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NUCLEAR
Nuclear power not a responsible choice
South Korea shuts nuclear power plant over steam leak
Australian government forced to drop nuclear waste dump
The Sickness of War
UK veterans accuse officials of refusing to attend independent probe
MKM Wins Largest Contracts
3-stage nuclear power programme evolved
High radioactivity recorded in Israel
Nuclear-Free New Zealand - Twenty Years On
Danger lurks in state's abandoned mines
Dumping on Yucca Mountain
Roberson lent drive to cleanup czar job
U.S. Forging Ahead With Yucca Mountain Project
INSIGHTS: Yucca Mountain - What Is at Stake for Our Nation?
MILITARY
Afghan President Warns Warlords to Lay Down Arms
Chinese told U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to proceed
Two arrested after 35,000 bullets seized on Romanian border
China warns US to stop arms sales to Taiwan or risk bilateral ties growth
House Approves 'Bioshield' Defense Bill
City Opens a Secure Lab to Counter Bioterrorism
Blair to admit mistakes before Iraq war
Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws
Report Says British Data on Iraq Was Flawed, Not Distorted
China Warns U.S. on Policies
Powerful Car Bomb Rocks Baghdad
Calm in Baghdad Is Shattered as Car Bomb Kills at Least 10
Philippines begins to withdraw troops
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Israel Expands Program to Attract Jews from North America
Israel to Reroute Path of Barrier in West Bank
Globalist: Israel's wall, a victory for the logic of war
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Okinawa anti-base candidates elected
Trouble in the desert kingdom
Aide to Bin Laden Surrenders
Philippines, Reacting to Threat, Starts Troop Withdrawal
Bogus Afghan Jailers May Face Prison Time
Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar Intelligence
Scarlett must go, say MPs
Goss has no chance of heading CIA: Roberts
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Hijackers allowed to stay for fear of infringing their human rights
TSA May Change Screening Redesign Considered for Airport Program
Unprecedented Security for Democratic Convention
Patriot Act chalks up 310 arrests
Security for Democratic convention unprecedented, Ridge says
U.S. Assails Uzbekistan Policies, Trims Aid
Justice Dept. Report Details Use of Patriot Act
Obstacles Block Tracking of Terror Funding
POLITICS
Excerpts of British Intelligence Report
How Niger Uranium Story Defied Wide Skepticism
The Cult of Power - From Leon Trotsky to Paul Wolfowitz
Former Army Scientist Sues New York Times, Columnist
Iranians Get the Last Laugh After Clerics Ban a Comedy
VOA Staff Members Say Government Losing Voice
Al Jazeera Adopts a New Code of Accuracy and Good Taste
In Bush's War Room, the Gloves Are Always Off
Powell Flies in the Face of Tradition
A Bipartisan Report Masks Deep Divisions
OTHER
EPA Sues for $2.8 Million in Arizona Superfund Cleanup
USDA's Mad Cow Detection Challenged
ACTIVISTS
The time for renewable energy is now
Group's Antiwar Billboard Is Offered New Times Sq. Spot
New York Rejects Central Park for Convention March
Thousands Protest Government in Peru Strike
2nd Annual Nuclear Free Future Run
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear power not a responsible choice
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
MAINE VOICES:
Maria Holt
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/mvoice/040714midcoastnuke.shtml
An article from USA Today described a study by the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project that found increased levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth collected in counties near nuclear power plants as compared with other counties in the same states.
Strontium-90 is a byproduct of uranium fission, which collects in bones and other tissues. The RPHP is currently studying whether children with cancer have more strontium-90 in their teeth than other children.
Sr-90 was widely released into the environment and the food chain by our above-ground nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s and by the French and Chinese between 1970 and 1980. Surprisingly, the RPHP study shows that although Sr-90 levels would have been expected to decline in the decades folowing the end of above-ground nuclear weapons tests, levels have actually been rising, especially in counties near nuclear reactors, where the levels were 31 percent to 54 percent higher than other counties in the same states.
We all need to be aware that, although nuclear power plants do not give off greenhouse gases, they consume great quantities of fossil fuel in processing the uranium fuel and in the construction and operation of the plants.
Few of us know that they also continuously release man-made radioactive pollution even when they are functioning the way they are supposed to. Maine Yankee nuclear power plant is still releasing small amounts of radioactivity even though it has been shut down since 1998.
When the Maine Low-Level Radioactive Waste Report covering 1986-1990 showed that more radioactive material was being released into the water and air by Maine Yankee than was being shipped out of state for burial, we were worried but not surprised. According to the Maine Yankee toll-free daily report (1-800-762-7104), during the past year while moving the radioactive fuel rods (high level waste) to on-site storage, more radioactive gas was released per day than per month during active operation.
Our Maine Bureau of Health reported that after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine in 1986, the radioactive cloud "rained out" here in Maine as it passed overhead on its way around the planet, producing measurable increases in radioactivity in, for instance, milk from our local dairy farms. According to Russian press reports, following the Chernobyl accident the cancer rates in the Ukraine and to the north in Byelorussia doubled in the next two years.
Our government, the Russian government and the World Health Organization have given the world only reassuring information about nuclear power and the Chernobyl accident. However in 1991, we had a visitor from Russia at Morse High School in Bath, brought to this country by students, teachers and alumni.
She visited the state Legislature, where she was asked quietly about the official downplaying of the health effects following the Chernobyl accident. She looked very sad and answered, "Those reports are not true."
We are in favor of taking action against the threat to life represented by global warming, but we feel strongly that we should give precedence to ways of doing this which do not cost us our health and the health of our children.
What can we do? Lobby our legislators to make more responsible choices in energy policy, and make more responsible choices ourselves. For example, it is now possible to buy, for a small premium, truly "green power," which is generated entirely within the state of Maine from non-nuclear and non-fossil sources. Ask Central Maine Power.
This should be happening nationwide, but as we know, "Maine leads the nation."
-------- accidents and safety
South Korea shuts nuclear power plant over steam leak
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
July 14, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26005/story.htm
SEOUL - South Korea shut a nuclear power plant after a steam leak was discovered on Sunday, a spokesman for state utility Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) said.
The spokesman for the company, which operates all 18 of South Korea's nuclear power reactors, said it would take several days to fix the problem at the 950-megawatt (MW) plant.
The reactor in Yonggwang, in the south of the country, was closed at 0721 am on Sunday (2221 GMT on Saturday), he said, stressing there had been no radioactive leak.
Two other reactors in Yonggwang were shut for more than three months for safety checks late last year, after a radioactive leak was found at one of the twin reactors, driving up demand for alternative fuels including oil and natural gas.
KHNP is a unit of state-controlled Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO), which supplies more than 95 percent of the country's power.
Energy-deficient South Korea, which imports all of its crude oil needs, relies on nuclear energy for 40 percent of its electricity.
-------- australia
Australian government forced to drop nuclear waste dump
SYDNEY (AFP)
Jul 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040714034851.m87xalmk.html
The Australian government was forced Wednesday to abandon plans for a national radioactive waste dump on a remote outback site as the political price proved too high in election year.
The site was to have been built on a sheep station acquired for the purpose near Woomera in South Australia, but after months of wrangling with state authorities, Prime Minister John Howard said his government had dropped the plan.
The decision came after Howard's Liberal colleagues expressed fears over the electoral implications of foisting the dump on South Australia in which three key marginal seats are under threat at the election due by the end of this year.
Howard blamed a recent Federal Court ruling against the forced acquisition of the land and the failure of the states to cooperate with Canberra in finding a national solution.
He handed responsibility for storage of waste back to the states, saying they had all accepted the need for safe and secure disposal, in one place. "But no-one wants it in their back yard," he said.
He said Canberra was committed to taking responsibility for the low-level radioactive waste, adding: "The states and territories now have a responsibility to do the same in relation to their waste and as a matter of priority."
Howard's conservative government purchased the land over the objections of the Labor-controlled state government, the land's owner and local Aboriginal communities.
The state government appealed against the acquisition of the land and the Federal Court upheld the appeal, finding there was no "urgent necessity for the acquisition".
It rejected federal government arguments that a dump would have presented no safety hazard and it would have been contrary to public interest for the purchase to be delayed.
Opposition Labor leader Mark Latham said Howard had spent eight years pushing for a waste site in South Australia, only to change his position in the run-up to an election.
"It's another example of Mr. Howard saying one thing before the election and getting ready to reverse the decision when the election is out of the way," he said.
-------- depleted uranium
The Sickness of War
Killing our own soldiers with radioactive weapons
Harvest Moon Hack
Joshua Greene
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Cleveland Free Times
E-mail Joshua Greene at: jgreene@freetimes.com
TOO BAD IT'S THE TROOPS and not the leaders who die in war. Instead we're living through someone's version of hell. I must have been one bad dude in my last life. Maybe we all were.
Last month we learned that our boys in Iraq are coming up positive, but it's bad. No joke. Investigative journalist Juan Gonzalez and the New York Daily News independently tested nine blood samples from National Guard military police who've complained of unknown ailments for months now. Four of them tested positive, not for head lice or mange or syphilis or derangement or any of the things that you or I are likely to test positive for. For uranium.
They've got uranium in their lungs.
Bullets made of lead weren't good enough. They couldn't pierce a tank, so they started using depleted uranium. Must have been a sale at the nuclear power plant. And it seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Gonzalez reports that the European Union in January 2003 became alarmed after a bunch of Italian soldiers started dying from leukemia. They called for a ban on using bullets made of nuclear waste. Gonzalez says 1,000 tanks were blown up in the first Iraq war using depleted uranium bullets. He says the exploding bullets sent uranium dust into the air. And our boys are now back in those very areas where this dust is just floating around.
Additionally, he reports that last year alone the U.S. forces used 127 tons of depleted uranium ammo.
What's up with that?
Who's making decisions saying it's okay to go spraying uranium around the surface of the earth? How does a decision like that get made?
Here in Ohio, we just let a corporation that's already proven it can't be trusted with our safety turn a nuclear power plant back on. And over there in World War III, they're sending poor boys into a land we already covered in "low-level radioactive waste."
Yo, Bush, that's why we were supposed to send the United Nations soldiers in.
And ain't that just like us. The hard news is, U.S. soldiers are being exposed to radioactive materials because they're in Iraq. Forget about what it's been like living in Iraq with radioactive waste just blowing around. Think the U.S. government keeping our troops in the dark is a big deal? It is. But who was supposed to tell the Iraqi kids not to play in the wrecked tanks?
The thing about uranium is it isn't exactly going anywhere anytime soon. As far as I can tell, the best a human can do right now is about 110 years. With a half-life of 2.3 million years, the Uranium 236 they're finding in these soldiers' lungs will outlive our species. What were we thinking?
There's something wrong about the way we're making decisions. It's like the time I was really stoned and couldn't figure out why my motorcycle wouldn't start. So I cut all the ignition wires and hot-wired it. When that failed, I noticed that the battery terminals just weren't cranked down tight enough. And so now I'm left with a bigger problem. But hey, even I know better than to spray nuclear waste around the surface of the earth.
It's a pretty dark path our whole modern society is on. In ancient times we had clean air and water, but it got dark at night and cold in the winter. So in the name of making it light at night and warm in the winter, we have dirty water and dirty air. Was darkness really that scary?
I've got a buddy in the armed forces. All last year he was marching to the administration's tune. "Weapons of mass destruction," he was telling me. "We can't have terrorists using our weapons." And his argument made sense. It's wrong for repressed, angry or just really stupid people to be allowed to use guns or explosives of any type. As we're proving, those are tools for a society far more advanced than ours.
We think we're advanced 'cause we've got 160 channels of advertising and mind-control in our homes. We let people with evil intentions, people we don't know, trust, love or nothing, come into our homes and tell us what to buy and how to talk. We're about ready for a trip back to the Stone Age. We need to relearn some of the basics.
Like don't shit where you eat.
This place, Iraq; it's known as the fertile crescent of the planet, and we're making it radioactive. Win, we all lose, and lose, we all lose too. It's just wrong to use weapons that not only kill our enemy and make his land fallow, but cause our own soldiers to die too. It's really not hard to understand.
----
UK veterans accuse officials of refusing to attend independent probe
2004-07-14
(Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-07/14/content_1600314.htm
LONDON, July 14 -- British veterans of the 1991 Gulf war and their supporters accused government officials of "chickening out" of attending an independent inquiry into illnessesthat have affected more than 6,000 former soldiers, the British Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.
The British government has decided not to allow its ministers, civil servants and members of the armed forces to attend the investigation led by Lord Lloyd of Berwick into the so-called "Gulf War Syndrome."
It would be "inappropriate" to accept invitations to the unofficial hearings chaired by the former Lord Justice of Appeal, the Ministry of Defense said.
However, the ministry promised instead to provide "a pack of appropriate documents" to help Lord Lloyd understand the complex issues involved. The Department of Health was bound by the same decision.
The three-week hearing headed by Lord Lloyd aims to take evidence from 30 ex-servicemen, medical experts and government representatives to establish the facts about Gulf War illnesses and resolve the long-standing dispute over their causes.
Thousands of British veterans say they have suffered from unexplained ailments including kidney pains, memory loss, chronic fatigue and mood swings. They blame the cocktail of tablets and vaccinations they were given to protect them against nerve agents,anthrax and botulism.
Exposure to depleted uranium munitions has also been identifiedas a possible cause of the illnesses.
However, it has never been accepted that the illnesses have a common cause arising from the Gulf War, meaning that hundreds of veterans have not been able to claim compensation.
The British government has never acknowledged the existence of "Gulf War Syndrome." The Ministry of Defense maintains that the illness are so varied that there can be no distinct syndrome or a specific cause.
--------
MKM Wins Largest Contracts in Its Corporate History
Valued at $142 Million From USACE Louisville and Tulsa
07/14/2004
PRNewswire - STAFFORD, TX USA
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-25-2004/0002238638&EDATE=
STAFFORD, Texas, Aug. 25 -- MKM Engineers, Inc. (http://www.mkmengineers.com ) announced it has won the two largest contracts in its corporate history. MKM Engineers, an 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business, won:
-- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District, Multiple Award Remediation Contract (MARC) valued at $100 million, distributed among five small businesses as Set-Asides
-- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa District, Multiple Award Task Order Contract (MATOC), valued at $42 million, competed among three firms in the 8(a) small business pool
MKM Vice-President of Federal Programs, Don Brenneman, said, "These are the most significant wins in our corporate history. Contract work can range from Hazardous, Toxic and Radioactive Waste (HTRW) to remedial construction services in all 10 states. The Corps noted in its award letter that quality, cost and time are the three critical performance aspects, with safety paramount. We intend to deliver outstanding performance throughout the life of these contracts."
Brenneman was formerly a VP at Halliburton Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Tetra Tech, and NUS, all major U.S. engineering firms. Brenneman also won the first U.S. Navy and Department of Energy (DOE) contracts for MKM. Other MKM contracts include those with the Department of Homeland Security (U.S. Coast Guard), Defense Reutilization Marketing Services (DRMS), Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), EPA, and others.
MKM's initial Aug. 23 MARC award was part of a $100,000,000 Department of Defense (DoD) contract for remediation services. Performance is expected to be completed by Aug. 23, 2014 within the boundaries of the Louisville District (KY, IN, IL, OH, MI). The Tulsa MATOC will be performed within its own boundaries (TX, OK, LA, AR, NM).
MKM President Khodi Irani said, "Since 2000, MKM Engineers has grown over 300%. Our revenues for FY 2003 were $42 million. We are poised to reach $48 million revenues by the close of 2004. We are enhancing our safety and QA programs. They will help ensure success in all our contract executions."
The U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command (JMC), Rock Island Arsenal HQ, tapped MKM to serve in its worldwide rapid response Army Contaminated Equipment Retrograde Team (ACERT) program. JMC deployed MKM to Kuwait to clean up depleted uranium. As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, MKM was invited by the Army Bomb Damage Assessment Team to review war damage in Iraq. Also, DOE BWXT Pantex recently awarded MKM an additional contract to perform work at its nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, TX.
MKM was contracted by U.S. Army JMC to provide turnkey sampling, characterization, and profiling, brokering, transportation and disposal services for the former McClellan AFB CS10 project, which was the U.S. Air Force's largest low level radiological waste (LLRW) disposal project. As a subcontractor to EG&G, a division of URS, MKM participated in the largest seizure in Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) history of 4.2 million pounds of explosives stored illegally in a Kansas warehouse as well as the FBI/BATF seizure of over 2,500 missiles in Roswell, NM.
MKM Engineers received the U.S. SBA Administrator's Award for Excellence, Region 6, in 2004. The Air Force AFCEE program also selected MKM for its Mentor-Protege Program, teamed with MWH.
Since its inception in 1991, MKM has successfully completed over 400 projects in 46 states. MKM's businesses include munitions response/unexploded ordnance (UXO), radiological waste, homeland security, design-build, and environmental remediation. MKM currently has over 150 employees and offices in 17 locations, including Kuwait. MKM is providing environmental/munitions response services at four of over 10 Army ammunition plants served.
Contact: Chief Public Information Officer: Colonel (Ret.) Paul Ihrke 281-814-2038 paul.ihrke@mkmengineers.com or Gurinder M. Rana, P.E. 330-962-8877 gm.rana@mkmengineers.com
MKM Engineers, Inc. 4153 Bluebonnet Drive; Stafford, TX 77477 V 281-277-5100 Fax 281-277-5205 1-800-277-4095 http://www.mkmengineers.com
SOURCE MKM Engineers, Inc. Web Site: http://www.mkmengineers.com
-------- india / pakistan
3-stage nuclear power programme evolved
Press Trust of India
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33780
New Delhi, July 14: To utilise large reserves of thorium, a "carefully balanced" three-stage nuclear power programme has been evolved by government, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday. Under this, from the spent fuel of the first stage in which natural uranium is used, plutonium is extracted and used as fuel in the second stage in fast breeder reactors, minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan said.
In the third stage, uranium-233, produced by irradiating thorium in nuclear reactor, is used as fuel, he said. Thorium by itself is not fissionable.
The minister said the third stage for large-scale exploitation of thorium can be launched only after a sizeable base capacity of the second stage is built up.
-------- israel
High radioactivity recorded in Israel
The Dimona nuclear plant is situated in the Negev desert
Reuters,
Wednesday 14 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AE4FB40C-5F1C-4AED-B02C-2EEAB498AA6B.htm
Worryingly high levels of radioactivity have been discovered in southern Israel's underground water table.
According to scientific research published on Wednesday, the soaring radioactivity levels measured in the Negev Desert and in the Arava valley are caused by natural radioactive elements such as uranium and radon gas.
But Professor Avner Vengosh, who co-authored the study by Ben Gurion University, dismissed any relation between the abnormal findings and the nearby nuclear plant of Dimona, also in southern Israel.
Contaminated water?
"This phenomena has spread throughout the area," he said, referring to Jordan and Egypt's Sinai desert.
"We discovered concentrations of radium reaching up to 10 times the normal average in (Israel's) water table," he added. Officials in the environment ministry have advised local fish farmers not to use the water for fear it will contaminate fish destined for human consumption.
The agriculture ministry insisted however that no contaminated fish had been found in the area.
-------- pacific
Nuclear-Free New Zealand - Twenty Years On
July 14, 2004 Engineers for Social Responsibility
http://www.esr.org.nz/events/even2004/NuclearFreeNZ.html
Dr Robert White spoke to the July meeting of the Auckland Branch of ESR to comment on the historical background to New Zealand's anti-nuclear legislation in 1984, and comment on the present situation.
On 14 July 1984 the Labour Government came to power and introduced the first nuclear-free policy for weapons and reactors on ships that New Zealand had ever had. It also established NZ as the first ever, single-nation, nuclear weapons-free zone. NZ is the only country that has put its nuclear-free policy into law which is comprehensive and expresses our complete rejection of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, or having anything to do with them. For many New Zealanders it is very symbolic and has won our country international recognition as an advocate of a nuclear-free world.
In 1970 there was no nuclear weapons policy and there was a long history of visits by ships of the US Navy. Each visit was covered by a separate visit request. In the 1970s there was a request by the Americans for blanket clearance to be given to their ships on an annual basis. The National Government agreed to that and the new procedure continued right up until 1984. It meant that no questions were asked about weapons at all on these ships.
Of course America was operating its neither-confirm-nor-deny policy on nuclear weapons, in other words they would neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on any ships throughout this whole period. This only affected ships that were not nuclear-powered, because in the 1960s concern had been growing in New Zealand about the safety of reactors on these ships and in the early 1970s a new safety code was introduced governing the safety of these nuclear reactors and in 1972 the US request for a nuclear-powered submarine was actually refused because NZ now required technical details of the reactors and the US refused to give those details. That situation continued until 1975 when Labour lost the election, although in 1974 the US gave NZ an absolute guarantee of liability for any nuclear reactor accident. But during this whole period visits by conventionally powered warships continued.
Then in 1975 National won the election and came into power and in 1976 dropped all restrictions on nuclear-powered ship visits, except that they had to be cleared individually, and nuclear-powered ship visits resumed.
It is probably that nuclear weapons did enter New Zealand in those years, right up to April 1984, although with the neither-confirm-nor-deny policy we cannot say for sure. This would be confirmed by a couple of statements by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon in 1976.
At that time there were enormous protests in NZ, about nuclear weapons. There were huge marches with tens of thousands of people, and the peace squadron flotilla, all with people protesting the possible presence of nuclear weapons in NZ on these ships.
We had the celebration yesterday [14 July] of the 20th anniversary of the Labour Government coming into power in 1984, when we got our first real nuclear-free policy. They had the dedication to establish a nuclear-free policy which completely banned the visits of nuclear-powered vessels on safety grounds and established a very unique formula for deciding whether to admit a vessel that might or might not be carrying nuclear weapons. The Government itself would decide whether or not to admit a ship or submarine that might be carrying nuclear weapons. That had never been done by any other country before or since.
It is worth noting that the ban on nuclear-powered vessels was always more controversial than the bans on vessels carrying nuclear weapons. This section of our nuclear policy has always had less support than the nuclear weapons ban which has always had high support from the public. The National Party recently published some poll results which they claimed showed great support, but which really are the same as they have been for years and years.
The USS Buchanan episode was the first American attempt to try and produce some sort of procedure whereby the new Labour Government's policy was melded with past activities to produce not too much disturbance for the American situation. One thing that was really worrying our Government was how the new nuclear policy was going to affect ANZUS and our relations with the Americans. The USS Buchanan was an aging destroyer, and it was claimed that it would be most unlikely to carry nuclear weapons, although at that stage in the Cold War virtually any ship that could carry nuclear weapons would do so.
Leaks of various Government communications led to huge activity by the Peace Movement, and the visit was eventually cancelled. Lange informed the American Ambassador, Munro-Brown, that they could not under the circumstances guarantee that the ship would fit with the new policy.
During this time French nuclear testing was going on and this was a big trigger to generate further support for the anti-nuclear policy of the Labour Government, especially after the sinking of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.
Then in June 1986 George Shultz who was the official mostly involved with the Government in discussing the whole nuclear policy and ANZUS, declared that NZ had effectively finished its membership of ANZUS and this was formally announced in August 1986. Whether this was a legal move by the American Government or not is open to question.
On the 8 June 1987 the nuclear policy finally became law. The US clearly saw the move from policy to legislation as quite serious, making it much more difficult for a succeeding NZ government to rescind the ban on nuclear armed and nuclear powered ships.
Then in 1990 the National Party itself adopted Labour's nuclear legislation in what seemed like a surprise move. Most people feel that this was done to win votes, with the Labour Government being in disarray at the time over their moves on the economy.
Then on 27 September 1991, a surprise announcement came from the US, saying that they were going to unilaterally remove all nuclear weapons from their surface ships, aircraft that could carry nuclear weapons and the smaller nuclear-powered submarines called attack submarines. It was clear that they did this because the weapons were old, generally obsolete and the US Navy regarded them as a damn nuisance because they never used them. The British and the Russians followed suit rapidly.
Finally in 1995 the Royal Navy resumed visits to NZ without any question about our nuclear legislation whatsoever and there were no real protests and these visits have continued off and on up until very recently. So the British accepted our nuclear-free legislation as it stands. The only people standing against it were the Americans.
Throughout the period 1988 to the present NZ-US defence relations have been improving, but the nuclear policy, according to the US, remains a block to full relationship. They have refused to send conventionally powered warships here even though everyone knew they did not carry nuclear weapons any more from 1992 on. But the legislation still remained a block.
In discussing the present and future of New Zealand's nuclear-free stance, he mentioned the National Party's recent claims about the Danish policy, obviously arising from National's complete misunderstanding of it.
Denmark has a policy allowing nuclear-powered ship visits, but what they say is "if you want to send your nuclear-powered ship here you have to tell us about how the reactors work, how the safety systems work, so that we can assess for ourselves if the ship is going to be safe in our ports". This is what NZ did earlier on. The Americans never do that for anybody, nor do the British or other nuclear navies. So while American conventionally powered warship visits to Denmark (a NATO country) continue, no US Navy nuclear-powered vessel has ever visited Denmark. This also serves to put to the lie the claim by the Americans that they do not discriminate between their nuclear and their non-nuclear powered ships, another excuse they use for not visiting.
Another claim made for the need for ship visits is that of strategic reasons. But if that really was so, then non-nuclear-powered ships could visit, but they do not do so. Looking at the actual pattern of nuclear-powered vessels of the years it becomes apparent that in the period 1958-75 there were only 4 visits by nuclear-powered visits. A report in 1984 said the nuclear-powered attack (ie smaller) submarines were generally only for rest and recreation by their crews.
And in the 1975 period when we had the Danish type of policy, there were no nuclear-powered visits at all, although other vessels did visit. From 1976 to 1984 there were 9 different nuclear-powered vessels visited and they made calls in 10 different ports.
They now have no cruisers. Their nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are so deep they cannot get into our ports. So if we lifted our ban the only type of vessels that would visit us would be the smaller nuclear-powered submarines. They also have very large ballistic missile submarines, but they never visit foreign ports, and probably would not be able to get in anyway, they are so huge.
So what about the question of safety? Do we really expose ourselves to great risks by having nuclear-powered vessels in our ports?
The US navy certainly has a good record for safety for its nuclear-powered vessels. But even so we know that there are nuclear-powered American submarines on the floor of the seabed. We all remember with great sadness the terrible recent Russian disaster with its submarine Kirsk. The Royal Navy has nuclear-powered submarines and they have had continuing safety problems. The British Government does not even allow them into its commercial ports. Likewise Australia bans nuclear-powered vessels from Sydney Harbour.
In the UK, Portsmouth authorities have issued iodine tablets to the local population in case of a naval reactor accident. Normal iodine fills the thyroid instead of radio-active iodine which is the most common release from a nuclear reactor accident.
A problem that has arisen more recently is that terrorists might seize a nuclear-powered vessel in a port - it would be a very tantalising target.
Dr White then commented that he believes the real problem is one of symbolism, the symbolism of a small and independent country standing up to the US and telling them what they can or cannot do. That is something which they just cannot tolerate, especially in the light of their ongoing nuclear strategies.
In the international arena NZ is seen as a highly-principled country, a truly nuclear-free country, working for nuclear disarmament, and it really does, according to people overseas, give support to groups in other countries, including in the US, who are looking for a nuclear-free world. And if we weaken our iconic legislation one bit, people will see this as us being under the US thumb again and we will lose much of that respect.
The Bush Administration has developed what is really a very, very worrying new nuclear weapons policy which blurs the traditional distinction between nuclear weapons with their dreadful destructive power and all other weapons. They will now consider using nuclear weapons against any country, including non-nuclear powers, that they see as seriously threatening them. And they will use them in what they call surprising military situations, whatever that means, presumably attacks by terrorists.
But of direct relevance to us is that while the only nuclear-powered vessels likely to visit us are the nuclear-powered attack submarines, these vessels still retain the ability to carry nuclear weapons. On the surface ships they took away they took away the extra structures that were required to carry nuclear weapons, although in principle they could put them back. But these submarines retain the capability to carry nuclear weapons and the Americans have weapons in storage that at very short notice could put back on these attack submarines.
And the bellicose Bush Administration could deploy these at any time. There is also talk of developing new weapons for surface ships. So the situation is now very serious. The US is destroying hopes for nuclear disarmament despite what it claims and, their actions could see a nuclear armed US Pacific fleet in our waters again in the very near future in the guise of having to defeat terrorism.
Dr White concluded that he sees our legislation as being as significant as ever it was, and even more so perhaps, and all efforts to change it in any respect must be resisted with all possible strength.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Danger lurks in state's abandoned mines
By LISA STIFFLER
The Seattle Post Intelligencer
Jul. 14, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5434273
INDEX, Snohomish County -- Under the shade of massive cedars, Fritz Wolff pitches a small rock into a manhole-sized pit.
Silence.
A bird chirps.
Silence.
And finally, plunk.
A quick calculation and the innocuous-looking black hole is revealed as an 85-foot-deep shaft. A short hike from there, the granite hillside yawns open, exposing a monster chasm where miners once blasted away in search of copper.
Ancient timbers shoring up the entrance to the old Sunset Mine look as flimsy as toothpicks.
Wolff isn't going in, but others clearly have done so. Beer bottles are strewn below, and there are slide marks down the dirt slope. Wolff, a geologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, recalled meeting a man who told him he ignored the warning signs and walked into one of the main tunnels. He made it through unscathed.
Many aren't so lucky. Every year, dozens of people around the country are killed when they enter abandoned mines like this one off U.S. Route 2 on the way to Stevens Pass.
Others in Washington unwittingly fill their pets' sandboxes with arsenic-laced mine debris, or spin the wheels of their ATVs over contaminated waste, state and federal officials say.
There are more than 3,800 abandoned metal mines scattered around Washington, many of them leaching poisonous chemicals into the environment or posing serious hazards to backcountry hikers.
State officials concede that an inventory of mines and the risks they pose is only partially done -- money is running out, and there's no concerted effort to warn the public.
