade-size force -- about 5,000 soldiers -- to ensure security for the U.N. mission charged with helping set up national elections next year.
--------
ABUSE
Testimony Ties Key Officer to Cover-Up of Iraqi Death
June 25, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/middleeast/25ABUS.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 24 - The company commander of the unit charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib testified Thursday that the top military intelligence officer at the prison was in the cellblock the night a prisoner died during interrogation.
His testimony suggested the officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, was aware of efforts to conceal the death.
Testifying at a hearing for one of the seven accused members of his unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Capt. Donald Reese said that one night in November 2003, he saw the bloodied body of an Iraqi prisoner who had died during interrogation inside a shower stall in a prison cellblock. He said a number of officers were standing around it, discussing what to do.
One of them, he said, was Colonel Pappas, the head of the military intelligence at the prison. "I heard Colonel Pappas say, `I'm not going to go down alone for this,' " Captain Reese testified.
An autopsy the next day established the cause of death as a blood clot from trauma, he said.
The hearing was for Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, of Alexandria, Va., who appears in some of the photographs of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib showing a human pyramid of detainees. Specialist Harman also appears in a photograph with the dead detainee referred to in Captain Reese's testimony, his body packed in ice. She has been charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, making a false statement and assault.
In addition to Colonel Pappas, Captain Reese testified that among the others in the room were members of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also said there was a female major present, as well as a man named Jordan. It was not clear whether he was referring to Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the head of the interrogations center at Abu Ghraib.
Captain Reese, whose testimony lasted several hours and was covered in a news pool report, said he had been told the detainee had died from "a heart attack." But, he said, the body was "bleeding from the head, nose, mouth."
The testimony appears to be the first to suggest that a senior officer was aware of a suspicious death immediately after it happened, and that he was involved in or knew of attempts to hide it. The testimony also offered a wealth of details on the case, from a request for ice to preserve the detainee's body to an attempt to spirit it out of the prison, connected to an intravenous drip to make it appear the dead man was simply ill.
Captain Reese testified that the detainee had been captured during a firefight and had died during his interrogation. "He died in the shower," Captain Reese said. "I was told that when he was brought in he was combative, that they took him up to the room and during the interrogation he passed."
The body was left locked in the shower overnight. The next day an intravenous drip was fitted to it and it was taken away. "I was told the reason they did that was they didn't want the other inmates to get upset he had passed during the interrogation," he said. He said he was told the body "was taken to Baghdad somewhere."
An American military policeman said in sworn testimony in April that the man had been brought to Abu Ghraib by "O.G.A.," initials for other government agency, or the C.I.A., with a sandbag over his head. Military guards took the prisoner to a shower room at the prison, which was used as a temporary interrogation center, according to the account by Specialist Jason A. Kenner, also of the 372nd Military Police Company.
"He went into the shower for interrogation and about an hour later he died on them," said Specialist Kenner, whose account left unclear whether the detainee had been examined by a doctor or given any medical treatment before he died.
Captain Reese's testimony added further details. He said that when Colonel Pappas and the other officers were gathered around the body, a man he identified only as Jordan ordered a lower-ranking officer "to get some ice out of the chow hall" to store the body.
"Jordan" and Colonel Pappas were "talking about the situation" and the "O.G.A. guys were visibly upset this had happened." Captain Reese said the incident occurred after an attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad. Meshing with other accounts, he said the detainee had been brought in alive by Navy Seals. Captain Reese said the detainee was one of three men captured; the other two had been killed in the fighting.
In his testimony, Captain Reese described the generally abusive atmosphere at the prison. On his first day there, he said, he noticed Iraqi inmates with underwear on their heads. Another inmate, he said, was wearing a plastic food container as underwear.
"He'd made it himself, I guess, to cover him," Captain Reese said. "That was one of the things that struck me as odd."
Under cross-examination, he said that some inmates at Abu Ghraib whom he described as "psychological patients," had eaten their own feces. Some prisoners wore women's underwear, he said, only because there were not enough men's briefs to go around.
-------- war crimes
DIPLOMACY
U.S. Seeks a Deal to Shield Americans From Iraq's Courts
June 25, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, June 24 - The Bush administration is negotiating an agreement with Iraqi leaders to continue shielding Americans from criminal prosecution by Iraqi courts, but without the the new government's formal adoption of the arrangement, administration officials said Thursday.
The officials said the arrangement, which is expected to be agreed upon in the next few days, just before the United States officially cedes power to the Iraqis at the end of June, was intended to immunize Americans from prosecution without forcing Iraqi leaders to suffer any adverse political consequences.
Iraqi officials have said the credibility of the new government could be highly damaged if it were to grant immunity to American military personnel and American contractors from local prosecution.
At the same time, the Bush administration has consistently demanded a guarantee of such immunity, similar to arrangements that already exist in all countries where American military personnel operate. In those cases, however, the immunity agreements are accords negotiated by both sides. The accords vary, sometimes allowing local prosecutions under certain circumstances, like when a crime is committed that has nothing to do with military activity.
"This is done with the approval and consent of the new Iraqi government," a senior administration official said.
But asked whether Prime Minister Iyad Allawi would accept such an arrangement, the official said: "I'm not sure he will. He might say, `Yes, they talked to me about it, and I understand the way it has to be.' "
The form of the arrangement is expected to be an order issued by the administrator of the American occupation, L. Paul Bremer III, extending a similar order he issued when the occupation began last year.
Details of the administration's plans were first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday.
The new arrangement was also discussed in broad outlines by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., nominated to be the senior American commander in Iraq, who said he understood it was still being negotiated and would be adopted shortly. Speaking at his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Casey said he was "very concerned that we have the appropriate protections in place for our armed service members" after sovereignty is transferred.
Administration officials have said that American civilians working for private contractors would leave Iraq if they were not protected from being prosecuted by Iraqi courts.
General Casey said Mr. Bremer would refine his original occupation order providing such immunity so that it would "still provide us with the same protections that we had under the original provision."
Many international lawyers say that such an order from Mr. Bremer would have questionable legal standing in Iraq, since it is generally recognized under international law that a decree by a military occupation leader is not valid after the occupation ends. United Nations officials have also said that any order protecting Americans from prosecution would have to be formally adopted by the government of Iraq. But other experts say that, especially after the prisoner abuse scandals, no Iraqi leader can afford to be seen as protecting Americans from prosecution.
One Bush administration official said the revised order to be issued by Mr. Bremer would contain a clause saying "it may be amended or rescinded" by the Iraqi government that takes office.
"Like anything in Iraq, the government can say that it does not recognize this provision," said an administration official. "But we're putting this through in a way that's in consultation with the Iraqis, so we don't put them in a position to say this is shoved down our throats, and we're not going to take it."
Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said at a news briefing that the arrangement "will be some sort of mutually agreed process" that was still under discussion.
The immunity arrangement has been discussed for months by administration officials. Although they said an agreement would be adopted before June 30, they never said explicitly that it would be a formal accord, although they left the impression it would be.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Jury Role In Raising Sentences Affirmed
Ruling May Affect States' Procedures
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3835-2004Jun24?language=printer
A bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled yesterday that only juries, not judges, may increase criminal sentences beyond the maximums suggested by statutory guidelines, a decision that throws into doubt sentencing procedures used by nine states and possibly the federal government.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the court said a trial judge in Washington state violated the Constitution when he sentenced a convicted kidnapper to 90 months in prison rather than the 53-month maximum prescribed by state law. The judge was following a provision of the law that permits judges to impose higher sentences when they find that the facts warrant harsher punishment.
But the court said the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a jury trial in felony cases means that any facts that would result in a sentence above the range of sentences specifically mentioned in the law must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
"When a judge inflicts a punishment that the jury's verdict alone does not allow . . . the judge exceeds his proper authority," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority.
The ruling was the latest application of the court's 2000 ruling in Apprendi v. New Jersey, in which the court roiled criminal law by holding for the first time that factual findings a court uses to increase sentences must be made by a jury rather than by a judge.
The court used Apprendi in 2002 to strike down state laws that call for judges, rather than juries, to decide between life imprisonment and death in capital cases. But in a separate case yesterday, the court limited the impact of that ruling by declaring that it would not apply retroactively.
The decision yesterday in Blakely v. Washington, No. 02-1632, may be Apprendi's most significant consequence yet. It poses a direct challenge to the past quarter-century's worth of sentencing reform at both the state and federal levels.
In response to concerns that similar crimes were being punished much differently by judges in different courts, the federal government and some states replaced previous sentencing systems, under which juries determined defendants' guilt or innocence and judges determined sentences pretty much as they saw fit.
The new sentencing guidelines typically established a range of prison time for various crimes, with judges permitted to "depart upward" from that range if they find "aggravating factors" deserving of harsher punishment.
Federal sentencing guidelines were established in 1987, and Washington is one of nine states that have similar systems. The Bush administration supported Washington in the case, out of concern that federal guidelines be kept intact.
"If defendants asserted the right this decision gives them, a very large fraction of the sentences in federal criminal cases and probably a sizable number of criminal cases in states with state sentencing guidelines would be unconstitutional," said William J. Stuntz, a professor of law at Harvard University who specializes in criminal issues.
In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, which she read from the bench in what was, for her, an unusual display of disagreement with the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that "the practical consequences of today's decision may be disastrous."
"If the choice is between adopting a balanced case-by-case approach that takes into consideration the values underlying the Bill of Rights as well as the history of a particular sentencing reform law, and adopting a rigid rule that destroys everything in its path, I will choose the former," she wrote.
O'Connor listed Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania as states with systems similar to Washington's.
O'Connor and a fellow dissenter, Stephen G. Breyer -- who participated in drafting the federal sentencing guidelines before joining the Supreme Court -- predicted that the cost to the states of complying with the court's ruling would spell the end of sentencing reform.
"The simple fact is that the design of any fair sentencing system must involve efforts to make practical compromises among competing goals," Breyer wrote. "The majority's reading of the Sixth Amendment makes the effort to find those compromises -- already difficult -- virtually impossible."
Scalia noted that the court's ruling does not necessarily apply to the federal guidelines, which were not directly at issue in the case. But Breyer wrote that he is "uncertain" how to distinguish Washington state's system from the federal system.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy also dissented.
In response to Breyer, Scalia wrote that "our decision cannot turn on whether or to what degree trial by jury impairs the efficiency or fairness of criminal justice."
Scalia suggested that sentencing guidelines are unfair to defendants such as the kidnapper in Washington, Ralph H. Blakely Jr. Blakely pleaded guilty in return for the prosecutor's recommendation of a 53-month sentence, only to have the deal scrapped by a judge.
Increased costs could be mitigated, Scalia said, if prosecutors negotiate plea agreements in which defendants waive their right to jury sentencing.
"The framers would not have thought it too much to demand that, before depriving a man of three more years of his liberty, the State should suffer the modest inconvenience of submitting its accusation to [a jury] rather than a lone employee of the state," Scalia wrote.
His opinion was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter.
Seattle defense lawyer Jeff Fisher, who represented Blakely, said the decision will strengthen defendants' bargaining power.
"I suppose it will cost [states] some money," he said. "Obviously, abiding by the Constitution costs money in various ways -- but not an extraordinary amount of money."
----
Justices reject decision on Cheney panel
June 25, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040625-120835-9178r.htm
A U.S. Court of Appeals was out of bounds when it ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal the inner workings of a White House energy task force that he headed in early 2001, the Supreme Court said yesterday.
But the high court's 7-2 decision kept the case alive by ordering it back to a lower court for further hearings on whether Mr. Cheney is protected by executive privilege from handing over his records.
In a 21-page majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court said the Constitution recognizes "the paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation that might distract it from the energetic performance of its constitutional responsibilities."
Justice Kennedy, who decided that a federal district court judge had not given the Bush administration demands appropriate deference and ruled mistakenly on the relevant law, was backed in his decision by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen G. Breyer and John Paul Stevens.
A dissenting opinion by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter said they would have affirmed the lower court's ruling, which had ordered Mr. Cheney to turn over papers disclosing the makeup of his energy task force.
The two justices said, "The district court could accommodate separation-of-powers concerns short of denying all discovery or compelling the invocation of executive privilege."
The case stems from suits filed by Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group, and the Sierra Club, an environmental organization. The suits argue that Republican operatives, lobbyists and energy-industry officials such as former Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay steered the administration's energy policy not only as advisers, but as members of the task force.
The Sierra Club said the Supreme Court was "essentially ducking the issue by sending it back to a lower court," and Judicial Watch said the ruling was "no victory for the Bush administration," although the case will be delayed until past the November elections.
The case was overshadowed for a time by a series of developments outside the courtroom involving conflict-of-interest questions about Mr. Cheney's friendship with Justice Scalia.
Justice Scalia had gone duck hunting with the vice president in Louisiana just weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Sierra Club filed a motion demanding that he recuse himself, but the justice refused, saying no legally relevant questioning of his impartiality had been made.
He joined Justice Thomas in separate opinion that would protect Mr. Cheney from having to release his records at all.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan "clearly exceeded" his authority in ordering the administration to release records, Justice Thomas wrote for the two.
The case revolves around whether Mr. Cheney is legally bound to full disclosure by the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires government panels to conduct business openly, unless all members are government officials.
But the issue of who was a member or an adviser of the task force has been pushed aside by the Bush administration's position that Mr. Cheney has executive privilege from disclosing his records - a position that hinges on the "separation of powers" section of the Constitution, which protects confidentiality in the highest rungs of the executive branch.
