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NUCLEAR
Getting it Right the Next Time: An interview with Hans Blix
Nuclear Israel: Belling the cat
Abraham Announces Nuclear Initiative
New Plan Ordered For Yucca Mountain
Court upholds Nevada nuclear storage
Court Sets Back Federal Project on Atom Waste Site's Safety
Panel reviews cleanup progress
Los Alamos Missing Secret Data
Court Sets Back Federal Project on Atom Waste Site's Safety
MILITARY
Afghans Set Date To Elect a President
Australia Stands by Iraq War, Despite U.S. Report
Britain's top cop warns on terrorism
U.S. Marines Kill Two Iraqis in Ramadi
In Words of World Court, a Wall That Is `Contrary to International Law'
Major Portion of Israeli Fence Is Ruled Illegal
Israel Asks U.S. for Support at U.N. Over Barrier
Castro orders review of Cuba's military recruitment
Warning of Threatened Terror Attacks Against Bahrain
Welcome to the Matrix
CIA blamed for bad data on Iraq arms
Analyst Questioned Sources' Reliability
Senators Assail C.I.A. Judgments on Iraq's Arms as Deeply Flawed
Key Revisions Were Made to CIA Document
Spy Chiefs 'Retract Wmd Intelligence'
U.N. Court Rejects West Bank Barrier
Marine Who Was Missing Is Said to Be in Good Health
Marine: Lighter, But A Deserter?
New Sex Charges Against Soldier in Iraq
Court verdict on Israeli barrier
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
D.C. court braces for detainee cases
Choosing Canada
U.S. to Tell Detainees of Rights
Army Whistleblower Says Superiors Hid Torture
POLITICS
Panel Condemns Iraq Prewar Intelligence
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
C.I.A. Deleted Large Sections, Officials Say
C.I.A. Warned White House That Links Between Iraq and Qaeda Were 'Murky'
Excerpts From Two Senators' Views About Prewar Assessments of Iraq
Admitting Intelligence Flaws, Bush Stands by Need for War
Bush's War-Era Records Damaged
Australian PM Accused of Politicizing Troops
Groupthink Viewed as Culprit in Move to War
Kerry Details Nonproliferation Agenda
Analysis As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large
Democrats Avoid Platform Fight Over Iraq
ENERGY
In Search of New Power Source, City Looks Underwater
OTHER
Bio-prospectors hustle to claim hardy bacteria
ACTIVISTS
British sub at Gibraltar is protested
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- inspections
Getting it Right the Next Time: An interview with Hans Blix
July/August 2004
Arms Control Association
July 10, 2004
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Blix.asp
Hans Blix, former executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), spoke with Arms Control Today June 19. He shared his insights on nonproliferation and disarmament issues as well as his account of the momentous events leading to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Some interview excerpts follow.
The Need for Further Disarmament Steps
One of my strong feelings is that we need to get back to dynamic work on the disarmament agenda. I find it so politically puzzling that we have not been moving on this agenda. We were celebrating and recollecting the Reagan era, and Mr. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was here in Washington and recalled the ambitions that they had, to do away with nuclear weapons. I was at the opening of the Cold War, and indeed the end of the Cold War was the greatest thing that has happened for disarmament. Tensions drive armament, and the de-tension, détente, helps to promote disarmament. And it did. Indeed, much has happened. You see the dismantling of weapons, and it's nice that the problem is rather how to do away with plutonium [more] than anything else.
However, there still remains the fact that this disarmament process [the UN Conference on Disarmament] has stalled in Geneva for a number of years. There are, to my knowledge, no big territorial or ideological issues at stake between great powers and continents or blocs, if there are any blocs any longer. We shall see, of course, more civil wars; we shall see more regional conflict in the world, but we do not see over the horizon any conflict between the blocs, and that being so, it is puzzling that we are stuck in the big disarmament process. A relaunching of the disarmament process would inject a new atmosphere. I'm not going so far as to contend that it would affect the North Korean situation or Iranian situation, but there would be a new atmosphere. It's hard to work up a great enthusiasm...among the non-nuclear-weapon states at a time when you see a strong reluctance on the part of the [United States] at any rate to move ahead with the big issues that are stuck.
On North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan
I'm probably known to the world mostly as an inspector, and I had that function at the IAEA. But I always felt that the first barrier to proliferation is the political one, and sometimes I feel that, in the arms control community, we tend to look at all these technical fixes and the control of this material, and that's fine-I'm not against all that. But let us look at what is the basic thing that drives countries to go for nuclear weapons or get more of them: it is security concerns. When you look at Iran; or you look at Israel; or you look at India, Pakistan, Iraq, certainly North Korea, you have to see what are the perceived security concerns they have.
In the case of North Korea, I think it's absolutely clear that they have that concern. They have been talking about a nonaggression pact, using language that we had around the Stalinist period, and we laugh a little at it. But when you look at what they want, it seems to me that they want an assurance that their borders are inviolable, and I don't see that that part of the problem should be very difficult. I don't see anyone who wants to invade North Korea because the problems of taking care of them would be very great.
The other side of the Korean thing may be the more difficult part of establishing inspection, verification, which must be sufficiently far reaching, and you only ever talk about nuclear issues. What about biological and chemical and missiles in North Korea? In Iraq [biological and chemical weapons were] not that irrelevant, but when you come to North Korea, you have the feeling that no one talks at all about it. So, inspection I think will be important and it raises special difficulties in a country so hermetically closed as North Korea. But what must drive them a lot is an almost paranoic feeling that they have no friends. They used to have the Russians, and they had the Chinese, etcetera, and they felt stronger earlier. But today, they feel on insecure grounds, and I don't think this guarantee should be a difficult one to give.
Therefore, I think that it is right to zero in on the six-party talks and on their demand for a guarantee on inviolability. And when we talk about their demand for oil and for food, etcetera, I [would] see if this can be [done], not as a humanitarian prop-up, but for an evolution of North Korea into a more viable [state]. If North Korea is to have a peaceful exit, what I would like to see would be that the outside assistance, which they no doubt will ask for, be geared toward an economic development in which they will come over in the Chinese direction. Not simply helping them not starve for the next period, but actually leading them somewhere.
Clearly, Iran is [in] an area equipping itself with weapons. You had of course first Israel. But Iran must also be aware that Iraq will now be a sovereign state, and although I hope that there will be effective verification remaining in Iraq after sovereignty is supposed to pass to it, nevertheless the technical know-how still remains in Iraq. And I've seen the holes in the Bushehr reactors, which the Iraqis shot with some Exocet rockets in the past. So, I imagine this will also figure in their [Iran's] thinking.
And while I approve of the diplomatic efforts of the European states,[1] which are also coordinated with the [United States], I think that they must not lose sight of the larger political approach to détente in the Middle East. It seems very far away, and I'm not naïve, and I know it's not happening tomorrow. However, it has been conspicuous all the time that all the states in that region support the notion of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Israel does, and so does Iran...and if one were to tackle the central problem of the Middle East, the relations between Israelis and Palestinians, I think it will also prove easier to tackle the issues of weapons of mass destruction. I'm not at all against the Europeans' initiative, but I think in all these cases, we need to remember the political dimension.
The [United States] doesn't have much by way of economic relations with Iran today, but in Europe they do. That should hover in the background. If you begin to brandish them, then it may be counterproductive, especially when you're talking in the case of Iran. Yes I agree, they have not been forthright, they have not been open, their lack of transparency increases the suspicion-all of that I agree with.
At the same time, when one asks them to renounce or suspend their enrichment capacity, I think one also has to remember there's a certain pride in these things and [in] technological prowess. I have heard it said, "Why should Iran have nuclear power, they have oil?" No one asked that question when the shah was about to launch a huge [nuclear] project. I think this nuclear technology is part of the feeling that, yes, we are also able to do the most advanced modern technology.
On Nuclear Power and Proliferation
I'm a strong proponent of nuclear power, I'm not against it. Not least today, when we are seeing attacks on pipelines in Iraq and when we have a feeling that terrorist movements are trying to scare away Western technicians or Westerners from Saudi Arabia. Then we are getting into a situation that may be similar to the past fear of a cutting off of supplies of oil. And we should be reminded then that with nuclear power you can at least reduce the reliance upon oil somewhat, not that much, but this is one of the most significant ways of doing it for electricity. In [the] long term, if we were to make use of fuel cell cars, instead of gasoline-powered cars, the hydrogen could be produced with the help of nuclear power.
I do not mind countries like India, certainly a huge country, going for nuclear power. I think that's desirable. But it also leads me to be an even stronger advocate of nonproliferation and of safety in the operation of reactors and the disposal of waste.
We do have quite a number of non-nuclear-weapon states that have enrichment: Brazil, South Africa, Japan, of course. If we are asking that no one else do it, I don't think that it can be a hard or fast rule. You may have a country that would develop very fast into using nuclear power much more. And I think it would have to be an arrangement on which you can have some flexibility. Suppose that Ukraine for instance, which has a lot of nuclear power, if they would also go for enrichment. Then I don't see any absolute obstacle why that should not be so. At the present time, we have licensed five nuclear-weapon states. Should we now license a few more for enrichment, and that's the end of it? That's a rigidity. I think we need some sort of flexibility in that for the future.
On Inspections and Intelligence
Recently, I've been trying to explain how far can you come with inspection, how useful is it? When Mr. [Vice President Dick] Cheney said, for instance, that the inspections are useless at best and instead [the administration relied on] defectors, he clearly went wrong.
On the other hand, I think it's also risky to say that inspection is the key. Don't underestimate it, don't overestimate it. They are like search machines. They have their merits, and they have their limitations. The great merit is that they can go into any place legally, they can be entitled to go in, and especially with the [IAEA] Additional Protocol,[2] so you can go much further than before. You have the right to have access to the information, to people, to documents, etcetera. But they also have their limitations, they cannot go around the country. For that, they need to have information.
Now what can we do then, with an organization like UNMOVIC? Yes, I would be in favor of a modified mandate that would allow it to continue with a broadened base that could be used ad hoc by the [UN] Security Council. It is not a very expensive item for the moment. They are managing on leftovers from the oil-for-food [program],[3] and that will last for a while. But they will need a budget. And the beauty of it is that they are not dependent upon a standing group or standing army of inspectors. Rather, we had the roster system set up for a different reason: that you were not allowed to go in.[4] And so we created a roster system, we train people, they work at home, and they are available like an international reserve that can go in. And it is very economic, they are given the refresher courses, and they learn the latest techniques. So, with a relatively low cost you could have a reserve for some inspection.
Let me say something more about intelligence and merging or mixing it with the inspection. This is fundamental. We know now, after the Iraqi affair, that international inspectors under the authority of the Security Council or the board of the IAEA came to conclusions that were closer to reality than what the intelligence agencies did. There are a couple of reasons that helped us on the [inspectors] side. One was that we had the Security Council as our master. The Security Council did not push us or breathe down our neck to come into any particular conclusions. They just said, "You do your professional work, and you report accurately to us." Intelligence agencies clearly felt there was an expectation that they would come up with something that pointed to the direction of the existence of the weapons because their executive branch of the government wanted that, both in the [United States] and in the [United Kingdom].
The other [factor] was the international civil servants concept, which is strong in the [United Nations] and the IAEA. You are there to assemble facts, and submit that to a political level. You are not part of the policymaking. I was very clear to the Security Council that I am not advising what you are to do. I simply am responsible for our job of collecting the data and giving it to you.
In the national governments, I think there has been a risk of the blurring, whether we see it, not only in this particular sphere, but we see of course in many areas where government, executive branch, in the policymaking and selling it to the public, will want to create their own reality. And they repeat again and again the same thing of questionable factual value, and it turns it into virtual reality. I think you might say Iraq is a case where eventually the virtual reality collided with old-fashioned, real reality.
So, [we need to retain] this distinction. Not doing away with intelligence data-they have their role-but keep them apart. And as I said, the intelligence can provide the inspectors with ideas where to go because they have other sources than inspectors do.
On Iraq
And what you can see today, of course, is that, after the Iraqi affair, there is no political inclination to rely too much on intelligence.
So, the whole concept of counterproliferation has been weakened. It's not gone, because if something is imminent, then sure, they will act. But they can also go to the Security Council and share the responsibility of a decision. I don't accept their contention that the Security Council is impotent. I saw that [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair said that the council is not there just to talk but also to act. All right. Within a short day or two after that, the council acted within less than 12 hours to take a decision on Haiti. So, if they are agreed, they can act.
But in the case of Iraq last spring, they were not agreed, and I think it was to the credit of the council that they did not authorize the war. Where would we have stood today if the council had said fine to the Spanish-U.S.-[British] resolution, had authorized it on erroneous premises? They were skeptical of the premises; they were right. And therefore, I think it was a good thing that they didn't authorize the war. And with the present composition of the council, there is no automatic veto. The Russians, the Chinese are not automatically vetoing things. And therefore, the council should not be ruled out as impotent. I think it is there, and if you had a threat that is not within 12 hours, well, I think that you might also share the responsibility in taking action by going to the council.
I never said in the Security Council that I would advise against war. It would be presumptuous of me.... Now my personal wish was of course to continue the inspection, and I think that's probably how people perceived my attitude. But I did not explicitly ask Security Council to vet that.
However, on the question of the evidence, we were not silent. You will find in my book[5] the description of the conversation with Blair. I have the transcript of it, and it is amusing. I think it was in February [2003]. It makes clear that I do not exclude the possibility that there are still weapons. But I am making clear to him that we were not impressed by the evidence that we had. I do say to him that it would be paradoxical if you invaded with several hundred thousand men and you didn't find anything. This was in February. And he then said, no, no. All the intelligence agencies are agreed. And to top it off, he said "and the Egyptians too."
So, I had no doubt at all that he was [acting] in good faith, nor have I ever suggested that President George W. Bush was [acting] in bad faith. But our doubts or skepticism about the evidence began in the autumn because David Albright [president of the Institute for Science and International Security] and his people were doubting the [claim about] aluminum tubes. And I was doubtful about the yellow cake contract,[6] not because I had any suspicion at all that it was a forgery, but I felt that yellow cake is a long way from a bomb. And why should the Iraqis bother to import yellow cake? That was my simple layman thought about it.
But then in January and in February, we went to dozens of sites given by intelligence-U.S., [British] and others-and found no weapons of mass destruction. That shook us quite a lot. Then came [Secretary of State] Colin Powell with his beautiful presentation-I won't use another noun for it-his beautiful presentation to the Security Council. Perhaps we should have felt humiliated because he was then presenting all these smoking guns we hopeless inspectors had failed to see. However, I felt more like sitting in a court bench, saying, well, the chief prosecutor is now putting forth the evidence; then let's see what the experts say about this evidence. So, I let our experts dig their teeth into it. Now there were of course many things they could not check, the intercepted telephone calls and so forth that they could not check, but there were several others that they could check and each they were skeptical about.
Now that was when I said I have to go to the Security Council and also register our doubts about the evidence, and I did so. There I referred to three things. I referred to the fact that you cannot say that simply because something is unaccounted for it exists. Secondly, I referred to the sites that we had been to [that were] not building any weapons of mass destruction. And thirdly, I took up the case of the chemical sites, which...Powell had referred to, it was the only one that I took up. I said the trucks that he had seen [that] they thought were decontamination trucks our inspectors had seen.... And we had taken lots of environmental samples and seen no traces of chemicals. So, this was still in February [2003 when] I went before the [Security] Council. Maybe I could accuse myself today of not speaking louder, but that was the only voice that came.
If Inspections Had Continued
If inspections had continued, I think that two things would have happened. First, we would have been able to go to all sites suggested to us by intelligence-[British], U.S., or any other-and since there weren't any weapons, we wouldn't have found any. And we would have reported that fact, and I think that ought to have shaken the intelligence agencies. We didn't have bad relations with intelligence; we were not so antagonistic at all. I think it should have shaken them to say, "Sorry, but then our sources were bad." Maybe the time was too short, maybe the number of cases was too short for them to retreat on that, or draw that conclusion.
So, that would have been the most important [outcome]. The other thing that could have happened was also important, but slightly less work: that was that the Iraqis gave us at the end of February and the very beginning of March, they gave us long lists of people whom they said had participated in the unilateral destruction operation in 1991. And what we would have done would have been to interview these people. And there are difficulties you have with interviewing in totalitarian countries, but nevertheless there were some 80 or so names and in such a large number if you could interview them, there might have been some hope that we would understand more.
And it was quite clear that, when inspections were over, then you go into long-term monitoring,[7] and there was no end to that. [It] wouldn't require a specific decision of the Security Council. Now with [UN Security Council Resolution] 1284, this system was modified, and they constantly introduced what they called "reinforced long-term monitoring." Well anyway, they were reinforced inspections, and so they made no difference between inspection and monitoring and there was no limit set to that. The real limit would not be formal, but it would be the risk of a fatigue in the council; [that is] a beginning resistance from the Iraqi side, and a fatigue in the council, a wish not to implement it, to enforce it. That could have happened but you know, that's containment. And if they saw a sign of new nuclear things, then they would probably pull up their socks again. So, that's the risk of containment, yes.
But the result would have been that Saddam [Hussein] would have stayed in power probably. Some people say that he couldn't have survived the rumor that they had weapons of mass destruction-that's not so sure, I think. The sole good result of the war I see is the disappearance of one of the world's worst regimes.
However, what would have been the case then? It would have been a little like [Fidel] Castro, like [Moammar] Gaddafi, who is now supposed to be a good boy. It would have been a situation similar, where the world does not intervene on a humanitarian basis but leaves it to foreign policy by obituary, as The New York Times calls it elegantly, that you wait him out. And it would have had many negative aspects, but it also would have had many positive aspects.
ENDNOTES
1. See Paul Kerr, "With Deadline Looming, European Foreign Ministers Strike Deal to Restrict Iran's Nuclear Program," Arms Control Today, November 2003, p. 24.
2. States concluding additional protocols to their safeguards agreements with the IAEA are obliged to disclose to the agency significantly more information regarding their nuclear activities than they would under their original safeguards agreements. Such protocols also increase the IAEA's authority to detect clandestine nuclear activities.
3. The oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil and use the proceeds to purchase medicine, health supplies, food, and other supplies "essential" for civilian needs, was created in 1995.
4. After UN inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, the Iraqi government did not allow them to resume work in Iraq until November 2002.
5. Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004).
6. For more background on these claims, see Paul Kerr, "Bush's Claims About Iraq's Nuclear Program," Arms Control Today, September 2003, p. 22.
7. Resolution 1284, adopted in 1999, authorized the creation of UNMOVIC to replace UNSCOM after UN inspectors were withdrawn the previous year and to verify that Iraq had fulfilled its remaining disarmament obligations.
-------- israel
Nuclear Israel: Belling the cat
By Ehsan Ahrari,
Jul 10, 2004
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG10Ak01.html
In an era of intense global support for nuclear non-proliferation, Israel's unspoken possession of a nuclear arsenal - euphemistically known as an outcome of its policy of "strategic ambiguity" - is coming under increased criticism and limelight. Mohammad ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - the United Nations' nuclear watchdog - visited Israel on Tuesday to talk to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Even though a spokesman of that agency denied that ElBaradei's mission was to ask the Jewish state to unravel its nuclear-weapons program, one is hard pressed to know how else that region would ever become a nuclear-free zone. According to the unclassified estimates of the US intelligence community of the late 1990s, Israel possesses between 75 and 130 nuclear weapons.
If one were looking for a gaping example of US nuclear non-proliferation policy double standards, that it lets Israel continue to modernize its nuclear arsenal without even a word of criticism would fit the bill. Not that Washington was ever oblivious to the existence of such Israeli capabilities. On the contrary, as the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) - a prestigious nuclear non-proliferation group - notes, "The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence [a nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of the same name] after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that [the] Dimona complex was a nuclear-research center built for 'peaceful purposes'." One should recall similar explanations that India proffered in the aftermath of its so-called peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, and until it became a declared nuclear power in 1998. Iran is currently using the very same rationale to pursue its own nuclear program.
During the 1960s, the US sent nuclear inspectors to the Dimona nuclear facility seven times, but, according to the FAS, "they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control of the timing and agenda of the visits". The same source adds, "The Israelis went so far as to install false control-room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear-power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of 'weapons-related activities' such as the existence of a plutonium-reprocessing plant." (Iraq used a similar campaign of deception to hide its own nuclear capabilities in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991.)
It is also worth noting that during 1961-73, which was a crucial period for Israel's nuclear-bomb program, US ambassador Walworth Barbour envisaged his job "as being to insulate the president from facts that might compel him to act on the nuclear issue". Thus one of the cornerstones of America's nuclear non-proliferation policy was a deafening silence on Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. Both Republican and Democratic administrations are equally guilty of upholding that silence.
But there is another way to understand the United States' silence on the issue. Establishing a qualitative military edge - indeed institutionalizing that edge - for Israel in the military arena over its Arab neighbors has been a cornerstone America's policy since the administration of the late president Lyndon B Johnson. The decisive victory of Israel over the Arab armed forces in the 1967 military debacle further persuaded Johnson to view the Jewish state as an ally on which the US should bank in the mega-conflict of the Cold War years. The Arab states were perceived then, as they are envisaged now, as too constrained by the upswings of anti-Americanism in their polities to be counted on to remain on the US side when the chips are down. This is one of those enduring perceptions that was proved false, but never ceased to shade the thinking in the uppermost echelons of US government.
The US was partially correct about the conclusion regarding the prevalence of anti-Americanism among Arab masses. The chief underlying reason was America's inability to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Whether Washington really had much sway over Israel was not important; however, for the Arab side that perception has been one of the constant realities of the Middle East. Even the late president Anwar Sadat of Egypt in his biography identified America's perceived influence over Israel as his reason for breaking with the Soviet camp and becoming a major Arab ally of the US. Whether Washington did not resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict or could not do so, at least from the Arab side, the general understanding is that it is because of a pro-Israeli (or an anti-Arab) bias. At the risk of oversimplification, it can be stated that the US did not succeed in being the peacemaker in the Palestine Liberation Organization-Israeli conflict either, and anti-Americanism prevailed on the Arab side, thereby further convincing various US presidents about the correctness of their policy of maintaining a qualitative military edge in favor of Israel.
From the Arab side, there has been a sustained endeavor to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Even though it has been an uphill struggle, Arab states still view it as a major - and perhaps the only - way of putting pressure on Israel to unravel its nuclear-weapons program. But their dilemma is summarized in the adage, "Who'll bell the cat?" In this instance, the Arabs' side also knows that the US is the only power that has some - in fact a lot, in their assessment - influence in initiating a meaningful dialogue with Israel to materialize the emergence of a nuclear-free zone in their area. Even though the extant tremendous advantage of Israel in conventional military power over Arab countries makes its possession of nuclear weapons well nigh unnecessary, only Washington (at least in principle) can successfully make that argument and persuade Israel to contemplate dismantling those weapons.
The chief problem with the preceding is that there is no conceivable way any US president would ask Israel to unravel its nuclear capabilities in the era of a global "war on terrorism". Yet Washington had no compunction about putting similar pressures on India and Pakistan immediately after their respective nuclear-weapons programs came out of the closet in 1998, or demanding that North Korea unravel its nuclear-weapons option, or that Iran shouldn't even consider developing its capabilities to produce nuclear weapons.
Still, ElBaradei's mission to Israel serves as a considerable moral force, as the IAEA played a highly visible role in Libya's active measures to foreclose its nuclear-weapons option, and that agency is continuing to put pressure on Iran to increase transparency in its nuclear program.
The most positive news from Israel is that, even though he has refused to abandon his country's policy of nuclear ambiguity, Sharon has agreed to discuss a nuclear-free zone in the region as part of future peace talks. "That is the first time I hear that from an Israeli prime minister," said ElBaradei to reporters in Jerusalem on Thursday. A spokesman of the IAEA's chief made an observation that would go a long way toward opening a meaningful Middle Eastern dialogue for the potential emergence of that area as a nuclear-free zone. He said, "ElBaradei would be happy to act as an informal bridge between the Islamic world, which resents what it considers unfair international tolerance of Israel's secret nuclear capacities, and Israel, which sees itself as facing 'an existential threat' from a far larger enemy." There is also a minor development indicating that Israel is edging - albeit by taking baby steps - toward nuclear transparency. It has established a new Israeli Energy Commission Website that contains a photo of Dimona.
There is no suggestion here that Israel would seriously consider abandoning its nuclear-weapons program in the near future. But at least it is willing to talk about the issue. The only way it would ever be persuaded to give up nuclear weapons is if the US decides to speak the truth to nuclear Israel. And that is also not about to happen in the short run. In the meantime, the involvement of the IAEA promises to serve as a compelling moral force in the potential emergence of the Middle East as a nuclear-weapons-free zone, especially if the issue remains under the international limelight on a sustained basis.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
-------- russia
Abraham Announces Nuclear Initiative
Wade Boese,
July/August 2004
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Abraham.asp
The Department of Energy is making organizational changes and boosting funding to better keep global nuclear materials from falling into hostile hands, but two key projects with Russia remain stalled.
On May 26, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced a $450 million initiative to accelerate existing programs intended to end the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) as fuel for research reactors and to retrieve all U.S.- and Russian-exported HEU, which is one of two fissile materials that can be used to build nuclear weapons (plutonium is the other).
