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NUCLEAR
NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: Nuke spill
Agency proposes fining contractor for safety violations
Lunch with the FT: Noriaki Imai
Israel's plans for Iran strikes
Diplomats: Iran Atomic Shopping Deepens Bomb Fears
U.S. finds jobs in Iraq for nuclear scientists
North Korea wants nukes
More N. Korean Bombs Likely, U.S. Official Says
Possible US sale to India of counter-measure systems
UN nuclear watchdog challenges Britain to reveal Niger intelligence
Utility Loses Track of Spent Nuclear Fuel
Demolition of Most Dangerous Building in America Begins
Demolition Is Begun at Plutonium Site
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Wins Fusion Office
US Nuclear Lab Temporarily Halts Secret Work
Security Breached At Lab Again
Los Alamos Halts All of Its Classified Research After Data Vanishes
N.M. Lab Finds Missing Classified Disk
Regulators Meet With Critics of New Storage for Indian Point
Agency: Hanford Workers Exposed to Vapors
Neb. Wants Nuke Judgment to Be Overturned
MILITARY
Devastated by AIDS, Africa Sees Life Expectancy Plunge
Rwanda Backed Congo Uprising, Experts Tell UN
Report Reveals Lies, Not the Liar
Lockheed's Interior Contract Gets Rewrite
Former general says U.S. military didn't expect Iraqi insurgency
Allawi shot inmates in cold blood, say witnesses
Another Iraq Car Bomb Kills 10
More Killings in Iraq; Group Claims Governor's Assassination
Iraq Premier Forms Security Service to 'Annihilate' Terrorists
US, Israel Against the World on Wall
Palestinian Militants Kidnap, Then Free, Gaza Police Chief
Palestinians Seek UN Help Against Israeli Barrier
'Secret film shows Iraq prisoners sodomised'
Officials Accuse Each Other in Prison Scandal
Navy: Guantanamo Inmates Want Tribunals
Iraqis Welcome Spy Agency Despite Historic Echoes
UK Iraq Report Hides Minefield for Blair's Spies
British spy chief faced internal opposition: report
Senate Report on Iraq Intel Points to Role of Jerusalem
Ex-GI May Risk Arrest By Going To Japan
As Inquiry Continues, Marine Returns to U.S.
Marine Who Had Disappeared Returns to U.S. for Questioning
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Detroit to Vote on Medical Marijuana
New Airline Screening System Postponed
Government Is 'Reshaping' Airport Screening System
Small Rail Line to Be Focus of Security Test
US Cuts Aid to Uzbekistan
Halfway to Being an American Family
A Risky Route to Freedom
Hmong Capital Of U.S. Girds For New Influx
Ex-Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Detained
Prisons tighten Muslim chaplain criteria
POLITICS
French defense minister to Algeria, first such visit since war
House Rejects Cut in Military Aid to Egypt
Congress's Inquiry Into Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Bogs Down
U.S. Won't Turn Over Data for Iraq Audits
'Yellowcake' and black marks
AP Seeks Release of Bush Military Records
House Votes to Block Aid for Saudi Arabia
Soul Man
The Little Engine That Couldn't
Kerry Gets Warm Reception From NAACP
Civil Rights Board Wants Inquiry on Florida Voter-Purge List
OTHER
Everglades Mercury Levels Lower Due to Incinerator Regulations
EPA considers clean air lawsuits for pollution at 22 power plants
4-Month Probe Cites Disarray Within WASA
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Group Settles Dispute With Company on Times Sq. Ad
Antiwar Displays To Hang in New York Federal Case Ends in Compromise
Antiwar Group Settles Dispute With Company on Times Sq. Ad
150 Picket Near City Hall in Favor of Central Park Rally
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: Nuke spill
By TOSHIHIDE UEDA,
The Asahi Shimbun
July 16, 2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200407160169.html
Five years after the disaster in Tokaimura, a report blames the nation's policies. `Japan is obligated to provide the world all accurate information about the accident.' KENJI SUMITA Osaka University professor emeritus
The nation's biggest nuclear gaffe, which killed two and exposed more than 660 residents to radiation, was the result of lax safety control measures brought on by a shaky national policy, according to the Atomic Energy Society of Japan.
The 1999 accident at JCO Co.'s nuclear-fuel processing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, was due to compromised quality-control procedures. The nation's plutonium-usage plan was destabilized, leading to an order for large quantities of fuel at the plant that caused the entire fuel-processing procedure to be shortened, the society's investigative committee said recently.
The committee will publish its full report on the deadly accident this fall, which marks the fifth anniversary of the tragedy.
A committee investigative team studied roughly 15,000 articles of trial documents, examining the steps that led up to the accident.
The final report, also to be sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, will include an evaluation of the safety measures. The lessons learned will be used as reference in future disaster prevention guidelines.
At the time of the accident, the JCO's Tokaimura plant was manufacturing liquid uranium for use as nuclear fuel in the Joyo reactor at the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC), formerly the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., or Donen. It had been operating the experiential fast-breeder reactor using liquefied uranium mixed with liquefied plutonium.
In January 1993, one change was added to the final stage of making liquefied uranium-Donen's on-site inspections were canceled at the JCO plant.
A series of illegal activities by JCO began in 1993, coinciding with the timing of the changes implemented in the JCO's fuel-processing procedures.
In the fall of 1992, many nations decried a shipment of reprocessed plutonium aboard the Akatsukimaru ship en route from France. They opposed it because the ship passed near their coasts and the plutonium can also be used to make nuclear weapons, according to Fumiya Tanabe, committee member and head engineer at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.
To assuage international concerns, Donen's chairman told a Dec. 8, 1992, Diet session that the one-ton shipment would be used only as fuel for the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, Tanabe said.
Tanabe said that the commitment meant the JCO would have no other means of securing plutonium. Because this excluded use of plutonium from France to the Joyu, the only way to make fuel for the Tokaimura reactor was to mix liquefied plutonium with the liquefied uranium JCO produces.
According to records, Donen began meeting with JCO officials about obtaining liquefied uranium more than 10 days before the chairman's statement in the Diet.
Donen then ordered 200 kilograms of liquefied uranium from JCO by August 1993. JCO officials asked that the quality-control inspection be simplified to meet the deadline. That's how the two sides decided to skip the on-site inspection by Donen officials.
``The one ton (of plutonium) aboard Akatsukimaru was to be used for Monju from the beginning, and nothing had changed overnight,'' said Masashi Kanamori, deputy director of the Safety Promotion Project for JNC. ``Safety is an issue both businesses should take very seriously.''
Tanabe disagrees.
``If Donen had continued its inspections, it could have noticed the illegal work procedures at JCO,'' he said.
In the Tokaimura accident, two workers died of extreme radiation exposure in making liquefied uranium. The accident is the worst in the history of Japan's nuclear development.
The government's cap on the amount of uranium to be used for each processing round was 2.4 kilograms. The JCO workers used seven times that amount, resulting in the accident.
JCO workers there also resorted to other shortcuts, including melting powdered uranium in stainless-steel buckets.
The committee report also cites shoddy government oversight.
In November 1983, JCO asked the government for permission to manufacture liquefied uranium and other substances for its Joyo reactor in Tokaimura.
The government approved the request as soon as June 1984.
The then Science and Technology Agency was to conduct an initial screening, and the Nuclear Safety Commission was to check that screening.
But the agency did not even check JCO's proposed process for liquefying uranium in its initial screening. And there are records of a Nuclear Safety Commission subcommittee debating the issue, Tanabe said, but the commission should have returned the inspection results to the agency for a re-evaluation.
At the time, Donen was manufacturing fuel for its Joyo and Monju reactors as well as the Fugen prototype advanced-thermal reactor.
The processes for those reactors were intricately overlapped.
Because there was no oversight of the entire process, Tanabe said, each factory had no choice but to make its own decisions based on their judgment when problems like meeting a delivery date arose. That is the biggest cause of this accident, he said.
``The government investigation into the accident came up with a conclusion in just three months. But the goal of that investigation was policy-making and so it lacked fact-finding efforts,'' said Kenji Sumita, professor emeritus of Osaka University who was president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan in October 2000, when its probe started. He added that the new report is essential.
``Japan is obligated to provide the world all accurate information about the accident. Some members of the society were critical of government policy and so the society can make an overall assessment,'' Sumita said. ``In addition to physical and immediate damage, nuclear accidents have a very strong political and social impact. The investigation should also contribute to educating the world about the lessons learned through Tokaimura.''
----
Agency proposes fining contractor for safety violations in radioactive sludge removal
Friday, July 16, 2004
By John K. Wiley,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-16/s_25919.asp
SPOKANE, Washington - The Department of Energy proposed a $935,000 fine against one of its contractors on Thursday for safety violations in a project to remove radioactive sludge from the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The department said Fluor Hanford Inc. claimed in 2003 it was prepared to begin removing 50 cubic meters of radioactive sludge from the reservation, but it failed the agency's readiness review. The department found that company employees were not adequately trained, documents and records were incomplete, and some of the equipment it planned to use was not safe enough.
DOE officials said that if the fine stands, it would be the largest civil penalty ever levied at Hanford, which contains the nation's largest collection of nuclear waste.
The company has not decided whether to challenge the fine, spokesman Geoff Tyree said.
"We are disappointed with the civil penalty, particularly the level of the fine, because we have completely turned this project around in the past year," Fluor Hanford President Ron Gallagher said in a statement Thursday.
The company was hired to remove spent nuclear fuel rods from storage basins at the reservation and then clean up the remaining radioactive sludge in a separate project.
The company has since passed a readiness review and has begun removing the sludge. The company is continuing to remove the remaining spent fuel rods.
The 586-square-mile Hanford site, located near Richland in south-central Washington, was created as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II to make plutonium for nuclear weapons.
-------- depleted uranium
Lunch with the FT: Noriaki Imai
By David Pilling
July 16 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373711241
The first time I saw Noriaki Imai was in a hotel room in Osaka in April when I switched on the television to watch the evening news. There, on top of the polished drinks cabinet where the television rested, were the fuzzy images of an 18-year-old Japanese boy cowering on the ground. Next to him were two equally terrified Japanese people, a young man and woman. All three were blindfolded. Behind them stood Iraqi militiamen, brandishing guns and knives. A message in Japanese moved slowly across the screen: unless Tokyo pulled its troops from Iraq within three days, Imai and the two other "children of Japan" would be burned alive.
Unlike Kim Sun-il, the 33-year-old South Korean beheaded by Iraqi militiamen a few weeks later, the death sentence on Imai and his fellow hostages was never carried out. For days, the hostages' families appeared on television, pleading for their children's lives. All three had gone to Iraq for humanitarian reasons, they said. None supported the dispatch of Japanese troops. Eight excruciating days later, the hostages were released unharmed.
It was then that the trouble really started. Japanese public opinion, which at first had rallied in sympathy, turned against the three. They were blamed for recklessly going to Iraq and dragging their government into negotiations with armed lunatics. The phrase jiko sekinin, roughly "self-responsibility", sprang from television news discussions into daily parlance. It meant the three had struck out alone, and should face the consequences.
Families of the hostages were bombarded with hate mail. The government flew the three back to Tokyo, but billed them for the airfare. Arriving at Haneda airport, their heads bowed low in shame, they shuffled past hostile placards including one that read simply: "You got what you deserve."
A few weeks later, Imai agreed to meet for lunch. After a period in virtual hiding in his native Hokkaido, he was in the process of recovering his self-composure and sorting out what had happened - both in Iraq and in Japan. Boyish and handsome, he apologised for being late. Actually, he was five minutes early.
Standard Japanese etiquette aside, Imai was no longer the meek, harrowed-looking boy I had seen at a press conference after his return. Then, he had fled the cameras after mumbling a few short answers to written questions.
Now, dressed in a cycling top and jeans, he has an aura of confidence. "I'm recovered now. I'm not going to bend low anymore," he says. At the time of the press conference he hadn't been coping well. "One of my biggest fears was that the flash of the camera would bring everything back. The flash makes you lose the will to live."
I turn the menu around to face him. By Tokyo standards, this is not a particularly expensive restaurant, but his eyes widen at the prices and he selects the cheapest option. He has chosen an upscale version of the bento lunch boxes filled with savouries that children carry to school and salarymen eat at their desks. As is common in Japan, I order the same as my guest.
Imai asks for ice coffee and exhibits some amazement that I - a journalist at an upstanding newspaper - should have ordered a lunchtime beer. "Sugoi", he says, employing the overworked word for "amazing".
As he pours liquid sugar into his tall glass of coffee, I ask him what he made of the public hostility. "It was a huge surprise. People were saying I needed to take responsibility for my own actions," he says. "But it sounded to me as if they were saying they wished I'd died. To my mind, the meaning was: 'You should have died in Iraq and come back a corpse.'"
The food arrives in three neatly stacked lacquer boxes. The waitress, dressed in a simple kimono, slides in and out of the room, bringing separate bowls of thick red miso soup and white rice. "Sugoi," says Imai, surveying the ornate arrangement: tiny portions of raw fish, steamed vegetables and meat, grilled eel, pickles and tofu. "I've never eaten anything so luxurious in my life."
As he prods at a succulent piece of raw sea bream and mixes a little green wasabi mustard in soy sauce with the end of his chopsticks, I tell him that a version of events is circulating that the hostages faked their own kidnapping to force Tokyo to withdraw its troops. "Why do people say such things? I can't believe it," he says, losing his composure for an instant.
He says the government, aided by much of the media, deliberately discredited the hostages. True enough, a close adviser to prime minister Junichiro Koizumi had told me privately that the hostages' families were communists and had sullied their case by pressing for the withdrawal of troops. Koizumi's government is extremely prickly about criticism of the deployment, which is an open challenge to Japan's pacifist constitution. "They did not want us to be heroes," says Imai.
He had gone to Iraq, over the initial objections of his parents, to study the effects of depleted uranium shells on the health of civilians. Over the internet, he had made contact with Nahoko Takato, a 34-year-old Japanese volunteer working with Iraqi street children. She was to become a fellow hostage.
I wondered what had made him political when so many Japanese are wary of expressing opinions. "Up until third grade, I had never even read a book. I was a gamer," he says, surveying the lacquered boxes for the next delicacy. But September 11 and its aftermath was a turning point. "From October 7, the bombing of Afghanistan started and I felt very empty and useless." He wandered the internet in search of answers. He researched the Balkan and Rwandan wars to determine when outside intervention might be justified; studied depleted uranium; read up on the arms industry; and looked into the scramble for coltan metal, used in Japan's ubiquitous mobile phones and blamed by some for fuelling conflict in the Congo.
"I'd like to find out more about these things," he says, momentarily choking on some wasabi. "But in Japan, people don't know much about such topics," he continues when he has recovered. "We don't know anything about Angola or Sudan. Most young people are losing interest in social affairs."
Imai set out to explore things for himself, but within days of leaving the safety of Japan he was being bundled into a car by armed men. "These guys were carrying rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs," he recalls. "They had a hand-grenade right in front of my face in the car and I thought: 'Oh no, these guys are suicide bombers.'"
When the kidnappers discovered their captives were not soldiers but a motley crew of aid worker, photo-journalist and depleted-uranium researcher, they promised not to kill them. They asked the three to cry as they filmed a video later released to the al-Jazeera network, a fact seized on by sceptics as proof that the whole kidnapping was a set-up.
Imai says there was nothing fabricated about their fright. At one point during the filming a knife was put to his throat. "It was terrifying. It's true that [later] they promised, many, many times we would be freed. But it kept not happening, and so mentally we became worn down."
Yet he does have sympathy for his kidnappers. "Although they had weapons in their hands, some of them became close with us. They dealt with us sincerely," he says. Captors and captives talked over tomato and cucumber salad, chicken and sickly orange pop. When they were released, they shook hands. "We had had many discussions about whether there is a way to fight without weapons. They really weren't altogether happy about fighting like that. They even said: 'We want to find another way. What should we do?'"
Now back in Japan and dashing out a book on his experiences, he is often stopped in the street. "Sometimes people criticise me, saying mean things straight to my face," he says, repeating a Japanese word that my dictionary translates as "pert, sassy boy". (My friends say it's more like: "You little shit.") But Imai says that for every person who swears at him, several more express support.
Finishing his grapefruit, he makes ready to leave. "Look me up next time you're in Hokkaido," he says, heading for the door. He turns to bow. Not the low bow of contrition or regret. But the polite bow of a Japanese boy taking his leave, and venturing out into the world beyond.
David Pilling is the FT's bureau chief in Tokyo
david.pilling@ft.com
-------- iran
Israel's plans for Iran strikes
16 July 2004
Janes
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040716_1_n.shtml
Amid growing concern over Iran's alleged duplicity in declaring all its nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Israel - the country that regards itself as most at risk from a nuclear-capable Iran - may be poised to revive contingency plans to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.
It is hardly surprising that Israel's national security establishment has concluded that Israel would be at risk from a nuclear-capable Iran. However, if a pre-emptive attack is to be launched Israel may have to go it alone. Any joint US-Israeli precision-guided missile strike against Iran's nuclear facilities - Bushehr, Natanz or Arak - is unlikely to prove an attractive option for the US administration while it remains mired in Iraq - which shares a 1,458km-long border with Iran.
If the USA was to participate in such an operation, Washington's allies would undoubtedly denounce what would be seen as yet another example of dangerous US unilateralism. However, the real concern is that a chain reaction of unintended consequences would further destabilise the world's most volatile region. The USA's involvement in a pre-emptive strike against Iran would also undermine the Bush administration's last vestiges of credibility as an 'honest broker' in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. An Israeli strike could effectively end hopes of reaching any kind of peace deal. The US administration also faces the dilemma of insisting that Iran has no right to develop nuclear weapons while Israel is believed to have several hundred in its arsenal.
The controversial role of intelligence is likely to prove significant. The US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) would have to produce incontrovertible evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons which, given the recent damning report by the US Senate on the CIA's collection and analysis of intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), is unlikely. This crisis of credibility would make a US decision to launch a pre-emptive strike difficult, if not impossible, to sell to US legislators or to the wider world.
----
Diplomats: Iran Atomic Shopping Deepens Bomb Fears
July 16, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Western diplomats say recent intelligence reports show Iran has been attempting to buy items that could be used to build nuclear weapons -- a charge Tehran dismisses as baseless.
The diplomats cited European customs information and intelligence gathered in the Middle East showing Tehran had tried to buy, among other things, high-speed switches that could potentially be used in a nuclear weapon and high-speed cameras the Iranians might use to test a nuclear explosion.
``They appear to be working on the planning for a high-speed nuclear implosion device,'' the diplomat said, adding that Iran had also been experimenting with ``high explosive that would be appropriate for the core of a nuclear weapon.''
A senior U.S. official told Reuters in Washington that these procurement efforts were part of an effort that has been going on for a long time. He declined to confirm the specific items mentioned, but said they were not ``all new'' to Washington.
``This is an ongoing procurement process. I fully believe that they're still at it, but I can't say that there is some new list that they're out buying right now,'' the official said.
The diplomats said their motivation for briefing Reuters was concern that France, Britain and Germany were enabling Iran to play for time while the trio struggle to find a way of enticing Tehran into fully suspending its uranium enrichment program.
Iran agreed with the Europeans last October to suspend its enrichment program, which the United States believes is aimed at making fissile material for atomic weapons. But Tehran never fully suspended the program and recently said it would resume production, assembly and testing of enrichment centrifuges.
TIME CRITICAL
``There is a recognition here that time is a very critical factor,'' said a non-Western diplomatic source. ``The red line is not when they (the Iranians) get the bomb, but when they don't need any more external assistance.''
A senior European diplomat said there was a lot of evidence that what Iran sought was ``break-out capability'' that would stop short of building a nuclear weapon but give it the ability to do so rapidly if it chose to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The United States is bound to seize on the new intelligence as further proof of its belief that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear power program.
But analysts and diplomats say Washington will have trouble persuading skeptics that Iran wants the bomb given that U.S. and British intelligence about pre-war Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- a key justification for the decision to invade Iraq -- turned out to be grossly inaccurate.
Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity. President Mohammad Khatami said Wednesday that the diplomats' intelligence was false.
``It is not true at all,'' he told reporters in Tehran. ``If they're aiming to force Iran to abandon its right to use peaceful nuclear technology, then I should say that we will never abandon our right.''
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been probing Iran's nuclear program for nearly two years, declined comment. While the IAEA has reported numerous instances where Tehran concealed potentially arms-related activities, it has found no clear proof of a weapons program.
``We all think the American assessment is probably right because there is no other good explanation for the Iranian activities,'' a senior international diplomat involved in the investigation of Iran told the New York Times this week.
``But we still don't have the smoking gun,'' he said, adding that after Iraq ``we need smoking guns more than ever.''
Diplomats and analysts say that while Washington was clearly wrong that Saddam Hussein had caches of WMD, U.S. and Israeli claims that Iran is covering up suspicious nuclear activities have been repeatedly confirmed by the IAEA inspectors' findings.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. finds jobs in Iraq for nuclear scientists
Goal is to thwart proliferation threat
Farah Stockman
The Boston Globe
Friday, July 16, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=529665.html
WASHINGTON Fifteen months ago, the U.S. government wanted to arrest and interrogate Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, the father of Iraq's nuclear program.
Now, it wants to get him a job.
State Department officials have sent several messages through intermediaries to the aging particle physicist, letting him know that he has a chance to earn a healthy salary, a well-stocked research lab and a place at the table of the new Iraq.
The overtures to Jaffar - who now lives in the United Arab Emirates - are part of a State Department effort to hire unemployed Iraqi weapons scientists who U.S. officials believe are in danger of passing their expertise in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare to rogue regimes or terrorist groups.
Begun quietly in an unmarked villa outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, the U.S.-financed Iraqi International Center for Science and Industry already employs about 60 scientists, half of whom were recently investigated or imprisoned on the orders of the U.S. team that was searching for Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Although now it appears that Saddam's weapons programs withered away a decade ago after the Gulf War, the scientists who worked on them are still a possible proliferation threat, according to State Department officials who hope to engage as many as 500 former weapons scientists on reconstruction projects in Iraq that provide an alternative to weapons work.
A U.S. under secretary of state, John Bolton, has described the effort as a "race against time." Indeed, at least one Iraqi nuclear engineer told U.S. officials he had been approached by both insurgents and by Iranians who offered him a substantial sum of money to work on their own nuclear program. Another Iraqi weapons scientist with a doctorate in mechanical engineering is believed to have traveled to Tehran.
"Iran, Syria or Al Qaeda would have high interest in these scientists," said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who has arranged jobs for some Iraqi weapons scientists in the United States. "This is a far more difficult situation than Russia."
Albright said the Iraqi scientists could be killed or kidnapped far more easily than in Russia.
The State Department has provided $2 million for the scientist program, which was modeled after a similar effort in Russia and the former Soviet republics. The former U.S.-led occupation authority also had earmarked $37 million, raised from the sale of Iraqi oil, for related nonproliferation projects to be run by the Iraqi government.
"Someone who knew 10 years ago how to produce chemical weapons against the Kurds still knows how, still has the recipe," said Anne Harrington, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction. Harrington's team is scheduled to brief Senator Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the scientist recruitment program Friday in Washington. Lugar has been a central player in the initiative to tighten controls over nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.
To persuade scientists not to sell their skills on the open market, the State Department program arranges for them to become consultants to Iraq's ministries - from the environment to the oil industry - and pays generous salaries. Other perks are expected to include access to satellite-based Internet, reconstruction of laboratories, assistance with research grants, possible venture capital funds, and travel opportunities, like an upcoming trip to the United States for eight former weapons scientists.
"It's not enough to pay a salary. You have to give them back their self-esteem as scientists," said Alex Dehgan, who ran the program in Iraq for the State Department under a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Obviously these guys had a lot of prestige and they had built up careers that had suddenly come to an end."
The program got off to a difficult start. Recruitment was a challenge, as many prospective scientists were in hiding or in prison, like General Amir Saadi, once Saddam's liaison to UN weapons inspectors, who has reportedly been kept in solitary confinement since he surrendered last April. The treatment of the scientists sparked bitterness that continues to this day.
"We are not fools," said Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist now living in Canada. "They think we are simply puppets. The whole scientific infrastructure they have blown to pieces."
A major challenge is battling the perception that Americans are rewarding scientists who once worked on Saddam's illicit programs. For instance, Hussain al-Shahristani, the former head of the Iraqi nuclear energy agency who spent more than a decade in Abu Ghraib prison because he refused to work on Saddam's bomb, was not offered a space at the U.S.-financed center because he is not a weapons scientist.
With the handover of authority in Iraq, many scientists are being released from prison. But the fate of many others is still unknown. Some have scattered across the country or fled abroad.
Jaffar, the face of Saddam's nuclear ambitions, has re-entered the scientific community while in exile, attending conferences and recently joining Iraq's new National Academy of Sciences, which was founded by Shahristani with the help of State Department funds.
-------- korea
North Korea wants nukes
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
July 16, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040715-104810-8100r.htm
North Korea has acknowledged its nuclear weapons aspirations, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly told Congress yesterday.
"While they said they wanted to maintain a civil nuclear program, they also acknowledged that most of their nuclear programs are weapons related," Mr. Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Kelly said the revelations came during the recent six-party talks with the communist nation aimed at ending the standoff over the country's nuclear program.
The third round of talks ended in Beijing last month and included the United States, North Korea, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea.
North Korea's leaders have sent conflicting signals about their nuclear programs in the past, although they have spoken about their nuclear-deterrent options and analysts think the country has one or more atom bombs.
Mr. Kelly said the North Korean delegation identified the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which was reactivated in 2002, as a nuclear weapons facility.
He also said that the country proposed a freeze on its program in exchange for energy aid and the lifting of economic sanctions among other issues, all considered main goals of the poor nation.
For their part, U.S. negotiators proposed that the country dismantle its entire nuclear program before any deals on aid.
--------
More N. Korean Bombs Likely, U.S. Official Says
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53165-2004Jul15.html
North Korea is likely to be producing nuclear bombs even as it conducts negotiations with the United States and four other countries on ending its weapons programs, the senior U.S. official responsible for those talks told Congress yesterday.
"Time is certainly a valid factor in this," said James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We don't know the details, but it's quite possible that North Korea is proceeding along, developing additional fissionable material and possibly additional nuclear weapons."
Although North Korea has asserted that it has produced weapons-grade plutonium since the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear programs began 20 months ago -- and though U.S. intelligence analysts broadly believe that the number of nuclear weapons held by North Korea has increased from two to at least eight during this period -- it is highly unusual for a senior administration official to concede publicly that North Korea's stockpile may be growing.
After four negotiating sessions with North Korea and its neighbors since April 2003, Kelly said, it "is clear we are still far from agreement." The first round included China and later expanded to involve South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Democrats on the committee scolded the administration for waiting too long to present North Korea with a detailed proposal for ending the crisis. At the most recent six-nation talks, held in Beijing last month, the administration proposed that once North Korea declares it would end its programs, U.S. allies such as South Korea could provide immediate energy assistance.