The separation-of-powers concerns were wrongly and hastily "dismissed" by the lower courts, Justice Kennedy wrote yesterday, adding that a U.S. Appeals Court had wrongly based its ruling on the 1974 Supreme Court ruling on President Nixon's Watergate tapes.
That case found that no person, even the president, is above having to comply with the law. But Justice Kennedy said the Nixon case "cannot bear the weight the Court of Appeals puts on it" because it distinguished criminal and civil proceeding, and the Cheney case is merely a civil suit.
The Bush administration was pleased with the finding yesterday.
"We believe the president should be able to receive candid and unvarnished advice from his staff and advisers," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Bush opponents have tried to use the energy task force to turn Mr. Bush's close ties to the oil and energy industries into a campaign issue.
"For now, the public will remain in the dark about the Bush administration and energy industry executives' secret meetings about national energy policy," said David Bookbinder, Sierra Club's Washington legal director.
He also said the administration's "obsession with secrecy has already led to a polluting energy policy that will harm Americans' health safety and the places they treasure."
Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said, "The Nixon legacy of secrecy is alive and well in the Bush White House."
"Americans shouldn't have to rely on court orders to learn what special interest lobbyists are writing White House policies," he said. "George Bush and Dick Cheney have forgotten that the White House belongs to America, not Enron, and they owe it to the public to disclose this information."
Judicial Watch, meanwhile, cited a 1993 ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals which forced first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to expose the inner workings of a health care task force she had created. The group said it thinks the lower court eventually will force a similar full disclosure of the energy task force case.
"In the end, we can't imagine the court endorsing the Bush administration's concept of unchecked executive secrecy and power, which is so truly at odds with a republican form of government," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
----
High Court Backs Vice President
Energy Documents Shielded for Now
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1988-2004Jun24?language=printer
The Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court yesterday to give Vice President Cheney another chance to shield the internal workings of the 2001 energy policy task force he headed, all but ensuring that none of its alleged contacts with industry lobbyists will be aired before the November elections.
A 7 to 2 majority of the court said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had not given due weight to the executive branch's need to be free of "vexatious litigation" when it ruled last year that it could not grant Cheney a special order blocking a federal district judge's order permitting two public interest groups to examine the task force's records.
The decision set the stage for months or years of additional legal wrangling if Cheney and President Bush are reelected. Meanwhile, the White House will not have to release contested documents, avoiding potentially embarrassing revelations of the extent to which companies such as the now-bankrupt Enron Corp. may have influenced its policies.
At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan welcomed the ruling, saying: "We believe that the president should be able to receive candid and unvarnished advice from his staff and advisers. It's an important principle."
Democrats renewed their charges of excessive White House secrecy, with the presidential campaign of John F. Kerry declaring that the "Nixon legacy of secrecy is alive and well in the Bush White House."
Alan B. Morrison, a lawyer for the two organizations seeking access to the records, said, "If the government's goal is to push 'no disclosure' through the election, they will win that." Morrison is representing the Sierra Club, a liberal environmentalist organization, and Judicial Watch, a conservative anti-corruption organization.
Justice Antonin Scalia had come under fire for refusing to bow out even though he went on a duck-hunting vacation with Cheney while the case was pending before the court. Although he indicated in a concurring opinion that he would have ruled more broadly in the vice president's favor, Scalia did not determine the outcome of the case by his vote with the majority.
While drafted in terms applicable mainly to the case before it, the opinion revealed a court now sympathetic to the White House's need to insulate itself from lawsuits. In 1997, the court ruled 9 to 0 that President Bill Clinton would not be unduly hampered by Paula Jones's lawsuit for sexual harassment he had allegedly committed while governor of Arkansas; yesterday, the court warned of "meritless claims against the executive branch."
The Jones case flowed in part from the court's landmark 1974 ruling that ordered President Richard M. Nixon to divulge his White House tapes to a Watergate special prosecutor, but in yesterday's opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy chided the D.C. Circuit for reading the Nixon case too broadly.
During Watergate, Kennedy wrote, an intrusion on internal White House deliberations was justified to produce information for a criminal case. While prosecutors are relatively limited in the charges they can file and evidence they can demand, Kennedy wrote, "there are no analogous checks in the civil discovery process here."
Given that fact, Kennedy wrote, the White House should not be forced by the prospect of revealing its internal deliberations to invoke executive privilege, as the D.C. Circuit had recommended it do.
His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Scalia and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer.
Cheney's task force, known officially as the National Energy Policy Development Group and made up of several Cabinet officers and White House aides, was set up on Jan. 29, 2001. That May 16, it issued a report including recommendations favored by industry, but the administration has failed to win passage of energy legislation that includes them.
From the beginning, environmental and consumer organizations, as well as congressional Democrats, have said the White House shut them out while throwing its doors open to industry lobbyists.
The White House has seen the case as a front in its battle to preserve control over internal information and to establish the principle that the president should be able to receive candid advice in private.
The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch maintain that the lobbyists' influence over Cheney's task force was so great that it was not a government policy commission, but a public-private advisory board including "de facto" members from industry. As such, the groups argued, the task force is required to disclose its proceedings under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The court did not rule on that contention yesterday, dealing exclusively with the issue of "discovery," meaning access to documents and testimony. In 2002, U.S. District Judge Emmett G. Sullivan ordered the White House to give the two organizations access to the task force records so they could try to substantiate their claims.
Rather than directly contest that order, Bush administration lawyers asked the D.C. Circuit to cancel it out through a writ of mandamus, a rarely granted order usually reserved for cases in which there is no alternative method of preventing a court from acting illegally.
Normally, an appeals court would not hear a challenge to a lower court's discovery order before it has been precisely formulated with input from both parties to the case. The D.C. Circuit invoked that rule in rejecting the request for mandamus.
But the White House appealed to the Supreme Court. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson argued that because FACA is a disclosure law, granting the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch the right to look through the task force's papers would be tantamount to giving them a victory in the lawsuit itself.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice David H. Souter, defended the D.C. Circuit's view of the case, noting that it had "abided by the ordinary rules of appellate jurisdiction."
Reading a summary of her opinion from the bench, a sign of especially strong disagreement with the majority, Ginsburg said that "this court has no cause to . . . fault the Court of Appeals for insensitivity to separation-of-powers concerns the Court of Appeals opinion showed it had well in mind."
The case is Cheney v. the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 03-475.
--------
Justices' Ruling Postpones Resolution of Cheney Case
June 25, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25cheney.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 24 - The Supreme court held Thursday that a lower court had acted "prematurely" when it rejected a request from Vice President Dick Cheney to block disclosure of records from his energy policy task force.
In a vote of 7 to 2, the court sent the case back to a federal appeals court, a decision that will defer any resolution of the politically sensitive lawsuit until after the November elections. The lawsuit had the potential to embarrass the administration, especially given Mr. Cheney's former role as chief executive of Halliburton and the close ties of other administration members to the energy industry.
In telling the appeals court to be "mindful of the burdens imposed on the executive branch in any future proceedings," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion, implicitly but not definitively, rejected the Bush administration's position that the vice president's activities should not be subject to pretrial discovery at all. Two members of the seven-justice majority, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, would have accepted the administration's argument that the Supreme Court itself should block discovery at this point.
The dissenting justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, said the Supreme Court should have permitted the case to proceed in the district court. In her dissenting opinion, which Justice Souter signed, Justice Ginsburg said the lower courts could have handled the case under procedures that would "accommodate separation-of-powers concerns."
Two organizations, the conservative Judicial Watch and the liberal Sierra Club, sued Mr. Cheney and his National Energy Policy Development Group to force it to comply with an open-government law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The lawsuit has been stalled at a preliminary phase for more than two years. The pretrial discovery dispute that the Supreme Court's decision keeps alive was generated by uncertainty over whether the task force was covered by the disclosure law in the first place.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act does not apply to committees composed entirely of federal officials. With its membership composed of the vice president, six cabinet secretaries and four other government officials, the energy task force appeared to fall outside the law's coverage.
But the plaintiffs argued that officials of Enron and other private energy companies had played such an active role in the group's deliberations that they should be considered as de facto members, bringing the task force within the disclosure law.
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs were entitled to enough discovery to show whether that was in fact the case.
As it went to the Supreme Court, the case, Cheney v. United States District Court, No. 03-475, was a mix of high-stakes politics and complex issues of federal jurisdiction.
It was clear that the justices, while resolving the jurisdictional questions, were fully aware of the broader context as well.
While the appeals court had ruled that the Bush administration had to include a claim of executive privilege as part of any effort to block discovery, Justice Kennedy said that was incorrect as a matter of law and not sensitive enough to the constitutional separation of powers.
"Executive privilege is an extraordinary assertion of power not to be lightly invoked," Justice Kennedy said, adding, "Once executive privilege is asserted, coequal branches of the government are set on a collision course." A court should "explore other avenues short of forcing the executive to invoke privilege," he said.
While pretrial discovery issues are not ordinarily subject to appeal, "this is not a routine discovery dispute," Justice Kennedy said. He said the court going back to John Marshall had recognized the special position of president and vice president. While these officials were not "above the law," Justice Kennedy said, it did mean that courts should recognize "the paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation that might distract it from the energetic performance of its constitutional duties."
The appeals court had relied for its analysis in part on the Supreme Court's 1974 decision in United States v. Nixon, which rejected Nixon's claim of executive privilege and ordered him to turn over the Watergate tapes to the special prosecutor. But there were "fundamental differences" between the cases, Justice Kennedy said. The Nixon case was a criminal case; this is a civil suit.
"The need for information for use in civil cases, while far from negligible, does not share the urgency or significance of the criminal subpoena requests in Nixon," Justice Kennedy said, indicating that the interests to be served in the suit against Mr. Cheney were much less pressing.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ginsburg said there was no indication that the federal district court would ignore the majority's separation-of-powers concerns as discovery proceeded. She noted that the trial judge had invited the administration to make specific objections and in other ways limit the government's exposure. She said she would "allow the district court, in the first instance, to pursue its expressed intention tightly to rein in discovery" if the government, instead of resisting all discovery, requested it to do so.
It could now be many months before the lower courts sort out the next phase of the lawsuit. The majority suggested that the court of appeals might reconsider its precedent holding that private citizens acting as "de facto" members of a government panel can bring the group within the coverage of the disclosure law.
Administration officials said that the ruling vindicated their position and protected the president's ability to seek confidential advice.
Shannen W. Coffin, a former deputy assistant attorney general, who handled the case in district court, said that the decision was a "huge victory for executive authority" that would help the White House regain legal prerogatives in the courts.
At the same time, by returning the case to the lower courts, the ruling kept alive for Democrats the secrecy issue they had seized on.
"George Bush and Dick Cheney have forgotten that the White House belongs to America, not Enron, and they owe it to the public to disclose this information," Phil Singer, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement.
The majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen G. Breyer and John Paul Stevens, who also wrote a concurring opinion.
--------
Court Won't Make Cheney Energy Papers Public
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
by James Vicini
June 25, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25691/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court refused yesterday to require Vice President Dick Cheney to disclose records of a 2001 task force he headed that critics say secretly formed energy policy favorable to the industry.
In a temporary victory for the government, the justices set aside a ruling that Cheney, a former energy industry executive, must comply with a federal judge's order to produce the internal White House documents or give a detailed explanation of what was withheld and why.
Democrats accuse the administration of excessive secrecy surrounding the task force that President Bush put Cheney in charge of. They said the force, which endorsed more oil and gas drilling and a revived nuclear energy program, favored the industry over environmental concerns.
The 7-2 ruling sent the case back to a U.S. appeals court for more hearings on the government's arguments. That means the case will remain active in the months leading up to the November elections.
"The Nixon legacy of secrecy is alive and well in the Bush White House," Phil Singer, a campaign spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, said in a statement. "The president should come clean and make this information public."
The Supreme Court case received widespread attention when Justice Antonin Scalia went on a duck-hunting trip with Cheney in January and then refused to remove himself from the case. He maintained his impartiality could not be questioned.
Scalia was among the justices in the majority. He joined a separate opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas that would go even further than the majority and order the federal judge to rule for the government.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the majority that the appeals court was wrong in concluding it lacked jurisdiction over the case.
"We note only that all courts should be mindful of the burdens imposed on the executive branch in any future proceedings," he wrote in the 21-page opinion.
"Special considerations applicable to the president and the vice president suggest that the courts should be sensitive to requests by the government," Kennedy said.
WHITE HOUSE WELCOMES RULING
White House spokesman Scott McClellan welcomed the ruling. "We believe that the president should be able to receive candid and unvarnished advice from his staff and advisers. It's an important principle." The Sierra Club environmental group and the watchdog group Judicial Watch had sued to find out the names and positions of the task force members and to learn about their contacts with industry executives.
They claimed Cheney, the former chief executive of energy and construction company Halliburton Co., drafted a policy that favored the industry by consulting executives, including Ken Lay, then a top Enron Corp. executive.
"The Supreme Court is essentially ducking the issue by sending it back to a lower court," said David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club's Washington legal director.
"This ruling means that for now the public will remain in the dark about the Bush administration and energy industry executives' secret meetings about national energy policy," he said.
Kennedy ruled for the government in holding the appeals court has jurisdiction over the case, but he did not go as far as the government wanted in its second argument - that the law at issue, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, does not apply to the task force.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter said in dissent that the lawsuit should go forward and the federal judge should be allowed to consider what records should be released.