Formally dubbed the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the new effort also urges stepped-up action to secure other nuclear and radiological materials that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, a conventional explosive mixed with radioactive material.
While extolling the administration's record on reducing the threat posed by nuclear materials worldwide, Abraham said, "[W]e would be fooling ourselves and endangering our citizens to think that these past efforts are enough."
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has charged the Bush administration with being too lax in its approach (see page 34).
The Global Threat Reduction Initiative
In 1978 the United States launched a program to convert research reactors to operate with low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is not suitable for making nuclear weapons, instead of HEU. But budget constraints, the technical complexity of the conversion work, and reluctance by some governments to switch types of fuel have hampered the program. Only about a third of the 105 research reactors slated for conversion have been modified.
The new initiative aims essentially to convert a similar number within the next five years. It leaves open the question of when the last third of the reactors might be converted because an appropriate substitute LEU fuel is not yet available for them.
Abraham suggested June 14 that the administration's initiative represents the most that can be done. "I know some have implied that this work can be done quicker. But the people who make those assertions are simply ignoring the realities of science," he stated. Abraham added, "Changing a reactor core is not like changing the battery in your car."
The initiative further calls for picking up the pace of a 1996 program to retrieve about 20,000 kilograms of U.S.-origin enriched uranium, including roughly 5,000 kilograms of HEU, that have been exported to 41 countries. About 1,100 kilograms of HEU have been retrieved to date.
Acknowledging that the program "has had a long history of not performing as well as it should," Abraham said that would now change. "I made it clear...that I want this job done as soon as possible," he declared. The secretary pledged to complete the work in a decade.
As another part of the initiative, the United States finalized a May 27 agreement with Russia to assist Moscow in retrieving some 4,000 kilograms of HEU it exported to 17 countries. The goal is to finish this work by 2010.
The United States and Russia first explored repatriating Soviet and Russian HEU in the late 1990s. Operations during the Bush administration have recovered HEU from sites in Bulgaria, Libya, Romania, and Serbia. Prior to that, the United States helped remove HEU from Kazakhstan and Georgia. A research reactor in Uzbekistan is next in line.
Not all U.S.- and Russian-origin HEU is located in countries ready to return it. Iran and Pakistan are two notable examples. The United States, Russia, and the International Atomic Energy Agency are hosting an international conference this fall to discuss how to handle these more intractable situations.
In addition, the initiative commits the Energy Department to seek out any nuclear and radiological materials not covered by existing programs. "Once identified, we will secure, remove, relocate, or dispose of these materials and equipment in the quickest, safest manner possible," the secretary stated. The Energy Department intends to pre-position equipment around the world to facilitate such missions.
A new office within the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration will manage the initiative.
Plutonium Projects Stuck in Neutral
Although seeking to speed up its efforts to reduce HEU threats, the United States is spinning its wheels when it comes to mitigating plutonium dangers. This inaction has upset some U.S. lawmakers.
At a June 15 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) questioned whether Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton was trying hard enough to overcome obstacles holding up a U.S.-Russian agreement for both countries to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium.
Urging that the program be jump-started, Domenici, who oversees funding for the Energy Department as chairman of the relevant subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, argued, "If he can't do it, somebody ought to...be put in his place that will do it." Agreed to in principle in September 1998 and sealed two years later, the plutonium deal has been hampered by disagreement over accountability for any accidents.
"The issue that divides Russia and the United States at this point is whether we're going to get liability protection equivalent to that which we've operated under for the past 12 years or whether we're prepared to accept a lesser liability protection," Bolton explained at the hearing.
Bolton's testimony failed to satisfy Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). "You've certainly illuminated the problems...but not really the solution," Lugar remarked. Describing the situation as "very, very serious," Lugar ventured that he and other senators might need to meet with the president to discuss the matter.
Lugar's fellow Republican, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas, also had concerns with another languishing plutonium program with Russia and asked the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, to look into it. GAO reported in June that the program to shut down Russia's final three plutonium production reactors is troubled.
Although Russia pledged in 1994 to cease operating the three reactors by 2000, it still has not done so. The deadline passed unfulfilled due to differences between Washington and Moscow over who should pay to provide nearby towns with the heat and energy that would be lost when the reactors shutdown. The Bush administration agreed in March 2003 to build one fossil-fuel facility and refurbish another to address Russian concerns.
However, GAO found widespread confusion between U.S. and Russian entities-17 total-over managing work on the replacement facilities and Russian fears about finding future employment for displaced reactor workers. GAO further noted that Energy Department officials are worried about Russia's ultimate intentions because it has refused to reduce the amount of plutonium the three reactors produce and to add safety features in the meantime.
The projected date for when the last of the three reactors will be shut down has slipped from 2006 to 2011.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
New Plan Ordered For Yucca Mountain
Court Seeks Extended Radiation Guards
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38751-2004Jul9.html
A federal appeals court threw the future of proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., into doubt yesterday by demanding that the federal government devise a new plan to protect the public against radiation releases beyond the next 10,000 years.
Although the three-judge panel rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the project, which has been under consideration for more than two decades, it required the government to meet a radiation standard some Energy Department officials have described as unrealistic.
Still, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham welcomed the decision, and said he is confident the government could move forward, now that the court has "dismissed all challenges to the site selection."
"Our scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain project is sound," Abraham said. "The project will protect the public health and safety."
He said energy officials would work with the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress to "determine appropriate steps to address" the call for a new radiation standard.
Nevada officials, however, said the ruling means the end of the Yucca project, which is slated to accept as much as 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste -- an amount that would fill a football field 19 feet deep. The waste consists of highly radioactive used fuel rods and other waste from national defense activities and commercial power reactors.
"We think the project's effectively dead," said Robert Loux, Nevada's state nuclear project director.
In recent years, federal officials have been pressing aggressively for construction of the radioactive waste repository at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Bush administration determined in 2001 that it was technically and scientifically feasible to build the facility at Yucca Mountain, and Congress approved the site in 2002 over Nevada's objections.
Without question, the ruling means more legal obstacles for the Energy Department, which was planning to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this fall to begin construction. In addition to setting a new radiation standard, the federal government may have to defend itself against new challenges to the project's environmental impact.
Joseph Egan, Nevada's lead attorney for the Yucca Mountain Project, said the state could sue on matters ranging from transportation to whether the government should store nuclear waste on site. "There's all sorts of things now that are fair game for us," he said.
The court dismissed Nevada's assertion that locating the site at Yucca is unconstitutional and that other measures violate the nuclear waste law. But in a separate section of the 100-page decision, the judges took aim at the EPA for disregarding findings by the National Academy of Sciences, which called for a storage system that would protect against radiation releases beyond the next 10,000 years. Congress in 1992 approved legislation requiring federal officials to take the academy's recommendations into account.
The three-judge panel wrote that the EPA "unabashedly rejected NAS's findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."
Geoffrey Fettus, a Natural Resources Defense Council staff attorney who challenged EPA's standard, said the court ruling means that the government must show its repository can "rely on geology to isolate waste" rather than human-made barriers. "It certainly raises serious questions about the adequacy of Yucca's geology to isolate waste for the requisite period of time," Fettus said.
The ruling quotes a former energy official, Lake H. Barrett, who wrote in 1999 that devising a radiation standard beyond the next 10,000 years "would be unprecedented, unworkable, and probably unimplementable."
But Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the agency is confident it could come up with a plan to protect the public against radiation for longer than 10,000 years. He also said the court indicated Congress could set a new radiation requirement despite the academy's study.
"We're confident in our science and we're moving forward," Davis said.
Either side could appeal yesterday's ruling to the Supreme Court, but it is unclear whether either will. These same groups -- in addition to Nevada authorities and environmental organizations, the Nuclear Energy Institute, which is the nuclear energy industry's policy organization, also disputed aspects of the plan -- are likely to challenge the Energy Department's license application before the NRC.
The department has already filed 5.6 million pages of scientific material as part of its application, Davis said, and the process could take three to four years to complete. He added that federal officials are reevaluating whether to seek a license this fall in light of the court's ruling.
"We still have to take our case before the NRC," Davis said.
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
--------
Court upholds Nevada nuclear storage
July 10, 2004
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040709-103956-2577r.htm
A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a congressional mandate to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but ordered the federal government to expand radiation protection plans beyond 10,000 years.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia holds the project hostage until the plans are redrawn, but there were no signs the state plans to appeal.
More than 100 interim nuclear storage sites exist throughout 39 states and more than 160 million people reside within 75 miles.
Energy Department Secretary Spencer Abraham said he was pleased with the decision and that the project will protect public health and safety.
"While the court did not question the scientific validity of the Environmental Protection Agency's standards, it did vacate one aspect of the standard, the 10,000-year compliance period," Mr. Abraham said. "Therefore, DOE will be working with the EPA and Congress to determine appropriate steps to address this issue."
Greg Bortolin, spokesman for Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada, called the court's decision "encouraging."
"Nevada's argument was based on sound science, and it is heartening to know that the court basically agreed with the state of Nevada," Mr. Bortolin said. "All along, what the governor was doing was looking out for the safety and welfare of the citizens of Nevada."
Congress mandated in 2002 that the nation's radioactive waste from power plants and spent reactor fuel be stored at the Yucca Mountain site despite objections from Nevada state and federal officials. The site is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The court's decision upheld the congressional act and dismissed other challenges as without merit.
"Having the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment, nuclear waste has vexed scientists, Congress and regulatory agencies for the last half-century," the court wrote.
"After rejecting disposal options ranging from burying nuclear waste in polar ice caps to rocketing it to the sun, the scientific consensus has settled on deep geologic burial as the safest way to isolate this toxic material in perpetuity," the court said.
It also ruled that actions by President Bush and the Energy Department leading to the selection of the Yucca Mountain site are unreviewable.
However, the court ruled that the 10,000-year compliance period proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency is a violation of the Energy Policy Act in that it is not consistent with findings by the National Academy of Sciences.
The court said the waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain has a half-life of 17 million years and that radioactive waste and its harmful consequences persist for time spans beyond human comprehension.
"They can go forward, but they can't get the license without the EPA regulation getting changed," Mr. Bortolin said. "I concede it doesn't kill the project, but past experience shows that changing an EPA regulation can sometimes take several years."
About 20 percent of the nation's electricity comes from nuclear power, and it is estimated that by 2005 the United States will have accumulated more than 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste.
--------
Court Sets Back Federal Project on Atom Waste Site's Safety
July 10, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/national/10YUCC.html
WASHINGTON, July 9 - The government's 17-year effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada suffered a major setback on Friday as the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the government's standards for protecting the public from radiation leaks at the repository, which extend 10,000 years, were too short, though it did not specify an appropriate period.
The Energy Department has spent about $9 billion on the repository, which would dispose of waste from civilian reactors and would give the government a place to store radioactive material left over from nuclear weapons production. The repository is also crucial to the nuclear power industry's hopes for new reactor construction after a 30-year drought. Failure to open Yucca Mountain would probably leave highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel in about 68 locations around the country, where civilian power reactors have operated.
The case had been brought by the State of Nevada and environmental groups, which oppose the repository.
In its 100-page decision, the three-judge panel rejected other arguments against the Yucca Mountain repository, including contentions that it was unconstitutional for Congress to force the project on an unwilling state. The appeals court said decisions by Congress and the Bush administration to single out Nevada were not subject to judicial appeal.
An appeal of the decision is possible, but both sides said the argument was more likely to move to Congress
In its ruling on Friday, the appeals court did not say how long the government should plan for protecting the public from leaks, but it cited a National Academy of Sciences report that said it was possible to predict the flow of leaks from a repository for up to a million years. The court ruled that a 1992 federal law that committed the country to burying the waste required the government to follow the advice of the National Academy.
But according to the government, Yucca Mountain cannot meet the radiation standard indefinitely. Documents prepared to help Yucca Mountain qualify under a 10,000-year standard show that by about 270,000 years after the waste is buried, an individual just outside the repository's fence would be subject to a radiation dose 60 times higher than the allowable limit. The academy had recommended setting a standard that covered the period when the radiation leaks were predicted to be the highest, in about 300,000 years.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said his department would work with the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress "to determine appropriate steps" in light of the ruling. When the Energy Department loses a case in court, it often seeks to have Congress overturn the decision by amending the law. And the court even suggested that Congress could change the law to mandate a 10,000-year standard.
A lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Geoffrey Fettus, said that it might now be impossible for the Energy Department to argue that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. "They will have to contradict things they've already said in their earlier dose assessments," Mr. Fettus said.
The council, one of the plaintiffs, favors burying the waste. But Mr. Fettus said it remained to be seen whether it could be scientifically shown that Yucca was an appropriate site.
Congress picked Yucca as the lead candidate for the repository in a law passed in 1987. There is no back-up plan, because the same law bars consideration of any other site. In the absence of a national repository, the default solution is that as reactors around the country will build giant steel-and-concrete casks for storage. More than a dozen reactor complexes have done so already and many more are planned. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a public information session on July 15 at Indian Point, near New York City, for example, on the construction of casks there.
The estimates of how long Yucca can exist without radiation leaks are based on several factors, including how long the metal containers holding the waste would stay intact, and how fast radioactive materials would be carried through the soil by underground water flows. A decision to measure the repository against a 300,000-year rule, or a million-year rule, would switch the focus to characteristics of the rock, experts said.
Michael A. Bauser, associate general counsel of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group of reactor operators, called the court's decision a victory for his side because it "validated the overall process that led to the recommendation and selection of Yucca Mountain."
Mr. Bauser said the industry and the government could ask for a rehearing, ask the Supreme Court to take the case, or seek help in Congress. Making predictions beyond 10,000 years was harder, he said. "Uncertainties clearly increase with greater periods of time," he said.
Mr. Bauser's group had argued that the government's rules were too restrictive. The Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum permissible radiation dose for people outside the boundary of the Yucca project, and set a second standard for the maximum dose that they could receive through contamination of well water. The industry said that there was no basis for a separate water standard, but the court disagreed.
Over the long term, rainwater percolating through the mountain and then flowing underground to wells is the most likely way that the public would be exposed. Because nuclear waste breaks down over time, eventually becoming harmless, predicting doses requires calculating the rate at which different radioactive materials will decay and how fast each would flow through the dirt.
Nuclear materials are measured according to their "half life," or the time it takes for half the radiation to die away. Half lives for the isotopes reaching Yucca vary from decades to millions of years, time periods that the judges called "beyond human comprehension."
The decision also gave Nevada the right to challenge the Environmental Impact Statement done by the Energy Department. Nevada wants to argue that the department gave insufficient attention to one of the alternatives, leaving the waste where it is, mostly in the spent fuel pools of nuclear reactors or in concrete casks nearby. Nevada also wants to challenge government estimates of the environmental impact of transporting the waste.
At the very least, the decision makes it even less likely that the Energy Department can stick to its schedule of 2010 to begin accepting waste at the site, on the edge of the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas, where the department and its predecessor agencies tested nuclear bombs for decades. The department was planning to file an application for a license later this year, with another agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is supposed to make a licensing decision using standards set by the E.P.A. The commission expected to begin hearings next spring, but the E.P.A. has been told to rewrite the rule.
The E.P.A. said when it set the 10,000 year standard that this was consistent with rules on other kinds of hazardous materials. It also said that anything longer would bring in factors that were hard to account for, like climate change that would make the Nevada desert much wetter.
But with the demise of the 10,000-year standard, a lawyer for Nevada, Joseph Egan, said, "As a practical matter, that means the licensing proceeding is completely on hold."
Even before Friday's decision, the 2010 date was regarded by people in the nuclear industry as highly suspect, because of the unprecedented nature of the legal proceedings that would be required before the commission could grant a license.
The $9 billion already spent by the Energy Department on the project has mostly been collected from nuclear utilities, which signed contracts to pay for waste disposal and the department faces lawsuits that may seek hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for the failure to keep its end of the deal.
Joseph Davis, a spokesman for the department, said that program managers would evaluate the impact of the decision on the schedule. Nuclear power plant operators have avoided any short-term problem by installing steel-and-concrete casks to hold the waste, a solution likely to last for decades at least. The military waste that has been solidified in preparation for burial at Yucca is also stored in a form that would be suitable for decades as well.
-------- new mexico
Panel reviews cleanup progress
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com
Los Alamos Monitor Assistant Editor
Saturday, July 10, 2004
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/07/08/headline_news/news01.txt
A state legislative committee on radioactive and hazardous materials plied local officials in Los Alamos on Tuesday for information on the status of the consent agreement between Los Alamos National Laboratory and the New Mexico Environment Department.
LANL's Beverly Ramsey, who leads the lab's Risk Reduction and Environmental Stewardship Division, and Joe Vozella, assistant manager of facility operations at the Los Alamos Site Office, gave a joint presentation.
Vozella, who represented the National Nuclear Security Administration in negotiations, said his best guess was the public would have its first look at a version of the document by the end of this month or early next.
He said while the consent order is still under negotiation he could not divulge everything, but he could give a more general status report since the parties had agreed to agree.
The state has compiled a 270-page draft, he said, which has been shared with the lab and DOE, who have already sent comments back. Those are now being incorporated in the document in preparation for a 60-day period of public input.
Resolving those comments will require another 60 days, and might include "substantive changes," he said, which in turn could require more negotiations and therefore more time.
Speaking from the audience, Joni Arends, executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, gave an example of concerns that might be expected during the public comment period.
She noted that the Hanford Site in Washington State had won DOE's promise that no more radioactive waste would be deposited in unlined trenches.
"That should be part of this agreement," she said.
Vozella responded that radionucleides were not addressed as a part of the consent order. DOE has maintained that federal rather than state laws govern issues relating to radioactive materials.
Vozella said earlier that DOE and the University of California, which manages the LANL contract, have agreed to share radionucleide information with the state of New Mexico.
"We do not have to concur with the state," he said, but added radiological issues would be cooperatively addressed.
Under DOE's plan and the consent agreement, hazardous and mixed wastes at LANL as well as radioactive waste are all scheduled to be cleaned up by 2015.
Ramsey said there were two pieces of good news. One was that the lab, the state, and the federal government were all cooperating on a workable document. The other was that clean up was not being held up by the lengthy process for reaching an agreement.
"We are not waiting for the signatures on the order," she said. "We are doing the work. Nothing has stopped."
Rep. John Heaton, D-Eddy, who demonstrated familiarity with Waste Isolation Pilot Project issues from his home district, asked several questions about the end state condition promised by the cleanup plan. "We can almost measure down to a molecule," he asked, "so how do we determine how clean is clean?"
Vozella said that the state standards are related to the specified land-use of a given piece of land, whether residential or industrial, for example, and that those standards would be kept under covenants in the land transfer agreement.
Ramsey said the biggest challenge under the consent order would be protection of ground water.
"We need to be proactive about that," she said.
She said the Material Disposal Areas, including 12 large waste dumps, and issues of surface water, involving storm water run-off from the laboratory would be challenging.
"You don't know how happy I am to hear that the clean up action has been set in place, said Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Sandoval.
Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Dona Ana, said she had found NMED Secretary Ron Curry most responsive for issues in her part of the state and thanked the lab and DOE for working with him.
The committee also heard an unclassified presentation on the current status of plutonium pit production at the laboratory by Jim Ostic, acting project leader for pit production at the lab. Accompanying him was Robert Dodge, team leader for waste operations.
Ostic told the committee the lab had made four plutonium pits this year, triggers for nuclear weapons, and that the goal of the lab's provisional manufacturing capability was to produce 10 per year by 2007.
Dodge said the waste stream as measured in 55-gallon drums may have increased slightly, but that, "The amount of waste is going down from what I see on our daily job."
A decision on where to build a new plutonium pit manufacturing facility is still on hold by NNSA, awaiting congressional approval. Two sites in New Mexico were under consideration under DOE's draft environmental impact statement, WIPP and LANL.
The committee also heard a report from Rod Linn on what firefighting capabilities could be gained from advances in wildfire modeling.
Tim DeLong, the new chair of the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board briefed them on that group's role in laboratory environmental issues.
After the public hearing the committee toured the new Emergency Operations Center.
----
Los Alamos Missing Secret Data
By KENNETH CHANG
July 10, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10alamos.html
Two computer-data storage devices containing classified research information are missing from the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., officials there said yesterday.
"It's a very serious situation," said Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Mr. Roark would not specify the type of storage devices missing; they could be floppy disks, hard disks, memory cards or some other kind of removable storage mechanism. He also declined to specify what was on the missing devices or which part of the laboratory they disappeared from, except to say that it was part of Los Alamos's weapons physics division.
The laboratory discovered the loss Wednesday during an inventory taken to prepare for an experiment.
This is the third instance in which classified data have gone missing from Los Alamos in the last year, but the announcement this time was more dire in tone. In a statement, G. Peter Nanos, the laboratory's director, said the current situation "must be dealt with swiftly and decisively." He said that the laboratory was investigating and that "I intend to fully exercise my authority as director to hold those involved fully accountable, up to and including termination of employment, if appropriate."
In the meantime, laboratory employees who had access to the missing devices will be allowed to continue duties in their work areas, though only under escort. That new restriction affects fewer than 20 people, Mr. Roark said.
In the most recent earlier incident, in May, laboratory officials said that the missing devices did not contain nuclear weapons information and that they believed there was no actual loss of material.
"It was items slated for destruction,'' Mr. Roark said yesterday. But, he said, the missing devices this time contained data related to current experiments and had not been listed for destruction.
-------- us nuc waste
Court Sets Back Federal Project on Atom Waste Site's Safety
July 10, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/national/10YUCC.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 9 - The government's 17-year effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada suffered a major setback on Friday as the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the government's standards for protecting the public from radiation leaks at the repository, which extend 10,000 years, were too short, though it did not specify an appropriate period.
The Energy Department has spent about $9 billion on the repository, which would dispose of waste from civilian reactors and would give the government a place to store radioactive material left over from nuclear weapons production. The repository is also crucial to the nuclear power industry's hopes for new reactor construction after a 30-year drought. Failure to open Yucca Mountain would probably leave highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel in about 68 locations around the country, where civilian power reactors have operated.
The case had been brought by the State of Nevada and environmental groups, which oppose the repository.
In its 100-page decision, the three-judge panel rejected other arguments against the Yucca Mountain repository, including contentions that it was unconstitutional for Congress to force the project on an unwilling state. The appeals court said decisions by Congress and the Bush administration to single out Nevada were not subject to judicial appeal.
An appeal of the decision is possible, but both sides said the argument was more likely to move to Congress
In its ruling on Friday, the appeals court did not say how long the government should plan for protecting the public from leaks, but it cited a National Academy of Sciences report that said it was possible to predict the flow of leaks from a repository for up to a million years. The court ruled that a 1992 federal law that committed the country to burying the waste required the government to follow the advice of the National Academy.
But according to the government, Yucca Mountain cannot meet the radiation standard indefinitely. Documents prepared to help Yucca Mountain qualify under a 10,000-year standard show that by about 270,000 years after the waste is buried, an individual just outside the repository's fence would be subject to a radiation dose 60 times higher than the allowable limit. The academy had recommended setting a standard that covered the period when the radiation leaks were predicted to be the highest, in about 300,000 years.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said his department would work with the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress "to determine appropriate steps" in light of the ruling. When the Energy Department loses a case in court, it often seeks to have Congress overturn the decision by amending the law. And the court even suggested that Congress could change the law to mandate a 10,000-year standard.
A lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Geoffrey Fettus, said that it might now be impossible for the Energy Department to argue that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. "They will have to contradict things they've already said in their earlier dose assessments," Mr. Fettus said.
The council, one of the plaintiffs, favors burying the waste. But Mr. Fettus said it remained to be seen whether it could be scientifically shown that Yucca was an appropriate site.
Congress picked Yucca as the lead candidate for the repository in a law passed in 1987. There is no back-up plan, because the same law bars consideration of any other site. In the absence of a national repository, the default solution is that as reactors around the country will build giant steel-and-concrete casks for storage. More than a dozen reactor complexes have done so already and many more are planned. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a public information session on July 15 at Indian Point, near New York City, for example, on the construction of casks there.
The estimates of how long Yucca can exist without radiation leaks are based on several factors, including how long the metal containers holding the waste would stay intact, and how fast radioactive materials would be carried through the soil by underground water flows. A decision to measure the repository against a 300,000-year rule, or a million-year rule, would switch the focus to characteristics of the rock, experts said.
Michael A. Bauser, associate general counsel of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group of reactor operators, called the court's decision a victory for his side because it "validated the overall process that led to the recommendation and selection of Yucca Mountain."
Mr. Bauser said the industry and the government could ask for a rehearing, ask the Supreme Court to take the case, or seek help in Congress. Making predictions beyond 10,000 years was harder, he said. "Uncertainties clearly increase with greater periods of time," he said.
Mr. Bauser's group had argued that the government's rules were too restrictive. The Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum permissible radiation dose for people outside the boundary of the Yucca project, and set a second standard for the maximum dose that they could receive through contamination of well water. The industry said that there was no basis for a separate water standard, but the court disagreed.
Over the long term, rainwater percolating through the mountain and then flowing underground to wells is the most likely way that the public would be exposed. Because nuclear waste breaks down over time, eventually becoming harmless, predicting doses requires calculating the rate at which different radioactive materials will decay and how fast each would flow through the dirt.