"There could be heavy metals leaching from sites we're not aware of -- pretty big, physical hazards we don't know about," said Mo McBroom, an attorney with the Washington Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit advocacy group. "What worries me is we don't know how bad it is."
In "Washington Undermined," a report being released today, the group calls for increased funding and better coordination between state and federal agencies to get the old mines inventoried. WashPIRG is also calling for mining companies to create a fund that will help pay for cleanups and for the government to establish a public education program.
"Washington is way behind, and we're moving forward much too slowly," McBroom said.
While there are fewer abandoned mines here, many states in the West boast computerized inventories and well-publicized education programs, she said.
Wolff, a retired Boeing worker and former miner, is the only one working on creating an inventory of the state's abandoned mines -- and he's parttime.
Over the past four years, he's catalogued about 50 mines, but there are dozens of large sites remaining that need attention. The project is down to its last $6,000.
Department of Natural Resources officials hope more money will be funneled into the project, although the agency's Geology and Earth Resources Division is still reeling from a 40 percent budget cut.
"We've got other things that we are committed to funding, in terms of earthquake-hazard research, and there are a lot of other things we're doing," said Dave Norman, assistant state geologist with DNR. "It's a balancing act. I think we'll pull it off."
Norman estimates it would take about $200,000 to complete the inventory of major mines. The project has been supported financially in large part by the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. Officials with the federal agencies consider it important work that's key to their operations.
The inventory is a way to answer the questions "where are the sites, what's really bad and what do we need to pay attention to for cleanup?" said Bob Fujimoto, of the Forest Service's Minerals and Geology Department.
Because the mines are on private land as well as property managed by government agencies, the state seems the logical choice for tracking the information, Fujimoto said.
With a complete inventory, land managers could begin to understand the cumulative threat the mines pose to fish and surface and drinking water.
"Independently they might not look like much," said Ken Marcy, an EPA Superfund site-assessment manager. But taken together, "that adds up potentially to a problem."
Hard-rock mines were operated locally beginning in the late 1800s. Only three are still operating in the state.
Wolff, who majored in mining sciences in college and worked in mines as a young man, has a healthy fear of the abandoned shafts and tunnels.
The blasted-out holes can collapse or rain down chunks of rock. They hold pockets of odorless, oxygen-depleted air that can quickly suffocate. Rotted planks bridging nearly bottomless tunnels disintegrate underfoot.
And along with a metallic booty of copper, silver, gold, uranium and magnesium, Washington's miners liberated from deep underground potentially dangerous heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium and lead.
Unearthed sulfur undergoes chemical reactions that produce strong acids that contaminate water and kill aquatic life. At some sites, sandy waste piles, or "tailings," are left in mounds after miners extracted what they could from the ore.
"People are using these sites as recreational spots and have no idea that the sandy soil is tailings full of arsenic," McBroom said.
Wolff said he met a woman in her 80s who had been drinking for years from water that flowed from mines in the Monte Cristo mining district in Snohomish County. The water was contaminated with arsenic at 3,300 parts per billion -- about 300 times higher than today's federal drinking water standard.
The woman, who Wolff believes is still alive, told him, "I don't know if it helped me or hurt me."
There have been relatively few cleanups of abandoned mines in Washington. Since passage of the 1872 Mining Law, until revisions were made in the 1970s, mining companies were able to walk way from mines without addressing environmental damage.
Locally, a cleanup project is getting started at Holden Mine near Lake Chelan -- one of the nation's largest copper mines. Soil and water at the mine, which ceased operations in the '60s, are contaminated above safe levels and tailing mounds are at risk of sliding into a creek.
A cleanup plan should be released this winter, and aluminum manufacturer Intalco has agreed to pay for the investigation of the contamination. Regulators hope to persuade the company, the successor to the mine's original operators, to pay for the cleanup as well.
But many other orphaned sites languish, with owners unwilling, unable or no longer around to address the hazards.
There's too little money in government budgets to cover the costs. Officials with the state Ecology Department, which oversees cleanup projects, said they're working to revamp their program and come up with better ways to track down those responsible for the old mines.
The industry would be willing to contribute to a cleanup fund if liability issues and ownership concerns are addressed, said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association.
Miners hauled almost 13 million pounds of copper from the Sunset Mine near Index, which ran intermittently from 1902 until 1946. Its operators are long gone.
Pollution there doesn't appear to be a problem. Wolff has thoroughly tested a stream that flows from a caved-in opening. The water runs cold and clear, prompting him to kneel along the stream and fill his water bottle for a refreshing swig.
But the geologist preaches extreme caution when he comes near the creepily alluring tunnels and chasms, splashed with the tropical-sea blue of oxidized copper.
"You take one more step," Wolff said, "and you're a permanent part of the mine."
-------- nevada
Dumping on Yucca Mountain
Native Americans lose their land as our presidential hero revives old-time nuclear tensions with Moscow
AL Kennedy
Wednesday July 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1260837,00.html
So glad that our Tony has now slithered himself a plucky and important millimetre away from Bush - "I now feel I can only agree absolutely with 99% of what the lovely president thinks and does". Sturdy chap, our premier. But if he's looking to improve his personal popularity - we can hardly expect him to be acting out of conscience - he still has to deal with the difficulty that if Bush and Blair together are the Laurel and Hardy of demonic foreign policy, Bush and Blair apart are quite evil enough to provoke spontaneous vomiting in small children.
Now, like many British citizens, I'd rather not think about our ghastly leader, but Bush is rather harder to blot out. It's that whole terror thing. I've been waking up screaming since I was five, so I find I am slightly susceptible to terror. Not the $60bn-earmarked-for-next-year, civil-rights-dissolving, Orange Alert type of terror - I mean real terror.
And it's not as if the genuine terror of Bush is hard to notice. Within hours of coming into office, he'd started approving oil exploration in national parks, cutting support for disadvantaged children, raising the levels of arsenic in drinking water... Being an utter bastard with numbing consistency is his only speciality beyond mangling his native language and playing golf like an unhinged Muppet in times of crisis.
But Team Bush could never be happy just tormenting its own (non-millionaire) citizens - the misery must spread. So we in the rest of the world get to be alarmed by the whole sabotaging Kyoto thing, the murdering strangers for fun and profit thing and the screwing the Middle East in hopes of Armageddon thing. But what gets slightly less attention is the reviving the cold war arms race thing.
It seemed momentarily puzzling when the US withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and started developing cuter, smaller types of "battlefield" nukes when there didn't seem to be a cold war any more. These things were of little or no help against mobile terror cells and the Pentagon had proved itself completely unable to protect even its own troops from the radiation produced by existing DU weapons. But, of course, all this lucrative US nuclear development was bound to alarm the Russians and therefore justify itself retrospectively. Hence, Mr Putin's obliging announcement that his scientists have developed a vigorous response to America's ballistic missile defence. The fact that BMD won't work as advertised is, of course, balanced by the fact that it gets nukes very close to Russia and is supposed to be pre-emptive not defensive. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense - it makes money, which is much more important.
And the new cold war is why US military nuclear facilities (which have been closed down as unsafe by the FBI in the past) are now immune from environmental legislation. Better yet, plans for the Nevada test site now include sexy, actual testing of nuclear weapons. Needless to say this is really pleasing everyone in Las Vegas, which is only 65 miles away, and everyone in Utah - soon to be renamed Downwind, the Malignantly Mutating State. Naturally, attempts to amend the relevant Defence Authorisation Act failed.
But the Bushies' joy doesn't end there, because the Nevada test site isn't even on United States land - it's on territory which belongs to the Western Shoshone nation and is protected by treaty (should you feel that treaties between the US and indigenous peoples are in any way binding). The Yucca Mountain site earmarked for America's nuclear waste depository is also on Western Shoshone land, as is the planned Federal Counterterrorism Facility. And what is probably the world's third largest gold-producing area.
Which is why Karl Rove and George W have both visited Nevada lately and why seizures of Shoshone livestock have already started. Despite formal opposition from 80% of the Shoshone population, Amnesty International and the National Congress of American Indians, Congress has just passed the Western Shoshone distribution bill - which distributes 15 cents on the acre for huge tracts of land in four states, whether the owners intended to sell or not.
So with one bill, the neo-cons can ensure cancer misery on an epidemic scale, mindlessly polluting mineral extraction, increased efficiency in the belligerent surveillance of an entire population, world war three and one in the eye for them pesky redskins. Recent Irish revelations suggest that George is in his jimjams by 5pm and now we know why. His days are full of such knee-trembling thrills that it's a miracle he ever gets up off his back.
Talking of miracles, Bush was recently quizzed about his special relationship with Jesus and carefully assured his questioner that it "doesn't make me a better person than you". His delivery didn't convince. When he can do whatever he wants, whatever the consequences, surely that makes him better than all of us.
· More on the Shoshone defence of their territory can be found at http://wsdp.org
-------- washington
Roberson lent drive to cleanup czar job
Tri-City Herald,
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opinions/story/5297362p-5234901c.html
Jessie Roberson ends her three-year stint as the nation's nuclear cleanup czar this week with a record of hard work and apparent enthusiasm for the job.
Some -- the Herald's editorial board included -- disagreed at times with the ways Roberson, as the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for environmental management, chose to approach the legacy of waste left by the nation's Cold War nuclear weapons production.
She came to the job with a drive to do cleanup faster and cheaper. It was a worthy goal, but a risky one. Faster and cheaper is good, as long as it doesn't end up being slipshod and half-done. Plenty of people differed with her on the tack the Energy Department was taking. But even her critics also know this about Roberson: Few have brought such an energy to the office, or worked so hard to make something happen.
There has been real progress. At Hanford, construction started on the vitrification plant, almost all radioactive liquids have been pumped from underground leak-prone tanks, workers have packaged nearly 20 tons of material containing plutonium and spent nuclear fuel has been removed from leak-prone pools near the Columbia River.
Some of that work was the result of momentum built before Roberson took office, but her dogged attempts to educate Congress about cleanup funding helped get money to make things happen.
Unfortunately, Roberson's tenure witnessed the worst decline in the Department of Energy's relationship with the state. But, to her credit, Roberson remained accessible and engaged even as relations were increasingly strained.
Roberson can rightfully claim that she leaves Hanford and other sites better off than she found them. And that's more than some assistant energy secretaries have been able to say.
-------- us nuc waste
U.S. Forging Ahead With Yucca Mountain Project
By J.R. Pegg,
July 14, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-14-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - The Bush administration will press forward with its plan to bury much of the nation's nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a top Energy Department official told the Senate Energy Committee on Tuesday.
Opponents of the plan say a federal court ruling issued last week effectively derailed the project, but Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow hailed the court's decision as "an enormous victory."
The court found the federal government's 10,000-year federal safety requirement for the highly radioactive waste is illegal because it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.
But the court also rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the repository and McSlarrow said this overshadows the concern about the safety standard.
"Everything regarding site selection and standards was upheld except for one thing," he said.
The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's nuclear waste in 1987, but the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism.
The facility is the intended destination for a total of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from Defense Department sites and spent nuclear fuel from the 103 operating nuclear reactors across the United States.
The Deputy Energy Secretary said he expects the facility will open and begin receiving shipments of nuclear waste in 2010.
But even some supporters of the project do not share McSlarrow's optimism.
"This is an ominous situation," Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said of the court ruling.
The court did not specify how far out into the future the government must assure the safety of the site, but noted that the National Academy of Sciences report recommended a standard that would cover 300,000 years, when some project radioactive releases from the site to peak.
Critics of the project say this standard cannot be met and Domenici agrees.
He told colleagues it is impossible for scientists to determine the safety requirements for the site beyond 10,000 years.
"That is almost as far out as civilization has been in existence," Domenici said. "There was essentially nothing in the world 10,000 years ago that had to do with mankind."
A key concern for supporters is that the law that identified the Yucca Mountain site for the repository blocks consideration of any other site.
Sustained delay to or failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project would force state governments to deal with the waste.
And the nuclear waste problem is growing in scope and expense.
As of 2003, nuclear reactors in the United States had generated some 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and by the year 2035, the United States will have produced more than twice that amount.
Several court cases have ruled that the federal government is liable for the costs of storing the nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.
The industry says that total bill could be some $56 billion - the first of several cases that could determine that figure began this week.
States are in no position to oversee or regulate long-term waste storage, Domenici said, and this could cause some to begin to shut down nuclear power plants.
"It is terrifically important that we find a solution to this," said Domenici. "The entire nuclear power industry in the United States could stand or fall with this interpretation."
McSlarrow said the administration is still reviewing the court's ruling, but told the committee he could not see why the project could not proceed.
"It is unlikely that anything that might occur on a post 10,000-year standard would cause us to revise the 10,000 year standard," said McSlarrow, who noted that the ruling approved of the 10,000 year standard.
The court suggested two possible options for dealing with the 10,000 year compliance period: either federal agencies could revise their regulations to extend the compliance period beyond 10,000 years or Congress could intervene and pass legislation giving agencies permission to maintain the 10,000 year standard.
The ruling could also be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Changing the law fits the bill for Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who called the decision "a bump in the road."
"We will change the language so the judges can look at it again," said Craig, a Republican.
But changing the law would be far from easy - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is critical of the Yucca Mountain project, which is also opposed by both Nevada Senators.
Critics of the Yucca Mountain plan note that federal officials have raised an array of concerns about the project, including a finding that the manufactured storage containers in which the government plans to store nuclear waste at the facility will probably leak.
There are also funding concerns swirling around the project. In its latest budget request, the Bush administration proposed moving the majority of funding for the repository "off budget."
That funding proposal was "not well thought out," said Domenici, because the budget process does not permit the Bush request.
The problem is forcing the Congress to scramble to meet the $880 million funding request - the House budget only includes $131 million for Yucca Mountain.
McSlarrow acknowledged that funding below the administration's request could stall the project, but said "we are going to work with Congress to ensure we get the funding stream we need."
Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning criticized the administration for requesting cuts in funding for research projects designed to restart the nation's commercial nuclear power industry.
Although nuclear power produces some 20 percent of the nation's electricity, the industry has not ordered a new plant since 1973.
"If we do not expend more dollars on research and development of nuclear power, we are never, ever going to open another nuclear power plant," Bunning said. "If this country is going to have a new nuclear power plant, the federal government is going to have to subsidize it."
----
INSIGHTS: Yucca Mountain - What Is at Stake for Our Nation?
July 14, 2004
By LeRoy Koppendrayer
Chairman, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and
Chairman, Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition
ST. PAUL, Minnesota, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-14-inskop.asp
Two years ago, Congress overwhelmingly ratified the President's February 15, 2002, recommendation to proceed with licensing and development of a permanent repository for the nation's civilian and defense nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. One would have thought that the repository was on its way to being completed. This is not the case. Instead, the very existence of the nuclear waste disposal program is threatened due to lack of annual funding.
Our nation's plan for the disposal of civilian and defense nuclear waste was established by Congress when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982. The NWPA included a provision for funding the nuclear waste disposal program through a federal nuclear waste fund. Since 1983, ratepayers across the nation have paid and continue to pay into the nuclear waste fund.
LeRoy Koppendrayer, a Republican, served in the Minnesota State Legislature 1990-1998. Chair of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, he serves on the Board of the Organization of Midwest States which oversees the Midwest electricity grid. (Photo courtesy MPUC)
As mandated by Congress, the nuclear waste fund is designed to fund the Department of Energy's establishment of a safe, timely, and cost-effective centralized storage and permanent disposal of the civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Unless Congress comes to grips with the intent of the NWPA, the nuclear waste disposal program may soon come to a grinding halt.
The nation's ratepayers who receive electric energy generated from nuclear power make more than $750 million per year in payments into the nuclear waste fund, and with interest credits, this amount exceeds $1 billion annually. After deducting expenses to date, the fund now holds about $15 billion.
Unfortunately for the public, this account balance has been used to camouflage the federal deficit each year, rather than for developing a repository to receive spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants, as intended by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. After being chronically underfunded for years, the nuclear waste disposal program now faces its most severe budget crisis ever.
In its FY 2005 budget, the Department of Energy requested $880 million to keep the project on track. However, the administration only allocated $131 million for the defense nuclear waste disposal program and zero for the civilian waste disposal program, incorrectly assuming that legislation would be enacted which would provide $749 million from annual ratepayer contributions.
Though the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved this legislation (H.R. 3981), only $131 million was marked-up by the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee and it did not attach the bill to the FY 2005 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
Unless the House and Senate enact H.R. 3981 expeditiously, the Program will not be able to retain an adequate workforce to meet the milestone dates necessary to allow waste to be accepted by 2010. As a result, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste could be stranded indefinitely at plant sites throughout the nation.
Killing the current federal program permanent repository at Yucca Mountain would have dire consequences to the nation's electricity generation portfolio, and the environment. Nuclear power comprises 20 percent of our nation's base-load electric generating capacity and produces no controlled air pollutants, such as sulfur and particulates, or greenhouse gases.
Generating electricity from commercial nuclear power plants in place of other more polluting energy sources means fewer dangerous emissions are released into our nation's atmosphere. However, failure to provide a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste could lead to nuclear power plants being shut down, and forcing further reliance upon burning coal or expensive natural gas.
To aide this ailing program, we understand that Senator [Pete] Domenici plans to introduce a proposal to temporarily increase the fee customers' pay into the nuclear waste fund through their electric bills. This one-year only "transition fee" should collect $446 million to help make up for the $749 million shortfall in the Department of Energy's fiscal year 2005 budget.
However, since the nuclear waste fund already contains a $15 billion unused balance, the members of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition are not in favor of taxing the nation's ratepayers with an increased fee.
As a regulator, I believe it will be very hard for a state utility commission to justify double taxing its ratepayers when we have a $15 billion balance in the nuclear waste fund.
Further, we are very concerned that any increase in the nuclear waste fund fee could become permanent. However, if this single-year fee will be the instrument that clears the way to remove the nuclear waste fund fees from the annual appropriations stranglehold permanently and the DOE can tap annually into the corpus of the nuclear waste fund, as needed, then the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition may consider supporting it.
Government studies have determined that the current fee level is sufficient to build and operate the disposal site if these fees were appropriated annually. However, over the past several years, Congress has failed to appropriate adequate amounts. The resulting severe funding constraints have threatened the Program's ability to meet important Program milestones.
If Congress would enact legislation to codify the nuclear waste fund annual receipts as offsetting collections, it would ensure that every cent collected from the ratepayers will be delivered to the Program, as intended by the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Therefore, the members of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition urge the full House and Senate to enact H.R. 3981 expeditiously to ensure that this Program does not falter or come to a grinding halt.
The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition is comprised of 45 organizations in 25 states, including state regulators, state attorneys general, nuclear electric utilities and associate members working together to hold the federal government accountable for its contractual and statutory obligations to remove spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive material from nuclear power plants across the nation to interim storage and to a permanent repository.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan President Warns Warlords to Lay Down Arms
July 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Disarmament.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- President Hamid Karzai threatened Wednesday to crack down on Afghan warlords who continue to thwart efforts to disarm them.
Slow progress persuading militias to give up their guns has forced repeated delays of Afghanistan's first post-Taliban elections for fear of intimidation.
``Those who act against...or endanger the security of the country are rebels,'' according to a decree signed Wednesday by the president. ``According to the law, they are condemned to heavy punishment.''
Disarming militias which helped the United States drive out the Taliban in late 2001 is a key component of a U.N.-sponsored plan to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into war.
But only 10,000 of the official 100,000 irregular fighters have given up their weapons so far, prompting Karzai to pledge action to speed the process.
The United Nations accuses powerful anti-Taliban leaders of stalling, raising concern that they will use fear to consolidate their power before they lose their private armies.
Militia commanders including Mohammed Atta and Hazrat Ali pledged their loyalty to the government and the disarmament process at a meeting with Karzai on Wednesday, state television reported.
The decree targets militias operating outside the nominal control of the Defense Ministry -- mainly smaller units who should be easier to dismantle.
It warned commanders and former fighters against secretly re-forming disbanded formations and hiding heavy weapons. It stopped short of naming any offenders.
A vote for president is set for Oct. 9, more than three months later than originally planned. Parliamentary elections have been put off until the spring.
-------- arms
Chinese told U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to proceed
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Gertz
July 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040713-111331-1903r.htm
The United States will sell arms to the Republic of China (Taiwan), despite Beijing's objections, because of the growing Chinese missile buildup opposite the island, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday.
That message was delivered to Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing last week by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in response to Chinese complaints about Taiwan, including the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, said two officials who discussed some details of the meetings on the condition of anonymity.
Miss Rice also said in the meetings with Mr. Hu and former President Jiang Zemin, chairman of the powerful Communist Party commission that controls the military, that North Korea's nuclear-weapons program must be halted soon.
"We asked them to make clear to North Korea that time was a factor and that we didn't have forever," the official said.
Miss Rice also pointed out that North Korean connections to the covert Pakistani nuclear-supplier group led by Abdul Qadeer Khan showed that Pyongyang has a highly-enriched-uranium-based weapons program (HEU), a charge that China has disputed in the past.
Miss Rice told the Chinese that "A.Q. Khan was not engaged in academic research," the official said. "He was a nuclear-weapons expert, and his network existed for that purpose, and that North Korea has an HEU program."
On Chinese opposition to Taiwan arms sales, Miss Rice said a weapons deal has been under way since April 2001 and is reaching the point of actual transfers, the official said.
Pending sales are expected to include Patriot anti-missile systems and P-3 anti-submarine aircraft. Taiwan also is negotiating to buy up to eight diesel electric submarines and several guided missile destroyers.
The Chinese leaders were told that although the Bush administration does not favor "unilateral change" by either China or Taiwan, arms sales are needed "because China's missile buildup has created an imbalance on the [Taiwan] Strait, and we need to correct that."
"They need to understand that," the senior official said.
China has been deploying up to 75 short-range missiles a year within range of Taiwan for the past several years.
Beijing also is set to kick off large-scale war games near Taiwan this month, exercises that in the past were used as an attempt at political intimidation.
At the Chinese Embassy yesterday, a spokesman called in reporters to protest U.S. support for Taiwan.
"We are gravely concerned over the recent U.S. moves on the Taiwan question. We strongly urge the U.S. side to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut the military links between the U.S. and Taiwan. Stop any official exchanges with Taiwan authorities. Stop supporting Taiwan to join the international organizations where statehood is required," spokesman Sun Wiede said.
The senior administration official said the spokesman's comments were less strident than those heard in Beijing, where both Mr. Hu and Mr. Jiang told Miss Rice that China would not "sit idly by" while Taiwan moved to formal independence.
"They came at us very heavily on Taiwan," said the official, who took part in the meetings.
The Chinese said they appreciated the U.S. position that it did not support Taiwanese independence, but also protested the administration's adherence to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which permits defensive arms sales.
Miss Rice urged the Chinese to take up an offer made by Chen Shui-bian, the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), in his inaugural speech in May for China to resume talks with Taipei.
-----
Two arrested after 35,000 bullets seized on Romanian border
BUCHAREST (AFP)
Jul 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040713165520.gfit603z.html
Romanian police said Tuesday that they had arrested two Turkish men after seizing 35,000 bullets in a lorry entering the country from Bulgaria.
The ammunition was hidden in several boxes in a truck carrying 20 tons of French yoghurt to Turkey.
The Turks, aged 47 and 31, will face the prosecutor in the southern border town of Giurgiu before being deported to their country of origin.
Police said it was the biggest seizure of ammunition in Romania this year. The frontier police and the customs had previously announced strict security measures "to detect arms and ammunition that can serve terrorist purposes".
-----
China warns US to stop arms sales to Taiwan or risk bilateral ties growth
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jul 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040713231225.y0bejtvh.html
China warned the United States Tuesday to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut military links with the island if it wanted any improvement in bilateral relations.
Chinese embassy spokesman Sun Weide said at a press conference that Beijing was "gravely concerned" over recent US moves on the Taiwan question and said the situation was "quite critical," particularly over arms sales.
"We strongly urge the US side to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut the military links between the US and Taiwan," he said.
The United States remains the leading arms supplier to Taiwan despite its shift of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
Sun also called for a halt to all US "official" exchanges with Taiwan authorities and a stop to US backing for Taipei's bid to join international organizations.
"Only in this way can the stable development of the China-US relations as well as the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait be guaranteed," Sun said.
The media conference in Washington comes on the heels of US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's visit last week to Beijing during which the Taiwan issue hogged the agenda.
Sun's remarks show that Beijing is not convinced by Rice's assurances to Chinese leaders, including China's military strongman and ex-president Jiang Zemin, that Washington respects Beijing's "one China policy" and is opposed to Taiwan independence, observers said.
Under a 25-year-old US law, the United States acknowledges Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China but is bound by law to provide weapons to help Taiwan defend itself if its security is threatened.
China has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan should the island declare formal independence. The two sides split in 1949 at the end of a civil war but Beijing regards the island as part of its territory.
Cross-strait tension has been escalating since pro-independence Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian took office in 2000 and since his re-election in March this year.
Taiwan's cabinet on June 2 approved a special budget of 610 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) for the purchase of advanced weaponry. A team from Taipei was reportedly in the United States recently to shop for arms.
Sun stressed that the Taiwan issue "bears on China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity and is always the most important and sensitive issue in China-US relations.
"To address the issue properly is the key to the sound and stable development of China-US relations."
Sun also expressed "grave concern and dissatisfaction over recent irresponsible deeds and words by some US government officials and congressmen" on China's management of Hong Kong affairs.
"Hong Kong is China's Hong Kong. The Chinese people have the determination, the capability and the wisdom to maintain the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong," he said.
The United States this month reaffirmed its policy to push for greater democracy in Hong Kong after more than half a million people took to the streets of the Chinese-ruled territory to back calls for political reform.
More than 530,000 people protested on the seventh anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese control on Thursday to vent anger over Beijing's decision to deny the territory universal suffrage.
The United States is Hong Kong's second-largest trading partner.
-------- biological weapons
House Approves 'Bioshield' Defense Bill
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-bioshield-congress.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to stimulate the development of drugs and vaccines to counter a bioterror attack won final congressional approval on Wednesday and was sent to President Bush to sign into law.
The $5.6 billion, 10-year Project BioShield program, approved by the House on a 414-2 vote, expands public- and private-sector research incentives to develop treatments, antidotes and vaccines that would otherwise not find a viable commercial niche.
The Senate earlier passed the bill, a 2003 initiative of Bush that enjoyed strong bipartisan support. The goal is to deter a biological, chemical or nuclear attack, as well as to limit casualties should one occur.
``The purpose of course is to protect Americans,'' said California Republican Chris Cox, chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. He said the bill marshaled public resources to spur an ``unleashing the creative genius of the private sector.''
Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, the top Democrat on the Homeland panel, said he hoped the bill would create a ``renewed sense of urgency regarding the bioterror threat. This bill marks but the beginning, not the end, of a long road we must travel.''
The legislation will encourage more research and will also basically guarantee a market by buying and stockpiling these new drugs and vaccines to treat or protect people against such diseases as anthrax, smallpox or the plague, or against such toxins as ricin.
Without such assurances, the private sector would be reluctant to invest millions in products that in a best case scenario would never be needed. On Wall Street, Biotechnology stocks rose Wednesday before the vote.
The legislation also allows the government to use experimental treatments in an emergency, even if they have not completed the usual Food and Drug Administration approval process.
Underscoring the threat, the Senate health committee announced it would hold a hearing next week on the bioterror threat going into the upcoming political convention and election seasons.
``Congress must be ever vigilant in its review and assessment of our defenses,'' said New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg, chairman of the committee and a co-author of the BioShield bill.
The House passed similar legislation last year but it got snagged in the Senate until May.
Congress had already decided to appropriate the money and made close to $1 billion available for the current fiscal year in a separate spending bill. Government scientists have already reported some progress in researching potentially fatal agents.
--------
City Opens a Secure Lab to Counter Bioterrorism
July 14, 2004
By MARC SANTORA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/nyregion/14lab.html
Nearly three years after anthrax attacks in New York City brought home the danger that bioterrorism poses to the world, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday announced the opening of a $16 million high-security laboratory to help detect and deal with future threats.
For the first time, the city will not have to send many kinds of pathogens for testing to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, using the new lab instead and making New York a leader in studying and defending against infectious diseases, health officials said.
Mr. Bloomberg pointed to the city's history at the vanguard of public health, including instituting some of the country's first sanitation laws in the wake of a typhoid epidemic a century ago caused, he said, by a kitchen worker named Mary Mallon. The 20,000-square-foot lab, on the East Side near Bellevue Hospital, would give New York crucial protection in an age of new dangers, he said.
"Today New York faces a different kind, a more dangerous kind, of biohazard: bioterrorism," Mr. Bloomberg said. "This facility is an important addition to the city's defense against weapons of mass destruction and also natural epidemics."
Answering critics who say that government officials are focused too narrowly on bioterrorism after three decades of neglecting the nation's public health infrastructure, Mr. Bloomberg and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner, said the lab would also improve the monitoring of less exotic diseases.
"One of the things we try and do with our terrorism preparedness is make sure that we get double value," Dr. Frieden said. "For example, the laboratory here, which is testing for bioterrorism, also greatly upgrades our ability to test rapidly, say, for tuberculosis." Scientists in the lab will also test for emerging viruses like West Nile and SARS, as well as devise timely AIDS tests.
As the focus on public health declined in the years before bioterrorism, budgets for the city's public health labs were among the hardest hit.
In fact, the new lab - known as a Biosafety Level 3 facility - was first envisioned in 1992, when a new strain of tuberculosis appeared in the city, according to a health official. In 1999, those plans, still on the drawing board, were expanded after West Nile emerged. The lab design expanded yet again after the anthrax attacks in October 2001.
The day before the anthrax attacks, in which people were exposed to a white powder sent in the mail, only two people worked in the city's existing Level 3 lab, which was basically one room in the same building as the expanded lab. As the city struggled with the anthrax threat, bringing in dozens of scientists to work in labs scattered around the city, two technicians were exposed to anthrax spores, and critics pointed to improper training as the main cause.