-------- death penalty
Death Sentences Will Stand
Supreme Court Says Ruling Does Not Apply Retroactively
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3767-2004Jun24.html
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that its 2002 decision requiring juries rather than judges to decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty does not apply retroactively, clearing the way for the eventual execution of more than 100 death row inmates in four states.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the court said that its ruling two years ago in Ring v. Arizona was not such a fundamentally new rule of law that its benefits should flow to everyone, including those whose death sentences became final before then. In Ring, the court held that state laws assigning judges the power to find "aggravating factors" that warrant capital punishment violated the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a trial by jury.
"The right to jury trial is fundamental to our system of criminal procedure and States are bound to enforce the Sixth Amendment's guarantees as we interpret it," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the opinion for the court. "But it does not follow that, when a criminal defendant has had a full trial and one round of appeals in which the State faithfully applied the Constitution as we understood it at the time, he may nevertheless continue to litigate in hopes that we will one day have a change of heart."
Scalia was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
The case, Schriro v. Summerlin, No. 03-526, had the potential to overturn 111 death sentences in four states: 87 in Arizona, 15 in Idaho, five in Montana and four in Nebraska. That would have eliminated more than two-thirds of those states' total death row population of 161, forcing the states to choose between settling for life imprisonment and spending millions of dollars to conduct new sentencing hearings in front of juries.
It could also have changed 15 Nevada cases in which offenders were sentenced to death under a law that let judges decide sentences when juries deadlocked or defendants pleaded guilty.
Under a 1989 Supreme Court ruling that limited capital defendants' constitutional appeals, only those relatively rare Supreme Court decisions deemed to have revolutionized constitutional law can be applied retroactively.
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled that Ring qualified under this standard. That court also observed that a trial by jury would enhance the fairness and accuracy of the sentencing process.
The defendant in yesterday's case, Warren W. Summerlin, was sentenced to death on July 12, 1982, for the rape and murder of a debt collector. The Arizona judge who sentenced him was later disbarred, after he admitted he had been a habitual marijuana user during the time he decided Summerlin's fate.
Recent research by Cornell University professors John Blume, Theodore Eisenberg and Martin T. Wells found that 4 percent of convicted murderers in single-judge-sentencing states were sentenced to death in recent decades, in contrast to 2 percent of convicted murderers in jury-sentencing states.
But Scalia said that Ring was not a "watershed" because it changed the decision maker in capital cases, not the definition of capital murder. He added that "the evidence is simply too equivocal" to conclude that juries are more accurate fact finders than judges.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Breyer lamented the fact that the court's decision permits the execution of some death row inmates sentenced in trials the court would not approve today.
The "ordinary citizen," he wrote, "will simply witness two individuals, both sentenced through the use of unconstitutional procedures, one individual going to his death, the other saved, all through an accident of timing."
But Arizona and the other states whose systems of capital punishment were at issue say they were being whipsawed by changing court rulings.
Arizona enacted its judge-only death-sentencing statute in 1973, in an effort to comply with a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that struck down all state capital punishment laws as arbitrary. It was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1990 before being struck down in Ring.
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A 4-3 Ruling Effectively Halts Death Penalty in New York
June 25, 2004
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/nyregion/25DEAT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
New York State's highest court ruled yesterday that a central provision of the state's capital punishment law violated the State Constitution. Lawyers said the ruling would probably spare the lives of the four men now on death row and effectively suspend the death penalty in New York.
The 4-to-3 ruling from the State Court of Appeals in Albany went well beyond the particulars of a single case, giving opponents of the law an important victory. Besides the four death-row inmates, lawyers said, it could spare the lives of nine defendants fighting capital cases and more than 30 others whose murder cases are in early stages. Because the case was decided on state constitutional grounds, it is also expected to provide a broad new legal foundation for untold future challenges to the state's death penalty.
The ruling left the capital punishment law itself intact, providing that the Legislature repairs the provision that the court said was flawed. But the court's majority said, "Under the present statute, the death penalty may not be imposed."
No one has been executed under the law, which was passed in 1995 with the fervent support of Gov. George E. Pataki. Some juries have resisted imposing capital punishment and some district attorneys have declined to seek it at trial. The last execution in New York, under a previous death penalty law, was in 1963.
The court's majority said the Legislature improperly required judges to tell jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict during the penalty phase of a trial, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. The decision said that instruction had the effect of coercing jurors to vote for execution, because they might fear that a vote against it would lead to the eventual release of people charged with extraordinarily violent or otherwise shocking murders.
"The deadlock instruction," the majority said, "gives rise to an unconstitutionally palpable risk that one or more jurors who cannot bear the thought that a defendant may walk the streets again after serving 20 to 25 years will join jurors favoring death in order to avoid the deadlock sentence."
The majority decision, by Judge George Bundy Smith, said the deadlock provision violated the State Constitution's guarantee of due process of law. Lawyers said yesterday's ruling left little ground for review by any federal court. Including yesterday's decision, the Court of Appeals has overturned a death sentence four times since the law was enacted.
The governor and legislative leaders said yesterday that they would move quickly to repair the law. The leaders of the State Senate and Assembly have both said they favor the death penalty. But legislative politics and the volatility of the capital punishment issue left it unclear how quickly the penalty might be restored.
Some prosecutors said yesterday that they were working on amendments to the law that could quickly revive the death penalty. Several of them said publicly that they believed that the remaining death-row inmates might be able to be resentenced to death under a new law. But several of them conceded that the courts might not approve such death sentences.
The dissent, by three judges all appointed by Governor Pataki, said the decision reflected an effort by the majority to stall the application of the death penalty in the state. "Today's decision, in our view," the dissent said, "elevates judicial distaste for the death penalty over the legislative will."
The ruling affirmed the conviction of Stephen LaValle, a former Long Island roofer who raped and killed a Suffolk County schoolteacher, Cynthia Quinn, in 1997, stabbing her 73 times. But the court sent the case back for sentencing of Mr. LaValle, now 37. The court said a trial judge was to sentence him to a life term, perhaps one that included the possibility of parole.
Critics of capital punishment maintained even during legislative debates about the law in 1995 that the deadlock provision, which the Court of Appeals said was unique among the nation's capital punishment laws, coerced jurors to vote for death, but some critics say such legal arguments gained little traction in a Legislature convinced that the public strongly favored capital punishment.
Some prosecutors say the deadlock provision was intended to encourage jurors to make the difficult choice between life without parole and death that is presented to them in capital cases. These prosecutors say the provision has helped some death penalty juries reach a decision by suggesting that a defendant may someday go free if they do not reach a verdict.
But in a statement yesterday, the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas Spota, whose office prosecuted Mr. LaValle's case, said juries needed to be able to be sure "that in the event of a deadlock, the defendant whom they found guilty of first-degree murder would be sentenced to life in prison without parole." He added that he believed that such a sentence would be rational "in these specific circumstances."
The decision was a major victory for the New York Capital Defender's Office, a state-financed legal office that handled the appeals of Mr. LaValle and the three other men whose death sentences have been overturned by the Court of Appeals since the law went into effect. Death penalty supporters have said the capital defenders are working to get what amounts to a moratorium on the death penalty by deluging the court with one technical legal argument after another.
Mr. Pataki yesterday called the ruling disappointing, while Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican Senate majority leader, called it irresponsible, adding that it "could ultimately jeopardize the lives of New Yorkers by placing dangerous, violent criminals back on the streets."
Some prosecutors around the state criticized the decision, saying the judges appeared to be searching for reasons to avoid approving any death sentence. "From the perspective of a prosecutor, there's tremendous frustration right now," said Mike Green, the Monroe County district attorney. "In case after case, it seems they're looking for a way to set the death sentences aside.'
But the chief Capital Defender, Kevin M. Doyle, called the decision a victory for common sense. Mr. Doyle, acknowledging that some critics of the court had said its prior rulings overturning death sentences were made on technical grounds, argued, "Nobody can claim the provision that was found unconstitutional was anything but dangerous and unfair."
Some trial judges have held that the deadlock provision is unconstitutional and have refused to tell juries in advance that in a deadlock, the law requires judges to impose sentences that may permit release on parole. But the majority in the Court of Appeals ruling said the failure to give that jury instruction did not fix the problem, because jurors should not be left to speculate about the possibility of a killer going free someday on parole.
The dissent, written by Governor Pataki's most recent appointee to the court, Judge Robert S. Smith, called the ruling "an astonishing holding" that improperly supplanted the role of the Legislature. The other dissenting judges were Victoria A. Graffeo and Susan Phillips Read.
The dissent said the majority had invented a new constitutional right ensuring that a jury in a capital case would be told in advance that a deadlock would mean a sentence of life in prison without parole.
"The existence of such a right finds no support in precedent, and none in logic except on the premise that death penalty defendants are constitutionally entitled to every procedural advantage the human mind can devise," the dissent said.
Judge George Bundy Smith and two of the other judges in the majority, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, were appointed by Governor Pataki's Democratic predecessor, Mario M. Cuomo.
The only Pataki appointee in the majority, Albert M. Rosenblatt, a former Dutchess County district attorney, is viewed by some lawyers as ambivalent about capital punishment.
Some prosecutors said yesterday that they were still studying the decision. The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said he was "not prepared to draw any conclusions" as to whether the death sentence obtained by his prosecutors would stand for John B. Taylor, who was convicted of murder in a massacre at a Wendy's restaurant in Flushing in 2000.
The two other men on death row are Robert Shulman, who bludgeoned and dismembered three prostitutes on Long Island in 1994 and 1995, and Nicholson McCoy, who sodomized and killed a female co-worker at a Suffolk grocery store in 1998.
Michael A. Arcuri, the president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, said his members had concluded that the legal problem identified by the court could be repaired by the Legislature.
But some legal experts said it seemed clear that yesterday's decision meant that capital punishment in New York was essentially back to Square 1. "The problem in this case," said James S. Liebman, a Columbia University law professor, "exists in every single death penalty case in the state, and, in effect, there is no viable or valid death sentence in New York until they get it straightened out."
Some death penalty supporters and prosecutors said they were more concerned about the court's general recognition of due process rights for capital defendants under the State Constitution than about the specific decision on the deadlock provision.
Several said that ruling would open new challenges to the capital punishment law. "We don't know what the full scope of this new constitutional right is," said Mr. Green, the Monroe County district attorney, "and we won't know for years."
-------- homeland security
U.S. Efforts to Protect D.C. Area Faulted
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4171-2004Jun24.html
Washington area members of Congress yesterday questioned the Bush administration's commitment to keeping the capital safe and urged officials in the region to do a better job of explaining how they are spending tens of millions of dollars in preparedness aid.
In a series of pointed exchanges at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee, Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and his colleagues criticized the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for leaving the year-old, congressionally mandated post of national capital region coordinator vacant for five months before it was filled April 30.
Other panel members cited a new congressional study that concluded that regional authorities cannot say whether key vulnerabilities to terrorism remain because they have no system to measure the effect of as much as $340 million in federal anti-terror grants that have flowed to the Washington area.
"The time has come to ask difficult questions," Davis said, "so that we can determine the road ahead. . . . What have we done with the federal funding to date? How were funding decisions for the region made? How did we enhance preparedness? We need to move away from generalities . . . and talk specifics."
Davis turned to the new regional coordinator, Thomas J. Lockwood, and asked him whether Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge had given him enough clout to do the job. "The fact that they left the opening so long leaves us in doubt of the commitment of the administration," said Davis, who had asked for the study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
"We did lose a lot of time," added Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
Lockwood, a former Maryland homeland security official, replied: "Do I have visibility in the organization? Absolutely. Secretary Ridge is committed to this position."
Lockwood said that regional coordination was improving and that most of the federal grant money studied by the GAO was awarded before the Department of Homeland Security was created in March 2003.
Top administrators from the District and 16 Virginia and Maryland cities and counties will meet July 7 to set joint spending priorities and discuss security policies, he said. He also said state and District leaders published a regional document in February to guide spending of federal homeland security grants, including $30 million this year.
"We've been working with unprecedented levels of coordination," Lockwood said. "The region will be working over the next several months to develop a comprehensive plan." For example, he said an inter-agency federal committee is developing standard responses for emergencies and better procedures for providing credentials to people at disaster sites and for sharing information and intelligence.
Still, several committee members pointed out problems. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) complained of a lack of transparency in homeland security spending by state and local governments.
Moran said he was waiting for a response after writing to Ridge on Sept. 11, 2003, to suggest regional performance benchmarks for police, fire and other first responders. He also asked Ridge to work with local officials to ban shipments by train of hazardous materials through Alexandria, Arlington and downtown Washington during high alerts and public gatherings.
"We have yet to receive any response to this letter or to that proposal," Moran said.
Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) expressed concern that federal grants were not reaching local officials promptly. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said more should be done to force the region's jurisdictions to set aside parochial interests, citing Metro, the transit agency, as an example of regional cooperation.
State and local officials involved with homeland security said they will consider sending monthly financial reports to Davis's committee and presenting a detailed spending summary in the fall.
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New York to Close Area Near G.O.P. Convention to Traffic
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/nyregion/25CND-CONV.html?hp
Bomb dogs will screen subway trains for explosives. High-tech cameras will do the same with cars. And a small army of uniformed and plainclothes officers will roam partially or fully closed streets around Madison Square Garden.
Authorities believe those measures should secure the safety of President Bush and tens of thousands of other attendees at the Republican National Convention -- yet not paralyze midtown Manhattan in gridlock.
On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly outlined a plan they claimed would minimize commuter headaches, while countering the potential threat of bombings and other terror attacks at the convention, set for Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
"The disruption will be a little bit annoying, but minimal," Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show.
The transportation plan calls for one lane of avenues directly outside Madison Square Garden to remain open to motorists, except during the approximately 13 hours the convention will be in session. It also imposes parking restrictions and reroutes bus service. Streets bordering the convention to the north and south would be closed for several blocks.
