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NUCLEAR
Uranium Ash at Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel Plant Draws Fine
Hiroshima mayor wants constitution static
Survivor speaks out against nuclear bomb
80% of A-bomb plaintiffs had acute radiation symptoms
The Nuclear Fashion Season
US backs out of nuclear inspections treaty
Part 2 of 3: World watches as U.S. walks fine line on nuclear testing
UC Should Quit Los Alamos
Catawba nuclear plant on track to test plutonium fuel
MILITARY
New U.N. Deadline Rejected by Sudan
Sudanese army says UN resolution 'a declaration of war'
Pure evil in Sudan
State Department in talks with Jordan for arms
U.S. wants Israel to retain edge
First women complete army training in insurgency-torn Nepal
START-UP System Uses Ultraviolet Light to Disable Airborne Threats
In Profile
Contracts Awarded
'91 U.S. Report Calls Colombian Leader Ally of Drug Lords
Gibraltar detects snub as US warship pulls out of celebrations
Bombs Explode Near Churches in 2 Iraqi Cities
U.S. urges Israel to end settlements
Palestinian Militants Face Off as Rifts Between Factions Grow
Stranded on the Egypt-Gaza Border
Pakistani-U.S. Raid Uncovered Terrorist Cell's Surveillance Data
Captured Qaeda Figure Led Way to Information Behind Warning
Special Warriors Have Growing Ranks and Growing Pains
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Police batten down city after alert
Washington and N.Y. Put on Alert
Police Plan Traffic Stops Near IMF and World Bank
N.Y. Grapples With Terror Threat, Stiff Security
Americans Urged to Stick to Routines Despite Terror Alert
U.S. Warns of High Risk of Qaeda Attack
Counterterrorism Exchange
Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency
After Guantánamo, More Jail for 4 Frenchmen
POLITICS
The Progressive Peacenik Myth
Kerry Pledges Iraq Troop Cut Within 4 Years
Bush Endorses New Post to Oversee Intelligence System
OTHER
Kerry-Edwards' New Plan Has Energy-Environment Component
Landmarks of Capitalism Strengthen Already-Strict Security
ACTIVISTS
What if I got Drafted: an American Nightmare
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Uranium Ash at Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel Plant Draws Fine
August 2, 2004
ATLANTA, Georgia, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-02-09.asp#anchor5
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff has proposed a $24,000 civil penalty against Westinghouse Electric Company for alleged violations of nuclear safety requirements at its commercial nuclear fuel plant in Columbia, South Carolina.
NRC officials said the proposed civil penalty is based on a Severity Level II problem, the agency's second most serious type of violation.
The agency alleges that eight violations resulted from the company's discovery of uranium ash deposits in a plant incinerator off-gas system that exceeded allowable limits.
The NRC said there were "no actual adverse consequences" and the amount of ash discovered would not have supported a nuclear reaction, or criticality, at the concentration and shape in which it was found.
Still, the agency said the potential safety consequences were "significant" because Westinghouse Electric failed to establish, implement and maintain all criticality control systems as required.
The Westinghouse Columbia Nuclear Fuel Plant has no reactor but manufactures low-enriched uranium fuel for use at commercial nuclear power plants.
A nuclear accident at this type of facility would involve a sudden, localized burst of radiation in a production area inside the plant due to having too much fissile material in one place in a container of the wrong shape.
The NRC said the alleged violations were categorized collectively as a Severity Level II violation because, although no adverse consequences occurred, the factors involved collectively resulted in a significant increase in the likelihood of a nuclear criticality event.
NRC officials said the company has taken steps to preclude a recurrence of the problem and that Westinghouse has 30 days from receipt of the notification of the proposed civil penalty to pay it or to protest it, in whole or in part.
Westinghouse Electric Company is wholly owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd plc of the United Kingdom.
-------- japan
Hiroshima mayor wants constitution static
August 02, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040802-080909-4039r.htm
HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 2 -- Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba wants the Japanese national government to refrain from altering its war-renouncing constitution.
The mayor is concerned about a recent movement to revise the Japanese Constitution that currently prohibits the use of force in settling international disputes. He will voice his concerns during his city's city annual peace ceremony on the anniversary of the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima Aug. 6, the Mainichi News Service reported.
Akiba plans to express his constitutional concern when he makes the customary "peace declaration" during the ceremony.
"The national government should support the pacifist constitution, with which we stand proud before the world, and try to reverse the growing trend of accepting war and nuclear weapons," Akiba said in a statement.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first cities to ever be attacked by atomic bombs.
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Survivor speaks out against nuclear bomb
By Masaaki Harada
Mon, Aug. 02, 2004
The Fort Wayne, Indiana, Journal Gazette
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/9301237.htm
While efforts to rescue the survivors of the torpedoed USS Indianapolis continued in the Philippines Sea, the atomic bomb components the Indianapolis had delivered were being assembled and carefully loaded into the belly on B-29 bomber Enola Gay on Tinian island.
On Aug. 6, 1945, seventh-grader Miyoko Matsubara was working at a demolition site near downtown Hiroshima. All students in the seventh grade or higher were mobilized to help the nation's desperate war effort.
Matsubara had been assigned to the vegetable farm at a former school ground. But that day, a Monday, she and three other classmates were sent to clean up the debris of buildings that had been demolished to create a fire buffer lane.
"My friend told me that she heard a B-29. I did not believe that because we had already two false alarms in that morning. Hiroshima had not been raided since spring that year," Matsubara said in a telephone interview from her home in Hiroshima.