In the new lab, more than 100 technicians and scientists will be able to work at one time if required. On any given day, roughly 20 people will staff the Level 3 section of the lab.
The city paid the entire cost of building the lab. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will help pay for new equipment and staff members, officials said.
In a tour of the new lab yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg moved from one pristine vial-filled room to another as Dr. Sara T. Beatrice, who runs the city's public health labs, talked of diseases with imposing names like tularemia. Nearby, Dr. Edward Lee, a virologist, was busy preparing an agent to test for SARS.
To deal with the actual SARS virus, Dr. Lee would have to work in a secure Level 3 section. Those areas, which hold dangerous pathogens, feature filtered air, sealed doors and negative air pressure, which prevent germs from leaking out. People working in the secure areas must wear protective clothing. The highest security level for labs, Biosafety Level 4, is much less common and reserved for the study of exotic viruses and diseases.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, universities, states and the federal government have greatly expanded their financing for Level 3 facilities, raising concern about ensuring the security of the pathogens being studied. However, scientists have consistently said the odds of a pathogen's leaking or getting into the wrong hands are extremely small.
New York City has one of the most elaborate disease surveillance operations in the country. Every day, the Health Department monitors 60,000 health-related transactions, including 911 calls and hospital and pharmacy visits. That system gives officials a chance to get an early estimate of health problems like a flu outbreak, food contamination or a bioterror attack.
-------- britain
Blair to admit mistakes before Iraq war
Scotsman.com
JAMES KIRKUP
14 Jul 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=804052004
TONY Blair is today expected to be cleared of wilfully misleading the British public in the run-up to war with Iraq, as the Butler report is published into the use of intelligence.
The Prime Minister is none the less expected to admit that mistakes were made in the months before the conflict, and accept the points of criticism which will emerge today.
Despite widespread expectations that Lord Butler will find serious faults in the intelligence process, the Prime Minister, who received his copy of the report yesterday, made it clear he had no regrets and stood by his decision to go to war.
"I feel very much as I did 18 months ago," he said at a press conference in London. "It is very difficult to look at Iraq today, to look at Iraq under Saddam, and say we would be better off, the world would be safer, we would be more secure, if Saddam was still in charge of Iraq."
It has also emerged that intelligence chiefs are pushing for a new code of conduct to be drawn up, which would make impossible any future political interference with their work.
The Scotsman understands that British intelligence officials giving evidence to Lord Butler called for new rules that would clearly define the boundary between ministers and spies, preventing what many saw as the political interference in the intelligence assessment process that led to the September 2002 dossier which was used to justify going to war in Iraq.
US intelligence officials have recommended that British spies be given a way of expressing dissenting views about intelligence reports, in order to avoid politicians stating with certainty things that agents cannot prove beyond doubt.
British inter-service reports are based on consensus, meaning there is no way for dissenting opinions to be expressed to ministers, and American intelligence officials believe that contributed to Mr Blair's sense of certainty about Saddam's arsenal. Had there been a US-style system he would not have written in the dossier's foreword that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam was continuing to produce illegal arms.
The controversial claim that Iraq had WMD ready to use at 45 minutes' notice might also have been dropped.
"It's amazing that on domestic policy, your Prime Minister can hear all the dissenting views of his Cabinet members before he makes a decision, but when it comes to something as crucial as going to war, there is no way for dissenting voices to be heard in the system," Bob Ayers, a former senior Pentagon intelligence official, told The Scotsman.
The report comes amid renewed tension between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, which has seen allies of the two men whispering and briefing against each other.
"One spark and the whole thing could go up," said one senior Labour MP yesterday.
But despite the tense atmosphere, Mr Blair's allies insist they are relaxed about the Butler report, which they expect to steer clear of personally rebuking the Prime Minister.
Although Jonathan Powell, the Downing Street chief of staff, may be criticised, the document is said to recommend that John Scarlett's appointment as head of MI6 next month should go ahead.
Unlike Lord Hutton's report in January, which could have cost Mr Blair his job, few expect Lord Butler to carry the same weight among jaded voters.
"The public have already made up their minds about Iraq - Butler won't change anyone's view of the war or the PM," said one Blairite MP last night.
Still, the report may have a significant effect on Labour's chances in by-elections in Leicester and Birmingham tomorrow.
Labour is defending two usually safe seats against a strong challenge from the Lib Dems. Labour campaign officials admit that the party is all but certain to lose Leicester South, and may also be defeated in Birmingham Hodge Hill.
Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dem leader, yesterday went to Leicester to demand Mr Blair "apologise for misleading the people and Parliament" over the war. The conflict, he said, had "re-invigorated" al-Qaeda and shown that Mr Blair "lacks crucial political judgment".
"On the day after the Butler Inquiry, people in Leicester and Birmingham should exercise their judgment" on the war by voting against Labour, Mr Kennedy said.
--------
Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws
By ED JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Jul 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_IRAQ_INTELLIGENCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair escaped harsh criticism in an official inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq, which faulted him Wednesday for informal decision-making and pushing available intelligence to the limit, but found no deliberate distortions.
Blair said he took full, personal responsibility. But he told parliament, "No one lied, no one made up the intelligence" after the much-awaited report was released.
The commission - headed by Lord Butler, a retired civil service chief - found prewar Iraq had no usable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that British intelligence was flawed, unreliable and incomplete. The five-member commission interviewed Blair, senior Cabinet figures and key intelligence officials.
But while criticizing Blair's "informal" governing style, it absolved him of misleading the public over Iraq, a charge that has dogged the prime minister since he took Britain into the U.S.-led war.
Protesters - including some who wore masks depicting Blair with a Pinocchio-like long nose - greeted the announcement by gathering outside the news conference where the report was released and carrying signs that featured Blair's face and read: B.liar.
Butler's judgment vindicates the British government of some of the harshest charges against it, a week after a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee excoriated a "broken corporate culture" at the CIA and said there had been a "global intelligence failure" on Iraq. CIA director George Tenet resigned before the report was released.
The verdict takes some pressure off Blair, whose popularity and credibility have been battered by the war and continuing violence in Iraq, and by the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction.
His Labour Party did poorly in recent elections, and there have been rumblings within the party calling for his ouster.
Blair's future has wider symbolic and political ramifications months after a pro-war government was voted out in Spain, and with Bush - Blair's chief ally - facing a re-election campaign.
"We have no reason, found no evidence, to question the prime minister's good faith," Butler told reporters.
He concluded "no single individual" was responsible for intelligence failures that led Blair's government to overstate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we've identified, but no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead," he said.
Before the war, Blair said Saddam "has chemical and biological weapons ... (and) existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons."
Addressing the House of Commons on Wednesday, however, he acknowledged it was likely Saddam "did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy."
But Blair - who appointed the investigating commission five months ago - defended his decision to go to war.
"I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all," he said. "Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."
Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, an opponent of the war, said the report showed "we committed British troops to action on the basis of false intelligence, overheated analysis and unreliable sources."
Like a U.S. Senate report released last week, the Butler report found human intelligence sources lacking.
One source's reporting was "open to doubt," while a second was "unreliable," the report said. And it found intelligence received from another nation on Iraq's biological agents was "seriously flawed." It didn't name the country.
The report criticized Britain's intelligence agencies for failing to check all their sources and relying on secondhand reports.
It also noted a "strain" between the measured assessments of intelligence officers and the government's desire to find strong evidence of the Iraqi threat - but insisted that did not amount to exaggerating or manipulating intelligence.
Butler said "there was no evidence we came across that the intelligence collectors were asked to collect intelligence to justify a particular course of action."
The report was the latest to exonerate Blair's government. Three previous inquiries also cleared officials of misusing intelligence or lying to build a case for war.
The government was accused in a May 2003 British Broadcasting Corp. report of falsely claiming that Iraq could deploy some chemical and biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice. The BBC has been criticized for the report.
Butler said the 45-minute claim was the weakest piece of intelligence published about Iraq, and should not have been made without explaining that it referred to battlefield munitions rather than missiles.
Butler did mention Blair's "informal" style of government, which relies heavily on the advice of unelected special advisers rather than Cabinet ministers. But it made no recommendations for change and called for no resignations.
The report stressed that Joint Intelligence Committee head John Scarlett should not step down from his new job as chief of the MI6 spy agency. "We have a high regard for his abilities and his record," the report said.
Butler also noted that British intelligence had not suggested there was evidence of cooperation between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
--------
Report Says British Data on Iraq Was Flawed, Not Distorted
July 14, 2004
By ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-BRIT.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON, July 14 - A major British inquiry into banned Iraqi weapons reported today that Saddam Hussein had no significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons capable of being deployed at the time United States and British forces invaded Iraq last year.
The report by Lord Butler, formerly Britain's top civil servant, castigated failures both in British intelligence-gathering and the use the government made of intelligence to justify the war, in effect contradicting Britain's rationale for the invasion. But it did not single out culprits for blame, softening the likely political damage for Prime Minister Tony Blair, the closest ally of President George W. Bush in the Iraq campaign.
"We have no reason, found no evidence, to question the prime minister's good faith," Lord Butler told a news conference.
Unlike in the United States, moreover, where a report last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee passed a withering verdict on the Central Intelligence Agency's operations before the war, the report specifically exonerated one of Britain's top spymasters, John Scarlett, sparing him the same destiny as George Tenet, who recently stepped down as director of the C.I.A.
For all that, the report by Lord Butler showed what it called "seriously flawed" intelligence-gathering that was "open to doubt" and had since been proved wrong.
It said that while Saddam Hussein had been seeking unconventional weapons, Iraq "did not have significant if any stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them."
In a speech to Parliament almost immediately after the report was published, Prime minister Tony Blair said he had to accept that, contrary to his expectations, "as the months have passed it seems increasingly clear that at the time of the invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy."
That represented a dramatic turnaround from Mr. Blair's earlier assertions about an Iraqi arsenal of unconventional weapons - depicted as presenting a current and serious threat in the preparations for the invasion when Britain and the United States sought international support for it. But, in an ebullient and energetic performance before Parliament, Mr. Blair seemed to carry off the about-face with some aplomb.
"I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made," Mr. Blair told Parliament. At the same time, though, both Mr. Blair and his aides suggested that the specific intelligence about Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" was not the prime rationale for war, apparently revising their earlier arguments. Rather, Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with United Nations resolutions had been the prime justification, said Jack Straw, the foreign secretary.
That assertion met with some skepticism from the government's critics. "He has changed the grounds of the argument," said Alan Beith, a legislator from the oppostion Liberal Democrats.
Yet the report exonerated the government of the charge that it deceived the public and Parliament. "No single individual is to blame," Lord Butler said. "This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we have identified but there was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead."
That offered Mr. Blair some relief from the longstanding accusation that he took the country to war under false pretenses.
"No one lied. No one made up the intelligence," Mr. Blair said. "Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficult. The issue of good faith should now be at an end."
The publication of the 160-page report today had been seen as a critical hurdle for Mr. Blair but both its content and his self-confidence in Parliament seemed to suggest that he felt he had survived the challenge without the kind of damage that could have forced his resignation.
The publication of the report did nothing to dent Mr. Blair's avowed conviction that the war was justified.
"I cannot say that getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all," Mr. Blair said.
Moreover, he said that had the United States and Britain backed down on their threat to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein would have resumed programs to build unconventional weapons, emboldening other dictators to follow suit.
But the report did not dissuade some of his critics from questioning whether the Iraq invasion had damaged Mr. Blair's standing.
"The issue is the prime minister's credibility. The question he must ask himself is: does he have any credibility left?" said Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative opposition, which supported the war.
Even opponents of the war within Mr. Blair's own Labor Party said they still believed the real reason for the invasion had not been acknowledged.
"We went to war under a false premise," said Alice Mahon, an anti-war Labor legislator. "We went to war on George Bush's timetable."
Other critics said the government now seemed to be shifting its grounds, making a retroactive case for regime change in Iraq after arguing at the time that the war was justified because of the purported threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons.
"Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam," Mr. Blair said.
In specific terms, the Butler report said that a contentious British government dossier, published in September 2002, went to the "outer limits" of British intelligence available at the time to support a claim by Mr. Blair that Saddam Hussein had the capability to deploy unlawful weapons within 45 minutes.
At a news conference, Lord Butler said the so-called 45-minute claim should not have been included "in this form" by the Joint Intelligence Committee, an advisory body headed last year by Mr. Scarlett before his appointment to heads the MI6 spy agency.
Moreover, the report said, Mr. Blair's government ignored some of the intelligence community's concerns about the flimsiness and limitations of the information concerning Iraq's unconventional weapons when it published its dossier in September 2002. "The judgments in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available," the report said.
The report also said that postwar checks on "human intelligence sources" inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq had "thrown doubt on a high proportion of those sources and of their reports and hence on the quality of the intelligence assessments." MI6 said in a statement today that it regarded the report as "wise and good."
The Butler report found that there was no evidence that Iraq had cooperated with Al Qaeda, echoing similar findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington last week. In tone, however, the British report was far less scathing about intelligence failures than the American report had been.
The British findings departed from the American report last week in several key areas. Firstly, Lord Butler said Britain had received information from "several different sources" to substantiate reports that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger, an assertion dismissed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In other areas, said Nev Johnson, a British Foreign Office official acting as a spokesman for MI6, the Butler report showed that British intelligence had indeed maintained high-level agents in Baghdad before the fall of Saddam Hussein even though they had no direct access to information on unlawful weapons.
And, unlike the United States, both Lord Butler and Mr. Johnson said, British intelligence agencies routinely avoid relying on exiled Iraqis as a source for information.
Despite the publication of the report - the fourth inquiry into the war - some of his adversaries said none of the investigations had thrown light on the basic political considerations that prompted Mr. Blair to support President Bush so closely in going to war. Even Mr. Blair acknowledged that those questions were not likely to go away.
"This report will not end the arguments about the war," he told Parliament.
-------- china
China Warns U.S. on Policies
Beijing Says Stances on Taiwan, Hong Kong May Hurt Relations
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47742-2004Jul13.html
China lashed out yesterday at the Bush administration's policies on Taiwan and Hong Kong, declaring it is "gravely concerned" that the issues will undermine progress on U.S.-China relations.
The tough statement, made at a rare news conference called by the Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington, came just days after national security adviser Condoleezza Rice toured the region and met with top Chinese officials. During the trip, Rice rebuffed demands from China that the United States curb arms sales to Taiwan, but the official state media then reported China's concerns in more muted language.
Sun Weide, the embassy spokesman, repeatedly declined to say whether Rice's message during the trip had unnerved the Chinese leadership. But he expressed fear that the administration's actions have undermined support for the "one China" policy that has governed U.S.-Sino relations for three decades.
"The important thing is for the United States to honor its commitments," Sun said, calling the situation across the Taiwan Strait "severely tested." Otherwise, he warned, it would harm bilateral relations and affect China's cooperation on such issues as the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The Bush administration entered office deeply suspicious of China, but has hailed the improving cooperation with China as one of its foreign policy achievements. China's decision to intensify its public criticism over Taiwan -- just seven months after President Bush alarmed conservatives by appearing to side with Beijing over Taiwan's moves toward independence -- suggested that the Chinese leadership is publicly testing the administration's commitments in this election year.
A senior administration official who had traveled with Rice played down the spokesman's comments in a conference call with reporters. "The relationship with China, while we are not wearing rose-colored glasses, is productive and stable," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under guidelines set by the White House.
The official said Rice heard even stronger language on Taiwan during her meetings in Beijing. Top leaders warned that they will "not sit idly by" if arms sales to Taiwan went forward, and said that Taiwan is "an obstacle" to U.S.-Chinese relations.
The official said Chinese officials appear to believe that the administration's policies on human rights, democracy, Hong Kong and other issues "added up" to a policy "aimed at regime change in Beijing." To allay those concerns, Rice, in her meetings, "conveyed that we do not want a weak China," he said. "We want a more confident and transforming China that the rest of the region would welcome."
Vice President Cheney, during a trip to Beijing in April, also tried to calm Chinese fears over the nascent independence movement in Taiwan. But Cheney pointedly noted that how Beijing handles Hong Kong -- which was returned to China in 1997 after a century of British colonial rule -- could influence the situation in Taiwan.
Sun yesterday rejected Cheney's statement as "interference from the U.S. government." He said that "you know, I know and everyone knows before 1997 there was no democracy. Democracy has been expanding in Hong Kong over the years" since Beijing took control.
The U.S. official who traveled with Rice said Chinese officials had told Rice during the discussion on Hong Kong that "you, too, suffered under the British colonial yoke." Rice, he said, made clear to the Chinese that although the United States is not challenging the "basic law" that set up Chinese authority over Hong Kong, "we have fundamental concerns about the civil liberties" in the former colony.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to seize it by force if necessary. Taiwan's newly reelected president, Chen Shui-bian, says the island is an independent country.
The U.S. official said Rice noted to the Chinese leaders that Chen muted his rhetoric in his inauguration speech, and that this "represented a chance for dialogue." But although he said the Chinese leaders acknowledged that Chen had modified his language, they are "convinced he is faking it," and "their distrust of Chen is visceral," the official said.
Rice told the Chinese leaders that the U.S. arms sales were largely in response to China's missile buildup across the Taiwan Strait, but the U.S. official said Chinese officials did not directly respond to this point. They noted instead that China's defense budget is small compared with that of the United States.
Sun said that China believes one of the three communiqués that governs U.S.-China bilateral relations, signed in 1982, requires the United States to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan, and "we think it is time for the United States to honor its commitments to the Chinese side."
President Ronald Reagan, who signed the communiqué, at the same time secretly signed a one-page memorandum saying that he believed the communiqué restricted U.S. arms sales only if the balance of power between Taiwan and China was preserved -- and so the United States could help Taiwan if China improved its military capabilities.
On the North Korean impasse, Sun also broke new ground at the news conference. He said China, along with other participants in the North Korean talks, believes the United States must reward North Korea with "corresponding measures" at the moment Pyongyang declares it has frozen its nuclear activities. The United States has insisted it will not provide such incentives until North Korea's full disclosure of its programs has been verified by U.S. intelligence.
-------- iraq
Powerful Car Bomb Rocks Baghdad
Bulgarian Hostage Executed; Fellow Driver Still Under Threat
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48187-2004Jul13.html
BAGHDAD, July 14 -- On Wednesday, a powerful car bomb apparently exploded by a suicide attacker in a search line outside of Baghdad's convention center, an area in the heart of the city frequented by Americans and foreigners. A police official at the scene said only that there were Iraqi civilian and Iraqi National Guard casualties, but would not specify how many. July 14 is a national holiday commemorating the 1958 revolution that overturned the monarchy.
Insurgents killed a Bulgarian hostage in Iraq and vowed to kill a second Bulgarian within 24 hours, al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday.
The Arab satellite station said it had decided not to broadcast a videotape of the killing because it was too gruesome. But it showed footage of one of the Bulgarians kneeling before three masked men and wearing a blindfold and orange jumpsuit, a uniform typical of U.S. jails and associated around the world with images of Muslims detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bulgaria, which has contributed 470 troops to U.S.-led forces in Iraq, confirmed that one of the two truck drivers had been killed. "One of the Bulgarians has been executed," said Bulgarian government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev.
Bulgaria, which has said it will keep its troops in Iraq as long as they are needed, had urged the militants to release Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivailo Kepov, 32, who disappeared June 27. There was no word on which man had been killed.
The Monotheism and Jihad Group, which had asserted responsibility for the beheading of an American and a South Korean in Iraq, threatened Thursday to kill the Bulgarians within 24 hours unless U.S.-led forces freed all Iraqi detainees. The U.S. military has branded the group's leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi, its number one target in Iraq, saying he is behind much of the violence racking the country.
In a new hostage crisis, al-Jazeera said militants had set a 72-hour deadline to kill an Egyptian if the Saudi company he worked for did not pull out of Iraq.
On Wednesday, Philippine officials said they were coordinating to withdraw troops from Iraq following demands for a pullout from militants holding a Filipino hostage.
Confusion reigned over whether the Philippines intended to bring its troops home a month ahead of their scheduled Aug. 20 departure to save Angelo de la Cruz, 46, a truck driver threatened with death.
A Philippine Foreign Ministry statement said the number of troops in Iraq had dropped to 43 from 51, but did not say when the cut was made. A military spokesman said that no order to pull out had been received but that two transport planes were being prepared just in case.
The Reuters news agency contributed to this report.
-------
Calm in Baghdad Is Shattered as Car Bomb Kills at Least 10
July 14, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 14 - A suicide car bomber blew himself up this morning at the gates of the American-fortified Green Zone, killing at least 10 people, injuring dozens more and shattering a two-week lull in terrorism violence.
The blast occurred around 9 a.m. and smeared body parts and torn clothes across the thick concrete walls of the American compound.
It was the deadliest single attack since Iraq regained sovereignty just over two weeks ago and Iraqi officials thought it could be payback for their recent crackdown.
"We think this is a response to recent arrests in the last couple of days," said Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. This week, newly-minted Iraqi security forces have fanned out across the country, sweeping up hundreds of suspected terrorist and criminals.
"This was naked aggression against Iraqi innocents," Mr. Allawi said as he stepped through the wreckage.
In another attack, the governor of Mosul and two of his bodyguards were killed today when their convoy was ambushed, according to American officials..
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official who declined to be identified told the Reuters news agency that the governor was "on his way to Baghdad with a security escort of four cars when the attackers in another car pulled up beside his vehicle and threw a grenade, and then shot at his car." It was not clear who was the target of the Baghdad car bomb, which exploded as several cars were waiting in line to enter the Green Zone. Both American and Iraqi soldiers guard the area, where the Iraqi interim government and new United States Embassy are located. But like most other attacks, Iraqi soldiers bore the brunt of the casualties today, along with several Iraqi civilians. No Americans were killed but one American soldier standing by a checkpoint was injured.
In May, a similar attack killed the President of the Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, as his car waited at another entrance into the Green Zone.
Today is a holiday in Iraq, marking the end of the monarchy in 1958, and American commanders said they had tightened security at all checkpoints in anticipation of a major attack.
"I wouldn't call this a surprise," United States Army Col. Mike Murray said. "I get paid to be a pessimist. I'd be surprised if this is the last one."
Those in a crowd that had gathered to gape at the charred cars and whirling ambulances were dismayed. The past two weeks have been remarkably quiet and each day that ended without major bloodshed spawned more hope.
But much of that was dashed this morning with a blast big enough to make windows across the city quiver.
"Why do they start this again?" asked a grocer, Hadi Odai.
At nearby Yarmuk hospital, the bomb plunged the emergency room back into chaos. Nurses rushed bloodied bodies in and out of the wards. Men with bad burns and swollen faces writhed bed. Relatives shrieked for lost loved ones.
"Sayufi! Sayufi!" wailed Fouzia Kadhim, 75, calling out for a grandson she could not find. "You aren't telling me the truth!" she screamed to the workers. "He's dead!"
Her grandson turned out to be only lightly wounded. But in a nearby bed the news was not so good.
Salaam Bakr, 60, lay quietly with no shirt and bloody trousers. He and his wife had been walking outside the Green Zone when the bomb ripped open 10 yards away. His wife was knocked to the pavement, he said. When he called out her name, she said nothing.
"I was crying: `My wife! My wife!' " Mr. Bakr said.
But in all the commotion, the police rushed him away.
A hospital worker told a reporter, but not Mr. Bakr, that his wife was dead. This morning, the Bakrs traveled from Karbala, an hour to the south, to see if Mrs. Bakr could get back her teaching job. A former Baath Party member, she had been fired last year as part of the purge against Baathists. But under new rules, she was allowed to reapply.
The couple did not know today was a government holiday and all offices were closed.
--------
Philippines begins to withdraw troops
washtimes
July 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040713-114600-1191r.htm
MANILA - The Philippines said today it is withdrawing its small peacekeeping contingent from Iraq early to meet the demand of kidnappers threatening to kill a captive Filipino truck driver.
The announcement, which said the pullout was beginning immediately, was a dramatic turnaround by one of Washington's most fervent backers in the global war on terrorism.
The move by the staunch Southeast Asian ally coincided with the announced beheading yesterday of a Bulgarian hostage by an Iraqi insurgent group led by Osama bin Laden's ally Abu Musab Zarqawi.
For the United States, the Philippine decision marked the failure of a scramble by U.S. officials to persuade Manila not to withdraw its forces from Iraq to meet the demands of a terrorist organization.
This spring, Spain also pulled out its troops after terrorist rail bombings brought down the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
The Bush administration expressed unhappiness at the Philippine government's announcement that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq "as soon as possible" in the face of demands of an Islamist terrorist group threatening to kill a Filipino truck driver seized last week.
Bulgarian officials confirmed late yesterday that one of the two truck drivers seized by Zarqawi's Unity and Holy War movement near Mosul five days ago had been killed.
A tape of the beheading had been given to the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network. The terrorists said they would kill the second Bulgarian hostage within 24 hours if their demand for the release of imprisoned comrades was not met.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy condemned the killing, but said it was "unthinkable" that his country, which has about 480 troops in the U.S.-led security mission, would give in to the kidnappers' demands.
In the Al Jazeera broadcast, three men dressed in black with their faces covered by masks stood over one of the Bulgarian hostages, identified by reporters as Georgi Lazov, 30. The video reportedly showed Mr. Lazov being beheaded, but the network did not air the most graphic footage.
Zarqawi's group earlier claimed responsibility for the beheadings of American businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il.
Mr. Lazov and fellow Bulgarian Ivaylo Kepov were kidnapped while traveling to Mosul in northern Iraq.
The Philippines earlier vowed it would not yield to pressure to move up the withdrawal, which had been scheduled for Aug. 20, when the force's mandate ends.
U.S. officials had expressed displeasure that Manila was even considering caving in to the kidnappers' demand, a position echoed by Australia and Iraq's new interim government.
"The Foreign Affairs Ministry is coordinating the pullout of the humanitarian contingent with the Ministry of National Defense," a Philippine government statement said. "As of today, our head count is down from 51 to 43."
A deadline set by the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin Al-Waleed Corps for the Philippines to meet the group's demands had expired early yesterday, but negotiations had continued in Iraq through intermediaries. The insurgents had told President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that Angelo dela Cruz, a poor father of eight, already had been moved to the place he would be killed if she didn't change her mind.
The crisis put Mrs. Arroyo squarely between domestic concerns and her previously strong commitment to the United States, the Philippines' former colonial power.
The timing was particularly bad, with political wounds still fresh from a bitter election. The opposition claims it won and has warned of mass protests. But the government has said that the threat of destabilization plots had eased after Mrs. Arroyo's inauguration for a new six-year term on June 30.
Bush administration officials said they were taken by surprise by the statement from a senior Philippine diplomat Monday night that Manila's 51-soldier contingent would be brought home from Iraq "as soon as possible."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We certainly noted the remarks and are disappointed to see remarks like this at a time when Iraq is fighting for stability and peace," Mr. Boucher said.
"Our policy is not to negotiate or provide benefits to terrorists," he added. "We think that can send the wrong signal."
•David Sands contributed to this article from Washington.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Palestinian metal workshops have been routinely targeted
Wednesday 14 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6148903F-597D-42E2-87F4-6552C5C58F35.htm
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at several metal workshops in Gaza City claiming they were used to manufacture bombs. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza's Zeitoun neighbourhood early on Wednesday.
Palestinian witnesses said three missiles hit the workshops in the nighttime strike.
The last time Israeli helicopters fired on Gaza, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated by firing home-made missiles on the Israeli town of Sderot, east of Gaza.
Home-made rockets
Late on Tuesday, Palestinian fighters responded to the Israeli assassination of local leader Numan Tahaina by firing Quds-1 rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, Aljazeera reported.
An Aljazeera correspondent reported that Numan Tahaina, 38, was on Israel's most-wanted list since the first Palestinian intifadha against Israeli occupation in 1987.
Israeli officials admitted they killed Tahaina after firing on his car which refused to stop at an impromptu checkpoint.
--------
Israel Expands Program to Attract Jews from North America
July 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-MIDE.html
LOD, Israel, July 14 - With immigration to Israel down sharply in recent years, a charter flight delivered nearly 400 new arrivals from the United States and Canada today as part of an expanding program that has been attracting middle-class Jews from North America.
In a ceremony that filled a massive hanger at Ben Gurion International Airport, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and two of his cabinet ministers greeted the immigrants moments after they stepped from an El Al jumbo jet from Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"We have to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews from America to Israel," Mr. Sharon said. "We need them here. It is important for you, it is important for us."
The immigrants are among 1,500 from the United States and Canada - almost a third of them from New York State - who will be arriving this summer under the sponsorship of a private group, Nefesh B'Nefesh, or "soul to soul."
North American Jews, most of them comfortably middle-class at home, have traditionally migrated to Israel in small numbers, averaging about 3,000 to 5,000 annually for the past quarter-century, according to Israeli government figures.
But Nefesh B'Nefesh is seeking to substantially raise these figures. In its first attempt, the group brought in just over 500 immigrants in the summer of 2002. More than 1,000 came last year, despite the ongoing Mideast violence and an Israel economy just beginning to slowly recover from a recession.
Dr. Jonathan Paley, an orthodontist from Cedarhurst on Long Island, landed with his wife Sarah and their five children, ages 11 years to 4 months.
Dr. Paley, 33, will quickly settle his family in Jerusalem and then commute to New York for two weeks out of every month. He will keep working at his old practice until he can re-establish himself in Israel.
"It's not easy, but this is something very important to all of us," Dr. Paley said. "I first came to Israel when I was 11, and I've been dreaming about this ever since."
The immigrants said the continuing violence was not a deterrent to immigrating - in fact, in some cases, it motivated them to show solidarity with Israel during a time of turmoil. For young men, mandatory military service awaits them.
"At some point, I expect to serve in the army, which I'll do gladly," said Jason Silberman, 25, who had been living in Queens and working at a Manhattan law firm.
While the new arrivals cited personal reasons for coming, the immigration issue is also linked to the demographic battle between Israelis and Palestinians.