North Korea then would have three months to disclose its programs and have its claims verified by U.S. intelligence. After that, the United States would join in providing Pyongyang with written security assurances and participate in a process that might ultimately result in the normalization of relations.
"The bottom line is that we now confront a much more dangerous adversary than we did in 2001," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the panel. He accused the administration of adopting a policy of "benign neglect" even after learning that Pyongyang had a clandestine nuclear effort, and then taking "more than two years to resolve its internal divisions and settle on an approach for dealing with North Korea."
Under questioning, Kelly made it clear that improving relations with North Korea would take much more than the dismantling of its nuclear programs. In particular, he said, North Korea would need to improve its human rights record.
"We're not looking to bribe North Korea to end its nuclear weapons state," Kelly said. "We see this as a very important objective, but then we have made clear that normalization of our relations would have to follow these other important issues. And human rights is co-equal in importance, perhaps even more important, than conventional forces, chemical weapons, ballistic missiles, matters of that sort."
In response to the administration's proposal, North Korea has demanded immediate assistance from the United States once it freezes its programs. Kelly said the administration is still studying the North Korean proposal, which he called vague.
He told lawmakers that the administration does not consider the security assurances a "reward" or a benefit that could be claimed by North Korea as a U.S. concession.
-------- missile defense
Possible US sale to India of counter-measure systems for head of state's aircraft
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jul 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040715230150.esabw8at.html
The Pentagon Thursday announced the possible 40 million dollar sale to India of missile warning and countermeasure systems for three new Boeing 737 aircraft used by the country's head of state.
The three systems each consist of a AN/AAQ-24 large aircraft infrared countermeasures system, a AN/ALE-47H countermeasure dispensing system and a AN/ALQ-211 early warning suite controller and radar warning system, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.
It said the total value, if all options were exercised, could be as high as 40 million dollars.
"India will install the self-protection systems on three new Boeing 737 aircraft," it said. "They will use the system for the movement and protection of their head of state."
The prime contractor will be L3 Communications of Greenville, Texas.
The AN/AAQ-24 is a system that automatically alerts an aircraft's crew to a missile launch and activates an infrared countermeasure to foil the launch.
The AN/ALQ-211 is used to detect hostile radar signals and jam them, and the AN/ALE-47H is computer controlled system to dispense decoys.
-------- u.n.
UN nuclear watchdog challenges Britain to reveal Niger intelligence
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
UK Independent
16 July 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=541511
The United Nations nuclear watchdog yesterday challenged the Government to share intelligence which it used to accuse Saddam Hussein of trying to buy uranium from two African countries for a nuclear bomb.
Lord Butler of Brockwell said the Government's claims were "well-founded," after admitting "significant controversy" surrounded the reliability of government statements about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium ore.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determined in March 2003 that documents which allegedly "proved" an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger were forgeries. But the British government, the first to put the claims into the public domain in the September 2002 dossier, continued to insist it had separate sources which confirmed its statement.
Lord Butler's report revealed the accusations against Iraq concerned not only Niger, but the war-ravaged, mineral-rich country of the Democratic Republic of Congo. An IAEA spokesman said that the Vienna-based body responsible for monitoring Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions on nuclear issues, had not been informed of the specific intelligence on the two countries. A spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, said: "We did not see any indication of any violation, but we remain open to reopening the investigation if the information is made available to us."
Governments are bound by UN resolutions to submit to the IAEA any information concerning illegal Iraqi weapons. Lord Butler said Britain had "further intelligence from additional sources" in 2002 that Iraqi officials visited Niger in early 1999 to buy uranium ore. "There was disagreement as to whether a sale had been agreed and uranium shipped," he added.
So far as Democratic Republic of Congo is concerned, "there was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached," Lord Butler said. "We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded."
He said the forged documents were not available to the British government at the time, and they did not undermine the Government's case.
IAEA officials have expressed frustration that Lord Butler's team appeared more willing to share information with the press than with the UN body charged with investigating Iraq's nuclear programme.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Utility Loses Track of Spent Nuclear Fuel
July 16, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-utilities-pge.html
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pacific Gas & Electric said on Friday that it had lost track of three pieces of spent nuclear fuel it last used in the late 1960s, although the utility said there was no threat to public safety.
The San Francisco-based utility, a unit of PG&E Corp. said the nuclear fuel was from the now closed Humboldt Bay nuclear plant near Eureka in northern California.
Pacific Gas & Electric said there was a discrepancy in its records related to the movement of the used nuclear fuel more than 34 years ago.
The used nuclear fuel consisted of three, half-inch diameter by 18-inch long segments, weighing a total of about 4 pounds, which were cut from a single, seven-foot fuel rod in 1968.
``You could use that kind of material for a dirty bomb but it was probably lost long before 9/11 and they are just now accounting for it,'' said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group.
``It is likely it was mistaken for something else and shipped off-site. It is not likely that someone took it off-site either maliciously or inadvertently,'' he added, noting it may be have been removed during a site clean-up some years ago.
The Humboldt Bay reactor operated from 1963 to 1976. The utility said no fuel has been shipped off-site since 1974.
MINUTES REVIEWED
The utility said it discovered that the fuel was missing on June 23 when it reviewed minutes of ``on-site review committee'' meetings dating from 1968. Records provided conflicting accounts about what happened to the pieces.
The review was to prepare for moving used fuel from the pool to dry cask storage and decommissioning the plant.
``The fuel rod segments remain in the used fuel pool, or were shipped off-site to an appropriate controlled facility, either for analysis or reprocessing,'' said Greg Rueger, the utility's Chief Nuclear Officer.
``However, we must ensure that we have accurate records and that entails a meticulous search of the pool itself, to confirm the location of these three used fuel segments,'' he added.
Lochbaum said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was making nuclear plant operators physically look at spent fuel after operators of the Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut lost track of a couple of rods about three years ago.
``When they do inventories they really have to look at it (now),'' said Lochbaum, noting that as the plant had not operated for many years there would have been a considerable decay in the radioactivity of the rods.
The utility said the investigation into the location of the rods could take several more weeks to complete.
-------- colorado
Demolition of Most Dangerous Building in America Begins
July 16, 2004
DENVER, Colorado, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-16-09.asp#anchor1
On Thursday, workers began demolishing Building 771 at Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons production plant 16 miles northwest of Denver. Building 771 is the first plutonium process building of its size and complexity to be demolished in the United States.
In 1995, the Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that Building 771 was its greatest vulnerability and the building was called the "most dangerous building in America," in media reports.
"The demolition of one the most contaminated buildings in the country, once thought impossible, demonstrates the nation's commitment to accelerated cleanup and closure of Rocky Flats," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
Rocky Flats is now classed as a DOE owned cleanup and closure site operated by Kaiser-Hill Company under an accelerated closure contract. As part of that contract, dismantlement of Building 771 is expected to take six to eight weeks, with completion scheduled for September 2004.
When this historic cleanup is complete," Abraham said, "it will show that the U.S. government can clean up the legacy of the Cold War and turn the 6,000 plus acre reserve from a perceived public liability into a true public asset, a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."
The safe cleanup and closure of an entire former nuclear weapons production site has been a task of such magnitude and complexity that it has never before been attempted, or accomplished, anywhere else in the world, Abraham said.
During a nine year cleanup process conducted in preparation for the demolition 15,000 liters of plutonium solutions have been drained and stabilized, the DOE says. Workers have removed 240 contaminated gloveboxes, 251 tanks, more than 11 miles of aging piping, and 40,000 liters of contaminated sludges.
"Under the Energy Department's accelerated cleanup plan, all the weapons usable material at Rocky Flats is gone - 12 years ahead of the original schedule," said Secretary Abraham.
The majority of the plutonium stockpile at Rocky Flats was shipped to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Other materials were sent to the Pantex facility on Texas and to facilities in Tennessee. Some of the leftover plutonium was declared a waste and treated and packaged for shipment to the Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico.
An issue at the site is thousands of cubic yards of wastes that still must be shipped away. Some is waste left from the weapons production era, but most of it is being generated during the site's cleanup as buildings are torn down and soil contamination is addressed.
The Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board warns that while some waste has already been shipped to sites in New Mexico, Nevada and Utah, some types of radioactive waste do not yet have a disposal location designated or available. These "orphan" wastes must be addressed if the site is to successfully close.
The successful decontamination and demolition of the major plutonium production facilities such as Building 771 must be done carefully to prevent air dispersion of the plutonium embedded in these facilities, the Board says.
Plutonium emits alpha radiation, which can travel only short distances and will not penetrate through items like a piece of paper or human skin. The much thinner lining of the human lung is not as effective a deterrent so the greatest danger from plutonium comes if a person inhales plutonium. Once inside the lung, the energy released by the plutonium particle can cause damage to the surrounding tissue and may lead to the development of a cancerous tumor.
Another risk at the site centers on protection of surface water leaving the site. Soil and groundwater cleanup projects are underway to accomplish this risk reduction.
Cleanup of Rocky Flats was expected to take 65 years and cost in excess of $36 billion. Abraham said the cleanup now is expected to be completed at a cost of $7 billion "a savings to the taxpayers of $29 billion."
The 6,550 acre site is part of the national nuclear weapons complex, at one time responsible for the production of nuclear weapons. Operations at the site began in 1952. During the Cold War, Rocky Flats was responsible for manufacturing the nuclear trigger device or "pit", a small, hollow sphere made from plutonium. No longer needed for nuclear weapons production, the site is left with a legacy of contamination.
Building 771 is the second of the site's five major plutonium contaminated facilities to be demolished. Over the next 18 months, the remaining 450 facilities and structures at Rocky Flats will be decommissioned and demolished and environmental remediation completed. Rocky Flats is scheduled to close in 2006. It will then be classed as a National Wildlife Refuge.
View the Kaiser-Hill Rocky Flats contract with the U.S. Energy Department online at: http://www.rfets.gov/doe/rfoffices/rffo/doeprocurement/KHContract/index_Contract.htm
--------
Demolition Is Begun at Plutonium Site
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/national/16rocky.html
GOLDEN, Colo., July 15 - As part of a lengthy cleanup of the former Rocky Flats weapons complex, demolition began on Thursday at a highly contaminated building where workers once handled highly radioactive materials used in triggers for nuclear weapons.
Leaks, spills and a 1957 fire plagued the structure, Building 771, and part of it was closed 30 years ago because radiation levels were off the charts. In 1994, the Department of Energy called the building its "greatest vulnerability'' because of the buildup of contamination.
Rocky Flats started producing plutonium triggers in the 1950's. It was closed in 1989 when safety violations led to a raid by federal agents.
Work began in 1994 to decommission the complex, and the site, which includes 6,000 acres of open space, will eventually be turned over to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Half of the roughly 800 buildings that made up the sprawling complex have been dismantled. Completion is expected by December 2006.
Department of Energy officials originally estimated that the cleanup would take 60 years and cost up to $36 billion. The final cost will probably be less than $7 billion.
The faster pace has led critics to question whether proper precautions are being taken and if the Kaiser-Hill Company, in charge of the cleanup, is more interested in earning hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses for finishing ahead of schedule.
Kaiser-Hill has defended its safety record, and state and federal officials express confidence that proper procedures are being followed.
-------- new jersey
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Wins Fusion Office
July 16, 2004
PLAINSBORO, New Jersey, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-16-09.asp#anchor4
The U.S. project office for the international nuclear fusion experiment will be located at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on Princeton University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, the U.S. Energy Department and the university announced on Tuesday.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), is the next major step for the development of nuclear fusion, the same type of energy that powers the Sun and other stars. It is the fusion of atoms, rather than the splitting of atoms, the process that powers today's nuclear electric plants and weapons.
No fusion energy will be generated at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL). The experimental facility will be located in one of two potential host countries - the European Union and Japan - each of which is making its case to the group of ITER partner nations - China, European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States.
There are two competing sites to host the $5 billion test bed for harnessing nuclear fusion to generate electricity. The European Union has selected Cadarache, France, as its candidate site; Japan's contender is Rokkasho. The U.S. supports the Japanese site.
In partnership with the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the plasma Physics Lab will be responsible for overseeing the U.S. ITER Project Office and providing it with the staffing and facilities to support construction of this international research facility.
These will include securing technical assistance from the U.S. fusion community, procuring and shipping U.S. hardware contributions, arranging for U.S. personnel to work abroad at the ITER site, representing the U.S. with the international ITER organization on construction and preparation for ITER operations, and coordinating and integrating the U.S. fusion community's ITER project activities with the international ITER project.
The PPPL/ORNL proposal was one of three proposals submitted by DOE national laboratories to lead the Project Office. The two other proposals were from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
PPPL Director Robert Goldston said, "We had very highly qualified competition, and so we are particularly pleased with the outcome of the selection process. The efforts of the U.S. in support of ITER will be nationwide and we will be drawing on the capabilities of the whole U.S. fusion research community."
-------- new mexico
US Nuclear Lab Temporarily Halts Secret Work
Story by Adam Tanner
REUTERS USA:
July 16, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26057/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - The Los Alamos National Laboratory, a key U.S. center for nuclear weapons research, has temporarily ceased all classified work after vital data was reported missing last week from a research area, lab officials said yesterday.
Such a precaution at Los Alamos, the New Mexico birthplace of the first atomic bomb during World War II, has not occurred in recent memory, lab officials said, highlighting the seriousness of the breach.
The lab said it learned of two missing data storage disks on July 7 during an inventory check. At a news conference, the lab director and other officials declined to detail the nature of the data, citing national security concerns.
"Until such time as we are confident that we are addressing this issue, then all activities with respect to classified materials have been put on hold," said Gerald Parsky, chairman of the Regents of the University of California which manages Los Alamos. "These breaches of national security will not be tolerated."
The case of the missing disks is the latest in a series of security shortcomings at U.S. nuclear weapons labs in recent years. Just last month a set of keys to a sensitive nuclear area at Los Alamos went missing for most of a day.
"This is a big deal, but it is certainly a necessary step," Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington D.C., said of the Los Alamos halt of classified work.
The missing data was on two zip disk drives, she said, adding: "They need to change the way they handle classified media and move to what's called a media-less system so that there isn't the capacity for a scientist to just walk off with a disk or a zip drive."
Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said "fewer than 20" staffers have had their lab access suspended pending the results of the inquiry.
BREAKING THE RULES
Lab director Gerald Nanos met some of Los Alamos's 12,000 employees - most of whom have government security clearances - this week. Yesterday, he met with University of California officials in San Francisco to address the latest scandal.
"Where in the past, most of the issues were associated with inventory errors and that sort of thing, I have a clear indication here that people did not follow the rules as to the chain of custody and keeping track and doing the proper documented transfer of material," Nanos said.
Officials said, however, that they had no indication that the sensitive data had been taken outside of the well-secured Los Alamos facility, which is spread over nearly 40 square miles. Four years ago Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, was accused of stealing secrets at Los Alamos. He later pleaded guilty to one count of downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure computer after the government's case against him collapsed.
Robert Dynes, University of California president, said any findings about the incident would likely be kept secret.
"If you were to suddenly tell everyone in the world that this information might be out there, you would start a treasure hunt, and that's not what we are interested in doing here," he said. "We have to protect the security of the nation."
Robert Foley, a retired admiral who serves as the Los Alamos vice president for laboratory management, said an isolated culture among scientists there may have contributed to sloppy security standards.
----
Security Breached At Lab Again
Associated Press
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53127-2004Jul15.html
ALBUQUERQUE, July 15 -- The most recent security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory prompted the lab to halt all classified work Thursday while officials conduct a wall-to-wall inventory of sensitive data.
The stand-down began at noon, and the inventory of CDs, floppy disks and other data storage devices is expected to be completed within days, lab spokesman Kevin Roark said.
Last week, the lab reported that two items containing classified information were missing. The items were identified only as removable data storage devices.
The incident was the latest in a series of embarrassments that have prompted federal officials to put the Los Alamos management contract up for bid for the first time in the 61-year history of the lab that built the atomic bomb.
Lab officials are searching for the items and investigating how they disappeared.
Individuals who had access to the items are being allowed to enter their workplace under escort only, and work has been shut down in part of the unit involved, the Weapons Physics Directorate, while the investigation continues, lab officials said.
The National Nuclear Security Agency, the federal agency overseeing the labs, sent a team to Los Alamos this week to investigate the loss.
The University of California, which has operated Los Alamos from its beginnings during the World War II race to build the bomb, has not decided whether to compete for the contract when it expires next year.
But UC President Robert C. Dynes warned Thursday: "These types of incidents are unacceptable, and they really do have to come to an end."
Similarly classified material was reported missing in May. Lab officials later said they believe the material was destroyed, as intended, but that the paperwork was faulty.
----
Los Alamos Halts All of Its Classified Research After Data Vanishes
July 16, 2004
New York Times
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/national/16lab.html
After the disappearance last week of two removable data storage devices, officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory yesterday announced a halt to classified research while they conduct an inventory of sensitive data.
The halt affects the majority of work at Los Alamos, one of the nation's two nuclear weapons research laboratories.
The loss of the storage devices was discovered July 7 during preparations to run an experiment in the laboratory's weapons physics division. The devices have not been found.
The security lapse comes as the contract for managing Los Alamos goes out to bid. The University of California has run Los Alamos since it was founded during World War II, but the secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, decided last year to seek competing bids after the discovery that some employees had spent thousands of dollars of laboratory funds on personal items. At the time, Mr. Abraham criticized the laboratory for "systematic management failure" in its business procedures.
In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Abraham was similarly harsh on the laboratory's handling of classified information.
"The investigation to date indicates widespread disregard of security procedures by laboratory employees," Mr. Abraham said. "This is absolutely unacceptable. While our first priority must be to locate the missing material, the government will insist that the University of California, which operates Los Alamos, ensures that the laboratory take strong measures to correct the systematic flaws that allowed this problem to occur."
Conducting the inventory will take at least several days, said Kevin Roark, a laboratory spokesman. Employees involved in classified research will also repeat training on laboratory procedures and policies on handling sensitive data on floppy disks, CD-ROM's, memory cards and other removable data storage devices.
Officials declined to say what kind of storage devices were missing or whether the data involved nuclear weapons research.
The Department of Energy will soon release a request for proposals for running Los Alamos after the University of California's current contract ends in September 2005.
--------
N.M. Lab Finds Missing Classified Disk
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Lab-Missing-Disk.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A classified floppy disk reported missing from a government nuclear weapons lab was found Friday, but officials were tight-lipped about details surrounding the incident.
The disk was listed as missing during a June 30 inventory at Sandia National Laboratories. The lab said the floppy disk came from a military organization.
``The disk was always under the control of individuals authorized to possess it,'' said Ron Detry, Sandia's vice president of integrated security and chief security officer.
Detry cited a procedural error in the disk's transfer between lab organizations, but lab officials declined to comment on where the disk was found or any other details.
``We are relieved the disk has been found. But in my mind, the nature of the near miss of this recent incident is far too close for comfort,'' Sandia Director C. Paul Robinson said. ``We must find better ways and procedures for ensuring the protection of such material.''
Sandia officials notified the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration about the disk.
Robinson said he has asked Detry to lead a task force to improve the management of classified electronic information and removable media.
The incident at Sandia came on the heels of another security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where two items identified only as removable data storage devices with classified information turned up missing during a special inventory.
-------- new york
Regulators Meet With Critics of New Storage for Indian Point
By KIRK SEMPLE
July 16, 2004
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/nyregion/16indian.html?pagewanted=print&position=
PEEKSKILL, N.Y., July 15 - Federal regulators, in a meeting here on Thursday with local residents, activists and government officials, sought to placate critics of a plan to build new storage for highly radioactive waste at the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the plant, organized the meeting to give the public a chance to ask questions - and vent - about a plan to transfer spent fuel rods from storage pools at the two reactors to a set of storage silos, or "dry casks," made of concrete and steel.
The company that operates the plant, in nearby Buchanan, says the move is needed to free up space in the storage pools, now nearing capacity. The company, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, has already received the approval of federal regulators to use the dry casks, so it seemed doubtful that the four-hour meeting, held in a conference room of a marina on the Hudson River, would have any effect on the plan.
Still, a commission panel, in a series of presentations and in a sometimes feisty question-and-answer session, insisted that it would subject the dry casks to rigorous inspections.
"While we believe the systems today are safe and secure, we don't stop there, and we won't stop there," said Larry W. Camper, deputy director of the agency's licensing and inspections directorate.
A lobby led by the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, a group of civic organizations that wants to shut down the plant and its two reactors, has faulted Entergy for its choice of dry casks, saying the current model has design faults. The groups also insist that Entergy spread the dry casks out and conceal them within bunkers and containment buildings.
Entergy says that its plan is safe and in compliance with federal regulations, and that the dry casks are secure enough to prevent radiation leaks and survive terrorist attacks.
"The casks, we believe, will withstand a commercial airliner crashing into them," Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said in an interview on Thursday. Each cylindrical cask is 20 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter and has walls two feet thick.
Commission officials said the type of dry cask selected by Entergy was already in use at eight American nuclear power plants.
Entergy and federal regulatory officials say the dry casks will remain at Indian Point only as long as it takes to open a federal storage area for spent fuel rods.
But a long-sought government effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada hit a major snag last Friday when a federal appeals court said the government standards for protecting the public from radiation leaks there were inadequate.
Kyle Rabin, senior policy analyst for Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental group, said officials should honestly regard the dry casks not as a temporary measure but as something permanent, particularly with Yucca Mountain in doubt. Indian Point, he warned, was being converted into "a nuclear waste dump on the banks of the Hudson."
-------- washington
Agency: Hanford Workers Exposed to Vapors
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Vapors.html
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Some workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have been exposed to dangerous vapors from tanks that store radioactive waste, a federal report said Friday.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health investigated complaints from workers that their health was at risk when working near the underground tanks containing wastes left from the production of nuclear weapons materials.
The employees work for CH2M Hill Hanford Group, a private contractor that operates the so-called tank farms on the 586-square-mile reservation near Richland.
NIOSH interviewed 54 managers and employees of CH2M Hill Hanford, and found that 35 reported acute and chronic health concerns they believed were related to the automatic venting of gases from the tanks. Workers also worried about a lack of respirators and of adequate environmental monitoring.
NIOSH recommended that an air-purifying respirator be provided to any worker entering a tank farm, with higher-quality equipment available for those entering known vapor-release areas.
The Energy Department's Office of River Protection, which owns Hanford, said the NIOSH findings are consistent with other recent assessments.
A plan to correct the problems will be developed, the department said in a statement, and NIOSH will be asked to return to Hanford to study the followup.
Joy Turner, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill Hanford, said the contractor will cooperate to bolster worker safety.
Hanford was created as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. Nuclear and hazardous wastes from decades of plutonium production are stored in 177 underground tanks, grouped together in tank farms.
Hanford is now engaged in the cleanup of the nation's largest collection of nuclear waste, a $2 billion-a-year job that involves some 11,000 workers.
Also Friday, Washington's governor and attorney general said they'll ask a federal judge to expand the state's lawsuit against the Energy Department, seeking to halt new shipments of low-level radioactive wastes to Hanford.
Gov. Gary Locke and Attorney General Christine Gregoire said the department has not fully complied with federal environmental laws, and the agency should complete the Hanford cleanup before bringing in more waste. Groundwater contamination is a key concern.
In June, the department began shipping low-level radioactive waste to Hanford from the Rocky Flats nuclear complex in Colorado.
-------- us nuc waste
Neb. Wants Nuke Judgment to Be Overturned
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuke-Dump-Lawsuit.html
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Nebraska asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to overturn a $151 million judgment against the state for refusing to host a nuclear waste dump.
Attorney General Jon Bruning was not optimistic that the high court will agree to hear the case, let alone rule in Nebraska's favor.
``Look at the track record in this litigation -- we haven't won anything yet,'' Bruning said. ``That's not to say we have no chance. But let's be realistic -- it's a long shot.''
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Lincoln ruled in 2002 that former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated and orchestrated plot to keep the regional dump from being built in Nebraska. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in February.
Nebraska officials argued that they refused to license the dump for low-level waste because of concerns about pollution and a high water table at the proposed site in Boyd County in the northeast part of the state.
The dump was to take waste from the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which consists of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.
Nebraska doesn't have the money to pay the court judgment because of an ongoing budget crunch and has been trying to negotiate a settlement.
The compact earlier rejected a settlement offer and said it would offer a counterproposal. Compact officials are scheduled to discuss negotiations at a meeting next week.
The Associated Press reported last week that Gov. Mike Johanns had approached Texas Gov. Rick Perry about storing nuclear waste there. As part of the deal, Nebraska has offered to pay Texas a flat fee of $25 million to take the waste from the group of five states.
Nebraska also offered to pay an additional $5 million to Texas to cover any unforeseen expenses for storing the waste.
Such a deal would not release Nebraska from the court judgment unless the five-state group agreed.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Devastated by AIDS, Africa Sees Life Expectancy Plunge
July 16, 2004
By CELIA W. DUGGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/africa/16afri.html?pagewanted=all
Africa is getting poorer and hungrier as life expectancy continues its steep decline in the countries hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic, according to a United Nations report released Thursday. It said infants born now in seven nations with high rates of H.I.V. infection could expect to live less than 40 years.
The report, by the United Nations Development Program, also said the sub-Saharan African region as a whole was getting poorer, with the prospect that rising numbers of Africans will subsist on less than $1 a day in the years to come.
Last year, the United Nations Development Program projected that it would take Africa more than 140 years to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty. But this year, as even that slight progress is gone, its annual Human Development Report states that "no date can be set because the situation in the region is worsening, not improving."
As Africa struggles with the world's heaviest AIDS burden, South Asia and East Asia are making rapid progress in reducing poverty and hunger, driven mainly by the advances of China and India, the two most populous countries, the report found.
Africa's setbacks are a break from recent decades of progress. From 1960 to 2000, for example, life expectancy in developing countries rose to 63 years from 46. Africa was part of that progress until the mid-1990's, when AIDS began seriously eroding its gains. The bleak statistical portrait of sub-Saharan Africa, drawn from the 2004 Human Development Report, does not spare South Africa, the region's economic powerhouse, which celebrated a decade of post-apartheid democracy this year. It is a discouraging portrait that the South African government sharply disputed Thursday.
The report's summary measure of well-being - gauged by life expectancy, literacy, school enrollment rates and per-capita income - shows that South Africans are worse off today than they were when apartheid ended. That finding is largely driven by falling life expectancy because of AIDS, which the United Nations Development Program set at 48.8 years for South Africa in this year's calculation.
Joel Netshitenzhe, a spokesman for the South African government, called the United Nations' life expectancy estimate "nonsensical." South Africa's Medical Research Council, a government-financed independent body, estimated that life expectancy in South African had fallen much less severely, to 55 in 2000 from 57 in 1995.