A restricted area around the arena will be controlled by checkpoints, where police will demand identification from anyone seeking entry. Cars entering the area, including those carrying delegates and dignitaries, will be screened for explosives and other contraband by devices that provide real-time video images of their undercarriages.
In addition, there will be a show of force from the 36,500-officer New York City Police Department, the nation's largest. Between 6,000 to 10,000 officers have been assigned to patrol the streets and subways around the convention, including many who will have received training in how to handle chemical, biological or radiological attacks.
Officials have said that Penn Station, located directly below the arena, will remain open during the convention.
They also plan to create a "pedestrian mall" leading to a main entrance of the station by closing 32nd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues.
The transportation hub serves Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and the subway system. Riders could face delays, but no shutdowns, officials said.
"At this point, it appears it will be business as usual," said Tom Kelly, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The Lincoln Tunnel, just to the west of the convention site, and the city's other tunnels and bridges will be heavily guarded, but open to usual traffic, authorities said.
Preliminary plans call for state and city police officers -- armed with bomb-sniffing dogs and hand-held chemical detection devices -- to board commuter and subway trains one stop before they reach Penn Station during the hours of the convention. The trains will be swept for suspicious packages and terror suspects before being allowed to continue into the station, officials said.
The Lincoln Tunnel, just to the west of the convention site, and the city's other tunnels and bridges will be heavily guarded, but open to usual traffic, authorities said.
The traffic plan announced Friday also seeks to accommodate protesters by setting aside demonstration space at the southwest corner of the convention site, Bloomberg said.
"Our first concern is to make sure that everybody is safe and also to make sure that terrorism doesn't strike here, and also that people who want to express themselves get the right to do so, but don't infringe on the right of others," he said.
The city said it expects an anti-war protest by United For Peace and Justice that could draw up to 250,000 people on the eve of the convention. The city is still negotiating with the group over a march route and rally location.
A call to a spokesman for the group was not immediately returned.
-------- immigration / refugees
Drone Takes to Sky Above Arizona Desert
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Border-Drones.html
FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. (AP) -- The Border Patrol launched an unmanned drone Friday that uses thermal and night-vision equipment to help agents spot illegal immigrants trying to cross the desert into the United States.
The stepped-up surveillance is part of a mission that officials hope will stem the tide of illegal immigrants that has made Arizona the busiest illegal entry point along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is funding the program, also plans to test the drones in Northern states, over the Great Lakes and in Puerto Rico, said Robert Smith, head of the Customs and Border Protection's unmanned aerial drone program.
The two drones being used in the Arizona project can detect movement from 15 miles away, read a license plate, view a vehicle's occupants and even detect weapons, officials said.
Roger Maier, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that one of the remotely piloted Hermes 450 drones in the project started flying Friday.
Both drones were expected to go into regular use on Monday. They will fly 56 hours a week and can be used over preprogrammed flight paths or be piloted by remote control to check out specific destinations.
The drones weigh almost 1,000 pounds, have a 35-foot wingspan and can fly faster than 100 mph. They will patrol at 12,000 to 15,000 feet, and can stay aloft for 20 hours at a time.
The overall cost of the mission is estimated to be at least $10 million, with the government spending about $4 million on the drones.
Pilots on the ground will remotely control them unless the flight is preprogrammed, with another agent interpreting the images and using global positioning to send agents to respond to what the drones detect. It takes 12 to 18 people to operate the drones and monitor the images they send back, officials said.
The aircraft are a key element of the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to achieve ``operational control'' of the border in Arizona. The drones' mission ends Sept. 30, when it will be assessed to determine the future of drones with the Border Patrol.
Border Patrol agents catch hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants trying to cross Arizona's sprawling, cactus-covered deserts each year. The agency had recorded more than 330,000 apprehensions since Oct. 1 in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers most of the Arizona border.
Officials hope the drones will deter immigrants from crossing and will enable agents to better help people in distress.
Kat Rodriguez, an organizer for the human rights group Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, said changing U.S. border policy rather than increasing patrols is key to protecting lives.
``It's like throwing an infant in a pool and then jumping in and saving it. You act like the hero in a situation you created,'' she said.
The Hermes 450s, which Israel uses to patrol its frontiers, join a number of unmanned aerial vehicles being used in the United States.
Remote-controlled planes help gather data for environmental studies and patrol Western skies on wildfire watch. In Alaska, the Coast Guard is also testing a drone this summer for fisheries patrols and other uses.
Drones called Predators have also been successful in U.S. military and CIA operations. Missiles fired from Predators have killed al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan and Yemen.
On the Net:
Hermes 450: http://www.elbitsystems.com
Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov
-------- police
Los Angeles Moves to Ease Tensions After Tape Captures Police Beating of Black Suspect
June 25, 2004
By NICK MADIGAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/national/25beating.html
LOS ANGELES, June 24 - In the wake of a videotaped police beating of an African-American suspect, officials here scrambled Thursday to plead for peace and offer assurances that the incident, an echo of the Rodney King beating in 1991, would be scrupulously investigated.
All eight Los Angeles police officers on the scene have been removed from active duty with pay since the beating, which occurred early Wednesday during the arrest of Stanley Miller, 36. He was suspected of having stolen a Toyota Camry that he had used to evade police cruisers in a chase that moved from Los Angeles itself through the streets of Compton, south of downtown.
In a tape shown repeatedly on television, Mr. Miller is seen sprinting from the car and then stopping to raise his arms in surrender and crouching on the ground; at that point the officers can be seen leaping on him.
One officer, later identified by the police as John Hatfield, a seven-year veteran of the force, then hit Mr. Miller with a flashlight at least 11 times and also kicked him.
Mr. Miller was apparently not seriously injured. He can be seen on the tape, which was shot from a helicopter by KABC-TV, walking away with the arresting officers. He is being held on $30,000 bail as the suspect in the auto theft.
City and police officials held meetings with community leaders Wednesday and Thursday in an effort to diffuse tensions, and said they would continue to do so.
But the image of a police officer bringing a heavy flashlight down repeatedly on a prone man who had already surrendered could not help bringing to mind the thrashing of Rodney G. King, an episode that prompted devastating riots in 1992 after officers involved had been acquitted in a state court.
"Some heads must roll," John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, said in a telephone interview after he had met with the Los Angeles police chief, William J. Bratton, and, Mr. Mack said, urged him to make the investigation "thorough but quick."
"This incident is extremely upsetting to most people in the African-American community," Mr. Mack said. "My first thought when I saw the tape was, 'Here we go again.' "
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Chief Bratton said three investigations would be undertaken, including one by the Police Department's inspector general and another by an outside agency, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
"In this matter, we will go where the truth takes us," said Chief Bratton, who has been given credit for trying to build stronger ties to minorities in the wake not only of the King beating but also of the scandal involving corrupt officers in the city's Rampart Division, both of which occurred before his watch.
One lifelong resident of the city, Lee Wallach, chairman of the Los Angeles Interfaith Environmental Council, said in an interview: "We have quite a little history here. This will be a wonderful test, whether we like it or not, to see whether we've learned anything from our past experiences."
At the news conference with Chief Bratton, Mayor James K. Hahn said, "We're a community that has unfortunately been rocked by incidents involving the L.A.P.D." But Mr. Hahn added that over all, the department had "climbed out of a trench of disaffection and disrespect."
Percy Perrodin, who retired as a captain in the Compton Police Department in 2002 after 32 years on the force, said: "Use of a flashlight is never justified. You're only supposed to use whatever force is necessary to overcome resistance. Once the resistance has ceased, the force must cease."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Detention Dilemma
Two Years After 9/11, Guantanamo Prisoners Remain in Legal Limbo
ABCNEWS
June 25, 2004
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/US/2020_guantanamo_040625-1.html
- Two and a half years ago, the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay was little more than an aggravation to the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Today, Guantanamo Bay has become one of the most controversial facets of America's war on terror.
Watch Peter Jennings Reporting: Guantanamo, on a special edition of 20/20 tonight at 10 p.m.
The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that shook the nation to its core, President Bush declared war on the terrorists who had done it. In an address to the nation, the president said, "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."
Less than a month later, the president ordered the United States to attack Afghanistan - to destroy Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network and its Taliban protectors.
The campaign against al Qaeda thrust the country into an unprecedented type of war. In Washington, the Department of Justice and the White House began to grapple with the legal dilemmas of fighting an enemy that did not operate in the open or abide by the recognized rules of war.
On Nov. 13, 2001, with no advance notice to Congress, President Bush signed a military order that gave the Pentagon the power to try, sentence, and even execute anyone he identifies as an "illegal combatant" - a suspected terrorist who had violated the laws of war.
By the end of that month, the last Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan fell to the Afghan Northern Alliance and U.S. forces. Thousands of men surrendered to the Northern Alliance, and some of them were handed over to the Americans.
Lt. Col. Anthony Christino, a 20-year veteran of Army intelligence who was not directly involved in the Afghan campaign, says investigators would have had difficulty in determining which men posed threats to U.S. interests. "There are any number of legitimate reasons why someone of Arab descent may have been in Afghanistan. And there are also Arabs who were clearly in Afghanistan training to become terrorists. So, the question becomes, how do you discern one from the other," Christino said.
Mark Jacobson, a member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's prisoner policy team, said the administration had been preparing to hold tribunals for the men who surrendered in Afghanistan back in September and October of 2001, which, he said, is standard procedure for the military when it captures persons on the battlefield.
But based on the president's military order, everyone taken into U.S. custody had already been deemed an illegal combatant. The tribunals never took place.
"Some people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," Jacobson said. "A lot of them were the flotsam and jetsam of the battlefield. That's what happens on a battlefield."
And Christino noted that no U.S. official wanted to let any potential terrorist slip through their fingers. "You don't want to be the one who had in his or her custody the next hijacker."
The Legal Equivalent of 'Outer Space'
Getting information from the men who surrendered meant getting them away from the battlefield to a place where U.S. officials could interrogate them - Guantanamo Bay became the designated base.
On Jan. 11, 2002, the first 20 prisoners from Afghanistan arrived at Guantanamo Bay. They were not told where they were. They were put in cages in a makeshift prison called Camp X-ray and dressed in orange jumpsuits. It is the color condemned men in the Arab world wear. They thought they were going to be shot.
Guantanamo had been chosen deliberately. It was, one official said, the "legal equivalent of outer space."
"No serious thought was given to bringing these terrorists and Taliban militia within the territory of the United States. That would be unwise for a whole variety of reasons, starting with security and also including creating the possibility of extended litigation," said Brad Berenson, a lawyer in the Office of the White House Counsel.
The Justice Department asserted at the time that Guantanamo was beyond the reach of U.S. law - and so beyond U.S. constitutional guarantees of habeas corpus, which requires justification for detaining a person.
Berenson explained the administration's rationale. "If the president decides that we are at war," he said, "and that the powers and weapons of war have to be used against these people such that we can detain and interrogate them without interference from lawyers or courts in order to protect the country, then that is really his decision to make."
Rumsfeld insisted the prisoners were "among the most vicious killers on the face of the Earth," that they included a man with links to the financing of 9/11, a bodyguard for bin Laden, an explosives expert for al Qaeda, and other "senior al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, who continue to express a commitment to kill Americans if released."
Incentive-Based Interrogations
Today, nearly 600 prisoners from 40 countries are being held by U.S. forces at the base. The standard cell in Camp Delta (the successor to Camp X-ray) is essentially a metal box a bit larger than a king-size mattress. There's a spray-painted arrow pointing toward Mecca for daily prayers. The lights are never off.
Soldiers patrol the cellblocks constantly, looking at every prisoner - "eyes on the target" they call it - every 30 seconds.
Gen. Jay Hood has been the commander at Guantanamo since March. His predecessor, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, is now running Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
When Miller ran Guantanamo, he once said, there had been 22,000 interrogations in a system he devised and called "incentive-based." A comfort item, like an extra bottle of water, would be given for good behavior. It was all about reward and punishment. Because rewards could be determined by prisoners' level of cooperation with interrogators, the interrogators essentially determined prisoner treatment at Camp Delta.
The biggest reward for those who cooperate is a move to what is called Camp Four, where they wear white instead of orange and live 10 men to a room. They can be outside more in the exercise yard - if they behave.
Camp officials said repeatedly that no prisoners have been tortured at the base. "All of our interrogations are conducted consistent with all the provisions laid out in the Geneva Conventions. We are not torturing anybody, and anybody who has asserted so previously is lying. That doesn't happen here. Detainees are not beaten; they're not starved; they're not abused in any way," Hood said.
But the interrogations can be tough. They can occur any time of the night. Prisoners can be woken at any hour for interrogations, but they must be given five consecutive hours of sleep, Steve Rodriquez, chief of interrogations at the camp, said. And we have learned since that in late 2002, lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon were arguing that under his wartime powers, the president could authorize "interrogation methods that might violate" laws forbidding torture.
"Infliction of pain or suffering per se," one memo said, does not "amount to torture." The pain or suffering must be "severe."
A few months later, the defense secretary approved a classified "matrix for stress and duress," listing the coercion that could be used at Guantanamo. It included holding prisoners isolated in dark cells and interrogating them for 20 hours at a time.
Some officials question the usefulness of continued interrogations at the base. "Given that a large number of [the prisoners] have been held for two years or more, I don't think that there is a continuing intelligence value for most of the people held at Guantanamo," Christino said.
In fact, Christino thinks there may be only "a few dozen, a few score at the most," who are continuing to provide useful information to interrogators.