In the combined areas of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Jews currently outnumber Arabs by about 5.4 million to 4.9 million, according to figures from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
But the Arab birthrate is significantly higher and, under the current trends, Arabs will outnumber Jews within the next 10 to 20 years, according to demographers.
Israel's Jewish population rose with a wave of immigration from the Soviet Union that began in 1990. A year earlier, Israel had just 24,000 immigrants. In 1990, a record 200,000 arrived , the vast majority from the collapsing Soviet Union.
Immigration has fallen steadily since then because many Jews in economically distressed countries, such as the former Soviet states and Ethiopia, had already left. Last year, immigration fell to fewer than 25,000, reaching a 15-year low.
This year's batch of North American immigrants comes from 33 states across the United States and from four Canadian provinces, and 98 percent of the families have at least one member with an undergraduate or post-graduate degree.
"We promise we are going to bring many more planes in the future," said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, one of the leaders of Nefesh B'Nefesh.
Many of the newly arrived will be living in Jerusalem or in Beit Shemesh, about 20 miles to the city's west. However, at least a few immigrants will be moving to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a practice that strikes a nerve with Palestinians.
In recent years, new immigrants from India, Peru and elsewhere have been placed in West Bank settlements upon their arrival. And on Thursday, 50 French families will be arriving and moving to the West Bank while studying Hebrew, Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported.
The Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, calls for Israel to freeze "all settlement activity." Israel has interpreted this as meaning that the development of existing settlements is permissible.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, call for the dismantling of all settlements built in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on land that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians are seeking those territories for a future state.
--------
Israel to Reroute Path of Barrier in West Bank
July 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14mide.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, July 13 - Israel is revising the planned path of its West Bank separation barrier in an attempt to comply with an Israeli court ruling that called for it to be less burdensome on Palestinians, a Defense Ministry official said Tuesday.
Palestinians, however, said they would continue to oppose all sections of the barrier built inside the West Bank, land seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and which the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Israel's Defense Ministry, which is responsible for building the barrier, began working on alternative routes after Israel's Supreme Court ruled June 30 that a segment inside the West Bank, to the northwest of Jerusalem, was imposing too many hardships on Palestinians in the area.
The court ordered the rerouting of a 20-mile section that was in the initial stages of construction. The decision is considered precedent-setting for the rest of the barrier, a network of electronic fences, concrete walls, trenches and guard posts.
Defense Ministry planners have undertaken a review of all parts of the barrier still to be constructed, and expect to present alternatives within two weeks, said Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi, a spokeswoman for the ministry. The planners are not reconsidering sections already built, she said.
About 120 miles have been completed, mostly in the northern West Bank and around parts of Jerusalem. The entire barrier is expected to cover 437 miles. While parts run along Israel's borders of 1967, most of it would go up inside the West Bank, according to the existing plan.
Israel is insistent that the changes will be based on the principles cited by the Israeli court, and not the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Last Friday, that court ruled that all sections of the barrier inside the West Bank were violations of international law, and should be removed with compensation for Palestinian landowners who lost territory.
Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported Tuesday that planners would try to keep the barrier as close as possible to the 1967 borders, the so-called Green Line.
In addition, they will try to ensure that the barrier does not create any fenced-in Palestinian enclaves, that it does not separate Palestinian villagers from their farmland and that it will be at least a kilometer, or six-tenths of a mile, from the nearest Palestinian home, the report said.
Ms. Niedak-Ashkenazi declined to comment on the specifics of the report, but said the general principle was to reduce or eliminate hardships facing Palestinians.
But Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian labor minister, said "the only way to end this problem is to move the wall to the Green Line or forget about it altogether."
"As long as this wall is on Palestinian land, it will remain, to some extent, harmful to the Palestinians," Mr. Khatib said. "If Israelis feel there is the need for a wall, we have no argument with that, but they have to put it on their territory."
Previously, the barrier's planned route would have put almost 15 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side, according to calculations by the United Nations.
Israel says the barrier is intended to prevent Palestinian attacks, and that it cuts into the West Bank to protect Jewish settlements. The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, wants a state that includes all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with a capital in East Jerusalem.
Israel's opposition Labor Party agreed Tuesday to take part in negotiations on joining Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition government. Mr. Sharon recently lost his majority in Parliament and is looking to the left-leaning Labor Party to shore up his coalition and support his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Sharon discussed the barrier on Tuesday during talks with two senior American envoys, Stephen Hadley and Elliott Abrams.
They also reviewed Mr. Sharon's plans to remove Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and Israel's pledge to dismantle settlement outposts in the West Bank, according to Mr. Sharon's office.
In violence on Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a local commander of the Islamic Jihad faction during an operation in the West Bank town of Jenin, the military said.
Palestinians identified the dead man as Numan Tahaynah, a local leader of Islamic Jihad, a group that has carried out many of the attacks against Israel. A second suspect was injured and three Palestinians were arrested, the military said.
--------
Globalist: Israel's wall, a victory for the logic of war
NYT
Roger Cohen
July 14, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/529264.html
QALQILYA, West Bank Inside the "War Room," as it is informally called, Israeli soldiers gaze at banks of computer and television screens. What they see are images of the wall or fence or barrier - it is all these things in different places - that is transforming the physical and mental landscape of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their job is to stop anyone crossing the barrier and so make Israel safer.
An officer shows off the gadgetry: night-vision cameras trained 24 hours a day on a barrier loaded with electronic gizmos that signal the precise location of anyone who touches it, ensuring that Israeli forces reach the area within two to eight minutes to stop the sort of infiltration of Palestinian suicide bombers that resulted in close to 100 Israeli deaths in March 2002 alone.
The barrier, destined to run over 690 kilometers, or 430 miles, from the northern West Bank to its southern rim, with numerous protrusions into the area, has become an article of faith for these soldiers and officers. It is an effective tool, they say, not a political statement. Projected to cost well over $1 billion, it works and must be completed.
If Israelis are going to the beach and to clubs again, and if bombings have become rare, it is thanks in large part, they insist, to these ditches and guard towers and coils of barbed wire and miles of wire fencing that separate two peoples, demarcating the gulf between them.
Belief in the barrier is by no means confined to the army. Most Israelis are tired of the conflict, exhausted by it. They want to forget what goes on over there, in the West Bank. A wall helps them do that. They feel that peace was within reach in the 1990s, but now the best that can be hoped for is damage limitation. A fence seems to serve that objective: It makes the task of Palestinians who want to kill them harder.
"There is a feeling that you cannot resolve this situation for the coming decades, you can only manage it," says Tom Segev, a historian. "The wall is ugly and terrible, but it is also a way of managing."
So when the International Court of Justice in The Hague rules that the barrier is illegal, or when the Israeli Supreme Court declares that its planned path northwest of Jerusalem must be changed, many Israelis shrug. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's insistence that the barrier is necessary for self-defense - and international opinion or law be damned - finds a generally sympathetic domestic reception.
Opinions diverge on the reasons for the precipitous fall in Palestinian bombings this year. Is the intifada exhausted after almost four years? Was Yasser Arafat cowed by the Israeli killing of Hamas leaders? Did the removal of those leaders throw Palestinian militants into disarray? Have the ceaseless patrols by more than 12,000 Israeli soldiers in the West Bank blocked attacks?
Perhaps each theory has its share of truth. But whoever espouses these ideas also tends to see the barrier as an effective, additional guarantee of some semblance of normal life in Israel.
Sure, the price is high - the defeat of hope - but so be it.
What is missing, of course, from such Israeli musings is any real grasp of the life of the person on the other side of the barrier, the Palestinian. On those war-room screens the most common sight is a Palestinian in a donkey cart trundling along a dirt track beside the barrier.
The contrast between the high-tech Israeli cameras that deliver these images and the abject existence of the Palestinians photographed provides an apt summation of the divergence of the societies: a first-world Israel forging ahead as best it can, a third-world Palestinian society going backward.
The barrier, destined for completion by the end of next year, amounts to the most visible expression of the way Israelis and Palestinians have parted company. Because it wills and advances this unilateralist separation, the wall is profoundly political, whatever Israeli officers say.
To move through the West Bank today is to witness the growth of parallel networks. Israelis drive on highways to their settlements spreading like garrisons on hills. Palestinians are increasingly confined to dirt tracks beside these roads. The impression of colonizer and colonized is inescapable.
Nowhere is this separation more evident than between Qalqilya and the adjacent West Bank town of Hable. Having built the fence around three sides of these two towns, Israeli authorities realized that the two places, now cut off, depended on each other. So now the army is building a series of tunnels under the winding fence that will be used by Palestinians.
Israeli officers portray this as a generous gesture. They are proud of helping the tunnel people communicate. They show off flourishing orange trees and say the trees are proof of how "we let them into their fields." At one gate, Mutassem Abu Tayem, a 36-year-old Palestinian farmer, waits on a donkey cart to be let onto his land. His view? "We are living in a prison and are treated like beasts."
Fair treatment, many Israelis would say, for a people who adopted a national strategy of blowing up busloads of children. But the moral cost of the barrier to the idea of a Jewish homeland seems enormous.
In the Jerusalem area, where the wall is really a wall of concrete, higher than the Berlin Wall, the offense to the ideal that was Israel appears incalculable.
Look one way from the Mount of Olives and you see the golden walls of the Old City, refracting light. Turn east toward the village of Abu Dis and there is this gray monument to defeat, deadening light. To one side, minarets and churches and onion domes and synagogues piled, it seems, one on top of the other. To the other, the razor cut of a wall through land and psyche.
Life is an accumulation, war a dissection. It is clear in Jerusalem today that the logic of war has won.
Roger Cohen can be reached at rocohen@nytimes.com.
--------
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Palestinian metal workshops have been routinely targeted
Aljazeera
14 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6148903F-597D-42E2-87F4-6552C5C58F35.htm
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at several metal workshops in Gaza City claiming they were used to manufacture bombs.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza's Zeitoun neighbourhood early on Wednesday.
Palestinian witnesses said three missiles hit the workshops in the nighttime strike.
The last time Israeli helicopters fired on Gaza, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated by firing home-made missiles on the Israeli town of Sderot, east of Gaza.
Home-made rockets
Late on Tuesday, Palestinian fighters responded to the Israeli assassination of local leader Numan Tahaina by firing Quds-1 rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, Aljazeera reported.
An Aljazeera correspondent reported that Numan Tahaina, 38, was on Israel's most-wanted list since the first Palestinian intifadha against Israeli occupation in 1987.
Israeli officials admitted they killed Tahaina after firing on his car which refused to stop at an impromptu checkpoint.
-------- japan
Okinawa anti-base candidates elected
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida,
Stars and Stripes Pacific edition,
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=22350&archive=true
CHATAN, Okinawa - Two candidates opposed to the U.S. bases on Okinawa were big winners in Sunday's election to Japan's House of Councilors.
Keiko Itokazu, 56, vice chairman of the Okinawa chapter of the Social Mass Party, and Shokichi Kina, 56, a musician and member of the Democratic Party, both won seats in the upper house of Japan's Diet, similar to the U.S. Senate.
In a landslide, Itokazu defeated a candidate the two ruling parties supported. She garnered 316,148 votes, 95,345 more than Masatoshi Onaga, the candidate supported by the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito Party.
Kina was elected in his first try for public office. The popular singer and peace activist said his goal is to see Okinawa become an independent United Nations protectorate. He won a "proportional" seat after the Democratic Party grabbed 50 of the 121 contested seats.
Proportional seats are at-large seats awarded according to the percentage of the popular vote a party captures. Of the contests, 73 seats were prefectural seats and 48 were for the nationwide proportional seats.
Kina won 129,208 votes, making him the party's 10th-highest vote-getter.
"I want to fill a gap [that] exists between Okinawa and the mainland that stems from the past history," said Kina, who banked on his celebrity status. "Turn all the military bases into flower gardens."
He pledged to "put my effort into bringing down" the adminstration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and into changing "the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty into a Japan-U.S. Friendship Treaty."
Itokazu said her election was an endorsement for her campaign to cancel plans to build a new Marine air station in the waters off northeast Okinawa, to replace Futenma Marine Corps Air Station. She also wants to close the Futenma base and move Marine air operations off Okinawa.
"Throughout the campaign I heard the voices of Okinawans saying a loud 'no' to the Koizumi administration," she said Sunday. "The issues in this election were very clear, especially the opposition to construction of the new military base."
Although Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party took a beating, falling short of its goal of winning more than 51 seats - it won 49 - Koizumi is expected to remain in office because the LDP retained a majority of the seats not up for election.
Also, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, the New Komeito party, won 11 seats. All told, the two-party ruling coalition has 139 seats of the 242-seat upper house.
-------- mideast
Trouble in the desert kingdom
Racked by fundamentalism and political unrest, Saudi Arabia is a nation in crisis.
Simon Reeve
independent.co.uk
14 July 2004 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=540609
Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who rules Saudi Arabia in place of his ailing half-brother, King Fahd, is sitting under huge crystal chandeliers in a luxurious hall the size of a football pitch, listening to the problems and complaints of his subjects. In the middle of a short queue, a weatherbeaten tribal elder waits patiently. When his turn comes, the tribesman sits in an ornate chair next to the prince and begins pleading for a new well in his village. To my surprise, there is no subservience. Instead, the elderly man wags his finger at the 81-year-old prince, and even appears to be hectoring him.
After a few moments, during which Crown Prince Abdullah listens attentively, the old man hands him a letter confirming his request, squeezes the arm of his ruler and wanders away satisfied. With the air of a man dealing with a demanding family, the prince hands the paper to one of several flunkeys and turns to the next visitor. This uniquely Saudi event is a majlis, at which male Saudis are granted an audience with royalty. This summer, at a palace in the west of the kingdom, I became one of few Westerners permitted to meet the crown prince and to observe this medieval form of consultative rule.
In spite of heightened security after a spate of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the majlis is a curiously intimate affair. Saudis crowd round their leader for a handshake. Aides say there is no vetting of questions, and any male can drop in for a chat. "Just like one of your MPs' meetings with constituents," a younger prince told me. Not quite. The House of Saud runs every aspect of the kingdom as its private fiefdom. While the majlis proves that the royals listen to their subjects, it also shows how ordinary Saudis' lives can be changed, for better or worse, on a royal whim.
The senior royals, who have run this vast country since the charismatic King Abdul Aziz bin Saud unified Arabia in 1932, have long been vilified by outsiders. Western critics say the royals are corrupt, misogynistic, dictatorial and oppressive - and responsible for fomenting global terrorism. When I spent almost a month travelling around the kingdom, it came as a surprise to discover the extent to which most Saudis support the royals and want them to retain control, at least for now.
Crown Prince Abdullah, a son of King Abdul Aziz, is leading the nation during one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Saudi Arabia is facing unprecedented economic, social and political upheaval, and only major change can prevent the country sliding into chaos. The crown prince leads a reforming wing of the royal family. He has done much to discourage royal extravagance - even forcing the many other princes to pay for their own airline tickets - and is slowly beginning to modernise this devoutly Islamic country. But he must reconcile change with the demands of a pious population that worries that the Islamic focus of the state is under threat, while at the same time challenging the fundamentalists responsible for a wave of bombings and attacks across the kingdom.
Indeed, Saudi Arabia is a land of staggering contradictions. All Saudis profess loathing for the American government, and the suffering of the Palestinians dominates the news. Yet Western shops and foreign fast-food restaurants do brisk business. McDonald's is hugely popular, although every outlet has separate sections for men and women and, like all businesses and shops, they close five times a day for prayers. Alcohol and cinemas are illegal, but video stores stock the latest Hollywood releases. Satellite dishes are officially banned, but most families have one. Public music is prohibited, and firms have been reprimanded for playing music to callers on hold, but English-language graffiti praise American rappers and Eminem blares from car stereos.
The fiery mutawaeen - religious police from the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice - roam streets, shops and restaurants enforcing their vision of morality. Saudi women are legally prevented from driving and - with scant religious justification - must wear the black abaya, which covers the body from head to toe. Yet women wearing the abaya pore over scraps of underwear in lingerie shops in Riyadh before combing the sprawling new Harvey Nichols department store for fashionable dresses they can wear at private house-parties.
About 70 per cent of the population of the Holy Kingdom are under the age of 30, but all the rulers are over 70. An army of youngsters is simmering with frustrations. There are few outlets for youthful rebellion. Young people are so desperate for contact with the opposite sex that teenagers scribble their names and mobile numbers on bits of paper and throw them at someone they fancy when the mutawaeen aren't looking.
To justify and legitimise its rule over its young subjects, the House of Saud turns to Islam. Since the creation of the state, the House of Saud has partnered with clerics who espouse the strict form of Islam derived from the 250-year-old teachings of a preacher called Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab. Mercy and tolerance are hallmarks of Islam, but Wahhabi teaching declares that Muslims who do not adhere to his particular version of Islam are apostates, and thus deserving of death. For decades, strict Wahhabism has taught that Christians and Jews are infidels and heretics. Wahhabi clerics control education in Saudi, and they have raised many youngsters to hate.
School textbooks state that Muslims and non-believers are historical enemies and include sections detailing "ways to show hatred to the infidel". One book explains that Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah "and turned into apes and pigs". Universities focus on religious instruction and eschew vocational skills, leaving many young Saudis ill equipped for the modern world.
Education and militancy are not the only areas where, critics say, the House of Saud has failed. Internal dissent has been stifled. The few human-rights workers not in jail allege that prisoners are tortured and abused.
Even the economy has taken a hammering. Saudi Arabia has 25 per cent of the world's oil reserves, but the average Saudi woman has six children, and state funds have not kept pace with the population boom. Incomes have fallen by about two-thirds since the Eighties, and unemployment is up to 30 per cent. Saudi women and children beg at traffic lights, a sight unthinkable just a few years ago. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 princes live lavishly at state expense, and millions of foreign "guest workers" from Asia, often treated like servants, keep the country running by taking the jobs Saudis are unable or unwilling to do. Foreigners make up a staggering 90 per cent of all employees in the private sector.
But it is wrong to perceive Saudi Arabia as a stagnant, backward state. It has experienced more change in the past 30 years than in the previous 13 centuries. In the space of a few decades it has undergone an industrial revolution, mass immigration, globalisation, a religious backlash and a social revolution brought about by the arrival of Arab satellite television.
Now change is coming again. To save the economy and meet the challenges of the modern world, reformers, including senior members of the royal family, are preparing for democratisation, social liberalisation and economic redistribution. The recent terror attacks have intensified the pressure; reformers argue that giving ordinary Saudis a say in the running of their country will help to marginalise the militants.
Crown Prince Abdullah professes to be committed to reform, saying: "It is high time to rid our society of the seeds of fanaticism and hatred and instead plant the seeds of tolerance and unity." The prince has been holding an unprecedented series of meetings with intellectuals, clerics and reformers, discussing modernisation of the courts, the employment market and the education system. Most radical of all, the country is taking a step towards democracy. Senior princes confirm that municipal elections, the first since the Sixties, will be held in October - and women can vote.
Much of this change is driven by necessity. Young women constitute 55 per cent of university graduates but just 5 per cent of the workforce. "This is a waste of money, a waste of human resources and a waste of brains that could really challenge this economy and get it out from the very low growth of around 1.4 per cent for the whole [of the] last 20 years," says Nahed Tahar, a female senior economist, who graduated in Britain.
Reforms granting women more rights have already been introduced, and laws are being rewritten to encourage women to start businesses and to invest capital. Ten years ago, hardly any women worked in the kingdom. Tahar, who works for an investment bank, is a trailblazer. But men and women still cannot work together, so Tahar has her own office in an open-plan building. "When I started, there were many men who could not look me in the eye," she says. "But now they are getting used to me."
Change happens slowly in Saudi, but royals are among those making a difference. In Jeddah, the entrepreneur Prince Amr bin Muhammad, a grandson of King Faisal, has begun employing women in his IT business. "Some women who are wealthy don't need to work," Prince Amr says. "But there are a vast majority of them who are not wealthy and who need to work."
Prince Amr is creating computerised maps of the kingdom that could one day be used to compile electoral rolls for a constitutional monarchy. Change is needed, he says: "We cannot rule the way we have been doing for the last 100 years. Better we change than have it imposed on us."
I had presumed that most Saudis privately felt oppressed by their royal rulers and wanted rapid reform. But after meeting scores of Saudis - from Bedouin tribesmen to senior princes, from Osama bin Laden's former best friend to trendy young women - I realised I had been wrong. The majority of Saudis regard the royals as the glue that holds their country together. And, while most people accept the need for change, they want it to happen at their own pace, not one dictated by the West.
I expected hostility. But, despite their anger at Western support for Israel and general fury at American foreign policy, Saudis do something many Westerners do not - they make a distinction between an individual and the government of his country. Everywhere I went, the Saudis were warm and hospitable. The shooting of the BBC's Simon Cumbers and Frank Gardner, shortly after I flew home, came as a huge shock.
Yet Saudi Arabia has been a breeding ground for militancy for more than a decade, and Western and Saudi intelligence experts believe there are still several thousand extremists within the kingdom who are prepared to use violence. Many Saudis supported the events of September 11, and a majority at least felt a degree of satisfaction that America was suffering.
But support for extremism has begun to change since the attacks inside Saudi Arabia, which killed local Muslims and Western workers who were guests in the country. Now Saudis see themselves as victims. Concrete barriers have gone up around major buildings, hotels and shopping malls to protect against car bombs. Dr Mohsen al-Awaji, a Saudi lawyer who represents several militants and who was imprisoned for his own militant views, believes the terrorists have gone too far and that their campaign has become "intolerable".
At his office in Riyadh, Dr al-Awaji, a pious but avuncular figure, introduced me to "Saleh", a tough, hardline imam who has fought in Afghanistan and supports Bin Laden, and has been imprisoned for some years because of his links to extremist organisations. Saleh, who said he would have been "proud" to be a September 11 hijacker, was flicking through the translated autobiography of Hillary Clinton, which seemed to reinforce his hatred of the West.
Yet he was embarrassed by the latest terror attacks inside Saudi Arabia, and viewed them as a huge mistake. I heard the same comments across the kingdom. Saudis are turning against the extremists they once supported. Even the clerics Safar bin Abdul Rahman al-Hawali and Salman al-Awdah, once so close to Osama bin Laden that he thanked them personally in videotapes for their support and for "enlightening" Muslim youth, now describe the militants as "deviants".
This change is vitally important. Saudi Arabia is the focus of the Islamic world. About 1.3 billion Muslims around the planet face towards the kingdom in prayer five times each day. If the people of the holy kingdom turn aggressively against al-Qa'ida, latent sympathy for extremism across the rest of the Islamic world could also start to wane. The next few years will be crucial. The royals must introduce changes that modernise the kingdom, treading a path between the demands of the reformers and those of the hardliners, while moving at a pace the cautious Saudis will accept. The stakes are huge. Success or failure will shape the future of Islam across the world, and could have a profound impact on all our lives.
Simon Reeve presents 'Saudi: The Family in Crisis', a 'This World' documentary, on BBC2 tomorrow night at 9pm. He is the author of 'The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism' (Andre Deutsch)
--------
Aide to Bin Laden Surrenders
Confidant of Al Qaeda Leader Turns Himself In Under Saudi Amnesty Offer
By Abdullah al-Shihri
Associated Press
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48077-2004Jul13.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, July 13 -- A Saudi confidant of Osama bin Laden surrendered in Iran and was flown to his home country Tuesday, Saudi officials said. The man, who in 2001 appeared in a videotape with bin Laden, is a potentially valuable asset in the hunt for the fugitive al Qaeda chief.
Khaled Harbi was shown Tuesday on Saudi television being pushed in a wheelchair through the Riyadh airport. He surrendered under a Saudi government amnesty that promises to spare the lives of radicals who turn themselves in.
"Thank God, thank God. . . . I called the embassy and we were very well received," Harbi told Saudi television in the airport terminal. "I have come obeying God, and obeying the rulers" of the kingdom.
U.S. officials consider Harbi, also known as Abu Suleiman Makki, a sounding board for the al Qaeda chief rather than an operational planner for his network, a U.S. counterterrorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another U.S. official said Harbi was not a senior member of al Qaeda. The official, who declined to be identified, called him "an aging mujaheddin," or holy warrior.
The Interior Ministry did not say what Harbi was wanted for, but a Saudi security official said he was a member of al Qaeda. He is not among the 26 people listed on the kingdom's official list of most wanted terrorism suspects.
Mansour Nogaidan, a Riyadh journalist and former member of the radical underground, said Harbi appeared on a videotape released in November 2001 in which bin Laden described the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
At a dinner shown on the videotape, bin Laden praised the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and credited them with inspiring conversions to Islam.
"We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed, based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors," bin Laden said on the tape.
"I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for."
In a statement, the Interior Ministry said Harbi had contacted the Saudi Embassy in Tehran from the Iranian-Afghan border, where he was stranded.
Nogaidan said Harbi was disabled in both legs while fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He then preached at a mosque in Mecca, but left Saudi Arabia for Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
U.S. officials have said that some detained al Qaeda operatives close to bin Laden, notably Khalid Sheik Mohammed, have provided vital intelligence about the organization. It was not immediately clear how much access U.S. authorities would have to Harbi or to what would say during interrogation by the Saudis.
Wearing traditional white robes and an Arab headdress, Harbi was carried off the plane before being placed in a wheelchair. He was accompanied by his wife, dressed in black, and their son, a Saudi security official said. The Interior Ministry said Harbi would be taken to a hospital for medical care. It did not elaborate on his condition.
Harbi is the third man known to have taken advantage of the month-long amnesty offered by Saudi officials on June 23. One of those who surrendered is Othman Amri, No. 19 on Saudi Arabia's most wanted list.
In his televised remarks, Harbi described the amnesty as a "generous offer" and urged other radicals to take advantage of it.
Separately, Prince Nayef, the interior minister, acknowledged for the first time that Saudi nationals had infiltrated neighboring Iraq to join the insurgency against U.S.-led forces.
"Surely, there are Saudis" among the foreign fighters detained in Iraq, Nayef told reporters late Monday. But he said their numbers and details of how they got to Iraq were not available.
Iraq's human rights minister, Bakhtyar Amin, said Monday there were 14 Saudis among 99 foreign fighters now being held by Iraqi forces.
-------- philippines
Philippines, Reacting to Threat, Starts Troop Withdrawal
July 14, 2004
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-HOST.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 14 - The Philippines today began withdrawing some of its small peacekeeping troops from Iraq, in response to the threat made by Iraqi insurgents that they would behead a Filipino driver if Manila did not withdraw its forces by July 20.
"As of today, our headcount is down from 51 to 43," Delia Albert, the Philippines foreign secretary, said on Philippines national television today, referring to the number of Filipino troops and police officers helping coalition forces in Iraq.
The announcement came just hours after the Arab news channel Al Jazeera reported that a Jordanian militant group said it had beheaded one of two Bulgarian hostages held in Iraq. The group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, threatened to kill the second hostage within 24 hours, Al Jazeera reported.
In recent months, dozens of foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, posing a difficult test for nations that have sent troops to Iraq or who have nationals working here. Soldiers, security guards and low-level workers like truck drivers and translators all have been targets.
Al Jazeera did not show the execution of the hostage, nor did it identify him. It broadcast a section of videotape showing a blindfolded man with a mustache, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling with his hands tied behind his back. Three masked men stood above him, one apparently reading from a piece of paper.
The group led by Mr. Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, has beheaded two other hostages: Nicholas Berg, an American businessman killed in May; and Kim Sun Il, a Korean interpreter killed last month.
The group, Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad, had threatened to kill the two Bulgarian men, truck drivers identified as Ivaylo Kepov and Georgi Lazov, by Saturday unless all Iraqis in prison here were released. On Tuesday, the Bulgarian government said it believed that both men, thought to be suffering from health problems, were still alive. They were last heard from on June 29, while traveling near the northern city of Mosul.
Philippine officials said in Baghdad that the driver being held hostage, 46-year-old Angelo dela Cruz, is alive and well.
"There's no risk of execution of Angelo de la Cruz," Roy Cimatu, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyos' special ambassador to the Middle East, told reporters here today.
The kidnappers said they would execute Mr. De la Cruz, a truck driver for a Saudi company, on Sunday if the Philippine government did not agree to withdraw the troops a month early.
On Monday, Rafael Seguis, the Philippines deputy foreign affairs secretary, made it clear that the government was willing to pull out its troops in an effort to secure Mr. De La Cruz' release.
"In the name of the Filipino people and the name of humanity and the family of De la Cruz and his eight children, the government of the Philippines is pleading for his release," he said in Iraq, at an Al Jazeera studio. "In response to your request, the Philippines will withdraw its humanitarian force as soon as possible."
All but one past claim of the execution of hostages has been true. On July 3, a militant group posted a claim on the Internet that it had beheaded an American marine, Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. But Corporal Hassoun turned up safe several days later.
The announcement that the Philippines would pull out troops was a dramatic turnaround by one of Washington's biggest backers in the campaign against terror. The Philippines had vowed not to yield to pressure to move up the withdrawal, which had been scheduled for Aug. 20. Bush administration officials had said they were disappointed at the decision by the Philippines to pull its troops out.
"We believe that a decision by the Philippine government to withdraw their 51 troops ahead of schedule would send the wrong signal to terrorists," the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said to reporters Tuesday during a campaign trip by Mr. Bush to Michigan.
In the Philippines, groups critical of President Arroyo's support for the war in Iraq criticized the United States for pressuring her not to pull out troops.
"Dela Cruz was held hostage because the government of his country, led by President Arroyo, is an avowed ally of the U.S. war and its global war of terror now directed against Iraq and its people," said Crispin Beltran, a congressman representing workers and peasants in Congress.
Leftist and migrant-workers groups have been holding daily protest actions in Manila and in other parts of the country urging Arroyo to stop supporting the war in Iraq, which they describe as immoral and illegal. On Tuesday, the police, using water cannons and truncheons, broke up a rally in Manila, injuring several protesters.