According to the South African government's assessment of its people's well-being, based on the higher, national calculations of life expectancy, South Africans are better off than they were a decade ago. "We have interacted with the U.N.D.P. and demonstrated that some of the data they used to come to their conclusions are inaccurate," Mr. Netshitenzhe said.
Fu Haishan, a statistician with the United Nations Development Program, said the Human Development Report relied on statistics from the World Bank and United Nations agencies that specialize in education, hunger and population "to ensure minimum and common standards are used."
Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the program, said in an interview that he had had difficult exchanges with South Africa over the report's findings. He called the life expectancy data for South Africa "catastrophic," even as he recognized post-apartheid improvements in education, electricity and water provision.
As to what South Africa needs to do, Mr. Malloch Brown said, "Fix the AIDS problem."
South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, has been criticized at home and abroad for being slow to aggressively tackle AIDS. More than five million South Africans are infected with H.I.V. And unlike neighboring Botswana, which started an effort to provide drug treatment to people with AIDS in 2001, South Africa's treatment effort just got under way this year.
The South African government spokesman, Mr. Netshitenzhe, defended the government's AIDS effort, saying it had the continent's biggest prevention program and expected to be providing drug treatment to 53,000 people by March.
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Rwanda Backed Congo Uprising, Experts Tell UN
July 16, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-congo-democratic-rwanda.html
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Rwanda recruited, trained and sheltered renegade soldiers who staged a mutiny in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo last month, offering them mobile phones and cash, according to a draft U.N.-commissioned report.
Rwandan officials rounded up potential fighters in the border town of Cyangugu and promised them phones or $100 to fight with forces loyal to Colonel Jules Mutebutsi and General Laurent Nkunda, said the draft seen by Reuters Friday.
``The group of experts concluded that Rwanda's violations involved direct and indirect support, both in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Rwanda, to the mutinous troops of Jules Mutebutsi and Laurent Nkunda,'' it said.
``Rwanda has also exerted a degree of command and control over Mutebutsi's forces.''
The report was prepared by a panel of security and customs experts for a U.N. Security Council committee monitoring an arms embargo on eastern Congo.
The Rwandan army rejected as outrageous the charges that it had assisted Mutebutsi and Nkunda, who briefly seized the strategic eastern town of Bukavu last month.
The renegade officers belong to RCD-Goma, a former rebel group backed by Rwanda during Congo's five-year war. Some rebels were assimilated into the army after the war.
The crisis in Bukavu triggered fears of a new war in Africa's Great Lakes region, with Congo accusing Rwanda of backing the dissidents and Rwanda denying any such links.
Tiny Rwanda has invaded its neighbor twice in the past eight years, saying it had an obligation to hunt down Hutu rebels who took part in the country's 1994 genocide.
Congo moved some 13,000 reinforcements to the border region after the Bukavu insurgency.
DISARMED OR DANGEROUS?
Contrary to Rwanda's claims, its army had not disarmed Mutebutsi's troops after the revolt but offered them refuge, the report said.
``Approximately 300 of them, in uniform, remained in a coherent command structure, under the protection of Rwandan troops. The group concludes that these troops remain a latent threat to the DRC,'' it concluded after visiting Cyangugu.
Rwandan forces had also maintained ``semi-fixed positions'' in remote parts of Congo's North Kivu province, the report said, citing satellite images of fixed heavy weapons encasements and discussions with sources in both countries.
It also said trucks had been seen ferrying weapons to Congo through Rwandan and Ugandan border posts and cited weapon serial numbers as well as details of transit dates and routes.
A Rwandan army spokesman insisted Mutebutsi and his men had been disarmed and U.N. observers were welcome to check on them.
``This report is just fanning conflict in the region,'' said Colonel Patrick Karegeya. ``I don't think this report is credible. If it wanted to be credible, they should have brought these allegations and satellite images and showed them to us.''
Congo's army has clashed with Nkunda's forces in recent days, U.N. and military sources say, and civilians are reported to be fleeing as some 2,000 government soldiers advance.
Congo has repeatedly said it plans an offensive against Nkunda, diplomats and U.N. officials say. It was unclear whether the latest violence marked the start of the showdown.
-------- britain
Report Reveals Lies, Not the Liar
by Sanjay Suri,
July 16, 2004
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=3041
LONDON - The long-awaited inquiry report into intelligence failures that led Britain to join the invasion of Iraq reveals what went wrong, but stops short of saying who went wrong.
The 196-page report by Lord Butler discloses "serious flaws" in intelligence that led to Britain's involvement in the war. Key intelligence relied on third hand sources and was unreliable, the report says. And yet the report does not blame the intelligence services, because intelligence was pushed to "outer limits but not beyond."
The report says there is no reason that John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee who put together the intelligence on Iraq should not be appointed head of MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency, as planned.
The report also points out that the dossier presented to the public did not contain the caveats and qualifications that had been included in the reports that the intelligence services handed to the government.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Parliament after the report was tabled Wednesday: "Don't blame the intelligence community, blame me."
Blair was saying the right thing but several opposition leaders said he was not doing the right thing. And the report itself does not blame Blair for any wrongdoing.
"The report talks of lies, but does not say who the liars are," Mustafa Alani, Iraq expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) told IPS. "It is good news for Blair but bad news for democracy and for a system of accountability."
Going to war is the most crucial decision any government can make, Alani said. "At the end of the day Britain's decision has been shown to be based on a set of assumptions. This is very serious. You cannot justify the most important decision you take on just an assumption."
That view was expressed in the House of Commons but to no effect.
"Somehow, no one is to blame for all of this," Welsh nationalist leader Elfyn Llwyd said to Blair. "Why don't you take responsibility and do the honorable thing?"
Opposition leader Michael Howard said: "When presenting your case to the country, you chose to leave out those caveats, qualifications and cautions (of the intelligence services) - at issue is the prime minister's credibility. The question he must ask himself is, does he have any credibility left?"
Former Tory chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) Kenneth Clarke pointed out how Blair had misled the parliament and the country, as brought out in the Butler report.
"Do you believe that if you had come to this House and if you had used the actual language of the intelligence assessment you had read when you made the case for war, you would still have won the vote that carried this country to war?" Clarke asked. "I must tell you I do not think you would have done."
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned his cabinet post over the decision to invade Iraq added: "Had we done so we would have been spared the unavoidable conclusion from the content of the Butler Report that we committed British troops to action on the basis of false intelligence, overheated analysis and unreliable sources."
But Blair remained defiant. "No one lied," he said. "No one made up the intelligence. No one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services. Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty."
Blair said Britain had been right to invade Iraq. "I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."
Officials are talking of a shake-up in the intelligence services, but not a shake-up in the government.
Alani says Blair's future will rest on how the situation plays out within Iraq. "If there are positive developments, those would justify the mistakes of the government," he told IPS. "But if the situation deteriorates, then the mistakes of the government and this whole issue will be forced again to the front."
-------- business
Lockheed's Interior Contract Gets Rewrite
Guantanamo Interrogation Work Was Improperly Awarded Twice
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53666-2004Jul15.html
A newly disclosed Lockheed Martin Corp. contract to provide interrogators to the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is being rewritten after twice being found improperly awarded.
Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby said yesterday that the department will redo the contract on a sole source basis because interrogators are already on the job and the contract will expire in January. The General Services Administration determined that the contract had been improperly awarded twice before.
The department will not renew the contract once it expires, Quimby said. "This is not really what Interior's mission is really about," he said. "We're going to get out of the interrogation business."
Bethesda-based Lockheed declined to comment on the details of the contract, which was disclosed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal.
The issue mirrors the controversy surrounding a CACI International Inc. contract to provide interrogators to the military in Iraq, which was spotlighted after an Army investigation identified one of CACI's employees as a suspect in abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The GSA launched an investigation after determining that the work, managed by the Interior Department, was improperly ordered under an information technology contract.
For the Guantanamo work, the GSA awarded Affiliated Computer Systems Inc. a $13.3 million contract in November 2002 on behalf of the Pentagon's Southern Command. Affiliated Computer Systems was later acquired by Lockheed. The contract called for 30 intelligence analysts and 15 to 20 interrogators and strategic de-briefers, said Raul Duany, spokesman for the Southern Command.
The work was originally ordered under a GSA contract for information technology services, then under an engineering services contract with the Interior Department. A GSA review found that it was improper for the work questioning prisoners to be included in an information technology contract, said Mary Alice Johnson, a GSA spokeswoman. When the contract was canceled in late January, Southern Command moved the work to the Interior Department, where it was added to an engineering services contract.
"When the Army came to [Interior], they didn't inform us of the previous experience with GSA," Quimby said. If the agency had known about the canceled contract, it "would have been a warning light" and "there may have been a different determination" about how to handle the work, he said.
The controversy in May surrounding CACI's interrogation contract prompted GSA to review the Lockheed deal again. Once more, the GSA determined the contract had been improperly awarded.
Southern Command is awaiting the Pentagon's guidance on how to proceed after the contract expires, Duany said. "Our understanding is that we have not broken any laws or regulations," he said. "We just looked at the most expeditious way to meet the requirements and do our share in the war on terror and to contribute to intelligence gathering."
-------- iraq
Former general says U.S. military didn't expect Iraqi insurgency
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Thu, Jul. 15, 2004
Chicago Tribune
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/9164892.htm
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - One of the nation's top generals during the invasion of Iraq said Thursday that the insurgency took U.S. military leaders by surprise because they believed the assurances of Iraqi opposition groups and defectors that American forces would be welcomed.
Gen. John Keane, who served as the Army's vice chief of staff during the war and who has since retired, told the House Armed Services Committee: "We did not see it coming. And we were not properly prepared and organized to deal with it. ... Many of us got seduced by the Iraqi exiles in terms of what the outcome would be."
Keane's testimony echoes a recent admission by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who told the House committee last month that the Bush administration mistakenly believed the capture of top Iraqi leaders would quell insurgent violence.
Keane said an insurgency in Iraq after the end of major combat was discussed during months of war planning but was not made a priority.
Although Thursday's hearing was ostensibly held to examine Army plans to adopt new technology and transform its tactics, it became an examination of the trouble the military has encountered in Iraq.
Testifying with Keane were two other retired Army officers, Col. Douglas Macgregor, who left the service last month, and Maj. Gen. Robert Scales.
Scales advocated spending less money on new weapons and technology and more on educating soldiers in cultural, language and strategic skills.
Macgregor, who used his recent post at the National Defense University to serve as an in-house Army critic, said Army leaders paid little attention to the possibility of unrest following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Keane, who served briefly as acting Army chief of staff after the invasion, agreed. Spreading his hands wide, he told the committee, "This represents the space for the intellectual capital that we expended to take the regime down."
And then drawing two fingers nearly together to reveal just a small gap, Keane added, "This represents the space for the intellectual capital to deal with it after. I mean, that was the reality of it."
Macgregor said that rather than a large invasion force, a small force should have raced to Baghdad, avoiding fights with the Iraqi army, whose officers, he said, could have later helped administer a U.S.-run Iraq.
Scales said the Army based much of its Iraq strategy on the use of advanced weaponry and computer technology that linked battle units and did not emphasize intelligence.
All three retired officers portrayed an Army overtaxed by events in Iraq, as well as a National Guard and Reserve system bearing an unfair burden to support operations there and in Afghanistan.
Keane said the system of using those units as support for the active Army must end.
"That whole World War II or Cold War mobilization process we've got is broke," he said. "And I know the institution knows that, and they've got to fix it."
----
Allawi shot inmates in cold blood, say witnesses
July 16, 2004
By Paul McGeough, Chief Herald Correspondent, in Baghdad
Sydney Morning Herald
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh12.htm
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.
But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.
Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has issued a verbal denial.
The names of three of the alleged victims have been obtained by the Herald.
One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.
"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."
Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four metres in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head."
The witnesses said seven prisoners had been brought out to the courtyard, but the last man in the line was only wounded - in the neck, said one witness; in the chest, said the other.
Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.
There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts have been obtained.
A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New Yorker: "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat [intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."
In Baghdad, varying accounts of the shootings are interpreted by observers as useful to a little-known politician who, after 33 years in exile, needs to prove his leadership credentials as a "strongman" in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy.
Dr Allawi's statement dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.
But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs."
Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have told the policemen they must have courage in their work and that he would shield them from any repercussions if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty.
The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq.
"Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.
"He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people.'
"At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals."
Dr Allawi had made a surprise visit to the complex, they said.
Neither witness could give a specific date for the killings. But their accounts narrowed the time frame to on or around the third weekend in June - about a week before the rushed handover of power in Iraq and more than three weeks after Dr Allawi was named as the interim Prime Minister.
They said that as many as five of the dead prisoners were Iraqis, two of whom came from Samarra, a volatile town to the north of the capital, where an attack by insurgents on the home of Mr Al-Naqib killed four of the Interior Minister's bodyguards on June 19.
The Herald has established the names of three of the prisoners alleged to have been killed. Two names connote ties to Syrian-based Arab tribes, suggesting they were foreign fighters: Ahmed Abdulah Ahsamey and Amer Lutfi Mohammed Ahmed al-Kutsia.
The third was Walid Mehdi Ahmed al-Samarrai. The last word of his name indicates that he was one of the two said to come from Samarra, which is in the Sunni Triangle.
The three names were provided to the Interior Ministry, where senior adviser Sabah Khadum undertook to provide a status report on each. He was asked if they were prisoners, were they alive or had they died in custody.
But the next day he cut short an interview by hanging up the phone, saying only: "I have no information - I don't want to comment on that specific matter."
All seven were described as young men. One of the witnesses spoke of the distinctive appearance of four as "Wahabbi", the colloquial Iraqi term for the foreign fundamentalist insurgency fighters and their Iraqi followers.
He said: "The Wahabbis had long beards, very short hair and they were wearing dishdashas [the caftan-like garment worn by Iraqi men]."
Raising the hem of his own dishdasha to reveal the cotton pantaloons usually worn beneath, he said: "The other three were just wearing these - they looked normal."
One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."
After the removal of the bodies, the officer in charge of the complex, General Raad Abdullah, is said to have called a meeting of the policemen and told them not to talk outside the station about what had happened. "He said it was a security issue," a witness said.
One of the Al-Amariyah witnesses said he watched as Iraqis among the Prime Minister's bodyguards piled the prisoners' bodies into the back of a Nissan utility and drove off. He did not know what became of them. But the other witness said the bodies were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib.
That would place their burial near the notorious prison, which was used by Saddam Hussein's security forces to torture and kill thousands of Iraqis. Subsequently it was revealed as the setting for the still-unfolding prisoner abuse scandal involving US troops in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.
The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. The US military and Dr Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.
The security establishment where the killings are said to have happened is on open ground on the border of the Al-Amariyah and Al-Kudra neighbourhoods in Baghdad.
About 90 policemen are stationed at the complex, which processes insurgents and more hardened offenders among those captured in the struggle against a wave of murder, robbery and kidnapping in post-invasion Iraq.
The Interior Ministry denied permission for the Herald to enter the heavily fortified police complex.
The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published.
Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.
Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.
A statement in the name of spokesman Taha Hussein read: "We face these sorts of allegations on a regular basis. Numerous groups are attempting to hinder what the interim Iraqi government is on the verge of achieving, and occasionally they spread outrageous accusations hoping they will be believed and thus harm the honourable reputation of those who sacrifice so much to protect this glorious country and its now free and respectable people.
"Dr Allawi is turning this country into a free and democratic nation run by the rule of law; so if your sources are as credible as they say they are, then they are more than welcome to file a complaint in a court of law against the Prime Minister."
In response to a question asking if Dr Allawi carried a gun, the statement said: "[He] does not carry a pistol. He is the Prime Minister of Iraq, not a combatant in need of any weaponry."
Sabah Khadum, a senior adviser to Interior Minister Mr Naqib, whose portfolio covers police matters, also dismissed the accounts. Rejecting them as "ludicrous", Mr Khadum said of Dr Allawi: "He is a doctor and I know him. He was my neighbour in London. He just doesn't have it in him. Baghdad is a city of rumours. This is not worth discussing."
Mr Khadum added: "Do you think a man who is Prime Minister is going to disqualify himself for life like this? This is not a government of gangsters."
Asked if Dr Allawi had visited the Al-Amariyah complex - one of the most important counter-insurgency centres in Baghdad - Mr Khadum said he could not reveal the Prime Minister's movements. But he added: "Dr Allawi has made many visits to police stations ... he is heading the offensive."
US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: "If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed."
----
Another Iraq Car Bomb Kills 10
Prime Minister Announces New Domestic Security Agency
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51022-2004Jul15?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 15 -- Insurgents detonated a car bomb Thursday near the municipal government complex in the Iraqi city of Haditha, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others, as interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi sought to reassure Iraqis during a fresh surge of attacks that security is improving.
The bombing in Haditha, a crossroads town about 125 miles northwest of Baghdad that was once deeply loyal to deposed president Saddam Hussein, bore the hallmarks of the powerful explosion that killed 11 people here in the capital a day earlier. The target was a seat of political power, and the victims were primarily civilians. Of those killed, three were members of the Iraqi police force and the rest apparently were bystanders. Iraqi officials said 27 people were wounded.
A few hours after the bombing, Allawi announced the creation of a domestic security agency to help gather intelligence against the insurgency and to coordinate efforts against it. While giving few details of how the agency would operate, Allawi told reporters that the General Security Directorate would "annihilate these groups" that make up the resistance.
"The security situation is in continuing improvement," Allawi said during a news conference, flanked by the defense minister, Hazim Shalan, and the interior minister, Falah Naqib. "We will not spare any effort to defeat our enemies."
On Wednesday night, Iraqi police discovered a headless body dressed in an orange jumpsuit floating in the Tigris River near the town of Baiji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad. Earlier in the day, a group associated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, who U.S. officials say has ties to al Qaeda, announced it had killed one of two Bulgarian hostages it was holding.
Bulgarian officials are using fingerprints to determine if the recovered body is that of Georgi Lazov, the hostage featured in a videotape broadcast by the al-Jazeera satellite channel kneeling in front of three masked men. The group is demanding that all Iraqi prisoners be freed.
Allawi's news conference appeared designed to highlight his interim government's progress in building an effective security force since assuming political power from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority on June 28. The news conference came as insurgent bombings and political assassinations have disturbed the relative calm following the handover, prompting fresh worries among many Iraqis about the country's future.
Allawi, once the CIA's favored candidate to lead post-Hussein Iraq, has won over many Iraqis by moving quickly to address the tenuous security situation in much of the country. Soon after the handover, Allawi issued an emergency decree that gave him broad martial powers in areas hardest hit by the insurgency. He also intends to offer amnesty to some members of the resistance. He said his cabinet was debating the measure but that he expected it to be ready next week.
But Iraqi security forces, while showing signs of improvement, remain poorly equipped, understaffed and inadequately trained. Although the handover officially ended the 15-month occupation, the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are the principal guarantors of the government's security. Meanwhile, insurgents continue to target Iraqis who have taken on additional duties following the handover. In the past two days, at least seven police officers and national guardsmen have been killed.
The insurgency has also continued to kidnap foreigners, often demanding that the captives' home governments withdraw their forces from Iraq. On Thursday, Allawi said he called the Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to ask her to reconsider her decision to begin withdrawing her country's 51 soldiers ahead of schedule. Arroyo had ordered the withdrawal after insurgents threatened to kill a Filipino hostage unless she did so. Allawi did not say whether his appeal was successful.
Naqib, the interior minister, also said there had been progress on security. He said recent roundups of suspected organized crime cells and insurgent groups had led to the arrest of 15 men who may have links to al Qaeda or Ansar al-Islam, described by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda. He said the men were cooperating with Iraqi officials.
Allawi outlined plans to bolster his security forces, in part by reaching out to other countries. Beginning next week, he is scheduled to travel to eight Arab countries, seeking military equipment and other aid, including troops in some cases.
Allawi indicated he also intended to work with neighboring countries -- Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia are on his itinerary -- to tighten security in border regions. An unknown number of foreign Arab fighters have slipped into Iraq in the past 16 months intent on battling the U.S. presence here.
Allawi said he would not allow troops from neighboring countries to serve in Iraq but had not ruled out hosting soldiers from other Arab nations.
"It is a very simple, candid, frank message," Allawi said, describing what he'll say to leaders in neighboring countries. "It is that our cooperation must be founded on mutual interests and respect."
Allawi said his first round of travel would end before the 1,000-member Iraqi National Assembly convenes this month to select a smaller committee to serve as a kind of interim legislature. The committee will help chart Iraq's course toward national elections, planned for January.
Allawi called the assembly "a cornerstone step in the transition to democracy" and vowed that the elections would be held on schedule. Iraqi and U.S. officials have said they believe the insurgency will lose much of its political force once the country elects its own government, replacing the one arranged largely by the United Nations and the U.S. occupation authority.
Despite Allawi's assurances, the calm that immediately followed the handover appears to be over. Car bombings over two consecutive days have killed at least 14 Iraqi civilians, and insurgents renewed their attacks on senior Iraqi politicians by killing the popular governor of Mosul on Wednesday in a highway ambush north of Baghdad.
Insurgents also attacked two oil pipelines, one north of Baghdad and one in the far south. It appeared that neither attack would affect Iraq's oil production.
In Baiji, 120 miles north of Baghdad, insurgents set a pipeline along the Tigris River ablaze. U.S. military officials said the site is a frequent target. It is one of three pipelines that carry crude from Kirkuk to Iraq's largest refinery in Baiji.
Capt. Daniel Young, an engineer assigned to the 1st Infantry Division headquarters in Tikrit, said the cause of Thursday's fire was not known. But he said the Baiji refinery, which is operating at half capacity while undergoing scheduled repairs, usually stores enough oil to avoid a shutdown.
"Typically these breaks get repaired in about five days," Young said. "The refinery won't shut down because of it."
Correspondent Doug Struck in Tikrit contributed to this report.
--------
More Killings in Iraq; Group Claims Governor's Assassination
July 16, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/middleeast/16CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 16 - Sporadic violence continued to flare across Iraq today, wounding scores of people and claiming several lives.
Also, a group linked to the elusive Jordanian terrorist suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi took credit for assassinating the governor of Nineveh province. The group, Tawhid wal Jihad, or Unity and Holy War, did not provide any details that would confirm if it indeed was behind the killing on Wednesday, in which the governor's convoy was swarmed by gunmen north of Baghdad.
But the group claimed in a curt statement posted on an Islamic Website on Thursday, "Your brothers in the military wing of Tawhid wal Jihad beheaded the traitor, the governor of Mosul, in a perfect ambush, thank God."
The use of the word "beheaded" was curious because Iraqi officials said that the governor, Osama Kashmoula, was not killed immediately in the attack but died in a hospital shortly afterwards from his wounds.
But beheading has become Mr. Zarqawi's grim signature. In the past several weeks, he or masked men affiliated with him have taken responsibility for beheading the young American entrepreneur Nicholas Berg, a South Korean translator who was shown on television begging for his life and most recently a Bulgarian truck driver.
Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, a United States Army spokesman, said today that it was not clear who had assassinated the governor but that the attack "seemed to be too well planned for criminals or the former regime elements, the smaller operations, to carry out."
Mr. Zarqawi, whom American and Iraqi officials depict as a guiding light for the insurgency, has also threatened to assassinate Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi.
The violence todayincluded several large explosions, one that killed an Iraqi civilian near Baiji, north of Baghdad, and one that targeted a United States convoy in the capital, wounding an American solider and injuring several civilians, Reuters and the U.S. military said.
Also, marines killed several insurgents in fighting near the rebellious hotspot of Falluja, a spokesman said. Arab news channels reported that a boy was killed in the adjacent town of Abu Ghraib in separate clashes and that a Baghdad policemen was shot to death.
At Friday prayers, which often become an outlet for political venting, many imams continued to fume against the American presence.
"We will not let the ill-omened trinity rule our country, " said Sheikh Jaber al-Khafaji, referring to the United States, Britain and Israel. "Guidance and peace will not be ours with the existence of Coalition Forces."
The sheikh spoke at a Shia mosque in Najaf, south of Baghdad.
At a Baghdad mosque, members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, bragged about their recent success in cracking down on criminals.
A Mahdi army soldier, Hajj Mohammed, said that for the past two weeks, his group had been running surveillance on a street gang that was stealing from a food warehouse.
Two days ago, Mr. Mohammed said, Mahdi army agents teamed up with Iraqi police to arrest the thieves, who were caught with 1,000 sacks of stolen sugar, 1,000 tins of oil and 300,000 pounds of rice. Today, in an empty lot near the mosque, Mr. Mohammed and other gunmen displayed the recovered food in 10-foot-high piles with a picture of Mr. Sadr placed on top.
"We do not want any positions in the government," Mr. Mohammed insisted. "We just want justice and peace."
Also today, the Philippines continued to draw down its small force to meet demands of hostage takers who threatened to behead a Filipino truck driver unless all Filipino soldiers left the country.
Speaking on television, Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert said that Manila "has recalled the head of the Philippine humanitarian contingent in Iraq. He is leaving Iraq today with 10 members of the Philippine humanitarian contingent." The rest of the troops will be withdrawn shortly, Ms. Albert said.
Filipino troops were scheduled to go home Aug. 20, but officials in Manila accelerated that date to satisfy the militants holding Angelo de la Cruz, a truck driver and father of eight.
The Philippines' force in Iraq was mostly symbolic, 51 soldiers and policemen, but Filipino leaders were under intense pressure not to bow to terrorist demands. Many western leaders have criticized their decision to pull out early.
"I don't want to be harsh on a friend," Australia's prime minister, John Howard, told Australian radio. But, he said, "it's a mistake and it won't buy them immunity."
In Mr. de la Cruz's hometown in Pampanga, a province north of Manila, friends and relatives jumped for joy when the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera aired a video Thursday showing an upbeat Mr. dela Cruz saying he would be home soon. People in his village have already begun preparing for the homecoming party, tying yellow ribbons on trees and promising to cook Mr. de la Cruz's favorite dish, kare-kare, a mix of sautéed beef and peanut sauce.
Zainab Abdul Hussain contributed to this report from Baghdad, Jim Glanz from Mosul and Carlos H. Conde from Manila.
--------
BATTLE FRONTS
Iraq Premier Forms Security Service to 'Annihilate' Terrorists
July 16, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/middleeast/16iraq.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 15 -Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq on Thursday announced the establishment of an Iraqi security service to "annihilate" terrorist groups in his country, appealed to countries with large Muslim populations to send troops to Iraq and sought to dissuade any countries from negotiating with hostage-takers.
He spoke as a Filipino hostage, in a videotaped message broadcast on the Arab television news channel Al Jazeera, thanked his country for removing its troops from Iraq.
In a message translated and read by Al Jazeera's staff, the hostage, a Filipino contract worker, said his captors were prepared to release him. The group holding him said that it would free him once the last of the 51 Filipino troops in the United States-led force had left Iraq.
Also on Thursday, 10 Iraqis were killed in Haditha, west of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded near a government complex that houses police, civil defense and other officials.