"Soon, I spotted white tails in the spotless summer sky. I followed it and barely saw a plane heading northwest. Next moment, I saw a flash. Then, I was blown about 15 feet away from where I'd been standing to the ground."
Most houses and buildings within 1 1/2 miles from the ground zero in the center of Hiroshima were destroyed or burned.
The death toll immediately after the bombing is still unknown. Officials counted 140,000 bodies by the end of 1945, said Masaharu Niida of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Fifty-nine could not be identified, even by gender, he said.
Matsubara was rescued by her neighbors and sent to a tunnel her family had made as a shelter.
Over the next seven months, she was treated at a makeshift relief station at an elementary school. Radiation made her hair fall out and gums bleed during her recovery, she said.
In addition to the bomb's aftereffects, Matsubara had to face discrimination in postwar Japan.
"Being wounded, weak and ugly, I could not get a job. No man wanted to marry me, fearing sudden death," she said.
Matsubara joined the growing anti-nuclear movement and visited 14 countries including the United States and former Soviet Union to appeal for a ban on nuclear testing in 1962.
Matsubara, now 71, is one of a handful of atomic bomb survivors who speak out about their past to visitors to Hiroshima from all over the world.
"I realized that real enemy is not America. It is war and nuclear weapons," Matsubara said. "I was positive that man-made bombs, A-bombs and nuclear weapons must be gotten rid of by the hands of men."
Donald Beaty, of Angola, and other survivors of the torpedoed USS Indianapolis were told that the top-secret cargo they had carried was atomic bomb parts while they were recuperating in Guam.
Beaty believes the sacrifice in Hiroshima eventually saved a lot of Americans and Japanese lives.
He said many things he saw during the war indicated that the Japanese were determined to continue fighting.
"The atomic bomb ended up saving people on both sides," Beaty said. "I hate to say this but if we invaded Japan we would probably be fighting with children. That's absolutely terrible for both sides."
Matsubara disagrees with that view.
"Either side will fight until defeating the other, that's the nature of war," she said. "But the drop of the atomic bomb at the very last stage of war was, I believe, not necessary. If they wanted to show the power of the bomb, I wish it could have been dropped in the middle of Tokyo Bay for demonstration."
Matsubara became a Baptist after the war. She said she has made many American friends through church activities.
"We can get along so well person-to-person," she said. "I wonder why it's not the same when it comes to nation-to-nation."
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80% of A-bomb plaintiffs had acute radiation symptoms
Monday, August 2, 2004
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=307318
OSAKA - Over 80% of the plaintiffs who have sued the government for recognition as atomic bomb illness sufferers experienced symptoms of acute radiation, regardless of their distance from the hypocenters in the 1945 U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to a Kyodo News survey.
Kyodo contacted 146 survivors of the atomic bombings who have filed lawsuits, and 92 of them responded. (Kyodo News)
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The Nuclear Fashion Season
02 August 2004
gateway2russia.com
http://www.gateway2russia.com/art/All%20about%20Russia/Economic%20News/Markets%20and%20Industries/The%20Nuclear%20Fashion%20Season_247968.html
Fifty years ago, the Obniskaya Nuclear Power Station, the first in the world, was put into operation. Today, after nearly two decades of crisis, nuclear power is again on the rise
Irik Imamutdinov and Dan Medovnikov
An interview with Alexander Rumyantsev, Head of the Federal Atomic Power Agency and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Every technology has its own life cycle. At first, it expands furiously, then reaches a plateau and stagnates. Occasionally but very rarely, technologies get a new lease on life. After Chernobyl, the spell of "peaceful atom" was broken and the nuclear power industry ground to a halt. However, judging by a host of signals coming from several national economies, nuclear power is back on the agenda, in part because the public opinion is changing once again.
AR - Your observation is correct. Finland is a good example. We conducted a public opinion poll there, and the majority of the population supported construction of a nuclear power station, and so did the parliament. Let's not forget that the pragmatic Finnish technocrats clearly realized that the situation could change again, so they decided to take advantage of the favorable conditions to get the most energy possible, and the contract went to the biggest reactor. Look at what is happening in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia. Two years ago, Iran made a statement at an IAEA General Convention in front of all the delegates, saying "We are developing large-scale nuclear engineering and welcome all countries to participate in the project." The capacity of the notorious nuclear power station in Bushehr is 1 GW, and now the Iranians want to put six times as much into operation. India has ambitious plans, too: it plans to put 20 GW of nuclear capacity into operation, or in other words, a new reactor block each year. China will increase nuclear power from 8 to 36 GW by 2020. Russia's energy strategy until 2020 also states that nuclear power will grow at a faster pace in the European part of Russia than traditional power plants. Recovery has begun in the US as well. Bush called on the nation to develop the hydrogen economy and large-scale nuclear power engineering needs high-temperature gas nuclear reactors. And of course, there is South Korea and Japan where nuclear power hasn't experienced any slowdown at all.
- But the world nuclear powers are extremely wary of some countries' nuclear ambitions, since some reactors can turn out weapons-grade plutonium and all of them can be used to make dirty bombs. Personnel at local nuclear power stations are skilled atomic specialists who have learned to handle fissionable materials. In the end, almost everyone knows how to use the technology now, and if some country with nuclear facilities really wants to build nuclear weapons, it will - this is a major deterrent factor for nuclear power development in the world.