In Baghdad, the interim Iraqi government, flexing its new muscles without American help, on Tuesday mounted a major sweep of criminals in Baghdad, arresting what officials said were 527 suspects in crimes ranging from kidnapping to murder.
Safety is, by far, the major concern of Iraqis, and they frequently complain that the American military has been less concerned with ordinary crimes, which have skyrocketed, than with bombings and terror attacks. After two weeks of relative calm following the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, the violence resumed today with a suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed at least 10.
The raids on Tuesday seemed intended to show that the new interim government, which took power from American occupation forces here two weeks ago, would not only move forcefully against everyday violence, but was capable of doing so alone.
"There was no coordination with the Americans in these arrests," Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said. "This was done totally by Iraqis."
The raid, the second in the past week, was carried out by the Baghdad police and Iraqi intelligence agents. Mr. Kadhim said that those arrested would be investigated for any links to the insurgents who attack American and Iraqi forces.
In Brussels, the new interim foreign minister of Iraq, Hoshyar Zebari, appealed to NATO for urgent help in training Iraqi security forces to help fight the insurgency here, as promised last month at the organization's summit meeting in Turkey.
He also said that Iraq would like military equipment and help from NATO in border control and protecting United Nations workers who will oversee the elections for a national assembly next January.
"We need this training you promised us in Istanbul to be carried out as soon as possible," Mr. Zebari told reporters in Brussels. "We need it, in fact we are in a race against time and it's a matter of urgency."
NATO members have disputed exactly what their agreement last month meant, with several countries opposed to NATO's becoming the primary trainer of Iraqi security forces. Several nations, including France, have ruled out a direct presence of NATO troops.
Carlos H. Conde contributed reporting to this article from Manila.
-------- prisoners of war
Bogus Afghan Jailers May Face Prison Time
By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer
Jul 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_US_VIGILANTES?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Three American vigilantes tricked NATO peacekeepers into helping with illegal raids, the security force said Wednesday, getting them to send explosives experts and bomb-sniffing dogs to check buildings in Kabul where they had detained suspects.
A spokesman said the men, led by former U.S. soldier Jonathan K. Idema, seemed authentic - fluent in military speak, decked out in faux U.S. Army fatigues and claiming to belong to a nonexistent task force.
"Their credibility was such that with their uniforms, their approach, our people believed they were what they said they were," said Cdr. Chris Henderson, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force. "It was a mistake."
Afghan officials said the three men, who were arrested July 5, could spend 20 years in jail on charges of hostage-taking and assault of Afghans allegedly found hanging upside down in their private jail.
It remained unclear if the three men had been picking up innocent Afghans of if they were trailing genuine militants plotting bombings or other violence.
Henderson said Idema called in bomb-disposal teams from the International Security Assistance Force to check houses and vehicles three times from June 20-24.
The teams found "traces" of explosives in two cases, and suspicious electronic components in a third, Henderson said. He wouldn't say whether they could have been used to make bombs.
Idema, formerly of Fayetteville, N.C., appeared in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He claimed in a book to have fought alongside the Northern Alliance troops who allied with U.S. forces to drive out the Taliban regime.
Better known as "Jack," he returned to Kabul some weeks ago with his partners. Police say he was armed and dressed in military gear and sometimes wore a flat woolen Afghan cap.
It remains unclear if Idema, who spent three years in a U.S. federal prison for a fraud conviction in the 1990s, was hoping to bank a million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of al-Qaida fugitives.
The U.S. military here insists that Idema, who has worked with several Western TV networks, has no connection with either it or the American government.
The U.S. Embassy has checked that the men are being treated properly, but there is no sign of an attempt to remove them from the country.
Fatah said the charges raised against the Americans, as well as four Afghans arrested along with them, carry jail terms of 16-20 years.
Abdul Baset Bakhtyari, a senior judge at Kabul's lower court, said it received the case Wednesday and it would be several days before a trial begins.
"It will be a public trial," Bakhtyari said. "They can bring lawyers from whichever country they want."
He said Idema and the two others would remain in Afghan custody.
Afghan officials say they freed all eight illegal prisoners, but residents in the Kabul neighborhood where one of the raids occurred say five men have not returned.
Henderson and an Afghan security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both said they didn't know if the five were now in Afghan custody.
Henderson insisted Wednesday that none of the peacekeepers had witnessed any abuse of detainees. "Had anyone in ISAF seen that, it would have been reported."
Defending the force's actions, he said Idema didn't seem out of the ordinary in Kabul, with its many armed Western operatives, from American spies to private security guards.
Still, when word of the operations reached higher officials a few days after the third raid, they became suspicious and contacted the U.S. military.
"At that point they said: 'this is Idema, he's not legitimate,'" Henderson said.
Armed with information from ISAF and the Americans, Afghan forces then raided Idema's jail in Kabul, he said.
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar Intelligence
July 14, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/politics/14inte.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 13 - The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.
Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.
The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.
"In determining what the president was told about the contents of the N.I.E. dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and all, there is nothing clearer than this single page," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page "additional view" that was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on Friday.
A separate white paper summarizing the National Intelligence Estimate was made public in October 2002. The Senate report criticized the white paper as having "misrepresented'' what the Senate committee described as a "more carefully worded assessment" in the classified intelligence estimate. For example, the white paper excluded information found in the National Intelligence Estimate, like the names of intelligence agencies that had dissented from some of the findings, most importantly on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. That approach, the Senate committee said, "provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of the debate within the intelligence community regarding these issues."
Among the specific dissents excluded from the public white paper on Iraq's weapons was the view of the State Department's intelligence branch, spelled out in the classified version of the document, that Iraq's importation of aluminum tubes could not be conclusively tied to a continuing nuclear weapons program, as other intelligence agencies asserted. Also left out of the white paper was the view of Air Force intelligence that pilotless aerial vehicles being built by Iraq, seen by other intelligence agencies as designed to deliver chemical or biological weapons, were not suited for that purpose.
The fact that there were significant differences between the white paper and the classified versions of the intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons first became apparent last summer, when the Bush administration made public more of the classified document.
The full National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program, but included some caveats and summarized dissents made by the State Department's intelligence branch, among other agencies.
At a background briefing on Friday that coincided with the release of the Senate report, a Senate Republican official noted that intelligence agencies routinely prepared such abbreviated summaries of National Intelligence Estimates for presidents, and that those summaries were routinely covered by the doctrine of executive privilege.
Mr. Bush and his advisers had full access to the classified 90-page intelligence estimate, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," which provided a more detailed and qualified account of the intelligence agencies' views, the Senate Republican official noted.
The main body of the 511-page report that was approved unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee made no mention of the summary sent to Mr. Bush. In interviews, Democratic officials said that Republicans on the panel, which meets in closed session, had blocked their efforts to formally request the document from the White House. They also said that Democrats on the panel had tried and failed to persuade Republicans to include in the committee report a description of the one-page summary as having been an inadequate reflection of the full intelligence estimate.
The document is still classified, according to Congressional officials, who declined to discuss it in detail. But in his written "additional view," included as an appendix to the Senate report, Senator Durbin said there was "no reason" that the summary prepared for Mr. Bush "should not be declassified in its entirety and publicly released."
Republican Congressional officials have said there is nothing unusual about the preparation of the one-page summary for Mr. Bush. They say they accept as legitimate the C.I.A.'s refusal to share the document with the intelligence committee, on the ground that documents prepared by the agency explicitly for a president should remain privileged.
Along with members of Congress and other top administration officials, Mr. Bush and his advisers were also provided with the full, classified version of the intelligence estimate, and Republican Congressional officials say it would be misleading to focus on the abbreviated version contained in the one-page summary.
John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence, said last week that he believed that the C.I.A. should have included more caveats in the 2002 intelligence estimate, particularly in a section that summarized its key judgments. On Tuesday, a senior intelligence official said of the presidential summary: "We expect people to read beyond one page.''
A one-page President's Summary is routinely prepared as part of any National Intelligence Estimate, according to intelligence officials. Like the National Intelligence Estimate, the summary is produced by the staff of the National Intelligence Council, which reports to the director of central intelligence.
A President's Summary is written explicitly for the president, and is reviewed and endorsed by the chiefs of the 15 American intelligence agencies, who form what is known as the National Foreign Intelligence Board.
The one-page summary is not the only document that the White House refused to share with the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to Congressional officials. Copies of the President's Daily Brief that the committee had sought were also denied to the panel, even though the White House did allow another investigative body, the president's commission on the Sept. 11 attacks, to review those highly classified documents.
A White House official suggested Tuesday that Democrats, having joined Republicans in issuing a unanimous report that did not address the question of the one-page summary, were now, by focusing attention on it, "seeking to rewrite the conclusions." The official said the White House believed that the document should not be made public because it was covered by the doctrine of executive privilege.
In his written statement, Senator Durbin said the C.I.A. had told the intelligence committee that 80 copies of the one-page summary had been distributed to the White House, a fact he called an indication that the document had not been prepared exclusively for the president. He said the summary "contains no intelligence beyond that contained" in the broader intelligence estimate, which was provided to members of Congress and to the committee, "and does not set forth policy advice that should be considered privileged."
A Senate Democratic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that three members of the intelligence committee staff were permitted by the National Security Council to review the one-page Presidential Summary and to take notes on its contents. But, the official said, the staff members were not permitted to take possession of the document or to publicly describe its contents in detail.
--------
Scarlett must go, say MPs
Spy chief set to take over at MI6 will be criticised today over war intelligence
independent.co.uk
By Colin Brown, Andrew Grice and Kim Sengupta
14 July 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=540687
Tony Blair will face pressure today from MPs from all three main parties to block the promotion of John Scarlett to head of MI6 after the Butler inquiry publishes its report into intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Mr Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), accepted "ownership" of the Government's 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons, which included the false claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction "within 45 minutes" of an order to do so. His judgement is expected to be questioned by the five-month inquiry headed by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary.
Lord Butler will clear Mr Blair of deliberately misleading the nation about the intelligence on which he based his case for war. While the report does not question his integrity, it does criticise his informal way of taking decisions, with a lack of proper minutes and notice of meetings. It is likely to say that intelligence should never again be used in such an overtly political way.
In a Commons statement an hour after Lord Butler releases his report at a press conference, Mr Blair will promise to implement the recommendations. He is expected to admit mistakes were made in the run-up to the war and that lessons must be learnt for the use of intelligence in future. But he will refuse to say sorry for taking military action to remove Saddam. One government source who has read the Butler report told The Independent: "It's bad, but nowhere near as bad as the Senate inquiry into the US intelligence last week. There is criticism but we think we can get through this."
The Prime Minister will come under pressure from all sides today for promoting Mr Scarlett in May while the Butler committee was still conducting its inquiry.
In the United States, George Tenet, the director of the CIA, resigned over the intelligence failures on Iraq. Last night Labour MPs tabled a Commons motion condemning Mr Blair for his action. The motion "deplores the promotion of John Scarlett to head MI6" while the Butler inquiry was still under way. Jeremy Corbyn, one of the signatories, said: "The head of the CIA was forced to resign but Mr Blair has promoted John Scarlett. That is extraordinary."
Alice Mahon, another left-wing Labour MP, said: "When you see what happened to the head of the CIA, people will not understand why Mr Blair is promoting John Scarlett. It is a scandal."
Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "The appointment of John Scarlett before the Butler report was published was completely inappropriate."
Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said Mr Scarlett had allowed the JIC reports to be "politicised". He said: "There are three things that should never be allowed to happen again - the JIC reports should never again be published; the chairman of the JIC should never again be appointed from serving intelligence officers, however qualified; and the independence of the JIC from No 10 should never again be compromised."
The Prime Minister will resist demands for him to shelve the promotion of Mr Scarlett, who is due to become head of MI6 on 1 August. His official spokesman said Mr Scarlett continued to have the Prime Minister's "full confidence".
Whitehall sources admitted that Mr Scarlett would be in the firing line when the Butler report is published today. "It's going to be 'get Scarlett' day," said one. "The Prime Minister is determined to keep him. But a head of steam could build up that he shouldn't get the MI6 job."
The report, it is believed, will critically examine the roles of Sir Joe French, who was head of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Intelligence Service, and Joe Cragg, his deputy. They were both present at the final JIC meeting which signed off the September 2002 dossier.
Mr Blair's admission that mistakes were made will not satisfy his critics. In his strongest attack over Iraq, Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said last night: "The only mandate this government had for war was winning a [Commons] vote where military force was specifically sanctioned to remove the elusive WMD. I don't expect Tony Blair will apologise; so perhaps he should admit he was wrong over his other errors. How else can we learn lessons for the future unless we acknowledge what went wrong?"
------
Goss has no chance of heading CIA: Roberts
The Hill
By Alexander Bolton
July 14, 2004
http://www.hillnews.com/news/071404/roberts.aspx
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday dismissed the chances of Rep. Porter Goss's (R-Fla.) becoming director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Goss, a former CIA case officer and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, had been named by senior administration officials as the front-runner for the job vacated by former CIA director George Tenet, who resigned Sunday. Goss's candidacy has foundered because of opposition from Senate and House Democrats who believe he is too partisan to run the CIA. The agency is at the center of the political battle over whether the invasion of Iraq was justified.
"Porter Goss? That trial balloon went up, and Sen. [John] Rockefeller [D-W.Va.] got out his BB gun and popped it out of the sky," said Roberts in a wide-ranging interview in his Hart Building office, referring to his committee's ranking member.
"We do not want a partisan fight right before the election," Roberts said.
"[Rockefeller] said he was too partisan and not acceptable," Roberts said. "I don't think Porter is too partisan or that he is unacceptable, but that doesn't speak for the other side. Apparently, if you have the vice chairman firmly opposed to the nominee, I don't think that's a very good starting point."
Roberts declined to promote a successor to Tenet.
"The door's wide open; that's their pick," Roberts said, referring to the Bush administration. "My only message to the White House is if they do this, make it an extraordinary person that will get bipartisan support. My criterion for it is that the intelligence director should be someone who has a lot of information-management experience because that's what it's all about."
At the end of last month, Rockefeller issued a public statement warning the president not to nominate a CIA director whom Democrats would view as partisan.
"We need a director that is not only knowledgeable and capable but unquestionably independent," said Rockefeller. "I strongly urge the President to look for an individual with unimpeachable, nonpartisan national-security credentials and the stature and independence to bring about much-needed reform of our intelligence agencies."
Key Democrats in the House also oppose Goss's possible nomination to the CIA. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), formerly the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, recently blasted Goss as too partisan.
She and other key Democrats were furious that during a floor debate last month Goss displayed a poster on the House floor criticizing Sen. John Kerry for favoring intelligence budget cuts.
"I didn't get the impression on the floor yesterday that Chairman Goss was somebody who was putting himself in line for the director of CIA," Pelosi said at a meeting with reporters last month, adding, "The crowner for me was when [he] held up something about John Kerry that was, I think, supposed to be clever."
Harman has also expressed her doubts about Goss last month: "I told Porter Goss as recently as last night, as we were sitting on the House floor at midnight still voting, my first choice for that job is nobody, and my reason for that is that the job is outmoded. The job should be revised."
A spokeswoman in Goss's personal office and a spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
President Bush said last week that he had not decided whether to nominate a new CIA director before the November election. But over the weekend, Roberts and Rockefeller publicly urged Bush not to delay his choice. It is widely believed that Bush will soon appoint a new CIA director, partly to avoid extra criticism should terrorists strike the homeland between now and November.
"I don't think you can have an acting director during the global war on terrorism, and during the transition, and right during the threat to the homeland, and right during all these bills that are now put out," Roberts said, referring to a slew of proposals that various lawmakers in the House and Senate have put forth to restructure and reform the intelligence community.
A number of lawmakers favor installing a new director of national intelligence - akin to an intelligence czar - at a level above the chief of the CIA to coordinate intelligence operations.
Roberts refused to endorse such a radical restructuring at such an early stage, before getting input from the "wise men" and "wise women" of the intelligence community.
"I think that Senator Rockefeller and I both agree that we ought to be very deliberate and very careful," Roberts said.
Roberts plans to have hearings next Tuesday and Thursday to discuss reform with intelligence experts. "We'll be saying 'Alright, if you had a clean piece of paper what would you recommend?'" Roberts said.
Speaking of candidates qualified to take over at the CIA, Roberts said, "We need someone to take charge and make it a five or six year [stint]. Someone who transcends into the future without politics."
"It's so high-profile, you're going to have to find someone with great information-management skills, [who] knows how to deal with Congress, [and who] can sift through all of these proposals and look at the law of unintended consequences, [who will] do no harm, [and], from a pragmatic standpoint, say, 'How do we fix this?' and take charge."
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, former director of the National Security Agency William Studeman, former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Chris Cox (R-Calif.), are other names that have been floated.
Albert Eisele and Geoff Earle contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Hijackers allowed to stay for fear of infringing their human rights
14/07/2004
telegraph.co.uk
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/14/nhijak14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/14/ixnewstop.html
Nine Afghan gunmen who hijacked an airliner four years ago and forced it to fly to London have been told they can stay in Britain with their wives and children.
After a secret court hearing, immigration adjudicators refused them asylum but ruled that they could not be deported because their human rights would be infringed.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, described the ruling as "crazy" last night on the grounds that it sent the wrong signals to others tempted to use hijackings to claim asylum.
The gunmen's continued presence is a severe embarrassment to the Government, which promised to block any asylum applications by those on the plane.
Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, said: "I am utterly determined that nobody should consider that there can be any benefit in hijacking."
A Number 10 spokesman said at the time: "You cannot have a situation where a signal can be sent to anybody that the way to get asylum is through hijacking a plane."
The hijackers seized a Boeing 727 on an internal flight from Kabul in February 2000. Armed with guns and explosives, they held the plane at Stansted Airport for 70 hours surrounded by police and SAS before giving themselves up.
They were jailed at the Old Bailey the following year for hijack, false imprisonment, possessing firearms with intent to cause fear of violence and possessing explosives.
But their convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal last summer. The judges ruled that the law relating to whether the men had acted under duress had been wrongly applied at their trial.
Since then, the Government has been fighting to throw them out of the country.
The Home Office said last night it intended to appeal but it is now increasingly likely that the hijackers and their families will be allowed to stay indefinitely in Britain.
Of the 170 people on the plane, 89 returned voluntarily to Afghanistan and 22, including 13 dependants, have been granted asylum. A further 25 are awaiting the outcome of appeals and other legal procedures that have cost at least £20 million.
The remaining 34 are the hijackers, their wives and children, who have been resettled in rent-free housing in west London and receive benefits.
Mr Davis said last night: "We are all baffled at this outcome. It seems crazy that asylum seekers can hijack a plane and yet be allowed to stay in this country."
He added: "We are not opposed to people applying for asylum, but there are genuine law abiding ways of doing so. This isn't one of them. It sends the wrong signals out and puts peoples' backs up."
There was a similar outcome to the hijacking in 1996 of a Sudanese Airbus en route from Khartoum to Jordan. Six Iraqis who forced the plane to land in London were jailed, but their sentences were later quashed and they have remained in the country with their families.
Twenty years ago, three members of a gang that hijacked a Tanzanian airliner were allowed to stay in Britain after their release from prison.
The Afghan hijackers' case went before the Immigration Appellate Authority, which hears appeals against decisions made by the Home Office in asylum and immigration matters.
Normally, there is a presumption that the hearings are held in public but in this case a request was made for a private session.
The hijackers have been refused the protection of the 1951 United Nations refugee convention because of the circumstances in which they came to this country.
But the adjudicators ruled that under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights the hijackers could not be deported. The article prohibits a signatory returning anyone to a country where they might be "subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
Although the Taliban no longer run Afghanistan, lawyers apparently argued that the hijackers were in danger from "Taliban elements who could target them".
A Home Office spoksman said: "We are naturally disappointed by the second part of this ruling and have launched an appeal."
The hijackers said at their trial that they were peaceful people driven to violent action by the circumstances in which they and their families lived.
-------- homeland security
TSA May Change Screening Redesign Considered for Airport Program
Wednesday, July 14, 2004;
Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48346-2004Jul13.html
The federal government is considering major changes to a proposed airport screening program designed to rate the chances that each airline passenger is a terrorist or criminal, a top official told lawmakers yesterday.
David M. Stone, acting administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, told senators at his confirmation hearing yesterday that his agency intends to "reshape and repackage" the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening program, known as CAPPS 2, in order to address privacy concerns raised by U.S. airlines, political leaders and advocacy groups.
The program, which had been planned to begin operations this summer, was once billed as the most important tool for protecting the nation's aviation system from terrorism because it would mine numerous databases for information about each passenger's background -- including details such as how often a person changed addresses.
Stone said yesterday the TSA is now considering eliminating or changing four of the program's major components outlined last year. They include: an identity verification process; a check of each passenger's name against government lists of known terrorists; a process by which each passenger would be assessed and assigned a numerical score to rate the risk the traveler posed to the aircraft; and a comparison of each passenger's name against databases of known violent criminals.
-------
Unprecedented Security for Democratic Convention
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-security.html
BOSTON (Reuters) - Security for the Democratic National Convention in Boston will be tighter than for any other event in U.S. history due to fears al Qaeda may try to disrupt the election process, officials said on Wednesday.
After a tour of the convention site, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said security levels would be unprecedented for the July 26-29 convention and would be more complex and costly than security for the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Repeating a warning made last week, Ridge said the government feared that al Qaeda might try to stage a ``large scale attack'' in the United States aimed at disrupting the electoral process.
The Democratic convention will be the first major political nominating event since the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked airline attacks, which killed about 3,000 people.
Ridge said there was no specific intelligence that the convention was a target, but he said federal, state and local police would utilize all resources to prevent an attack.
``We will have patrol boats in this harbor and surrounding waters, providing blanket security coverage that will intercept and trap any terrorist attempting to swim ashore or smuggle weaponry over these waterways,'' Ridge told a news conference at the Charleston Navy Yard.
Other measures include 24-hour surveillance of convention facilities, bomb-sniffing dog teams, portable X-ray machines and explosive detection monitors that will check people and deliveries bound for the Fleet Center convention site.
One of Boston's two main train stations -- located just below the Fleet Center -- and some major highways will be closed or restricted during the convention. Democrats are expected to nominate Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry as their presidential candidate.
Ridge urged business owners and commuters, who have expressed outrage at the draconian traffic restrictions, to understand that the tight security is essential.
``There is obviously some inconvenience associated with hosting a major event,'' he said. Ridge said he was confident the Fleet Center and surrounding areas would be ``as secure as they can possibly be.''
He denied that politics were involved in the latest warning that al Qaeda may try to attack during the upcoming elections.
``This absolutely has nothing to do with politics,'' Ridge said. ``We don't do politics in homeland security.''
Ridge's warning of a possible al Qaeda attack last Thursday came in a week Democrats had captured attention with the announcement of presidential candidate John Kerry's running mate. The election will be held Nov. 2.
--------
Patriot Act chalks up 310 arrests
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
July 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040713-111330-1477r.htm
The USA Patriot Act has helped federal, state and local terrorism investigators arrest 310 persons since the September 11 attacks, 179 of whom have been convicted, and has proved to be "al Qaeda's worst nightmare," the Justice Department said yesterday in a report.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, attempting to dissuade Congress from weakening the act, key provisions of which will expire next year, delivered the 29-page document to the House Judiciary Committee, saying it gave authorities access to new legal tools and technology to "hunt down al Qaeda, destroy their safe haven and save American lives."
"We are a nation at war. ... We have to use every legal weapon available to protect the American people from terrorist attacks," Mr. Ashcroft said at a press conference with Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican.
The report said the act helped secure six guilty pleas from an al Qaeda "sleeper cell" in Lackawanna, N.Y.; allowed the surveillance of a reputed terror cell in Portland, Ore., resulting in convictions of six persons in a scheme to travel to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces; and the successful prosecution of a money launderer for Colombia's leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
It also credited the Patriot Act with the conviction of a man who sent more than 200 threatening letters laced with white powder to government agencies, businesses and individuals in Louisiana; and the discovery, through communication intercepts, of an 88-year-old Wisconsin woman who had been kidnapped and held for ransom.
Mr. Sensenbrenner said the report showed the act had been "an important tool" in tracking down criminals and terrorists, but that didn't mean the law shouldn't undergo more scrutiny.
He said when the committee is reconstituted next year, should he remain as chairman, it will look at "each and every provision" to determine whether the provision should be extended, modified or allowed to sunset.
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday said the report failed to mention a portion of the law known as Section 213, which expands access to "sneak and peek" search warrants, and ignored new government powers to gather personal data, including library records and medical information.
"While lawmakers and the ACLU have made repeated requests to find out how, exactly, the act has been used, the attorney general leaves those questions unanswered," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director.
Mr. Ashcroft said the report reinforced what the majority of Americans already know: "When it comes to saving lives and protecting freedom, we must use the Patriot Act and every legal means available to us in the act."
Congress enacted the Patriot Act after the strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, passing the bill in the Senate by a 98-1 vote and in the House by a 357?66 vote.
Last week, however, a White House threat to veto the Justice Department's 2005 spending bill if the act was weakened was enough to persuade House Republicans to protect the law.
Republicans delayed for 40 minutes a vote on an amendment to the Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill that would have limited the department's sneak-and-peek authority to read and keep records on a person's library activities until they got the votes necessary to kill it.
Reps. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, and C.L. "Butch" Otter, Idaho Republican, introduced the amendment, which failed when the House vote deadlocked at 210-210.
--------
Security for Democratic convention unprecedented, Ridge says
Knight Ridder Newspapers
By Shannon McCaffrey
Jul. 14, 2004
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9155019.htm
BOSTON - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday that security at the Democratic convention later this month would be "unprecedented" and could end up costing more than the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.
Warning of a possible al-Qaida strike this summer intended to influence the presidential election, Ridge toured massive security preparations at the Fleet Center in Boston. Thousands of Democrats will gather there July 26-29 in the first major political party convention since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The convention has been designated a national special security event, a label reserved for the most vulnerable large events.
"Our goal is to deter any potential attacks with multiple layers of security," Ridge said at a news conference with Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Patrol boats from the Coast Guard and the Boston Police Department cruised in the harbor behind him.
Ridge brushed off criticism from some Democrats that the Bush administration was exaggerating the potential threat to detract attention from the new Democratic ticket of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
"We don't do politics in homeland security," Ridge said. He called critics who suggest such a tactic "cynical."
Ridge said credible intelligence continues to point to the possibility of an attack before the presidential election, but he repeated that there was no specific threat to the political conventions. There still are no plans to raise the nation's color-coded threat level, he said.
The seriousness of the threat is disputed within intelligence circles, with some saying the information obtained by U.S. officials could be a deliberate campaign of disinformation.
Others give it more credibility. Some lawmakers who left a classified briefing with Ridge last week said what they had heard about the threat troubled them.
Security at the convention will be intense. Bustling North Station, the main train terminal in Boston, will be shut down, as will a portion of the interstate running past the Fleet Center.
Trucks of food arriving at the Fleet Center will be X-rayed. Conventioneers must undergo screening similar to that at airports. There will be bomb-sniffing dogs and 24-hour surveillance of key buildings. Patrol boats will be crawling Boston's harbor to prevent terrorists from trying to swim ashore and to stop bomb-laden boats, Ridge said.
"We've never seen anything like this," said Ronald Libby, the northeast regional director of the Federal Protective Service.
Massachusetts State Police will use small four-wheeled robots to inspect suspicious packages. Self-sufficient mobile units, resembling Winnebagos with some of the same capabilities of Air Force One, will be dispersed throughout the Boston area with satellite connections to view surveillance cameras of federal buildings and radio hookups to local, fire, police and federal authorities.
Ridge said the security efforts in Boston could be the most extensive undertaken on U.S. soil. He said that while the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City required the protection of more venues, the convention in Boston will involve protecting more people in a more densely populated urban environment. The Olympics security cost $320 million.
Asked if he would be willing to bring his family to downtown Boston during the convention, Ridge replied: "You bet."
-------- human rights
U.S. Assails Uzbekistan Policies, Trims Aid
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48018-2004Jul13.html
In a rare rebuke of an ally, the Bush administration announced yesterday that it will cut $18 million in military and economic aid to the authoritarian government of Uzbekistan because it has failed to take a series of promised steps to improve its human rights record.
The decision will not affect funding Uzbekistan receives from the Nunn-Lugar project to secure nuclear weapons material. Programs that support democracy groups and health care will also be exempt.
State Department officials, who had been warning President Islam Karimov's government for months that the additional aid package was in jeopardy, said they hope the move will send a tough message that political repression can be costly.
President Bush reached out to Uzbekistan one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, noting in a speech that Uzbek militants with links to al Qaeda were a threat. Shortly after, Washington won the rights to a military base on Uzbekistan's border with Afghanistan and aid was promised to Karimov's government.
But Congress, concerned about the country's human rights record, conditioned the new money on substantial and continuing progress in meeting human rights commitments Karimov made during a visit to Washington in 2002.
Among the steps expected were the introduction of free and fair elections, a free press, economic reforms and an end to torture in prisons.
Uzbekistan received the certification several times afterward, but in January the State Department said Uzbekistan had failed to meet international human rights standards. The move was symbolic but was considered a warning to the Central Asian power that its relationship with Washington could suffer.
With yesterday's announcement, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell officially determined that Uzbekistan was not meeting the criteria set by Congress to secure the funds.
"This decision does not mean that either our interests in the region or our desire for continued cooperation with Uzbekistan has changed," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement last night. At the same time, he said, "enhanced progress in democratization, respect for human rights and economic reforms are essential for Uzbekistan's security and long-term prosperity, as well as to reinforce a solid and enduring relationship with the United States."
Human Rights Watch analyst Tom Malinowski, who has chronicled Uzbekistan's record, welcomed the latest move as an important victory for human rights.
"This is the first time that the administration has allowed a lack of progress on human rights to have a significant impact on its relationship with a critical security partner in that part of the world," he said.