Rodriquez said that there may be 50 detainees, of the nearly 600 prisoners, who are providing information.
Innocents Among the Detainees?
If the overwhelming majority of the detainees have yielded no useful information for interrogators, how many of the prisoners might not be affiliated with al Qaeda or involved with any terror activities?
Khalid al-Odah, a Kuwaiti, says there is at least one. His son, Fawzi al-Odah, has been held at the camp for nearly two years.
Fawzi al-Odah was among a group of five Kuwaitis picked up by authorities in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border in late 2001 and turned over to Americans. While held in Pakistan, the Kuwaitis had asked a guard to deliver a letter to their ambassador in Pakistan. They wrote that they had gone to Afghanistan legally to "provide humanitarian help to the needy Afghan people" during the war. The guard reportedly was too afraid to deliver the letter. Today, all five men remain in Guantanamo.
On April 20, the Bush administration's policies in the war against terrorism were being argued at the Supreme Court. The justices had agreed to rule on two cases brought by families of prisoners in Guantanamo: Rasul v. Bush, on behalf of two British citizens and two Australians, and Al-Odah v. the United States on behalf of 12 Kuwaitis, including Fawzi al-Odah.
The families had asked the high court asking to guarantee the Guantanamo prisoners a chance to argue their innocence.
The administration had answered that a president's wartime powers are so absolute that the courts - including the Supreme Court - have no business getting involved.
There were 19 so-called amicus briefs challenging the administration, including one from three former chief judge advocates.
John Hutson, who once served as the Navy's top lawyer, responsible for protecting the legal rights of all U.S. sailors, was among them. "We can't just sit back and say, 'We've got different rules now. Because they're terrorists, different rules are going to apply. We haven't articulated them, but by George, they're different,' " he said. "It's in a time of crisis that you have to cling ever more tightly to the rule of law. It's not a rule of law if you only apply it when it's convenient for you."
And for the first time in American history, members of the British Parliament, 175 of them, submitted a brief to the court.
The high court is expected to rule on the cases before the end of its current term.
A Permanent Prison: Camp Five
The United States has now completed a new permanent prison at Guantanamo Bay. It is called Camp Five. If prisoners are transferred here, said our escort officer, they know they are not going home.
Today, the United States is sending men to Guantanamo from various parts of the world. Six, for example, were picked up in Bosnia, another in Iran, and two men were delivered here from West Africa.
The courtroom for the military tribunals is ready. But after almost 21/2 years in U.S. custody, only three prisoners have been charged. And not a single trial has begun or a date even set.
To Khalid al-Odah, the detention of his son is painful and incomprehensible. "It makes no sense, what they are doing. We become all, as families and as the detainees, victims of 9/11 - become like the Americans, victims of the 9/11."
-------- torture
PENAL LAW
Legal Scholars Criticize Memos on Torture
June 25, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25LEGA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Legal scholars asked to assess the recently released Justice Department memorandums concerning torture all but unanimously agreed that the quality of the legal work in them is poor.
It is unsurprising that law professors, who are generally liberal, should differ with the conclusions reached in the memos, which take a broad view of presidential power. But their attack on the professional quality of the memos was unusually sharp.
Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, called the memorandums "embarrassing" and "abominable."
Martin Flaherty, an expert in international human rights law at Fordham University, said, "The scholarship is very clever and original but also extreme, one-sided and poorly supported by the legal authority relied on."
Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said: "It's egregiously bad. It's very low level, it's very weak, embarrassingly weak, just short of reckless."
John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department unit that prepared the memorandums, said much of such criticism was political rather than legal.
"Some critics of the Justice Department's work seem to assume that it is politically incorrect to ask the meaning of a publicly enacted law," he said, referring to a federal law banning torture. That law defines torture as the infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering."
In one memorandum, dated August 2002, Jay S. Bybee, who is now a federal appeals court judge, concluded that only physical pain as intense as that accompanying organ failure or death qualified as torture. The Bush administration has disavowed that memorandum.
Dean Koh said the August 2002 memorandum's analysis of what constitutes torture was "utterly unjustifiable."
"They took the narrowest definition," he said. "It would be as if I said that murder constitutes only serial killing."
Other scholars defended the memorandums as at worst unpolished.
"At various points the analysis seems to require the reader to draw a qualification in one part and apply it to a proposition in another part," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University.
But Professor Kmiec, who was in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, said exploration of the question of what constituted torture was appropriate and important.
"One of the most important functions of the O.L.C. is to be candid, to explore the worst case scenario, to assume we are facing the worst case scenario and to ask the question of what authority the president has to confront the situation."
Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard and the solicitor general in the Reagan administration, said it was important to analyze legal questions fully and dispassionately. "There's nothing wrong with exploring any topic to find out what the legal requirements are," he said.
Others were less kind.
The section of the August 2002 memorandum specifically disavowed by the White House, concerning the president's power as commander in chief to ignore laws against torture, drew particular scorn.
"If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture," Dean Koh said, "he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."
Several scholars criticized individual memorandums as incomplete.
The section of the August 2002 memorandum discussing the commander-in-chief power, for instance, failed to discuss or even cite the leading Supreme Court decision on the subject, several scholars said. That decision, rejecting the argument that President Harry S. Truman had inherent constitutional authority to seize private steel mills, is known as Youngstown.
"You just don't begin a discussion of presidential power without mentioning Youngstown," said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School.
Douglass Cassel, a law professor at Northwestern, went further. "That's not just poor judgment," he said. "That's incompetence."
A memorandum on Jan. 9, 2002, from Justice Department lawyers to William J. Haynes, the general counsel of the Defense Department, addressed "the effect of international treaties and federal laws on the treatment of individuals detained by the U.S. Armed Forces during the conflict in Afghanistan." But it failed to discuss a treaty and a federal law concerning torture.
"The failure to analyze two critical sources of law - namely the convention against torture and the torture statute - is incompetence," said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University.
A former Justice Department lawyer said that not every topic could be discussed in every memorandum. The torture law not covered in the January 2002 memorandum, for instance, was discussed at length in the August 2002 memorandum.
The later memorandum evaluated potential defenses to criminal prosecutions for torture.
"Its sweeping, expansive view of necessity and self-defense would curl the hair of people in the criminal division" of the Justice Department, said Professor Dellinger, who was in charge of the legal counsel's office in the Clinton administration.
Scott Horton, an expert in human rights law at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in New York, said the memorandums would have a practical effect in the prosecution of civilians who engaged in abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Defense lawyers are going to have a field day," he said. "These memoranda will directly undermine the enforcement of the law."
Professor Kmiec said it would be important to know why the disavowed memo was prepared at all.
"Part of the premise of the memo is that there are defenses to extreme methods of interrogation," he said. "The memo explains issues of necessity, self-defense and the meaning and applicability of treaties. All of that is thorough in the O.L.C. sense. But notice that it starts with a premise that extreme methods of interrogation are needed. `Why would you start with that premise?' I would ask, if I were still head of the O.L.C."
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Senate Unanimously Approves $417 Billion Defense Bill
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4093-2004Jun24.html
The Senate voted 98 to 0 yesterday to approve a $417 billion Pentagon spending bill for 2005 after jettisoning a controversial Republican plan to attach an amendment raising the nation's debt limit.
Senate Democrats charged that the debt ceiling plan, which was devised by Republican House leaders, was a ruse to avoid a separate vote that would call attention to soaring budget deficits under GOP rule just months before the election.
The overall bill -- the largest of its kind in history -- provides a 3.5 percent military pay raise, increases housing allowances for military families, gives the Bush administration the $10.2 billion it sought for missile defense, and includes $95 million in emergency famine and refuge relief for Sudan. It also funds the purchase of 24 F/A-22 fighter planes for the Air Force, two more than authorized in a separate bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday.
But early yesterday it appeared the debt ceiling issue could delay debate on the huge measure, after Senate Republicans indicated they might support a provision already in the House version of the bill that paves the way for raising the legal borrowing limit.
According to Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols, the federal government could reach the limit of $7.4 trillion by late summer or early fall.
Senate Democrats made clear, however, they would not let Republicans finesse the problem with a provision buried in a popular defense spending bill, and they hinted they would slow down Senate debate on the defense measure unless the GOP abandoned the idea.
"This is a matter that should be brought before the American people," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). "Sneaking the debt limit onto an appropriations bill is not going to get by."
Faced with that situation, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pledged to Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) that the debt ceiling provision would not be included in a final House-Senate compromise.
"We will not bring back a bill [from negotiations with the House] with that in it," Stevens said. House leaders were miffed at the turn of events. "There are two houses the last time I checked," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said.
John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said, "We're going to have to raise the debt limit to let Social Security checks go out."
The Bush administration has been pressing Congress to take action on the debt ceiling problem as soon as possible. But the administration can ill afford delays in enactment of the defense bill, which includes $25 billion to resupply forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The focus on the government's fiscal woes, evidenced by the debt ceiling controversy in the Senate, was mirrored in a partisan debate in the House yesterday over spending priorities and budget procedures.
By 230 to 184, the House defeated a proposal by Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) to revise this year's House-passed budget resolution, limiting tax cuts for those making more than $1 million a year to produce new revenue of $19 billion. The funds would be used for deficit reduction and domestic priorities.
--------
THE MILITARY
Senate Approves $416 Billion for the Pentagon Next Year Without Dissent
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, June 24 - The Senate gave overwhelming approval on Thursday to a $416 billion Pentagon spending bill for next year, including a $25 billion down payment for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and extra money for adding 20,000 Army troops and equipment.
The vote of 98 to 0 underscored the election-year consensus between President Bush and both parties in Congress to increase the military's budget at a time when two wars and efforts against terrorism are taxing Pentagon resources.
Before passage, the Senate added money to provide aid for Sudan and to help pay for security at the political conventions in New York and Boston this summer. The measure also provided funds for about two dozen projects for lawmakers' home states, including three airplanes for a college in Montana.
Not counting the funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bill is $22.5 billion, or 6 percent, over this year's total.
The overall bill provides $1.6 billion less than what Mr. Bush had requested. Included is $76.5 billion - $1.8 billion more than the president asked for - for purchasing weapons and other equipment, plus money for a military pay raise of 3.5 percent.
Mr. Bush had proposed that he be given the power to move the entire $25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan to whatever war-related accounts he chose. The Senate bill would give him flexibility to move $2.5 billion of the $25 billion. The rest would be assigned to specific accounts, though some - like $17.5 billion for operations and maintenance - are still broad enough to give the president much leeway.
The legislation closely tracks a defense bill the Senate approved Wednesday night that lays out next year's governmentwide military programs, which are expected to total $447 billion. That bill provided no actual money, but Thursday's does.
Unlike the bill the Senate was considering Thursday, the government-wide defense measure included the Energy Department's nuclear weapons program and military construction projects.
The bill is also similar to a $417 billion defense spending bill the House approved on Tuesday.
Congressional leaders hope to complete a compromise version of the measure and send it to Mr. Bush before lawmakers begin a six-week summer break in late July.
The $25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan will become available as soon as the measure becomes law, reflecting Congressional concerns that the Pentagon may need those funds soon.
As the Senate sped through amendments, it added by voice vote $50 million divided evenly between Boston and New York City for their costs in providing security at this summer's Democratic and Republican conventions, respectively.
It also used a voice vote to add $95 million for victims of warfare and famine in Sudan and Chad, in an amendment sponsored by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, and others. But by a vote of 54 to 44, it rejected an effort by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, to provide $118 million more.
--------
Senate Approves $416 Billion for Pentagon
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A $416 billion Pentagon spending bill for next year was passed unanimously by the Senate in a move aimed at providing funding relief to a military strapped by two wars and counter-terror efforts.
The Senate voted 98-0 Thursday for the spending bill includes a $25 billion down payment for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and extra money for adding 20,000 Army troops and equipment like Chinook helicopters.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the chief author of the bill, said the vote reflected bipartisan support for immediate war funds. The money for Iraq and Afghanistan would be available as soon as the measure becomes law, which congressional leaders hope might happen by late July.
``It is a symbol to the country that we're able to come together in times of crisis,'' Stevens said.
Before passage, the Senate added aid for Sudan, assistance to New York and Boston for hosting this summer's political conventions, and about two dozen projects for lawmakers' home states. Those included money to buy three airplanes for a college in Montana.
Not counting the funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bill is $22.5 billion, or 6 percent, over this year's total.
The overall bill provides $1.6 billion less than what President Bush requested. Included is $76.5 billion -- $1.8 billion more than he wanted -- for purchasing weapons and other equipment, plus money for a 3.5 percent military pay raise.
Bush proposed having the power to move the entire $25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan to whatever war-related accounts he chose.
The Senate bill would give him flexibility to move $2.5 billion of the $25 billion. The rest would be assigned to specific accounts, though some -- such as $17.5 billion for operations and maintenance -- are still broad enough to give the president much leeway.
The legislation closely tracks a defense bill the Senate approved Wednesday night that lays out next year's government-wide defense programs, which are expected to total $447 billion. That bill provided no actual money, but Thursday's does.
Unlike the bill the Senate considered Thursday, the government-wide defense measure included the Energy Department's nuclear weapons program and military construction projects.
The bill is also similar to a $417 billion defense spending bill the House approved on Tuesday.
Congressional leaders hope to complete a compromise version of the measure and send it to Bush before lawmakers begin a six-week summer break in late July.
The bill moved through the Senate so abruptly that reporters were not given the customary report describing the measure. The White House wrote a letter saying it ``has not had sufficient time to review'' the bill -- but supported it anyway.