AR - Countries that are economically developed and scientifically and technically advanced, like Japan or Germany, can easily create these technologies and weapons. South Africa was in the process of creating them and, perhaps, could have but it gave up activities voluntarily. Israel neither confirms nor admits officially that it possesses nuclear weapons. However, the overwhelming majority of countries simply don't need nuclear status. What would, say, Monaco stand to gain from the bomb? Nuclear status would only ruin the country's economy. As a matter of fact, we have discussed these topics extensively with IAEA General Director Mohamed El-Baradei. I fully agree with his stance: we have the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The countries that signed this Treaty are entitled to develop civilian nuclear programs. Those that already have them are obliged to help. Please note that they are obliged to help. And the Iranian problem is more likely an inadequate reaction on the part of certain states. Since apart from Iran, there are other countries unable to make a nuclear reactor. What do they all need? They need the nuclear powers to guarantee long-term supplies of fuel with unconditional return of spent fuel to the country of origins or to some international consortium. In this case, they would enjoy all the benefits of atomic power and nuclear technologies, while "dirty bombs" would remain a tabloid fantasy.
- Isn't that a bit too optimistic? After all, in the decades the NPT has been in effect (it was signed in 1968), the number of nuclear powers has increased by perhaps three countries (if we add Israel to India and Pakistan).
AR - By only three, while without the NPT and IAEA monitoring this number could well have jumped to ten. Incidentally, control is quite efficient. There were rumors very recently that in Iran some building had been demolished and a layer of soil removed. The IAEA inspection team immediately arrived on site, examined it, and found out that the work had nothing to do with nuclear matters.
- We began our interview with the statement that atomic power is experiencing a renaissance. However, even if all goes well, traditional technologies - graphite-uranium and heavy water reactors (?????-??????? ???????) as well as the breeder reactors invented fifty years ago- will be used for the next twenty years. It's clear that innovation cycles in power engineering are very long but something will definitely have to change in about fifty years.
AR - I can't predict what will happen in fifty years because we are at the stage of scientific and technological development that could enable scientists to change the world's power strategy fairly quickly -in one or two decades - depending on economic and political conditions. There are a lot of possibilities even if we don't take controlled thermonuclear and hydrogen power into account for the time being. It cannot be ruled out that new coal processing technology will be developed, and there is much more coal on the planet than oil and gas. We have yet to handle certain fuels properly and there are offshore reserves of hydrocarbons that could last for ages. The question is when it will be feasible to develop them. According to many experts, large-scale atomic power engineering also has a fair chance. But they also point out the limits of uranium deposits. Once again, it's a question of market conditions. The uranium that costs less than $40 per kilo is in short supply. If the price were, say, $100 per kilo, uranium could be extracted from seawater. We shouldn't forget about huge reserves of nuclear weapons material either. Of course, breeders were invented long ago, but they are the reactors that can use weapons-grade materials to meet civilian energy needs. And if you want to know my opinion, I believe that fast reactors have very good prospects.
- What do you think about attempts to find environmentally friendly ways to produce atomic power? If a real breakthrough in this area came, would the future of atomic power look simply brilliant? No radioactive waste whatsoever, no problems with waste disposal and so on.
AR - I'm familiar with one of the winning projects at Russian Innovations Competition this year. It received the White Book Prize and carries the ambitious name of "Clean Technology for Producing Atomic Energy." It's not nonsense. Indeed, nuclear reactions could with certain probability go along the channel that would produce waste that would quickly transform into stable isotopes - in other words, there would be no long-lived isotopes at the end at all. The question is how to critically increase probability of nuclear reaction passing along these very channels (which scientists refer to as reaction mode)? In terms of technical implementation, it's a fantasy for the time being that makes controlled thermonuclear reactions look like a chapter from a science history textbook. Still, this research is worthwhile and challenging. It is necessary for independent research teams to confirm the results.
- A nuclear project is a splendid example of rapid innovation: just few years are needed between basic scientific discoveries and industrial implementation. In what other areas of science, in your opinion, can we expect something similar today?
AR - Another well-known and no less splendid example comes to mind, namely the link between research in semiconductor physics and information technologies. Today, the highest hopes are for biotechnologies and medicine - first and foremost, with treatments for diseases that so far have been considered incurable, for example, cancer. As for physics, the scientific community is looking forward to the launch of a new super-booster - a large particle collider at CERN. It will either confirm or disprove ideas determining the so-called standard model of the modern theory of structure of matter. This directly concerns the theory of intra-nuclear interactions theory and cosmogonic principles as well. Strange as it may sound, these experiments could turn into another innovation breakthrough. Remember, in 1937, five years before the launch of the first nuclear reactor, Rutherford argued that nuclear power would find practical application in about two or three centuries.
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US backs out of nuclear inspections treaty
August 2, 2004
The Washington Post
By Dafna Linzer in Washington
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/01/1091298579371.html?oneclick=true
In a significant shift of US policy, the Bush Administration has announced that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty to ban production of nuclear weapons materials.
For several years the US and others have been pursuing the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons.
At an arms control meeting in Geneva last week the US told other countries it supported a treaty, but not verification.
US officials, who have demonstrated scepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding such a system would cost too much, require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty.
However, they declined to explain in detail how they believed US security would be undermined by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.
Arms control specialists said the change in the US position would greatly weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. They said the US move virtually killed a 10-year international effort to persuade countries such as India, Israel and Pakistan to accept some oversight of their nuclear production programs.
The announcement at the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament comes several months after President George Bush declared it a top priority to prevent the production and trafficking in nuclear materials, and as his Administration works to blunt criticism by Democrats and others that it has failed to work effectively with the UN and other international bodies on such vital matters.