According to the latest State Department report on human rights around the world, Uzbekistan "remained very poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses." The police and the National Security Service, a successor to the KGB, were cited for committing serious human rights abuses, and the report noted that as many as 5,800 people may be imprisoned for religious and political affiliations.
"The Uzbek government has repeatedly tried to exploit the war on terror to win American sympathy for its crackdown on dissent," Malinowski said. "But the United States isn't buying it because there's a recognition here that when governments like Uzbekistan shut down legitimate dissent, they drive dissenters underground and potentially into the arms of more radical and violent groups. That hurts, not helps, the war on terror."
-------- justice
Justice Dept. Report Details Use of Patriot Act
Document Offered in Bid to Gain Support on Hill
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48011-2004Jul13.html
The Justice Department unveiled yesterday extensive new details of its use of the USA Patriot Act in a bid to shore up support for the embattled anti-terrorism law, asserting that it has helped thwart al Qaeda plots and led to scores of criminal convictions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
According to a 29-page report to Congress released by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Justice Department terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against 310 people and have yielded 179 convictions or guilty pleas. The report says the Patriot Act was central to those cases.
The report also chronicles numerous instances in which the law has been used in traditional criminal investigations, from child pornography prosecutions to the rescue of a kidnapped 88-year-old woman. Ashcroft and other Bush administration officials had not previously revealed the extent to which law enforcement authorities were able to investigate such crimes under the expanded powers provided by the law.
"This report is an unprecedented compilation of dozens of real-life cases from across the country in which the FBI and other law enforcement officials have used the tools of the Patriot Act to protect America's families and communities and even to save lives," Ashcroft said after meeting with House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.).
The report comes less than a week after Republicans narrowly defeated a proposal in the House to prohibit the FBI from using the law to obtain library and bookstore records. GOP leaders, under intense pressure from the White House, prolonged a vote for 23 minutes Thursday in a bid to sway enough dissident Republicans to produce a tie vote, which killed the measure.
The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress in the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, gave the government significant new powers to conduct searches and surveillance in terrorism investigations and allowed more information sharing among law enforcement agencies.
The release of the report is part of an effort by the Bush administration to bolster support for the law, some of whose sections are scheduled to expire next year. President Bush on Monday called on Congress to renew those provisions, and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday that the law has "dramatically increased our ability to choke off terrorist monies."
Democrats and civil liberties groups, some of whom have long criticized aspects of the law, decried yesterday the extensive use of the Patriot Act for non-terrorism cases. They noted that the report does not mention some of the law's most controversial provisions. For example, Ashcroft declined to say yesterday whether the Justice Department has made use of the section allowing the FBI to obtain business records without a traditional search warrant, information that is classified. As of last summer, when Ashcroft last reported on the use of the new powers, the government had not employed that provision.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that "the real issue now is how the Patriot Act should be improved to satisfy civil liberty concerns while keeping our country safe."
The Justice Department report says that the Patriot Act was crucial in the prosecution of suspected members of al Qaeda cells in Lackawanna, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., and that it allowed authorities to more easily prosecute dozens of defendants for allegedly providing "material support" to terrorist groups. The report outlines lesser known prosecutions that it characterizes as related to terrorism, including cases involving the Islamic Resistance Movement, a Palestinian group also known as Hamas, and the rebel group FARC in Colombia.
The report provides as examples lengthy accounts of non-terrorism cases in which the Patriot Act played a central role, including investigations of a couple who allegedly defrauded widows and orphans, and of an Indiana man accused of filming the sexual abuse of his 13-year-old daughter. Sensenbrenner highlighted the case of the Wisconsin woman, 88, who was kidnapped in 2003. She was rescued after officials used the Patriot Act to obtain information from Internet service providers.
But Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the examples indicate that "the Patriot Act went too far too fast, and gave law enforcement officials too much power that had nothing to do with terrorism."
-------- terrorism
Obstacles Block Tracking of Terror Funding
Task Is Complex, Leadership Is Lacking, Critics Say
By Kathleen Day and Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48391-2004Jul13?language=printer
For two years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an unlicensed money transmitter in New York City used a New Jersey bank to move $1 billion in and out of foreign accounts, some belonging to black market currency traders. By law, Hudson United Bank was required to tell regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. about such suspicious transactions, but it didn't. Instead, a probe by the New York district attorney finally alerted FDIC officials.
Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve Board fined the U.S. arm of Swiss bank UBS AG $100 million for illegally funneling $5 billion in cash to countries with which U.S. firms were banned from doing business, including Cuba, Iran and Libya. The secret cash pipeline eluded UBS's regulators at the Fed -- until U.S. soldiers in Baghdad stumbled onto a stash of U.S. bills.
And in May, the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency levied a record fine of $25 million on the District's Riggs Bank for years-long failures to report unusual transactions, including those by officials at the Saudi Arabian embassy -- failures that had continued despite earlier attempts by the OCC to fix the situation.
President Bush and his top officials have repeatedly said that detecting and interrupting the flow of funds to illicit activities is a vital component in the battle against terrorism. Getting front-line financial institutions to alert officials to suspicious money movements is one key to that effort. While authorities have drawn no links between the Hudson, UBS and Riggs incidents and terrorist acts, critics see the lapses as evidence of troubling gaps in the monitoring machinery.
"You have to draw a conclusion from cases like Riggs and others," said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has held four hearings on combating money laundering. "You have a broad failure of regulatory agencies to provide oversight of the banking industry."
Critics in Congress say that strides have been made in the past three years to interrupt funding flows and that coordination among agencies has improved. But because underground groups are finding ever more evasive ways to maneuver and to disguise assets, the problem remains critical.
Charles Intriago, a former prosecutor who publishes Miami-based Money Laundering Alert puts it bluntly: "Bottom line: It's a piece of cake [for a terrorist or other criminal] to move $10 million into this country."
Monitoring efforts have been hindered by a historic reluctance by bank regulators to become law enforcement agents; gaps in top Treasury Department positions; fragmented state and federal bank regulation; and the inherent difficulty of writing rules that don't overburden an already highly regulated banking industry and make doing business with foreigners too cumbersome.
Shelby and others, including Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), have questioned whether bank regulators are up to the task. Lawmakers, though undecided on the matter, have considered creating a new, single anti-money-laundering agency, which bank regulators oppose. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), Shelby and others are pushing for the administration to exert more leadership on the issue.
Bank regulators' principal obligation has been ensuring the financial soundness of the banking industry rather than rooting out money laundering -- the use of complex transactions that mask the connection of money to illicit activities. Regulators say they now recognize that they must play a more active role in identifying criminals who move funds through U.S. banks. The problem is how to do that.
Senior bank regulatory officials, speaking on condition that they not be named, have said that efforts to coordinate and share information among U.S. agencies about money laundering have been hampered by gaps in leadership.
David D. Aufhauser, formerly both general counsel of the Treasury and chairman of the White House's National Security Council Policy Coordination Committee on Terrorist Financing -- he stepped down from government Sept. 30, 2003 -- acted as the administration's point man to coordinate efforts by the many agencies involved. His departure has left a vacuum that the White House and Congress have been slow to fill, according to critics. The Treasury's general counsel slot was filled by Arnold I. Havens, and White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend took over the policy coordination role.
Treasury also lost another important player, undersecretary for enforcement James Gurule, whose position had been described by the agency as key in its war on terrorist financing since 9/11. Gurule stepped down in February 2003, and his position has remained unfilled for over a year.
In March, in response to criticism that the Bush administration was unorganized and needed more central planning in its push against terrorist financing, Treasury created a new Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. It combines some of Aufhauser's former role as coordinator of the financial war with an expanded version of Gurule's former position.
"We're putting these pieces together in a thoughtful, considered manner," said Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols, who said the new office was created after careful consultation with key congressional committees.
Grassley subsequently wrote the president that Treasury still lacks sufficient resources and authority "to detect, investigate and prevent financial crimes."
The new office has three positions that will coordinate fund-tracking efforts by bank regulators and enforcement officials within the department. All are vacant. The president hasn't nominated anyone for assistant secretary for intelligence. The White House almost immediately announced nominations for the other two positions -- the head of the office and another assistant secretary -- but they have been held up by a four-month turf battle between Shelby and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Grassley over whose committee has jurisdiction. Last week they agreed to joint jurisdiction, with each committee holding hearings.
"We are obviously disappointed that it took the length of time that it did to come to an agreement on these nominees. They are extremely important appointments, and since the majority of their responsibilities fall within the Banking Committee's jurisdiction, we felt it critical that we are involved in their confirmation," said Andrew Gray, a spokesman for the committee.
Some critics have raised doubts about whether the restructuring itself will solve the problem. "The restructuring appears to be heavy on generals and light on soldiers," Grassley and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) wrote to President Bush on March 24, raising concerns that Treasury needs both more authority and resources.
Time also has been lost in turf battles between Homeland Security on the one side and the FBI and its parent, the Justice Department, on the other. The White House eventually intervened, making the FBI the lead investigative agency. FBI and Homeland Security officials now say the two agencies are working well together.
Another problem is that nearly three years after Congress passed the Patriot Act, Treasury has not yet issued final rules requiring banks and other financial institutions, including casinos, insurers and brokerage firms, to scrutinize financial transactions of foreign customers for indications of money laundering, foreign corruption or terrorist financing. Although Treasury requires banks to comply with the proposed rules now, nearly all other financial organizations, such as casinos, pawn shops and currency exchanges, operate outside the guidelines, Treasury acknowledges. Treasury officials say they expect to issue final rules soon.
But even final rules won't provide a "how-to" manual on what to look for, critics say. "There's no meaningful guidance from government for the financial industry on how to detect and report terrorist financing," said Joseph M. Myers, a lawyer who in January stepped down as a career staffer on the White House's National Security Council, where he was the day-to-day coordinator among various federal agencies on the terrorism financing issue.
He said, for example, that law requires banks and securities firms to try to verify an individual's name, address, date of birth and Social Security number before opening a new account. But without written permission from the individual, the Social Security Administration will not tell banks or other financial institutions if a Social Security number and name match, severely cramping verification efforts.
John Byrne, head of compliance for the American Bankers Association, said even if Social Security numbers could be easily verified, tracking terrorist dollars would still be hard. He points out that the men involved in the 2001 attacks used their real names to open bank accounts, and that the money they shuffled around involved relatively tiny amounts of cash and seemingly ordinary transactions. "Terrorist financing cannot be detected by banks," he said. "It's virtually impossible without intelligence from the government."
Another source of confusion, according to critics in government and the banking industry, has been a decade-long lack of focus at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), a 14-year-old Treasury unit that is supposed to enforce key elements of U.S. anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing law and be a resource that law enforcement can use to track suspects. The banking industry -- and Aufhauser -- have long complained that FinCen does little with the millions of suspicious activity reports financial institutions are supposed to file, and that there is insufficient use of computer technology to highlight troubling transactions.
"Much of the information . . . is merely lodged like a book on a library shelf without a card-catalogue," said Aufhauser in congressional testimony earlier this year. "In the absence of an express and pointed request from law enforcement, the information remains unexploited. Surely we ought to have an artificial intelligence program that red flags patterns and concerns for investigation."
A new FinCen director, William J. Fox, has said he is trying to turn the unit into a coordinator for bank regulators to keep problems like those at Hudson Bank, UBS and Riggs from slipping through the cracks again.
Bankers, regulators and the FBI have been feuding for years over proposed reforms in the number and usefulness of the reports banks must fill out for large or suspicious transactions.
In addition to suspicious activity reports, which have no dollar threshold and are required whenever a transaction seems strange, banks also must file currency transaction reports for most cash transactions of $10,000 or more. The banking industry wants to increase the threshold to $20,000, saying inflation has made the current amount too low.
About 13 million currency transaction reports were filed last year. The ABA's Byrne and bank regulators say the majority are useless as law enforcement tools. But the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are adamant that the threshold remain $10,000, according to sources inside the agencies. A Treasury official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said bank regulators are currently meeting with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are trying to come up with a compromise that would reduce the number of currency transaction reports.
To U.S. bank regulators at the Fed, the FDIC and the comptroller's office, well-publicized cases such as UBS, Hudson Bank and Riggs are isolated cases of banks unwittingly being used by criminals. And even the harshest critics in government and industry are quick to point out ways government agencies work well together to combat terrorist financing, no small feat given the long list of agencies and groups involved, which in addition to Treasury, Homeland Security, the FBI and Justice Department and bank regulators includes the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, the Securities and Exchange Commission and financial regulators from 50 states.
The lack of centralized enforcement authority at the federal level is also exacerbated by the dual state/federal nature of most financial regulation. James W. Nall, Hudson United's chief financial officer, said his bank bought the correspondent banking unit in July 2002 from an FDIC receivership of a failed Connecticut state bank. Presuming the correspondent division had been given a clean bill of health -- Hudson was in effect buying the unit from the government -- Nall said Hudson officials did not consider it a high-risk area. Hudson, chartered by the state of New Jersey, is examined by the FDIC every other year, trading off years with state bank regulators. No one regulator, Nall said, was looking specifically at money laundering risk at Hudson until it was too late.
"It came as a surprise for most everyone," Nall said of the revelations of potential money laundering at the bank's New York correspondent banking unit. "I think it's safe to say our Bank Secrecy Act compliance could have and should have been stronger."
Yet for Shelby, Sarbanes and others, the bureaucratic complexity is no excuse for failures to find serious, sometimes years-long transgressions.
"The entire system could stand some substantial improvement," said Intriago, the publisher of Money Laundering Alert. "There have been long-standing problems on the enforcement side and the regulatory side."
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Excerpts of British Intelligence Report
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 14, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Intelligence-Excerpts.html?ei=1&en=248d14eca4a1f27c&ex=1090844171&pagewanted=print&position=
Excerpts of conclusions in Lord Butler's report on the government's use of intelligence on Iraqi weapons:
``The number of primary human intelligence sources (in Iraq before the war) remained few. Other intelligence sources provided valuable information on other activity, including overseas procurement activity. They did not generally provide confirmation of the intelligence received from human sources, but did contribute to the picture of the continuing intention of the Iraqi regime to pursue its prohibited weapons programs.
``Validation of human intelligence sources after the war has thrown doubt on a high proportion of those sources and of their reports, and hence on the quality of the intelligence assessments received by ministers and officials in the period from summer 2002 to the outbreak of hostilities. Of the main human intelligence sources:
``a. One SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) main source reported authoritatively on some issues, but on others was passing on what he had heard within his circle.
``b. Reporting from a sub-source to a second SIS main source that was important to JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) assessments on Iraqi possession of chemical and biological weapons must be open to doubt.
``c. Reports from a third SIS main source have been withdrawn as unreliable.
``d. Reports from two further SIS main sources continue to be regarded as reliable, although it is notable that their reports were less worrying than the rest about Iraqi chemical and biological weapons capabilities.
``e. Reports received from a liaison service (another government's intelligence agency) on Iraqi production of biological agent were seriously flawed, so that the grounds for JIC assessments drawing on those reports that Iraq had recently produced stocks of biological agent no longer exist.
``We do not believe that over-reliance on dissident and emigre sources was a major cause of subsequent weaknesses in the human intelligence relied on by the UK.''
``In general,we found that the original intelligence material was correctly reported in JIC assessments. An exception was the 45-minute report. But this sort of example was rare.
``We should record in particular that we have found no evidence of deliberate distortion or of culpable negligence.
``We found no evidence of JIC assessments and the judgments inside them being pulled in any particular direction to meet the policy concerns of senior officials on the JIC.''
``The main vehicle for the Government's use of intelligence in the public presentation of policy was the dossier of September 2002 and accompanying Ministerial statements. The dossier broke new ground in three ways: the JIC had never previously produced a public document; no government case for any international action had previously been made to the British public through explicitly drawing on a JIC publication; and the authority of the British intelligence community, and the JIC in particular, had never been used in such a public way. ...
``The government wanted an unclassified document on which it could draw in its advocacy of its policy. The JIC sought to offer a dispassionate assessment of intelligence and other material on Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical and ballistic missile programs. The JIC, with commendable motives, took responsibility for the dossier, in order that its content should properly reflect the judgments of the intelligence community. They did their utmost to ensure this standard was met. But this will have put a strain on them in seeking to maintain their normal standards of neutral and objective assessment.
``Strenuous efforts were made to ensure that no individual statements were made in the dossier which went beyond the judgments of the JIC. But, in translating material from JIC assessments into the dossier, warnings were lost about the limited intelligence base on which some aspects of these assessments were being made. Language in the dossier may have left with readers the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgments than was the case: our view, having reviewed all of the material, is that judgments in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available.''
``Even now it would be premature to reach conclusions about Iraq's prohibited weapons. Much potential evidence may have been destroyed in the looting and disorder that followed the cessation of hostilities. Other material may be hidden in the sand, including stocks of agent or weapons. We believe that it would be a rash person who asserted at this stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological or chemical agents, or even of banned missiles, does not exist or will never be found. But as a result of our review, and taking into account the evidence which has been found by the ISG and debriefing of Iraqi personnel, we have reached the conclusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime:
``a. Had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programs, including if possible its nuclear weapons program, when United Nations inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted.
``b. In support of that goal, was carrying out illicit research and development and procurement activities to seek to sustain its indigenous capabilities.
``c. Was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions; but did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them.''
``The JIC made it clear that the al-Qaida-linked facilities in the Kurdish Ansar al Islam area were involved in the production of chemical and biological agents, but that they were beyond the control of the Iraqi regime.
``The JIC made clear that,although there were contacts between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaida, there was no evidence of co-operation.''
``From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:
``a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
``b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.
``c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.
``d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made,and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.''
``The JIC should not have included the 45 minute report in its assessment and in the government's dossier without stating what it was believed to refer to. The fact that the reference in the classified assessment was repeated in the dossier later led to suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character.''
--------
SENATE REPORT
How Niger Uranium Story Defied Wide Skepticism
July 14, 2004
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/politics/14nige.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 13 - Soon after the Central Intelligence Agency heard in 2001 that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger to build nuclear bombs, the first doubts about the account were raised. But the story was included in President Bush's State of the Union address last year despite sustained skepticism by the State Department, disclaimers by another intelligence agency, assertions that key documents were faked and a dearth of evidence that eventually led C.I.A. officials to grow wary.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, in a report released Friday, has provided the most comprehensive review of what went wrong in the Niger case, which became a major political issue last year after documents that described the uranium deal were discredited as forgeries.
The Senate report disclosed deep concerns among intelligence agencies about the credibility of the information. It concluded that the C.I.A. had failed to aggressively investigate the Niger matter, described the agency's assessments as "inconsistent, and at times contradictory" and noted that the agency had allowed the uranium claims into intelligence reports to policy makers - and the president's speech shortly before the war - without proper vetting.
The C.I.A. first began looking into reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in October 2001, much earlier than previously disclosed. A foreign intelligence service, which is unidentified in the Senate report but which is believed to be Britain's, had said Niger was planning to ship several tons of uranium ore - called yellowcake - to Iraq. The foreign service told the C.I.A. that the Iraqi sales agreement dated to 1999, and had been approved by Niger's president, Tandja Mamadou.
At the time, analysts at the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Energy considered the reports of Iraq's purchases of uranium from Niger to be "possible"; only a State Department intelligence analyst thought the report was "highly suspect," the Senate found. The State Department analyst did not believe that Niger would risk selling uranium to Iraq, in violation of international rules, and also knew that a French consortium controlled Niger's uranium industry, making it nearly impossible for Niger to make large shipments on its own.
In February 2002, the C.I.A. received more detailed information from the foreign intelligence service, including what was described as the verbatim text of the sales accord, but the State Department analyst still doubted its veracity.
Until then, Iraq's possible relationship with Niger was an issue being debated by a handful of intelligence professionals. That changed on Feb. 12, 2002, when the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a follow-up report that said in its title that Niger "signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad,'' and that caught the eye of Vice President Dick Cheney.
After he read the Defense Intelligence Agency's report, Mr. Cheney asked his C.I.A. briefer what the agency thought about the issue.
The director of the C.I.A.'s center for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control responded by writing in a report that "information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated."
Another unit of the C.I.A., the counterproliferation division of the Directorate of Operations, tried to collect more evidence.
Instead of assigning a trained intelligence officer to the Niger case, though, the C.I.A. sent a former American ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to talk to former Niger officials. His wife, Valerie Plame, was an officer in the counterproliferation division, and she had suggested that he be sent to Niger, according to the Senate report.
That finding contradicts previous statements by Mr. Wilson, who publicly criticized the Bush administration last year for using the Niger evidence to help justify the war in Iraq. After his wife's identity as a C.I.A. officer was leaked to the news media, Mr. Wilson said she had not played a role in his assignment, and argued that her C.I.A. employment had been disclosed to punish him. The F.B.I. is investigating the source of the leak about Ms. Plame, which was classified information.
Mr. Wilson went to Niger in February 2002 and met with the former prime minister, former minister of mines and other business contacts. In his C.I.A. debriefing, Mr. Wilson reported that the former prime minister said he knew of no contracts with any so-called rogue nations while he was prime minister, from 1997 through 1999. But he did say that in June 1999, a businessman insisted that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanded commercial relations with Baghdad, according to the Senate report. The meeting took place, but the prime minister said he never pursued the idea because of United Nations sanctions on Iraq.
Analysts at the C.I.A. did not believe that Mr. Wilson had provided significant information, so the agency did not brief Mr. Cheney about it, despite his clear interest in the issue, the Senate found.
The C.I.A. issued another report in March 2002, based on information from the same foreign service, saying there was a sales agreement calling for Niger to provide 500 tons of uranium to Baghdad a year. The foreign service did not identify its source to the agency, and the agency told Senate investigators that it still did not know where the information came from. Analysts at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research were still skeptical, but reports of Niger uranium continued to course through the intelligence system.
On May 10, 2002, the C.I.A. issued a report for policy makers repeating that a "foreign government service says Iraq was trying to acquire 500 tons of uranium from Niger." In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency published a report saying that "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore" even as it warned that it "cannot confirm" whether Iraq had the uranium. In October 2002, a National Intelligence Estimate, an interagency review for policy makers, included the foreign service's Niger reports.
But as that information was being published, C.I.A. officials were growing uncomfortable with the evidence.
A British white paper on Iraq issued in September 2002, made the allegations public, but C.I.A. officials warned Congress and the White House that they believed the British had exaggerated the case. In a conversation with the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, persuaded the White House to remove a reference to the uranium purchases from a speech Mr. Bush was planning to give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002.
Just as the C.I.A. was turning cautious, new documents surfaced in Rome that seemed to confirm an Iraq-Niger deal. Once the documents arrived in Washington, the State Department's analyst was dubious. In an e-mail message to other analysts, he wrote, "You'll note that it bears a funky Emb. Of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess.)"
A month later, however, the Navy issued an intelligence report saying a large quantity of uranium from Niger was being stored in warehouses in the West African nation of Benin, and was destined for Iraq. The report included the name and phone number of a West African businessman coordinating the deal, someone supposedly willing to provide further information.
The Senate found that the C.I.A. never contacted the businessman. "No one even thought to do that," an agency official told the Senate committee. A month later, an American defense attaché finally went to the Benin warehouses and found only bales of cotton.
In January 2003, the State Department's analyst sent an e-mail message to other analysts saying that he believed that the documents obtained in Italy were fake. The "uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax," he wrote.
But by that time, the White House was already working on Mr. Bush's State of the Union address, and wanted to include some mention of Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium, the Senate report said. On Jan. 27, the White House gave Mr. Tenet a draft copy of the address to review.
He passed it on to his executive assistant to give to other C.I.A. officials. He never read the speech, he told the Senate, and did not realize it included the uranium reference.
It was left to midlevel C.I.A. and White House officials to deal with the speech. A C.I.A. proliferation expert talked with his White House counterpart about the uranium reference, but he did not question its credibility, the Senate found.
The next day, in his State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
His address suddenly gave the uranium issue high visibility, but it could not withstand global scrutiny. In February 2003, Washington sent copies of the Iraq-Niger documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear proliferation. The next month, the agency determined that the documents were forgeries. On March 11, the C.I.A. issued its own assessment, in which it said it could not dispute the atom agency's conclusion.
-------- propaganda wars
The Cult of Power - From Leon Trotsky to Paul Wolfowitz
by Justin Raimondo,
July 14, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3027
With almost 900 Americans dead, thousands horribly wounded, and talk of canceling a national election that is taking place in the shadow of terrorism, one has to ask: how did we get here? Seymour Hersh, speaking at the American Civil Liberties Union conference on July 7, gave a pretty good answer:
"Rather than deal with the obvious stuff about Bush and this election and what it means, I think the real question we have to answer - and this is the question that I'm inchoate about: my friend Dan Ellsberg would say this is heuristic, 'I have some heuristic thoughts about it' - he's a great expert on heurism.... The question we have to say to ourselves is, okay, so here's what happens: a bunch of guys, eight or nine neoconservatives, cultists - not Charles Manson cultists, but cultists - get in.
"And it's not, with all due respect to Michael Moore, (his movie's fine) but it's not about oil, it's even not about Israel, it's about a utopia they have. It's about an idea they have. Not only about that democracy can be spread. In a sense I would say Paul Wolfowitz is the greatest Trotskyite of our times. He believes in permanent revolution. And in the Middle East, to begin with, needless to say.
"And so you have a bunch of people who have been, for ten or twelve years, fantasizing, since the 1991 Gulf war, on the way to resolve problems. And of course there'll be beneficiaries, Israel would be a beneficiary, etc., etc., but the world in their eyes, this is a utopia.
"And so they got together this small group of cultists. And how did they do it? They did do it. They've taken the government over.
"And what's amazing to me - and what really is troubling - is how fragile our democracy is. Look what happened to us... They took the edge off the press, they also muzzled the bureaucracy, they muzzled the military, they muzzled the Congress. And it's an amazing feat. We're supposed to be a democratic society. And all those areas of our democracy bowed and scraped to this group of neocons."
It was a riveting talk, delivered in a tone of understated modesty, each interruption of applause visibly anticipated and borne by the speaker as if the audience were shooting arrows at him: as if to say there's no time for self-congratulation, because we have to get at the truth and time is running out....
I've lost track of how many major stories Hersh has broken in the past few months: Abu Ghraib, the financial shenanigans of neocon guru Richard Perle, the lie factory called the "Office of Special Plans," and the list goes on. In this age of journalistic servility to the State, he has no peers as an investigative reporter. The boys in the Pentagon shudder each time The New Yorker rolls off the presses.
Here is a topnotch journalist - an empiricist by profession, and necessity - trying to discern some pattern in the facts he's assembled. With access to all sorts of Washington insiders - including Pentagon generals, whose disaffection, he said in his talk, "has never been so acute" - Hersh comes up with a story remarkably similar to that recounted by others, including General Anthony Zinni, intelligence expert James Bamford, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, and a number of authors and journalists - including the present writer, who has been continually underscoring the threat posed by the neocons since the very first installment of this column.
"It's not the Manson clan," said Hersh to the assembled civil libertarians, "but we really have been taken over."
By whom - or what?
Like other such sects, religious as well as political, the history and beliefs of the neoconservative cult come in two versions. As Murray N. Rothbard pointed out in a trenchant 1972 study of the Ayn Rand cult:
"Every religious cult has two sets of differing and distinctive creeds: the exoteric and the esoteric. The exoteric creed is the official, public doctrine, the creed which attracts the acolyte in the first place and brings him into the movement as a rank-and-file member. The esoteric creed is the unknown, hidden agenda, a creed which is only known to its full extent by the top leadership, the 'high priests' of the cult. The latter are the keepers of the mysteries of the cult."
An ideological cult, Rothbard observed, has many of the salient features of a religious cult, and essentially the same belief structure: leader-worship, dogmatism, and a hatred of heresy, characteristics the neocons exhibit in abundance. Leader-worship fairly describes the neoconservative theory of the Presidency: the President, as Warrior-King, can order torture, and even suspend the Constitution. As for dogmatism: instead of acknowledging and analyzing the utter wrongness of their expectation that we would be greeted with cries of "Hail our liberators!" by the Iraqis, the neocons are now blaming the disaster on the allegedly flawed "execution" of their policies. Hatred of heretics is certainly an animating force among them, second only to blood-lust: just ask Michael Lind, or, indeed, anyone who has crossed their path.
The official exoteric story is that there is really no such creature as a neocon, it's all an "anti-Semitic" conspiracy theory dreamed up by Pat Buchanan and myself. The Iraq war was driven, not by highly-placed individuals with a specific agenda, but by historical necessity: the necessity, that is, of responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The neoconservative vision, they innocently aver, is based on building "democracy" not only in the Middle East, but throughout the entire world, and establishing what they call the "benevolent global hegemony" of a rising American Imperium, an "empire of liberty."
The real story, as Hersh clearly realizes, is quite different: Paul Wolfowitz is the greatest Trotskyist not only of our time but of all time. Certainly greater than Trotsky himself, the founder of the Red Army and prophet of world revolution who wound up in some rundown Mexican backwater with an icepick sticking out of his head. Trotsky's "Fourth International," stillborn, lived in Stalin's shadow for all of its brief half-life, but in that time managed to generate a tendency that would eventually culminate in another sort of world revolution - and yet, on second thought, not all that different.
Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, whom Hersh describes as the "genius" of the neocon operation, knows well his antecedents, as Jeet Heer has reported in the National Post, citing neocon writer and "ex"-Trotskyist Stephen Schwartz:
"To this day, Schwartz speaks of Trotsky affectionately as 'the old man' and 'L.D.' (initials from Trotsky's birth name, Lev Davidovich Bronstein). 'To a great extent, I still consider myself to be [one of the] disciples of L.D,' he admits, and he observes that in certain Washington circles, the ghost of Trotsky still hovers around. At a party in February celebrating a new book about Iraq, Schwartz exchanged banter with Wolfowitz about Trotsky, the Moscow Trials and Max Shachtman.
"'I've talked to Wolfowitz about all of this,' Schwartz notes. 'We had this discussion about Shachtman. He knows all that stuff, but was never part of it. He's definitely aware.' The yoking together of Paul Wolfowitz and Leon Trotsky sounds odd, but a long and tortuous history explains the link between the Bolshevik left and the Republican right."