Nuclear materials are measured according to their "half life," or the time it takes for half the radiation to die away. Half lives for the isotopes reaching Yucca vary from decades to millions of years, time periods that the judges called "beyond human comprehension."
The decision also gave Nevada the right to challenge the Environmental Impact Statement done by the Energy Department. Nevada wants to argue that the department gave insufficient attention to one of the alternatives, leaving the waste where it is, mostly in the spent fuel pools of nuclear reactors or in concrete casks nearby. Nevada also wants to challenge government estimates of the environmental impact of transporting the waste.
At the very least, the decision makes it even less likely that the Energy Department can stick to its schedule of 2010 to begin accepting waste at the site, on the edge of the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas, where the department and its predecessor agencies tested nuclear bombs for decades. The department was planning to file an application for a license later this year, with another agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is supposed to make a licensing decision using standards set by the E.P.A. The commission expected to begin hearings next spring, but the E.P.A. has been told to rewrite the rule.
The E.P.A. said when it set the 10,000 year standard that this was consistent with rules on other kinds of hazardous materials. It also said that anything longer would bring in factors that were hard to account for, like climate change that would make the Nevada desert much wetter.
But with the demise of the 10,000-year standard, a lawyer for Nevada, Joseph Egan, said, "As a practical matter, that means the licensing proceeding is completely on hold."
Even before Friday's decision, the 2010 date was regarded by people in the nuclear industry as highly suspect, because of the unprecedented nature of the legal proceedings that would be required before the commission could grant a license.
The $9 billion already spent by the Energy Department on the project has mostly been collected from nuclear utilities, which signed contracts to pay for waste disposal and the department faces lawsuits that may seek hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for the failure to keep its end of the deal.
Joseph Davis, a spokesman for the department, said that program managers would evaluate the impact of the decision on the schedule. Nuclear power plant operators have avoided any short-term problem by installing steel-and-concrete casks to hold the waste, a solution likely to last for decades at least. The military waste that has been solidified in preparation for burial at Yucca is also stored in a form that would be suitable for decades as well.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghans Set Date To Elect a President
By Stephen Graham
Associated Press
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38677-2004Jul9.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 9 -- Afghanistan's repeatedly delayed presidential election will take place Oct. 9, its top electoral official said Friday, but a parliamentary election scheduled to be held at the same time was put off until spring.
The presidential election, the first direct one in the country's history, is seen as a referendum on the rebuilding of this war-ravaged nation and a test of the ability of Afghan and international forces to keep the peace.
Zakim Shah, head of the Afghan-U.N. electoral commission, announced on state television that the council "decided to hold the presidential election on Mizan 18" -- a date on Afghanistan's calendar that corresponds to Oct. 9.
He said the parliamentary vote would probably be held in April or May and appealed to Afghan authorities and international organizations and foreign countries to do more "to create a more secure atmosphere for the candidates and the voters."
The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, welcomed the decision. "We think that the elections will mark another major step in Afghanistan's transition to a constitutional and representative government and constitute another milestone," he said.
"We join the Afghan government in fully supporting the electoral body's decision," he added.
Boucher said the United States would provide funds, training and expertise, as well as security.
Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed interim president, is predicted to win the vote for the top job, but he faces at least half a dozen rivals in this ethnically and regionally fractured country. If he wins fewer than the 50 percent of the votes needed for outright victory, a runoff will be held two weeks later.
The elections are meant to crown a faltering U.N.-sponsored drive to stabilize Afghanistan, begun at a conference in Bonn after the ouster of the ruling Taliban militia in late 2001.
International peacekeepers have brought relative calm to the capital, Kabul, which is enjoying a boom. Millions of Afghan refugees have returned, and a debilitating drought has eased. But persistent violence is depriving much of southern Afghanistan of desperately needed reconstruction, and the elections are threatened by the warlords who hold de facto power outside of Kabul.
-------- australia
Australia Stands by Iraq War, Despite U.S. Report
July 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-intelligence-australia.html
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Australian government, a staunch ally in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Saturday stood by its decision to go to war despite a U.S. Senate report discrediting the intelligence Washington used to justify it.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was justified because Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programs and missiles that could reach beyond a designated United Nations range.
``It is perfectly clear from what we've found out since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime that Saddam Hussein's regime was in clear breach of Security Council resolutions,'' Downer told reporters Saturday.
``He had missiles that exceeded the designated United Nations range. It was perfectly clear he had chemical and biological weapons programs. Chemical shells have been found in Iraq which are supposed to have been declared and destroyed,'' Downer said.
A U.S. Senate committee report said Friday that American intelligence agencies had overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, relied on dubious sources and ignored contrary evidence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
But the report found no sign that the White House had pressured analysts to reach pre-set conclusions.
The second part of the committee's investigation -- examining how the Bush administration used the intelligence -- was unlikely to be finished before the Nov. 2 presidential election.
Australia was one of the first nations to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq, dispatching some 2,000 military personnel to the Middle East and Iraq.
Prime Minister John Howard said the war was necessary to stop terror groups obtaining weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.
An Australian parliamentary report in March found that Australia's intelligence agencies had relied on U.S. and British intelligence reports on Iraq prior to the war.
The report said Australian intelligence assessments were more moderate and cautious, but they still overstated the possibility of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Downer said the debate over whether certain pieces of intelligence on Iraq were accurate ``would go on forever.''
``In the end the right decision was made to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime and eliminate that threat to human rights, neighboring countries and the international community,'' he said.
WORLD SAFER
U.S. Senator John Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the Iraq war had left the United States less safe and would affect national security for generations.
But Downer rejected any suggestion that the Iraq war had worsened international security, saying it had eliminated a breeding ground for terror groups. ``It's good for Australia as well as the rest of the world,'' he said.
Australia's opposition Labor party, which initially supported the Iraq war but now opposes the Australian troop presence in Iraq, urged Howard to apologize to Australians for going to war.
``If John Howard had any sense of self-respect today he would apologize to the Australian people for taking them to war on the basis of a lie,'' Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said.
``John Howard's claimed that Iraq possessed stockpiles of completed chemical and biological weapons. He said we had to go to war to remove those weapons so that they would not get into the hands of terrorists,'' said Rudd.
Iraq is looming as a major election issue in Australia, which is expected to go to a close poll in October.
Labor has promised to bring Australia's remaining 800-odd troops home by Christmas if it defeats the eight-year conservative government. Howard has said the troops will stay in Iraq until their job is done.
-------- britain
Britain's top cop warns on terrorism
AFP
July 10, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10093364%255E2703,00.html
LONDON: Britain's most senior police officer, John Stevens, announced his intention to retire with a warning that terrorism remains a constant menace to the capital.
"London has been the target of unsuccessful terrorist attacks and a lot have been disrupted," the chief of London's Metropolitan Police told BBC radio as he confirmed he plans to step down next year.
Britain remains on heightened alert against terrorist attacks, with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network seen as the number one threat to the country.
"We can't disclose to the people what we are doing covertly and even overtly," Sir John said.
"But we, and the security services MI5 and MI6, are working incredibly hard, and there are massive resources that we're using to ensure no one breaks through in a successful attack."
After the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in March, Sir John revealed there had been attempted assaults in Britain. "We have actually stopped terrorist attacks happening in London," he said, but gave no further details.
London mayor Ken Livingstone said it would be "miraculous" if the British capital escaped attack.
Without explicitly referring to al-Qa'ida's style of cross-border terrorism, Sir John said terrorism today "has to be looked at in a different way than we look at Northern Ireland terrorism".
Speaking in parliament yesterday, Home Secretary David Blunkett cited the danger posed by "sleepers" who hold down "normal, professional jobs" while awaiting the order to carry out an attack.
"In the United Kingdom, we've seen the superb work of our services disrupting and foiling potential attacks," Mr Blunkett said.
Sir John, 61, a police officer for 43 years, said he would retire next January 31.
-------- iraq
U.S. Marines Kill Two Iraqis in Ramadi
July 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-shooting.html
RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. marines killed two Iraqis and wounded six in the restive town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, Saturday, but accounts of the shooting conflicted.
Residents said U.S. snipers had fired from a building at drivers and pedestrians for no apparent reason, but the U.S. military said the dead were gunmen.
``They killed one poor man with a bullet in his brain,'' one man said. ``No one even looked at them (the Americans) or came close to them or talked to them. They just opened fire.''
An official at the local hospital said residents had brought in two bodies and six wounded, including two children.
The U.S. military said Marines had opened fire after coming under attack.
``There was a clash at approximately 6:15 a.m.today near a taxi stop in Ramadi between U.S. Marines and approximately seven enemy fighters dressed in black,'' it said in a statement.
``Those seven fired on the Marines from the taxi stop. The Marines returned fire, killing two of the attackers and seized the vehicle they used, which had a machine gun mount in the back.''
It said there had been no U.S. fatalities.
``The Americans are cowards, pigs and monkeys,'' one resident spat, as he showed reporters a blood-stained car and bullet-pocked shops after the shooting.
People in the Sunni Muslim town also criticized Iraq's interim government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
``Why doesn't that Allawi defend Ramadi as he defends the Americans? We are his people. Why doesn't he tell them to leave?'' one man asked.
Allawi's government took over from the U.S.-led occupation on June 28. It relies on 160,000 mainly American foreign troops for security, while it builds up fledgling Iraqi forces.
-------- israel / palestine
EXCERPTS
In Words of World Court, a Wall That Is `Contrary to International Law'
July 10, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/international/middleeast/10BTEX.html
Following are excerpts from the nonbinding decision on Friday by the International Court of Justice, which concluded that Israel's construction of the barrier in the West Bank is illegal.
. . . Whilst the Court notes the assurance given by Israel that the construction of the wall does not amount to annexation and that the wall is of a temporary nature, it nevertheless cannot remain indifferent to certain fears expressed to it that the route of the wall will prejudge the future frontier between Israel and Palestine, and the fear that Israel may integrate the [Jewish] settlements and their means of access.
The Court considers that the construction of the wall and its associated regime create a fait accompli on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case, and notwithstanding the formal characterization of the wall by Israel, it would be tantamount to de facto annexation. . . .
The Court is of the opinion that the construction of the wall and its associated regime impede the liberty of movement of the inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (with the exception of Israeli citizens and those assimilated thereto), as guaranteed under Article 12, Paragraph 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
They also impede the exercise by the persons concerned of the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Lastly, the construction of the wall and its associated regime, by contributing to the demographic changes, . . . contravene Article 49, Paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Security Council resolutions cited [above]. . . .
The fact remains that Israel has to face numerous indiscriminate and deadly acts of violence against its civilian population. It has the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens. The measures taken are bound nonetheless to remain in conformity with applicable international law.
In conclusion, the Court considers that Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defense or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall resulting from the considerations mentioned. . . .
The Court accordingly finds that the construction of the wall, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law. . . .
Israel accordingly has the obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built by it in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem.
Moreover, in view of the Court's finding that Israel's violations of its international obligations stem from the construction of the wall and from its associated regime, cessation of those violations entails in practice the dismantling forthwith of those parts of that structure situated within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem.
All legislative and regulatory acts adopted with a view to its construction, and to the establishment of its associated regime, must forthwith be repealed or rendered ineffective, except insofar as such acts, by providing for compensation or other forms of reparation for the Palestinian population, may continue to be relevant for compliance by Israel with the obligations referred to. . . .
The Court finds further that Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned.
Israel is accordingly under an obligation to return the land, orchards, olive groves and other immovable property seized from any natural or legal person for purposes of construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In the event that such restitution should prove to be materially impossible, Israel has an obligation to compensate the persons in question for the damage suffered.
The Court considers that Israel also has an obligation to compensate, in accordance with the applicable rules of international law, all natural or legal persons having suffered any form of material damage as a result of the wall's construction.
--------
Major Portion of Israeli Fence Is Ruled Illegal
July 10, 2004
By GREGORY CROUCH and GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/international/middleeast/10BARR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
THE HAGUE, July 9 - The International Court of Justice ruled Friday that the major portion of the barrier Israel is building violated international law because it was rising on Palestinian land on the West Bank.
In a nonbinding decision, it called on Israeli officials to tear down the sections it ruled to be illegal and to compensate Palestinians whose land it cuts across or whose interests have otherwise been harmed..
The opinion, endorsed by all 15 justices with the exception of the sole American, Thomas Buergenthal, found that the barrier "constitutes breaches by Israel of its obligations under the applicable humanitarian law" and that it "cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order."
Palestinian officials immediately hailed the advisory opinion as a major legal victory. "This is an excellent decision," the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, told reporters at his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "This is a victory for the Palestinian people and for all the free peoples of the world."
Israel, which has all along challenged the jurisdiction of the panel - the United Nations' top court - said Friday it would press ahead with the planned 437-mile stretch of electronic fences, watch posts and concrete walls, which it credits with helping to dramatically curb the number of suicide bombings in the country.
"I believe that after all the rancor dies, this resolution will find its place in the garbage can of history," said Raanan Gissin, senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The United States reiterated Friday its belief that the barrier's fate should be determined by diplomatic and political negotiations rather than court decisions.
"We do not believe that that's the appropriate forum to resolve what is a political issue," the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said aboard Air Force One as President Bush traveled to Pennsylvania.
About 120 miles of the 437-mile barrier have been completed since construction started about two years ago. Parts of the fence, both built and unbuilt, run along Israel's pre-1967 border, but a majority of the barrier's route is inside the Palestinian West Bank. It is this portion that was the object of the court's 64-page decision, which came on the heels of a decision last week by Israel's Supreme Court. That ruling, while finding the concept of the fence legal, also ordered the rerouting of a portion of it because it caused too much hardship on Palestinians.
The United Nations General Assembly asked the court to hear the case last December at the Palestinians' request, and the issue will probably soon make its way back to the world body. The Palestinians and the Arab League said they would ask the General Assembly to pass a resolution calling for the destruction of the wall, to keep up pressure on the Israelis. But only the 15-member Security Council can issue a binding order to that effect, and the United States would almost certainly veto any such resolution.
In the decision, large portions of which were read aloud by the court's president, Shi Jiuyong of China, the court determined that the barrier violated international humanitarian and human rights laws, infringing on the Palestinians' right to self-determination and right to freedom of movement. The Palestinians don't take issue with the barrier as long as Israel confines it to its pre-1967 borders. But many sections of the barrier that cut into the West Bank separate Palestinians from their farms, schools and jobs. The Palestinians also argued that Israel was effectively confiscating land that the Palestinians are demanding for a future state. The court agreed.
While acknowledging that Israel had "the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens," the court said the path of the barrier could work toward creating a "de facto annexation" of Palestinian land by Israel through the creation of "a fait accompli on the ground that could well become permanent."
The court said Israel should begin "dismantling forthwith those parts of that structure situated within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem" and make reparations for damages caused to the Palestinians.
Judge Buergenthal, the American, said in his dissent that the court should have declined to hear the case because it lacked sufficient information and evidence "for its sweeping findings."
Leaving open the possibility that some or even all sections of the barrier in the West Bank violate international law and acknowledging that "the wall is causing deplorable suffering to many Palestinians," the judge said the court should not have ruled until it had considered "all relevant facts bearing directly on issues of Israel's legitimate right of self-defense"
He said the impact of "repeated deadly terror attacks" was something "never really seriously examined by the court."
Israeli officials have acknowledged that the barrier has made life difficult for some Palestinians, but argue that it has saved innumerable lives since construction began.
"The fence is unpleasant, but believe me, being attacked by a homicide bomber is much less pleasant," said Ehud Olmert, Israel's deputy prime minister. "The fence may not be convenient, but it doesn't kill people."
There have been no deadly Palestinian bombings inside Israel's 1967 borders in almost four months, the longest such stretch since the Palestinian uprising began almost four years ago.
The barrier's path is about 100 yards wide, and Israel's Defense Ministry, which is responsible for the construction, says it has had to remove tens of thousands of Palestinian olive trees.
Israel chose not to make oral arguments to the court earlier this year, saying the body lacked jurisdiction in the matter.
Israeli officials said they would rely instead on their own judicial branch for guidance. The country's Supreme Court last week ordered the government to reroute about 20 miles of the barrier under construction northwest of Jerusalem and in a second decision froze construction on another part of the project. The court said Israel must balance security concerns with the needs of Palestinians.
Mr. Sharon has said his government will abide by the Israeli court decision to reconfigure the 20-mile section and is working on a new route in that area. But Palestinians argued Friday that Israel would face increasing isolation around the world if it did not adhere to the international court's decision, as well.
"Israel has a choice to formally become an outlaw state or do its best to try and comply with the provisions," said Nasser al-Kidwa, leader of the Palestinian observer mission to the United Nations, in an interview in The Hague.
Gregory Crouch contributed reporting from The Hague for this article, and Greg Myre from Jerusalem.
--------
Israel Asks U.S. for Support at U.N. Over Barrier
July 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has asked Washington to block any U.N. Security Council resolution that would act on Friday's World Court ruling that Israel's West Bank barrier is illegal, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Saturday.
``The issue will go to the Security Council because the (Palestinians) can muster an automatic majority in the U.N. General Assembly,'' Shalom told Israel Radio.
He said he had just spent a week in the United States trying to stop the ``all out party'' he expected the Palestinians to seek to arrange at the Security Council. ``I am therefore assuming ... that there is a good chance there will be a veto,'' he added.
The World Court, the U.N.'s highest tribunal, issued a non-binding opinion that the partially built barrier, which cuts into the West Bank, should be dismantled. Only the 15-nation Security Council can take action on the ruling, but as a permanent member, Israel's ally the United States can veto it.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat hailed the court's decision, saying it ``was a sign that the world supports the Palestinians in rejecting this wall.''
``This wall cannot be imposed on us and this wall will ... be removed,'' he said at his West Bank headquarters.
Israel has said the ruling is invalid because it fails to address its stated reason it built the barrier -- to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of its cities where they have killed hundreds of people.
Palestinians call the barrier an ``apartheid wall'' that will deny them a viable state and has separated thousands from fields, schools and hospitals. Officials said they would demand the Security Council take action.
But U.S. officials made clear they opposed U.N. involvement.
``We do not believe that that's the appropriate forum to resolve what is a political issue,'' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, adding it should be tackled through an internationally-backed ``road map'' to peace.
As the row over the ruling continued, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by army gunfire near the Gaza-Egypt border, medics said. Military sources said they knew of no such shooting by Israeli troops.
Haneen Abu Samhadana was in her flat when gunfire penetrated the window, hitting her in the chest, her sister said.
Later, four Palestinians were killed when a car exploded in central Gaza in an incident Palestinian security officials blamed on Israel. Israeli military officials denied involvement.
CALL TO ``PUNISH ISRAEL''
In the West Bank, Arafat's adviser Nabil Abu Rdainah said the Palestinians would use the decision to push the Security Council and General Assembly -- which requested the ruling -- to ``isolate and punish'' Israel.
``It is the responsibility of the United Nations to put in place a mechanism to commit Israel to this decision,'' Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told reporters.
The World Court said Israel must pull down the barrier and pay compensation to those who had lost their homes and land.
``The wall ... cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security,'' its head, Shi Jiuyong of China, said.
The court said the barrier -- mostly razor-tipped fences but with portions of cement walls -- ``severely impeded'' Palestinian rights to self-rule.
Israel has already vowed to keep building the 600-km (370-mile) barrier, which is about one-third complete. It says the barrier has already prevented scores of suicide bombings.
The planned route curves around Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin called the ruling unjust and said it ``will find its place in the garbage can of history.''
Israel's High Court ruled last week that Israel had the right to build a barrier in the West Bank on security grounds, but in a precedent-setting decision said parts of the structure must be rerouted to minimize Palestinian hardship.
Sharon later ordered segments of the barrier to be altered.
-------- latin america
Castro orders review of Cuba's military recruitment
HAVANA (AFP)
Jul 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040710003436.ud9v9vi9.html
Cuban President Fidel Castro has ordered a review of the Communist-ruled island's military recruitment practices following a drop in young recruits and amid the "real possibility" of foreign assault, the government announced Friday.
The decades-long ruler of this Caribbean island some 90 mileskilometers) off the coast of Florida and a longtime bogeyman of US presidents, has ordered a government commission to draw up new recruitment proposals.
"International tensions have risen against our country, underlining the real possibility of an armed aggression," the government statement said.
Castro on numerous occasions has accused the United States of preparing to invade his country.
-------- mideast
THE GULF
Warning of Threatened Terror Attacks Against Bahrain Brings Pullout of American Civilians
July 10, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/international/middleeast/10BAHR.html
KUWAIT, July 7 - The families of American sailors, marines and other military servicemen and -women have begun leaving a major naval base in the tiny island nation of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf since the Pentagon warned that terrorists were planning imminent attacks against Americans there.
The American pullout of civilians from Bahrain - a country with little violent crime, no significant history of terrorist activity and recent moves toward democratic rule - has raised the ominous possibility that the terrorist threat has begun seeping through the entire gulf region from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and a few other places.
The State Department recommended that Americans in Bahrain leave and others avoid traveling there, and it authorized family members of employees at the American Embassy to leave if they wished.
Within Bahrain, a place that local officials refer to as an island of peace and stability, and one where the United States Navy has maintained a presence for half a century, the move has caused deep consternation.
If other countries follow the move by the United States, it can affect the financial and tourism industries here, not to mention the Bahraini psyche, which has long functioned symbiotically with American expatriates who have found this a congenial, if temporary, home.
"We treasure and value a lot our special relationship with the United States," said Muhammad Abdul Ghaffar Abdullah, the minister of state for foreign affairs, who like many Bahraini officials spent years living and working in the United States. "If they leave, we wish that they come back soon."
In one indication that the American warnings have already had wider resonances, Canada has now posted on its consular affairs Web site a caution to its citizens on the dangers of traveling or living in Bahrain.
Dr. Abdullah said he understood that the warnings might have been less a reflection on Bahraini citizens than on international terrorists - in particular, the ones across the 12-mile causeway connecting this nation with Saudi Arabia.
But many Bahrainis also speculate that the arrest and quick release two weeks ago of six local terror suspects may have led to an overreaction by the United States.
The release was required by one of those democratic reforms that the United States has praised, a law requiring that suspects be detained for no more than 48 hours without compelling evidence. "They were really arrested by law," said Maj. Gen. Abdul Latif R. al-Zayani, chief of public security at the Interior Ministry. "They were detained by law. And we made sure that we respected the human rights."
He said that the investigation was continuing and that experts were combing through things like seized computers for any evidence that would justify going to trial.
An investigation of the terror threat was already in motion when the arrests were made, said Vice Adm. David C. Nichols, commander of United States Naval Forces Central Command and the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which operates in the Persian Gulf. "I would say the fact that they released them right in the middle of this probably didn't help," Admiral Nichols said, "but frankly I don't think the decision would have been any different in the short term had they held on to these guys."
He said he supported the decision, ultimately made by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, because so many family members of the 4,500 employees at the base live scattered about in the community. That is unusual in the Middle East, where residence within secure compounds is more common.
The admiral said he estimated that some 900 family members would be affected.
"My wife is here and she's not happy, nor are any of the families happy, nor am I happy," he said. "But the fact is, this is a prudent thing to do."
Whatever the complexities of the local issues, said Gary G. Sick, a specialist on the Middle East at Columbia University who served with the United States Navy in Bahrain in the 1960's, peaceful gulf nations like Bahrain may have to face the unpleasant reality that terrorists can move easily across their borders.
An attack by groups like Al Qaeda in Bahrain, Dr. Sick said, "would in effect tell the Arab world that we can strike wherever, that there are no safe havens."
In dire language, the State Department advisory warns that "extremists are planning attacks against U.S. and other Western interests in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Credible information indicates that extremists remain at large."
Helping to account for the puzzled reaction within the country, the downtown streetscapes are clean and modern to a fault, service in restaurants is punctual and polite, and the casual traveler would be hard pressed to feel any sense of danger while traveling about.
There was exactly one murder in Bahrain in 2003, according to Interior Ministry statistics, and an average of 4.4 in the previous five years. Bahrain's population is just under 700,000.
One of the men arrested in the raid two weeks ago, Bassam Bohkawa, a software engineer with a history of outspokenness on things like Arab detainees at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, ridiculed the notion that he might be a danger to foreigners.
"This is not Yemen," Mr. Bohkawa said in an interview in the lobby of the Diplomat Hotel. "We don't even know how to use a weapon. It's a very peaceful place."
-------- spies
Welcome to the Matrix
July 10, 2004
by Madeleine Baran
The NewStandard
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/baran.php?articleid=3004
In what civil liberties advocates call the most massive database surveillance program in U.S. history, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix, continues to compile billions of records on law-abiding citizens and receive federal funding, despite public outcry and suspicion.
A Florida-based company, Seisint, Inc., created the database shortly after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by combining the company's own commercial databases with law enforcement records.
Now law enforcement officials in participating states can comb the database to investigate ordinary crimes and terrorist threats. Matrix contains an unprecedented amount of information: current and past addresses and phone numbers, arrest records, real estate information, photographs of neighbors and business associates, car make, model and color, marriage and divorce records, voter registration records, hunting and fishing licenses, and more.