Daryl Kimball, director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said it was "surprising and baffling that the Administration is not supporting a meaningful treaty".
The UN conference includes 66 countries. It had announced its intention to start negotiations this year towards a verifiable international agreement that would ban production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. The two ingredients are used for setting-off a chain-reaction nuclear explosion.
The treaty was designed to impose restraints on India, Israel and Pakistan.
In 2000 all three countries, the Clinton administration and the other conference members agreed to pursue negotiation of the treaty. But last year the US decided to review its position.
The State Department said that an internal review had concluded that an inspection regime "would have been so extensive that it could compromise key signatories' core national security interests and so costly that many countries will be hesitant to accept it".
This year, after revelations that a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea, Mr Bush delivered a speech in which he proposed several new measures, including encouraging all countries to criminalise proliferation and secure sensitive materials within their borders.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Part 2 of 3: World watches as U.S. walks fine line on nuclear testing
August 2, 2004
The New Mexican
By JEFF TOLLEFSON
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/2537.html
NEVADA TEST SITE - The pig cages still remain at Frenchman Flat. Nearby are the remains of buildings and bunkers , a bridge, even a bank vault and an underground parking garage.
Surrounded by desert, groundlevel stumps reveal the site of a former conifer forest, each tree freshly cut, transported and planted in cement like so many fence posts. A video of the forest , rocked by an atomic explosion , is among the more famous images of early nuclear-weapons testing.
Those were the early days. To get a glimpse of subsequent decades, one looks to the craters , surface scars of underground explosions.
The Nevada Test Site offers a unique window into the Cold War - and a hint of what might have been if relations between nuclear superpowers had turned critical. But for some, the scariest thing about the Nevada Test Site is its future.
Officially, the Bush administration says it has no plans to resume nuclear testing. But the administration has taken steps to shorten the amount of time that would be required to test, if such a decision were made. Such plans are precautionary, offi- cials insist.
But within certain circles at the nuclear-weapons labs and the U.S. Department of Energy, support for testing remains. The decision to halt nuclear tests was driven primarily by Congress in 1992, and many at the labs believe it was premature. After a debate that extended from the first Bush administration into the Clinton administration, the moratorium stuck, and no more tests were allowed.
Outside observers fear that a number of new initiatives under the current Bush administration , including research into new bomb designs, could contribute to the kind of uncertainty that can only be resolved with a bang.
"I think we're at a precarious point right now. We are on the verge of making decisions that will have consequences for many years to come," said Steven Aftergood , director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "I obviously am among those who oppose testing and think that a ban on testing would be a positive measure internationally."
Given the international ramifications of a returning to testing, many think it unlikely. Moreover, given its superiority in nuclear weapons, the United States would have the least to gain and the most to lose from a return to testing, the National Academy of Sciences reported in a 2002 study regarding the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
John Immele is in charge of national security at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He says the lab is committed to the current program of science-based stewardship, without full-scale tests.
Certifying the weapons "is a challenge, but it's not sufficient to warrant nuclear testing ," Immele said. Even if new weapons were developed, Immele believes weaponeers can search the archives of old tests and design new bombs to be built and stockpiled without testing . In fact, Immele said people at the labs have long discussed redesigning, or outright replacing, the current weapons with ones that would be easier to build and maintain in a world without nuclear tests.
However, even advocates of the administration's nuclear agenda say new weapons might require nuclear tests. As acknowledged by a Defense Department advisory board, which has promoted new designs to meet new threats, "whether or not any new types of weapons require testing will depend on the results of the technical development work, as well as operational and policy considerations."
In a formerly classified briefing from March 1999, Los Alamos National Laboratory discusses the relative benefits of building and maintaining a more diverse nuclear arsenal. Given that budgets are limited when it comes to maintaining and certifying each weapon, the lab reported that "too many warhead options may result in decreased confidence for the overall stockpile."
Robert Norris is the author of a biography on Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie R. Groves and a nuclear researcher for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"If there's a second Bush administration, lots of things could happen," Norris says. "We are looking decades out here, and at some point I suppose you need to test if you are going to have all these (new weapons). The dike has got to break at some point, and Bush may lead the way." Dwindling expertise
The Nevada Test Site received $25 million this year to enhance its capabilities and prepare for potential nuclear tests, according to spokesman Kevin Rohrer. "Just to be clear, I think the administration's policy has been that we have no plans to conduct any underground test. ... That general policy has not changed."
Rohrer said the difficulty is maintaining the infrastructure , which includes facilities and equipment like cranes that lower nuclear bombs into the holes as well as people and expertise.
During the 1980s, this 1,375-square-mile desert site 65 miles north of Las Vegas, employed some 8,500-9 ,000 people, down from 12,000 in the 1960s. Today, employment at the site is around 2,200, which includes many personnel from LANL and the other nuclear-weapons laboratories.
One thing is certain: Any return to testing would not involve mushroom clouds rising into the sky. Since the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the United States has conducted its nuclear tests underground.
From Frenchman Flat, the site of many atmospheric tests analyzing blast effects, you have to drive over a saddle to get to Yucca Flat. Light circles mark the craters, more visible in aerial photographs, where the ground collapsed on caverns created by nuclear blasts.
Icecap, one of the last tests scheduled prior to the 1992 moratorium, remains a popular landmark at Yucca Flat. Icecap looks like a silo, built to lower the test device into a hole. Diagnostics cables wind across the desert floor to a series of trailers holding diagnostics equipment.