In a news conference on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Allawi said he had spoken to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines and had urged her to reconsider the withdrawal of her forces. "We don't negotiate with terrorists," he said. "The international community needs to close ranks against the terrorists."
The White House rebuked the Philippines for sending what it called the "wrong signal" by yielding to the terrorists' demands.
The fate of two Bulgarians taken hostage remained a mystery. Iraqi police officers found a headless body in an orange jumpsuit in the Tigris River, near Bayji, a town 170 miles north of Baghdad and turned it over to United States forces. A military spokeswoman said Thursday evening that it was not clear whether the body was that of a Bulgarian hostage who was reported to have been killed by his captors early this week.
The body was found Wednesday night less than 10 miles from where the governor of Nineveh Province in the north was assassinated, also on Wednesday. A senior American military officer in Mosul said that a terrorist cell was operating in that area.
Government officials and police officers have been favorite targets of the insurgency, and the carnage of the last two days showed that the insurgents remained determined to disrupt Iraq.
Just before sundown, gunmen fired on an Iraqi Foreign Ministry car, killing one official and wounding two others, The Associated Press reported, quoting an Iraqi national guard source. The foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, was not in the car.
On Wednesday, a car bombing killed 10 people at the gates of the American-occupied Green Zone.
In Kirkuk, a woman and her three children were killed late Wednesday when a rocket hit their house, Reuters reported.
At his news conference, Dr. Allawi offered few details about the new security division, called the General Security Directorate, except to say that it was intended to combat the insurgency. In an apparent effort to allay fears that the agency would be a reincarnation of Saddam Hussein's feared secret police, the interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, told reporters that the agency would be staffed by professionals with "clean hands."
Dr. Allawi has made security his chief focus. Last week, he announced emergency measures that, if invoked, would allow him to impose curfews, ban groups he considered seditious and order the detention of people suspected of threatening security. The reorganized Iraqi security forces have conducted several high-profile raids, including one this week that netted 15 people suspected of being members of Al Qaeda and its allies, government officials said.
Dr. Allawi has also suggested that the death penalty could be restored. "We are determined to bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy," he said. "We would not spare any effort to defeat our enemies, the forces of evil."
He has also suggested that the crackdown would be paired with an offer of amnesty for some insurgents who agree to lay down their arms. Earlier this week, the Iraqi president, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, said in a published interview that an amnesty proposal would be announced this week. But Dr. Allawi said it would have to wait until next week. "It's still being discussed," he said. Dr. Allawi also said that he had asked several other countries to contribute to the multinational force fighting in Iraq, including Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Morocco and Pakistan.
He said he planned to visit several neighboring countries, including Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to request help.
-------- israel / palestine
US, Israel Against the World on Wall
by Mithre J. Sandrasagra
(Inter Press Service)
July 16, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/sandra.php?articleid=3037
UNITED NATIONS - Lobbying has shifted into high gear on a resolution to be brought before the UN General Assembly on Friday that will call on Israel to tear down a wall it is building around the West Bank and pay reparations to affected Palestinians.
The motion will be introduced in an emergency session called by a majority of UN member states, the Arab Group at the world body and the Non-Aligned Movement of 116 developing nations, in response to an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling last week that declared the wall illegal.
Leading lobbying against the expected resolution is the United States, Israel's biggest international backer and its staunchest supporter on the UN's senior decision-making body, the Security Council.
"The decision of the ICJ hangs on an interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter which is frankly wrong," Ambassador John Danforth, U.S. representative to the United Nations, told reporters Tuesday. "It does not recognize Israel's right to defend itself."
"We are not going to negotiate ... Israel must stop construction, tear down those parts already built and compensate Palestinians," countered Palestine's representative Nasser al-Kidwa, echoing the ICJ decision.
Palestinian officials have promised to follow Friday's vote, which is expected to support the ICJ's decision, by taking the ruling to the Security Council, the only UN entity that could enforce the court's decision.
"We will bring the Security Council face to face with its responsibilities," al-Kidwa added.
Palestine is putting the resolution to a vote in the 191-member General Assembly in an effort to gain political momentum before taking the resolution to the Security Council. But once there, the United States, one of five permanent members able to veto any motion, is expected to kill the resolution.
U.S. and Israeli officials are taking Friday's vote seriously, aiming to secure a high number of abstentions so that no majority emerges in favor of the ICJ opinion. Their lobbying is focussed on European countries - particularly the United Kingdom, France and Germany - which abstained from December's General Assembly decision to ask the ICJ for its opinion on the wall.
The resolution that will be brought before the General Assembly is one-sided, said Danforth, arguing that a balanced political solution must be reached on the issue. "Each side has to agree to it."
Twenty-two "one-sided" resolutions condemning Israel were brought forth at the United Nations last year, and they "didn't do any good," he added.
Israel and the United States claim that the wall, which Israel began building in 2002, has been a successful defense against "non-state" actors. "The amount of terrorism has declined 90 percent as a result of the barrier," Danforth told reporters.
But the ICJ found that the right enshrined in Article 51 is limited to self-defense in the case of armed attack "by one state against another state."
Though the ICJ decision was supported by an overwhelming 14-1 vote, U.S. officials point out that several judges published separate opinions disagreeing with the court's pronouncements on a state's exercise of its right of self-defense.
Judge Pieter Kooijmans of the Netherlands observed that the ICJ failed to note that Security Council resolutions condemning international terrorism, on which Israel relied in its justification of the wall, do not refer to an armed attack "by another state" but to acts of "international" terrorism.
U.K. Judge Rosalyn Higgins also stated that she does not share the majority's views on self-defense.
But the ICJ ruling does not address only Israel's right to self-defense. It also condemns the government's infringements on internationally recognized civil, political, economic and political rights enshrined in the UN Charter, various UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
"The court appropriately found violations of both humanitarian and the law of human rights," John Quigley, professor of international law at Ohio State University, told IPS. "The wall seriously violates international law," he stressed.
"The court decision is a triumph not only for Palestinians but for Israeli lovers of peace and all those who respect human rights and the rule of law," said Terry Boullata, a member of the Palestinian Popular Campaign Against The Occupation Wall.
The wall was built in front of her house and cuts her family off from access to work, schools and relatives, says Boullata, headmistress at a West Bank school.
The ICJ - echoing a recent Israeli Supreme Court ruling that ordered changes in the barrier's route around Jerusalem because of its impact on Palestinian lives - recognized that the barrier is separating Palestinians from their farm lands, schools and jobs and their relatives. The court opinion says that building the wall is "tantamount to (the) annexation" of Palestinian land.
The protests against the security barrier are focused on its route, which does not follow Israel's internationally recognized border, the "Green Line" of 1967. Instead, the wall snakes through the West Bank, putting most Jewish settlements on one side and Palestinians on the other.
Parts of the wall constructed within the "Green Line" are not included in the court's decision.
"This wall is manifestly political. It is there to annex territories to Israel. It has very little to do with security because if you wanted security, pure and simple, you would build the wall on the Green Line," says former Israeli Knesset member and peace activist Uri Avnery.
Palestinian officials are confident the General Assembly will support their resolution. It was, after all, that body that asked the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the legality of the wall after a 144-4 vote in October 2003 on a measure demanding Israel stop and reverse construction of the barrier.
But formal admonition or a sanctions regime against Israel will likely be thwarted by a U.S. veto in the Security Council. In the meantime, the wall continues to rise.
----
Palestinian Militants Kidnap, Then Free, Gaza Police Chief
July 16, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/middleeast/16CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, July 16 - Palestinian militants today kidnapped the Palestinian police chief in the Gaza Strip, and though they released him unharmed after a few hours, the episode reflected the rampant lawlessness and internal Palestinian feuding that plagues the coastal territory.
Gunmen seized the police chief, Ghazi al-Jabali, after firing on his three-car convoy as it traveled on the coastal road south of Gaza City during the afternoon, Palestinian security officials said. Two of Mr. Jabali's bodyguards were injured, the officials added.
The abductors took Mr. Jabali to the nearby Bureij Refugee Camp, where he was held for about three hours while other Palestinian security officials negotiated with the kidnappers.
The gunmen were from the Jenin Martyrs Brigades, a little-known group that is an offshoot of a larger and better-known militant faction, the Popular Resistance Committees, the officials said.
The Martyrs Brigades did not issue any public demands while holding Mr. Jabali, though the kidnappers accused him of corruption and called for him to be put on trial, the security officials said.
Mr. Jabali was released and taken to police headquarters. However, no arrests were announced even though the Palestinian security officials said they knew the name of the man responsible, Mahmoud Nashabat.
The kidnapping was also seen as a challenge to the authority of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Mr. Jabali is seen as a close ally of Mr. Arafat, and the Palestinian leader places great importance on maintaining control over the security forces.
Internecine quarrels among Palestinians have been on the rise in Gaza despite the plan by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to evacuate Israeli settlers and soldiers from the territory by the end of next year.
Mr. Arafat previously spent much of his time in Gaza. But Israel has kept him confined to his West Bank compound in Ramallah for more than two years, and other senior Palestinian politicians visit Gaza only rarely.
The Palestinian security chiefs in Gaza, including Mr. Jabali, are among the few symbols of government authority in the territory. But feuds among the rival branches of the security forces are also part of the conflict in Gaza.
Mr. Jabali was the target of violence at least two times earlier this year.
In one incident, Palestinian gunmen shot up the police headquarters, killing one person and wounding 10, though Mr. Jabali was not injured. In another attack, a bomb went off at the entrance to the building where he lives, causing damage but no injuries.
In New York on Tuesday, the United Nations Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, said the Palestinian Authority "is in deep distress and is in real danger of collapse." He also said that Mr. Arafat lacked the "political will" to follow through with promised reforms, which would include revamping the security services.
Those remarks drew sharp criticism from the Palestinians. A senior aide to Mr. Arafat, Nabil Aburdeineh, said that Mr. Roed-Larsen was no longer welcome in the Palestinian areas. Some Palestinian officials have since distanced themselves from that remark.
But the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Roed-Larsen no longer had "permission" to meet Palestinian leaders.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sharon reiterated his intention to pull out of Gaza despite opposition from his traditional right-wing supporters in Israel.
"We must not ignore the demographics," Mr. Sharon said in speech delivered Thursday night to graduates of the National Security College. "It is impossible to maintain a Jewish and democratic country here, over the years, while ruling over millions of Palestinians" in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Sharon has also made clear that in withdrawing the 7,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza, he seeks to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank settlements, where about 230,000 settlers live.
--------
Palestinians Seek UN Help Against Israeli Barrier
July 16, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-barrier-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Palestinians called on the U.N. General Assembly on Friday to press Israel to tear down the barrier it is building in the West Bank and threatened to seek sanctions if the Jewish state fails to comply.
But Israel ridiculed Palestinian leaders over the fact that gunmen had just abducted the Gaza Strip police chief.
``They should not lecture anyone about the rule of law or accuse others of being outlaws. We have indeed reached the point where the inmates are running the asylum,'' Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman told assembly delegates.
A resolution drafted by Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa to demand Israeli compliance with the court ruling was expected to pass easily in the 191-nation assembly. But a vote was not expected before Monday in order to give Arab and European envoys more time to try to reach a deal on changes demanded by the 25-nation European Union for giving its support.
Before negotiations could begin, however, EU nations had to agree among themselves on a common position and had still not arrived at that point by Friday afternoon, diplomats said.
The General Assembly met in emergency session after the World Court last week issued an advisory opinion concluding that the 370-mile barrier violates international law by cutting into West Bank land occupied and dotted with settlements by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War.
The court, formally known as the International Court of Justice and based in The Hague, is the top U.N. legal body.
Israel argues it needs the combination of razor-tipped fencing and concrete, which is still under construction, to keep out suicide bombers. Palestinians see it as a land grab that would thwart their dream of a Palestinian state.
'WATERSHED EVENT' OR 'POLITICAL MANEUVER'?
Al-Kidwa called the ruling ``a watershed event ... based on international law and the ideals of peace and reconciliation.''
But Gillerman called it a ``political maneuver to undermine the prospects for progress on the ground'' toward peace.
Israel would instead comply with its own Supreme Court's ``thorough and rigorous judgment'' that parts of the barrier required rerouting, Gillerman said.
But al-Kidwa countered that it was ``not simply a matter of the adjustment of the route.''
``The issue is the removal of every part of the wall that has been built in every part of the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem,'' he said.
Should Israel follow through on its vow not to comply, al-Kidwa said, the Palestinians would at some point bring the matter to the 15-nation Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions for noncompliance with its resolutions.
While Washington, the main Middle East power broker and Israel's closest ally, often uses its council veto to protect Israel, ``we hope the United States will find itself able to take the right position with regard to this matter,'' he said.
The Palestinian draft would affirm ``the illegality of any territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force'' and would demand that Israel dismantle the barrier and pay reparations for any damages caused by its construction.
EU diplomats want it to recognize Israeli security concerns and refer to the obligations of both sides under the road map to peace set out by the quartet of Middle East mediators -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.
Diplomats said winning over the EU would bring along up to 25 other nations and bolster a later case for sanctions.
U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said Washington was particularly concerned by a section of the court ruling suggesting that under the U.N. Charter, a state had the right to defend itself only against an attack from another state.
If that right did not exist ``when terrorists hijack planes and fly them into buildings, or bomb train stations ... then the United Nations Charter could be irrelevant in a time when the major threats to peace are not from states but from terrorists,'' Danforth said.
-------- prisoners of war
'Secret film shows Iraq prisoners sodomised'
By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor
16 July 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=541472
Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomised by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses there.
Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that "it's worse". But he added that he would reveal the extent of the abuses: "I'm not done reporting on all this," he told a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union.
He said: "The boys were sodomised with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."
He accused the US administration, and all but accused President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney of complicity in covering up what he called "war crimes".
----
Officials Accuse Each Other in Prison Scandal
A top MP officer and the commander of military interrogators each gave testimony blaming the other for abuses at Abu Ghraib
By Richard A. Serrano,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 15, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes225.htm
WASHINGTON - A top military police officer and the commander of military interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are blaming each other for improper treatment of prisoners who were stripped, abused and sexually humiliated.
Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, told authorities that he was repeatedly assured by military interrogators that stripping Iraqis of their clothes was an approved tactic they used to "make the detainees uncomfortable."
But Col. Thomas M. Pappas of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade told authorities that stripping detainees was "inappropriate" and that he had personally ordered prison guards supervised by Reese to "have the detainees put their clothes back on."
The sworn statements by the two officers, taken separately this year during an Army investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, were posted this week on the U.S. News & World Report website.
Scenes of nudity, captured in photographs, are at the heart of the widening inquiry into whether military police guarding the prison - seven of whom have been criminally charged - were solely to blame for the abuses or if military intelligence officials, who conducted interrogations of prisoners, were also culpable.
An Army decision, expected as early as next month, will determine whether others should be charged and whether more senior officers should be investigated.
Reese also portrayed Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., one of the military police facing court-martial, whom fellow soldiers have called the ringleader of the guards, as someone who should never have been put in charge of Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib because of his questionable record as a prison guard in Pennsylvania.
Reese said Graner "constantly challenges orders and requests from the leadership."
After the abuse allegations surfaced, Reese said, he was told that Graner had a "long history" as an abusive guard in civilian life with "an extensive file, rather thick." Had he known that, Reese said, Graner "wouldn't even be in my company.... I wouldn't have put him on a night shift in charge of a wing."
Reese said he felt betrayed by Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, another guard who once worked in a civilian prison and is also charged in the Abu Ghraib case. "They were specifically put there for that reason," he said. "I trusted them and I was relying on their knowledge and their experience to do the job."
Reese and Pappas both have been officially reprimanded for not properly supervising their subordinates at the prison near Baghdad.
This summer, Reese testified at a military hearing against one of the guards charged in the case and said that on one occasion, when a detainee died during an interrogation session, he heard Pappas say, "I'm not going to go down alone for this."
In the statements disclosed this week, Reese stressed that Pappas' intelligence operatives were in charge of the prison and that they repeatedly urged guards to step up tactics to soften detainees. That allegation is a centerpiece of the defense for the six guards still awaiting courts-martial: that they were only doing what they were told by military interrogators.
It is supported by the sworn statement of a higher-ranking military policeman, Maj. David DiNenna Sr., who said interrogators kept telling the guards to deprive detainees of sleep, play loud music and limit their food intake.
DiNenna, whose statement was also posted on the magazine's website, told Army investigators that he believed the seven prison guards saw interrogators being rough with detainees and took it as a sign that they too could be aggressive.
"It would be my opinion that possibly these soldiers had seen similar, yet possibly not to this extreme, activity by the MI [military intelligence] personnel during interrogations of these prisoners," DiNenna said. "They then took it upon themselves to conduct such criminal activity."
Reese said that when he arrived at the prison in October, he was stunned to find so many inmates without clothes in the interrogation wing of Abu Ghraib. "My first reaction was, 'Wow, there is a lot of nude people here,' " he said.
"I was told that it was an MI tactic that was used to make the detainees uncomfortable. There were many people way above my pay grade that walk through that wing and nothing was ever said about it. I was told it was OK, [that] nothing was illegal or wrong about it."
But Reese also accepted responsibility for the seven guards who were charged. "The U.S. Army will probably not recover from this for a long time," he said. "And I am ashamed of what my soldiers did and embarrassed as well."
For his part, Pappas said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who was in charge of operations at another prison camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had encouraged the use of dogs, "with or without a muzzle," at Abu Ghraib as a device to get inmates to talk.
"The key findings of his visit were that the interrogators and analysts develop a set of rules and limitations to guide interrogations, and provide dedicated MPs to support interrogations," Pappas said of Miller.
But Pappas complained that there was no "established procedure" on how MPs should work under intelligence officers and that by January "there was confusion in the MP ranks as to who was responsible for the guard mission."
----
Navy: Guantanamo Inmates Want Tribunals
Friday July 16, 2004
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4318502,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Most of the 594 U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear willing to go before a tribunal that would give them a chance to convince military officers they are wrongly detained, the Navy secretary said Friday.
Gordon England said the first of the tribunals will be impaneled late next week or early the following one. He offered no assessment of the prisoners' chances for release but said anyone found to be wrongly held would be returned to his home country.
The new tribunal procedure is a response to a series of setbacks for the Bush administration and the military regarding the handling of prisoners from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terror.
Separately, the Pentagon announced Friday it was creating a new Office of Detainee Affairs to review reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and elevate worrisome ones to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Military officials have suggested that some Red Cross complaints about treatment of prisoners in Iraq, particularly at Abu Ghraib prison, did not reach high levels in the Defense Department quickly enough. The new office would attempt to change that.
The Guantanamo tribunals were set up soon after the Supreme Court ruled the prisoners there have a right to go to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention. The Pentagon said the purpose of the tribunals is to prepare for those court challenges by showing that a panel of military officers has reviewed each prisoner's case.
The prisoners, held with little or no contact with the outside for two years or more, were told of the Supreme Court's decision on their rights over the past few days. England, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said most reacted positively and wanted to meet with the military officer who will serve as their personal representatives for the duration of the tribunal.
``Most of the people who received this information listened, read and asked questions,'' England said. ``And their most commonly asked questions were, `When can I meet with my personal representative? And when will the tribunal process begin?'''
Of the rest, he said, ``About 5 percent of the people responded negatively. That is, crumbled up the notice and threw it on the floor, whatever.''
Every prisoner's case will be reviewed, whether he wants to take part in the quasijudicial process or not. Those who participate can request affidavits from witnesses, including people overseas.
England said the prisoners also will be told their assigned personal representatives are not their advocates. He acknowledged any incriminating information a prisoner might provide to the representative, or to a translator, could be used in the tribunal.
``This isn't a trial,'' England said. ``This is looking at facts.''
He said he did not know whether any of the prisoners expressed interest in seeking freedom through the U.S. court system.
The tribunals will be open to the press, but England said the first ones probably would not be accessible. He blamed this on logistical difficulties of having reporters on the Navy base, rather than on any need for secrecy.
Pentagon officials said the new detainee affairs office will fall under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. It will serve as the military's primary point of contact for the Red Cross, which monitors conditions of prisoners taken in an armed conflict.
Feith's principal deputy, Christopher ``Ryan'' Henry, told reporters Rumsfeld created the office Friday. The person who will head it has not been identified.
On the Net:
ICRC activities regarding Guantanamo detainees: http://www.icrc.org/eng
-------- spies
Iraqis Welcome Spy Agency Despite Historic Echoes
July 16, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-security.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - A little over a year ago, the word ``mukhabarat'' would have sent shivers down the spines of Iraqis, but Friday many said they supported a new domestic spy agency if it helped end rampant violence.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said Thursday he was forming the General Security Directorate, a new domestic intelligence agency -- mukhabarat in Arabic -- he hopes will infiltrate and expose those behind a violent 15-month insurgency.
With echoes of Saddam Hussein's feared mukhabarat intelligence body, which kept tight tabs on Iraqis for decades, some might have worried about a return to the bad old days, but most Baghdadis appeared unfazed.
``I agree with him. Mukhabarat is a must. I don't understand why it took them so long to create it,'' said Abed al Muneim Abdul Latif, a photo studio owner, giving a thumbs up to Allawi.
``Iraq needs it and I'm sure it will bring more security.''
Others were equally positive, saying the number one priority was security and whatever it took to achieve it was justified.
``Iraq needs everything -- police, intelligence and a good army. I welcome anything if it returns security to our beloved country,'' said Jamal Saeed, a shopkeeper in southern Baghdad.
Allawi's announcement, less than a week after the introduction of a new security law that allows the government to impose emergency measures anywhere deemed too insecure, came hours after more deadly attacks.
A car bomb in northwestern Iraq, halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border, killed 10 people. That came after a suicide blast in Baghdad Wednesday killed 11 Iraqis outside the fortified compound housing Allawi's interim government.
``We are determined to bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy,'' Allawi said in unveiling the new spy body, which he said would not be filled with men with blood on their hands. ``Terrorism will be terminated, God willing.''
EVERYDAY TERROR
Daily strikes against U.S.-led troops, Iraqi police, army and national guards, and anyone deemed to be collaborating with the United States, have left ordinary Iraqis living in constant fear and longing for security.
If a new spy agency can do anything to root out insurgents before they strike, then most Baghdadis say they're happy.
``Before, if someone said anything against Saddam they immediately came and took him away for investigation,'' said Abbas Maher, a restaurant worker in Baghdad, who said the former intelligence agency tortured his brother to death.
``I'm sure this new agency will be different.''
Allawi gave few details about the new body, but said it wouldn't have the power to detain people and would have to answer to the Iraqi justice system.
Most Iraqis asked Friday said they didn't think the new body would end up mimicking Saddam's mukhabarat.
``This one will help Iraqis to get rid of those planting bombs, killing people and threatening Iraq,'' said Ali Obedi, an assistant in an electronics store. ``It won't be against us.
``If they choose the right people to run it, then Iraq will be safe and secure. Other than that nothing will change.''
Others thought that forming a new spy agency was evidence that there's only one way to run Iraq -- Saddam's way.
``It proves that only Saddam knew how to run this country,'' said Ihsan Balo, a baker. ``He knew it needed a Mukhabarat because the police cannot stop violence.''
--------
UK Iraq Report Hides Minefield for Blair's Spies
July 16, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain-intelligence.html
LONDON (Reuters) - When Britain's former top civil servant issued his report into intelligence on Iraq Wednesday, his findings seemed almost too good to be true for Prime Minister Tony Blair and his favorite spies.
But a report initially denounced as a whitewash of the establishment is increasingly being seen as political dynamite, with ammunition buried in its pages that could seriously hurt Blair's allies and force a shakeup in the secret services.
``The instant reaction from people who saw the report was that this was a whitewash,'' said Anthony Glees of the Brunel University Center for Intelligence and Security Studies.
``But if you look at the document more closely you can see that this was a damning indictment of British intelligence. This was the worst failure since the Second World War.''
Lord Butler's report found that no one was to blame for intelligence failings and expressly absolved the government of deliberately deceiving the public to justify war.
But as journalists and commentators have pored more closely over the text, pressure has mounted on John Scarlett, Blair's top civil service intelligence adviser, named by the prime minister to take over next month as ``C,'' the country's top spy.
In a damaging revelation, the Daily Telegraph quoted an unidentified Cabinet minister as saying that the current ``C,'' Sir Richard Dearlove, had told the Cabinet he did not want Scarlett to succeed him because Scarlett was too close to Blair.
Other newspapers focused on statements Scarlett and others made to an inquiry in the second half of last year backing up prewar intelligence, even though Butler concluded that some of that intelligence had already been discredited in the first weeks after the invasion.
There are few signs that Blair will abandon plans to install Scarlett as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service -- Blair says a committee of civil servants recommended Scarlett as the best man for the job.
But attention will be focused on the name of the candidate to succeed Scarlett as head of the advisory Joint Intelligence Committee, due to be revealed within weeks.
Butler said this should be someone with stature and independence who would not seek a further job -- a sign that Blair will be punished if he names a close ally.
CROSSING THE LINE
In his findings, Butler criticized Scarlett for signing off on a September 2002 dossier designed to make the case for war. The dossier was stripped of words expressing doubt about the intelligence and included dubious facts.
That has been seen by critics as crossing the line supposed to separate intelligence from politics.
Although Butler explicitly avoided ending Scarlett's career, saying past mistakes should not bar Scarlett from becoming ``C,'' his report provided plenty of ammunition.
``There's ample evidence that Butler has left a smoking bomb in the green room so to speak,'' said Tim Ripley, a defense and security expert who writes for Jane's journals.
``This is going to play out for the next couple of days and we are waiting to see if the Sunday papers find that silver bullet to land that killer blow.''
Glees said some journalists may have been getting pointers on where to find damaging information in the report from inside the intelligence services themselves, where there were increasing signs of dissatisfaction with the leadership
--------
British spy chief faced internal opposition: report
LONDON (AFP)
Jul 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040715234626.wsno44jw.html
A top British intelligence official who compiled a controversial dossier on Iraq's weaponry faced internal opposition when he was later made head of the country's overseas spy agency, a report said Friday.
John Scarlett was now under pressure to resign as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Scarlett was the target of considerable implicit criticism in a report on British pre-war intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) published on Wednesday.
An inquiry team headed by Lord Butler found that much of the weapons information, notably that in a September 2002 dossier put together by the Joint Intelligence Service, then led by Scarlett, was unreliable.
The report said that any failures were institutional rather then personal and explicitly stated that Scarlett should not stand down.
However the Daily Telegraph reported that Scarlett was now thought to be under pressure to resign.
Additionally, the paper said, when Scarlett was made MI6 head earlier this year, the appointment was opposed by his predecessor in the post, Richard Dearlove.
Dearlove believed that it was wrong to put Scarlett into so sensitive a job amid the WMD controversy, and also that his work on the dossier had made him too closely linked to the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Dearlove was not happy with Scarlett's appointment," a government minister was quoted as telling the paper anonymously.