For example, a user could identify all brown-haired divorced male residents of Minneapolis who drive a red Toyota Camry and are registered to vote. The data can then be displayed in "social networking charts," showing connections between individuals, photo line-ups and "target maps," according to internal Seisint documents obtained by The New Standard after a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One of the documents boasts, "When enough insignificant data is gathered and analyzed ... IT BECOMES SIGNIFICANT." (original emphasis)
Seisint sells database access to individual states. Sixteen states went through a pilot program, but after negative media coverage and concern from citizens, politicians, and even law enforcement officials, all but Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio have decided to stop using Matrix.
The states that remain show no signs of bowing to public pressure. In Florida, law enforcement and government officials have become progressively more involved in the inner workings of Matrix. The supercomputers that hold the data are housed in Seisint's Boca Raton offices, guarded by Florida state police. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement acts as "Security Agent" for the system, even outside the state.
The federal government also plays an active role. In January 2003, Florida Governor Jeb Bush met with Vice President Dick Cheney to demonstrate how the program could be used by law enforcement, and to request additional funding. The Department of Justice gave Seisint $4 million in grants in 2003. The Department of Homeland Security also provided $8 million to help run Matrix, and, last year, assumed "managerial oversight and control" of the database, according to the agreement between the DHS and Seisint.
Civil liberties advocates claim that the Matrix is amassing records on ordinary people that, in a worse case scenario, could be used to track "suspicious" individuals, and to round up those likely of committing a crime - before any crime has occurred. Matrix officials dismiss these claims, arguing that the database is just a faster way to locate criminals and terrorists.
Bill Shrewsbury, vice president of Seisint, puts it simply. By using Matrix, he said, "You stop bad people quicker before they hurt someone else. It's that simple. There's no secrets here."
But the project remains under suspicion from civil liberties and privacy advocates who have expressed a number of serious concerns, including whether the database is used to conduct "data mining," a process by which data is searched to identify potential criminals or terrorists before any crime is committed. Also of concern is the company's secrecy about precisely what kind of data Matrix includes and how vulnerable the data is to being stolen, altered or misused by hackers.
Seisint officials have repeatedly denied that the Matrix is used for data mining. Instead, they say, the Matrix is used to locate potential suspects immediately after a crime has occurred. For example, in a child kidnapping case, Matrix could quickly identify all men with sex offender status living in a certain area who drive a car of a particular make and model.
"Its not like I leave at night, and I've asked the system, 'Hey, find me a terrorist,' and I come in the next morning and it has ten potential terrorists," said Mark Zadra, Chief of Investigations and Officer of Statewide Intelligence for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
However, according to the documents uncovered by the ACLU, Seisint has also used data for exactly that purpose. Three days after 9/11, Seisint created a "terrorism quotient" to identify potential terrorists in the general population. Matrix was still in the development stage, but company officials used "Seisint artificial intelligence," billions of public records, and public Federal Aviation Administration information - information Matrix now contains - to conduct the search.
A January 2003 slide presentation by Seisint lists some of the criteria for identifying potential terrorists: age and gender, "what they did with their driver's license," either pilots or associations to pilots, proximity to "dirty addresses/phone numbers, investigational data, how they shipped, how they received, social security number anomalies, credit history, and ethnicity."
According to Seisint's presentation, an initial search revealed 120,000 individuals with a "High Terrorist Factor" score; Seisint gave the list of names to the INS, FBI, the Secret Service, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Slides from the presentation state that it led to "several arrests within one week," and "scores of other arrests." Who was arrested, and whether they were convicted of or even charged with any actual crime remains unknown.
In addition, the company claims to have identified five of the 9/11 hijackers, after the fact.
Christopher Calabrese, program counsel for the ACLU's Technology and Liberty program, questions the usefulness of the search. "They conducted a search based on information about what already happened," he said. "If it weren't so deadly serious, it would be silly."
He added, "Somebody speculates on a potential event, and adds another level of speculation," he said. "What types of activities would be necessary to execute this type of event? Those people are then de facto suspects of a crime that has never happened, and that only exists in someone's imagination."
Zadra dismissed these concerns. "We're not profiling anybody," he said. "Law enforcement has been going through this process for decades."
Shrewsbury tried to distance the terrorist search from Matrix. "We don't use that component at all," he said. "It's not on Matrix at all." However, the basic information that was used to conduct the search is still available on Matrix, and there is no way for the public to know if such searches are being conducted.
The types of data included in Matrix have also worried civil liberties and privacy activists. Finding out what exactly is in the database has been almost impossible. While the company states on its website that Seisint does not own magazine subscription lists, telephone calling records, credit card transactions or credit report trade line data, the company has refused to open its operations for verification after requests by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) and the ACLU.
Company officials insist that the data is all publicly available, and that Matrix is just compiling previously available data in a central source. "Since it's public data, my name is in there. Your name is in there," Zadra said. "It's just information we already have access to."
However, the company's own documents state that, "The associative links, historical residential information, and other information, such as an individual's possible relatives and associates, are deeper and more comprehensive than other commercially available database systems presently on the market."
Calabrese of the ACLU said using the term "public records" is a misnomer. "It's not at all clear what that means," he said, adding that Seisint seems to consider commercially available data to be "public information," though most of the public does not have access to this data. In addition, although Matrix currently operates in only five states, it has driver's license information from 15 states, motor vehicle registration from 12 states, Department of Corrections information from 33 states and sexual offender information from 27 states, according to Seisint documents.
In some cases, states have sold the data to Seisint. For instance, according to the ACLU, Ohio sold its driving records to Seisint for $50,073 two years ago. In other cases, Seisint has presumably purchased this information from commercial databases, where driver's license data is readily available.
Zadra said Matrix continues to use that information in its searches, even if it is not obtained directly from a particular state government. "We've had a lot of states that said, 'I won't participate in Matrix,'" Zadra told The NewStandard. "I say, 'You are a Matrix participant because you sell your motor vehicle and criminal information anyway.'"
The security of these billions of records has been among the most persistent concerns of privacy advocates. If a hacker gained access to the database, the information gained could be used for dozens of potential purposes, ranging from simply locating an individual to selling Matrix data to businesses for marketing purposes.
Although Seisint officials argue that its data is safe, and note that the supercomputers are housed in a secure room outfitted with motion detectors, cameras, an alarm system, and an armed guard, many privacy advocates also remain concerned that the data could still be vulnerable.
They argue that the extensive office security overlooks the main issue. The data, they say, is most vulnerable in the police stations around the state where it is used on a daily basis. In Florida, 1,000 law enforcement officials have access to the Matrix, and privacy activists are concerned that the data there could be hacked or physically stolen. Zadra dismissed these concerns, insisting that one would need a login ID and password to access the system, and that all system activity is logged.
"Step back and think about the scope of this," Calabrese said. "One thousand [access] licenses, spread out around the state, using the Matrix for God knows what."
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy advocacy organization, argues that the majority of security problems come from "people on the inside, not people on the outside," and that Seisint does little to prevent this. "I think the presumption has to be that it's not secure," he said. "Systems that have a lot of people who can have access to the data are inherently not secure, just based on the numbers."
The ACLU is attempting to pressure the five remaining states to end their contracts with Seisint; but even if this happened, the information it compiled would still exist. "Even if you knocked it out completely, it would be pretty easy to reconstruct," Calabrese said. "You can't put the genie back in the box."
In the meantime, Zadra attempted to reassure worried citizens. "I could misuse any one of hundreds of [other] databases," he said. "Granted, [Matrix] would make it easier and faster because I could get it all out of one space." He paused, then added, "We're using it for investigative purposes only."
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CIA blamed for bad data on Iraq arms
July 10, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040709-110749-4917r.htm
Flawed intelligence that led the United States to invade Iraq was the fault of the U.S. intelligence community and not the result of political pressure by the Bush administration, a report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded yesterday.
The case for war was built on a faulty assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities, according to the report, which almost exclusively blames the CIA and effectively steers clear of accusing President Bush of politicizing the intelligence.
Key assertions, particularly that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program and had chemical and biological weapons, were "either overstated, or were not supported by underlying intelligence reporting," the 500-plus-page report said.
"What the president and the Congress used to send the country to war was information provided by the intelligence community. That information was flawed," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts said.
The Kansas Republican said his committee "found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities was the result of politics or pressure."
But while the entire committee approved the report, members were divided yesterday - with top Democrat, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, saying the disagreement centered "especially on the question of whether the administration pressured the intelligence community to reach predetermined, in my judgment, conclusions."
"There is a real frustration over what is not in this report," said Mr. Rockefeller, of West Virginia, noting his concern over the question of how intelligence is "shaped or used, or misused, by the policy-makers." That issue will be the focus of a "Phase II" investigation by his committee after the November elections, he said.
Yesterday's report criticized the CIA and its director, George J. Tenet, who announced his resignation last month. Deputy Director John McLaughlin told reporters that the agency has stated there were "serious flaws" in prewar intelligence on Iraq.
"We recognize those shortcomings and, long before today's report, have taken a number of steps to address them and to ensure that they are not repeated," he said. "So, my first message to you is a simple one: We get it."
Mr. McLaughlin said it would be wrong to exaggerate the flaws or leap to the conclusion there are "sweeping problems" within the 14-agency intelligence community.
"We, along with virtually every other intelligence service on the planet, and numerous nongovernmental experts, assessed that Saddam's determined efforts to conceal what was going on in Iraq was evidence that his commitment to these terrible weapons was continuing apace," he said.
The report found problems with "most of the key judgments" in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate produced by the National Intelligence Council, which reported to Mr. Tenet and drew analysis from across the intelligence community. It said the CIA failed to give fair treatment to dissenting opinions about specific intelligence matters.
The Senate report was more than a year in the making, and its release widely anticipated. Bush administration critics may have hoped to use its findings as fodder for criticizing the president before November.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democratic, said the report failed to tell the whole story.
"Because the White House was not a subject of the investigation, many critical questions remain," she said. "How were the misperceptions about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's link to terrorism created? By whom? And why?
"It is one thing to have bad intelligence, it's quite another to mischaracterize that intelligence," Mrs. Pelosi said. "Congress must investigate whether the intelligence on Iraq was misused or manipulated."
In what may be a precursor to the Intelligence Committee's Phase II investigation, several members of the panel attached "additional views" to yesterday's report.
"Poor intelligence collection and analysis do not absolve the Bush administration of the decision to go to war," said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, in an addition near the report's final pages.
He added the Bush administration "independently compounded the failure of the intelligence community by exaggerating the community's conclusions to the public - an inappropriate course of action that could have occurred even if the intelligence had been sound."
That said, the president emerged mainly unscathed.
Calling the report "useful" in its assessment of where the intelligence community "went short," Mr. Bush said during a political stop in Pennsylvania that he wants "to know how to make the agencies better."
•Bill Gertz contributed to this report.
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Analyst Questioned Sources' Reliability
Warning Came Before Powell Report to U.N.
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39770-2004Jul9.html
A few days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave his 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction -- with its startling allegation that four individuals had confirmed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories -- a government analyst who had read a draft of the speech sent an urgent e-mail to his boss.
All those sources are suspect or unreliable, especially the key one nicknamed "Curve Ball," warned the analyst, the only U.S. intelligence official who had met Curve Ball.
The analyst received a dismissive reply. "This war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and . . . the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," replied the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraq task force. The warning was never passed on to Powell or his top aides.
The incident, detailed in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence, underscores a central theme in the committee's investigation: Although there is little evidence that intelligence analysts were pressured to change their findings, the agency ignored or belittled inconvenient or contradictory facts in its rush to present the most dramatic case against the Iraqi government.
This left the administration relying on shaky or dubious accounts from Iraqi defectors, such as the four sources who provided what Powell has called the "most dramatic" part of his 90-minute U.N. speech.
Although Powell had told the United Nations that "every statement I make today is backed by sources, solid sources," the report concluded that much of the information the CIA provided for Powell's speech was "overstated, misleading or incorrect."
Whether unusual pressure on intelligence analysts resulted in faulty reports has been one of the big questions hanging over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Officially, the committee will examine how the administration used the intelligence it received in a second report, to be completed after the presidential election.
The 440-page report released yesterday concluded that key officials, including Vice President Cheney, did not unduly pressure analysts to change their conclusions. The committee said it could find no evidence that administration officials "attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgment," and added there was no evidence that Cheney's repeated visits to the CIA were attempts to pressure analysts or even were perceived as such.
But the report provides evidence of how administration officials held preconceived notions that appear to have affected how they viewed the intelligence information they received.
One senior intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency told the committee that some officials working for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were convinced that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack and may even have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"They did not tell us what to say," the intelligence officer told the committee. "There wasn't pressure in that sense. But you certainly had to make sure that your analysis was on target and that you were very precise in the words that you used."
At one point, the committee said, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith established a team that reviewed intelligence on the links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Feith told the committee that the team "found some things that looked very interesting in the year 2002 that apparently didn't register with people or were not given great prominence." Feith's team put together a briefing for Rumsfeld and, later, for CIA Director George J. Tenet, and then attended a meeting of intelligence analysts in August 2002 that sought to assess Iraq's links to terrorism.
The analysts told the committee they found the presence of policy staffers at the meeting unusual. "Most of the [policy] staffers' concerns had to do with the use of too many caveats to the reporting, and the 'tone' of the document," the report said, though those concerns did not change analytical judgments.
Anthony Cordesman, a national security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, criticized the report for failing to investigate the question of pressure on analysts more deeply. "I know of DIA senior officers pressured out of the Pentagon, and younger analysts who left the community over political pressure," he said in an e-mailed assessment. He said that the committee also failed "to examine the fact that the intelligence community almost always responds to the user's demands and perceptions."
The committee's report said that it made repeated calls for analysts to step forward and reveal whether they were pressured by administration officials, and that the committee sought out and interviewed analysts who had been identified in news reports. Bruce Hardcastle, a senior DIA official for Middle Eastern affairs, was interviewed after a report in The Washington Post said he avoiding meeting with Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William J. Luti because he sharply disagreed with Luti over the imminence of the threat posed by Iraq.
But Hardcastle denied the Post account, telling the committee his dispute with Luti was not over Iraq but concerned the use of the word "assassination" to describe the killings of terrorist leaders by Israeli Defense Forces. He said he did not experience pressure to change assessments on Iraq, but he added: "Generally it was understood how receptive [Defense policy officials] were to our assessments and what kind of assessments they would not be receptive to."
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Senators Assail C.I.A. Judgments on Iraq's Arms as Deeply Flawed
July 10, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 9 - In a scathing, unanimous report, the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that the most pivotal assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were unfounded and unreasonable, and reflected major missteps by American intelligence agencies.
The detailed 511-page report, the result of a yearlong review, found in particular that the stark prewar judgment by American intelligence agencies that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons had not been substantiated by the agencies' own reporting at the time.
"Most of the major key judgments" in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's illicit weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting," the committee report said. "A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of intelligence."
In 117 separate conclusions, the committee laid the blame squarely on what it portrayed as a sloppy, dysfunctional intelligence structure headed by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. The report was the harshest Congressional indictment of American intelligence agencies since the Church Committee report of the mid-1970's on abuses of power by the C.I.A.
Among the central findings, endorsed by all nine Republicans and eight Democrats on the committee, were that a culture of "group think" in intelligence agencies left unchallenged an institutional belief that Iraq had illicit weapons; that significant shortcomings in human intelligence left the United States dependent on others for information about Iraqi illicit weapons programs; and that intelligence agencies too often failed to acknowledge the limited, ambiguous and even contradictory nature of their information about Iraq and illicit arms.
"In the end, what the President and the Congress used to send the country to war was information provided by the intelligence community, and that information was flawed," said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the panel's Republican chairman.
Even Mr. Roberts, an ardent supporter of the war, said he was not sure that Congress would have authorized the war had it known of the flimsiness on which the prewar intelligence assessments were based.
At a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania, President Bush acknowledged that the report had been "quite critical" and that there had indeed been "some failures" in the intelligence about Iraq's illicit weapons. But he said he still believed that toppling Saddam Hussein justified the conflict.
A spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said of the document: "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."
The Senate report was remarkable both for the severity of its criticism and the fact that it reflected a bipartisan consensus rarely seen in Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike said it underscored the urgency of moving quickly to overhaul the country's intelligence agencies.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said the intelligence failure on Iraq "will affect our national security for years to come."
At the Central Intelligence Agency, John McLaughlin, who takes over Sunday as the country's acting intelligence chief, said of the Senate criticism, "We get it."
But he said he still believed that "the judgments were not unreasonable when they were made nearly two years ago."
"We acknowledge with all that we have learned since then that we could have done better," Mr. McLaughlin said. But he said the agency had seen no need to dismiss anyone as a result of what he portrayed as honest, limited mistakes that did not justify a broader indictment.
On another issue used by Mr. Bush to justify the war, the committee said that intelligence agencies' prewar judgments about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda had generally been reasonable, but that those judgments had been largely skeptical of the idea that there were significant ties between them.
The Senate report focused exclusively on the role played by intelligence agencies, and Democrats said they wished it had addressed the question of how the Bush administration had used the intelligence as a rationale for war. Under a deal reached earlier in the year between the two parties, that issue was set aside for a later phase of the inquiry, which is not likely to be completed before the November elections.
Mr. Bush and his aides have signaled that they are moving toward naming a permanent successor to Mr. Tenet, who announced his resignation last month, after the C.I.A. had begun to review the Senate report and its critical thrust became broadly known. An announcement could come as early as next week, according to administration officials, who said the candidates now included Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, who is widely admired by Democrats as well as Republicans, and is seen as likely to win easy confirmation in the Senate.
With the election only four months away, any intelligence chief named by Mr. Bush could not count on a long tenure, a factor that could make it difficult to enlist a candidate from outside the government. But administration officials said Mr. Bush believed that the problems facing the agency were too serious and the stakes too high to leave an acting director, Mr. McLaughlin, in place for more than a limited time.
Roughly one-fifth of the version of the report made public by the committee on Friday was blacked out, reflecting material deleted at the insistence of the C.I.A. from a classified version on which the panel finished work in May. Mr. Roberts and Rockefeller, who won major concessions in weeks of negotiations over the documents' release, said they would continue to try to persuade the C.I.A. to agree that more of the document could be made public without harm to national security.
On issues related to Iraq and terrorism, the report found that American intelligence agencies had been reasonable in most of their prewar judgments, including the idea that Mr. Hussein was most likely to use his own intelligence service operatives, rather than terrorist organizations, to conduct attacks.
It also described as reasonable the C.I.A.'s assessments that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990's "did not add up to an established formal relationship" and that "there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an Al Qaeda attack."
Those conclusions have not always been reflected in statements by Bush administration officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, who in their public remarks before the war and since have attributed more sinister significance to the the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda than the C.I.A. did in its assessments.
On the issue of Iraq and illicit weapons, the huge gap between the intelligence agencies' prewar assertions, most notably in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, and the fact that no such weapons have been found has been apparent for more than a year.
What the Senate report added to the picture was the conclusion that the intelligence assessments about Iraq were not just wrong, but that they were generally unfounded and were based on very little new information gathered after 1998. That was when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, removing the eyes and ears on which the United States had heavily relied.
Among the most glaring errors committed by the agencies, the committee said, was a failure to "accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties" behind their judgments, particularly those spelled out in the National Intelligence estimate of 2002, which stated conclusively that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons program and was reconstituting its nuclear program.
That approach, the committee said, violated what had long been understood in the intelligence community to be the central responsibility of "clearly conveying to policy makers the difference between what intelligence analysts know, what they don't know, what they think, and to make sure that policy makers understand the difference."
More broadly, it said, a "group think" dynamic inside American intelligence agencies generated, from the mid-1990's, "a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons program." This internal bias, the report said, prompted analysts, collectors and managers in the C.I.A. and other agencies "to interpret ambiguous evidence as being conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active or expanding weapons of mass destructions programs."
Appearing with Mr. Rockefeller at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Mr. Roberts denounced what he called "a flawed system" that does not allow American intelligence officials to do their best work. He described the problems as reflecting "a broken corporate culture and poor management that cannot simply be solved by additional funding and personnel."
Mr. McLaughlin, who has been deputy director of central intelligence since 2000, responded at a hastily arranged news conference at the C.I.A.'s headquarters, where workmen were still removing a tent erected Thursday for a farewell ceremony for Mr. Tenet.
"I don't think we have a broken corporate culture at all," Mr. McLaughlin said. He cited the dismantling of a nuclear weapons proliferation network led by the Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan, and the capture of Qaeda leaders including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as examples of the intelligence agencies' recent successes, and he portrayed the failures involving Iraq as reflecting isolated rather than endemic problems.
"Iraq was really a unique situation," he said.
Still, Mr. McLaughlin disclosed for the first time that the agency had adopted significant changes as a result of its mistakes in Iraq, including what he described as new procedures intended to challenge long-held assumptions and a new rule that future National Intelligence Estimates will be subjected to rigorous second-guessing before publication.
In the future, Mr. McLaughlin also said, managers who oversee intelligence-collection efforts will be required to "submit in writing" an assessment of the credibility of all human intelligence sources whose information is used as the basis for National Intelligence Estimates
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Key Revisions Were Made to CIA Document
Los Angeles Times
By Mark Mazzetti Times Staff Writer
Jul 10, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=3&u=/latimests/20040710/ts_latimes/keyrevisionsweremadetociadocument
WASHINGTON - In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq (news - web sites) war, the CIA (news - web sites) hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge.
But in the unclassified version of the NIE - the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war - those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.
The repeated elimination of qualifying language and dissenting assessments of some of the government's most knowledgeable experts gave the public an inaccurate impression of what the U.S. intelligence community believed about the threat Hussein posed to the United States, the committee said.
Dedicating a section of its 511-page report to discrepancies between the two versions of the crucial October 2002 NIE, the panel laid out numerous instances in which the unclassified version omitted key dissenting opinions about Iraqi weapons capabilities, overstated U.S. knowledge about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons and, in one case, inserted threatening language into the public document that was not contained in the classified version.
"The intelligence community's elimination of the caveats from the unclassified white paper misrepresented their judgments to the public, which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments," the Senate panel's report concluded.
"The fact that the NIE changed so dramatically from its classified to its unclassified form and broke all in one direction, toward a more dangerous scenario ... I think was highly significant," the committee's vice chairman, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said Friday.
NIEs commonly take months to prepare, but the Iraq report and its unclassified version were compiled in a matter of weeks, the panel said.
As the Bush administration ratcheted up its case for war in September 2002, senators on the Intelligence Committee wrote to the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, requesting an NIE about Iraq's weapons programs and any connections to Al Qaeda. With Congress set to vote on the war resolution the next month, intelligence officials rushed to produce the estimate.
But the Senate committee's sharpest criticism of the unclassified document focused not on changes made in haste but on the systematic alteration of the classified version.
For example, the panel cited changes made in the section of the NIE dealing with chemical weapons:
"Although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile," the classified NIE read, "Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of such poisons.
In the unclassified version of the report, the phrase "although we have little specific information" was deleted. Instead, the public report said, "Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."
The Senate report also noted one instance in which a dissenting view was left out of the unclassified version.
In that example, the classified NIE stated that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents."
But in a footnote, the U.S. Air Force's director for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance said he did not agree.
By eliminating that footnote from the unclassified version, the panel said, the public NIE "is missing the fact that [the] ... agency with primary responsibility for technological analysis on UAV programs did not agree with the assessment."
During a nationally televised speech in October 2002, President Bush (news - web sites) cited the threat of Iraqi drone aircraft being used for terrorist attacks against the United States. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also discussed the UAVs in his speech to the United Nations (news - web sites) on Feb. 5, 2003.
The committee's report describes not just sins of omission, but of addition.
The classified NIE stated, for instance, that "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing ... a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives."
In the unclassified version, the words "potentially against the U.S. homeland" are inserted at the end of the statement.
During a briefing before the report was released, one committee aide said the Senate panel had asked Tenet and Stu Cohen - who, as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw production of the NIE - who was responsible for inserting those words into the unclassified document.
"They did not know and could not explain," said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A similar degree of mystery surrounds the larger question of exactly how the classified NIE morphed into its unclassified version.
According to the committee report, the intelligence community began preparing an unclassified white paper on Iraq's banned weapons in May 2002, at the request of the National Security Council.
Months later, as the administration began to make its public case for war, Congress requested an official NIE. Officials at the National Intelligence Council decided to merge the white paper with declassified elements of the NIE to produce the official unclassified version.
Yet committee staffers said Friday that, after a year of investigating, they were still trying to get to the bottom of how the key differences between the classified and unclassified versions came about.
One such difference, the committee reported, is that the classified version presented intelligence findings as assessments - usually beginning with the words "we assess that" - whereas the white paper omitted those words and stated the assessments as facts.
"We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF [cyclosarin] and VX," the classified NIE read, according to the Senate report.
The unclassified white paper read, "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX."
According to the intelligence committee report, staffers asked intelligence officials why words like "we judge" and "we assess" were removed during the declassification process.
They were told that, because officials believed the white paper would be made public as representing the view of the entire U.S. government, not simply an intelligence community product, it was more appropriate to take references to "we" out of the document. This was done, committee staffers were told, "purely for stylistic reasons."
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Spy Chiefs 'Retract Wmd Intelligence'
PA News
By James Lyons, Political Correspondent,
10 Jul 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3187967
Spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence behind Tony Blair's claim that Iraq posed a "current and serious" threat, it was reported tonight.