The $25 million for "test readiness" is going toward new diagnostics equipment and funding full-scale exercises when the site conducts its subcritical experiments, which use weapons-grade material but fall short of a sustained nuclear reaction.
"There are many people who were not around when we did the underground testing," Rohrer said. "These people need to be trained. These people need to know the procedures."
As it stands, officials say it could take up to three years to prepare for a test if such a decision were made. By fall, the Nevada Test Site hopes to have decreased that time frame to two years. DOE is shooting for 18 months, although that depends on negotiations in Congress, where House appropriators have taken a stand against such action.
The administration's argument is simple.
Rogue states and terrorists will pursue nuclear weapons when and if it pleases them, regardless of what the United States does, DOE's nuclearweapons chief told Congress this spring. Therefore, it is in the United States' interest to keep its nuclear-weapons program agile and "responsive," which includes maintaining an ability to test quickly if the need arises.
For opponents to testing, the case comes down to nonproliferation and leadership.
Stephen Young, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the Chinese and Russians are tracking U.S. nuclear policy closely. Clearly, Young said, China would love to start testing, Russia would follow, and what happens after that is anybody's guess.
"From my point of view, it's pretty obvious that the U.S. has the least to gain," Young said. "The implications for U.S. security are very real."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
UC Should Quit Los Alamos
August 2, 2004
Editorial
Los Angeles Times,
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-lab2aug02,1,5890490.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
After 61 years, the University of California still can't get a handle on what's going on at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Case in point: Employees at the nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico, which UC has managed for the government since 1943, stored top-secret research in an unguarded safe next to a soft-drink machine. A few of those floppy disks and CDs - it is still unknown exactly what classified research is on them - disappeared, and as in so many other security lapses at the lab, UC has had to turn its focus from making scientific discoveries to cleaning up an avoidable mess.
UC has been under the government's security microscope since at least 1999, when Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was investigated for downloading weapons research onto his personal computer. That and a later series of embarrassing security flaps prompted the federal government in 2003 to open UC's lab management contract to competitive bidding for the first time.
Whether UC will compete for Los Alamos is up in the air, but the decision should be a no-brainer: By bowing out, UC would save itself the millions needed to make a bid, and perhaps lessen national security threats.
If it does compete, UC's bid may look less like a resume than a rap sheet. Over the last four years, two lab employees who blew the whistle on alleged financial fraud were fired by UC, only to be rehired when the media raised a stink; vials of plutonium have gone missing; injuries have stemmed from such causes as lasers carelessly left on and radiation exposure; and classified e-mails have found their way to the Internet.
UC is already battling to keep two other national labs, one of which is the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory above the UC Berkeley campus. Lab scientists and professors there conduct no classified research, have brought UC nine Nobel prizes and have discovered at least 11 atomic elements. It's safe to say that UC's fiercely guarded academic reputation won't take much of a hit if it leaves the Los Alamos competition.
UC's swift response to the latest Los Alamos blunder is commendable, but such action is several years late. Estimates place the cost of competing for the lab at from $10 million to $25 million. That money would be better put toward competing for the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory or, at least until UC's contract is up in 2005, beefing up security at Los Alamos.
-------- south carolina
Catawba nuclear plant on track to test plutonium fuel
Monday, August 2, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777065929&path=!localnews&s=1037645509099
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a preliminary finding in favor of allowing Duke Power to test a new fuel at its Catawba Nuclear Station on South Carolina's Lake Wylie.
Duke wants to test mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel as early as next year. The fuel is made by mixing uranium oxide and plutonium oxide from older nuclear weapons and placing the material in fuel rods.
The tests won't make an accident at the plant much more likely or worsen the results if an accident happens, the commission determined.
"It is, in our minds, a significant hurdle to have overcome," said Duke spokeswoman Rose Cummings. "NRC is essentially confirming our analyses."
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League hasn't decided how to respond to the finding, said Diane Curran, a Washington attorney representing the group. The league opposes the tests and says MOX fuel is dangerous.
The commission analyzed two possible accidents that MOX might influence.
The first looked at defects in the metal cladding that encases fuel rods. Under high pressure and high temperatures inside the reactor, failed cladding could release radioactive material into cooling water. The second examined the likelihood of an accident in handling MOX assemblies.
In neither case would MOX increase the odds of those accidents occurring nor would it make the consequences significantly worse, the commission said.
The NRC must wait until a comment period ends Aug. 12 before making the finding official. After that, the commission could issue the license to start tests.
Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotte.com
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-------- africa
New U.N. Deadline Rejected by Sudan
August 2, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/africa/02suda.html?pagewanted=all
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Aug. 1 - The Sudanese cabinet on Sunday condemned the 30-day deadline for action on the crisis in Darfur set by the United Nations Security Council, but said it would carry out a 90-day program agreed to earlier with Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The Security Council, in a resolution passed Friday, demanded that the Sudanese government take action within 30 days to disarm the Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, blamed for attacks that have driven about a million civilians from their homes in the Darfur region.
If Sudan fails to do this, the United Nations said, the organization intends to consider economic and diplomatic penalties.
Sudan says it has already started to crack down on the militias, whose members have been attacking black African villages, looting, raping, burning houses and driving the people off the land.
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Sudanese army says UN resolution 'a declaration of war'
KHARTOUM (AFP)
Aug 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040802072521.ieofqh30.html
Sudan's army has called the UN resolution giving it 30 days to resolve its Darfur crisis "a declaration of war" and warned it will fight any foreign troops sent into the western region, a report said Monday.