When Scarlett was appointed, critics labelled the new job a reward for backing Blair over the WMD issue and said he was too high-profile a figure for a post where former incumbents were traditionally known only as "C".
--------
Senate Report on Iraq Intel Points to Role of Jerusalem
The Forward
By Ori Nir
July 16, 2004
http://forward.com/main/article.php?ref=nir200407141106
WASHINGTON - Cooperation between Israel and the United States helped produce a series of intelligence failures in the lead up to the Iraq war, according to separate reports issued by members of the Senate and the Knesset.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, in its report issued last week, blasted the Central Intelligence Agency for poor intelligence gathering and analysis, and concluded that the U.S. "intelligence community depended too heavily on defectors and foreign government services" to make up for America's lack of human intelligence in Iraq. The credibility of these outside sources was difficult to ascertain and, as a result, the United States was left open to manipulation by foreign governments, the Senate report concluded.
In particular, the Senate report claimed, America had become completely dependent on foreign sources to evaluate Saddam Hussein's ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and other Palestinian terrorist organizations. On this front, the Senate committee concluded that the foreign intelligence was "credible." On the issue of weapons of mass destruction, however, the Senate report concluded that the United States relied on incorrect intelligence to argue that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Any direct references to Israel were blacked out of the published version of the Senate report, but an earlier report issued in March by a Knesset committee made it clear that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies were working together and exchanging information.
"In this particular case, nobody had hard, on-the-ground intelligence information," said Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Israel's Bar Ilan University and an expert on American-Israeli security relations.
Intelligence agencies, Steinberg said, were relying on a combination of data collected from Iraqi defectors, as well as radio monitoring or signal intelligence. The intelligence community, Steinberg said, "looked for the signal intelligence to verify what they got from the defectors. When you're doing that, and you don't have ground truth, you can usually find enough information to apparently verify what you're looking to verify."
Along similar lines, the Senate report criticized what it described as the creation of an "assumption train" - a chain of false assumptions based on faulty, unscrutinized intelligence. Judging from the Knesset report, issued in March by an investigative committee appointed by the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, several of the assumption train's cars were made in Israel.
But while the Knesset report harshly criticized the Israeli intelligence community, it also pointed a negative finger at the United States and other countries. Referring to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the Knesset report argued that "the intelligence picture that Military Intelligence and the Mossad put together relied, among other sources, and to a significant extent, on the assessments of fellow intelligence services which were similar to Israel's intelligence."
In turn, the Knesset report stated, foreign intelligence services relied on intelligence passed on by Israel that actually originated from operatives working for other governments. The result, according to the Israeli report, was "a vicious cycle of sorts in the form of a reciprocal feedback, which at times was more damaging than beneficial. It very well may be that the assessments given by an Israeli intelligence organization, or any other organization, to a fellow organization, were passed from hand to hand, played a central role in making up the assessments of that foreign organization, and then eventually returned to the original organization as an assessment of a different intelligence organization. That assessment, in turn, was immediately perceived as a reinforcement and validation by a reliable source, of the original Israeli assessment."
Both the Senate and Knesset reports criticized their country's respective intelligence agencies for drawing incorrect conclusions from faulty assumptions and for engaging in what U.S. lawmakers described as groupthink - a collective reasoning that is not challenged by healthy skepticism.
-------- us
Ex-GI May Risk Arrest By Going To Japan
U.S. Reserves Right To Request Custody
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53135-2004Jul15.html
TOKYO, July 15 -- An alleged U.S. Army deserter who lived in North Korea for 39 years appears set to travel to Tokyo for medical treatment as soon as this weekend, but U.S. officials on Thursday said they reserved the right to request his custody, even though that might not occur immediately.
Nonetheless, Japanese officials were making plans to bring Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, to Japan from Jakarta, Indonesia.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has championed Jenkins's case and expressed hope that Jenkins would be allowed to live in Japan with his wife, Hitomi Soga, and two daughters.
"I am indeed worried about his medical condition and I am making efforts at enabling the family of Ms. Soga to live together in Japan," Koizumi said.
"In principle," he told reporters late Wednesday, "I hope to explore a solution that would satisfy both countries based on the strong relationship of trust between Japan and the United States."
Jenkins had flown from North Korea to Indonesia with his two daughters on July 9 for a reunion with Soga. Soga was one of five Japanese abducted by North Korean agents during the 1970s and 1980s and returned to Tokyo in October 2002 after a landmark summit in Pyongyang between Koizumi and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.
U.S. authorities charge that Jenkins, a North Carolina native, crossed into North Korea while on patrol in South Korea in 1965. Since then, he has starred in North Korean anti-American propaganda films, playing the role of a CIA agent gone bad. His family in the United States maintains Jenkins was kidnapped and brainwashed.
According to Howard H. Baker Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Japan, the issue has become "a matter of extraordinary importance" between the United States and Japan, and is being dealt with on a "presidential level." Koizumi, President Bush's closest ally in Asia, who resisted public opinion and sent Japanese troops to Iraq, brought up the topic with Bush during the Group of Eight economic summit at Sea Island, Ga., early last month.
Japanese doctors who examined Jenkins in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, have determined that he is suffering from a post-operative illness related to stomach surgery, as well as ailments related to internal organs. A Japanese official familiar with his condition said it was "more serious than we thought" but "not life-threatening."
On Thursday, Baker said in an interview with foreign correspondents that the United States was "sympathetic" to Jenkins's health condition. While the Bush administration maintains that Jenkins must eventually face charges, Baker appeared to leave open the possibility that the United States might not seek immediate custody of Jenkins if he came to Japan for medical treatment.
"It's certainly possible he could come to Japan, that the U.S. would insist on its rights, but the actual custody would not be something sought or consummated under some circumstances," Baker said.
In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the United States would pursue Jenkins as an Army deserter. "Once he is in Japan, he becomes subject to the terms of the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement and falls under the authority of the U.S. military," he said at a briefing. Boucher said Jenkins has been charged with "extremely serious offenses" and "we intend to request custody when we have the legal opportunity to do so."
Koizumi has sought to reunite Soga, Jenkins and their daughters. Jenkins remained in North Korea with the couple's children when Soga returned for a tearful reunion with her family, from whom she was separated when she was kidnapped as a teenager by North Korean agents in 1978 for use in spy training camps in North Korea. Jenkins reportedly declined to accompany her to Japan in 2002, fearing arrest and extradition to the United States. But Japanese officials said Thursday that Jenkins has now expressed a desire to join his wife in Japan with their children.
Japanese news media have provided near-constant coverage of the Jenkins family reunion in Jakarta. When he descended from a Japanese government-chartered flight from Pyongyang last Friday, he sported a North Korean lapel pin, which he shed Sunday, attracting public interest. The gesture was quickly interpreted by Japanese media as an indication that Jenkins had left his allegiance to North Korea behind.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.
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As Inquiry Continues, Marine Returns to U.S.
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52385-2004Jul15.html
The U.S. Marine who went missing from his post in Iraq and nearly three weeks later turned up safe in Lebanon was returned to the United States yesterday amid continued questions about the circumstances of his disappearance.
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun arrived at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia at 3 p.m. yesterday aboard a C-12 military aircraft from Dover, Del. Hassoun entered the United States earlier in the day after a nine-hour flight from Germany, where he was evaluated by doctors after his reappearance in Beirut last week.
Hassoun, who was born in Lebanon, initially was thought to have deserted his post. Pentagon officials classified him as captured after a videotape surfaced on an Islamic extremist Web site showing Hassoun with a large knife positioned over his head. At one point, there were reports that Hassoun had been beheaded, but an extremist group later said it released Hassoun with the promise that he would not rejoin U.S. forces to fight. Hassoun arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon days later.
Hassoun has had contact with his family, but neither he nor relatives have publicly disclosed details of the past several weeks. The Pentagon likewise has remained silent about Hassoun's case, which is being handled by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. It is unclear what he has told military officials since his reappearance.
Marine officials said yesterday that Hassoun will spend the coming weeks at Quantico, where a team will evaluate his condition, debrief him and work to reintegrate him into military life -- a standard repatriation process for every service member who is captured in the field and returned to safety.
Although Hassoun will be made ready to return to full duty, military officials said there will be scrutiny of his story by naval investigators. Sources said the intelligence community is also interested in questioning Hassoun. Marine officials said the repatriation process takes precedence over the work of criminal investigators, which they said will be worked out in time.
Lt. Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters at Quantico's main gate yesterday afternoon that Hassoun "remains in good condition and good spirits." He said repatriation could take weeks or even months. Hassoun will remain on the base and will have a military escort wherever he goes.
Hassoun slept for most of his flight from Germany and greeted a military friend and a former supervisor when he arrived at Dover Air Force Base, smiling and chatting with them before the trip to Quantico. Hassoun, who will have the opportunity to speak with legal advisers while at Quantico, so far has not asked for an attorney, Marine officials said yesterday.
In a prepared statement upon his release from a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, on Wednesday, Hassoun said only that he was "excited" to be going home and that he was in good health and spirits.
"All thanks and praise are due to God for my safety," he said in the statement, which was released by the Marines.
Hassoun's arrival at Quantico was private, and the Marines released photographs of Hassoun stepping off an airplane. There will be no media interviews for Hassoun while he is at the base, said officials, who added that he will have the opportunity to meet with his family.
--------
A HOMECOMING
Marine Who Had Disappeared Returns to U.S. for Questioning
July 16, 2004
By JOHN FILES
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/national/16mari.html?pagewanted=all
QUANTICO, Va., July 15 - An American marine who turned up in Beirut last week after vanishing in Iraq was returned to the United States on Thursday for questioning and a "repatriation process" to assess his physical and mental condition, Marine Corps officials said.
The marine, Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, arrived at Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia from Germany, where he had undergone six days of evaluation in a military hospital, "in good condition and in good spirits," said Lt. Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for the Second Marine Expeditionary Force.
Colonel Lapan said that Quantico, 35 miles south Washington, was chosen "as the best facility due to its central location and access to a variety of support services." It is unclear how long Corporal Hassoun will remain at the base, Colonel Lapan said. Marine Corps officials said on Thursday that he would probably be transferred to his home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., once they have determined he is fit for duty.
As part of what Marine officials called repatriation, Corporal Hassoun will be debriefed by psychologists and military intelligence officials. He will also have access to military lawyers and will be able to see his family, officials said, but "his movements will be controlled."
The repatriation process is separate from inquiries being conducted into his disappearance. Corporal Hassoun, 24, a Lebanese-American, vanished from his base in Iraq on June 20. The process is standard for military personnel who have been captured or detained during service abroad, Marine Corps officials said.
Colonel Lapan declined to comment on most details of Corporal Hassoun's case pending the outcome of two military investigations.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency are conducting inquiries into the events surrounding Corporal Hassoun's disappearance. Officials have said that Naval investigators were looking at a range of possibilities, including reports that he was kidnapped, deserted his unit or staged an elaborate hoax with the aid of Iraqis.
Contradictory reports about Corporal Hassoun, including reports of his beheading by his captors, have created a confusing picture. His sudden resurfacing July 8, when he walked into the American Embassy in a suburb of Beirut - and a shootout earlier in the day near his relatives' home in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli - only added to the unusual nature of the matter.
When Corporal Hassoun left the hospital in Germany on Wednesday, he said he was eager to get home, but he did not discuss his disappearance.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
Detroit to Vote on Medical Marijuana
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Medical-Marijuana.html
DETROIT (AP) -- A vote on whether to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes in Detroit is seen by organizers of the ballot initiative as a stepping stone to rewriting the state's drug laws.
The proposal would create an exception in the city code for patients who have a doctor's permission to use marijuana. If it passes, the effect would be largely symbolic, since it wouldn't affect state or federal laws that allow prosecution of those possessing or using marijuana.
The initiative's organizers still would count success as an important first step.
``Our supporters find it reprehensible that an individual that is under a doctor's care that has a legitimate, serious illness can be denied medicine that works for them,'' said Timothy Beck, founder of Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care, which has sought to put the issue before voters for years.
The coalition collected the necessary signatures to get ``Proposal M'' on the Aug. 3 primary ballot. If that proposal and a similar one in Ann Arbor to be voted on in November pass, Beck said his group plans to work with lawmakers to put the issue before the state Legislature or push for a statewide ballot initiative that would make the policy state law.
``It will be an inspiration,'' Beck said. ``Others will be willing to support it. If not, then 2006 will be ripe for petition.''
But opponents of the Detroit ballot initiative have launched a campaign to educate people about marijuana use and its effects on the community in an attempt to encourage voters to reject the proposal.
Andre Johnson, program manager for the Partnership for a Drug-Free Detroit, said the ballot initiative is an attempt to move toward broader legalization of marijuana that could send the wrong message to young people about drug use.
``It's all a smoke screen. It is not about people who are ill or people who are sick,'' Johnson said. ``They're not thinking about the youth. Our primary concern is protecting the youth and protecting quality of life.''
If the proposal passes, those in Detroit who use marijuana for medical purposes still could face prosecution.
Agencies such as the Michigan State Police and the Wayne County sheriff's department, which patrol within the city limits, wouldn't be bound by a change in the city code. A spokesman for state Attorney General Mike Cox said Michigan law still would allow any marijuana user to be prosecuted.
``In general, state law trumps local ordinances. This wouldn't affect current state law,'' Stu Sandler said. ``County prosecutors are sworn officers of the state that need to uphold state law.''
Detroit police spokesman Derek Jones said medical marijuana users could face prosecution if they can't prove they have a prescription. He added that broader drug-enforcement efforts wouldn't be affected by a change in city code.
The question of whether states can legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June, the court said it will decide whether the federal government can prosecute sick people who smoke marijuana on the advice of a doctor. The case involves the Bush administration's appeal of a case it lost involving two California women who say marijuana is the only drug that eases chronic pain.
The case also affects Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, which have similar medical marijuana laws. Vermont's medical marijuana law took effect July 1.
On the Net:
Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care: http://www.mmdetroit.org
-------- homeland security
New Airline Screening System Postponed
Controversy Over Privacy Leads to CAPPS II Paring, Delay Until After Election
By Sara Kehaulani Goo and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53320-2004Jul15?language=printer
The Bush administration has decided to scale back and delay the debut of a vast airline passenger screening program until after the presidential election, federal officials said yesterday.
The decision comes after months of meetings with airline officials and lawmakers who pressed the administration to drop more controversial elements of the program, known as Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening Program, or CAPPS II.
Big disagreements about the system remain within the Department of Homeland Security itself, with some officials viewing it as a major aviation security improvement and others fearing it could alienate voters who view CAPPS II as a surveillance system that pries too far into passengers' lives, sources close to the project said.
Officials have already used some elements of the program, and it was scheduled to roll out in airports this fall. Department officials yesterday could not pinpoint a new start date or provide details on what aspects of the screening system would be dropped.
The program "remains, in my mind, one of the most important tools in the counterterrorism arsenal," said James M. Loy, deputy secretary of Homeland Security.
But, at least initially, the government would step back from plans to subject all passengers to CAPPS II screens, which marshal multiple government and private databases to assign each flier a risk level using a green, yellow or red color code, officials said. The extra screening may only kick in if a passenger's actions, such as paying cash for a ticket, flag him as suspect under the current system.
Officials said they also are likely to abandon plans to use the system to find passengers wanted for violent crimes.
Instead, sources familiar with the program said yesterday, the government will simply confirm a passenger's identity by, for example, asking to see a valid driver's license and then checking its authenticity with a commercial data service. Then an airline agent would match that name against increasingly robust watch lists of known terrorists.
While CAPPS II is on hold, the TSA plans this summer to push ahead with a more popular, voluntary program that allows frequent fliers to become "registered travelers" by providing personal information to the agency, along with a fingerprint or iris scan. If the agency accepts a passenger into the program, which requires a background check, the traveler will get an identification card that allows quicker passage through security lines.
CAPPS II was once described by the government's top security officials as the most important development in preventing terrorist attacks on commercial airliners. The government spent more than $60 million designing a computer system to verify a person's identity by comparing information from the airline reservation against commercial databases, such as those used by direct marketing firms.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge indicated that CAPPS II had been canceled in an interview published yesterday in USA Today. But some elements of the program are already being used to check foreign airline crews, some employees working at airports and some travelers who have volunteered in another security screening program, sources said. Officials also said they would continue with plans to test the computer network later this summer using passenger information.
Privacy advocates welcomed the announcement that the program would be smaller, and some took credit for forcing the government to reconsider it.
"It was always a very questionable concept from a security" standpoint, said David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights advocacy group in Washington. "The effectiveness was never demonstrated, and we always thought it was likely to provide a false sense of security and divert resources."
But others involved in the issue said the program's delay continues to leave a vulnerable hole in the nation's aviation system.
"Aviation security is certainly far too important to play politics with it," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who sits on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "The American people have a right to know how the obvious need for air security will be addressed. I believe it can be done and still protect privacy."
CAPPS II was supposed to begin screening passengers this fall, but it faced opposition at nearly every step. U.S. and European airlines initially resisted participating out of concerns that it would require them to become part of national law enforcement to track wanted criminals, not just terrorists. Privacy advocacy groups also claimed the government wasn't providing enough information about how the system would work.
In February, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Transportation Security Administration had many steps to go before it could even begin testing the system.
The program was also hurt by news reports that revealed several agencies, including the TSA, had already received millions of reservation records from airlines to test early versions of the program without telling the public. The airlines admitted they had not informed their passengers about turning over the records, which included credit card information and personal telephone numbers and addresses.
Several airlines now face class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of passengers who said the carriers violated their own privacy policies.
Some American Airlines frequent travelers will be allowed to participate next month in the TSA's registered traveler program at Reagan National Airport. The program has signed up 2,000 passengers at airports in Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
--------
Government Is 'Reshaping' Airport Screening System
July 16, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/politics/16fly.html
WASHINGTON, July 15 - The government is backing away from a plan to use commercial databases in its computerized system for determining which airline passengers might pose a security risk.
But it is pressing ahead with a new computer system that will rely on government databases.
The goal is a better screening tool that will select about 4 percent of all passengers for more intense scrutiny, compared with the 14 percent identified by the current system. Some travelers are now chosen for more intensive "secondary screenings" at random, and others are chosen for reasons that are supposed to be secret but are thought to include booking at the last minute, buying one-way tickets and paying with cash.
The acting administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, David M. Stone, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his agency was "reshaping and repackaging" the screening system, which was originally supposed to use commercial databases that sweep in data on credit, home ownership, telephone records and car registration as a way to evaluate whether the name given by a passenger was real. That plan, called Capps 2, for Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening, had been criticized as an invasion of passengers' privacy.
On Wednesday the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, was quoted in USA Today as saying that Capps 2 was dead. But a spokesman for his agency, Brian Roehrkasse, said Thursday that "the administration continues to move forward on an automated aviation passenger prescreening system to replace the existing antiquated airline system, to better manage risk and be more efficient."
Mr. Roehrkasse said he did not know when the new system would be put into place. Much of it is still under development, he said.
The law that established the Transportation Security Administration, passed by Congress in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks, included a variety of requirements for the new agency. One was to screen all baggage. That destroyed the rationale of the original Capps system, which was established in 1998 in response to the possibility of a bomb in a checked suitcase like the one that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Another requirement was to develop a better screening tool to pick which passengers, with their carry-on luggage, should be scrutinized.
The new system is supposed to rely on government databases.
The government already has a so-called no-fly list, which is actually a list of people whom the airlines are not supposed to carry, and a larger list of people who are supposed to be put through secondary screening if they seek to fly. According to an administration official who asked not to be identified, those two lists have fewer than 10,000 names but the new computer system would integrate a list of names that is "dramatically larger." The official would not be more specific about either number.
In addition, various government agencies maintain lists of names now, including the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. A federal agency established last December within the Department of Homeland Security, the Terrorist Screening Center, is supposed to integrate these lists. The agencies use a variety of bases for identifying individuals as suspect.
The Capps 2 system was supposed to be based on passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers; the original proposal for the system would have required passengers to submit their dates of birth as well. The new system might still do that, according to the official.
Laura W. Murphy, the director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that had been critical of Capps 2, said a system that relied solely on government databases could still be unfair, because the databases themselves would have errors. But she said she was glad that the government was no longer proposing to run every name through commercial databases.
"We don't want to turn into a society where everybody is treated like a suspect and everybody is investigated," Ms. Murphy said.
The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report and the hearings held by the Sept. 11 commission have demonstrated shortcomings in intelligence, Ms. Murphy said, and no-fly lists based on flawed intelligence would mean a security system "built on what right now appears to be a house of cards." The government should improve aviation security by concentrating on simpler challenges, like access control at airports, she said.
--------
Small Rail Line to Be Focus of Security Test
July 16, 2004
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/nyregion/16rails.html
NEW HAVEN, July 15 - About 1,200 rail passengers a day on Connecticut's southeastern shore will be expected to have their bags X-rayed and their tickets swiped in a month-long test of new technology designed to fortify mass transit systems against terrorism.
The test, which will begin with the Monday morning rush, is being done by the federal Department of Homeland Security. It is the third and final set of trials that the department has conducted since the deadly bombing of passenger trains in Madrid in March.
Shore Line East commuter trains in Connecticut were chosen for the third round of testing precisely because their relatively low number of daily riders could withstand the process without major delays.
"You don't want to do the test in the most difficult environment," said Asa Hutchinson, under secretary for border and transportation security at the department. This way, he said, "we can test without impeding the flow and speed of travel."
Shore Line East trains make eight stops from Union Station here in New Haven to Old Saybrook. Stephen Korta, commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Transportation, said the trains on that line carry about 1,200 passengers a day, each one picking up roughly 25 to 30 people per stop.
Passengers in and around Union Station on Thursday said they were supportive of the test. "I just believe in the safety of the people and whatever it takes," said Melanie Scelza, of Berlin, Conn., who was dragging a piece of wheeled luggage behind her.
In the first phase of testing in May, the Department of Homeland Security required passengers at a suburban train station in Maryland to pass through a scanner before boarding their trains. The scanner sniffed the air around them for traces of explosives. Carry-on baggage was also subjected to X-ray testing for explosives.
A second round of tests was conducted in June at Union Station in Washington. It focused on checked luggage and cargo. Results of that test have not yet been made public, but Mr. Hutchinson said that neither test caused any drop in ridership.
The Connecticut scrutiny will differ in one important respect. It will happen after passengers board their trains, with an eye to keeping the trains and their passengers on schedule.
Passengers will use one specially outfitted rail car to board their trains. Bags will be X-rayed by a large machine that is looking for images of known explosives.
Passengers will then be asked to hand a gloved attendant their tickets. The attendant will rub each ticket on a pad that can be read in a few seconds by a microwave-size machine that costs upward of $40,000. The machine can detect trace amounts of explosives on a document that has been touched by someone who has handled them.
Anyone who generates a positive reading from the ticket-reader or the X-ray machine will have to proceed to another, similarly priced machine that senses explosives using a different technology. There, an attendant will swab and inspect the luggage by hand and question the passenger to see if there might be an innocent explanation for the positive reading. Law enforcement officers will step in if someone is deemed a threat, and could stop the train if necessary.
Representatives of the devices' manufacturers said that it was highly unlikely that a passenger posing no risk would generate false positives from both technologies.
The American Public Transportation Association estimates 32 million trips take place a day on mass transit, more than 16 times the number of domestic trips by air.
Given the huge investment and possible inconvenience, Mr. Hutchinson said there were no plans to equip the entire mass transit system with the new technologies, only to learn what might be deployed if specific threats were made.
"Clearly, it's not something you do lightly," said Mr. Hutchinson.
-------- human rights
US Cuts Aid to Uzbekistan
by Jim Lobe,
July 16, 2004
Inter Press Service
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3043
This week's decision by the U.S. State Department to cut up to $18 million in aid to its staunchest anti-terrorism ally in Central Asia is being welcomed by human rights activists, who called the move long overdue.
The slap at the government of President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron hand since even before it became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991, should add at least some credibility to the Bush administration's claims that it is serious about supporting democratization in the Islamic world.
But at the same time, the move, which was expected since Washington issued a warning about Karimov's human-rights performance last December, is unlikely to prompt any major downgrading of bilateral relations, at least for the moment, and even rights groups say Washington should continue to be engaged with Tashkent to encourage reform.
The United States now has some 1,000 U.S. troops deployed to a military base in Uzbekistan, the remnant of a much larger force that played a key role in the military campaign that ousted the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001. It also has been buying up nuclear-related equipment and weapons stockpiles left over from Soviet times, under a long-standing aid program that is not affected by the aid cut.
A spokesman at the Uzbek embassy here assured reporters his country remains "united with the United States in the war against terrorism, and we will continue our strategic partnership," a theme echoed by the State Department statement that announced the cut.
"Uzbekistan is an important partner of the United States in the war on terror, and we have many shared strategic goals," said spokesman Richard Boucher. "This does not mean that either our interests in the region or our desire for continued cooperation with Uzbekistan has changed."
The State Department based its decision on a 2002 law that made U.S. aid to the Uzbek government conditional on its efforts to improve its human rights record and institute political, judicial and other reforms.
For aid funds to be made available, the administration of President George W Bush has to certify the Uzbek government is making "substantial and continuing progress" in meeting its commitments under the joint U.S.-Uzbek Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework, which was signed during Karimov's visit to Washington in March 2002.
Even at that time - the honeymoon period of the U.S.-Uzbek courtship - the Bush administration displayed unusual sensitivity about Karimov and his government's human-rights performance, widely regarded as the worst - possibly next to Turkmenistan's - in Central Asia.
Instead of being feted with a state dinner, or even offered an extended photo opportunity with Bush, Karimov was discreetly invited for afternoon tea at the White House and then quickly whisked away from the cameras and reporters' questions.
Still, Karimov's co-operation in the Afghan campaign was much appreciated by Washington, and the alacrity with which the Uzbek offered access to his bases and other support after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, was duly rewarded.
In a nationally televised speech Sept. 18, Bush himself denounced the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a violent anti-Karimov group accused of a series of bombings and hit-and-run attacks - as an affiliate of the al-Qaeda terrorist group of Osama bin Laden - and hence a common enemy of both countries.
While the IMU, which was based in Afghanistan, was effectively dispersed by the Taliban's ouster, Karimov's rule has not become any less heavy-handed, according to regional experts, who were not surprised last March when nearly 50 people were killed over three days in Tashkent and Bukhara in attacks - which included at least two suicide bombings by women - by Islamist militants against security forces.
While Tashkent blamed the violence on the work of "international terror" and on members of a nonviolent Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Washington took a somewhat more nuanced view typical of its balancing act between, on the one hand, supporting Karimov as a strategic ally in the 'war on terrorism' and, on the other, trying to steer him toward political reform.
"These attacks only strengthen our resolve to defeat terrorists wherever they hide and strike," the White House said, while, at the same time, the State Department stressed, "more democracy is the best antidote to terror."
One week later, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a 319-page report entitled "Creating Enemies of the State: Religious Persecution in Uzbekistan," detailing what its Central Asia director, Rachel Denber, called "a merciless campaign against peaceful Muslim dissidents."