The Prime Minister's case for war was supposedly based on evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and was trying trying to produce more.
But MI6 has since withdrawn the assessment underpinning that case, a senior intelligence source has told BBC1's Panorama.
The rare step amounts to an admission that it was fundamentally unreliable, according to The Observer which reveals details of the interview.
Mr Blair has already admitted that Iraqi WMD may never be found ahead of Lord Butler's report on intelligence failings.
However, the PM insisted it would have been wrong to suggest that Saddam did not pose a WMD threat.
Now he will face questions about why he did not give ground earlier ahead of the Butler report on Wednesday.
The claim that the intelligence has been withdrawn comes from a single, anonymous intelligence source but meets new BBC guidelines introduced in the wake of the Hutton report.
And former senior figures in the secret services have gone on the record with their criticisms of Mr Blair in the BBC1 Panorama programme, screened 10.15pm Sunday.
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U.N. Court Rejects West Bank Barrier
Israel Says Security Fence Will Stay
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38285-2004Jul9?language=printer
PARIS, July 9 -- The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled Friday that the security barrier being constructed by Israel in the West Bank is illegal, violates the human rights of Palestinians and must be dismantled.
In a nonbinding advisory opinion, the court rejected Israel's contention that the barrier was essential for its security. It ruled that Palestinians whose land has been confiscated for the 450-mile barrier should be compensated and called on countries not to help Israel build the fence.
"Israel is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated," the court said.
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, called the ruling "a victory for the Palestinian people, adding, "We salute this decision condemning the racist wall."
Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the fence would not be removed. "It's certainly unpleasant to have the ruling, but it's more unpleasant to have suicide attacks from territories not defended by the fence," he said. "The fence is probably uncomfortable and inconvenient for the Palestinians who live alongside of it, but it doesn't kill. The fence is removable and reversible, and death is not."
The court ruled 14 to 1 against the fence, with the American judge, Thomas Buergenthal, siding with Israel. On a separate question -- whether countries should withhold aid and support for the barrier project -- the court was split 13 to 2. A Dutch judge, Pieter H. Kooijmans, joined Buergenthal in dissenting from the majority view, which called on countries "not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created" by the wall.
Palestinian legal advisers said they would seek clarification on what the judges meant by "aid or assistance" and whether the ruling amounted to a call for sanctions against Israel.
Although the ruling, which was requested by the U.N. General Assembly, is nonbinding, the court's opinions carry moral and political weight. Past decisions have been used to pressure governments in the court of public opinion, such as a ruling in 1971 against South Africa's occupation of Namibia, which led to Namibia's independence and fueled an economic boycott against South Africa's white-minority government.
Israeli officials have argued that the fence is necessary to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel from the West Bank, and they point to the dramatic drop in suicide attacks in the 18 months that the wall has been under construction. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who first conceived of the wall, has called it a temporary solution to Palestinian attacks.
But Palestinians have denounced the barrier, which cuts deep into West Bank territory to encompass Jewish settlements, as an attempt by Israel to grab Palestinian land. Palestinians also say the construction project has hindered attempts to negotiate a solution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The barrier project, which is projected to cost $1.7 billion, is actually a series of barbed wire and electronic fences, ditches and huge concrete slabs in some places. About 120 of its 447 miles have been built.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that a portion of the barrier had to be rerouted because it was causing undue hardship to Palestinians by cutting them off from their farms, schools and hospitals. Although that decision concerned only one small section of the wall north of Jerusalem, it established the principle that Israeli security needs had to be balanced against the suffering caused to Palestinians.
The International Court said in its ruling, however, that it was "not convinced that the specific course Israel has chosen for the wall was necessary to attain its security objectives."
"The wall, along its route chosen, gravely infringes a number of rights of Palestinians residing in the territory occupied by Israel, and the infringements resulting from that route cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order," the court said.
Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the ruling "a legal slam dunk for the Palestinians" and said he hoped it would "serve as a basis for new policies by the international community, which is called upon to actively resist Israeli violations."
But Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, said: "The court decided to neglect the issue of terrorism, so how can we take it seriously? If there was no terror, we wouldn't need the fence."
The decision by the court, also known as the World Court, will now go to the U.N. General Assembly, where Palestinian and other Arab diplomats are expected to press for a resolution ordering Israel to comply with the ruling or face international sanctions. The issue could end up before the Security Council, where the United States is expected to use its veto to forestall any attempt to impose sanctions.
Ahmad Jafal, 32, a Palestinian attorney who lives in Abu Dis, a town just east of Jerusalem that has been split by a section of the wall, welcomed the ruling.
"I am very happy today," said Jafal, who teaches law at Al-Quds Open University. "Even if this court ruling is not implemented, morally it is very important. It encourages the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against the wall."
Yossi Mendelevitch, an Israeli whose 13-year-old son, Yuval, was killed in a suicide bombing in Haifa in 2003, said, "No doubt the fence would have stopped this malicious murder, no doubt the fence has already stopped other attacks."
Mendelevitch criticized the court in The Hague as "biased" but said Israel should work to reroute the barrier, in line with the Israeli high court decision.
Correspondent John Ward Anderson and special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
-------- us
THE MILITARY
Marine Who Was Missing Is Said to Be in Good Health
July 10, 2004
By MARK LANDLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/international/middleeast/10MARI.html
FRANKFURT, July 9 - An American marine who turned up in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, three weeks after vanishing in Iraq, was flown Friday to an American military hospital in Germany where doctors said he was exhausted and had lost 20 pounds, but otherwise appeared to be in good health.
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, a 24-year-old Lebanese-American, did not offer any details about what happened to him during his disappearance, said the commander of the hospital, Col. Rhonda L. Cornum.
"He has not volunteered, and nobody has asked him," she said in a telephone interview late Friday.
Corporal Hassoun will be debriefed by psychologists and military intelligence officials, Colonel Cornum said, but that process is separate from an inquiry being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service into his disappearance.
"Whatever he says here won't be held against him," Colonel Cornum said. "We do that for people."
She said Corporal Hassoun would be kept for three to five days at the hospital, which is on a secluded hilltop in the southwestern German town of Landstuhl. Marine Corps officials said he would then probably be transferred to his home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
"We were pleased to learn he is safe, and appears to be in good health," said Maj. Tim Keefe, a spokesman for the Marines. "The focus right now is on his well-being. It is not on the investigation."
The military investigators will have much to unravel. During the period that Corporal Hassoun was missing, he was variously reported to have been beheaded by Islamic militants, to have deserted his unit and been abducted on his way to Lebanon, and to have staged the entire disappearance.
Major Keefe said the military still had no idea what had happened to Corporal Hassoun between June 19, when he was last seen with his Marine unit in Iraq, and Thursday, when he walked into the American Embassy in a suburb of Beirut, accompanied by relatives.
Family members gathered at the airport in Beirut on Friday to see off Corporal Hassoun, who was flown to Germany in a C-17 transport plane.
"He slept a lot on the plane," Colonel Cornum said. "He said he hasn't gotten a lot of sleep lately."
But she said that Corporal Hassoun was alert, in good spirits, and that he had told doctors he was relieved to be at the hospital. For security reasons, he is being kept in a room with tightly restricted access.
Major Keefe said military officials had contacted members of Corporal Hassoun's family for help in the investigation.
Adding to the murkiness of the tale, Corporal Hassoun's reappearance coincided with a gun battle in his family's hometown of Tripoli, Lebanon, between his close relatives and extended members of the Hassoun clan.
The violence erupted when members of a rival clan went to the shop of a distant cousin, Mohammed Hassoun, in a nearby street, Lebanese security officials said.
The men, alternatively described as religious fundamentalists or business rivals of the cousin, taunted him by saying he was an American collaborator. The cousin, insulted, opened fire at them, killing two people and wounding three, the security people said.
The gunman was arrested, they said, but relatives of the victims were believed responsible for subsequently burning his carpet shop, the officials said.
At a news conference on Friday in West Jordan, Utah, where Corporal Hassoun's immediate family settled after emigrating from Lebanon, his older brother, Mohamad Hassoun, asked that the American and Lebanese governments protect his family.
"Unfortunately, we feel that we are being attacked on two fronts," Mr. Hassoun said. "I call on President Bush and Prime Minister Hariri to take the necessary steps to provide support and security to our extended family."
"Our intent is to prevent any further bloodshed, and we do not want our loyalty and nationalism questioned during these difficult times," he added.
Corporal Hassoun is being treated by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which has handled celebrated cases like that of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the Army private who was freed from captivity in a raid by American Special Forces soldiers after being wounded and held by Iraqi troops.
Mr. Hassoun said one of his brothers and a cousin were on their way to Germany to be with Corporal Hassoun.
"He is doing well physically but mentally he still needs some time to recover," Mr. Hassoun said in Utah. "It has been an emotional roller coaster, to say the least."
Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, for this article, and Melissa Sanford from West Jordan, Utah.
--------
Marine: Lighter, But A Deserter?
(CBS/AP)
July 10, 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/06/iraq/main627553.shtml
A U.S. Marine who resurfaced in Lebanon nearly three weeks after vanishing in Iraq in a reported kidnapping is doing well and recovering at an American military hospital in Germany, a Marine spokesman said Saturday.
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun "has had a full night's sleep and some breakfast. He's up and awake now, and he has been given telephone cards and access to a phone," said Maj. Tim Keefe, who visited Hassoun on Saturday morning.
Hassoun is expected to remain at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he is being debriefed and evaluated by doctors, until early next week, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.
He then will return to his home unit in Camp Lejeune, N.C., Keefe said.
Hassoun is a Lebanese-born Muslim who was working in Iraq as an Arabic translator, Keefe added.
Hassoun, of West Jordan, Utah, arrived in Germany on Friday night from Lebanon, where he turned up at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Thursday. The 24-year-old had been missing since June 20 from his base near the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah.
During the last three weeks, conflicting reports emerged about Hassoun's fate. Some said he was beheaded.
On June 27, Arab television showed a videotape of Hassoun with his eyes covered by a white blindfold and a sword hanging over his head.
The Navy is now investigating whether the kidnapping might have been a ruse.
Hassoun is out of danger, but he is not out of trouble, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
Technically in time of war, desertion is punishable by death, but nobody's talking about that right now," said Martin, at the Pentagon. "Everybody's just trying to figure out what the heck happened here."
Doctors who evaluated Hassoun on his arrival at Landstuhl said he was in excellent physical condition but had lost about 20 pounds.
Military investigators are not expected to question Hassoun while he is hospitalized, Keefe said.
"At this point he is a patient; we have to learn the facts before anything is done," Keefe said.
"I don't think it's going to come out for quite a while, and that could mean several days or several weeks."
--------
New Sex Charges Against Soldier in Iraq
July 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-abuse-england.html
In July 9 MIAMI item headlined ``UPDATE 1-New sex charges against US soldier in Iraq scandal,'' please read in paragraph 5 ``Spc. Charles Graner'' instead of ``Sgt. Charles Graner,'' correcting title.
A corrected repetition follows.
MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. military prosecutors have lodged new sex charges against a female soldier photographed holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash in an abuse scandal that rattled the U.S. war effort in Iraq, officials said Friday.
The new charges against Pfc. Lynndie England, who faces a host of charges for allegedly abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, were unrelated to mistreatment of Iraqis, the officials said.
A statement issued in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said she was charged late Thursday with violating a rule that prohibits creation and possession of sexually explicit photographs and with four counts of indecent acts.
England had been due to face a military court in Fort Bragg Monday, but her lawyers requested a delay, a military spokesman said.
England became pregnant in Iraq and media reports have said the father is one of her superiors, Spc. Charles Graner, who also has been charged in the abuse scandal.
Monday's hearing is the first stage of legal proceedings, known as an Article 32 investigation, to decide whether England should face trial.
The original charges state that she conspired to mistreat Iraqi prisoners, assaulted prisoners on at least three occasions, committed acts prejudicial to good order and committed an indecent act.
England, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, was charged along with six other U.S. military police reservists with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One soldier has been sentenced to a year in prison after admitting abuse charges.
Lawyers for some of the accused MPs have said intelligence officers ordered the soldiers to ``soften up'' prisoners for questioning. The Pentagon has denied accusations it sanctioned rough treatment to make people talk.
``OBEYEING ORDERS''
England has said she was obeying orders when she was photographed in gleeful poses with humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In one of the pictures, taken in late 2003, she pointed at the genitals of a hooded, naked man, a cigarette dangling from her lips.
The photographs were made public in April and prompted worldwide protest against the U.S. treatment of war prisoners, damaging U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
President Bush and other U.S. officials apologized but put the blame on a small group of soldiers. The alleged abuse took place as U.S. forces pressed prisoners for information to halt a bloody insurgency.
The legal proceeding at Fort Bragg Monday is known as an Article 32 investigation. A hearing officer will decide whether England should face trial.
The U.S. military statement Friday offered no details about the new charges and officials were not immediately available for comment.
England's lawyers, who have called their client a ``poster child'' for the Bush administration's flawed Iraq war policies, will be able to call witnesses. But Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will not be among them.
``They are not on the (witness) list. We requested it but they were denied,'' Lori Hernandez, a member of England's legal team, told Reuters this week.
Pictures taken at Abu Ghraib showed U.S. soldiers piling naked Iraqis into a pyramid and threatening them with dogs. In one, a hooded prisoner has electrical wires attached to his body.
-------- war crimes / ICC
Court verdict on Israeli barrier
AFP
July 10, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10094067%255E401,00.html
THE International Court of Justice today started reading its ruling on the legality of Israel's West Bank barrier after leaked documents indicated that the UN's top legal body would find the wall illegal and call for its destruction.
The reading of the ruling, which is non-binding, began at 3pm (11pm AEST) yesterday and was expected to take more than two hours.
The much-anticipated hearing of the court's 15-judge panel got underway as leaked copies of what appeared to be the official document were already circulating on the Internet, quoting the court as saying the wall was "contrary to international law".
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
D.C. court braces for detainee cases
July 10, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040709-103957-1953r.htm
The U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit is prepared to handle potentially hundreds of cases in the wake of Thursday's ruling by a federal appeals court that the 594 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can use the D.C. court to pursue challenges to their continued detention.
"We have assumed a wait-and-see attitude on this until we know how many cases there might be and in what form they will come to us," said Sheldon Snook, administrative assistant to Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan. "But the numbers are not unprecedented and while they might cause some problems, we've done it before."
Mr. Snook said the court's 15 judges have met concerning the potential cases.
"We might be working nights and weekends, but we'll get it done," he said.
On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in a ruling written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, said the U.S. District Court in D.C. was the proper venue given that the detainees are located overseas and would be suing the federal government.
The ruling was the first time an appeals court had determined where the challenges should be lodged. It followed a Supreme Court decision last month rejecting the Bush administration's position that detainees could be maintained in military custody indefinitely, without charges or trial, because they were apprehended as suspected terrorists.
It was the Supreme Court that ordered the appeals court to determine the proper venue in a single case involving a Libyan, Salim Gherebi, who was captured in Afghanistan and is challenging his two-year detention.
Meanwhile, Navy Secretary Gordon England yesterday said at a press briefing that reviews are under way at Guantanamo to determine whether to release or detain each of those in custody. He said reviews are aimed at determining the "security needs of our nation and the human rights of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Naval Base."
Mr. England, named by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to oversee the review process, said separate review boards have been formed, each with three military officers, who will make recommendations to him for a final decision on each detainee.
Another group of officers, he said, will work exclusively with each of the detainees to compile and present to the review board any facts from the detainee or from his home country. In addition, the detainee - with appropriate translators - will be able to personally appear before the board, he said.
The panels will determine whether a detainee is properly classified as an enemy combatant and, if not, then the detainee would be released to his home country, Mr. England said.
An enemy combatant has been described by the Pentagon as "an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners" during the 2001 war in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had ordered that all Guantanamo Bay detainees be notified within 10 days of their opportunity to appear before the panels.
-------- immigration / refugees
Choosing Canada
Americans opposed to Bush administration are flooding into Victoria.
Straight Goods
Ross Crockford
July 10, 2004
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature3.cfm?REF=708
When the United States invaded Iraq, Ann Wilson knew it was time to get out of California. She was a community organizer working for nonprofits and youth groups in a small town near Santa Barbara, and during the weeks leading up to the war, she'd been distributing leaflets at a local farmers' market, calling for further UN weapons inspections and opposing Halliburton's mideast expansion plans. But when the bombing started, the market banned her. And when she protested, some of her neighbours got ugly.
"We were spit at. We were called traitors," she says. "It was too much." She and her husband, a building contractor, considered their options. "We kept saying, 'We're moving to Canada!' It was a joke, but as things became more serious, we became more serious."
So last September the Wilsons sold their house, moved to Salt Spring Island, and applied for permanent residency in Canada. (They haven't got it yet, so their names have been changed for this story.) "It was a big deal to say, 'I'm leaving'," Ann says, because her family's been in the States since confederation. "But I'm glad I did."
Over the past couple of months, as the "war on terror" has spun out of control, articles have started appearing in liberal American media outlets like Utne Reader and Alternet, debating the merits of leaving the United States and going into political exile. (Even Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore says he'll move to Canada if George Bush is re-elected.) Now, it seems, some Americans are actually doing it. It's hard to say how many, because Immigration Canada hasn't released its numbers for 2003. But if you ask B&B owners and realtors, the trend is apparent: one realtor told Monday that half his current American clients cite the Bush administration as a reason why they're looking for property in Victoria.
"I signed up to defend my country, not to be a pawn in some sort of political ideology."
Immigration consultants hear this, too. "The primary motivation is lifestyle, but there definitely is an undercurrent of political motivation as well," says James Norris, a former diplomat who's provided immigration advice in Victoria since 1982. "Of the Americans I've worked for in the last year or two, many are Democrats, and they're firmly against George Bush and the war in Iraq."
Georgia Ireland fits Norris's profile: she worked in information technology in San Francisco, became "appalled" by events in the US, took early retirement, and moved to Victoria late last year. "I had it good. But I like the values here," she says. "You can see where your taxes are going, to health care and schools instead of the military."
Ireland got citizenship because her mother was Canadian, and the Wilsons have university degrees and experience at skilled jobs, so they're likely to get citizenship too. But it's difficult for young Americans without such qualifications to come to Canada - especially young US soldiers, many of whom had to join the army to get job training and a paid university education in the first place. Instead, their only option, aside from marrying a Canadian, is to claim that they're refugees - and because of the war in Iraq, some are doing exactly that.
"I signed up to defend my country, not to be a pawn in some sort of political ideology," says Jeremy Hinzman, 25, who was in Victoria recently to speak to peace groups. Hinzman joined the US Army in January 2001, enticed by its promises of up to $50,000 for college. But he was horrified by basic training designed to turn recruits into mindless killers, and he started attending a Quaker church. He claimed he was a conscientious objector, but his application was refused and he was sent to Afghanistan. He returned home, but when his unit was deployed again this January, to Iraq, he fled to Toronto with his Vietnamese wife and son, and claimed that he is a political refugee from the United States - where he faces at least five years in prison, or possibly the death penalty for deserting during wartime.
Will Canada's umbrella of refugee protection extend to deserters like Hinzman?
"If I'm punished for refusing to fight in a war that's recognized by the international community as illegal, then that's persecution for a political opinion," says Hinzman. "It's a logical claim. But the political reality of it may be another matter."
There will be more like him. So far only one other American soldier has claimed refugee status in Canada. But the US Army is stretched so thin that it's continually extending the tours of duty of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and morale is suffering. Jeffry House, Hinzman's lawyer, says 60 US soldiers have contacted him for advice, and several have told him that they've already deserted and are planning to come to this country. If the US reinstates the draft - which many military analysts say will be necessary by early 2005 if the US hopes to maintain the numbers of troops it has in Iraq - the numbers of young Americans seeking refuge in Canada will explode.
How should Canada respond? In the late 1960s and early '70s, when as many as 50,000 American men came here to escape service in Vietnam, they could get landed immigrant status right at the Canadian border, which is impossible to do today. No one has ever successfully claimed to be a political refugee from the United States, and it's unlikely a Liberal or Conservative government would rewrite the definition and risk incurring the wrath of our closest ally.
There is a solution, however. Canada's Immigration Act allows the government to grant landed immigrant status to newcomers for "humanitarian and compassionate" reasons, even if their refugee claims fail - and if Canadians pressure the government to use that discretion, it could let deserters and draft dodgers stay in the country.
It's happened before. According to John Hagan's book Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada (Harvard University Press, 2001), even after Pierre Trudeau became prime minister in 1968, the government waffled on the status of the arriving Americans - until the NDP, the United Church, newspaper editorials, and hundreds of letters to federal ministers demanded that Canada refuse to act as America's "military policeman" and admit all deserters and draft dodgers. A year later, Trudeau told church leaders, "Those who make the conscientious judgment that they must not participate in this war have my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism."
We may soon find out whether Canada is as politically courageous as it was 35 years ago.
Ross Crockford is a former trial lawyer and editor of Victoria's Monday Magazine. His award-winning journalism has appeared in Adbusters, Explore, Toro and Vancouver magazine.
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. to Tell Detainees of Rights
Pentagon Outlines New Procedures
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39879-2004Jul9.html
Detainees held in U.S. custody at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will learn of their legal rights for the first time beginning Monday as part of a Pentagon plan to determine how many of the prisoners are enemy combatants and who should be set free, officials said yesterday.
The Pentagon yesterday offered a preliminary outline of a new tribunal process developed in the wake of a June 28 Supreme Court decision that allows detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts. But the new process doesn't immediately grant the nearly 600 detainees at Guantanamo access to lawyers, and it is unclear how detainees will assert their rights while imprisoned at a remote base in another country.
Gordon England, secretary of the Navy, said a military tribunal process to evaluate the status of detainees held as enemy combatants in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks could begin within a few weeks. Detainees will first be told of their rights to contest their detention, to seek a writ of habeas corpus and to meet with a personal representative who will be their advocate throughout the military process.
England said the tribunals' underlying principle will be to see if each detainee should be released to his home country, and he said detainees will have the opportunity to present witnesses or affidavits to support their claims for freedom. It is unclear what access detainees will have to witnesses in their home countries, and England said it is likely that most witnesses will testify via affidavits.
Detainees should learn of their rights -- there will be an effort to present written notifications in as many as 17 languages -- by the end of next week. They will then be assigned a military officer with a rank of at least major to represent them in navigating the tribunals, and England said efforts will be made to ensure that the representatives remain "neutral."
England said the military will move quickly to examine all detainees, hoping the process will be completed within 120 days.
"Speed is of the essence," England said at a Pentagon briefing. "But the first principle is to do this correctly. That is, do it fairly, make sure we have the right standards, make sure it's well documented, but also do it as quickly as we can."
The plan met with quick criticism, with defense attorneys calling the internal process a way for the military to delay habeas corpus claims from reaching federal courts and public scrutiny. The tribunals also will be entirely controlled by the Pentagon, which has been asserting for years that each detainee is an enemy combatant and can be held indefinitely without charges or access to lawyers.
"For a detainee to be released under this process, this would require the military to determine that they've been wrong for years," said Rachel Meerapol, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents dozens of Guantanamo detainees. "They feel rigged toward a certain outcome. I find it impossible to believe that a branch of government that has been saying for 2 1/2 years that we've been able to hold these people can fairly decide whether they are enemy combatants."
Meerapol also said the Supreme Court decision in Rasul v. Bush requires the government to allow detainees to be represented by legal counsel. To date, none of the detainees has been allowed to meet with lawyers, and England said he expects that something will have to be worked out to allow groups of detainees to meet with groups of lawyers, although no details have been devised.
-------- torture
Army Whistleblower Says Superiors Hid Torture
The NewStandard
by David DeBatto
July 10, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/debatto.php?articleid=2999
A U.S. Army counterintelligence agent who accused fellow National Guardsmen of abusing Iraqi detainees says that his own commander coerced an Army psychiatrist into diagnosing him as "delusional." According to Sergeant Greg Ford, his commanding officer confronted psychiatrist Angelina Madera, a captain with the 30th Medical Support Element, after she had initially assessed Ford to be mentally stable.
Sgt. Ford says Captain Victor Artiga, the commander of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, told Dr. Madera she was to reclassify the whistleblower Ford as unfit for duty so he could be transferred out of Iraq immediately.
Reached at his home in California, Ford said that Captain Artiga rushed over to Dr. Madera's office as soon as he received her written evaluation and confronted her with the results. Ford says that Artiga told Madera that Ford was "delusional" and that her initial report "could not stay that way." He verbally intimidated her, according to Ford, and told her to change the report to reflect Ford's "delusions" because this was a "military intelligence" matter and Artiga wanted to get Ford out of Iraq "right away."
This exchange was witnessed by Sergeant First Class Michael Marciello, a counterintelligence team leader, who says he was ordered by Artiga to seize Ford's weapon and ammunition right after the torture allegations were made and to guard him 24 hours a day until Ford left Iraq after a second session with Madera.
Sgt. Marciello confirmed that he witnessed Artiga confronting Madera and said the commander made it very clear to Dr. Madera that she had to change her report and make sure Ford was sent to Landstuhl, Germany, for a mental health evaluation. Marciello said that Dr. Madera appeared to be "shaken" by the exchange and eventually agreed to assist Artiga in evacuating Ford to Germany.