The Trotskyists believed that the Revolution had gone off the rails, due not to the inherent brutality and immorality of the Bolshevik program, but because the Party didn't have the revolutionary zeal to carry the struggle forward into Europe and beyond. They sneered at the Stalinist concept of "socialism in one country," and correctly pointed to the Marxist classics, including Lenin, as proof that the Kremlin had betrayed the cause of true Communism, which they identified with a militant internationalism. Instead of sitting around liquidating Russian kulaks, Stalin, the Trots averred, should have gone on to liquidate all kulaks, everywhere.
Trotsky, by this time, had been forced into exile, and, after wandering through Europe, finally wound up in Mexico just as Hitler and Stalin concluded their infamous Pact - and sent the small Trotskyist grouplet, as well as the rest of the international Communist movement, into a tailspin of confusion.
Trotsky, always sensitive to the charge by Stalinists and their fellow travelers that he was really a bourgeois traitor, had always insisted on defending the Soviet Union "against the Stalinists and in spite of the Stalinists." But with the Nazis and the Commies now in alliance against the Western democratic powers - and poor little Finland in the Soviets' sights! - how was it possible to any longer defend the "workers' fatherland"? That's what Max Shachtman and James Burnham, two of Trotsky's top disciples in America, wanted to know. Trotsky, for his part, could give them no answer they found satisfactory, and so the Trotskyist movement split, with Shachtman and Burnham leaving the Fourth International's American grouplet, known as the Socialist Workers Party, and founding the Workers Party. Burnham departed the newly-minted party almost as soon as it was set up, going on to translate his anti-Stalinism into a full-fledged and full-throated anti-Communism by joining the CIA and winding up as a top editor at National Review.
Shachtman took a much longer, tortuous path to basically the same position: what his leftist opponents and erstwhile comrades in the SWP called "State Department socialism." Shachtman was a tremendously charismatic figure, a pyrotechnic speaker and learned (self-taught) scholar of the Marxist classics, whose ability to justify his latest "turn" in terms of Marxoid dogma might be fairly characterized as acrobatic. Each turn, when it came, took him farther away from his ideological origins - he had started out his political career as a Communist Party functionary in the 1920s.
When the Cold War began to press down on his isolated grouplet with such force that it was put on the list of "subversive" organizations, Shachtman regurgitated a brand new theory: the Soviet Union, in the Shachtmanite view, no longer represented socialism, but instead constituted a new and even more terrible danger than Western capitalism: bureaucratic collectivism. From that point on, Shachtman and his followers began to advocate a hard foreign policy line against the Soviet Union, a line that got progressively harder with the years. The Shachtmanites eventually disbanded their grouplet, at least in a formal sense, and merged with the remnants of the old Socialist Party, which they effectively took over, changing the name to the Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA).
Shachtman's new strategy was to work within the Democratic party, and the unions: his followers in SDUSA held key positions in the AFL-CIO and the teachers unions. In 1968, he pushed through a Socialist Party resolution endorsing Hubert Humphrey for President, over the feeble protests of Norman Thomas, who lay dying in a hospital. Shachtman ended his days as a key supporter of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, known affectionately as the Senator from Boeing, and fully supporting the Vietnam war. Key neoconservative cadre came directly out of the SDUSA: Jeanne Kirkpatrick, James Woolsey, Carl Gershman, Max Kampelman, Penn Kimble, and Elliott Abrams, to name just a few. Scoop Jackson's aides, such as Richard Perle and Abrams, went on to become prominent neocons. Reinforced by successive waves of ex-leftists, such as the Commentary crowd and Irving Kristol (a former Trotskyist follower of Burnham's), Shachtmanism, especially after Shachtman's death, in 1971, essentially morphed into neoconservatism.
"It's not about oil, it's even not about Israel, it's about a utopia they have. It's about an idea they have."
It's widely recognized that we were lied into war by a group of ideologues, but what is this "idea they have"? What kind of "utopia" is Iraq? The old Trotskyist idea of internationalism is here preserved, but for the red flags. Some of them even call themselves "Trotsky-cons." But this "outing" of the neocons has caused them considerable embarrassment - since they are currently masquerading as "conservatives" - and they've struck back by seeking to label the outers "conspiracy theorists" and "anti-Semites." Most deny their Trotskyist heritage - the more strenuous denials coming from the very people who embody it, such as Joshua Muravchik, once a youth leader of the SDUSA and now a rising neocon star over at the American Enterprise Institute.
Similarly vindictive protests at this dredging up of the true history of the neocons are coming, surprisingly, from the ostensible left. Although one might think that they would welcome the chance to excoriate their renegades, the orthodox Trotskyists that still exist on the far-left fringes are angry because they believe Trotsky's good name is being maligned. The "World Socialist Website" goes into a particularly dreary recitation of Trotskyist history that essentially admits the neocons' Shachtmanite lineage, but reduces its significance to a "journalistic turn of phrase" that "is a travesty of historical or political analysis, and only serves to obscure the ideological roots of the neoconservative movement."
But it is the World Socialist Website that is doing the obscuring here: the "world-historical" grandiosity and Jacobinism that animated the Shachtmanites merely changed flags, without changing either its goals or its methods. SDUSA is just as committed to international socialism as it was in Shachtman's day: that they are using the United States Army instead of the Red Army to impose it is only a detail that, in the end, matters little.
The Socialist Workers Party, which still exists, although it has long since given up Trotskyism for Castroism, is also pissed off at us for maligning their hero, and attacks Antiwar.com in much the same terms as the neocons employ. The headline in their newspaper, The Militant, proclaims: "Jew-hatred, red-baiting: heart of claims of 'neocon' conspiracy." Antiwar.com, in their view, is part of a sinister anti-Semitic conspiracy, along with Seymour Hersh: together, we are trying to "set up" the neocons for getting us into the Iraq war. They go so far as to repeat specific charges made by former Coalition Provisional Authority official Michael Rubin, in National Review, and directed at Karen Kwiatkowski - who exposed the manipulation of intelligence by the "Office of Special Plans" - that somewhat fancifully attempt to link her to the LaRouche group because she once was interviewed by one of their number.
Shoot, what about the fact that LaRouche used to be a member of the Socialist Workers Party - would it be fair to identify the SWP as LaRouchite, on the grounds of mere contact with LaRouche? These people are such hypocrites, and, what gets me is that they're so vulnerable to the very tactics they employ.
The SWP screed is a farrago of lies, evasions, and paranoid ravings. According to the Socialist Workers cult, not only Seymour Hersh and Antiwar.com, but also Michael Lind, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, "and numerous other publications and internet sites," by identifying neoconservatives as the sparkplugs behind this war, are all engaged in a veritable orgy of "Jew-hatred" and "Trotsky-baiting." The SWP, like the World Socialist Website crew, admits the origins of the Shachtman group in the Trotskyist movement, but then lamely avers that
"Smears about 'Trotskycons' to the contrary, the fact is that no prominent figure among the so-called neoconservatives has ever been a member of the Socialist Workers Party."
But no one ever said that they were. The SWP never amounted to a hill of beans, except briefly in the 1960s and 70s, when they were a key element of the antiwar movement. Today they are an insignificant little sect devoted to selling books, and enriching the cult leaders, while the intellectual descendants of their renegade faction rule the roost in Washington.
Against this Popular Front of Norman Podhoretz and SWP leader Jack Barnes, which includes Joshua Muravchik and the World Socialist Website, opponents of the Iraq war can only marshal the empirical evidence, and the insight that individuals, not abstract "forces" or historical "necessity," control events. And don't imagine this is some obscure debate over historical arcana: the idea that specific individuals are responsible for formulating and implementing American policy in the Middle East is the key to understanding the present debate over the "intelligence failure" that lured us into Iraq. Far from being a "failure," the perpetrators of this massive fraud were wildly successful, at least from their perspective- and the SWP, for some reason, is intent on helping them to get away scot-free.
The idea that animates the War Party is the same idea that has motivated Jacobins of the left and the right since time immemorial: a restless and malevolent energy that impels them to remake the world. Militant utopians inflicted millions of casualties in the twentieth century, and it looks like they intend to surpass their record in the twenty-first. The neocons may be temporarily discredited, and in eclipse: but it would be a mistake to count them out.
The cult of Power, with its roots in the Left and its present hegemony over the Right, is the eternal enemy of peace and liberty. Like any cult, it has an exoteric philosophy, which is presented in reams of essays and proclamations extolling the virtues of "democracy" - while its esoteric meaning is embodied in the photos of the Abu Ghraib house of horrors.
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Former Army Scientist Sues New York Times, Columnist
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47994-2004Jul13.html
The former Army scientist identified by authorities as a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks sued the New York Times Co. and columnist Nicholas D. Kristof yesterday, claiming the paper defamed him in a series of columns that identified him as the likely culprit.
The lawsuit, filed by Steven J. Hatfill in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, said Kristof identified him as the anthrax killer to "light a fire" under investigators in their probe of the anthrax-spore mailings, which killed five people and sickened 17. He accused Kristof of hurling "false and defamatory" allegations and the Times of engaging in "substandard and unethical journalism.''
In a series of columns in 2002, Kristof criticized the FBI for failing to aggressively pursue a scientist he at first identified as "Mr. Z.'' He wrote that the biodefense community had called Mr. Z a "likely culprit" and was "buzzing about Mr. Z behind his back," in part because the scientist was familiar with anthrax and was angered at the suspension of his top security clearance less than a month before the attacks.
Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, later acknowledged that Mr. Z was Hatfill. He also wrote that Hatfill deserved the "presumption of innocence" and that "there is not a shred of traditional physical evidence linking him to the attacks.''
Kristof did not return a phone call to his office yesterday. A Times spokesman, Toby Usnik, said the newspaper "believes this case does not have merit. . . . We believe in a case like this, the law protects fair commentary on an important public issue."
The lawsuit was the latest attempt by Hatfill, 50, to defend himself since Attorney General John D. Ashcroft publicly called him a person of interest in the anthrax probe in 2002. A former researcher at the Army's infectious disease research laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Hatfill last year sued Ashcroft and the FBI in federal court in the District. He accused the government of conducting a "coordinated smear campaign" against him. A federal judge in March granted the government's request to postpone the suit for six months because the investigation was at a critical stage.
No one has been charged in the investigation of anthrax-tainted letters mailed to media and government offices.
Hatfill, who lives in the District and is unemployed, declined to comment. His suit said Kristof's "transparent identification of Dr. Hatfill, under the name of 'Mr. Z,' as the likely anthrax mailer, was baseless and false.''
Victor M. Glasberg, a lawyer for Hatfill, said he sent the Times a letter to the editor and an op-ed article detailing his concerns, but the Times rejected both.
"The problem here is not simply defamation. It is defamation plus the arrogance of power,'' Glasberg said in an interview, adding that the Times's role as "the most distinguished daily newspaper in America" ensured that Hatfill's reputation would be harmed.
Staff writer Allan Lengel contributed to this report.
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Iranians Get the Last Laugh After Clerics Ban a Comedy
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48027-2004Jul13?language=printer
TEHRAN -- In "The Lizard," a criminal escapes from prison by dressing as a cleric, then finds himself trapped in the assumed identity. The movie is a comedy, what Hollywood would call a fish-out-of-water story, only it isn't a product of Hollywood.
It is very much a product of Iran, and Iranians went wild for it. At Tehran theaters, the lines wound around the block. Showtimes were added. "The Lizard" was on pace to set a box office record for Iran when, in mid-May, it was shut down by the real clerics who rule the country. They failed to see the humor in the movie, even if ordinary Iranians found it sidesplitting from start to finish.
"Because of the theme of the film, I assumed we would face some problems," said Kamal Mosafaye Tabrizi, the director. "But the extent was something we did not predict."
In Iran, where politics grows sterile while society ferments, the fate of "The Lizard" was instructive in itself: After a run of barely three weeks, the film disappeared into the chasm between the government and the governed.
"A bad influence," said Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the Guardian Council, the unelected body that disqualified about 2,000 reformist candidates in the last legislative elections.
"It's a comedy, what difference does it make?" said Ali Malekshahi, 52, a shirt merchant who, like many frustrated residents, missed the film in theaters but caught it on pirated videodisc. At that point, he said, he understood why the clerics closed it down: "They're afraid to be laughed at."
What audiences find so funny in "The Lizard" is a mix of broad comedy, deft satire and humorous scenes familiar to everyone in a country where a quarter-century of religious rule has left people wary of pious men wearing turbans.
When, for instance, Reza, the disguised criminal, steps onto the street outside the prison, his first challenge is hailing a cab. Taxis are plentiful in Tehran, where many ordinary motorists supplement meager incomes by picking up riders. But as Reza waves in vain from the curb, the roar of traffic passing him by is matched by the roar of the audience, which instantly recognizes the scene: Cabbies are notorious for ignoring clerics, as a passive-aggressive gesture of disapproval.
The goateed hipster who finally picks Reza up does not even take him where he wants to go, finding him useful instead as a prop to avoid a traffic ticket.
"It's part of the social facts," said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who holds the post of vice president in Iran and wears the white turban of the clergy. "There's no doubt there's a majority out there in the streets who do not entirely approve of the clerics."
To judge by a videodisc of "The Lizard" -- shot surreptitiously in a Tehran theater, with the audience's reaction recorded along with the action on the screen -- it's worse than that. Clerics play the role of villain in present-day Iran, widely resented for imposing their will on the people in the name of religion while feathering their own nests.
"I'm going to send you to paradise even if I have to force you," the prison warden tells Reza early in the movie, to rolling laughter. The statement establishes the contrast point to the movie's own lesson, articulated by the clergyman whose clothes Reza swipes: "There are as many ways to God as there are people."
That respectful message -- reinforced by a serene finale, with people flocking to a long-lonely mosque -- gave Tabrizi hope that "The Lizard" would pass muster with Iran's clerical establishment. The film was, after all, approved by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, a bastion of the reformist movement that also produced Abtahi. As an additional precaution, Tabrizi arranged screenings for several prominent clerics and their families.
"It was fantastic to see their families burst into laughter," the director said.
The problem, apparently, was its astounding success in theaters.
"Because of the number of people who were appreciating it, everybody became suspicious of the film," said Ali Afsahi, who brought a unique perspective to the feature: Before becoming a film critic, Afsahi was a cleric. He changed careers after deciding he could reach more people through film than through sermons.
"People enjoy talking to me now," he said. "I started teaching myself to talk like ordinary human beings. I stopped telling people, 'This is good, this is bad, this is a must, this is a mustn't.' "
The ban, when it came, was indirect. The Guardian Council's Jannati, who had not seen the film, pronounced it morally unsound. Showings ceased in the religiously significant city of Mashhad. Finally, the filmmakers announced that prudence dictated a discreet withdrawal.
To placate the authorities, the makers even sued in Los Angeles Superior Court to prevent the film's release in the United States. They lost, but persuaded the distributors, who are associated with an exile television station, to tone down the advertising campaign.
"The director decided he wanted to maintain his job in the future," said Mohammed Javad Larijani, a senior official in Iran's hard-line Judiciary Ministry.
The muddled outcome was typical of Iran a quarter-century after the Islamic revolution. In 1979, while imposing a severe interpretation of the Koran, the mullahs shuttered every one of Tehran's 74 movie theaters.
Today, visitors are directed to black-and-white snapshots of each of them in the Film Museum of Iran, a converted palace that honors the country's widely acclaimed directors, including those whose most famous works are banned here.
The contradictions reflect a shifting reality. After a seven-year effort at reform failed to wrest decisive power from unelected clerics, the population of 70 million has largely retreated, leaving politics to hard-liners yet withholding the legitimacy the conservatives crave.
"There are no political parties in Iran," said Hossein Ahmadi, manager of the Farhang theater, which like all reopened Iranian theaters is operated by the state. "Therefore any acts carried out by intellectuals immediately turn into political acts. This is what happened with this film."
Even the punishment reflected the changing tenor of the times.
"In the past, they banned the films first," Ahmadi noted. "Now they show them for a limited time.
"They killed the writers before. Now they put them in prison."
And the videos are freely available, reflecting the farcical quality of public life in a country where more and more people choose simply to ignore their government.
"It's mere play," the owner of a leather shop declared one recent Friday, as two dozen bored-looking young men -- sponsored by the government -- went through the motions of threatening the British Embassy, as they do each week.
Meanwhile, Tehran residents openly mocked the senior cleric who last month announced that "the missing imam," a messianic figure in Shiite Islam who has been absent for 1,063 years, had personally signed off on the last parliamentary election ballot.
"Everybody knows that they are corrupt, that they are crazy, that they are womanizers, that they are wasteful," said Ali Rashidi, an economist and reform politician. "There's nothing left of that purity you had in mind when you were talking about clergy in the historical sense."
Iranians so widely acknowledge that traditional religion has been sullied by politics that the condition forms the foundation for one conservative's criticism of "The Lizard."
"The movie was not able to demarcate between this clergy that lives with the people and the clergy who are subject to criticism," said Larijani, the Justice Ministry official, whose brother is a senior cleric who holds an appointed post high in government. "They have their driver. They have their bodyguard. They never get out there. This is the way I argue with the producer, who's a good friend of mine."
Larijani said he had not seen the film himself but was going to ask his son to bring home a video.
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VOA Staff Members Say Government Losing Voice
Dissent Creates Ruckus at Program's Parent Agency
By Brian Faler
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47811-2004Jul13.html
More than a third of the Voice of America's staff has signed a petition accusing the federal government of "dismantling" the international broadcasting agency, while financing a pair of newer, semi-private and separate media operations that the staffers said do not live up to VOA standards.
Their complaints have sparked a nasty brawl with the program's parent agency -- the Broadcasting Board of Governors -- which created the new media groups. The board has rejected the staffers' charges, defended its young offspring and accused the VOA dissidents of being slow to adapt to necessary change.
The petition, which was submitted to Congress last week, pointed to a series of decisions the board has made over the past few years. In 2002, it replaced the VOA's Arabic-language news service with an outlet called Radio Sawa, which, like its predecessor, broadcasts to the Middle East. Then, earlier this year, the board opened Al Hurra, a Virginia-based television network that officials hope will be able to compete in the Middle East with Arab broadcasting giant al-Jazeera.
The nearly 500 VOA staffers complained that the newer outlets are not only autonomous from the 62-year-old broadcasting agency, the pair -- especially the radio network -- focus too much on music and entertainment at the expense of the sort of hard news, PBS-style programming the VOA has traditionally emphasized. Moreover, the petition said, the networks do not share the VOA's commitment to balanced and comprehensive news coverage.
Meanwhile, the petitioners said, the board is planning to cut the VOA's daily English-language radio broadcasts that are beamed across the world by almost half, and has ended its programming for 10 Eastern and Central European nations.
"At a time when the ability of the United States to speak to the world in a clear, effective, credible voice is more crucial than ever, the United States is broadcasting less news, information and analysis to fewer countries for fewer hours in fewer languages," the petition said. "The presidentially appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors is dismantling the nation's radio beacon -- the Voice of America -- piece by piece."
The petitioners asked Congress to investigate the board's decisions. "We want the discussion to be held publicly. It's not happening here -- and these changes are being railroaded through with no discussion with the rank and file," one senior editor at the network said in an interview. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing his fear of reprisal.
The VOA has been broadcasting, mostly by radio, since 1942, when it first began sending news to Nazi-occupied territory in Europe. Since then, it has vastly expanded its reach, broadcasting across the globe in more than 40 languages.
In 1999, the VOA came under the control of the board, which is responsible for all government-sponsored broadcasting unconnected to the military. The board, which consists of nine people -- four Democrats, four Republicans and the secretary of state -- also runs Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the International Broadcasting Bureau.
Unlike the VOA, which is staffed by federal employees, the two newer media operations broadcasting to the Middle East are made up of nongovernmental employees.
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the BBG, disputed the VOA staffers' complaints. He said the board is not trying to marginalize the agency, pointing to what he said are the VOA's recently expanded services to Iran and Pakistan. The staffers' petition accuses the board of reducing its broadcasts to Iran.
He said the board created the newer television and radio networks independently of the VOA, in part -- and with congressional support -- to avoid red tape.
"We launched Al Hurra in a matter of months," Tomlinson said. "If we tried to do it inside VOA, it would have taken years."
Tomlinson also defended the content of the new operations, saying they are held, by law, to similar editorial standards as the VOA's, and he rejected suggestions that they do not cover enough news.
The networks' use of music and entertainment programming, Tomlinson said, has helped lure a much larger, younger audience than did the VOA format.
The board has been cutting the VOA's English-language broadcasts, Tomlinson said, because fewer people are getting the news via radio. The Eastern and Central European broadcasts were eliminated, he said, to focus more resources on services to the Middle East.
"The war on terror is a prime requirement," he said. "If you have to choose between getting information to the Middle East and serving great old audiences in Poland and the Baltic states, you unfortunately have to go with the countries in the Middle East."
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TELEVISION
Al Jazeera Adopts a New Code of Accuracy and Good Taste
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14jaze.html?pagewanted=all
DOHA, Qatar, July 13 - The Arabic satellite television channel Al Jazeera, accused by the United States of graphic, anti-American coverage of fighting in Iraq, released a new code of ethics on Tuesday that it said would ensure balanced and sensitive reporting.
The channel defended its right to report "the ugly face of war" but said the guidelines would take account of Western and Arab sensitivities when considering whether to broadcast explicit images of violence.
Washington has criticized Al Jazeera's coverage of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as inaccurate and anti-American, saying its broadcasts of wounded Iraqis, destroyed houses and slain American troops were tasteless or inflammatory.
The channel pledged to treat its audience "with due respect and address every issue or story with due attention to present a clear, factual and accurate picture."
It said it would also respect "the feelings of victims of crime, war, persecution and disasters, their relatives, viewers and individual privacy."
The code was announced at the end of a two-day media conference in Qatar, the Persian Gulf state that has been the base for the channel since it began operating eight years ago.
In Washington, Richard A. Boucher, spokesman for the State Department, welcomed Al Jazeera's announcement of the ethics code. "We've always felt it was important for high standards of journalism to be put in place," he said. "And so we welcome the action. We look forward to reading the actual guidelines."
The conference also discussed what one delegate called an abhorrent and growing trend of violence against journalists, pressure on the news media to suppress some news in conflict zones and a rift between Western and Arab media since Sept. 11, 2001.
Al Jazeera won over millions of Arab viewers before and during the American-led war on Afghanistan in 2001 after broadcasting exclusive images of Osama bin Laden after the attacks on the United States. The station has irritated authoritarian Arab governments as much as it has Washington.
During the invasion of Iraq last year, it showed images of bloodied Iraqis and captured American troops rarely seen in the Western news media. Along with Islamist Web sites, Al Jazeera has been a principal medium for militants announcing the capture or killing of hostages in Iraq.
Its journalists defended their record, saying they had a duty to portray the horrors of conflict.
"Some people say we are taking the nightmares into people's houses and we are putting too much blood on the screens," said a news editor, Ahmed al-Sheik. "If we don't report the ugly face of the war, would that mean we abided by the criteria? Would we be embellishing the face of the war?"
Mr. Sheik said the channel also had to consider competition from Web sites.
Al Jazeera's code promises to adhere to honesty, fairness and balance, to "distinguish between news material, opinion and analysis" and to "avoid the snares of speculation and propaganda."
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STRATEGY
In Bush's War Room, the Gloves Are Always Off
July 14, 2004
By JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/politics/campaign/14repubs.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ARLINGTON, Va., July 13 - Shortly before 2 p.m. on Monday, a handful of President Bush's campaign aides huddled around two small speakers in a room that, with its shades drawn, was lit by the glow of 15 television monitors. They were listening to the voice of Senator John Kerry.
None of the networks were carrying Mr. Kerry's entire speech to a group of financial donors, mostly women, in Boston that day. But Mr. Bush's operatives had somehow arranged for their own audio feed, they refused to say how, and were listening intently, ready to pounce on any opening for attack.
After sitting impatiently through what seemed to be a typical stump speech, they found one: Mr. Kerry said he was "proud" of votes by him and his running mate, Senator John Edwards, last fall against the president's requested $87 billion appropriation for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a vote that Republicans have used to make a case that Mr. Kerry has been failing to support the troops after voting to authorize the war.
Within an hour or so, Mr. Bush's team, at the campaign's headquarters in a corporate office building in suburban Virginia, across the Potomac River from the White House, had sent a release via e-mail to hundreds of journalists, supporters and campaign surrogates. The e-mail message included the new quote and one from September, when Mr. Kerry implied it would be "irresponsible'' to vote against such spending. The quotation, along with the idea that Mr. Kerry's position on the money had evolved, found its way onto Fox News and into articles in The Washington Post, USA Today, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press.
And this was a relatively slow day in Mr. Bush's war room.
Several journalists who cover Mr. Kerry later said they were too embarrassed to say publicly that it took the Bush operatives to spot what was notable in Mr. Kerry's remarks.
Though far more technologically advanced, Mr. Bush's war room was built in the mold of Bill Clinton's pioneering effort in 1992, which combined campaign research and communications staff members to collect and disburse information to the news media, which are crucial in shaping perceptions and candidates, as quickly as possible.
That operation was rooted in defense, born of the Democrats' vows to never again allow Republican attacks to go unanswered the way they believed they did during the 1988 race between Michael S. Dukakis and George Bush.
Mr. Bush's operation, however, is rooted more in offense, devised to seek out and exploit every possible opportunity to paint Mr. Kerry as a political equivocator who switches positions on important issues when it suits his political interest.
As such, the war room is the nerve center of what Democrats, and some presidential scholars, have called the most relentlessly negative re-election campaign in memory - and what Republicans say is a necessarily energetic drive to hold Mr. Kerry to a record they say is rife with contradictions. On a daily basis, the assembled Republicans hope to pick new fights based on Mr. Kerry's most recent statements, and those from his past.
The central tenet of Mr. Bush's communications operation is on a sign on the office door of Nicolle Devenish, Mr. Bush's campaign communications director, which says: "It's the Hypocrisy, Stupid," a play on the famous sign in Mr. Clinton's 1992 war room, "It's the Economy, Stupid."
"When you run against an opponent who is both a committed liberal and a committed flip-flopper, you have to have all that research about him all of the time," Ms. Devenish said. "Because he's going to go on the trail and say something ludicrous, like he did last week when he said 'I share your conservative values,' and you need to rapidly provide reporters with evidence to the contrary."
In that case, after Mr. Kerry told reporters in Cloquet, Minn., in early July, "I actually represent the conservative values that they feel." Mr. Kerry has, at times, said he was referring to fiscal policy and health care costs when addressing the values debate.
Mr. Bush's campaign responded with a list of examples that it says belie the notion that Mr. Kerry does have conservative values, including votes against the death penalty and for higher taxes.
Of course, Mr. Kerry's campaign has a war room, as well. And it has been credited with not only defending Mr. Kerry from Republican charges quickly but also taking the offensive, as it did recently against Mr. Bush over high gasoline prices. Speaking of his Bush campaign opponents, Chad Clanton, a spokesman in Mr. Kerry's war room said Tuesday, "They're doing an incredible job of trying to mop up after a failed administration that's made America less safe and less secure."
Reporters who cover the campaigns say Mr. Kerry's war room has grown competitive with that of Mr. Bush, but only in recent weeks. Not distracted by primary opponents, Mr. Bush's war room was well in place when Mr. Kerry's campaign was still moving to more of a general election footing.
Mr. Bush's campaign agreed to requests from two news organizations to observe the war room's activities for a day; Mr. Kerry's campaign denied the same request. The visit, which lasted from 5 a.m. to nearly 8 p.m. Monday, provided an unusual glimpse into the Bush campaign's daily efforts to discredit Mr. Kerry.
The room has three long tables lined with computers. Most are staffed by college students or recent graduates who constantly monitor politically oriented Web sites and watch the television monitors, which are regularly tuned to all of the major cable and financial news networks, the various C-Span feeds and the major broadcast networks.
The core war room staff of eight begins its workday at 5 a.m. But it is a 24-hour operation, fueled by Coca-Cola, coffee and Slurpees. Overnight three to four interns watch the late news programs, the late-night comedy shows and the Internet for any campaign news. One critical overnight job is to collect the most important items from the morning newspapers.
Another task is to seek any new clues in local papers about planned appearances by Mr. Kerry, Mr. Edwards or their prominent surrogates so that the campaign can plan to send its own friendly state representatives to speak against the Kerry campaign. The schedule, which is sent out to senior Bush communications aides, is titled "Wild-Eyed Watch."
The Monday morning papers included no great revelations about Mr. Kerry and his new running mate.
The schedule, as far as the war room staff could figure it, had Mr. Kerry making appearances in Boston and heading to Orlando, Fla., to address firemen and rescue workers on Wednesday. At a meeting of policy and communications aides, Steve Schmidt, Mr. Bush's deputy communications director, directed his staff to plan a conference call for Orlando reporters with Representative Adam H. Putman of Florida, to criticize Mr. Kerry on various votes.
Noting that a fund-raising concert for Mr. Kerry featuring Jackson Browne was scheduled for Monday night, Mr. Schmidt instructed staff members who deal with reporters to remind them of the Friday night fund-raising concert for Mr. Kerry at which Whoopi Goldberg used lewd jokes to deride Mr. Bush, undercutting Mr. Kerry's assertion of representing conservative values. "They've probably got a trap door on the stage this time," Mr. Schmidt said.
For all of the planning for action, and determination to show off its war room to the press, Monday was shaping up as a very dry day. Mr. Kerry, it turned out, was not making his trip to Orlando. The White House was taking the lead on the front of daily battle as Mr. Bush defended his rationale for war. Mr. Kerry's schedule was somewhat limited, which reduced the opportunities for material for the war room staff members. After CNN featured a news segment about an Iguana stuck in a tree, Ms. Devenish declared it one of the slowest news days in memory. The senior staff in the room seemed bored as interns clicked away on the Internet.