"The Security Council resolution about the Darfur issue is a declaration of war on the Sudan and its people," armed forces spokesman General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman told the official Al Anbaa daily.
"The Sudanese army is now prepared to confront the enemies of the Sudan on land, sea and air," he said.
Suleiman claimed the 30-day deadline set in Friday's UN resolution was "a preparatory period" for war against Sudan and that his country was "being targetted by foreign powers."
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said on Sunday the government regretted the resolution, although officials had said it would reluctantly be accepted.
The resolution warns Sudan of international measures if it fails to heed demands to rein in Arab Janjaweed militias and allow aid into Darfur.
Khartoum has been under growing international pressure to rein in its forces and its militia allies who are accused of mass killing, rape and other atrocities during a 17-month-long revolt in Darfur.
Up to 50,000 people are reported dead and more than a million have fled their homes, 200,000 of them seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad.
--------
Pure evil in Sudan
August 02, 2004
By Nat Hentoff
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040801-102014-6612r.htm
The is the first of two columns on the genocide in Darfur, in the west of Sudan:
The news media can no longer be blamed for not bringing light to the world about the more than 30,000 black African Muslims murdered by the Arab Muslim Janjaweed in Darfur, Sudan. The world has also been told of nearly 2 million of the survivors having been removed from their homes, many huddled in remote camps where epidemic diseases add to the corpses. And there is no doubt that the government of Sudan arms and supports the Janjaweed.
The appalling culpability of the Sudanese government has been documented by Human Rights Watch's release of confidential reports from Darfur's civilian administration that reveal the direct involvement of high government officials in supporting the Janjaweed.
And Amnesty International, in its new report "Rape as a Weapon of War," reveals that "girls as young as 8 are being raped and used as sex slaves in Western Sudan." That report includes interviews with victims and makes the incontrovertible point that these "mass rapes ... are war crimes against humanity that the international community is doing little to stop."
In Congress, both the House and Senate are trying to avoid repeating America's utterly shameful silence during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. On July 22, by overwhelming bipartisan votes, the House and Senate passed resolutions stating explicitly that the horrors in Darfur are indeed genocide.
Weeks ago, President Bush strongly told Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, Sudan's chronically duplicitous head of state, to rein in the Janjaweed. But since then, Mr. Bush has not focused nearly as hard on these atrocities. And Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose language has been much more forceful in the past, is now just calling for more diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government rather than specific, stinging punitive measures. Meanwhile, the killing of civilians and raping of women and children continue.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has said he had learned from his own silent culpability in the Rwanda genocide,now claimsthatMr. Bashir can end what other U.N. officials in the field call "this human rights catastrophe." However, Benny Avni reported in the July 22 New York Sun (a daily paper that has been invaluably present in Darfur) that the Khartoum government is sending a police force to Darfur to "protect" surviving black Africans - and among these police protectors are recently recruited actual members of the murderous Janjaweed.
And what of the United Nations, increasingly impotent in protecting those in this world most desperately endangered? (Sudan, by the way, is a member of the farcical U.N. Human Rights Commission.) As of this writing, an American draft resolution circulating in the U.N. Security Council threatens sanctions against the Khartoum government if it does not arrest the leaders of the Janjaweed.
But the sanctions are unspecific, and they call for "evidence" from this entirelyuntrustworthySudanese leadership within 30 days that they have, at last, fulfilled this commitment - this, after breaking many previous ones. How many more black Africans will be murdered and raped within the 30 days, and beyond?
How is the Khartoum government reacting? "Around the globe," the New York Sun reports, "oil-producing Sudan was lobbying to prevent outside pressure, playing not only the oil card but also on anti-American emotions that arose during the Iraq conflict."
While the United Nations "deliberates" as more lives are lost, Pakistan, China and Russia - the latter two being members of the Security Council - are urging that Khartoum be given more time to comply with whatever resolution the United Nations passes. Mr. Annan agrees, saying - as Mr. Powell does - that Khartoum can muster the will, under pressure, to stop the Janjaweed, the killers that the government itself unleashed.
BBC News has been providing important coverage on Darfur, including evasive semantic debates in which governments and human rights groups are temporizing on whether to call this catastrophe genocide. But Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights speaks the raw, saving truth in the July 23 New York Times: "The goal of prevention, which is paramount, cannot wait until a full legal determination is made."
On the same day, in a dispatch from BBC News, photographer Marcus Bleasdale, who reportedly took "pictures of between 30 and 40 mass graves in Darfur, in which up to 100 people had been buried," told the BBC: "As we looked along the horizon, we could see hands and heads sticking out of the trenches [of those graves]."
Of course this is genocide. It is also pure evil. Mr. Bush is not afraid of that word. Let him, right now - unlike Bill Clinton turning away from Rwanda - save lives in Darfur.
-------- arms
State Department in talks with Jordan for arms
8/2/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-08-02-jordan-armsdeal_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department defended a prospective deal to equip Jordan with high-tech air-to-air missiles and cautioned Israel not to build 600 new homes at a large Jewish settlement on the West Bank alongside Jerusalem.
As Israel looks to Congress to block the deal to upgrade the firepower of Jordanian jets, department spokesman Adam Ereli praised the Arab kingdom and said the United States would be careful to maintain Israel's military edge over the combined forces of Arab nations.
"We certainly appreciate all that Jordan has done to contribute to regional stability, including its support for a stable, secure and democratic Iraq, as well as its efforts to foster peace between Palestinians and Israel," he said in defense of a weapons sale.