Ford had alleged witnessing three fellow counterintelligence team members "torture" Iraqi detainees who were in their custody in Samarra, Iraq. "I walked in once right after an interrogation and saw a prisoner that was handcuffed and slumped against a wall," Ford recounted. "He was comatose. When I looked closer, I noticed a cigarette sticking out of each ear. When I removed them I saw that they were still lit."
Ford went on to relate other such scenes that he described as "war crimes." He said, "On several occasions I walked in and saw agents literally pulling prisoners' arms out of their sockets while they were tied behind their backs with flexcuffs. I had to push [one] idiot off [a] detainee and pop the guy's arms back in place."
The Army has denied all of Ford's allegations about prisoner mistreatment.
A 30-year career National Guardsman with eighteen years as a prison guard, Ford says that within twelve hours after the confrontation between Artiga and Madera, medics strapped him to a gurney against his will. He was flown by C-130 to Kuwait and then on to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany.
The scenario Ford presents is not altogether unfamiliar. A United Press International story on May 25, 2004, told the story of another whistleblower who was allegedly locked in a psychiatric ward as punishment for speaking out against the Army. That case involved Julian Goodrum, a decorated lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves. Goodrum, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had filed a complaint last summer over the death of a soldier in his command. He had also testified before Congress about the poor medical care reserve component soldiers were receiving at Fort Knox, Ky., upon returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ford, who refers to the ordeal as a "kidnapping," said that he filed complaints with the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) upon his return to the U.S. last summer, but that so far nothing has come of them. The CID has made no comments on the matter.
Sacramento FBI Agent Tom Reynolds has acknowledged receipt of a complaint and says his office took a report from Ford and is awaiting instructions from Washington.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Panel Condemns Iraq Prewar Intelligence
Senate Report Faults 2002 Estimate Sent To Hill, Accuses the CIA of 'Group-Think'
By Dana Priest and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39864-2004Jul9?language=printer
The U.S. intelligence community gave lawmakers debating whether to wage war on Iraq a deeply flawed and exaggerated assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, according to the results of a year-long, bipartisan Senate investigation released yesterday.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said either the intelligence community "overstated" the evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was actively reconstituting its nuclear program, or that the claims were "not supported by the underlying intelligence."
The report refutes every major weapons assessment laid out in a key 2002 intelligence estimate provided to lawmakers before the war and cited by Bush administration officials to justify publicly the case for an invasion. The findings also offer a broad indictment of the way the CIA carried out its core mission, accusing the agency's leadership of succumbing to "group- think," of being too cautious to slip spies into Iraq and of failing to tell policymakers how weak their information really was.
Asked yesterday if he believes Congress would have supported the use of force if it had been aware of this information before lawmakers voted, committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said, "I don't know." He said he would have voted for war on humanitarian grounds and would have considered it more "like Bosnia and Kosovo." U.S. ground troops did not fight in those conflicts.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va), the committee's ranking Democrat, was more emphatic. "We in Congress would not have authorized that war, in 75 votes, if we knew what we know now," he said. U.S. standing in the world "has never been lower, and as a direct consequence our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."
In a 440-page report that came to 117 conclusions, the committee said the intelligence community correctly determined that "there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship." The panel also concurred with the CIA's conclusion that "there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al Qaeda attack," including the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The committee also concluded that the CIA overstated what it knew about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium in the African nation of Niger, and that it delayed for months examining documents that would prove to be forgeries, resulting in reports to policymakers that were "inconsistent and at times contradictory." No one at the CIA told the National Security Council of concerns about the credibility of the Niger intelligence as President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech was drafted, contrary to officials' previous assertions, the report said.
In evaluating the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the committee blamed intelligence leaders who "did not encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, fully consider alternative arguments, accurately characterize the intelligence reporting, or counsel analysts who lost their objectivity."
Senate aides, who conducted hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials throughout the government as well as with United Nations weapons inspectors and others, said they found no evidence that junior or senior officials knowingly distorted or withheld information to make a particular case. Nor did they find evidence of undue political pressure by policymakers. But they did conclude that contradictory information was often ignored or dismissed.
Acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin defended the agency in a rare news conference yesterday. "I don't think there is a broken corporate culture here at all," he said, adding that outgoing CIA director George J. Tenet had admitted "serious flaws" months ago and has remedied most of them.
"We get it," McLaughlin said, noting that caveats to key judgments were buried in the body of the October 2002 intelligence document, but from now on will be given equal weight. He added that, in the future, estimates and assumptions will be tested by "devil's advocates" from the agency as well as outside experts.
The Senate report is one of four major government inquiries into intelligence failures on Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
As part of an agreement reached six months ago between Republicans and Democrats, the Roberts committee will investigate the administration's use of intelligence on Iraq. Critics have accused Bush, Vice President Cheney and other senior officials of exaggerating Iraq's links to al Qaeda and repeatedly suggesting that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks.
A Shortage of Spies
The Senate panel found "significant shortcomings in almost every aspect" of human intelligence that it said could not be blamed on a lack of funding or lack of qualified clandestine operatives, as the agency frequently suggests. Rather, it blamed "a broken corporate culture and poor management."
From 1991 to 1998, a time when Iraq was considered a top national security threat, little effort was made to create a U.S.-only spy network there. Because the United States had no official presence in Iraq, there was not even a plausible cover story for Americans to be in the country.
"The intelligence community appears to have decided that the difficulty and risks inherent in developing sources or inserting operations officers into Iraq outweighed the potential benefits," the report said.
When the committee staff asked the CIA why it had not considered placing a CIA officer in Iraq during those years, an agency official responded: "Because it's very hard to sustain . . . it takes a rare officer who can go in . . . and survive scrutiny [deleted] for a long time."
The report also showed how dependent the CIA often was on single sources of information. For example, a significant shift in 2002 in the intelligence community's assessment of Iraq's biological weapons was based almost exclusively on information provided by one individual, who asserted Iraq had mobile bioweapons laboratories.
The individual, code-named "Curve Ball," was debriefed by a foreign intelligence service and the only American to meet Curve Ball thought he was an alcoholic. Others in the Pentagon raised concerns about Curve Ball's credibility, but his information still became the centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations seven weeks before the war.
Despite a 2002 assessment that determined there was a 50 percent chance that Iraq possessed the smallpox virus, the only fresh information to that effect came from a single defector in 2000.
Mass Weapons
Among the most scathing chapters of the Senate report is its assessment of prewar reporting on Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program. The report portrays the 2002 estimate as a sharp break from previous U.S. assessments, which said Iraq retained ambitions and latent capabilities but "did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program."
The report said the CIA made a "significant shift" in its position two months after Cheney began stating publicly that Iraq had actively reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. The intelligence estimate, which echoed the administration's public claims, "was not supported by the intelligence" and relied on misstatements, concealment of doubts and suppression of evidence.
CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency advocates for this position repeatedly made false statements of fact in their classified assessments, many of which are quoted publicly for the first time in the Senate report. The report endorses the consensus of U.S. and overseas centrifuge experts that aluminum tubes cited as evidence of nuclear efforts were meant for conventional rockets.
The report said the CIA's leading advocate of the Iraqi nuclear threat withheld evidence from analysts who disagreed with him, misstated the information and analysis produced by others and distributed information inside and outside the agency that was "at minimum, misleading." The CIA did not adjust its position, the Senate committee said, when U.N. inspections in late 2002 and early 2003 "refuted" some of its most important assertions.
A senior intelligence official said the Senate committee report is "simply wrong," adding that the CIA continues to regard the purpose of the aluminum tubes as an open question. He declined to elaborate.
On the topic of biological weapons, the report concluded that none of the claims about Iraq's bioweapons stockpiles or capabilities was supported by intelligence and that the 2002 intelligence assessment also misrepresented the U.N.'s 1999 report on Iraq's biological research capabilities.
There was virtually no information to support allegations that Iraq was conducting biological and chemical experiments on humans. One Defense Department analyst told the committee: "Perhaps we were stretching that just a little bit." Intelligence analysts also told the committee that claims that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons such as mustard, sarin and VX nerve gas were the results of "analytical judgments" and were not based on hard intelligence. The same methods were used to reach conclusions that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling as much as 500 metric tons of chemical weapons agents. No such weapons have been found.
But the committee found the National Intelligence Estimate's assessment of missile delivery systems to be carefully worded and said it accurately reflected what was known at the time.
The committee also lent credibility to reports that Iraq had tried to buy missile technology from North Korea and added a previously undisclosed detail: That during a 2001 meeting in North Korea to discuss missile cooperation, three Iraqi military officers also met with a Syrian missile team that was in North Korea at the same time.
Intelligence agencies failed to support their prewar assertions that Iraq was building unmanned aerial vehicles or drones that could disperse biological weapons. The 2002 assessment even claimed there was evidence "strongly suggesting" Iraq may have planned to sneak such a drone into the United States. That assertion was based on a single, uninvestigated report that Iraq was trying to buy U.S. mapping software.
Iraq Links to Al Qaeda
The report noted that the CIA and the FBI do not believe that an alleged meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta occurred. Several Bush administration officials, most notably Cheney, have repeatedly highlighted the meeting as evidence of a potential Iraq-al Qaeda link.
The report said the CIA's counterterrorism center was "purposely aggressive in seeking to draw connections" between Iraq and al Qaeda. The approach was opposed by the CIA's Near East and South Asia office, which was more conservative in its conclusions. That office's views were left out of a June 2002 report.
Staff writers Barton Gellman, R. Jeffrey Smith, Dan Eggen, Susan Schmidt and Walter Pincus, and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
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Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.
Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.
Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.
The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."
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THE COMMITTEE
C.I.A. Deleted Large Sections, Officials Say
July 10, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10REDA.html
WASHINGTON, July 9 - An estimated 20 percent of a Senate committee's report on faulty Iraq intelligence was deleted at the request of the C.I.A., Congressional officials said Friday. The deletions have renewed a debate about whether Central Intelligence Agency officials were trying to suppress certain information to avoid embarrassment.
The C.I.A. originally asked that about half the Senate Intelligence Committee's report be blacked out. However, the Congressional officials said that while the agency's original requests included many items that were "unreasonable and arbitrary," they now believed that most of the sections that will remain blacked out relate to national security.
But Tom Blanton, the executive director of the National Security Archive, a research group affiliated with George Washington University, asserted that the deletions were intended to prevent embarrassment at the agency.
Mr. Blanton said the public report deleted the committee's reasoning for three key conclusions: that the agency knowingly misled Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; that it withheld reservations about its information from an October 2002 white paper that was instrumental in making the case for war against Iraq; and that it misled Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat.
Congressional officials said some of those portions might still be restored to the public version.
When Congress released its report about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks a year ago, some members complained that the Bush administration had deleted a whole section because it was embarrassing to the Saudi government.
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CONCLUSIONS
C.I.A. Warned White House That Links Between Iraq and Qaeda Were 'Murky'
July 10, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10REPO.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 9 - The Central Intelligence Agency repeatedly told the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks that evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda was "murky" and conflicting.
That judgment contrasted starkly with the Bush administration's depiction of a close, well-documented relationship, which it used to justify the war in Iraq, according to the findings of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday.
The C.I.A.'s conclusions on the issue of a possible Iraq-Qaeda link largely mirror those of staff investigators of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. That panel's staff reported last month that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that there was no credible evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report, which otherwise harshly criticized the C.I.A. for overstating the threat posed by Iraq before last year's invasion, praised the way the C.I.A. analysts had studied - and largely discounted - theories about close working ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
"The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990's but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the Senate report said, adding that the C.I.A's assessment that "there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an Al Qaeda attack was responsible and objective."
The Senate report is, overall, a scorching attack on the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, charging that they provided the White House with faulty and overstated information about Iraqi threats in the year before the Iraq war, especially in their claim that Iraq was concealing large stocks of chemical and biological weapons, developing nuclear arms and designing unmanned aerial drones to deliver lethal unconventional weapons.
In a television interview last month, Vice President Dick Cheney insisted that "there's clearly been a relationship" between Mr. Hussein and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and that "the evidence is overwhelming."
But the Senate report identified five highly classified intelligence summaries prepared within the C.I.A. and then distributed outside the agency after Sept. 11 that suggested that if there were significant ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, they were difficult to prove.
The agency said it had "no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other Al Qaeda strike" and that "the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other."
The Senate report said the agency had long ago discounted a Czech intelligence report, cited by Mr. Cheney as recently as a few weeks ago, that a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks had met in Prague in April 2001 with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer. "The C.I.A. judged that other evidence indicated that these meetings likely never occurred," the Senate report said.
The Senate report also cited other information available to the C.I.A. that suggested that Iraq would have been wary of any dealings with Al Qaeda, noting that the agency was aware that the Iraqi government had a pattern of arresting and executing Islamic extremists, and that the Iraqi government had sought "to prevent Iraq youth from joining Al Qaeda."
The White House is likely to cite other evidence in the Senate report as bolstering its argument that there was a close tie between Mr. Hussein and the terror network, including the disclosure in the report that a captured Qaeda leader, Abu Zubaydah, has told interrogators that he understood that "an important Al Qaeda associate" had "good relationships with Iraqi intelligence."
The associate, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who has been linked to Al Qaeda in the past, is accused by the Bush administration of orchestrating the anti-American insurgency in Iraq. Still, the Senate report noted that Mr. Zubaydah "offered his opinion that it would be extremely unlikely for bin Laden to have agreed to ally with Iraq due to his desire to keep the organization on track with its mission and maintain its operational independence."
The evidence cited in the Senate report suggests that George J. Tenet, the departing director of central intelligence, sometimes went beyond the conclusions of his agency's analysts in appearances on Capitol Hill before the Iraq invasion.
In testimony in February 2003 in the Senate, the report noted, Mr. Tenet said - without the sort of qualifications found in the reports of his analysts - that "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to Al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two Al Qaeda associates."
Citing Close-Mindedness
The C.I.A.'s assertion, in its national intelligence estimate, that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program "was not supported by the intelligence," the Senate report said, and in some ways reflected an unwillingness to consider the views of outside analysts.
The report said this close-mindedness was most evident in the cases of high-strength aluminum tubes, which the agency believed Iraq was trying to acquire to use as centrifuges to enrich uranium - a prerequisite for developing nuclear weapons. The committee found that C.I.A. personnel did not invite experts from the Department of Energy to participate in tests on the tubes. When asked why not, an agency official told the committee, "because we funded it. It was our testing. We were trying to prove some things that we wanted to prove with the testing."
The committee found that all of the equipment acquired by Iraq had conventional military or industrial uses, and the tubes in question appeared to be for building rockets.
The report dealt equally harshly with the administration's contention, voiced by President Bush in his State of the Union speech last year, that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa.
Administration officials have since conceded that there was not sufficient evidence for such a charge, and the report faults Mr. Tenet for failing to read the president's speech and fact-check it himself.
The committee faulted the C.I.A. for failing to notify the Senate that the agency was conducting its own review of the report from Niger, or to mention that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research asserted that it was based on forged documents.
Christopher Marquis (NYT)
Overreaching Conclusions
Before the war, the intelligence community's major conclusions about Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs far exceeded what could be drawn from available intelligence and overstated the judgments of intelligence analysts, the Senate committee concluded in its report on Friday.
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate stated that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." But the Senate panel found that conclusion "overstated both what was known and what intelligence analysts judged about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons holdings."
The Senate report also rejected the contention that "all key aspects" of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program had been active before the war. Information reviewed by the committee showed this conclusion was "not supported by the underlying intelligence."
While the intelligence did show that Iraq was renovating or expanding facilities that had been "associated" with Iraq's biological programs and was engaged in research that had biological applications, "few reports suggested specifically that the activity was related" to biological warfare.
The Senate report strongly criticized the handling of information about Iraq's supposed mobile biological weapons facilities provided by a source known as Curveball, finding that the C.I.A. failed to disclose important information about the source's reliability.
In addition, the intelligence community assessment that Mr. Hussein had probably stockpiled 100 metric tons of chemical weapons agents, and perhaps as much as 500 tons, was based on an analytical judgment and not on intelligence reporting, the committee said.
However, the panel found that available intelligence did support a conclusion that biological and chemical weapons "were within Iraq's technological capability" and that Iraq was trying to obtain material that could have been used to produce them. Findings about Iraq's capability to produce and weaponize biological agents were "for the most part supported" by intelligence, the committee found.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. (NYT)
Mixed on Missiles
The Senate panel said the intelligence agencies' assessments of Iraqi efforts to build medium-range missiles were "reasonable" and had a "clear foundation" in available information. But the panel said the agencies "overstated" Iraqi efforts to develop pilotless drone aircraft or their potential use in dropping biological weapons on the United States.
The Senate panel said the intelligence agencies had solid reasons to conclude that Iraq was in the final stages of developing the Al Samoud and Ababil-100 short-range missiles, both of which would have violated United Nations' prohibitions on Iraqi missiles capable of traveling more than 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles.
The panel also said the intelligence agencies used "reasonable judgment," based on available information, that Iraq was developing a medium-range ballistic missile that could have traveled even further.
But the committee concluded that the intelligence agencies did not have a basis for concluding that the drones were "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents." The committee noted that Air Force intelligence officials were skeptical about Iraqi plans to use the drones in biological warfare and had inserted a footnote describing that kind of mission as possible but unlikely.
"Other than the Air Force's dissenting footnote, the intelligence community failed to discuss possible conventional missions," the Senate panel said, even though these less deadly purposes were "clearly noted in the intelligence reporting and which most analysts believed were the U.A.V.'s primary missions."
The panel also said the C.I.A. refused to share information with other intelligence agencies that raised doubts about the claim that Iraq was intending to use drone aircraft to attack the United States. "This lack of information sharing may have led some analysts to agree to a position that they otherwise would not have supported," the panel said.
Edmund L. Andrews (NYT)
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Excerpts From Two Senators' Views About Prewar Assessments of Iraq
July 10, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10ITEX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 9 - Excerpts from opening statements of Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, vice chairman of the committee, at a news conference on Friday, as recorded by Federal News Service Inc., and the text of the committee's report:
Comments by Senator Roberts
A year ago, the Senate Committee on Intelligence made a commitment to the Congress and the American people that we should examine the quality and the quantity of intelligence that led to the war in Iraq. Now, the debate over many aspects of the United States liberation of Iraq will likely continue for decades, but one fact is now clear: before the war, the United States intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence. The report the committee is releasing today seeks to explain how that happened.
And I want the American people to know - we both want the American people to know - that the committee's 12-month inquiry into the United States intelligence community's prewar assessments with regard to Iraq is without precedent in the history of the committee. The committee has looked behind the intelligence community's assessments to evaluate not only the quantity and quality of the intelligence upon which it has based those assessments, but also whether or not those assessments themselves were reasonable.
The report contains a detailed and a meticulous recitation of the intelligence reporting and the evolution of the analyses. From the details, a report emerges that is very critical of the intelligence community's performance. This has not been a pleasant task, but it is based on fact.
Now, while criticism is never easy to accept, I think professionals understand the need for self-examination. And let me emphasize, the men and women of the intelligence community are first and foremost true and dedicated professionals.
Now this report is long and detailed. I encourage all of you to take the time to digest as much of it as you can. Obviously while it is too large for either one of us to summarize, I can point out some of the highlights.
First of all, most of the key judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's W.M.D. programs were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting. Here are some examples of statements from the key judgments:
Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program.
Iraq has chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle, a U.A.V., probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents.
And all key aspects - research and development and production - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war.
Now these are very emphatic statements. Simply put, they were not supported by the intelligence which the community supplied to the committee, and they should not have been included in the N.I.E.
Second, in the committee's view, the intelligence community did not accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to policy makers, both in the executive branch and here on Capitol Hill. Intelligence analysts are charged with interpreting and assessing the intelligence reporting and with clearly conveying to policy makers the difference between what they know, what they don't know, what they think and then making sure that the policy makers understand that difference. As the report details, they did not do this with respect to the October 2002 N.I.E.
Third, the committee concluded that the intelligence community was suffering from what we call a collective groupthink, which led analysts and collectors and managers to presume that Iraq had active and growing W.M.D. programs. This groupthink caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of W.M.D. programs.
While we did not specifically address it in our report, it is clear that this groupthink also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well, all of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein had active W.M.D. programs. This was a global intelligence failure.
Fourth, the committee concluded that in a few significant instances, the analysis in the N.I.E. suffered from what we call a layering effect.
Assessments were built or were based on previous judgments without carrying forward the uncertainty of those judgments. This is what we have termed the "intelligence assumption train."
Layering is a necessary tool for analysts. There's no question about that. However, if ongoing underlying questions and uncertainties are not incorporated into the subsequent intelligence products, then the subsequent assessment can be - unbeknownst to the policy maker, become increasingly inaccurate; in other words, the assumption train simply becomes longer.
Fifth, the committee concluded there was a failure by intelligence community managers to adequately encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, to fully consider alternative arguments, to accurately characterize intelligence reporting, and to counsel analysts who had lost their objectivity.
Sixth, the committee concluded that there were significant shortcomings on almost every aspect of the intelligence community's human intelligence collection efforts against the Iraqi W.M.D. target. Most alarming, after 1998 and the exit of the United Nations inspectors, the C.I.A. had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the W.M.D. target. In addition to this lack of good source reporting, the C.I.A. did not share its sensitive human intelligence reporting. Most if not all of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management, and cannot be solved by simply adding funding and also personnel.
Seventh, the committee concluded the C.I.A. abused its unique position in the intelligence community to the detriment of this nation's prewar analysis in regards to Iraq's W.M.D. programs. In a number of cases, the C.I.A. sequestered significant reportable intelligence and prevented information from being shared with all source analysts at other intelligence agencies. This problem also plagued the terrorism analysts as they examined Iraq's links to terrorists. But with respect to Saddam Hussein's regime and his link to terrorists, the committee did find that the C.I.A. judgments were reasonable, based on the available intelligence.
The agency was also more careful to inform policy makers about uncertainties with their analysis.
Finally, the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure. In the end, what the president and the Congress used to send the country to war was information that was provided by the intelligence community, and that information was flawed.
So the question now is, where do we go from here? As I have said before, this report cries out for reform. However, it is incumbent on the committee and the Congress to think responsibly and carefully about the most effective reforms. We must base whatever recommendations we ultimately make on the facts and considered judgment, not on expediency or media-generated momentum.
I intend, we intend for the committee to examine closely all proposals for change, keeping in mind that we should first do no harm, and avoid as best we can the law of unintended consequences. Congress should not legislate change merely for the sake of change. We should really direct our actions only against identifiable problems that lend themselves to legislative solutions. With these thoughts in mind, we intend to work with the executive branch, with our counterparts in the House of Representatives, and yes, with the people who are doing good work in the intelligence community, to construct an intelligence capability worthy of this great nation and the men and women who perform this difficult and often dangerous work. . . .
Comments by Senator Rockefeller
There is simply no question that mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq rank among the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation. The fact is that the administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war. And we in Congress would not have authorized that war - we would NOT have authorized that war - with 75 votes if we knew what we know now.
Leading up to Sept. 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed. Tragically, the intelligence failure set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come. Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before.
We found the intelligence judgments regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were not supported by the underlying intelligence. And here my words will parallel, in many respects, what Chairman Roberts has said. They were not supported by underlying intelligence. The judgments overstated what analysts knew and then failed to explain the uncertainty or uncertainties behind those judgments - in other words, the judgment with the caveats of "We generally feel this way, but there are those in the State Department, the Department of Energy, or whatever, who feel differently." Aluminum tubes was an example of that.
The report points out the intelligence community began with a presumption, as Chairman Roberts has said, that Iraq had the weapons, never questioned the assumption that Iraq had the weapons, and viewed virtually every bit of ambiguous information as supporting the fact that the weapons were there.
I just interrupt myself to point out that the head of Unscom, Rolf Ekeus, always had as a theory - and still does - that those so- called weapons of mass destruction, which we are still looking for, were in fact left over and simply a result of the 10-year war with Iran, and that all of the rest of it was what United Nations inspectors and others and us tried to find.
Our human intelligence collection, as Pat Roberts has pointed out, was inadequate. Not only did we not have people on the ground in 1998 - after 1998, when the inspectors left; but we relied, when they had left, too much on the fragmentary reporting from years before, from the early 90's, from the post-Iran-Iraq war situation, and were never able to pin anything down.
Our report found that the intelligence community's judgments were right on Iraq's ties to terrorists, which is another way of saying that the administration's conclusions were wrong, and that is, of the relationship, the formal relationship, however you want to describe it, between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and no evidence that existed of Iraq's complicity or assistance in Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks, including 9/11, which, through the device of Mohammed Atta and others, the debate continues almost up until two months ago, at least on the part of the vice president
Our report underscores the need for reforming the intelligence community . . . we have to have people whose job it is to specifically challenge the assumptions that analysts have come up with; that is their work, to challenge the assumptions on whether it's W.M.D. or whether it's the National Intelligence Estimate; that there are those who are there who are contrarian analysts, so to speak, to try and pick apart and challenge what those assumptions might be.