The report estimated that some 7,000 Muslims, most of them associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir, were serving often-lengthy sentences in prison, where many were subject to torture and other abuses.
A particularly notorious case came to light in late 2002 when a shopkeeper, Fatima Mukhadirova, persuaded the British Embassy in Tashkent to investigate the August 2002 death in custody of her son, Hizb adherent Muzafar Avozov. An independent examination carried out by the University of Glasgow concluded the father of four had died after being immersed in boiling water.
For her efforts, Mukhadirova was sentenced to six years of hard labor, although she was released after an international outcry on the eve of a visit to Tashkent by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February this year.
The HRW report detailed numerous cases of prisoner torture - which it found to be "routine" - by methods such as beatings, rape, electric shock, asphyxiation, burning and suspension by the wrists or ankles.
This record provoked groups like HRW, Amnesty International and Freedom House to call for cuts in western aid to the regime which, despite repeated exhortations by visiting Bush officials, was slow to react, although in recent weeks it invited international observers to help investigate two other in-custody cases and set up a permanent commission on the problem.
But despite those moves, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which had expressed strong concern about torture during its annual meeting in Tashkent last year, announced in April that it would limit new investment in Uzbekistan.
The State Department, however, based its decision not so much on the torture issue as on the government's failure to make "progress on democratic reform and restrictions put on U.S. assistance partners on the ground."
Instead of making it easier for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition parties to organize and operate, the Uzbek government has actually increased their regulation and made it much harder to receive foreign funding, including some of the $18 million in U.S. aid, according to Maria Brill Olcott, a Central Asia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While the amount of money involved is relatively little, some analysts said the move might reflect some strategic reassessments by both countries. "This is a sign that Central Asia is less important (to the Bush administration) than it was three years ago," said Olcott, who noted that U.S. military access to the air base in Uzbekistan is less critical strategically now that Washington has several bases in Afghanistan.
"Will it make Uzbekistan move closer to Russia? It probably will," she added, noting that Karimov, who already has close ties with China, has been moving in that direction for some time.
S. Frederick Starr, a Central Asia specialist at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), told the Washington Times the move was self-defeating because it would strengthen the hand of "the worst troglodytes in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and police," who were themselves targeted for some of the aid that has been cut.
-------- immigration / refugees
Halfway to Being an American Family
Identical Cases for Citizenship Yield 2 Results for Deaf Brothers
By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53193-2004Jul15?language=printer
Two Afghan brothers arrived at the federal courthouse in Alexandria yesterday, and their identical paths in America suddenly diverged.
As Satar Reangber stood and raised his right hand to become a U.S. citizen, his younger brother, Salam, watched from the second-to-last row, using his own right hand to cradle his infant niece.
Neither brother could hear the oath of naturalization or read the certificates of citizenship and Pledge of Allegiance distributed to the immigrants and their families. But they understood clearly that one of them had been left behind after their tandem six-year struggle to become Americans.
Satar emerged from the ceremony with his certificate, a small U.S. flag, a copy of the Declaration of Independence and a relieved grin. Bearing his prizes, he headed directly for Salam, embracing and kissing him three times on the cheek -- right, left, right, a Middle Eastern and Afghan custom -- and Salam clapped his hands.
"He's happy for his brother but not happy for himself," younger sister Najia Hayat said, translating the look on Salam's face.
For most of their lives, the Reangber brothers have shared a silent world filled with hand gestures, glances and grunts that only they and a few close relatives and friends understand.
They were born deaf -- Satar in 1961, Salam in 1964 -- in Kabul. Never learning to read or write in their native Dari, and speaking it with difficulty, they relied on lip-reading and toiled as tailors, outfitting the city's wealthy in suits and silks. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, most of the Reangbers came to Alexandria with refugee status -- the parents in 1985 and six of seven siblings in 1986.
The English that the deaf brothers saw forming on speakers' lips seemed impossible to read, its block letters too hard to learn this late in life, Hayat said. She enrolled them in sign language courses, but they quit after a few lessons, indicating that the other students always knew more. They found jobs altering suits at Britches of Georgetown and worked there until 2000.
In 1998, their sister helped them apply for citizenship and cited their disability in asking for an exemption to the interview and written test needed to qualify. In the next six years, Satar was called in for fingerprinting and then was told that his application had been lost, while Salam was interviewed, denied citizenship and told that deaf people don't qualify for disability waivers.
Satar appealed, and his case was reviewed in November and approved, leading to his participation in yesterday's ceremony. Salam's appeal is in progress.
Officials with the Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security did not return repeated calls for comment.
The differing treatment of the brothers' identical cases underscores the capriciousness of the agency's judgments, especially those involving disabled applicants, said Laura Burdick, deputy director of the Washington-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network. Burdick met Hayat at a citizenship workshop last year and was compelled by her rendering of the brothers' tale. She helped the family reapply for Satar's citizenship and appeal the decision against Salam.
"It's worrisome," Burdick said yesterday, after helping guide Satar through the line and explaining his situation to court officials. "Disabled people are supposed to have a waiver. In Salam and Satar's case, they don't know sign language. . . . These guys have been waiting six years. I understand that they are backlogged, but priority should be given to people who have been waiting the longest."
At yesterday's ceremony, all 65 naturalized citizens were asked to stand and state their country of origin. When officials were told about Salam's difficulties, they did not know what he should do. Finally, a man seated next to Satar was asked to tap him when it was time to stand, and Hayat, seated in the nearby jury box, was asked to say "Afghanistan" when Satar's name was called.
Now that he is a citizen, Satar plans to sponsor his fiancee, an Afghan woman who lives in Pakistan, to immigrate to the United States. He has not seen her since 1997, on his last visit to Pakistan, when the engagement was arranged by the couple's families.
Only U.S. citizens can sponsor a fiancee's immigration, which is partly why Satar was in such a hurry to get his citizenship, Burdick said.
Besides being able to marry, Hayat said, her brothers wanted their citizenship because they have feared traveling on Afghan passports since Sept. 11, 2001, and because they believe it will be easier to get jobs as U.S. citizens. Salam, 39, works as a steamer in Nordstrom's alterations department, while Satar, 43, works at Hayat's business, a flooring company in Lorton.
The brothers, who live with their now-widowed mother in Alexandria, have driver's licenses, but they have been warned to follow only routes they know. Once, Salam got lost on the way to Baltimore and had to give Hayat's telephone number to a police officer so she could pick him up.
One evening this week, as Satar's shift at the flooring company ended, a close family friend, Naqib Hatami of Springfield, teased that his future wife will run away when she sees Satar's now balding head. Hatami said he can understand Satar's Dari and gestures because he spends a lot of time with him.
"No, my hair's just like that," Satar replied as Hatami translated. "My heart is young."
In December, immigration authorities sent Burdick an e-mail saying they would take another look at Salam's case, but she has heard nothing since.
Hayat said the family is still looking for a bride for Salam. But she might hold off on the matchmaking, she said, because she doesn't want to make another woman wait seven years.
--------
A Risky Route to Freedom
Desperate Cubans Head For U.S. Via Honduras
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53106-2004Jul15?language=printer
LA CEIBA, Honduras -- Nine rafters slipped out of Cuba on May 3, guided by a full moon and buoyed by hope and ocean currents. After two days at sea, in the black and cold of 2 a.m., a screw shook loose from their old outboard and it sputtered to a stop. As the screw plunged into the shark-filled depths, their spirits sank with it.
"That was the moment I thought we were going to die," said Luis Machado Hernandez, 42, a Cuban hospital manager who said he was fleeing the unbearableness of existing on $10 a month in a place where a pair of child's shoes costs three times that much. But Machado and the others kept going, and for the next five weeks their remarkable voyage twisted and turned on the kindness and greed of strangers.
A day after their engine failed, they washed up on the Cayman Islands and were locked up with murderers for a month. There, as they recalled later, they bribed themselves free and set off again into the mountainous waves. Finally, on June 5, they landed in this Central American country, whose welcoming immigration policies have made it the hottest new haven among Cuban refugees.
"The Honduran people know what the Cubans are suffering, that they are being repressed and that they don't have liberties," said Ramon Romero, Honduras's director of immigration, who said his country welcomed Cuban boat people and would never return them to Fidel Castro, now 45 years at the helm of the communist island.
Far more Cubans attempt the 90-mile trip to Florida than the risky 500-mile voyage to Honduras. But because most rafters get caught by Cuban authorities or the U.S. Coast Guard in the heavily patrolled waters off Florida, an increasing number desperate to flee Cuba's miserable economic conditions are pointing their rafts toward Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere. Romero said at least 100 Cubans came to Honduran shores last year, more than twice the number in 2002. As the numbers keep increasing, he said, Honduras is recruiting families to take them in. "Hondurans identify with them and want to help them whenever they can," Romero said.
Rafters interviewed in Honduras said word had spread that this country is a safer bet than Cuba's other neighbors, including Belize, Mexico and the Cayman Islands, which routinely return the refugees to their homeland.
Machado estimated that at least one boat a day is setting off from Cuba for Honduras. Many of those turn back when motors and nerves break down on the high seas, he said. "And no doubt some don't make it," he added, describing how easily makeshift boats can be blown off course and swallowed by the Caribbean. Rafters said going to Honduras makes more sense than taking a chance with the United States' "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, under which Cubans who make it to U.S. soil are free to seek political asylum but those caught offshore are returned to Cuba. Sometimes Cubans win the race against the U.S. Coast Guard, as did the wife and two daughters of New York Yankees pitcher Jose Contreras, who reached an island off Florida last month after a three-hour chase. But, more often, they do not: The Coast Guard said it had caught and returned about 2,100 Cubans since the beginning of last year after finding them on rafts, rickety boats and even riding a floating 1951 Chevrolet pickup.
Once rafters reach Honduras, their relatives in Miami often send them money. Some try to find legal ways into the United States, but many set off through Guatemala and Mexico to attempt to cross the border illegally, they said.
Machado said some in his group had already left Honduras for the United States. "I don't know if they are dead or alive or in a jail somewhere," he said. Machado and the three others with him said they were trying to figure out a safer way to Miami.
"In Miami, whatever job you want you can have," Machado said. "I'm ready to work hard. I might not make it this month, or in three months or next year. But I want to go." A Similar Journey
Thirty miles from where Machado is now living, another group of Cuban rafters is being cared for by Honduran families. Lelis Arnulfo Hernandez, a gardener on the island of Roatan, said he was startled one day late last month when he found seven haggard Cubans stumbling out of a 12-foot boat that looked like an old fiberglass bathtub. They had spent seven days and eight nights at sea; all were dehydrated, and some were hallucinating. They had run out of food, water and fuel by the time they washed ashore near Hernandez's one-room home on the waterfront.
"One of them asked me, 'Is this Honduras?' And when I said yes, you couldn't believe how happy he was," said Hernandez, who then welcomed them into his wooden home, gave them food and hot coffee and took the ragged men to see a doctor.
Two weeks after their arrival, three of the men had already left for Mexico, hoping to sneak across the U.S. border, where the desert and soaring temperatures claim many lives. The four who remained were interviewed outside Hernandez's house, their backs and legs still covered with rashes where the boat's fiberglass had rubbed them raw.
"I was seeing things in the water and heat. My mind was going," said Yunior Buceta Cańete, 28, who had been a welder in Cuba earning $8 a month. He found out in a phone call to Cuba that his wife had given birth to their first child while he was at sea; he said he hopes to get to Miami, then find a way to get his family there. "We risked a lot to get here, but at least we are free."
The group set off from Santa Cruz, on Cuba's southern coast, with little more than an antique compass and a 1953 map. Buceta said the little outboard quit three times, and each time the men coaxed it back to life. A plastic sack that once had carried beans served as their backup sail. As storms churned the water and rain fell hard into the open boat, one man decided to turn himself in on the Cayman Islands, less than halfway through the journey. The men let him off on a Cayman beach, where they assume he was caught and returned to Cuba.
Days later, the men landed in Roatan, where their battered boat rests in high grass outside Hernandez's home, stirring awe among the locals who come to hear their story. "We were not sure if it was Belize or Honduras," said Jorge Abel Sosa Reina, a fisherman who served as chief navigator, talking about the moment when they saw land and Hernandez. Sosa moved toward land first, planning to wave on the others if it turned out they had miscalculated and were in Belize. That way, perhaps only he would be detained and returned to Cuba and the others could keep going. Sosa said he nearly fainted with relief when Hernandez told him he was in Honduras: "My whole body wanted to fold, collapse. I was so relieved." Sosa said he had been inspired to make the trip by his brother, who made it to Honduras in November and now lives in Miami with his two other brothers. Sosa said he hoped to join them.
Reaching Roatan was especially sweet for history professor Nicolas Gonzalez Verona, 51, the oldest on the boat. He said he had tried to escape Cuba in 1994 but the Cuban Coast Guard rammed his vessel and sank it. He paid a fine to avoid prison and spent the next decade waiting to try again. Once at sea, Gonzalez said he passed the time praying. Sick of the Sea
In La Ceiba, Machado and the three others from his group are living in a fire station.
Machado found a job upholstering furniture three days after arriving and said he worries constantly about his wife and two daughters back in Cuba. He said he would never allow his family to take the risk he did on the ocean. After one of the men's two small motors died, they lashed their two rafts together and kept going, fighting howling waves and the smell of spilled gasoline and vomit.
He said their troubles got worse when they smashed up against rocks on the shore of the Cayman Islands. They were caught, locked up and told they would be returned to Cuba. After a few days, their relatives from Spain and the United States arrived. One of the men was allowed to fly to Spain, and the American relatives paid bribes to get the eight others freed after 28 days in jail. They also paid $10,000 to a smuggler to carry the men the rest of the way to Honduras.
"It was a miracle," Machado said. "We had seconds' notice that we were leaving. We just ran out of jail."
They set off in the smugglers' 30-foot boat the first week of June. Before dawn on their fifth day at sea, Machado said, the smugglers suddenly announced that they were just off the Honduran coast and that the Cubans should jump.
"Go! Swim!" the men said and sped off.
After a half-hour of swimming, with Machado dragging his nephew who did not know how to swim, the Cubans reached a remote part of Honduras known as Gracias a Dios, or "Thanks to God."
A local woman who found the shivering Cubans gave them food and dry clothes, and they soon hopped a cargo boat heading for La Ceiba, Honduras's third-largest city. After their ordeal, Machado said, none of them can stand to look out the fire station window at the sea. "Cubans love the beach and the sea," he said. "But I have had enough of the sea for a long, long time."
--------
Hmong Capital Of U.S. Girds For New Influx
Thousands Exiting Camp in Thailand May Stress Twin Cities' Public Services
By Kari Lydersen
The Washington Post
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53126-2004Jul15.html
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Making his way through tents serving sticky rice and selling bundles of herbs and beaded New Year's dresses at the annual Hmong festival here recently, Xue Xiong was stopped every few feet by friends and relatives he hadn't seen in more than 13 years.
Newly arrived from the Tham Krabok refugee camp in Thailand, Xiong and his wife, their seven sons, and her sister and her husband had been living within borders of barbed wire and without access to jobs, formal education or adequate health care. "In the camp, we had no rights," said Xiong, 34, speaking through an interpreter. "It was really poor, the houses weren't nice and we had no schools or cars."
The Hmong are the last major group of Indochinese refugees from the Vietnam War era, and Xiong and his family were the first of about 5,000 arriving in the Twin Cities over the next few months. The Minneapolis area is home to the largest Hmong population in the country, about 60,000 people, but this summer's influx will be the biggest number in the shortest amount of time in recent years. And it comes at a difficult moment, with the economy slumping, cuts in public aid, a housing crunch and a tight job market.
"It's really tough right now, especially for people with low language skills and little work history," said Karen Calcaterra, a career program manager for immigrants and refugees at the nonprofit organization Lifetrack Resources. "In different times, refugees would come and the employers would be desperate for workers. Now there are three people competing for every vacancy."
Many Hmong families in the area are expecting scores of relatives in the new influx. Xiong's sister-in-law, Chong Thao, has about 30 more relatives arriving. While most here are filled with excitement at the prospect of family reunions, they will be presented with financial and logistical problems.
"I think that pace will lead to difficulties," said Joel Luedtke, director of refugee services for the Minnesota Council of Churches. "As host families receive relatives faster than they can move into their own housing, there will be a lot of doubling up. It will take them some time to find employment, so we will amass a significant percentage who are not employed in the first few months."
About 15,000 Hmong from the Tham Krabok camp are slated to be relocated in the United States by the end of the year, with a third going to California, a third to Minnesota, about 3,000 to Wisconsin and smaller numbers to other states. The majority are supposed to arrive before the start of the school year in September.
This will pose a particular challenge for the public schools, because about half the refugees are age 14 or younger. Most grew up without schooling, without adequate nutrition and without access to inoculations or other basic health care.
Because Tham Krabok was never designated an official refugee camp, it did not receive international aid. Camp residents were displaced from Laos after the Vietnam War, when the United States reneged on promises to help them in exchange for carrying out the CIA's secret war against the North Vietnamese and Laotian communists. The Hmong ended up in Wat Tham Krabok, on the grounds of a Buddhist temple, after other refugee camps in Thailand closed.
In December, the U.S. government made the surprise announcement that the refugees would be resettled here, reversing earlier statements that Tham Krabok residents would not come to this country.
The shift came after pressure from the Thai government, which has long wanted to close the camp, and urging from the government of Laos, which is in talks with the United States over normalizing trade. The decision also will help the nation meet its quota of accepting 70,000 refugees by Sept. 30. Refugee resettlement has been reduced since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Since the December announcement, social service and refugee resettlement agencies in St. Paul have been scrambling. In March, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly and a delegation of social service, health care and education providers visited the camp to assess needs. They found that programs promoting literacy, nutrition, drug rehabilitation, mental health and job skills will be needed once the refugees arrive, and they set in motion a plan to give children basic vaccinations in the camp, taking some of the burden off St. Paul schools and clinics.
Each family will be allocated $800 in State Department funds to get started, $400 in cash and $400 going to a resettlement agency. They also will be eligible for public aid and programs run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
At the Hmong festival, the Xue Xiong family got a taste of what it means to have little money in a land of plenty. After spending years with only enough belongings to fill a small backpack, they were suddenly surrounded by huge quantities of clothing, housewares and trinkets for the buying.
"There were so many toys," said Xiong's wife, Mai Yai Thao, 31, in Hmong, noting that in the camp their sons had no toys. "They were touching all them, but we don't have much money, so we only got them some little cars."
A night later, around a folding table in the Thao house, Xiong wondered how the family will pay rent at the dwelling they are moving into a few blocks away.
"Rent is $850 a month, and we will get $970 in public aid," he said. "And we need $100 a month for laundry and things like that. We need to get help from someone."
Advocacy groups said the immigrants will benefit from the network of family and friends eager to help the new arrivals. When the first influx of Hmong arrived two decades ago, they initially had difficulty adjusting to life here, staying on welfare for long periods and having problems in school. But now many have assimilated and predict the transition for the latest influx will be much faster.
"Between all their relatives, there are a significant number of Hmong businesses, where there will be jobs with less of a need to speak English," said John Borden, associate director of the International Institute of Minnesota, one of the nonprofit organizations leading the resettlement. "They're in almost all the professional businesses -- doctors, funeral homes, every specialized area."
While the Twin Cities have long been known as a top destination for Hmong and other political refugees, there are some who are not thrilled about the new arrivals. Leaders of advocacy groups say they have fielded phone calls from local residents angry about more refugees arriving.
Many older Hmong hold onto a dream of defeating the current Communist government in Laos and returning, while the younger generation see themselves as Americans and want to get on with their lives.
"There's the question of: Are we Hmong or are we American?" said Kao Ly Ilean Her, executive director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, who at age 7 came to the United States with her family in 1976. "The elders would say, 'We're just here until we can go back to the homeland.' Then there's people like me who say, 'We are home, and we need to participate and vote and organize here.' "
-------- prisons / prisoners
Ex-Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Detained
Fugitive Held in Japan on Charges Stemming From '92 Spassky Match in Yugoslavia
By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53671-2004Jul15.html
The hunt for Bobby Fischer, the unpredictable chess legend, ended this week when he was detained in Japan, where he awaits possible deportation on charges that he attended a 1992 match in Yugoslavia in violation of a U.S. ban.
The Japanese Immigration Bureau detained the 61-year-old Fischer on Tuesday at Narita International Airport in Tokyo at the urging of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had recently stepped up efforts to track the fugitive, U.S. authorities said yesterday.
"He's in custody in Japan, and we are awaiting a determination whether he'll be deported back to the United States to face charges," said Allan Doody, special agent in charge of the immigration agency's Washington field office.
The arrest capped a cat-and-mouse game between U.S. authorities and Fischer, who shuttled among several nations, including Japan, the Philippines and Hungary, to avoid arrest. A grand jury in Washington charged him with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by going to Yugoslavia for the chess match against Boris Spassky.
The charge, handed up in 1992, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
U.S. authorities, acting on the outstanding warrant, recently canceled Fischer's U.S. passport after discovering that he had a 90-day visa to visit Japan. Authorities there detained him at the airport for failing to possess valid travel documents, U.S. authorities said.
In August 1992, the Treasury Department sent Fischer a letter warning him not to go to Yugoslavia to play Spassky for the world class chess match. It explained that U.S. citizens were forbidden to get involved in "business or commercial activities" with Yugoslavia because of its role in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"We consider your presence in Yugoslavia for this purpose to be an exportation of services to Yugoslavia in the sense that the Yugoslav sponsor is benefiting from the use of your name and reputation," the letter said.
Fischer ignored the letter and headed off to Yugoslavia to square off against Spassky. Fischer had surrendered the world championship in 1975 after he refused to defend it against Anatoly Karpov of Russia.
At a news conference in Yugoslavia in September 1992, Fischer held up the letter and spit on it. He went on to beat Spassky and receive $3.3 million.
In subsequent interviews overseas, Fischer said he no longer played the "old chess." In 1996, he launched his own form of chess, Fischerandom Chess, in which the major pieces are arranged on a traditional board in an unorthodox way.
Fischer, whose mother is Jewish, became well known for his ranting and raving and anti-Semitic remarks.
In a radio interview May 24, 1999, in Baguio, the Philippines, Fischer remarked: "America is totally under control of the Jews, you know. I mean, look what they're doing now in Yugoslavia. . . . The secretary of state and the secretary of defense are, are dirty Jews."
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Fischer remarked on Philippine radio: "This is all wonderful news. It's time . . . to finish off the U.S. once and for all. . . . This just shows what comes around, goes around."
--------
Prisons tighten Muslim chaplain criteria
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
July 16, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040716-120133-6022r.htm
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, criticized in May for allowing a shortage of Muslim chaplains to threaten prison security and increase the potential for terrorism, has taken "important steps" in correcting the problems, a report said yesterday.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said the bureau had either closed or resolved all but three of 16 recommendations made to correct problems in the selection, screening and supervision of Muslim chaplains, contractors and volunteers who work with 9,000 Muslim inmates.
Two months ago, Mr. Fine said that without sufficient Muslim chaplains on staff, inmates were more likely to lead their own religious services, distort Islam and espouse extremist beliefs. The "presence of extremist chaplains, contractors or volunteers ... can pose a threat to institutional security and could implicate national security if inmates are encouraged to commit terrorist acts against the United States," he added.
He said it was "imperative" that the bureau had in place sound screening and supervision practices that would "identify persons who seek to disrupt the order of its institutions or to inflict harm on the United States through terrorism."
Mr. Fine noted at the time that only 10 Muslim chaplains were available to the bureau, three fewer than needed to overcome "a critical shortage," and that the chaplains had told investigators that some inmates were being radicalized by other prisoners.
Harley G. Lappin, director of the Bureau of Prisons, said in a response to the inspector general's report that the agency had developed further screening criteria to be used during the application process for Muslim chaplains, volunteers and contractors.
Mr. Lappin said the criteria would seek to determine the applicants' endorsement of violence, their support of terrorism, whether they had advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government, and any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
He also said that religious providers would be personally interviewed to determine whether they were appropriately placed, that they would be required to submit letters of recommendation and that the agency would work closer with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Mr. Fine's investigation began after several members of Congress expressed concern that the bureau had relied on two Islamic groups to endorse its Muslim chaplains, the Islamic Society of North America and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. Both organizations have been under federal investigation as part of a probe into terrorist financing.
Concerns regarding the radicalization of Muslim inmates were heightened after former inmates Richard C. Reid and Jose Padilla were arrested for terrorist acts against the United States.
Reid, convicted for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes, had converted to Islam in a British prison. British officials suspect that he was radicalized by clerics who preached at the prison.
Padilla, arrested for attempting to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States, had converted to Islam in a Florida jail, where authorities suspect his Islamic radicalization began.
-------- POLITICS
French defense minister to Algeria, first such visit since war
PARIS (AFP)
Jul 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040716014437.2f58fot7.html
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie will make an official visit to Algeria this weekend, the latest in a series of high-level trips by French officials aimed at bolstering bilateral relations.
When Alliot-Marie arrives in the former French colony, she will be the first French defense minister to make an official visit there since the end of the 1954-1962 war for Algeria's independence.
On Saturday and Sunday, she is scheduled to meet with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and other top officials for talks on the fight against terrorism and security in the Mediterranean region, aides to the minister said.
Alliot-Marie is also due to meet intellectuals and other members of civil society, including women's groups, the aides said.
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier spent two days in Algeria, on the heels of a trip last month by Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. President Jacques Chirac made a state visit to Algeria last year, and a lightning visit in April.
"This trip has a very high symbolic value," said a top-level French defense ministry official. "The time had come for such a visit, which is a very strong indicator of the normalization of bilateral relations."
But one diplomat noted: "The scars have not completely healed on either side: when one talks about the French army in Algeria, that brings back some memories. And on the French side, it touches a raw nerve."
France ruled Algeria for 132 years before granting it independence in 1962 following a brutal guerrilla war that claimed an estimated 100,000 French and one million Algerian lives.
The two countries now maintain close relations, and a significant number of France's estimated five million Muslims come from Algeria.
France is Algeria's main trading partner, and Paris thinks the time has come "to see what we can do together in the area of defense," officials here said.
During Alliot-Marie's visit, France and Algeria are expected to sign a defense cooperation agreement, which would seek to develop bilateral exchanges of military personnel and the prospect of joint exercises in the Mediterranean.
The independent Algerian press speculated that the series of high-level French visits was aimed at maintaining France's influence in Algeria, and at keeping the north African country from moving into Washington's orbit.
Raising the prospect of a "race between the United States and France for strategic positioning," the newspaper Le Quotidien d'Oran said the French and Algerian militaries "have kept few ties, if any."
"Twenty-nine years of no dialogue between two countries that face each other... That void was filled by American soldiers who have shown a certain aggressiveness in their approach," the paper said.