As the Senate sped through amendments, it also used a voice vote to add $95 million for victims of warfare and famine in Sudan and Chad, in an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and others. But by 54-44, it rejected an effort by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to provide $118 million more.
Senators voted 89-9 for nonbinding language sponsored by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., urging Bush to request in his next budget the money he thinks he might need for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush's 2005 budget, released in February, drew Democratic criticism for excluding war costs.
By voice vote, the Senate added $50 million divided evenly between Boston and New York City for their security costs at this summer's Democratic and GOP conventions, respectively.
Like most of the 13 annual spending bills Congress approves, the defense measure -- the largest of all -- carries numerous projects for lawmakers' home districts.
--------
Iraq, Afghan Wars Will Cost Up to $60B
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan probably will cost $55 billion to $60 billion next year if troop levels remain unchanged, not counting the expenses of rebuilding the two countries, Congress' budget analysts estimated Friday.
The projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is more than double the $25 billion President Bush has so far requested for the wars for 2005.
White House officials said early this year that they expected to spend up to $50 billion for the conflicts next year. Administration officials have since said they expect to seek more than that, with the next request coming after the November elections. They have specified no numbers.
Many members of Congress from both parties say they expect next year's war costs to be about $75 billion.
The congressional analysts estimated the price tag could reach up to $392 billion over the next decade, assuming a substantial U.S. force remains in Iraq through the period. All the figures include the Pentagon's costs of countering terrorists in other countries and tightening security at home.
At a time of soaring federal deficits, Democrats have long criticized Bush for not requesting war funds in his last two budgets for fear of political damage. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who requested the projections of 2005-2014 war costs, said the figures show Bush has underestimated the wars' financial burden for Americans.
``Instead of hiding these costs from the American people until after the election, the administration should acknowledge that significant additional resources will be necessary,'' he said.
The administration has said it makes little sense to project next year's costs because too much is unpredictable, like the number of troops that will be needed. They have said virtually nothing about potential long-term spending.
``The president has said he will make sure our troops have all the resources they need, as we hear from commanders on the ground,'' said White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton.
The congressional office said its estimates were uncertain because the Defense Department has provided little information and because of ever-changing circumstances. It said so far this year, its estimates have run 10 percent below actual spending.
The congressional study said little of the expense can be associated with the intensified armed resistance in Iraq. Most of the spending is for troops' pay and the supplies they need, with only about 10 percent related to the pace of operations, it said.
The study assumed today's force levels would be unchanged next year. That matches the Pentagon's announced plan to keep about 138,000 troops in Iraq through 2005.
Of three long-term scenarios Conrad asked the congressional analysts to study, the most expensive, which assumed the U.S. force would level off at 69,000 in 2010, would total $392 billion through the decade ending 2014.
The least expensive would cost $179 billion over 10 years and assumes troop levels in Iraq decline to 15,000 by 2010.
The Bush administration said last month that since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, lawmakers have provided $191 billion for the wars and the military's security costs at home, including military and reconstruction costs. That figure excludes Bush's $25 billion request for 2005.
The House and Senate have approved separate defense spending bills providing $25 billion for 2005. Congress is expected to send Bush a final version next month.
The Pentagon will spend nearly $400 billion next year, excluding war costs.
--------
Bid to Control Government Spending Fails
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An effort to impose legal hurdles on lawmakers' own spending urges failed as House Republicans split among themselves over taxes and spending during an era of war and deficits.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said there was victory even in this election-year defeat.
``Today was a good debate because any day you discuss controlling spending is a good day,'' he said.
Many Democrats disagreed.
``This bill was an irresponsible charade,'' said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. ``Republican leaders rolled the dice on this bill, and they lost.''
In a late night roll call Thursday, the House voted 268-146 to reject a bill that would have imposed a legal ceiling on the one-third of the federal budget set annually by Congress to fund routine agency operations.
If such spending exceeded $821 billion next year or $843 billion in 2006, automatic cuts would be triggered in those programs to bring them back to the legal limits.
The bill also sought to restrain spending in the remaining two-thirds of the budget that covers automatically paid benefits like Social Security, Medicare and welfare. Under the bill, any expansions of those programs would have to be paid for by cuts in other benefits, though Social Security and some other benefits would be protected.
The spending controls failed as Republicans splintered over the best way to constrain a growing federal deficit.
Many urged the House to accept legal spending limits but let tax cuts proceed without restriction.
``Should the family budget be protected from the fed budget?'' said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. ``We must limit, the size, the scope, the power and the expense of federal government.''
Some argued that deficits demanded that even tax cuts get a second look.
``To truly balance our budget, everything really should be on the table,'' said Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del.
Those on the committee that doles out federal dollars said they weren't to blame, and that lawmakers should look more closely at the two-thirds of federal spending paid as automatic benefits.
``They are the spending programs that run us deeper into debt every year,'' said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla.
Many Democrats -- and an occasional Republican -- said the GOP needs to simply exercise more restraint, not pass a new law.
``We have got to stop handing over our responsibilities to someone else to save ourselves from ourselves,'' said Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y. ``We have to have some discipline.''
Divisions among Republicans have prevented the House and Senate from settling on a single budget blueprint to guide next year's spending and tax policies.
The House also rejected a Democratic effort to tilt the budget away from tax cuts and toward debt reduction and homeland security, health and education spending. The measure, rejected 230-184, would have taken back a slice of the tax cuts meant for taxpayers earning $1 million or more, redirecting that $19 billion to debt reduction and education, health and homeland security spending.
-------- investigations
Bush Interviewed About CIA Leak
President Not Under Oath in Discussing Release of Covert Officer's Name
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A02
President Bush was interviewed for more than an hour yesterday by a special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA officer last summer.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald and several assistants questioned the president for about 70 minutes in the Oval Office yesterday morning. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the substance of the interview but said Bush, who was accompanied by a private lawyer, was not placed under oath.
Fitzgerald's session with Bush comes amid a flurry of recent interviews and subpoenas from investigators who have operated in almost complete secrecy for six months, giving little outward indication of where the probe is headed. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales testified on June 18 before a grand jury taking testimony in the case, and it was revealed in early June that prosecutors had interviewed Vice President Cheney.
"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, adding that Bush was "pleased to do his part" to aid the probe.
"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government -- has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge."
Fitzgerald is investigating whether Bush administration officials leaked the name of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak last July. Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a public critic of the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Wilson has suggested that administration officials disclosed his wife's identity as retaliation for his criticism.
The disclosure of a covert CIA officer's name could be a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison if it was done intentionally by an official who knew the government was trying to maintain her cover.
The disclosure came in a column Novak published last July 14. He said that when he wondered why the CIA selected Wilson in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger, two administration officials told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and set up the trip.
Bush's session with prosecutors is unusual but not unprecedented. Bill Clinton testified or was interviewed at the White House in criminal investigations at least seven times during his presidency, on matters that included a probe of the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster Jr., campaign finance irregularities, the Whitewater inquiry and the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation that led to his impeachment.
"Any careful prosecutor would want to make sure that he or she left no stone unturned. In that sense, an interview with the president should not be seen as out of the ordinary," said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a former prosecutor who investigated Clinton.
Bush retained a private lawyer, James E. Sharp, for the interview. Sharp did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
Some lawyers representing witnesses in the case have speculated that the recent activity, including the interviews of the president and vice president, may signal that the investigation is close to completion. But others said they are less certain that the interview with senior White House officials represents a tying up of loose ends.
"It's hard to believe the special prosecutor would be burdening the president with an interview unless they had testimony to the effect that the president had information," said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer representing Time magazine in the probe.
Fitzgerald has subpoenaed reporters from Time and NBC to testify before the grand jury. Both media organizations are fighting those subpoenas in court. The subpoenas to reporters may be another indication that the probe is nearing an end, because Justice Department guidelines demand that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before calling reporters before a grand jury.
This week, Fitzgerald took a tape-recorded deposition that will be played to the grand jury from Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed, at the urging of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Cheney, about two telephone conversations he had with Libby. Kessler said he told the prosecutors that in conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or Wilson.
Prosecutors were interested in questioning Kessler because a Post story in October that said an administration official told an unnamed Post reporter on July 12 that Wilson's wife set up his trip to Niger.
--------
Bush Questioned at White House on CIA Leak
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-CIA-Leak.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The probe into who leaked the name of a CIA operative to a journalist moved to the highest level of government as federal investigators spent more than an hour with President Bush.
``The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter,'' said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, adding that Bush repeatedly has said he wants his administration to cooperate with the investigation.
Bush was interviewed for 70 minutes on Thursday by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the head of the Justice Department investigation, and by members of his team. McClellan said the only other person in the room was Jim Sharp, a private trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor hired by Bush.
Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.
Fitzgerald declined, through a spokesman, to comment on the Bush interview, but legal experts following the case said it could indicate the probe was nearing an end.
The investigation has been an embarrassment for a president who promised to bring integrity and leadership to the White House after years of Republican criticism of the Clinton administration.
Four months before the election, the leak controversy has added to Bush's Iraq-related problems. His meeting with the lead investigator came a day before he was to leave on five-day trip to Ireland and Turkey where he was to work to persuade NATO allies to help in Iraq.
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who is married to Plame, has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed to undermine his credibility. Wilson denounced the Bush administration for claiming that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had tried to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger. Wilson went to Niger for the CIA to investigate and he found the allegation, which Bush mentioned in a State of the Union address, to be highly unlikely.
Vice President Dick Cheney and other top administration officials, including White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, also have been questioned in the investigation. A number of news organizations have received federal subpoenas for questioning as well.
A senior administration officials, traveling with Bush Friday to a European Union summit in Ireland, told reporters that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was questioned by the U.S. attorney's office at an early juncture in the investigation. Because of the secret nature of the probe, the official would discuss only on grounds of anonymity.
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department would offer details about what is believed to be the first time the president has been interviewed by prosecutors investigating possible criminal activity. Officials would not say whether the interview was taped or if Bush was under oath, nor would they speculate as to why he was questioned.
Asked if Bush had answered every question, McClellan said, ``The president was glad to do his part to cooperate with the investigation. The president was pleased to share whatever information he had with the officials in charge and answer their questions.''
McClellan, who said he was not in the meeting, was asked if Bush had any information about who leaked Plame's name. ``That's just getting into questions that are best directed to the officials in charge of the investigation,'' he said. ``I would not read anything into that one way or the other.''
Wilson suggested in a recent book that the leaker was Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The White House denies the claim and accuses Wilson of seeking to bolster the campaign of Democrat John Kerry, for whom he has acted as a foreign policy adviser.
Lawyers say they think prosecutors are probably close to wrapping up the investigation because they have interviewed news reporters. Justice Department criminal guidelines require that all available avenues be exhausted before prosecutors subpoena or interview reporters.
-------- propaganda wars
NEWS MEDIA
Wolfowitz Offers Apology to Journalists Covering Iraq
June 25, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/politics/25WOLF.html
WASHINGTON, June 24 - Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, issued an unusual apology on Thursday addressed "to journalists covering Iraq," in which he expressed "deep regret" for saying correspondents in Baghdad were afraid to travel and, therefore, published rumors.
"I know that many journalists continue to go out each day - in the most dangerous circumstances - to bring us coverage of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mr. Wolfowitz wrote in the letter of apology, dated Thursday. "Since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq, 34 journalists have given their lives; many others have been injured while bringing us that story."
Mr. Wolfowitz expressed "sincerest thanks" to correspondents who report on these issues, and "admiration for their courage."
"But, most of all, I want to extend an apology," Mr. Wolfowitz wrote.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Wolfowitz criticized what he described as a partial picture presented to America and the world on the mission to rebuild, stabilize and install new political institutions in Iraq, and he cast blame on the news media.
"Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors," Mr. Wolfowitz said in his House testimony. "And rumors are plentiful."
In his letter, Mr. Wolfowitz retracted that part of his testimony, writing:
"Unfortunately, in meaning to convey my frustration about the erroneous coverage of one particular news story, the statement I made came out much differently than I intended. And while I know reporters understand better than most that sometimes the best of intentions and the most elaborate of preparations can't prevent error, that doesn't for a moment change the seriousness of my mistake or the deep regret I feel that I did not instantly correct the record."
After his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz's comments were rejected by reporters who have covered Iraq, and he was the subject of critical media commentary, including that from Aaron Brown, a CNN anchor, and Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times.
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Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
June 25, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040624-112921-3401r.htm
The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements.
The issue arose again this month after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported there was no "collaborative relationship" between the old Iraqi regime and bin Laden.
Democrats have cited the staff report to accuse Mr. Bush of making inaccurate statements about a linkage. Commission members, including a Democrat and two Republicans, quickly came to the administration's defense by saying there had been such contacts.
In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands.
The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.
The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."
Shortly after the embassy bombings, Mr. Clinton ordered air strikes on al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and on the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.
To justify the Sudanese plant as a target, Clinton aides said it was involved in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Officials further determined that bin Laden owned a stake in the operation and that its manager had traveled to Baghdad to learn bomb-making techniques from Saddam's weapons scientists.
Mr. Cohen elaborated in March in testimony before the September 11 commission.
He testified that "bin Laden had been living [at the plant], that he had, in fact, money that he had put into this military industrial corporation, that the owner of the plant had traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program."
He said that if the plant had been allowed to produce VX that was used to kill thousands of Americans, people would have asked him, " 'You had a manager that went to Baghdad; you had Osama bin Laden, who had funded, at least the corporation, and you had traces of [VX precursor] and you did what? And you did nothing?' Is that a responsible activity on the part of the secretary of defense?"