Do I feel a sense of frustration together with Chairman Roberts that we have not been able to do that because of the weight of 511 pages and the time that that required, which is almost total? Yes, I think we both feel that frustration.
But we've got to do it right. We can't just do it for the sake of doing it. But we've got to do it fast.
This business that went on yesterday about threat levels and what's going to happen at conventions and other things, all of this simply is a way of saying time has run out. The 9/11 victims have a right to be frustrated, and their families have a right to be frustrated by the fact that we have not actually come up with and legislated, where we could, the reforms of intelligence. But we've not been able to do that because of the nature of this report and the investigation required of it, and the paucity of our staff, which has to be another intelligence reform, that the nature of the Intelligence Committee itself changes.
Now, the report does an excellent job of pointing out the intelligence community's shortcomings. I have to say, it is only an incomplete picture of what occurred during the national debate over the decision to invade Iraq.
The report we are releasing today is the first phase of the two-part committee investigation. Regrettably, whereas I consider reform incredibly important, I also consider the nature of the interaction, or the pressure, or the shaping of intelligence by endless numbers of public statements emanating from all levels high up in the administration, virtually saying that time has run out; you know: "mushroom cloud," "grave and growing," "imminent" by some, evidence supports the fact that they are developing their nuclear weapons program - all the rest of it. That whole aspect is being relegated to the second part of our report, and I regret that. I felt that we should and could have addressed all of these matters as a single matter, because under the rules of the committee, we can do that. But that was not possible. And so we moved forward, we moved forward and produced a very good piece of work.
The central issue of how intelligence on Iraq was - in this senator's opinion, was exaggerated by the Bush administration officials, was relegated to that second phase, as yet unbegun, of the committee investigation, along with other issues.
We've done a little bit of work on the No. 3 guy in the Defense Department, Douglas Feith, part of his alleged efforts to run intelligence past the intelligence community altogether; his relationship with the I.N.C. and Chalabi, who was very much in favor with the administration, wanting them to come on in; and was he running a private intelligence failure, which is not lawful.
As a result, the committee's report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which the intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly. It was clear to all of us in this room who were watching that and to many others that they had made up their mind that they were going to go to war. And I believe to this day, and I always have and I've said so publicly many times in regretting my vote, that there was a predetermination, even going back to 1998 and the letter to Bill Clinton, saying the time for diplomacy has ended and now is the time for military force - use of military force.
So the justification for the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq was: 1, that Iraq had stockpiled weapons, chemical and biological; 2, that they were actively pursuing a nuclear weapon; 3, that Iraq might use its alliances with terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, to use these weapons to strike at the United States. And in one part of our report, I believe we use the word even the use of this in the homeland, the United States.
The N.I.E. - I'm sorry.
The first two administration points, the case for invasion, the committee details, as Chairman Roberts has indicated, how these key pillars were not supported and should not have been there. The National Intelligence Estimate was given to us at our request - at the request of the Senate Intelligence Committee - about 10 days before the vote came.
It was done in three weeks. It was thrown together. It was based upon fragmentary intelligence, ancient intelligence.
And then there was this enormous difference between the classified version, where all kinds of doubts and caveats were included, and then the white paper, which was the unclassified version, which all of a sudden, everything moved in one direction - towards they've got them, they're ready to use them and watch out. I don't think that was an accident.
Let me just finish by saying - again, an emphasis on this relentless public campaign prior to the war which repeatedly characterized the Iraqi weapons programs in more ominous and threatening terms than any intelligence would have allowed. In short, we went to war in Iraq based on false claims.
So in conclusion, during a critical time in our nation's history - 18-month period spanning the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003 - the credibility of the intelligence community, which is the spear tip of all actions, and particularly under a doctrine of pre-emption, was significantly compromised.
Excerpts From the Report
OVERALL CONCLUSIONS:
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
1. Most of the major key judgments in the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.
2. The intelligence community did not accurately or adequately explain to policy makers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
3. The intelligence community suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction program. This groupthink dynamic led intelligence community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a W.M.D. program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs. This presumption was so strong that formalized I.C. mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and groupthink were not utilized.
4. In a few significant instances, the analysis in the National Intelligence Estimate suffers from a "layering" effect whereby assessments were built based on previous judgments without carrying forward the uncertainties of the underlying judgments.
5. In each instance where the committee found an analytic or collection failure, it resulted in part from a failure of intelligence community managers throughout their leadership chains to adequately supervise the work of their analysts and collectors. They did not encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, fully consider alternative arguments, accurately characterize the intelligence reporting, or counsel analysts who lost their objectivity.
6. The committee found significant short-comings in almost every aspect of the intelligence community's human intelligence collection efforts against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities, in particular that the community had no sources collecting against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after 1998. Most, if not all, of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management, and will not be solved by additional funding and personnel.
7. The Central Intelligence Agency, in several significant instances, abused its unique position in the intelligence community, particularly in terms of information sharing, to the detriment of the intelligence community's prewar analysis concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
OVERALL CONCLUSIONS: TERRORISM
8. Intelligence community analysts lack a consistent post-Sept. 11 approach to analyzing and reporting on terrorist threats.
9. Source protection policies within the intelligence community direct or encourage reports officers to exclude relevant detail about the nature of their sources. As a result, analysts community-wide are unable to make fully informed judgments about the information they receive, relying instead on nonspecific source lines to reach their assessments. Moreover, relevant operational data is nearly always withheld from analysts, putting them at a further analytical disadvantage.
10. The intelligence community relies too heavily on foreign government services and third party reporting, thereby increasing the potential for manipulation of United States policy by foreign interests.
NIGER CONCLUSIONS
12. Until October 2002 when the intelligence community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency reporting and other available intelligence.
16. The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the intelligence community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.
19. Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, C.I.A. continued to approve the use of similar language in administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.
21. When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency analysts or officials told the National Security Council to remove the "16 words" or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting. A C.I.A. official's original testimony to the committee that he told an N.S.C. official to remove the words "Niger" and "500 tons" from the speech, is incorrect.
22. The director of central intelligence should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact check it himself. Had he done so, he would have been able to alert the National Security Council if he still had concerns about the use of the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting in a presidential speech.
25. The Niger reporting was never in any of the drafts of Secretary (Colin) Powell's United Nations speech and the committee has not uncovered any information that showed anyone tried to insert the information into the speech.
26. To date, the intelligence community has not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa as stated in the National Intelligence Estimate. Likewise, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor the Defense Intelligence Agency, which both published assessments on possible Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium, have ever published assessments outside of their agencies which correct their previous positions.
NUCLEAR CONCLUSIONS
27. After reviewing all of the intelligence provided by the intelligence community and additional information requested by the committee, the committee believes that the judgment in the National Intelligence Estimate, that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, was not supported by the intelligence. The committee agrees with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research alternative view that the available intelligence "does not add up to a compelling case for reconstitution."
28. The assessments in the National Intelligence Estimate regarding the timing of when Iraq had begun reconstituting its nuclear program are unclear and confusing.
29. Numerous intelligence reports provided to the committee showed that Iraq was trying to procure high-strength aluminum tubes. The committee believes that the information available to the intelligence community indicated that these tubes were intended to be used for an Iraqi conventional rocket program and not a nuclear program.
30. The Central Intelligence Agency's intelligence assessment on July 2, 2001, that the dimensions of the aluminum tubes "match those of a publicly available gas centrifuge design from the 1950's, known as the Zippe centrifuge" is incorrect. Similar information was repeated by the C.I.A. in its assessments, including its input to the National Intelligence Estimate, and by the Defense Intelligence Agency over the next year and a half.
31. The intelligence community's position in the National Intelligence Estimate that the composition and dimensions of the aluminum tubes exceeded the requirements for nonnuclear applications, is incorrect.
32. The [material deleted] intelligence report on Saddam Hussein's personal interest in the aluminum tubes, if credible, did suggest that the tube procurement was a high priority, but it did not necessarily suggest that the high priority was Iraq's nuclear program.
33. The suggestion in the National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was paying excessively high costs for the aluminum tubes is incorrect. In addition, 7075-T6 aluminum is not considerably more expensive than other more readily available materials for rockets as alleged in the N.I.E.
34. The National Ground Intelligence Center's analysis that the material composition of the tubes was unusual for rocket motor cases was incorrect, contradicted information the N.G.I.C. later provided to the committee, and represented a serious lapse for the agency with primary responsibility for conventional ground forces intelligence analysis.
37. Iraq's persistence in seeking numerous foreign sources for the aluminum tubes was not "inconsistent" with procurement practices as alleged in the National Intelligence Estimate. Furthermore, such persistence [material deleted] was more indicative of procurement for a conventional weapons program than a covert nuclear program.
38. The C.I.A. initial reporting on its aluminum tube spin tests was, at a minimum, misleading and, in some cases, incorrect. The fact that these tests were not coordinated with other intelligence community agencies is an example of continuing problems with information sharing within the intelligence community.
42. The director of central intelligence was not aware of the views of all intelligence agencies on the aluminum tubes prior to September 2002 and, as a result, could only have passed the Central Intelligence Agency's view along to the president until that time.
43. Intelligence provided to the committee did show that Iraq was trying to procure magnets, high-speed balancing machines and machine tools, but this intelligence did not suggest that the materials were intended to be used in a nuclear program.
44. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that "a large number of personnel for the new [magnet] production facility, worked in Iraq's pre-gulf war centrifuge program," was incorrect.
45. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission was "expanding the infrastructure - research laboratories, production facilities, and procurement networks - to produce nuclear weapons," is not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee.
46. The intelligence provided to the committee which showed that Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program was compelling, but this intelligence did not show that there was a recent increase in activity that would have been indicative of recent or impending reconstitution of Iraq's nuclear program as was suggested in the National Intelligence Estimate.
47. Intelligence information provided to the committee did show that Saddam Hussein met with Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission personnel and that some security improvements were taking place, but none of the reporting indicated the I.A.E.C. was engaged in nuclear weapons related work.
BIOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS
48. The assessment in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that, "[W]e judge that all key aspects - research & development, production, and weaponization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war" is not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee.
49. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has biological weapons" overstated what was known about Iraq's biological weapons holdings. The N.I.E. did not explain the uncertainties underlying this statement.
50. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has mobile transportable facilities for producing bacterial and toxin biological weapons agents," overstated what the intelligence reporting suggested about an Iraqi mobile biological weapons effort and did not accurately convey to readers the uncertainties behind the source reporting.
51. The Central Intelligence Agency withheld important information concerning both CURVE BALL's reliability and [material deleted] reporting from many intelligence community analysts with a need to know the information.
52. The Defense Human Intelligence Service, which had primary responsibility for handling the intelligence community's interaction with CURVE BALL's [material deleted] debriefers, demonstrated serious lapses in handling such an important source.
53. The statement in the key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate that "chances are even that smallpox is part of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program" is not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee.
54. The assessments in the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iraq's capability to produce and weaponize biological weapons agents are, for the most part, supported by the intelligence provided to the committee, but the N.I.E. did not explain that the research discussed could have been very limited in nature, been abandoned years ago, or represented legitimate activity.
55. The N.I.E. misrepresented the United Nations Special Commission's 1999 assessment concerning Iraq's biological research capability.
CHEMICAL CONCLUSIONS
58. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has . . . chemical weapons" overstated both what was known about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings and what intelligence analysts judged about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings.
59. The judgment in the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was expanding its chemical industry primarily to support chemical weapons production overstated both what was known about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry and what intelligence analysts judged about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry.
60. It was not clearly explained in the National Intelligence Estimate that the basis for several of the intelligence community's assessments about Iraq's chemical weapons capabilities and activities were not based directly on intelligence reporting of those capabilities and activities, but were based on layers of analysis regarding [material deleted] intelligence reporting.
61. The intelligence community's assessment that "Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of chemical weapons agents - much of it added in the last year," was an analytical judgment and not based on intelligence reporting that indicated the existence of an Iraqi chemical weapons stockpile of this size.
62. The intelligence community's assessment that Iraq had experience in manufacturing chemical weapons bombs, artillery rockets and projectiles was reasonable based on intelligence derived from Iraqi declarations.
63. The National Intelligence Estimate assessment that "Baghdad has procured covertly the types and quantities of chemicals and equipment sufficient to allow limited chemical weapons production hidden within Iraq's legitimate chemical industry"was not substantiated by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
DELIVERY CONCLUSIONS
68. The intelligence community assessment in the key judgments section of the National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (U.A.V.) "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents" overstated both what was known about the mission of Iraq's small U.A.V.'s and what intelligence analysts judged about the likely mission of Iraq's small U.A.V.s. The Air Force footnote which indicated that biological weapons delivery was a possible, though unlikely, mission more accurately reflected the body of intelligence reporting.
69. Other than the Air Force's dissenting footnote, the intelligence community failed to discuss possible conventional missions for Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles (U.A.V.) which were clearly noted in the intelligence reporting and which most analysts believed were the U.A.V.'s primary missions.
72. Much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading or incorrect.
73. Some of the information supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, but not used in Secretary Powell's speech, was incorrect. This information should never have been provided for use in a public speech.
74. The Central Intelligence Agency should have alerted Secretary Powell to the problems with the biological weapons-related sources cited in the speech concerning Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapons program.
75. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency should have alerted Secretary Powell to the fact that there was an analytical disagreement within the N.I.M.A. concerning the meaning of [material deleted] - activity observed at Iraq's Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute in November 2002. Moreover, agencies like the N.I.M.A. should have mechanisms in place for evaluating such analytical disagreements.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
COLLECTION CONCLUSIONS
77. The intelligence community relied too heavily on United Nations [material deleted] information about Iraq's programs and did not develop a sufficient unilateral collection effort targeting Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and related activities to supplement U.N.-collected information and to take its place upon the departure of the U.N. inspectors.
78. The intelligence community depended too heavily on defectors and foreign government services to obtain human intelligence information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Because the intelligence community did not have direct access to many of these sources, it was exceedingly difficult to determine source credibility.
79. The intelligence community waited too long after inspectors departed Iraq to increase collection against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
80. Even after the departure of United Nations inspectors, placement of human intelligence (HUMINT) agents and development of unilateral sources inside Iraq were not top priorities for the intelligence community.
81. The Central Intelligence Agency continues to excessively compartment sensitive human intelligence reporting and fails to share important information about HUMINT reporting and sources with intelligence community analysts who have a need to know.
82. [material deleted] The lack of in-country human intelligence collection assets contributed to this collection gap.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
PRESSURE CONCLUSIONS
83. The committee did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
84. The committee found no evidence that the vice president's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.
IRAQI LINKS TO TERRORISM
90. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that Saddam Hussein was most likely to use his own intelligence service operatives to conduct attacks was reasonable, and turned out to be accurate.
91. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that Iraq had maintained ties to several secular Palestinian terrorist groups and with the Mujahedeen Khalq was supported by the intelligence. The C.I.A. was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and might have intended to employ such surrogates in the event of war.
92. The Central Intelligence Agency's examination of contacts, training, safe haven and operational cooperation as indicators of a possible Iraq/Al Qaeda relationship was a reasonable and objective approach to the question.
93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990's, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.
94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda were the reports of training in the use of nonconventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. [material deleted]
95. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment on safe haven - that Al Qaeda or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control - was reasonable.
96. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an Al Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise.
97. The Central Intelligence Agency's judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach - Al Qaeda - to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ Al Qaeda in conducting terrorist attacks.
98. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessments on Iraq's links to terrorism were widely disseminated, though an early version of a key C.I.A. assessment was disseminated only to a limited list of cabinet members and some subcabinet officials in the administration.
99. Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to Al Qaeda.
100. The Central Intelligence Agency did not have a focused human intelligence collection strategy targeting Iraq's links to terrorism until 2002. The C.I.A. had no [material deleted] sources on the ground in Iraq reporting specifically on terrorism. The lack of an official [material deleted] United States presence in the country [material deleted] curtailed the intelligence community's HUMINT collection capabilities.
102. The committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. After 9/11, however, analysts were under tremendous pressure to make correct assessments, to avoid missing a credible threat, and to avoid an intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11. As a result, the intelligence community's assessments were bold and assertive in pointing out potential terrorist links. For instance, the June 2002 Central Intelligence Agency assessment Iraq and Al Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship was, according to its Scope Note, "purposefully aggressive" in drawing connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda in an effort to inform policymakers of the potential that such a relationship existed. All of the participants in the August 2002 coordination meeting on the September 2002 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism interviewed by the Committee agreed that while some changes were made to the paper as a result of the participation of two Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy staffers, their presence did not result in changes to their analytical judgments.
104. None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency.
REGIONAL STABILITY
109. The Intelligence Community should have produced a National Intelligence Estimate-level assessment of the overall threat posed by Iraq in the region prior to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Such a document would have outlined - in one place and in a systematic fashion - the complete range of factors comprising Iraq's threat to regional stability and security.
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S
HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD CONCLUSIONS
110. Between 1991 and 2003 analysis of Saddam Hussein's human rights record was limited in volume, but provided an accurate depiction of the scope of abuses under his regime. The limited body of analysis was reasonable, given the difficulty of intelligence collection inside Iraq and the demands on collection resources that were primarily targeted on other priorities. Those competing priorities included weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, regime stability and regional security. There was no indication that the intelligence community's analysis was shaped or manipulated in regards to analysis of human rights abuses.
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THE REACTION
Admitting Intelligence Flaws, Bush Stands by Need for War
July 10, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/10REAX.html
WASHINGTON, July 9 - Promising to enhance the nation's espionage operations overseas, President Bush acknowledged on Friday that the prewar intelligence on Iraq was flawed, but nevertheless defended his decision to go to war.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Mr. Bush reacted to a Senate Intelligence Committee's report criticizing the intelligence agencies by once again asserting that Saddam Hussein had posed a threat to the United States and other nations.
But Mr. Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq, referring to his repeated suggestions that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons that posed a threat to the United States and other nations. "Listen, we thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," he said at an appearance in Kutztown, Pa. "I thought so. The Congress thought so. The U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons."
Later, in York, Pa., Mr. Bush said, "Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons, I believe we were right to go into Iraq. America is safer today because we did. We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
But many Democrats seized on the report to attack the administration's Iraq policy. "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence," Mark Kitchens, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, said. "The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."
The committee's report puts increased pressure on the Bush administration to explain its rationale for taking the nation to war. It also gives Democrats cover to express their misgivings by asserting, as Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, did Friday, that if he had understood then what he does now, he would not have voted for the resolution to go to war.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said she, too, would have voted against authorizing the use of force in Iraq had she known the report's conclusions.
"The primary thrust of the administration, originally, was regime change," she said in a telephone interview. "I never would have voted yes on the basis of regime change, nor quite possibly would a majority of the Senate. What became the convincing rationale were the weapons of mass destruction."
The report's findings also gave fresh ammunition to lawmakers proposing a major overhaul of the nation's intelligence-gathering apparatus. "The facts in this report form an inescapable indictment of the status quo that begs for a comprehensive structural overhaul of our entire intelligence community," said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, a sponsor of a bill, along with Mrs. Feinstein, to create a director of national intelligence.
In Kutztown, Mr. Bush signaled the likelihood that the White House would embrace or propose plans to overhaul the way the Central Intelligence Agency and the other intelligence agencies are organized and run. Mr. Bush cited three general ideas that he said "make sense."
The first, he said, was to beef up human intelligence-gathering. "Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe," he said.
The second, he said, was to make sure that the agencies had the most advanced technology and remained "at the cutting edge of change." Last, he said, there needs to be improved coordination among the intelligence agencies.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush would consider changes to the way the intelligence agencies operated but suggested that he would wait to see the report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before making a decision. Mr. McClellan suggested that Mr. Bush would also like to hear from another commission looking into the intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs. That commission, which Mr. Bush appointed in February, is not scheduled to report until next March.
Administration officials on Friday sought to play down the committee's findings and emphasize that toppling Mr. Hussein was the right thing to have done.
A State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, acknowledged the report's conclusions that much of the information provided to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell for his speech in February 2003 at the United Nations justifying war with Iraq was flawed. But even so, Mr. Boucher said, Iraq posed a serious threat.
On Capitol Hill, most of the top House and Senate leaders from both parties were silent. Only Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, issued a statement, saying that lawmakers must still examine the White House's role.
Some Republicans warned against that approach. Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Missouri Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the panel's inquiry found no evidence that intelligence analysts were pressured by the administration to provide skewed intelligence.
"Some on this floor and some commentators I've heard seem to be more interested in politicizing the problems in the intelligence community rather than getting at the root of the problem," Mr. Bond said in a Senate speech. "I hope we can put these partisan charges aside because there's much work to do to improve gathering, the analysis and the dissemination of intelligence for the good of this country."
Eric Schmitt reported from Washington for this article, and Richard W. Stevenson from Kutztown and York, Pa. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.
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Bush's War-Era Records Damaged
Alabama Service Still Not Verified
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A03
James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39707-2004Jul9.html
The accidental destruction of microfilm seven years ago has handicapped Pentagon efforts to turn up records documenting President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during part of 1972, a Defense Department public records official said in a letter to The Washington Post and other news organizations.
Records released to reporters on a CD-ROM this week essentially duplicate what the White House handed out in February regarding the president's Vietnam War-era service from 1968 to 1973. The records still do not provide evidence that Bush performed military service in Alabama, where he had been transferred in May 1972. Bush had sought the transfer to work on a Senate campaign.
Although the records gap was discussed at a White House news conference in February, details about why the records were missing were not known until the letter was sent by Pentagon Freedom of Information Officer C.Y. Talbott to news organizations.
"I am not able to provide complete copies of President Bush's payroll records for his National Guard service," Talbott said. He said this was because of "the inadvertent destruction of microfilm containing certain National Guard payroll records."
The records for "numerous service members" were damaged in 1996 and 1997 while officials tried to salvage deteriorating microfilm payroll records. The payroll summaries destroyed were for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972. "President Bush's payroll records for those two quarters were among the records destroyed," Talbott said.
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Australian PM Accused of Politicizing Troops
July 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-australia-politics-iraq.html
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will campaign on security at an election due within months, was accused Saturday of politicizing the nation's troops with voter leaflets showing him with soldiers in Iraq.
The pamphlets, declaring ``Staying the Course in Iraq'' and featuring photographs of Howard walking with Australian troops in Baghdad, were dropped into letterboxes in his Sydney electorate.
Iraq is looming as a major election issue in Australia, which is expected to go to a close poll in October. Opposition Labor promises to bring Australia's 800-odd troops home by Christmas if it defeats the eight-year-old conservative government.
Howard insists the troops will stay until their job is done and has used Labor's withdrawal promise to attack the opposition, charging it with ``cutting and running,'' which in Australia carries the inference of shirking a fight in cowardly fashion.
``Many defense force personnel have complained to the opposition about the nature of this propaganda. This material is inappropriate and should be pulped immediately,'' Labor senator John Faulkner told reporters Saturday. The Australian Defense Association, an independent national security think-tank, also called for an end to the use of troop photographs in the lead-up to the election, fearing a Vietnam War-style public backlash against troops serving in Iraq.
``It's an election year and given that the war in Iraq is unpopular in some quarters...it is preferable that electioneering material does not include photographs of members of parliament with the ADF,'' said association chief Neil James.
A retired former Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Laurie O'Donnell, also expressed concern.
``The defense force is there to serve the people of Australia and the government of Australia, whatever color it is. People trying to convert this into something as a political overtone is the wrong way to go,'' O'Donnell told local radio.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
Australian Defense Force (ADF) Chief Peter Cosgrove told parliament recently that images of defense force personnel should not be used for ``unmistakable political purposes.''
In Australia the use of images of the military has traditionally been limited to government information leaflets and TV commercials, and has played no part in election campaigns.
A spokeswoman for Howard said the pamphlets were not government propaganda, but a newsletter from John Howard to his electorate. ``This is not government advertising,'' she said.
The pamphlet was titled ``An important message from the Prime Minister'' and contained information on security and the economy.
The envelope containing the pamphlets carried Howard's Liberal Party slogan: ``Protecting, Securing, Building Australia's Future,'' which he unveiled this week as his fourth-term agenda.
``After proper consultations, including with the department of defense, he was informed that the brochure was appropriate,'' the spokeswoman said, adding that the photographs of the prime minister with the troops were available publicly on the defense department's Web Site.
Since the start of the Iraq war, Howard has frequently been photographed and filmed farewelling Australian troops and navy ships and welcoming them home.
Similar to the visit by President Bush to Baghdad for Thanksgivings Day, Howard made a secret, lightning visit to Baghdad for Anzac Day, Australia's memorial for its war dead, on April 26 -- a visit which commanded national publicity.
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Groupthink Viewed as Culprit in Move to War
July 10, 2004
By Vicki Kemper
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes220.htm
WASHINGTON - The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The escalation of the Vietnam War. The go-ahead for launching the space shuttle Challenger.
"Groupthink," an insular style of policy-making, has been identified as a chief culprit in all. And to these, the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday added the process leading to the decision to attack Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
Irving Janis, a Yale psychologist, coined the term in 1972 to describe a decision-making process in which officials are so wedded to the same assumptions and beliefs that they ignore, discount or even ridicule information to the contrary. When members of a cohesive, homogeneous group value unanimity and agreement on one course of action more than a realistic appraisal of alternatives, they are engaging in groupthink.