Barnier denied any "Franco-American rivalry" in an interview before his visit, but the United States and Britain head a long list of possible military suppliers for Algiers, which currently is using Russian-built MiG fighter jets.
-------- budget
House Rejects Cut in Military Aid to Egypt
Administration Pressed Hill to Avoid Shifting Money for Arms to Economic Assistance
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53129-2004Jul15.html
The House yesterday rejected a $570 million cut in U.S. military aid to Egypt after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell issued a last-minute warning to lawmakers that the action would damage relations with a close Middle East ally "at a very sensitive moment in the region."
Although the 287 to 131 vote was lopsided, the administration and military contractors who sell U.S.-financed weaponry to Egypt took seriously the threat of a cut and worked behind the scenes to head it off.
Before the vote, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made calls to some lawmakers, who were also on notice from arms companies that the shift could result in job losses in home districts. "It was a full-court press," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who offered the amendment to the $19.4 billion foreign aid bill for 2005.
His bill would have shifted the military aid to economic assistance, which he said is "desperately needed" in Egypt. "The last thing this society [Egypt] needs is the ultimate in high-tech weaponry," Lantos said.
The debate brought out highly ambivalent feelings about Egypt. The House's pro-Israel forces used the opportunity to vent frustration with the Egyptian government's role during hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. Among those supporting the cut was House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), one of the strongest supporters of Israeli interests in Congress.
Lawmakers took the floor to rebuke the Egyptian government for tolerating anti-Semitism, limiting its cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism and failing to prevent gun-smuggling to militant Palestinian groups.
But Powell and senior lawmakers in both parties warned that the action would send the wrong signal at a time when Egypt has begun working closely with Israel to assure a smooth transition as Israel plans to withdraw from Gaza.
In a letter to Congress, Powell noted that a unilateral reduction would weaken the balanced military aid to Egypt and Israel that is a "cornerstone" of the 1979 Camp David peace accords. In 2005, Israel and Egypt are set to receive $2.2 billion and $1.3 billion in grants, respectively, under the formula.
"Our credibility in this relationship depends to a great degree upon being a reliable provider of assistance to the Egyptian military," Powell wrote.
"This puts a finger in the eye of our friends in Egypt," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.)
Jewish House members were divided on the issue. Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) questioned why the United States was providing lavish military assistance to Egypt even though "it has no real enemies" and its government tolerates "TV shows that perpetuate anti-Semitism."
But she said she was reluctantly opposing the aid cut because of its timing, noting that Egypt has lately signaled its intention to play a more constructive Middle East role.
However, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), in backing Lantos's proposal, said years of U.S. aid to Egypt have done little to curb anti-Israel rhetoric in the country's media.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal pro-Israel lobby in the United States, took no official position on the issue. Earlier in the day, AIPAC won at least a symbolic victory when it helped push through the House a resolution that was critical of a July 9 advisory judgment from the International Court of Justice holding Israel's security wall to be illegal. The resolution indicated that the ruling was a result of improper political pressure from members of the U.N. General Assembly. The vote was 361 to 45.
Republican leaders hoped to take a final vote later yesterday on the underlying foreign aid bill. Tight budget restrictions forced the House to cut $2 billion from President Bush's request, but the measure still provides a record $2.2 billion to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis -- nearly $60 million more than last year.
The president got only half the $2.5 billion he requested for his signature foreign aid initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The corporation establishes a new way to dispense foreign aid to countries that qualify by meeting a list of criteria such as commitment to free-market economies and democratic institutions.
The bill provides $900 million in aid to Afghanistan, and continues a waiver that allows continued bilateral economic assistance to Azerbaijan despite that country's economic blockage of Armenia.
--------
CAPITOL HILL
Congress's Inquiry Into Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Bogs Down
July 16, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/politics/16abus.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 15 - The Congressional investigation into the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison has virtually ground to halt, as a senior Senate Republican said Thursday that no new hearings would be held on the matter until this fall at the earliest.
The Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee made it clear weeks ago that it believed that the several current military investigations of the scandal were sufficient, and that summoning commanders to Washington would only hinder American operations in Iraq.
That left the issue to the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican, has held a series of hearings, but none since May 19. On Thursday, Mr. Warner said he would hold off calling any more witnesses until several criminal prosecutions and seven pending Pentagon inquiries were completed.
But some of those inquiries are running weeks behind. The pivotal investigation of the role that American military intelligence officials played in the abuses, which officials once expected to wrap up in June, now is not likely to be completed and reviewed by senior Pentagon officials until mid-August. Congress will soon recess until September.
"We're not in a position to try to have an independent investigation at this point," Mr. Warner told reporters after senators received a classified briefing on Thursday on Red Cross reports about detention operations at American-run prisons in Iraq. "There are so many ongoing investigations going on, we cannot in any way jeopardize the right of individuals being investigated."
Other factors also are behind the delay: the calendar, the preferences of some of Mr. Warner's Republican colleagues and the pace of the military investigations, many of which are behind schedule. All seem to be conspiring to thwart his desire to hold hearings on the matter.
Many Democrats and some Republicans, like Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, have pressed to push ahead to get to the bottom of the abuses. Senator Collins supported further hearings, saying, "I think there are some serious unanswered questions."
Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the Pentagon approach seemed to have "slowed things down rather than speed things up." He said the Senate found itself in the awkward position of having to wait for reports that it needed as the basis for hearings.
But House Republicans and, privately, some Senate Republicans say Mr. Warner, by holding more hearings, would only hand Democrats an explosive campaign issue.
For its part, the Pentagon has played to Mr. Warner's military sensibilities - he is a former secretary of the Navy - and urged him not to take any steps that could upset the overlapping military reviews or the military justice system.
When pressed Thursday to give a schedule of when hearings might resume, Mr. Warner expressed frustration and replied testily: "I can't give you a schedule. Take a look at all those investigations. What can you do until they are finished?"
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he agreed with Mr. Warner on putting off more hearings, but said investigators must search for culpability among higher-ranking officers and officials. "The idea that only five or six privates and sergeants are legally exposed is unacceptable," Mr. Graham said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Warner said he was trying to schedule a broader hearing on Iraq for next week with L. Paul Bremer III, who stepped down last month as the senior civilian administrator in Iraq. But committee officials conceded that Mr. Bremer was unlikely to give up vacation time to be pummeled by senators' questioning.
Among the other witnesses Mr. Warner said he might like to call after the Senate's August recess is William J. Haynes, the general counsel of the Defense Department.
Senator Reed said there might be an incentive outside of Capitol Hill to have some of the military reports come out when Congress is gone, diminishing their impact.
Interest in the issue among senators may be waning. About 10 senators from both parties attended the briefing held on Thursday to update lawmakers on the status of the seven pending inquiries and on the Red Cross reports.
Mr. Warner said 24 of 25 reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross on detention centers in Iraq had been made available to lawmakers by Pentagon officials. The reports, which are usually kept secret to protect the rights of prisoners and to ensure that human rights experts have continued access to prisons, were provided to the Senate committee on Thursday and to its House counterpart on Wednesday.
But aides familiar with the reports said they did not add any significant new information beyond what was contained in a highly critical report completed in February. That report said that as far back as May 2003, the Red Cross had complained to military officials about abuses.
At the briefing on Thursday, the Pentagon also provided senators with updated figures on investigations of the death or abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The military has opened 41 death investigations; 15 are still pending. Of the 135 inquiries into other abuses, 54 are still pending.
Carl Hulse contributed reporting for this article.
-------- investigations
U.S. Won't Turn Over Data for Iraq Audits
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53164-2004Jul15?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, July 15 -- The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said Thursday.
Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, the U.N. representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), said that the United States has repeatedly rebuffed his requests since March to turn over internal audits, including one that covered three contracts valued at $1.4 billion that were awarded to Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services firm. It has also failed to produced a list of other companies that have obtained contracts without having to compete.
The Security Council established the IAMB, which includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in May 2003 to ensure that Iraq's oil revenue would be managed responsibly during the U.S. occupation. The council extended its mandate in July so it could continue to monitor the use of Iraq's oil revenue after the United States transferred political authority to the Iraqis in June.
The dispute comes as the board released an initial audit by the accounting firm KPMG on Thursday that sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition's management of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. The audit also raised concerns about lax financial controls in some Iraqi ministries, citing poor bookkeeping and duplicate payments of salaries to government employees.
The Pentagon did not specifically answer questions about withholding information to auditors, but released a statement saying the Coalition Provisional Authority worked hard to manage Iraq's oil resources.
"In a very challenging environment, the CPA made every effort to bring sound management transparency and oversight to the Development Fund for Iraq while at the same time improving the quality of life for the Iraqi people," said Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman. "The CPA supported the efforts of the auditors. KPMG's comments and recommendations will be passed on to the Iraqi interim government for their use."
The audit, which covers May 2003 to December 2003, asserts that the coalition's management of Iraq's oil was plagued by "inadequate" bookkeeping and accounting systems, high turnover among coalition finance officials and a disregard for procedures designed to ensure competitive bidding for contracts. KPMG is planning to produce a second audit that covers the coalition's management of the program through June 2004.
The IAMB concluded that more than $10 billion in Iraq's oil proceeds and frozen assets had been "properly and transparently accounted for" after they were deposited in the U.S.-controlled Development Fund for Iraq. But it asserted that "financial controls were insufficient to provide reasonable assurance" that the money was properly spent.
"KPMG has not reported to us any evidence of fraud," Halbwachs told reporters before the audit was released. "There are weaknesses that could lead to fraudulent activities. It makes it easier to defraud the system if the controls are weak."
In a written response to the criticism included in the report, the U.S.-led coalition said management of Iraq's oil industry was hampered by ongoing violence.
"Although the auditor encountered difficulties, they are generally the result of the challenging work environment and the precautions the security conditions demanded," according to a statement included in the audit. "For example, retrieving a simple bank statement from the Central Bank of Iraq, or a meeting with Ministry of Oil officials, presented significant security issues, as these facilities required a security detail of at least six persons."
KPMG outlined a series of other shortcomings, including the coalition's failure to install meters on Iraq's Persian Gulf export loading platforms, making it impossible to determine how much oil Iraq was exporting. KPMG said that it was unable to verify independently the value of crude oil Iraq bartered for Syrian electricity.
-------- propaganda wars
'Yellowcake' and black marks
July 16, 2004
Washington Times editorial
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040715-082643-6068r.htm
As the idiom goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Last summer, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV made some fairly extraordinary claims about the Bush administration, which earned him a spot on the John Kerry campaign (see www.restorehonesty.com). The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report addresses Ambassador Wilson on many of his allegations. In nearly every case, the report concludes, the ambassador was wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately so.
Traversing the talk-show circuit last summer, Ambassador Wilson explained to a fawning press corps how the Bush administration had ignored his 2002 mission to Niger, in which he was responsible for investigating intelligence suggesting that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy enriched uranium - "yellowcake" - from there (the ambassador's conclusion, based on a highly intensive eight days of sweet-mint-tea drinking: no evidence); and how senior administration officials had purposefully and maliciously "outed" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame, to columnist Robert Novak, for spite. At the time, Ambassador Wilson was at the height of his fame, which he packaged in a book with a title as long as the author's ego: "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir."
Those were his extraordinary claims, designed with the explicit intention of casting the entire Bush administration as a bunch of liars and crooks. Now, the Senate Intelligence report provides the lack of extraordinary proof. First, as for the "yellowcake" matter, the report finds that Ambassador Wilson's 2002 Niger mission did nothing if not give further evidence that negotiations with Iraq had taken place. As we've said before, the "yellowcake" fiasco is pretty much over. Those "16 words" in the president's speech were correct exactly as the president spoke them. But to belabor the point, and show just how wrong the ambassador actually was, the British intelligence report, released Wednesday, also vindicates the president: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 ... was well-founded."
It gets worse for Ambassador Wilson, however. According to a July 10 article in The Washington Post, the ambassador "provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged." Problem is, The Post reports, Ambassador Wilson hadn't seen those documents at the time he made his conclusions. Moreover, the Senate report found a memo written by Mrs. Plame recommending her husband for the Niger mission - a finding contrary to the account given by the ambassador in his book - just as Mr. Novak reported. Indeed, this might help explain why a former ambassador with no experience in conducting these kinds of investigations was chosen in the first place.
Once championed by the likes of John Kerry and an adoring media, the ambassador is now thoroughly discredited. As occasionally happens in Washington, the "truth" of Ambassador Wilson's flagrant assertions has been disproven by the facts.
--------
AP Seeks Release of Bush Military Records
July 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Military-Service.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Associated Press asked a federal judge Friday to order the Pentagon to quickly turn over a full copy of President Bush's military service record.
The White House has released partial documentation of Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard but has not complied with the news service's Freedom of Information Act request for any record archived at a state library records center in Texas, the AP said in a court filing.
Records released so far do not put to rest questions over whether Bush fulfilled his National Guard service for a period during the Vietnam War, the AP argued in papers filed in federal court in New York.
Those records came from federal records clearinghouses. Texas law requires separate record keeping for state National Guard service, and those records should exist on microfilm in Austin, the AP said.
``A significant, ongoing controversy exists over the president's military service during the Vietnam War, specifically whether he performed his required service between May and October 1972,'' lawyers for the AP wrote.
There also are allegations that potentially embarrassing material was removed from Bush's military file in 1997, when he was running for re-election as Texas governor, the AP said.
``The public has an intense and legitimate interest in knowing the facts concerning the president's military service. Reviewing the microfilm copy of the personnel file at the Texas Records center could well answer the questions that have been raised,'' the lawyers wrote.
The news service asked U.S. District Judge Harold Baer to hear arguments in the case and to direct the Pentagon to comply with the FOIA request within three days.
AP first sought the Texas records in March, and sued the Pentagon in June for not moving more quickly to supply the information.
The administration has said that military payroll records that could more fully document Bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air National Guard were inadvertently destroyed. Microfilm containing the pertinent National Guard payroll records was damaged and could not be salvaged, according to the administration.
-------- us politics
House Votes to Block Aid for Saudi Arabia
By Anna Willard,
July 16, 2004
Reuters
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbur/news.newsmain?action=printarticle&ARTICLE_ID=661607
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers cheered as the House of Representatives voted on Thursday to strip financial assistance for Saudi Arabia from a foreign aid bill because of criticism that the country has not been sufficiently cooperative in the U.S. war on terror.
The vote was a stinging defeat for the Bush Administration which had strongly opposed the measure saying it would "severely undermine" counterterrorism cooperation with Saudi Arabia and U.S. efforts for peace in the Middle East.
The House voted 217-191 to remove $25,000 in the $19.4 billion 2005 foreign aid bill earmarked for Saudi Arabia.
The funds were designated for military training but approval would have triggered millions of dollars in discounts on hardware and other military training, lawmakers said.
"I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to the Saudis and I don't want anyone else's to," said Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley.
Supporters of the measure also argued that with Saudi Arabia's massive wealth from ownership of one-fourth of the world's proven oil reserves, the kingdom should not need financial aid from the United States.
The Senate would also have to strip the Saudi aid from its version of the foreign assistance bill before it stands a chance of being enacted.
U.S.- Saudi ties were shaken by the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 were Saudi nationals and revelations that individual Saudis had financed al Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, was born in the kingdom.
A study by the Council on Foreign Relations found recently that Saudi Arabia has stepped up its efforts to halt the flow of funds to militant groups, but said more needed to be done.
Arizona Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe, said the timing of the House measure "could not be worse." He acknowledged Saudi Arabia had not always been a model partner in the war on terror but said "we need all the friends and allies we can get."
----
Soul Man
By Corinne McLaughlin,
July 16, 2004
New Times
http://www.newtimes.org/issue/0402/kucinich.html
I first met Congressman Dennis Kucinich four years ago when I was looking for a Democrat in Congress who was willing to speak about spirituality at our conference, "Re-Igniting the Spirit of America." His courage, vision and integrity inspired me.
Kucinich told me he loved the book I co-authored," Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out." After living in Washington, D.C. for 12 years, and working for the Clinton Administration, I found it quite refreshing a politician would appreciate this approach.
He asked me to be his press secretary, and though I couldn't at the time, I later helped him write and promote a bill proposing a federal Department of Peace.
When Kucinich introduced his Peace bill, several of his speeches (with titles like "Prayer for America" and "Spirit and Stardust") spread around the Internet like wildfire. Thousands of Americans woke up and felt a new sense that a politician with a solid progressive record-and most significantly-a new consciousness was finally running for President. Winner of the Gandhi Peace Award, Kucinich fearlessly voted against sending troops to Iraq when it wasn't popular to do so, and he introduced legislation to repeal the Homeland Security Act, ban weapons in space, ban genetic engineering, protect the environment and prevent the manipulation of voting machines.
Kucinich has spiritual depth, which is remarkable in politics today, and he talks openly about spirituality (rare for a Democrat.) His presidential campaign is unusual, in that it reflects the thinking of many internationally respected authors who have sold millions of books on spiritual themes. Among his supporters are Ram Dass, John Robbins, Jack Kornfield, Hazel Henderson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marianne Williamson, Sam Keen, Riane Eisler and Vicki Robin.
This past fall, I organized two advisory circle meetings for Kucinich with more than a dozen best-selling authors. The Democratic presidential candidate either attended or phoned from the campaign trail. Here are highlight excerpts from those rich, provocative sessions:
Dennis Kucinich: When I walked into this room and sat down, I immediately felt a unified field. The only other time I experienced something with this power was in a meeting with a group that came into my office in Washington. I felt a tangible, physical field that's created by you all here. In a sense we didn't even need to have this discussion! I walked in and within two seconds I'm thinking, "I got it..."
I'm very grateful for your help and your guidance and for the truth you've communicated, as it makes it possible for the themes of this campaign to have the kind of depth that it does. My work in many ways is an extension of the work of so many of you.
Corinne McLaughlin: What surprised you most in running for President?
Kucinich: That there are 26 hours in a day.
Avon Mattison (author, "We the Peoples' Initiative" and founder, Pathways to Peace): If you could start your campaign over again, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Kucinich: I'd buy a newspaper, and maybe a television network.
Paul Ray (Co-author, "The Cultural Creatives"): I have some research for you on the "new political compass." There is a new political constituency emerging which I call New Progressives, representing 45 percent of likely voters.
The easiest way to describe them is that they are at right angles to the dimension of Liberal Left and Social Conservative Right and they are directly opposed to Big Business Conservatism. These New Progressives are at the intersection of all the movement constituencies, and the marginal cost of mobilizing them should be small. If they are mobilized under a single banner, as a big political tent, they could wind up replacing one of the political parties.
What we should be doing is building in networks that can persist over time because that's the way people power actually works-it's very dense networks.
Dennis Kucinich: One thing I can tell you-as someone who, for several Congresses sat in at all the leadership meetings-the leadership of the Democratic Party is totally poll driven. No principle, no direction, just the moment, so it's a very limited, egocentric, unthoughtful approach to governance and public policy...
Some Democrats voted for the war because the polls told them it would be the thing to do. It's sick... They use the polls to raise money. There are no viable policies because there are no core beliefs.
Carolyn Shaffer (co-author, "Creating Community Anywhere"): I want to help you with long-term, community building that can inform politics, through the movement I'm connected with. We create village councils and other formats that can be put into practice to get more media coverage.
Kucinich: But as the poet said 30 years ago, "The revolution will not be televised."
Duane Elgin ("Voluntary Simplicity", "The Promise Ahead") As a non-partisan media activist, I've seen that power in a democracy is the power to communicate, and we don't have the power to communicate our vision and values to the public at large.... The vehicle of that communication is essentially broadcast television. It uses the public airwaves that we, the public, own.
No one running in the [Democratic] primaries is holding the media accountable in the court of public opinion. You could powerfully distinguish yourself if you say that the unspoken elephant in this room is the mass media and what they're not telling us-about climate change, species extinction, the roots of terrorism in poverty, etc.
Kucinich: The FCC Act of 1934 says the electronic media must be responsible to the people or it can't operate. Now the media monopolies have created a situation where there is less of a democratic discussion than ever before.
I experience this as a candidate because the themes I raise challenge the status quo. I don't get the coverage the other candidates do.
The other day I talked about the media role in taking us into Iraq, and about their accountability. But the problem is we can't put a face on the media, personify it. It's amorphous. So for that reason, it's more vulnerable, but it's also more difficult to pin it down. It's a paradox. Your point is well taken, about demanding accountability.
The media is responsible in large part for the situation in Iraq. If the media had done its homework, Bush wouldn't have had the confidence to proceed. The media helped to build the Cold War. The media was a spear-carrier for the government.
Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex, but now its military-industrial-media complex, and their airwaves become marketing tools for war.
Anodea Judith (author, "Wheels of Life"): From a systems perspective, a system has four basic parts: input, transformation, output and feedback. Feedback is responsible for the evolution of the system. And in our culture, the media is actually the feedback mechanism.
But the feedback we're getting is actually a distorted funhouse mirror. We're not getting accurate information, and it's preventing evolution. People make the right decisions if they get the right information. Fortunately, we have the Internet or we'd be in worse shape.
Kucinich: That's very perceptive. When you go into a funhouse, you see your distorted image. If you didn't know what you really look like, you'd look at that image and think it is you.
Randy Hayes (Co-author, "Alternatives to Economic Globalization"; Founder of Rainforest Action Network): If you look systematically at the social and ecological crisis in this country and world-wide, big business is shredding the fabric of nature itself, usurping public governance and replacing what we used to call the free press with mass media.
As a society we know the functionality of the separation of church and state, but what would be the functionality of the separation of business and state? Can we talk about that in a way that is pro-commerce and unifying and can win elections?
Kucinich: The way we do it is to talk about a question of scale. As business grows and becomes larger, it inevitably crushes the aspiration of smaller businesses.
Laissez-faire capitalism is not analogous to a democratic society, as a democratic society has checks and balances. A laissez-faire economy says pursue economic freedom at any price. In a democracy there's a certain regulation of freedom.
The challenge that we face is the importance of protecting small business, of looking at issues of concentration of wealth that makes it much more difficult to uphold the principle of democracy. I think we have to create connections between democracy and commerce on a smaller scale that is more sustainable and creates more jobs.
Gordon Davidson (co-author, "Spiritual Politics"; co-founder, The Center for Visionary Leadership): The problem of takeover of government by big business is now deeply rooted in the legal system by giving corporations all the rights and few of the responsibilities of individuals. This is a fundamental distortion of our democracy, as originally all the rights resided only in the individual.
And because corporations are immortal and can amass immense wealth, their power quickly surpasses any individual or group of individuals. There are movements now to require regular renewal of corporate charters by studying their corporate performance to see if they satisfy social goals. If not, they should not have their charter renewed.
Kucinich: I favor that. We have to insist that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission do their job.
Joe Kresse (Foundation for Global Community): We need to move from managers' capitalism to owners' capitalism. People who own corporate America have abdicated their responsibility, their boards have abdicated their responsibility. Even as Adam Smith said, watch out, if corporations are left to their own devices, people will rob, break and steal.
Kucinich: That's very useful. I have talked about this, but I'd like to explore this more as a theme in this campaign. It's also a way to connect with the constituency of people who've been cheated out of their investments.
Shakti Gawain (author, "Creative Visualization," "The Path of Transformation"): What's happening in the world is a reflection of what's going on individually within each of us. One way to do the healing externally is to do the healing internally, within us.
Kucinich: I read "Creative Visualization" 30 years ago, it was great. In the visualization you lead last night [during an advisory circle meeting], I saw a horse race, and at the last minute, I saw a horse break through across the finish line. I saw it clearly!
Sam Keen (author, "Faces of the Enemy," "Fire in the Belly"): You're the only Democratic candidate for President who seems to understand the radical changes we need to make to preserve the environment and move us away from a militarized future that will cost all of us our social and political security.
Kucinich: We're at a point in the campaign, without mass media coverage of any kind, where we've grown the campaign to a 50-state campaign, we've built an organization around the country. We're at a critical point where we have to keep sustaining it.
If you have networks that you can tap, put in a favorable word about what we're doing. Let people know, to go to our website and make a contribution. It's critical to sustain the organization.
People need to be aware this is a real campaign, it's not just a message trip that I'm on. I believe this election and this campaign is wide open and gives us a shot at structural change.... I chose a life in public life and I've been doing this my whole life. This is about whether we have the confidence in the authenticity of our own dreams and our own worldview-or whether we'll settle for half measures and wishful thinking.
For more information or to order Kucinich's new book, "A Prayer for America," contact the Kucinich Campaign toll-free at 866-413-3664 or visit http://www.kucinich.us.
Corinne McLaughlin can be reached at corrinemc @ visonarylead .org.
----
The Little Engine That Couldn't
Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War Plank
By RON JACOBS
July 16, 2004
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs07162004.html
Well, history has repeated itself and, just like the saying goes, this time around it is pure farce. In this instance, I am referring to the attempt by Kucinich supporters to attach an antiwar plank to the Democratic Party's 2004 platform. As anyone knows, of course, these platforms don't really mean much of anything, but the fact that the Kerry people fought even the inclusion of a statement that called the Iraq war wrong from its inception proves once again how little difference there really is in the campaigns of the two men running for president of the United States this year. It also proves the pointlessness of any group of left-leaning Democrats who still believe that their party is capable of redemption along McGovernite lines.
The original hope of the Kucinich campaign--a campaign that voiced clear opposition to the war and ran on a demand that the US withdraw from Iraq--was that the Democratic Party platform for 2004 would include language that included a timetable for the withdrawal of all US military forces from Iraq and also made clear that the party considered the war on Iraq a mistake from the beginning. What the Kucinich campaign got instead was "a commitment to begin the process to talk about bringing the troops home;" according to Kucinich's campaign manager, Tim Carpenter. In short, they got nothing, since the conversation Mr. Carpenter is referring to has already begun in the streets and workplaces of the nation.
To add injury to insult to those Kucinich supporters who supported Dennis because of his supposed opposition to the war, Kucinich called some supporters and told them that this retreat was some kind of a victory. If I were one of those supporters, I would have hung up on Mr. Kucinich's quicker than I do on a solicitor. This is no victory. If anything, it's further acknowledgement as to the bankruptcy of the two-party system. Not only have the remaining antiwar forces in the Democratic Party been relegated to the sidelines at the party convention, they've convinced themselves that their silencing is a victory. All of this done, of course, in the name of party unity and a desire to beat George Bush.
In 1968, there was a much larger antiwar contingent within the Democratic Party. This contingent was represented by the McCarthy and Robert Kennedy (later McGovern, after RFK's murder) campaigns. Despite the failure of these campaigns to win the nomination, the antiwar forces that propelled them fought to the bitter end to get their antiwar plank into the party's platform. They failed, in part due to manipulations by the pro-war forces in the party represented by Hubert Humphrey. Once their failure became apparent, most of these Democrats either left the Convention Center and joined their fellow peace activists in the streets of Chicago or they continued to search for ways to get their message out to the American people from the convention floor. Of course, those who did the former were gassed and beaten and those who attempted the latter were shouted down or physically removed from the convention floor.