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Changing world poses test for chief Bush speechwriter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Joseph Curl
June 25, 2004
Michael Gerson has been a busy man lately.
The 40-year-old chief speechwriter for President Bush has worked nearly nonstop for most of the month to supply his boss with nearly two dozen speeches - some planned, others unforeseen.
"This was kind of a bruising period because of the confluence of all these ceremonial events. The World War II Memorial and Memorial Day and the Air Force Academy [commencement address] and D-Day and the Reagan eulogy. It was just a tough period," Mr. Gerson said.
And it's about to get tougher. Mr. Gerson and his team are drafting a speech for Mr. Bush on the transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led coalition to an Iraqi government appointed by the United Nations on Wednesday.
"I'm not sure if it's June 30, but we are going to speak around the date," said Mr. Gerson, lending credence to the inside-the-Beltway rumor that the president, who will end a trip to Ireland and Turkey on June 29, might pop down to Baghdad for a small ceremonial turnover.
The Bush speechwriters have been working round-the-clock since the end of May, when they provided the president with soaring rhetoric for the dedication of the National World War II Memorial on the Mall. In the next week, Mr. Bush made a lengthy statement on the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, delivered the Air Force commencement address in Colorado and then flew to Europe on a four-day trip, which included the June 6 D-Day speech and a hastily crafted statement on the death of former President Ronald Reagan given at midnight.
Since then, things have not eased up. There were a half-dozen statements with foreign leaders at the Group of Eight summit in Georgia, the Reagan eulogy, an address to the Southern Baptist Convention, two pep talks to military personnel in Florida and Washington state, and several issue-oriented speeches nationwide.
For each, the Bush team - Mr. Gerson, six speechwriters, two researchers and two full-time fact-checkers - crafted unique speeches to fit the moment. But Mr. Gerson, a former U.S. News & World Report writer who has worked for Mr. Bush since 1999, has written so many speeches for the president that he now writes fairly easily in Mr. Bush's voice.
"I have a pretty good feel after five years. I've gotten closer and closer over the years," he said.
The job of the speechwriter is to break down a complex subject into its smaller components.
"If I were to describe the type of rhetoric he likes, I would say it's a mix of simplicity and elevation. He really likes a nice turn of phrase, and he understands emotional language, but he wants a level of directness and simplicity. ... He values emotional seriousness."
Speechwriters sometimes know what's coming - the World War II memorial and D-Day, for example - but often don't, such as the Reagan eulogy. Either way, they must produce. There is no time for luxuries such as writer's block.
The team's output in the past month illustrates the demands of the job. The speech for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, which the president delivered from the cliffs of Normandy overlooking Omaha Beach, was lofty rhetoric that praised the soldiers of "the greatest generation," many of them making their last trip to the French shores.
Work on the D-Day speech began two to three weeks before the event, and Mr. Gerson even sent a researcher with a White House advance team to the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, France, to soak in the setting.
The researcher read great works such as "The Longest Day" and prepared a "very thorough briefing with a lot of background material for the writers" - in this case, Mr. Gerson and his senior staff, deputy John McConnell and senior speechwriter Matt Scully.
"We had a pretty simple purpose: We wanted the event to be about the veterans and the focus not to have anything having to do with broader politics, anything having to do with the president and his own drama. We really wanted it to be something that the veterans themselves would appreciate," Mr. Gerson said.
Although one veteran said the speech was Mr. Bush's best because "it wasn't political," Irene Sauters, 86, of Carlisle, Pa., who served in the 191st General Hospital in Paris during World War II, thought it was a flop.
"He ought to fire his speechwriter," she said. "It was a horrible speech. It didn't soar, it just fell flat."
Mr. Gerson said simply: "There's no way to please everyone, and our main job is to please the president."
-------- us politics
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity
Clash With Leahy About Halliburton
By Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3699-2004Jun24.html
A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week.
On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
Leahy's spokesman, David Carle, yesterday confirmed the brief but fierce exchange. "The vice president seemed to be taking personally the criticism that Senator Leahy and others have leveled against Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq," Carle said.
As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.
Cheney's office did not deny that the phrase was uttered. His spokesman, Kevin S. Kellems, would say only that this language is not typical of the vice presidential vocabulary. "Reserving the right to revise and extend my remarks, that doesn't sound like language the vice president would use," Kellems said, "but there was a frank exchange of views."
Gleeful Democrats pointed out that the White House has not always been so forgiving of obscenity. In December, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry was quoted using the same word in describing Bush's Iraq policy as botched. The president's chief of staff reacted with indignation.
"That's beneath John Kerry," Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said. "I'm very disappointed that he would use that kind of language. I'm hoping that he's apologizing at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know."
This was not the first foray into French by Cheney and his boss. During the 2000 campaign, Bush pointed out a New York Times reporter to Cheney and said, without knowing the microphone was picking it up, "major-league [expletive]." Cheney's response -- "Big Time" -- has become his official presidential nickname.
Then there was that famous Talk magazine interview of Bush by Tucker Carlson in 1999, in which the future president repeatedly used the F-word.
Tuesday's exchange began when Leahy crossed the aisle at the photo session and joked to Cheney about being on the Republican side, according to Carle. Then Cheney, according to Carle, "lashed into" Leahy for remarks he made Monday criticizing Iraq contracts won without competitive bidding by Halliburton, Cheney's former employer.
Leahy, Carle said, retorted that Democrats "have not appreciated White House collusion in smears" that Democrats were anti-Catholic for blocking judicial nominees such as William H. Pryor Jr. Democrats demanded that Bush disavow the allegations by conservative groups, but the White House did not.
The Democratic National Committee has declared this to be "Halliburton Week" to portray administration ties to the controversial company. "Sounds like it's making somebody a little testy," Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said.
Republicans did their best to defend the vice president. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), while pointing out that he was unaware of the incident, described Cheney as "very honest" and said: "I don't blame anyone for standing up for his integrity."
There is no rule against obscene language by a vice president on the Senate floor. The senators were present for a group picture and not in session, so Rule 19 of the Senate rules -- which prohibits vulgar statements "unbecoming a senator" -- does not apply, according to a Senate official. Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes.
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Gore Says Bush Lied About Iraq Link to Al Qaeda
Associated Press
Friday, June 25, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4092-2004Jun24.html
Al Gore accused President Bush yesterday of lying about a link between al Qaeda and deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and said Bush refuses to back down from that position to avoid political fallout.
"They dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever," the former vice president, who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush, said in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center.
Republicans responded that the Democrat's assertions were false and out of touch.
Ken Mehlman, chairman of Bush's reelection campaign, admonished Gore for delivering what he called "another gravely false attack." The Republican National Committee contended that Gore is out of touch. Gore accused Bush and Vice President Cheney of ignoring warnings from international intelligence services, the CIA and the Pentagon before the Iraq war that their claim of a link between al Qaeda and Hussein was false.
With a smirk, Gore then added: "So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding 'no credible evidence' of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, it should not have come as a surprise. It should not have caught the White House off guard."
The independent, bipartisan commission looking into the terrorist attacks found "no credible evidence" of a link between the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and Iraq.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Takashi Hiraoka: Host A-bomb exhibitions around the world
June 25, 2004
Asahi Shimbun
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200406250156.html
Kuniko Inoguchi quit her post as Japan's ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in April. Since she was appointed ambassador from the private sector two years ago, I, as an advocate of the abolition of nuclear weapons, have looked to her to play a positive role in advancing the move.
However, she was unable to break the deadlock of the disarmament conference in which the interests of member states clashed.
When I look back on the way the Japanese government tackled nuclear disarmament, I cannot help but think Inoguchi's hard efforts were wasted.
The United States is currently attempting to build up its nuclear war potential. It is preparing to resume nuclear tests, developing robust nuclear earth penetrators and advancing research to make nuclear weapons smaller and easier to use. Along with the decision to launch a pre-emptive strike, these projects completely ignore ``a clear commitment to abolish nuclear weapons'' that the five nuclear powers agreed on at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2000.
Even though the U.S. administration led by George W. Bush displayed such glaring double standards, the Japanese government failed to raise any objection. Moreover, Japanese officials have recognized U.S. subcritical nuclear experiments, given the go-ahead for a missile defense system and even dispatched Self-Defense Forces to Iraq.
With such behavior, the government ``stepped on the edge of Ambassador Inoguchi's skirt'' and held her back from doing her job. Japan cannot escape criticism that it is only making a show of advancing nuclear disarmament.
When I met then-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto during his visit to Hiroshima in the summer of 1997, I told him, ``If Japan really wants to promote nuclear disarmament, it should seriously consider moving out of the nuclear umbrella.'' ``There's no way we can do such a thing,'' he said flatly.
At last year's Aug. 6 Hiroshima peace memorial service, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed to ``advance initiatives for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation by taking steps such as urging foreign governments for early ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.'' He also stressed that Japan firmly stands by the three non-nuclear principles (of not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons into Japan).
However, if I were to make the same proposal to Koizumi, I think he would give the same answer as Hashimoto's.
This gap between what Japan professes and what it really thinks is what makes Japan's diplomacy weak and shallow.
Recently, high-ranking government officials and lawmakers have been speaking of re-examining Japan's three non-nuclear principles. Furthermore, there is a growing voice stressing the need for a nuclear umbrella to counter the North Korean threat.
Many people continue to suffer the effects of nuclear testing throughout the world. We also hear reports about the serious impact of depleted uranium weapons on human health. Under such circumstances, once again, we need to seriously ask ourselves: Can nuclear weapons really protect the people?
The nuclear umbrella is not the answer to the security of the Japanese people. I believe a more realistic approach would be to create a nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia, for example.
The six-party talks now under way may be a step toward realizing a nuclear-free Northeast Asia, not to mention the settlement of the abduction issue for Japan.
Japan must advance its nuclear disarmament diplomacy based on such values.
It is important that Japan actively use such international forums as the United Nations and the Conference on Disarmament to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the same time, if the government seriously wants to tackle the problem, it should also make a positive effort to arouse international public opinion calling for abolition.
As countries prepare for the NPT Review Conference to be held next year, the Foreign Ministry should organize ``atomic bomb exhibitions'' around the world with the cooperation of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and nongovernmental organizations in order to stir international public opinion for the abolition of destructive nuclear weapons.
The United Nations has 191 member states. If exhibitions are held in 10 countries each year, it would take nearly 20 years to cover the world. Sending the SDF and providing official development assistance are not the only ways for Japan to influence the international arena. The hosting of ``atomic bomb exhibitions'' is a peaceful and useful contribution that only Japan is capable of making.
The author is a former mayor of Hiroshima City. He contributed this comment to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: June 25,2004) (06/25)
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Frosty Reception to Greet Bush in Ireland Ahead of Summit
June 25, 2004
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/europe/25CND-PREX.html?hp
ENNIS, Ireland, June 25 - President Bush arrived in Ireland this evening and headed for the heavily guarded Dromoland Castle in County Clare, as Irish authorities braced for what were expected to be large demonstrations across Ireland against the American occupation of Iraq.
In contrast to the jubilant welcomes accorded Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, the reception that awaits Mr. Bush, who will attend a European union summit meeting, is developing as frosty, if not outright hostile. Widespread opposition to the Iraq war and revulsion at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have turned a large portion of Irish popular opinion against him.
Big protests were expected in Dublin and Shannon, where Air Force One landed. Smaller protests were expected in Galway, Sligo, Waterford and Tralee, in County Kerry.
"Fury and fear as town is turned into a fortress," a headline in The Irish Examiner said. The newspaper quoted the mayor of Shannon as saying that the town's residents were being made into a potential target for a terror attack.
The leader of the Irish Senate, Mary O'Rourke, recently refused an invitation from the American ambassador, James C. Kenny, to attend a dinner at his home to celebrate the president's pending visit. Ms. O'Rourke expressed her disapproval of American prison policy at Guantànamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and of the war in Iraq.
"Nobody denies we have an affinity with the United States, but that is a different matter from having an affinity with the president," Ms. O'Rourke said in Parliament this week.
But the centrist Irish Independent said in an editorial today that while Mr. Bush's trip would be the equivalent for the protestors of "a visit from the Devil Incarnate," the demonstrations "seem a bit out of touch." The newspaper added that with the planned transfer of power from the United States to Iraqis on June 30, "we are now tantalizingly close to the big step that the Americans have been promising all along."
It was unclear whether Mr. Bush would even see the protestors, who were to be kept back at least a mile from Dromoland Castle, a 16th-century Renaissance fortress turned hotel and golf resort in the small town of Newmarket-on-Fergus.
But the president got a taste of what awaited him during a contentious television interview broadcast Thursday night on state-run RTE television. The reporter, Carole Coleman, began the interview by asking Mr. Bush how it felt to come to Ireland knowing that the majority of the Irish did not want him in their country.
"I hope the Irish people understand the great values of our country, and if they think a few soldiers represent the entire of America, they don't really understand America," Mr. Bush replied, referring to the soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. "If they say this is what America represents, they don't understand our country."
When Ms. Coleman asserted that the world had become a more dangerous place since the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Bush replied that "I do think the world is a better place."
"History will judge what I'm about," he added. "I don't chase polls, popularity polls. My job is to do my job."
Often, when Mr. Bush paused, Ms. Coleman started another question, and Mr. Bush held up his hands defensively and admonished, "Let me finish."
Mr. Bush is to spend only 18 hours in Ireland for the European Union summit meeting before heading to Ankara, Turkey, and then to Istanbul for a NATO summit meeting. The United States is seeking help from the trans-Atlantic alliance to train Iraqi security forces for their post-June 30 duties. Security was reported to be extremely tight in Turkey after bombs in both cities killed four people on Thursday.