Experts said Friday that while groupthink was not entirely responsible for the acceptance of faulty intelligence information on Iraq, the Bush administration was, by design, particularly susceptible to that risky style of decision-making.
"Groupthink is more likely to arise when there is a strong premium on loyalty and when there is not a lot of intellectual range or diversity within a decision-making body," said Stephen M. Walt, academic dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "The Bush administration has been an unusually secretive group of like-minded people where a very high premium is placed on loyalty."
All organizations and administrations face the same risk, Walt said. He added that while the report specifically indicted the intelligence community, others - including Democratic lawmakers and the media - also failed to challenge basic assumptions about Iraq's weapons capability.
"When a president makes a decision about something, there is a tendency to get on the train rather than throwing yourself in front of it," he said. "Whatever Bush's flaws may be, indecision is not one of them."
Business schools and political scientists are among those who warn would-be policymakers and managers of the dangers of groupthink. CRM Learning, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based company specializing in developing products for leadership and management development, has been selling its popular Groupthink video program since the 1970s.
"It's one of those films that people use again and again as new managers or leaders come in," said Lyndi Calder, the company's vice president of marketing.
The commonly cited "symptoms" of groupthink are a fundamental overconfidence that gives members an illusion of invulnerability and a belief in the inherent morality of the group.
The groupthink dynamic also is characterized by a pressure to conform that often leads group members with different ideas to censor themselves. But groupthink is most likely to occur when all or most members of a group share the same views.
In that sense, it is the opposite of collective wisdom, said James Surowiecki, a financial writer for the New Yorker and author of the recent book, "The Wisdom of Crowds."
"What's really striking about groupthink is not so much that dissenting opinions are crushed or shouted down, but they come to seem improbable," he said. "Everyone operates on the idea that this is true, so everyone goes out to prove that it's true."
Surowiecki, who concludes in his book that "under the right circumstances, most groups are remarkably intelligent," said it's when leaders surround themselves with like-minded people that groupthink is a danger.
"Collective wisdom," by contrast, comes when "each person in the group is offering his or her best independent forecast," he said. "It's not at all about compromise or consensus."
He said a guiding principle of the Bush administration seems to be that "everyone needs to be on the same page to reach a decision." To reach good decisions, he said, "I think it's exactly the opposite."
-------- us politics
Kerry Details Nonproliferation Agenda
Wade Boese,
July/August 2004
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Kerry.asp
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, used several June speeches to promise a more aggressive approach than President George W. Bush on keeping "weapons of mass murder" out of the hands of terrorists.
Describing the possibility that terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons as the "greatest threat we face today," Kerry said June 1 that he would accelerate current programs aimed at controlling supplies of the two key ingredients for nuclear weapons-highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. The Massachusetts senator also called for disposing of existing excess stockpiles and banning the future production of these materials for weapons purposes.
"No material. No bomb. No nuclear terrorism," Kerry explained.
The Bush administration has dedicated $10 billion through 2012 to safekeeping and destroying bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union and recently stepped up programs to do the same elsewhere. It has also won commitments by another 20 states to collectively try and match the U.S. $10 billion.
But Kerry argued these efforts have been insufficient. "We have done too little, often too late," he charged.
Kerry stated his administration would remove all nuclear bomb-making material from inadequately guarded sites worldwide within four years as opposed to the 13 years he estimated it would take under current plans.
Kerry implied that this task could be accomplished, in part, by boosting funds but failed to put a price tag on his proposal. He also pledged to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end lingering bureaucratic disputes, such as assigning liability for accidents and gaining access to certain weapons sites, that have impeded some projects. (See ACT, June 2003.)
The senator further called for all countries permanently to cease production of HEU and plutonium for weapons, essentially capping the amount of nuclear bomb-making material worldwide. Although the U.S. government had long supported negotiating a treaty toward this end, the Bush administration initiated a review of the concept last year and has yet to announce any findings. (See ACT, November 2003.)
To better convince other countries to forgo nuclear weapons, Kerry declared the United States needed to serve as a better example by shelving its ongoing research into modified or new nuclear weapons. He contended that such activity "undermines [U.S.] credibility in persuading other nations" to give up their nuclear arms possessions or pursuits.
Two countries that Kerry, like Bush, particularly wants to persuade to abandon any nuclear ambitions are North Korea and Iran. But the Democratic challenger indicated that he would take a different approach in dealing with Tehran and Pyongyang, seeking more direct talks with each country. In the case of Iran, he said Washington should join with other capitals to call Tehran's "bluff" by offering it nuclear fuel so it would have no excuse to produce its own.
Given the importance of preventing nuclear terrorism, the senator said he would name a single official to be in charge of U.S. policy on the threat. A similar position would be created for dealing with biological weapons dangers, Kerry said June 2.
Kerry does not disagree entirely with Bush. Like the president, Kerry stated that his administration would bolster rules and controls regulating nuclear trade and oppose the acquisition by any new countries of facilities useful for building nuclear weapons. Bush outlined several policy recommendations with the same aim in a Feb. 11 speech. (See ACT, March 2004.)
Even though many Democrats have been critical of what they deem as Bush's undue emphasis on pre-emption, Kerry said June 3 that, if terrorists succeed in obtaining nuclear or biological weapons, he would "destroy those weapons before they are used." In preparation for such a scenario, the senator said he would "build new forces that specialize in finding, securing, and destroying weapons of mass destruction and the facilities that build them."
Still, Kerry said May 27 that he would work "to build an international consensus for early preventive action, so that states don't even think of taking the nuclear road." He did not specify what kind of actions he had in mind.
Acting in concert with other countries, particularly through alliances, is one of four foreign policy "imperatives" Kerry has outlined. Reshaping the U.S. military to counter and defend better against unconventional and asymmetric threats; relying on nonmilitary options, such as diplomacy, "early enough and effectively enough so military force doesn't become our only option"; and ending U.S. dependence on oil imports from the Middle East are the other three.
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Analysis As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large
By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39833-2004Jul9.html
Yesterday's report by the Senate intelligence committee left in shreds two of the Bush administration's main rationales for the war in Iraq: that Iraq had illicit weapons and that it cooperated with al Qaeda.
The conclusions are not earthshaking by themselves. Although President Bush and Vice President Cheney have not abandoned either rationale, both were already tattered after similar doubts were voiced over many months by U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq, the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA officials and others.
The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes. Though officially agnostic on the White House role in using Iraq intelligence (that will come in a later report), the committee gives ammunition both to Bush and Democratic opponent John F. Kerry.
On the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the bipartisan committee report absolved administration officials of pressuring CIA analysts to inflate the case against Saddam Hussein. And while making no judgment on whether the administration distorted the intelligence it was given, the committee made plain that the CIA's case against Iraq was plenty exaggerated on its own. Without "any evidence" of administration coercion, the committee found, the intelligence community's judgments on Iraq's weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."
On the issue of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, however, the committee's findings imply that the White House, not the CIA, is to blame for making dubious claims that there were working ties between Osama bin Laden's organization and Hussein's Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the committee found, echoing the Sept. 11 commission staff's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between the two.
"The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective," the committee found. "No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise." Likewise, the report concluded: "No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaeda in conducting terrorist attacks."
The undermining of the administration's case for war is potentially a grave threat to Bush, whose reelection prospects are closely tied to Americans' view of the merits of the Iraq war and whether it advances the fight against terrorism. For that reason, Bush has delayed a final reckoning on Iraq's forbidden weapons by naming a commission that will not report its findings until after the election. In the meantime, he continues to assert ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, and to place blame for any weapons miscalculation squarely on the CIA.
In that vein, Bush blessed the committee's work yesterday. "The idea that the Senate has taken a hard look to find out where the intelligence-gathering services went short is good and positive," he said in Pennsylvania, acknowledging "some failures" in the intelligence. "We thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," he said. "I thought so; the Congress thought so; the U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons."
Bush's distancing of himself from the flawed allegations may well be aided by the departure this week of CIA director George J. Tenet, who was criticized in the Senate report for not always being informed about dissenting views when he met almost daily with Bush.
Democrats, in turn, are determined not to let Bush avoid blame. Even before the report came out, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) sent out a press release saying the administration asserted Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration that the CIA doubted. Yesterday, the Kerry campaign issued a statement saying: "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."
A senior intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity agreed with that logic yesterday, saying the CIA's assertions, whatever their accuracy, did not in themselves justify going to war; the agency made no recommendation on this. "Policymakers should not be immune from the decision on what to do," the official said.
In an early indication of political debates to come, the Senate panel's Republican chairman yesterday emphasized the findings that left the White House blameless, while the Democratic vice chairman emphasized that the CIA was right to dismiss the notion of al Qaeda ties to Iraq.
"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said in summarizing the report. "Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."
Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) found a different point of emphasis. "Our report found that the intelligence community's judgments were right on Iraq's ties to terrorists, which is another way of saying that the administration's conclusions were wrong, and that is, of the relationship, the formal relationship, however you want to describe it, between Iraq and al Qaeda," he said.
Rockefeller continued to assert yesterday there was administration "pressure" on the CIA, although he endorsed the bipartisan committee report stating otherwise. The report, while stating that no intelligence analysts said they felt pressured to change their conclusions, found "tremendous pressure" to avoid missing a potential threat. That made the CIA "purposefully aggressive," as the agency described it, in drawing potential links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Whatever the source of that pressure, the committee's finding yesterday casting more doubt on an al Qaeda-Iraq link make it likely the controversy will continue through the presidential campaign. The committee labeled as "accurate" the CIA's prediction that Hussein would rely on his own operatives to conduct attacks.
Even yesterday, after the committee report, Bush said Hussein's Iraq provided a safe haven for an "al Qaeda affiliate." Bush has previously described Hussein as "an ally of al Qaeda" and asserted that Iraq "provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
Cheney last month said: "There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to; the evidence is overwhelming."
Cheney's office yesterday pointed to the committee's findings that the CIA was rightly concerned about "reports of training" in chemical and biological weapons and was reasonable to believe "al Qaeda or associated operatives" were in Iraq. A spokesman said the committee findings are consistent with administration claims.
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Democrats Avoid Platform Fight Over Iraq
Associated Press Writer
July 10, 2004
By KEN THOMAS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4297365,00.html
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) - John Kerry's presidential campaign avoided a platform fight Saturday by persuading activists to drop virulent language about the Iraq war that would have declared the conflict a mistake from the beginning.
The Democratic platform committee worked through the day at a beachfront resort to put final details on the party's statement of principles for the November elections.
The platform will be shaped heavily by national security crises and presumptive nominee Kerry's campaign.
First, however, the committee had to avoid demands by a group of activists that the document describe the entry into Iraq as a mistake and lay down an exit strategy to get American forces out of Iraq. Still, the document includes tough language on terrorism and President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
It will be presented to the Democratic National Convention in Boston for its imprimatur at the end of this month.
``Democrats are stronger than ever on national security issues and are going into the election confident of winning the debate on who can keep America safe,'' Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said.
The committee adopted language brokered by the Kerry campaign saying that as other nations add troops, ``The U.S. will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence.''
Supporters of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, still campaigning despite Kerry's evident victory, said the language was not what they had wanted but called it a victory. They agreed to withdraw amendments to the platform on Iraq in exchange for the new language.
``What we got was a commitment to begin the process to talk about bringing the troops home, and the Kerry campaign and the DNC from the outset didn't want this language in there,'' Kucinich deputy campaign manager Tim Carpenter said.
``We've moved. They've moved. It's truly unity in that sense,'' Carpenter said.
Kerry advisers said the platform reflected the Massachusetts senator's long-standing position on Iraq. Kerry has said he would repair America's international alliances and build a genuine multinational coalition to secure Iraq.
``We think we've come to an agreement with the Kucinich people on a way ahead that we think represents what has always been John Kerry's position,'' Kerry adviser Rand Beers said. That, Beers said, ``is we shouldn't be in Iraq longer than we have to be, but we have to ensure that when we leave Iraq, we do it in a way that doesn't leave chaos and catastrophe in our wake.''
``I think that reflects a general view on the part of Democrats, no matter who they supported early on, that it's important that John Kerry be elected,'' said former President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger.
Kucinich later thanked supporters by phone, declaring: ``We pushed them on this issue. They needed to be pushed on this issue.''
Republican National Committee spokesman David James called the platform an ``extreme makeover'' of the Kerry ticket by the DNC.
``The makeover is designed to hide the fact their platform does not mention opposition to funding for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is how both ... Kerry and Edwards voted as part of a tiny, liberal minority in the United States Senate,'' James said.
The document contends Bush ``rushed to war'' in Iraq but does not call the war a mistake. That, it says, is arguable. It also does not rule out pre-emptive military action, if necessary.
``Platforms are about the future, and it is very clear that America must succeed in Iraq. It's got to stay there until the job's done,'' said Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the platform committee's co-chairman.
About a dozen activists greeted committee members outside the ballroom with signs reading: ``Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home. Peace is Patriotic.''
National security clauses comprise half the platform. McAuliffe said about 20 percent of previous platforms dealt with security. DNC officials said about 200 amendments were filed for consideration at the final drafting conference, including those from the Kucinich activists.
The Democratic document offers few departures from party principles on social and economic issues and bears a strong resemblance to Kerry's campaign agenda.
It supports abortion rights, gay rights short of marriage and affirmative action, and it echoes Kerry's support of expanded health care, a modernized military, energy independence and middle-class tax cuts.
Committee members removed a reference to 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole in the text but included a mention of former first lady Nancy Reagan's support of embryonic stem cell research, which Democrats also approve. The Bush administration has restricted the research.
The gathering was in Florida, where Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore in 2000 after a spate of legal challenges, a 36-day recount and a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois said the meeting's location was ``in the middle of a crime scene. If I had a big yellow ribbon, I would tie it around this entire state.''
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
In Search of New Power Source, City Looks Underwater
July 10, 2004
By IAN URBINA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/nyregion/10windmills.html
They look like underwater windmills. And in late August, when six of them are dropped into the rapid currents of the East River alongside Roosevelt Island, these giant "tidal turbines" will begin harvesting about 150 kilowatts of electricity.
If all goes well, an entire underwater wind farm of 200 to 300 sleek 15-feet-tall turbines will discreetly spin under the surface of the river by 2006, providing about 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 8,000 homes.
"That will make New York City one of the greenest cities in the world when it comes to locally produced clean energy," said Trey Taylor, the owner of Verdant Power, a company in Virginia that has been given permits by the city to build the submerged turbines. "It makes sense for this city to take the lead because it has extreme energy needs and unique energy potential."
That potential rests in the distinct geography of the East Channel between Queens and Roosevelt Island. As the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean squeeze their currents down the long, narrow and steep downward slope of the East Channel, the result is a water flow of about six miles per hour, one of the fastest flows of any waterway on the East Coast. "That's a lot of kinetic energy that the city could put to use," Mr. Taylor, 56, said. The East Channel is shallow enough that large commercial ships prefer to use the side of Roosevelt Island facing Manhattan, and it is also deep enough that the turbines pose no risk to recreational boats.
"We're very optimistic about these plans," said Mr. Collins, a spokesman for New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which subsidizes promising technological projects in the state. Last year, the authority gave Verdant a $1 million grant for the project, the largest single award the agency has given to date. "The pilot tests on these structures have been incredibly positive, and things are moving forward quickly," Mr. Collins said.
The project has three stages. In December 2002, a single turbine was suspended under a barge anchored between the Queensboro Bridge and the Roosevelt Island Bridge. It operated for about 5 weeks, and the test period showed that the 8-foot propellers, which rotate only 30 revolutions per minute, were slow enough to avoid harming local aquatic life. The project's second stage starts in late August with the construction of a "six pack" of turbines that will be mounted on pilings under the water and will provide electricity to residents on Roosevelt Island, which has about 3,000 homes. The third stage, if all goes as planned, will start in the fall of 2005. For that, Verdant must get approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a $20 million turbine field that would stretch about a third of the way across the East Channel and would extend from the Roosevelt Island Bridge to the northern tip of Roosevelt Island.
The turbines, the tops of which are about 8 feet beneath the water's surface, swivel to face the oncoming current. The rotors, which have three blades, can swing out of the water for maintenance.
The technology for the turbines is not new. But Mr. Taylor said the project was delayed when his only prototype of the turbine was lost several years ago after being sent to Pakistan for testing. "I'm still not sure how you lose a package that large," he said during a presentation to a group of engineers and city officials at the Center for Architecture near Washington Square on Thursday. "But we are back on track now so long as we can get through the remaining layers of regulatory red tape."
Dick Lutz, the editor of Roosevelt Island's newspaper, The Main Street WIRE, said residents support the project. "We live in asthma alley, so this is a huge step in the right direction," he said, explaining that many residents complain about the effects of living downwind from KeySpan Energy Corporation's Ravenswood power plant and several 10-megawatt generators belonging to New York Power Authority in Long Island City.
"How can you go wrong?" said John Catsimatidis, chief executive of Gristedes Supermarket. The Gristedes on Roosevelt Island, like the rest of the buildings there, would use electricity from the turbines. "This is a steady harvest of energy that doesn't cough pollution back onto us."
A 10-megawatt field, Mr. Taylor said, would save the city the equivalent of about 65,000 barrels of oil each year and would reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 33,000 tons.
"The beauty of the project is not just that it's clean energy, but that it's local," Mr. Taylor said.
Since the electricity would not be traveling far, it would not burden an already overstretched transmission grid. It would also help bolster the city's energy supply, which is expected to run short of demand by 2009. To avoid overdependence on outside sources of energy, New York State requires that at least 80 percent of the city's electricity be generated within the five boroughs. Mr. Taylor said that while the city used 1,000 times what the 10-megawatt turbine field would produce, it is an important start.
But challenges remain. At a price of 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, the electricity from the tidal turbines is still about 2 cents above the wholesale market rate. There is also the problem of supply shortages during the six hours a day of "slack tide," when the tides cause the water to change direction, making the current too slow to turn turbines' rotors.
Mr. Taylor expects the price of tidal energy to drop as customers sign up, and he says power dips will easily be handled by using fuel-cell technology to store energy during times when the currents produce excess electricity.
"The question here is not whether there is enough energy," Mr. Taylor said. "It's how soon can we tap into it."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Bio-prospectors hustle to claim hardy bacteria
July 10, 2004
By Paul Elias
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040709-104001-6954r.htm
PALO ALTO, Calif. - The creatures are known as "extremophiles," and they earn the name: They live in toxic Superfund cleanup sites, boiling deep-sea rift vents, volcanic craters and polar glaciers - some of the planet's harshest environments.
These single-celled creatures owe their hardiness to genes, and that has drawn the attention of a few biotechnology companies. The companies train the genes to mass produce industrial-strength enzymes for such products as better detergents, cleaner chemicals and more effective DNA fingerprints.
Such "bio-prospecting" efforts have huge potential for good. They just might make hazardous waste cleanup more affordable, reduce pollution and make better medicines, if the microbes' genetic durability can be exploited and controlled.
But tough questions are being raised as well - about the morality of allowing private companies to patent and profit from Mother Nature.
The extremophile candidates are numerous. There's Deinoccus radiodurans, dubbed Conan the Bacterium by its legions of fans because it withstands 10,000 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human. Found on radiated food, it has a unique ability to repair broken DNA.
In Chile's moonlike Atacama Desert - one of Earth's driest spots - lives another extremophile scientists say could give them clues to what life might look like on Mars.
And the Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is sponsoring experiments on genetically engineering extremophiles to extend the shelf life of blood-clotting platelets in extreme conditions. The idea is to help treat battlefield wounds.
Objections to such work often come from activists who complain that Third World countries aren't properly compensated for microbes extracted from their deserts, mountains and sea shores.
"The concern with bio-prospecting is that the people who consider themselves to be the stewards of the bio-dioversity in a region often aren't consulted or are ignored," said Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute, a environmental nonprofit based in Edmonds, Wash.
Native Hawaiians are angry over a deal between the University of Hawaii and a biotechnology company to share in potential profits gleaned from lava sludge. Now the Hawaiian Legislature is considering a moratorium on the transfer or sale of extremophiles found on public lands so that environmental and profit-sharing issues can be worked out.
Antarctica is governed by an international treaty that vows to keep the continent open and free to scientists dedicated to peaceful pursuits. But 92 patents have been filed in the United States and another 62 in Europe that claim ownership of biological property found there.
While such patent applications appear to be legal, "some scientists active in Antarctica worry about whether outright commercial exploitation and patents are within the spirit of the treaty," said Sam Johnston, who co-wrote a report on the subject for the United Nations this year.
The Edmonds Institute sued the National Park Service in 1997 after it gave San Diego-based Diversa Corp. commercial rights to prospect for extremophiles in the fabled hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. The prospecting, involving fees and royalties paid to the government, was ultimately approved by a judge on the condition that an extensive environmental review be completed.
The National Park Service has defended the deal - which remains on hold pending the review - as a way for the government to profit on scientific research without disrupting the park's environment. Four decades ago, the Park Service wasn't so financially savvy when a University of Wisconsin researcher discovered the extremophile Thermus aquaticus in a Yellowstone hot spring.
Today, that bacterium provides a key enzyme - polymerase - used for polymerase chain reaction, better known as PCR, a Noble Prize-winning DNA fingerprinting technique used widely by crime labs, hospitals and university researchers.
Yellowstone doesn't receive any income from sales of the PCR enzyme, now a key tool in the $300 million-a-year DNA fingerprinting business.
The companies involved say that without the ability to patent extremophiles, they can't make good on the many promises of this area of biotechnology.
David Estell, a researcher at Genencor International Inc., said bio-prospecting requires the collecting of just a few samples, which hardly disturbs the environment.
Genencor is one of the few profitable biotechnology companies in existence, earning $13 million in the first quarter of 2004 on $94 million in revenue.
Genencor has the genetic material of 15,000 strains of microbes stored in deep freeze in Palo Alto and the Netherlands. It already has 11 industrial products on the market, and is using living material - enzymes and proteins, rather than fossil fuels - to develop cleaner and cheaper ways of making industrial chemicals.
Genencor takes a gene that gives a microbe alkaline resistance, for instance, and uses it to create enzymes for laundry detergent. One enzyme is used in Tide detergent. Another is used to give jeans a faded look.
Both are produced by extremophiles found thriving in highly alkaline lakes in East Africa and Kenya. The extremophile genes responsible for making these enzymes are genetically engineered into commonplace bacteria, which are then coaxed to grow by the trillions in giant brewers' vats at Genencor's nine factories around the world.
"The goal," Mr. Estell said, "is make proteins do something they've never done before."
-------- ACTIVISTS
British sub at Gibraltar is protested
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, AFP, Reuters
Saturday, July 10, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/528820.html
GIBRALTAR A British nuclear submarine docked at Gibraltar on Friday despite Spanish protests over the return of the vessel, whose last stay in the colony provoked acute tensions between the countries.
Spain's deputy prime minister, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, said Spain had tried to persuade Britain to cancel the return of the submarine, the Tireless, to Gibraltar, and repeatedly had expressed its "discomfort and discontent" to British authorities about the visit.
"We're going to try and make sure the visit is as short as possible," Fernández de la Vega said at a news conference.
She said Spain had summoned the British ambassador three times this week to complain about the submarine's deployment.
Britain has said the Tireless, which is capable of firing Tomahawk missiles, is in Gibraltar for a short visit as part of a routine operational program.
Spain ceded the tiny territory of Gibraltar to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and has been trying to win it back ever since. It brands the British presence an occupation.
The Tireless triggered controversy when it visited Gibraltar in May 2000 after developing a crack in the cooling system of its reactor while in the Mediterranean, leaking a small amount of contaminated water into the sea.
It pulled out of the colony after almost a year of repairs and arguments. Environmentalists and residents of southern Spain had repeatedly demanded that it be towed away.
Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos said the submarine's return was one of a series of unfriendly acts by Britain since Spain's new Socialist government took power in April.
At a news conference Thursday, Moratinos said London had given assurances that the visit by the Tireless would be "short and surrounded by the strictest safety measures" and said he hoped it would spend less than a week at the Gibraltar naval base.
But he warned: "We will assess what the impact on our relations with Great Britain will be if the United Kingdom continues not to take into account the requests of a friendly country."
The Foreign Ministry told Britain's ambassador, Stephen Wright, on Wednesday it had a "profound ill feeling" given the "lack of British sensitivity toward Spanish public opinion" in objecting to the Tireless visit, a ministry statement said.
"We do not want nuclear-powered ships in the bay," said Francisco González Cabañas the top official for Cádiz province, which neighbors Gibraltar, the Spanish news agency Efe reported Thursday.
Gibraltar's military spokesman said the colony on Spain's southern coast provided an important facility for the support of submarines.
"In the last eight weeks, HMS Trenchant, HMS Sovereign and USS Albany, which stopped over for July 4 celebrations, have had highly successful visits here," he said.
Tensions over Gibraltar, seldom far from the surface in British-Spanish relations, have flared in recent months.
Wright was summoned to the Foreign Ministry last month to hear a protest against the visit of Princess Anne to Gibraltar to mark the 300th anniversary of the British seizure of the territory.
Two years ago, London and Madrid came very close to agreeing a deal on sharing sovereignty - but virtually all of the residents of Gibraltar showed their distaste for the plan later that year in a referendum. (Reuters, AFP, AP)
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