How times have changed. After 1968, the antiwar forces briefly took over the Democratic Party and ran George McGovern in 1972. Thanks to a lack of support from the party's corporate backers, an uneven campaign strategy, and a Republican campaign that included a number of dirty tricks, McGovern lost and the progressive forces within the Democratic Party moved back into the shadows. Since then, these forces have played a role that revolves primarily around keeping progressive independents from running a third-party campaign (a role ironically now also played by the third party Greens) . By performing this role, these forces have prevented the progressive voice in US electoral politics from being heard in any effective manner and have helped create the current political situation in the US where most people don't vote and those that do have a choice that only represents the American right wing.
Which brings us to today, a mere two weeks before the Democrats hold their party convention in Boston. Their nominee, John Kerry, represents the less conservative wing of America's right-wing establishment and might win the November election if it is held and if his campaign can motivate enough voters to bother voting. As has been the case since 1972, progressive Americans have no one whom they can vote for, only someone to vote against. It is these voters that Kerry is counting on and it is these voters who Kucinich and Nader try to represent. Unfortunately, Mr. Kucinich refuses to leave the Democratic Party-a decision that rendered his campaign moribund from the beginning, and Nader cannot get the funds a national campaign requires in today's America. Not that it would matter much if either of these men's campaigns actually had a chance of winning, since the moneyed interests who really elect this country's presidents would never allow anyone with their opinions move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Given this, one would think that Mr. Kucinich would not give up so easily on his desire to get some antiwar language into the Democratic platform. After all, what does he have to lose? Instead, his supporters and the rest of the Anyone-But-Bush mindset are left to vote for John Kerry, a man who not only supported the Iraq war from its beginnings, but also hopes to expand it to NATO if he's elected. How is that any different from George Bush?
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
----
Kerry Gets Warm Reception From NAACP
Campaign Also Alters Ads Based on Criticism From Congressional Black Caucus
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53130-2004Jul15.html
PHILADELPHIA, July 15 -- Sen. John F. Kerry had a simple message for the NAACP's annual convention Thursday. I'm here. He's not.
Unlike President Bush, who had cited a scheduling conflict in declining an invitation to speak at the gathering this week, the Massachusetts Democrat said he "will be a president who is truly a uniter, not one who seeks to divide the nation by race or riches or by any other label."
"I understand you've been having trouble getting some speakers," Kerry joked at the outset of a 50-minute speech that touched on a range of issues deemed important to the black community, such as the conflict in the Sudan and the disputed 2000 presidential election, which Kerry called the most tainted in history. "The president may be too busy to speak to you now," he said. "He'll have plenty of time after November 2."
A White House communications director Dan Bartlett on Thursday called the leadership of the NAACP intolerant and said Bush, who has been stung by criticism from the group in the past, would be addressing the Urban League, another group that advocates for civil rights, next week.
Kerry was warmly received by the few thousand delegates from across the country who chanted his name as he walked on stage. Some shouted words of encouragement from their seats or sprang to their feet to urge him on.
"There's a lot of love in this room, I'm telling you," Kerry responded to a man who shouted his affections. "I want to turn this love into votes. I want to turn this love into action. I want to turn this love into change."
After criticism from some black leaders who said he had hired few black staff members and failed to reach out to their communities, Kerry's campaign has stepped up efforts to secure the Democratic Party's traditionally strong relationship with African Americans. Thirty percent of his staffers are people of color, according to Allison Dobson, a campaign spokeswoman. He announced Wednesday that Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama will be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. About 40 percent of delegates to that convention will be members of minority groups.
Kerry launched a $2 million advertising campaign targeting black voters, but he quickly agreed to revise it in the face of criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus. Twenty-five of the caucus's 27 members reviewed the TV and radio ads Wednesday morning, and unanimously deemed them "a bit lackluster," caucus chairman Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said. Several members complained to the Kerry campaign, which sent aides to meet with black lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday.
"We came to an agreement the ads would be changed, and some of them would be pulled" until replacements could be produced, Cummings said. The new ads, he said, will emphasize Kerry's differences with Bush on key issues such as job creation. They also will feature black House members from swing states testifying to their support of Kerry.
The original ad, which showed Kerry mingling with black audiences and hugging an African American man, did not do enough to highlight the stakes of the presidential race, Cummings said. "We emphasized it was not enough for people just to like Kerry, but for them to understand that four more years of Bush" would seriously damage the black community's agenda, especially civil rights laws subject to federal judges' review, he said.
"To us, this is the most important election that we will experience in our lifetime," said Cummings, 53. The failure to show the ads to the black caucus before airing them, he said, "was a campaign oversight, and it was corrected. . . . We were satisfied."
In Philadelphia, despite Kerry's claim, not everyone was feeling the love. "It may make a difference that he is paying us attention now, but sometimes it bugs me to be targeted at such a late date," said Alice Jeffery, a retired middle school teacher from Memphis. Still, she called Kerry the "lesser of two evils."
But Abraham Mencer, 75, a retired Air Force major from Willingboro, N.J., said, "I don't see how you can criticize him when you look at the other choice." That sentiment was echoed by many others there who gave lukewarm approval of Kerry but lambasted Bush for his absence. "Showing up is a big thing for us," said Marsha Aiken, 52, of New York. "He could have just sat back at home, knowing that for us he is the better candidate."
Kerry spoke of the connection between religious faith and deeds as he called on the Bush administration to address the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, which Kerry labeled "genocide." The Bush administration has avoided that term for the conflict in the African nation, but Kerry said he would go further, calling for "an international humanitarian intervention."
He drew a standing ovation by bringing up the election that brought Bush to power. "We are not only going to make sure that every single vote counts; we're going to make sure that every single vote is counted."
The speech marked Kerry's first campaign event after a two-day hiatus spent honing his convention speech in Boston. On his campaign plane Thursday he told reporters he had been huddling with speechwriters, some of whom made the trip to Philadelphia with him, until 10:30 the night before. The speech would be more personal than others he has given, Kerry said, adding that he was doing much of the writing himself, in longhand on notepads. He leaves Saturday for a four-day vacation on Nantucket, Mass.
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report from Washington.
--------
Civil Rights Board Wants Inquiry on Florida Voter-Purge List
July 16, 2004
By FORD FESSENDEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/national/16vote.html
WASHINGTON, July 15 - Members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called on the Justice Department on Thursday to investigate possible voting-rights violations in Florida's troubled effort to purge felons from its voter registration lists.
At a hearing on the state's effort to use a list of 48,000 suspected felons to trim voter rolls, the civil rights commission's chairman, Mary Frances Berry, also urged the newly created federal Election Assistance Commission, which is distributing millions of dollars to the states for voting improvements, to consider withholding Florida's share.
The civil rights commission, which has no power to take action itself, has been deeply critical of Florida since the 2000 election. The hearing on Thursday, part of a series the commission is holding to dramatize voting problems before the 2004 election, focused on the Florida purge. Dr. Berry said she would ask the Justice Department to investigate the possibility that the purge violated the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against minorities.
On Saturday, the Florida secretary of state, Glenda Hood, suspended the state's felon effort, citing a methodological flaw that virtually guaranteed that voters who registered as Hispanics would not be purged, while thousands of blacks might be.
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hood, said the secretary of state would audit the process of developing the felon matching list to answer questions about why the flaw was not caught earlier. Ms. Nash also said that the state's effort did not violate the Voting Rights Act, but that the state would cooperate in any Justice Department investigation.
Ms. Hood declined an invitation to appear at Thursday's hearing, but sent a letter saying that county election supervisors would remove felons from the rolls without using the state list. Florida is one of seven states that ban felons from voting, unless they successfully petition to have their rights restored.
Dr. Berry said she was concerned that Ms. Hood's new plan would be even worse than the original problem, possibly violating Bush v. Gore, the landmark case that stopped recounts in the 2000 presidential election because there was no uniform standard among Florida's counties for counting votes.
Representatives of civil rights organizations who testified said they were already planning lawsuits to stop county efforts to purge voters.
"Florida is absolutely committed to blocking voters," said Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "All of the civil rights organizations are in intense discussions, and we think there are three or four lawsuits that should be filed here."
Gracia Hillman, the vice chairwoman of the Election Assistance Commission, told the civil rights commission yesterday that her agency did not have the authority to deny Florida its share of federal money appropriated under the Help America Vote Act. Florida has already received $47 million this year, and is eligible for an additional $85 million.
The commission also sharply questioned a representative from Accenture, the private company that Florida retained to help set up the felon-matching operation. Dr. Berry wanted to know who had failed to find the flaw that resulted in Hispanic felons being left off the purge list.
Meg McLaughlin, an Accenture partner, said she did not know, but that it was not her company's responsibility.
Under the state's methodology, if a name and birth date were matched in the felon and voter databases, but the races did not match, the person was not put on the purge list. Ms. McLaughlin said her company did not know that the state's felon database did not have a designation for Hispanic, a fact that resulted in only a handful of the state's approximately 650,000 registered Hispanic voters making the purge list, compared with more than 20,000 blacks.
Hispanics tend to register as Republicans in Florida, while blacks are overwhelmingly Democrats.
"We were not provided with that information," Ms. McLaughlin said, adding, "I would think we should have been."
She declined to say whose responsibility it was to give the company the information.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Everglades Mercury Levels Lower Due to Incinerator Regulations
July 16, 2004
GAINESVILLE, Florida, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-16-09.asp#anchor7
Mercury levels in the Everglades have dropped over the past 10 years after reaching dangerously high levels in the early 1990s, according to new research from the University of Florida.
After analyzing nearly 100 years worth of mercury data stored in the feathers of wading birds preserved in museums, the researchers say waste incinerators in the 1980s were responsible for the mercury contamination.
Their study confirms earlier findings that controls on emissions from waste incinerators, combined with a reduction in the use of mercury in household items, are effectively cutting mercury levels in Everglades birds.
"This is a triumph of regulation, which is something you don't hear about very often," said Peter Frederick, an associate professor of wildlife ecology at University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Concerned about the disappearance of wading birds in the Everglades wetland, Frederick led a team of researchers who measured mercury levels over the past century using feathers from museum specimens of Everglades wading birds. Their findings appeared in the June issue of the journal "Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry."
Use of incinerators to burn garbage - including household products containing mercury, such as flashlight batteries - boomed nationwide in the 1980s.
But because airborne mercury particles can travel hundreds or thousands of miles before settling to a body of water, scientists said it was possible the pollution was coming from smokestacks in other states or countries, and not from South Florida.
Frederick looked at the history of Everglades mercury contamination by testing the feathers of Everglades birds from 1905 to the late 1990s. "When birds ingest mercury, some of it will bind in a durable form with their growing feathers, which leaves a record of their exposure," he said.
A slow increase in mercury content of the feathers over the 20th century would indicate a global increase in use of mercury. If levels increased sharply during the 1980s incineration boom, local sources were probably to blame, he said.
The researchers tested museum specimens from four species - anhingas, great egrets, white ibises and great blue herons - and were collected between 1905 and 1990. They tested feathers from live birds in the Everglades of the same types after 1990.
They found low mercury levels until the 1970s. Levels increased from the late 1970s and to the early 1990s, roughly coinciding with the nationwide growth in the use of incineration, Frederick said.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states and the federal government tried to stop the contamination by imposing limits on mercury emissions from medical and municipal waste incinerators.
Mercury levels in the feathers dropped after 1994, reflecting the delayed effect of emissions regulations, Frederick said. "There's a certain amount of lag time, up to seven years, between the passage of the regulations and the changes we observed in the field. It takes some time for existing mercury to cycle through the environment."
Bird populations in the Everglades fell by 90 percent between the 1950s and the 1980s, and Frederick believes high mercury levels played a part in their disappearance.
Mercury, found in medical thermometers, batteries and electrical switches, is a toxic that causes reproductive and behavioral problems in birds and humans. When materials containing mercury are burned, particles of the metal are released into the air and settle into water bodies where they become hazardous to fish and birds.
When fish ingest mercury, either by absorbing it through their gills or by eating smaller contaminated fish, the element is stored in their bodies for life. Wading birds, which consume large amounts of fish, are particularly at risk from mercury contamination.
Tom Atkeson, coordinator of the mercury program at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the study presents "very convincing" evidence that reduced incinerator emissions are responsible for the drop in mercury levels in Everglades birds.
Atkeson said state and federal governments cannott take all the credit for the cut in mercury emissions. Several large battery manufacturers voluntarily phased out the use of the mercury in the 1980s, reducing the amount of the toxic burned in incinerators.
----
EPA considers clean air lawsuits for pollution at 22 power plants
Friday, July 16, 2004
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-16/s_25924.asp
WASHINGTON - The owners of nearly two dozen coal-burning power plants could face lawsuits from the Environmental Protection Agency for clean air violations stemming from plant expansions or improvements, according to agency officials and documents.
The EPA and the Justice Department are considering actions against operators of 22 plants for alleged violations of a regulation that the Bush administration has been trying to scale back and make less burdensome to industry.
The rule requires utilities to install additional pollution controls when making expansions or improvements that result in more emissions. Utilities have argued the rule has been abused by regulators targeting routine, needed maintenance.
No decision on whether to file the lawsuits has been made, but at least 14 of the cases have been turned over to the Justice Department for possible action, said an EPA official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the cases are pending. Some cases may be settled before going to court or possibly dropped, the EPA official and industry sources said.
The enforcement agenda represents five years of preparation by EPA staff to identify alleged clean air violations under the so-called "new source review" requirements of the Clean Air Act. Among the targets are some of the country's largest utilities.
Neither the EPA nor the Justice Department would confirm or deny on the record the pending enforcement actions.
"We will not discuss ongoing enforcement investigations," said EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.
Justice spokesman Blaine Rethmeier said the department had no comment on pending cases, but he added, "We are vigorously prosecuting all the (new source review) cases" before the department.
The Clinton administration brought nine cases involving 51 power plants under the rule and another six cases had been filed since then, even as the Bush administration has sought to make the regulation less stringent. Seven of those 15 cases have been settled.
The new wave of enforcement cases involve power plants across the country from New York to North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Indiana, Michigan, Colorado, California, and Oregon, among other states.
Among them are plants owned by the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority; Atlanta-based Southern Co. subsidiaries Gulf Power in Florida and Mississippi Power; Pacific Gas & Electric in California; and PacificCorp in Oregon.
Another eight cases are still under review at the EPA. These include possible actions against Michigan-based Consumers Energy, Indian Power and Light and Westar Energy in Kansas, Northern Indiana Public Service Corp., and Minnesota-based Xcel Energy, according to the EPA list and agency officials.
The enforcement cases involve regulations that have been strongly criticized by the White House and have been the target of an intensive overhaul within the EPA because of arguments by industry that they have hindered plant maintenance, expansion, and efficiency.
In December, a federal appeals court blocked the Bush administration's planned changes in the "new source review" rules until a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen states challenging the changes can be fully considered.
In the meantime, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt has said he favors vigorously prosecuting violators of the rules, including cases filed by the Clinton administration as well as any new cases that have merit.
Scott Segal, a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a utility group, said a decision to pursue these new cases "creates more uncertainty" and will further prompt utilities to put off needed maintenance and efficiency improvements for fear of lawsuits.
But environmentalists have criticized the EPA for not adequately enforcing the regulations, which they argue would significantly reduce smokestack emissions if aggressively enforced.
"We have 150 million people exposed to unhealthy air in the country. Yet these utilities are being allowed to circumvent their clean air obligations," said William Becker, executive director of two associations that represent state and local air pollution control officials.
-------- health
4-Month Probe Cites Disarray Within WASA
Communication Failures Hurt Response to High Lead Levels
By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53412-2004Jul15.html
Communication breakdowns and internal conflicts at the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority kept senior managers from promptly detecting and properly disclosing lead contamination problems in the drinking water, according to an independent report commissioned by the utility.
The report, written under the direction of former U.S. deputy attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., concludes that the agency's water quality division was in disarray as excessive levels of lead began to appear in the drinking water at some District homes.
The four-month investigation found that personality conflicts between staff members, in part attributable to alleged irregularities in the way WASA was conducting its water sampling, led to a previously undisclosed probe of the lead monitoring program two years ago. That probe, by the D.C. inspector general and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, found no wrongdoing.
The report says senior WASA managers played down initial findings of excessive lead levels in 2002 and did not acknowledge the severity of the problem until December 2003, after the agency's engineering department had produced results of thousands of new water tests. Even then, General Manager Jerry N. Johnson and his deputy, Michael S. Marcotte, failed to tell the agency's board, city officials and the public about the full scope of the lead contamination, the report says.
Furthermore, "failures of communication within WASA impeded WASA's and the Board's ability to process and respond to information in a timely and effective fashion," the report states.
WASA board members told investigators for Holder's law firm, Covington & Burling, that Johnson and Marcotte were effective executives but "tended to provide information to the Board very late, and even then only in a 'packaged' format," according to the report.
Board Chairman Glenn S. Gerstell and Holder have scheduled a news conference at 11 a.m. today to release the report. The Washington Post obtained a copy yesterday from a source on condition of anonymity.
The report says that WASA had undertaken a massive testing program in 2003, which found that more than 4,000 homes had water with lead levels above the federal limit, but that "key WASA personnel, as well as the Board and members of the District government, were not aware of the results" until a Washington Post article Jan. 31. "This delay and lack of communication is wholly unacceptable," the report concludes.
The 143-page, $75,000 report, requested by WASA's board of directors, also criticizes the EPA, the D.C. Department of Health and the Washington Aqueduct, which is operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, for failing to keep the public informed of the extent of the lead problem and the possible health risks.
Those agencies often gave WASA conflicting advice or failed to respond to the agency's request for guidance, the report says.
"The other agencies involved . . . had a muted response . . . and, along with other governmental entities, missed opportunities to confront these issues earlier," the report says.
The report's 18 recommendations to improve internal and external communication include: assigning responsibility for compliance with EPA rules to a senior manager; appointing a liaison to deal with the city's Health Department; creating a task force to address public health concerns whenever an EPA action level is exceeded; and bringing on a board member with engineering experience.
"There's no question it's critical of WASA and clear that WASA's staff made a number of mistakes and misjudgments and there was poor supervision over some employees," Gerstell said yesterday of the report. "The result was that the public was not timely informed about this problem. For me as chairman, that's completely unacceptable."
Gerstell also faulted the EPA, the Health Department and the Army Corps. "All were very complicit in the series of problems," he said.
In a written statement, EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said that "accurate reporting by WASA would have triggered earlier efforts to correct problems in DC water."
The Covington & Burling report follows other criticism of WASA's management of the lead contamination problems. The EPA ruled last month that WASA violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in six categories and cited several problems in the way the agency disclosed the problem to the public. In April, D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) released 14 recommendations after a review by a city task force.
Last month, Washington Aqueduct officials started treating the water in part of the distribution system with a chemical that they hope will coat lead pipes and fixtures and stem the leaching. An expansion of the treatment to the entire system is planned for Aug. 9.
The Covington & Burling report deals with both the period before WASA officially reported excessive lead problems to the EPA in August 2002 and the aftermath.
The first section sheds new light on how WASA and the EPA allegedly mishandled information that could have revealed a lead problem a year earlier.
In 2001, WASA's water quality manager, Seema S. Bhat, sent an e-mail informing her superiors and her EPA liaison, George Rizzo, that an initial round of tests during the 2000-01 sampling period showed that WASA had exceeded the lead action level.
Bhat then retested several houses and substituted some results, after which WASA declared itself in compliance with EPA rules.
Substituting lead test results without federal permission is against the law. Bhat has said Rizzo approved her actions, but the EPA disputes her assertion. Holder's team said it found no evidence that the EPA signed off on Bhat's actions.
Bhat later fired an aide, Jerome Krough, who responded by telling the D.C. inspector general that he believed that Bhat had improperly invalidated test results.
The D.C. inspector general enlisted the help of the EPA's inspector general and launched an investigation, the Holder report states. After more than a year, however, the investigation was closed in December 2002 with no finding of fault. Last month, the EPA ruled that WASA had improperly invalidated several tests.
Marcotte and Kofi Boateng, Bhat's direct supervisor, have said that Bhat, who was fired in 2003, did not fully inform them about the excessive levels of lead in the water in 2001. They were informed by August 2002, when they notified the EPA that WASA exceeded the lead level in the 2001-02 testing period.
In the second section of the report, Holder's team confirms findings by EPA investigators that WASA avoided using some federally mandated language in brochures and public service announcements about the lead problem.
But the report also blames the EPA for giving WASA conflicting guidance and signing off on many steps the agency took to inform the public and solve the lead problem.
As for the D.C. Department of Health, which WASA's Johnson asked for assistance, the report says that "these requests for help were met with slow response time from DOH or were not met with any response at all."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Group Settles Dispute With Company on Times Sq. Ad
By JULIA PRESTON
July 16, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/nyregion/16billboard.html?ei=1&en=d8073191bba18f8c&ex=1090949056&pagewanted=print&position=
An antiwar group reached a settlement yesterday with Clear Channel Communications over a billboard advertisement the group wanted to display in Times Square, agreeing to post an image of a red, white and blue dove instead of a bomb with a burning fuse. The media conglomerate said it would provide two alternative billboards, instead of the one on the Marriott Marquis hotel that it originally leased to the group.
In an amicable ending to a dispute that could have become an embarrassment for Clear Channel, the company agreed that the group, Project Billboard, could display its ad on a billboard that wraps around the Condé Nast building at 42nd Street and Broadway, a prime location. The ad will go up in early August, in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention, and will remain for three months. It will include the phrase "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war," which Clear Channel at one point tried to revise to eliminate the reference to the war in Iraq.
As part of the settlement, Project Billboard will also be able to use a second vertical billboard for four months, on the side of the W Hotel at Broadway and 47th Street. That ad will read "Total Cost of Iraq War," and will include a running electronic ticker displaying how much the United States is spending in Iraq.
Deborah Rappaport, a board member at Project Billboard, said the group would get the two billboards for $368,000, the price it originally paid to lease one.
After several weeks of confused discussion between the two sides, Clear Channel clarified this week that it could not post the ad on the billboard originally leased because the hotel refused to have any political advertising on its wall space.
Ms. Rappaport said the deal "satisfies our desire to get our message up." Clear Channel said that it was "happy to help Project Billboard get their message to the more than 1.5 million people who pass through Times Square each day."
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Antiwar Displays To Hang in New York Federal Case Ends in Compromise
By Michelle Garcia
The Washington Post
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53656-2004Jul15.html
NEW YORK, July 15 -- A California public interest group declared victory Thursday in its battle against media giant Clear Channel Spectacolor, ending a dispute over an antiwar billboard planned for Times Square.
In an agreement with the media company, Berkeley, Calif.-based Project Billboard will post two signs in the cradle of the midtown business district in time for the Republican National Convention late next month. A billboard stretching the length of several stories will feature a dove and the words: Democracy Is Best Taught By Example, Not By War. The second, a ticker similar to the iconic national debt clock, will display the "total cost of Iraq War" in dollars spent.
"The bigger message is, the ability of Americans to discuss and debate the issues is going to be maintained," said Deborah Rappaport, director of Project Billboard. "We are very gratified by that."
The two sides closed negotiations the day before they were expected to return to federal court. The California group had sued Clear Channel for breach of contract when it declined to post a billboard with the same message and the image of a bomb on the side of a hotel in Times Square. The media company decided that the bomb imagery was too sensitive for a city still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The company added that the hotel owners had veto power over the ad's content.
"Clear Channel always wanted to help them. The problem was, a political ad couldn't go up on that building," a Clear Channel spokesman said. A company official said the agreement demonstrated Clear Channel's commitment to helping the group find an alternate location.
The billboards will be unveiled Aug. 2 and displayed for several months.
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Antiwar Group Settles Dispute With Company on Times Sq. Ad
July 16, 2004
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/nyregion/16billboard.html
An antiwar group reached a settlement yesterday with Clear Channel Communications over a billboard advertisement the group wanted to display in Times Square, agreeing to post an image of a red, white and blue dove instead of a bomb with a burning fuse. The media conglomerate said it would provide two alternative billboards, instead of the one on the Marriott Marquis hotel that it originally leased to the group.
In an amicable ending to a dispute that could have become an embarrassment for Clear Channel, the company agreed that the group, Project Billboard, could display its ad on a billboard that wraps around the Condé Nast building at 42nd Street and Broadway, a prime location. The ad will go up in early August, in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention, and will remain for three months. It will include the phrase "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war," which Clear Channel at one point tried to revise to eliminate the reference to the war in Iraq.
As part of the settlement, Project Billboard will also be able to use a second vertical billboard for four months, on the side of the W Hotel at Broadway and 47th Street. That ad will read "Total Cost of Iraq War," and will include a running electronic ticker displaying how much the United States is spending in Iraq.
Deborah Rappaport, a board member at Project Billboard, said the group would get the two billboards for $368,000, the price it originally paid to lease one.
After several weeks of confused discussion between the two sides, Clear Channel clarified this week that it could not post the ad on the billboard originally leased because the hotel refused to have any political advertising on its wall space.
Ms. Rappaport said the deal "satisfies our desire to get our message up." Clear Channel said that it was "happy to help Project Billboard get their message to the more than 1.5 million people who pass through Times Square each day."
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150 Picket Near City Hall in Favor of Central Park Rally
July 16, 2004
By DIANE CARDWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/nyregion/16protest.html
About 150 protesters picketed outside of City Hall Park yesterday to demand that the Bloomberg administration allow a giant rally in Central Park before the Republican National Convention next month.
The demonstration came a day after the city threw down the gauntlet to United for Peace and Justice, the group planning the largest convention protest, to accept a rally site along the West Side Highway or take the city to court.
Organizers stressed that they would prefer to negotiate with the city in the hope that officials would reconsider letting them use Central Park, Times Square or a stretch of Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, sites that the group had proposed for its Aug. 29 rally and that the city rejected. Bill Dobbs, spokesman for the group, said that it was considering a lawsuit, but that he was not sure how serious those considerations were.
"The protesters deserve a place to express themselves that is away from the edge of the island, a place that has some meaning for New Yorkers," he said.
The police and the group have estimated that 250,000 people could attend the rally.
Trying to pressure Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg into changing course, demonstrators chanted and carried signs with slogans like "Don't pen in free speech" and "Keep your knee-jerk reactionary politics off my Bill of Rights" under the watchful eyes of about 40 police officers who had apparently been expecting a larger turnout. The protest area, on Broadway south of Murray Street, was lined with barricades down to Barclay Street, near where three police dogs lay on the sidewalk, looking bored.
Mr. Bloomberg appeared unswayed about changing the protest site and the route of a march before the rally. "The route is up to the city, and after listening to what they wanted to do and then looking at what the city can do in terms of what venues we have, what resources we have, we've come up with something that I think should satisfy everybody," he told reporters, adding that if it "doesn't satisfy everybody perfectly, I'm sorry, we just we don't have places where for a crowd that size there's very many options."
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