A Turkish television station, CNN Turk, reported that the authorities had also discovered a vehicle full of explosives in a parking lot at Istanbul International Airport today, according to news services.
The European Union-United States summit meeting, which formally begins on Saturday, is to focus on the political relationship between the United States and Europe, which continues to be strained by the war in Iraq. But both sides are expected to issue joint statements on issues such as Iraq, the Middle East, counterterrorism and unconventional weapons.
"There is no point in us continuing to focus on the passionate argument about intervention," Christopher Patten, the European Union's commissioner for external relations, told White House reporters staying in Ennis, a town about six miles from Dromoland Castle. "We have a shared interest in trying to ensure that the new Iraq is able to be open, pluralistic, democratic and, pray God, stable as well, despite the present exceptionally difficult security situation."
But Mr. Patten was indirectly critical of the United States for disclosures of aggressive prisoner interrogation options set out by Bush administration lawyers, including an August 2002 Justice Department memo that appeared to offer a permissive definition of torture.
"The notion that what we saw in Abu Ghraib is somehow typical of the United States is a terrible calumny," Mr. Patten said. "Where I think there is a legitimate worry in Europe is whether or not the administration and others are as committed to the application of the Geneva Conventions as we are. I think once you start hair-splitting about the Geneva Conventions, you risk getting into a good deal of difficulty."
Administration officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Bush never considered the more aggressive options presented by the Justice Department lawyers.
When Mr. Reagan came to Ireland, his ancestral village gave him an emotional homecoming and named a pub after him. Mr. Clinton was celebrated in 1995 by a crowd of 100,000 that brought central Dublin to a standstill.
Brian Lavery contributed reporting for this article.
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Rally to Demand Unearthing of Mass Graves of Franco Era
June 25, 2004
New York Times
By RENWICK McLEAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/europe/25SPAI.html
MADRID, June 24 - Their numbers dwindling and their days numbered, Spaniards who resisted Franco's rise to power are coming forward for perhaps the last time to demand action on an issue they say has haunted them for nearly 70 years.
Their request is that the government help identify the tens of thousands of political opponents of Franco, prisoners of war, battle casualties and others who historians say were killed in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War and dumped in mass graves by his military forces.
On Friday, hundreds of Spaniards old enough to remember the faces of those who disappeared into the graves are expected to gather at an old battlefield in Madrid to honor those who opposed Franco and to ask that the mass graves be uncovered and the remains identified.
"In these graves lies the true history of Spain," said Vicente Moreira Picorel, 79, who said his mother was shot by Franco's forces in 1936 and then buried in an unmarked grave along with several others. "It is a page of Spanish history that is yet to be written."
Mr. Moreira, who after years of research found his mother's grave in 2001 and exhumed her remains, said he was disappointed that so many of the graves were still covered nearly 30 years after the death of Franco in 1975. He said more should have been done sooner. "The Spanish people ignore a lot of what happened back then," he said.
Time may be running out for his generation. Of Spain's roughly 40 million people, fewer than two million are thought to be old enough to remember the civil war, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, in which the republican form of government was overthrown and replaced by Franco's military dictatorship.
"Our grandchildren have really taken the baton," Mr. Moreira said.
Members of this younger generation say they do not want to see the truth of the civil war die with their grandparents. "This is urgent," said Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Our Historical Memory, which is sponsoring Friday's gathering of civil war survivors. "It must be done soon. These are people who in a short time will not be around anymore.
"We are young people who did not experience the civil war, and we demand to know what happened."
Pressure to examine the graves has come from other quarters as well. Last week, the people's advocate, Enrique Múgica, whose job is to investigate citizens' complaints about their government, requested that the state "exhume, identify, and conduct the necessary forensic tests on the remains of the victims so they can be returned to the families for dignified burial."
Mr. Múgica added that this must be done "with the utmost urgency," and that the government should provide the families with assistance in gaining access to historical records that would help them determine what happened to the victims. "There are still dozens of thousands of cadavers of people who lost their lives in the war and remain in mass graves," he said.
The group sponsoring the gathering on Friday says it has already helped families uncover the remains of more than 300 victims. It estimates that 30,000 people were buried in some 600 mass graves. Many of them have already been located, Mr. Silva said, but not all. He said his organization could not do the job without financing and support from the government. "We are unsubsidized," he said. "We are doing this with our own private money."
His group and the survivors of the war are asking the government to open a special office to help families find out what happened to those who disappeared. "There isn't even a phone number to call for information," Mr. Silva said. "It's the families' right."
In the fall of 2002, when the conservative Popular Party was in power, Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Franco's rule and formally recognizing the victims who suffered under it.
The Popular Party, now in the opposition, says that there is no need to do anything further and that the best approach is to keep the civil war out of contemporary politics.
The Socialist Party, which came to power after elections in March, says it is willing to confront the issues of the past more directly, but its words do not convince everyone.
"The Socialist Party has always been very afraid of this topic," Mr. Silva said. Some members of the party agree with him but are reluctant to say so publicly.
Since Franco's death, they say, the Socialist Party has been worried that focusing attention on issues like the mass graves would open up old wounds that might threaten Spain's democracy.
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Thousands in Ireland Protest Bush Visit
June 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ireland-Bush.html
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Thousands of left-wing activists marched through the Irish capital Friday to protest the arrival of President Bush for a brief summit with European Union chiefs.
Rallying under the ``Stop Bush Campaign'' banner, the crowd of about 10,000 waved signs denouncing Bush as a warmonger and calling for an end to American military flights though Shannon Airport, a strategic refueling point used by thousands of U.S. troops each month.
The protesters marched from north Dublin to the south-side office of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose decision to keep Shannon available for Iraq-bound forces has angered many in this officially neutral nation.
``Good people of America,'' read one placard, ``vote that son of a Bush out.''
``If we don't speak out, our silence will be taken as consent,'' Dublin Mayor Andrew Montague told the crowd. ``This president lied to the world about the reasons for invading Iraq.''
In an interview with state broadcaster RTE, Ahern said Ireland's open airport policy didn't amount to support for the U.S. war effort. However, he stressed that those opposed to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq should recognize that times were changing, and European Union cooperation with Bush over Iraq was essential.
Ahern, the current president of the 25-nation EU, said the latest U.N. resolution on Iraq called on world body members to ``help the coalition forces in Iraq. So whatever the arguments of last year were, those arguments are dead.''
But few in the crowd wanted to forget the war in Iraq. Leaders of Green Party handed out copies of a mock set of instructions advising protesters how to make a ``citizen's arrest'' of Bush if they meet him.
That prospect appeared remote as, 150 miles west on the far coast of Ireland, more than 6,000 police and soldiers set up checkpoints and shut down key roads near the summit site in the biggest security operation ever mounted in Ireland.
The Irish security forces' primary goal was to prevent protesters from breaching perimeter security at Shannon, where Air Force One landed Friday evening, or the nearby Dromoland Castle, a luxury hotel hosting the summit Saturday.
Hundreds of officers from Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana, formed a cordon about 100 yards from the airport entrance and blocked about 1,200 protesters.
Riot police were on standby, but the protest was peaceful. Some demonstrators said the police presence was heavy-handed.
An Irish Navy vessel intercepted a boatload of protesters on the Shannon estuary Friday. Among three people arrested was one of Ireland's most prominent peace campaigners, former Irish army officer Ed Horgan, who last year sued the government in a failed bid to make Ahern close Shannon Airport to U.S. military flights.
On the Net:
Protest site, www.stopbushcampaign.org
Dromoland Castle, www.dromolandcastle.ie
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Should we welcome a champion of freedom or sun a warmonger?
Irish Examiner
25/06/04
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sgrTcRgBN7rgEsgadLjt5C321I.asp
DOES anybody else think that the policing of the 18-hour visit of George W Bush is completely over the top?
Parts of two counties, Limerick and Clare, have been effectively shut down and those who do get through the lines have been told to expect up to four hours added to their journey time for security checks. It's madness.
Why wasn't the president flown into Knock airport where there wouldn't have been the same level of inconvenience?
Helen Flannery, Holycross, Bruff, Co Limerick.
KATHERINE FITZPATRICK (Irish Examiner letters, June 25) believes that people in Ireland should stay quiet on human rights abuses, and on war, when these involve the United States because we need to be more 'grateful' for US investment. I disagree.
It is a fundamentally amoral position to take on war and human rights. Can our silence be bought by economic investment? Where would such an attitude, if consistently applied, lead us? Would we have tacitly supported apartheid if the old South Africa had invested heavily in this country?
Secondly, US investment came to Ireland because there is money to be made here and because Irish workers are skilled, well-educated and hard-working. American investors and businessmen are primarily interested in profits, and that is why they are here.
Finally, the anti-war movement is not anti-American: it is opposed to the policies of the US government. In fact, there is a huge anti-war movement within the US itself and many members of Anti-War Ireland are Americans living in Ireland who are disgusted by the actions of the Bush administration. When we gather in Shannon town centre this evening, it will be to unwelcome George W Bush because of his persistent warmongering.
In no sense will it be an anti-American demonstration.
Dr Fintan Lane, Convenor, Anti-War Ireland, 2B Miller's Court, Cork.
THE motley collection of anti-Bush zealots protesting against the visit, let there be no doubt, would be organising similar protests even if Iraq had not been liberated by the international coalition in 2003.
Astute observers will recall the opprobrium that was visited on the US by the usual suspects when the US routed al-Qaida out of Afghanistan after the tyrannical Taliban regime allowed that state to become, in effect, the HQ for the commencement of the Islamofascist war on the First World.
I do not recall any protests against either al-Qaida or the Taliban in the years immediately prior to September 11; against the USSR when that country illegally occupied Afghanistan, and a succession of other states for decades the despotic regimes in China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, etc.
The lesson is clear as far as these professional protesters are concerned: if your government is socialist, communist or Islamofascist, no protest or dissent will ensue from that quarter.
If, however, you have a capitalist, non-secular, anti-terror and anti-crime administration, the full, unyielding and anti-democratic force of disingenuous media-driven agitation will descend on you, and your supporters, ad infinitum.
In much the same way as Ronald Reagan is now being posthumously feted for dismantling the tyrannical Soviet machine in the 20th century, the likelihood is that the Bush dynasty will eventually be commended universally for standing up to the new tyranny of the 21st century Islamofascism.
Thank you, George Bush, and welcome.
Eoin McMahon, Northumberland Road, Dublin 4.
AS a war criminal, George Bush should not be welcomed in Ireland. He should be arrested for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
World leaders must have the courage to take this step. Until this happens, the death and destruction daily endured by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Our political leaders remind us of the money that the US provides.
That is a prostitute's view. But every day that Ahern, Harney and co aid and abet Bush's war effort they are complicit in his war crimes.
Bush launched an illegal war of aggression based on lies.
This campaign has included indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas (Fallujah, Baghdad) in violation of article 51 of the Geneva conventions.
Bush ordered the placing of prisoners beyond the protections afforded prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions. The rape, beatings, torture and humiliation of these prisoners violates the United States army field manual regarding the treatment of prisoners.
In addition, such treatment violates article 16 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The only WMD in use in Iraq is the depleted uranium used by US forces. It contaminates soil, water and air.
Mr Bush, like Hitler, has made the world unsafe, and he threatens to plunge us into a greater war. All who planned and executed this war must be held accountable.
In 1967, Martin Luther King said: "The greatest purveyor of violence on the planet... is the government of my country." It remains true.
Paul Meuse, 1, Belgrave Place, Wellington Road, Cork.
YOU would think that a person who was xenophobic, homophobic, who didn't believe in the freedom of the press, who stymied all opposition and who allowed attacks on the minority population would incur the wrath of the left, but the silence regarding Robert Mugabe's atrocious reign has been deafening.
I wish I could think of an alternate reason for this, but the only one I can come up with is that unlike President Bush, or Sharon, Robert Mugabe happens to be black.
John McKee, Damer Court, Upper Wellington Street, Dublin 7.
ACCIDENT and emergency units are full to overflowing, patients spend days lying on trolleys in packed corridors and waiting lists, despite the hollow promises made by the Government when buying the last election, have actually worsened.
Yet a unit of Limerick Regional Hospital can be freed up in the off-chance of it being needed by a man who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, and who will be in Ireland for 18 hours this weekend.
What a great country we live in.
Denis Hurley, Kilbrittain, Co Cork.
I LISTENED with interest to the news announcing the opposition of a senior clergyman and the written opposition by over 100 lawyers, including prominent barristers, to President Bush and to his visit here.
The opposition being expressed by the senior clergyman to the visit contrasts greatly with the silence regarding the carnage visited on innocent victims by the IRA in our country, north and south. Their silence also regarding the call for the release of the vicious IRA gang that murdered Detective Garda Gerry McCabe, and in relation to other atrocities, is truly deafening.
I'm sure also that law-abiding citizens will reassured that in order to police the protest groups, the remainder of the country is being denuded of gardaí.
Who will benefit most from the remainder of the country being left to the criminal fraternity? If offenders are apprehended, I'm sure some of the aforementioned lawyers and barristers will be willing to defend them, possibly on the free legal aid scheme.
Sinn Féin's opposition to the visit is too laughable for comment considering their track record.
The media always seem to place great emphasis on the numbers taking part in protests. In a democracy the majority decide who should carry out their wishes, but we never hear a news report that three or four million Irish people did not take part in a protest in Shannon, Dublin or wherever. Maybe it is not considered newsworthy to be a law-abiding member of the community.
Anthony Fagan, Bellefield Road, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.
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