But Mr. Kerry's pronouncement that he was proud of the vote against the $87 billion appropriation gave the war room something to attack. He was actually referring to Mr. Edwards when he said: "I'm proud to say that John joined me in voting against that $87 billion when we knew the policy had to be changed."
After Republicans sent an e-mail message about the comment to their vast list of reporters, Mr. Schmidt followed up with telephone calls to select reporters traveling with Mr. Kerry to make sure they noticed it. "The news of the day," Mr. Schmidt proclaimed in one phone call to a reporter, "is an evolution on the $87 billion. Now John Kerry said he was proud." (Mr. Kerry's campaign argued that Mr. Kerry has always stood by his vote and that the Bush campaign was making something out of nothing particularly new. )
On Tuesday, Mr. Bush's aides, while careful not to credit themselves for persuading reporters to jump on the quote, were clearly pleased that it popped up in many articles. Even so, they were not entirely satisfied. Mr. Schmidt said he would ask some of the campaign's surrogates to bring it up again during television appearances.
But in the end, surrogates were not necessary. Mr. Bush, apprised of the quote by campaign aides, brought it up in a speech in Michigan on Tuesday, saying, "Members of Congress should not vote to send troops into battle and then vote against funding them. And then brag about it."
That sound bite was featured prominently near the beginning of "World News Tonight" on ABC on Tuesday. The program's average, nightly audience far outreaches any single newspaper: more than eight million people.
-------- us politics
Powell Flies in the Face of Tradition
The Secretary of State Is Least Traveled in 30 Years
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48010-2004Jul13.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell hates to fly -- and it shows.
Powell is on track to become the least traveled secretary of state in more than three decades, since Henry A. Kissinger embodied the concept of the globe-trotting foreign policy guru, according to records maintained by the State Department's historian. Powell's three immediate predecessors, the records show, traveled an average of more than 45 percent more than he has.
In Powell's view, he is bringing the job of secretary of state back to its core purpose of managing foreign policy from Washington. He travels when necessary, as briefly as possible, and reaches out to foreign leaders by telephone and to foreign audiences with repeated television interviews. "His first duty is to advise the president on his foreign policy and to manage the department to execute the foreign policy," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said. "That's the job. It's mostly done in Washington."
Powell speed-dials around the globe, following time zones as his counterparts wake up. By the State Department's count, he made more than 1,500 calls to foreign officials in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In addition to granting interviews to media overseas, he meets regularly with foreign officials here -- in both cases, according to Boucher, more than any other secretary in recent memory.
Meanwhile, Powell has sharply cut back on travel, especially compared with his immediate predecessors. Including his recent trip to Sudan and Indonesia, Powell traveled 180 days in his first 42 months as secretary. Madeleine K. Albright, Warren M. Christopher and James A. Baker III averaged 46 percent more days at similar points in their tenures.
Indeed, Powell's schedule puts him just slightly ahead of William P. Rogers, secretary of state from 1969 to 1973, who was largely overshadowed by Kissinger, then the national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon. Powell is significantly behind George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and would need to travel 45 more days in the next six months to catch up with Shultz's 225 days of travel over four years.
Some leading foreign policy specialists -- and even some State Department officials -- have wondered whether Powell's travel schedule has in some ways contributed to the United States' falling image abroad. They argue that behind-the-scenes actions, such as telephone calls, carry much less impact overseas in an era when public diplomacy is increasingly important in advancing foreign policy goals.
"Telephoning is necessary but not sufficient," said former U.N. ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, a leading prospect for secretary of state in a John F. Kerry administration. "In the modern age, like it or not, secretaries have to travel. There is no alternative."
Powell, who lived and traveled overseas frequently during his lengthy military career, came into his current job without wanderlust. In his 1995 autobiography, "My American Journey," he wrote that "having seen much of the world and having lived on planes for years, I am no longer much interested in travel."
Shortly before he took office, Powell received a letter from the dean of the diplomatic corps, George F. Kennan, a key aide to Powell's hero, George C. Marshall. Marshall was a Nobel peace laureate and a secretary of state to President Harry S. Truman. In the letter, which Boucher provided, Kennan argued that Powell's predecessors had "seriously misused and distorted" the office of secretary of state through their travel.
Kennan said much more of the diplomatic heavy lifting should be done by lower-level officials, especially ambassadors, while the secretary remains in Washington. "These absences [should] be held to a minimum and not indulged in when suitable alternatives are available," Kennan wrote. "The absence of the secretary of state for prolonged periods deprived the president, so long as it endured, of what should have been the latter's widest, most qualified and most responsible source of advice on foreign policy problems."
Boucher said Kennan's letter struck a chord with Powell, who was already thinking along the same lines. Powell, according to aides, told the assistant secretaries of state that they were his battalion commanders and that they would hit the road, but that he would be available if needed.
Thus, Powell relied on the ambassador in Beijing to help resolve a dispute with China over a collision between a Chinese fighter and a U.S. surveillance plane. He tasked then-Assistant Secretary Walter H. Kansteiner III to hopscotch across Africa to win three key votes needed on Iraq at the U.N. Security Council. Kansteiner got the votes, even though he was shadowed by the French foreign minister.
Detractors, such as James B. Steinberg of the Brookings Institution, point to the Turkish parliament's narrow rejection of a U.S. request that troops be allowed to enter Iraq through Turkey as an example in which personal, on-the-ground diplomacy by Powell might have made a difference. Foreign policy experts also say Powell has spent relatively little time in the Middle East since a difficult trip in April 2002, even though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq have been central issues for this administration.
Kissinger, whose "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East defined his tenure, still holds the travel record: 313 days in his 39 months as secretary of state. Powell also has traveled far less than John Foster Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state, and barely exceeds the travel pace of Dean Rusk, secretary of state for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Powell also has significantly shorter trips than any predecessor -- an average of 3.3 days. He rushes through meetings in conference rooms and foreign ministries and spends virtually no time sightseeing. In 3 1/2 years, his only nonbusiness moments have been 15 minutes in a Nepalese temple in 2002 and a couple of hours at the ancient ruins of Petra during a three-day trip to Jordan in 2003. In capitals abroad, it has become his custom to apologize for the brevity of his visit and express the hope he can stay longer next time.
In fact, Powell has progressively cut the average length of his trips, from 4.6 days in 2001 to 2.9 days this year. Kissinger's trips lasted an average of 8.7 days, while most other recent secretaries averaged about five days.
Typical of his pace on the road, Powell spent less than 24 hours in Sudan and less than 36 hours in Jakarta, Indonesia, and flew overnight two of his four nights outside the United States.
Strikingly, President Bush has spent more time overseas than any other first-term president except his father. Including last month's trip to Ireland and Turkey, Bush spent 64 days traveling in foreign countries, compared with 78 days for his father and 56 days for Bill Clinton, who ranked third, according to State Department records.
White House spokesman Sean McCormack said that Bush has found it invaluable to meet foreign leaders face to face overseas, but that he found no fault with Powell's travel schedule. "What the president is more concerned with is effectiveness, and Secretary Powell is a very effective secretary of state," McCormack said.
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CONGRESSIONAL MEMO
A Bipartisan Report Masks Deep Divisions
July 14, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/politics/14memo.html
WASHINGTON, July 13 - Something unusual happened last week on Capitol Hill: Democrats and Republicans agreed with one another. By Tuesday, things were getting back to normal.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled its blistering, and unanimous, critique of prewar intelligence on Iraq last week, it looked like a rare moment of bipartisanship in a contentious election year. But in Washington, appearances are deceiving, and by Tuesday, with the full Senate back at work, each side was trying to turn the 511-page document to its political advantage.
Democrats were irked that the committee examined only how intelligence was gathered, not the more politically explosive question of how the Bush administration used the information. They demanded that the second phase of the inquiry, which will address that question, be completed before the November election.
"We still don't have a full picture of how the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq," Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said.
Republicans, intent on shielding President Bush from precisely that accusation, responded by noting pointedly that Democrats had used the intelligence to justify invading Iraq.
"I want you to look at what Jay Rockefeller said right out there on the floor of the Senate," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the former Republican leader, referring to the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican whip, took the floor to read at length from a 2002 speech by Mr. Rockefeller in which he said that Saddam Hussein's "existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America today and tomorrow."
The deteriorating comity on Capitol Hill, coming just days after Mr. Rockefeller and Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the committee, stood side by side to pat themselves on the back for producing bipartisan consensus on the politically sensitive question of prewar intelligence, is not entirely a surprise. The surprise, members of both parties say, is that the committee achieved unanimity in the first place.
Just last week, the day before the report was issued, legislation to change the way courts handle class-action lawsuits fell apart in partisan bickering. And this week Democrats and Republicans have accused each other of political posturing over the issue of gay marriage.
But the Intelligence Committee report looked like a powerful exception. Some attributed it to the seriousness of the matter at hand. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and an Intelligence Committee member, said the report covered issues that were "a matter of life and death, a matter of preserving our homeland security and I don't think it's lost on any one of us."
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said, "You just don't go in the sandbox and have a petty political food fight when the very security of the country is at stake."
Indeed, working together served the political purposes of both parties. Democrats wound up putting intelligence on Iraq, a potent election year issue, back on the front page, with Republicans like Mr. Lott and Mr. Roberts making powerful pronouncements about how the system failed.
Mr. Rockefeller said Tuesday that he thought the report "hit home" with the White House, and added, "I think they're not comfortable or happy about the unanimous report."
Republicans, meanwhile, were well aware they could not duck the question of why the administration went to war over the threat of unconventional weapons, only to find none. As Mr. Lott said, "You can't paper over that."
But by limiting the scope of their investigation, Republicans came off looking as though they were boldly tackling an issue that could reflect poorly on the White House, all the while pointing fingers at the Central Intelligence Agency.
That was the result of some smooth political footwork by the panel's chairman, Mr. Roberts.
He said in an interview that he knew he would never achieve unanimity- the single feature of the report that gives it its credibility - if he allowed the analysis Democrats wanted of how the White House used the intelligence. And he also said he knew he would not get unanimity if he failed to allow Democrats to have their say. So in the end, he postponed the issue.
"We're into a very rough campaign where a lot of personal comments have already been made, and then you have a war that promoted very strong feelings," Mr. Roberts said.
On Monday, lawmakers in both parties were saying they hoped the spirit of bipartisan cooperation would hold. Mr. Wyden and Mr. Lott are sponsoring legislation that would strip the C.I.A. of its authority to make decisions on how information is classified.
"The stark reality in the United States Senate is that nobody has enough votes to move ahead on a partisan basis." Mr. Wyden said then. "So if you want to get something done, it absolutely has to be bipartisan."
By Tuesday, his colleagues were not optimistic. As Mr. Rockefeller predicted, "It's going to be choppy for a while."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
EPA Sues for $2.8 Million in Arizona Superfund Cleanup
July 14, 2004
PHOENIX Arizona, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-14-09.asp#anchor2
Beginning in the 1960s, defense and aerospace component systems, including pyrotechnics and explosives, were manufactured at the facility near Arizona's Phoenix-Goodyear Airport and resulted in the release of hazardous substances into the groundwater.
The site was listed on the federal Superfund list in 1983 after the Arizona Department of Health Services discovered hazardous substances - including trichloroethylene - in local water supply wells.
Following investigation throughout the late 1980s, the EPA in 1989 selected the remedy to clean up soil and ground water contamination. Cleanup has been underway at the site for over a decade, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now working to confirm the full extent of contamination and adapt the cleanup to address it.
The EPA issued two orders against Unidynamics Phoenix, Inc. requiring the company to design and conduct cleanup at the site. The company continues some cleanup activities required in the orders, but violated the orders when it failed to conduct certain portions of the cleanup - forcing the EPA to expend funds and conduct the work in its place.
This week the U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Arizona on behalf of the EPA seeking to establish the liability of both Unidynamics/Phoenix, Inc. and Crane Co. for past and future costs for oversight and work the EPA conducted at the PGA-North site. The Phoenix-Goodyear Airport site is comprised of a northern and southern area - Unidynamics and Crane Co. are the potentially responsible parties only for the northern portion.
The EPA is also seeking penalties from Unidynamics/Phoenix Inc. of up to $27,500 to $32,500 for each day that the company failed to conduct work required under the two EPA orders issued in 1990 and 2003.
In 1993 Unidynamics Phoenix was acquired by Pacific Scientific, the largest supplier of energetic devices for aerospace and defense programs in the United States. Pacific Scientific is a division of the Danaher Corporation, an aerospace and defense industry company.
The Justice Department is seeking $2.8 million in costs, and penalties and punitive damages for violation of EPA orders regarding cleanup of soil and ground water contamination at the Superfund Site.
"The EPA is seeking to recover Superfund money, and to ensure prompt cleanup of soil and ground water contamination at the site, which continue to threaten valuable drinking water resources," said Wayne Nastri, the EPA's regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest region. "We are conserving the Superfund by ensuring that those who contributed to the contamination pay for the cleanup."
-------- health
USDA's Mad Cow Detection Challenged
Report Says Animal Wasn't a 'Downer'
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47947-2004Jul13.html
New witnesses have disputed the U.S. Department of Agriculture's official account that the only American animal found to have mad cow disease could not stand up or walk when it was slaughtered, challenging anew the underpinning of the agency's approach to detecting the disease.
The new information brings to five the number of workers in Washington state who say the infected animal was not a "downer," according to an investigation by the agency's inspector general.
If the animal could and did walk, it would not have been a high priority for testing -- making its discovery more a matter of luck than effective surveillance.
A second report by the inspector general yesterday found major flaws in the detection program for mad cow disease. The draft report, released by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) in advance of a congressional hearing today, cited deficiencies in how the agency collects samples for testing and how it calculates infection rates, and questioned why the agency does not test some slaughtered animals that are most likely to be infected.
Inspector general Phyllis K. Fong and USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman are scheduled to testify today before the House Government Reform Committee.
Top USDA officials yesterday strongly defended the determination that the Washington state animal was a downer and the quality of the agency's expanded surveillance program.
Ronald DeHaven, administrator of the agency's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said in a teleconference that the Washington state cow was the kind of questionable animal that should be tested, regardless of whether it could sometimes stand and walk. And he said that while the disease surveillance program was not working adequately in the spring -- when the inspector general's office evaluated it -- it has been greatly expanded and improved since then.
"We've recognized the shortcomings of the previous plan," DeHaven said. "Our new plan reflects changes in the program not in place previously."
The issue of how the Bush administration has handled the mad cow issue has become increasingly politicized. Democrats have accused the USDA of sloppy procedures and making inaccurate statements about the December discovery of an infected animal, while Republicans have said the administration limited the damage and protected public health. Mad cow disease, which is caused by deformed proteins called prions, destroys the brain and is incurable.
Waxman's release of the draft inspector general's report -- which did not include the usual responses from the agency being inspected -- was itself unusual.
The USDA's assertion that the animal was a downer helped reassure the public when the animal tested positive for mad cow disease, indicating that the government surveillance system was able to detect animals with the disease.
But the new information, released in a letter from Waxman, paints a different picture. Two workers at the slaughterhouse where the animal was killed said early this year that they did not think the infected animal was a downer, and now three men at the dairy farm where the animal lived just before it was taken to slaughter have said the same.
In addition, the USDA veterinarian who labeled the animal a downer told the House Government Reform Committee there was a "distinct possibility" that the cow stood up again soon after he examined it. According to Waxman's account, the inspector general also found that three USDA officials in the western region were aware that the slaughterhouse that killed the infected cow routinely tested ambulatory cows and had a general policy of not accepting downers.
"Your claim that the infected cow was a downer reassured the public that USDA's testing program was working," Waxman wrote. "But it now appears that these assurances lacked foundation. Even a cursory investigation would have found that the infected cow stood and walked on the day of slaughter."
Among the other conclusions reached by the inspector general were:
• Cattle rejected by slaughterhouses because they appeared to have disorders of the central nervous system -- believed to be at highest risk of carrying the infection -- were not always tested. The inspectors said that 162 of 680 cattle rejected between 2002 and 2004 for those disorders had been tested.
• The national sampling program for mad cow disease is not random because it is voluntary. The federal government could require brain samples to test for the disease but has declined to do so except at certain slaughterhouses.
• The USDA surveillance program assumes mad cow disease is confined to high-risk cattle -- those that cannot walk, have disorders of the central nervous system or have died of unknown causes -- but studies have shown that healthy-looking animals can also be infected.
DeHaven said the USDA's new surveillance program, begun June 1, has already tested more than 11,000 animals. He said that samples are coming from a broad range of sites -- farms, slaughterhouses and rendering facilities -- and that many are from animals that died of unknown causes.
"We have had outstanding cooperation with the industries we're working with," he said, adding that the agency is on target to collect 260,000 samples within 18 months. The goal of the expanded surveillance program, he said, is to determine whether there is mad cow disease in the American herd. The infected animal found in Washington was born and raised in Canada.
"Nothing in the report suggests any compromise of the public health," DeHaven said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
The time for renewable energy is now
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
An op/ed by Dr. David Suzuki
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-14/s_25690.asp
While there was certainly no shortage of hot air during Canada's recent federal election campaign, at least some of it was channeled in the right direction: wind energy.
During the election period, several of the major parties included substantial new commitments to wind energy as part of their platforms. Promises ranged from small investments to generating up to 10 percent of Canada's energy supply through clean, renewable wind energy over the next decade.
Such investments are badly needed. Canada currently lags behind almost all other industrialized countries when it comes to wind power. In spite of our vast country's incredible wind energy potential, wind generates less than 0.2 percent of our electricity needs. Many provinces still rely on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to provide power.
Unfortunately, burning these fuels also causes air pollution and releases vast amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are changing our climate. Canada has committed to reducing these emissions through the Kyoto Protocol, but we have yet to begin making those reductions on a large scale. Wind power could be an important part of meeting our commitments.
European countries have already proven wind to be a cost-effective, reliable, nonpolluting energy source. The wind-energy industry is forging ahead in these countries, helped by government policies that encourage more clean-energy production.
In the last year, for example, Germany installed eight times more wind-energy turbines than Canada has in total. And in less than a decade, Spain has gone from having no experience in wind energy to being a world leader. It took just six months for a Spanish company to install a new 50 megawatt wind farm near Chicago. That's nearly three times more installed wind power than is found in all of Ontario.
But wind is not the be-all, end-all of our energy needs. There are other clean, renewable energy sources - such as solar, small-scale hydro, sustainable biomass, and geothermal - that also need to be harnessed if we are to power our economy without dangerously disrupting the planet's climate and adding more and more pollution to our air.
Critics sometimes insist that it would be impossible to power the world with renewable energy alone. They point to the explosive growth in global energy demand as proof, saying that renewable energy could never catch up.
For example, Americans now consume 50 percent more electricity per capita than they did 25 years ago.
But that argument misses the point that much of the energy we consume is wasted. Fossil fuel combustion, even at the best of times, is not the most efficient way to provide our power needs. Plus, decades of access to cheap oil has made us lazy and complacent about energy. We just aren't very efficient.
Consider this: In just 20 years, the personal computer has gone from being practically unheard of to being accessible in the palm of your hand. The information superhighway, which didn't even exist, has become so much a part of life that it's a cliché. Having instant access to vast amounts of information anywhere in the world is now simply taken for granted. What did we do before Google anyway?
Compare these advances to those in the automobile or electrical power industries. Our cars still get the same fuel efficiency on average (or worse) than they did 20 years ago. Dirty fossil fuels still dominate much of our electrical production. Our homes, by and large, are only marginally more energy tight than they were 20 years ago.
This isn't to say that we haven't had advances in these areas; hybrid cars are finally coming to market, better building technologies do exist, renewable energy technologies are available. But they only have toe-holds in Canada compared to much of the world.
Our leaders can change that. Efficiency and renewable-energy technologies are taking off in other countries. Worldwide investment in renewable energy reached nearly $27 billion in 2003. Canada needs to get on board, or we could find ourselves in a situation akin to the rest of the industrialized world running on supercomputers while Canada still pecks away at a typewriter.
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Group's Antiwar Billboard Is Offered New Times Sq. Spot
July 14, 2004
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/nyregion/14billboard.html
Accusing an advocacy group of a "rush to the courthouse," a lawyer for Clear Channel Communications offered an alternative billboard space in Times Square yesterday for a huge antiwar advertisement by the group.
But the lawyer, Robert H. Pees, said Clear Channel still has "concerns" about the image proposed by the group, Project Billboard, which shows a round bomb painted with the stars and stripes over the words "Democracy Is Best Taught by Example, Not by War."
Deborah Rappaport, a Project Billboard representative, said the group would insist on the bomb image and was withdrawing an earlier compromise offer to use an image of a red, white and blue dove instead.
While Clear Channel seemed to be seeking to resolve the dispute, a hearing on the matter, at the United States District Court for the Southern District, in Manhattan, only compounded the tangles. In a civil suit filed on Monday, Project Billboard accused Clear Channel of breach of contract, charging that the media conglomerate was trying to muzzle its political message.
Mr. Pees surprised the group's lawyers by handing the judge a rider to a lease on the original billboard, specifying that the building's owner had to approve the ad's content. The immense billboard, 69 feet high and 44 feet across, hangs on the Marriott Marquis hotel at 1535 Broadway.
Douglas F. Curtis, a lawyer for Project Billboard, jumped up to say that the group had never seen the rider. According to the suit, representatives of Clear Channel never mentioned the hotel's refusal to display the ad when they first rejected the bomb ad on June 29..
A spokeswoman for the Marriott Marquis, Kathleen Duffy, confirmed that the hotel's general manager, Mike Stengel, had rejected the ad in discussions with Clear Channel officials several weeks ago. The hotel's contract with Clear Channel for the outer wall space specifies that it can reject any advertisement with "political content," Ms. Duffy said.
"It's not because of the message, it's because it's a political ad,'' she said. "If there was an ad that was pornographic in nature, we have the right to refuse that, too."
On Monday, Clear Channel showed the hotel the dove ad, Ms. Duffy said, and Mr. Stengel rejected that, too. She said that it was the first case in which the hotel had been presented with advertising it deemed political.
Project Billboard, which describes itself in court papers as "a group of citizens" seeking to "rediscover the core values that have made the United States great," paid $368,000 to rent the billboard for three months starting in August, in time for the Republican National Convention.
In a statement, Clear Channel said that when it signed a contract last Dec. 5 with an agent for Project Billboard, it had not been aware that the ad's message was political but rather had understood that it would "promote a live-entertainment event."
Mr. Pees, the Clear Channel lawyer, said the company was ready to offer another "big and splashy billboard" in Times Square, and he chastised Project Billboard for suing prematurely. "Fairness and equity are best taught by example, not by litigation," he said.
But he said Clear Channel remained reluctant to display the bomb ad. "Those of us who have been in New York for a while understand the sensitivities that many New Yorkers have to bombs," he said.
Ms. Rappaport called the dove ad a "last-ditch effort" to avoid litigation but said it was no longer on the table. She rejected a Clear Channel request to drop the war reference. "Absolutely unacceptable," she said.
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New York Rejects Central Park for Convention March
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-protests.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's police commissioner on Wednesday told organizers planning a major protest march at next month's Republican convention to stage it on a route designated by the city or take the matter to court.
The group, United for Peace and Justice, wants demonstrators protesting the policies of President Bush to be able to march on a 2-mile route past the convention site at Madison Square Garden arena into Central Park in midtown Manhattan on Aug. 29, the second day of the convention.
The convention will nominate Bush for a second term.
City officials say the protest, which organizers expect to attract 250,000 people, would damage the park, which had a recent $18 million face lift. Police say the proposed route would cause traffic and security problems. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told a news conference a ``reasonable alternative'' had been offered for the march to proceed on Manhattan's West Side Highway, about a mile from the arena.
``This is the best place to accommodate such large numbers and allows for a massive demonstration without crippling the rest of the city,'' he said.
After four months of negotiations, he said that was the city's ``final offer'' and the group would have to challenge the decision in court.
Bill Dobbs, a spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, said the group was undecided about going to court.
``This is an act in bad faith that poisons the atmosphere of negotiations,'' said Dobbs, adding Central Park should be able to accommodate the protest.
``In the past it has handled the most high-profile events, and because Manhattan is so dense, the park serves a constitutional function in enabling people to assemble.''
Kelly said protest permits had been granted to 14 other organizations to demonstrate during the convention against Bush administration policies on issues from the war in Iraq to gun control and abortion rights.
Donna Lieberman, head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the ``hard inflexible line'' taken by the police on the major march was ``disappointing.''
--------
Thousands Protest Government in Peru Strike
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-peru-strike.html
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Thousands of Peruvians, some burning effigies of President Alejandro Toledo, took to the streets nationwide on Wednesday to tell his unpopular government bluntly: Change your policies or go.
Peru's first general strike since 1999 began with scuffles between protesters and the police in the capital, Lima, and 76 people were arrested across the country, the interior ministry said. At least six were injured, including two babies, radios reported.
Fearing a repeat of a day of arson and looting in the southern city of Ayacucho earlier this month in protests the government said were hijacked by the Shining Path terror group, 93,000 police were on alert and 600 troops helped guard installations such as electricity plants and hospitals.
The main square, where the government palace is located, was cordoned off with metal barriers for the one-day action.
But in the end, the day passed peacefully. The government, which said it would dock a day's pay to anyone who skipped work, said few had in fact heeded the unions' strike call. ``What strike?'' asked Production Minister Alfonso Velasquez.
Demonstrators earlier blocked roads on the edge of Lima as did Aymara Indians near the southern border with Bolivia, where a mob lynched a mayor accused of corruption in April.
``The demand for Toledo to go is massive. This demonstration is a rejection of the government's economic policies and the whole privatization process,'' said Julio Lopez, a 28-year-old student in the southern city of Arequipa.
There, protesters pretended to shoot and then burned one effigy of Toledo, while others staged the government's funeral complete with a black coffin and strains of the Last Post.
The president, a one-time shoeshine boy who rose to become a World Bank adviser, took power in 2001 promising change after a corruption scandal cost Alberto Fujimori the presidency.
But Toledo's man-of-the-people image backfired when he failed to meet ambitious promises of jobs and better pay in a country where over half the population lives on $1.25 a day.
The government says it has hiked public pay 30 percent and put Peru among the region's fastest growing economies.
But Toledo is Latin America's least popular leader, his credibility in tatters after a string of corruption scandals, and polls show his approval rating is 7 percent or less.
VOX POP
The strike was called by top union body, the General Confederation of Workers of Peru, or CGTP, whose president, Mario Huaman, has stopped short of calling for Toledo to quit.
But he told reporters: ``More than 85 percent of the population is demanding Toledo go, not me ... The voice of the people is the word of God.''
The protest comes in the middle of the Copa America soccer tournament which Peru is hosting.
One sign in Arequipa -- where Brazil play Paraguay later on Wednesday -- read: ``Score a goal against bad government.''
(Additional reporting by Gareth Chetwynd and Eduardo Simoes in Arequipa; Daniela Desantis in Tacna; Javier Leira in Piura; Jose Miguel Gomez in Trujillo; Robin Emmott, Eduardo Orozco and Pilar Olivares in Lima))
----
2nd Annual Nuclear Free Future Run
We run and walk to bring focus not only on the horror of nuclear weapons but the damage caused to the Earth by the production not only of these weapons but also by the use of nuclear energy.
FootPrints For Peace
Event Announcements July-August, 2004
by peacehq
Wed Jul 14 '04
article#43552 ffpindy@hotmail.com
http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=43552&group=webcast
2nd Annual Nuclear Free Future Run
On August 1st starting at 7:30 am at Horseshoe Mound in Portsmouth Ohio a group of runners and walkers from FootPrints For Peace, Peacehq and other local organizations will start by foot towards the Y-12 nuclear research and storage facilities in Oakridge TN arriving on August 6th.
We will run and walk every step in a prayer for Peace carrying the message that "All Life Is Sacred".
We run and walk to bring focus not only on the horror of Nuclear Weapons but the damage caused to the Earth by the production not only of these Weapons but also by the use of Nuclear Energy. The waste by-products have the potential to destroy life. Just recently it was reported by the AP that the Savannah River Site, a 300-square-mile federal weapons complex in South Carolina, has 51 steel tanks holding 37 million gallons of waste, including uranium, cesium and plutonium. Some of these tanks were built in the 50's and leaks have occurred recently! Some of the tanks are within 8 to 10 feet of the water table! This is only one example of many. We need to find a better way without this deadly potential that will get worse unless we make it go away!
We chose Portsmouth Ohio as a start point because Portsmouth is the home of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. While the USEC ceased uranium enrichment operations in 2001 at Portsmouth and consolidated operations at the Paducah KY plant a new enrichment facility is being being constructed in the Portsouth area.
The run will finish in Oakridge TN at the Y-12 plant on Hiroshima Day and at the same time that the Interfaith Pilgramage being lead by the Nipponzan Myohoji, Atlanta Dojo Walking from Atlanta GA. arrives in solidarity. There will be a weekend of peaceful protests at the Y-12 plant being hosted by O.R.E.P.A.
Further information 6th Annual Peace Pilgrimage from Atlanta to Oak Ridge as well as the O.R.E.P.A. gathering can be found at http://peacehq.tripod.com/ATLDOJO_website/eventssched.html
Portsmouth Ohio is located approximately 100 miles east of Cincinnati Ohio on the Ohio River via US 52.
Horseshoe Mound is located in Mound Park at the northeast corner of Grant Street and Hutchins Street in Portsmouth.
Join with us in this effort. Everyone is welcome. For details please contact us at ffpindy@hotmail.com
Visit our web site at: http://footprintsforpeace.tripod.com/
For complete coverage of last months FootPrints For Peace Run For Freedom event visit: http://footprintsforpeace.tripod.com/UFTR/EA/RFF/RFF-04.html or http://peacehq.tripod.com/PHQ_RunsWalksActions/RFF/RFF-2004/rff04.html
Jim Toren Co-founder - FootPrints For Peace
http://www.footprintsforpeace.net
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