Jordan has fought alongside Arab nations in all the wars against Israel except the 1973 war. In 1996, under the late King Hussein, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel.
This is the first time Israel has tried to prevent Jordan from buying U.S.-manufactured arms since the signing.
Ereli called the deal a potential one, and said the administration had not formally notified Congress of a plan to go ahead.
On another front, the State Department said the 600 housing units the Israeli defense minister has approved for Malleh Adumim are a form of settlement activity that Israel promised to end when it approved a U.S.-backed road map for negotiations with the Palestinians.
"We look forward to Israel abiding by that commitment and sticking by the road map," Ereli said.
Even expanding settlements to account for "natural growth" among the Jewish families that live on them is ruled out by the road map, Ereli said.
American diplomats also have reminded Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that unauthorized outposts must be removed from the West Bank, the spokesman said.
--------
U.S. wants Israel to retain edge
(UPI)
August 02, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040802-074834-7696r.htm
Washington, DC, Aug. 2 -- The United States said Monday it is committed to Israel maintaining a military edge in the Middle East and would not want to alter that situation.
"We remain committed to Israel's qualitative military edge and will do nothing to degrade it," State Department's deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters in Washington while commenting on a report that Israel was trying to block the transfer of air-to-air missiles from the United States to Jordan under a deal reached earlier.
"We have a strong relationship with Jordan, we certainly appreciate all that Jordan has done to contribute to regional stability," said Ereli, adding the United States also values Jordan's efforts to foster peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
But the United States, he said, is committed to Israel retaining its military superiority in the region.
-------- asia
First women complete army training in insurgency-torn Nepal
KATHMANDU (AFP)
Aug 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040802082435.fb3lkvuz.html
The first women recruits completed military training Monday to join the army of Nepal, which is fighting a bloody insurgency by Maoist guerrillas who claim strong support from women.
The 197 women recruits will be assigned non-combat work such as operating telephones and computers but will eventually be inducted into fighting units, Chief of Army Staff General Pyarjung Thapa said at a ceremony.
The women received five months of rigorous training in combat and rescue operations. A second batch of 251 women will start the course August 17, Thapa said.
He said three of the trainees were widows of victims of the Maoists, who are known for ruthless tactics in their campaign to overthrow the monarchy. Nepal's civil war has claimed nearly 10,000 lives since 1996.
While Nepal's army is male dominated, independent estimates say women comprise up to a quarter of the Maoists' "People's Liberation Army."
The Maoists claim to fight against the exploitation of women, in part by restricting alcohol in areas under rebel control.
Thapa expressed the hope that women would eventually make up five percent of the Royal Nepal Army, whose strength is around 80,000.
"The determination, confidence and intelligence demonstrated by the women recruits is greatly appreciated," Thapa said.
Women first entered Nepal's army in 1961 as nurses and later began to work in other non-military capacities but they had never before undergone military training.
About 16 percent of the army's non-combat staff is female, Thapa said.
-------- biological weapons
START-UP System Uses Ultraviolet Light to Disable Airborne Threats
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33124-2004Aug1.html
Bio-Defense Research Group Inc., a Columbia start-up, is betting that memories of the anthrax scare that focused so much attention on air-circulation systems in big buildings will help sell its sole product, a device that it says not only kills anthrax but also disables a variety of germs and even radiation.
The company is testing prototypes of the device, which zaps airborne threats with ultraviolet light as they pass through heating and cooling ducts, but executives said they expect to begin selling it by the end of the year.
The device would have saved millions of dollars in cleanup costs at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, which processed two letters containing anthrax spores in the fall of 2001, said Jefferi K. Lee, the company's president and chief operating officer.
Lee sees a wide market for the product, called PathAway, beyond organizations worried about terrorist threats. Hospitals, buildings with mold spores, hotels, sports arenas, cruise ships and schools are all places where people are packed close together and likely to pass on germs.
The company says its system neutralizes airborne pathogens by assaulting them with ultraviolet rays that destroy their DNA or make them incapable of multiplying. Lee said the product has achieved a 100 percent neutralization rate for anthrax spores in tests using a government-approved bacterial stand-in for anthrax.
Preston D. McGee Sr., 38, the chief executive, founded the company in October 2002 after successfully bidding for a license to develop the technology for commercial sale from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. McGee, who has a doctorate in biotechnology, developed protocols for vaccines against biological weapons while a scientist at the Defense Department, according to Lee.
The company is negotiating with venture capitalists, but so far McGee has raised the firm's $2.5 million in funding entirely from himself, family and friends, Lee said.
Bio-Defense has only sold one unit so far -- to the lab at Johns Hopkins for further testing. Scientists there are doing further testing on Path-Away. Lee said the company is in talks to sell the product to other companies and the Defense Department.
--
In Profile
Name: Bio-Defense Research Group Inc.
Location: Columbia
Big Idea: Kill biological weapons and other germs by scorching their DNA with ultraviolet light.
Founded: October 2002
Web site:www.bdrgi.com
Who's in charge: Preston D. McGee Sr., chief executive; Jefferi K. Lee, president and chief operating officer; Tyrone Wilson, chief financial officer.
Funding: $2.5 million in funding from McGee and his family and friends
Employees: 6
Big-Name Clients: None
Partners: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Centrex Inc.
-------- business
Contracts Awarded
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page E04
Washington Technology
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33143-2004Aug1?language=printer
CACI International Inc. of Arlington won a five-year, $75 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command to provide systems integration, software development and business process support for information systems at U.S. Navy shipyards.
Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calf., won a $93 million contract to provide information technology services to NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center. It also won a 10-year $525 million contract to provide information technology infrastructure support services to the U.S. Strategic Command.
International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., won a Navy contract to build a supercomputing cluster at the Naval Oceanographic Office Major Shared Resource Center in Mississippi. The value of the contract was not disclosed.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda won a two-year, $178.5 million contract extension from NASA to work on mission operations for space shuttle and International Space Station projects.
Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles won a $3.1 million contract from the Army to provide a chemical-agent threat-warning system. It also won a $35.6 million contract modification from the Navy for work on the USS George Washington.
Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., won a $29.4 million contract from Electric Boat Corp. to produce multi-band satellite communication systems for a new Virginia-class submarine. Electric Boat is a unit of General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church.
Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego won a $10.4 million contract for engineering and support services of tactical data link systems. It also won a $49 million contract to provide adolescent substance abuse counseling services to military teens and their families stationed overseas.
Silicon Graphics Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., won a $45 million contract to build a supercomputer called the Space Exploration Simulator for NASA using the Linux operating system.
SRA International Inc. of Fairfax won a $19.9 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to provide technical and program support services to the agency's tactical technology office.
Telecommunication Systems Inc. of Annapolis won a five-year, $20 million contract to provide information technology services and systems integration support services at Fort Belvoir and six other Army installations.
Titan Corp. of San Diego won a $28.1 million contract to provide engineering services for parts of the Navy's command and control networks.
BearingPoint Inc. of McLean won a $3.1 million contract to provide an integrated criminal justice information system to Montgomery County.
Power Systems International Inc. of Natural Bridge Station, Va., won a $5.99 million contract from the space and naval warfare systems center to provide high-power, lightweight, transportable generator sets and power distribution units.
Computer Sciences Corp. of Falls Church won a $58.7 million contract from the Air Force's Headquarters 55th Wing for information technology.
Saft America Inc. of Cockeysville, Md., won a $2 million contract from the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command to automate the manufacturing process for high-power Li-Ion batteries.
Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems of Reston and Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems of Gaithersburg are among five contractors sharing in a , $489.5 million contract from the Air Force's headquarters electronic systems center to provide communications infrastructure.
EGandG Technical Services Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $13.5 million contract from the Defense Distribution Center for material distribution services for the Defense Logistics Agency.
Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River won a $7.6 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command to provide additional funds for the MV-22 Engineering and Manufacturing Development Program.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems of Suffolk won a $5.78 million contract from the FISC Norfolk Detachment Philadelphia to provide services supporting the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Experimentation Program and Joint Futures Lab.
John C. Grimberg Co. of Rockville, Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. of Bethesda, Skanska USA Building Inc. of Rockville, Coakley and Williams Construction of Gaithersburg, Forrester Construction Co. of Rockville, Sauer Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., and M.A. Mortenson Co. of Minneapolis, Minn. won a $100 million construction contract from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command.
Raytheon Co. of Baltimore won a $1.8 million contract from the Army Materiel Command for engineering and manufacturing development.
Saft America Inc., Advanced Battery Systems of Cockeysville, Md., won a $2 million contract from the Army Materiel Command for manufacturing technology.
Fintrac Inc. of the District won a $6.3 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
EarthData Holdings Inc. of Washington won a $25 million contract from the General Services Administration for environment services.
Ontime Transportation Inc. of College Park won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for worldwide logistics.
National Center for State Courts of Arlington and Chemonics International Inc., Checchi and Company Consulting Inc., and Management Sciences for Development Inc. of Washington won a $200 million contract from the Agency for International Development for international rule of law and justice sector technical assistance.
Executive Technology Solutions LLC of Silver Spring won a $4.2 million contract from the Air Force's air education and training command for specialty-care optimization.
Dolphin Environmental LLC of Falls Church won a $1.5 million contract from the General Services Administration for environmental services.
SeiCorp Inc. of Centreville won a $5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Data Solutions and Technology Inc. of Lanham won a $4.4 million contract from the Social Security Administration for labor and moving services.
Ricoh Business Systems of Rockville won a contract estimated at $1 million a year for more than two years from the Department of Health and Human Services for a document management pilot program.
IBM Global Government Industry of Bethesda won a $50 million contract from the Air Force Materiel Command for the MRO transformation program.
Norshipco of Norfolk won a $1 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for propeller repair.
Systalex Corp. of Rockville won a $79.3 million contract from the Department of Commerce for the core financial and other business systems support center.
MEO Forest Service of Washington won a $295.1 million contract from Agriculture Department for an information technology infrastructure study.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $1.9 million contract from the Army Materiel Command under an MX 11769 option award.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to the report.
-------- colombia
'91 U.S. Report Calls Colombian Leader Ally of Drug Lords
August 2, 2004
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/americas/02colo.html?pagewanted=all
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Aug. 1 - A recently declassified American intelligence report from 1991 says that President Álvaro Uribe, now a staunch ally in Washington's war against drug trafficking, was at that time a close associate of Colombia's most powerful drug lord and an ardent ally of the cocaine traffickers then engulfing this country.
A spokesman for Mr. Uribe denounced the findings in the 13-year-old report, by the Defense Intelligence Agency, on Colombia's biggest drug traffickers as "the same information" presented in a smear campaign by political opponents in the 2002 presidential election. Senior American intelligence officials and diplomats cautioned that such reports might not be accurate. However, the statement issued by the spokesman for the president did not directly address the report's most damaging assertion: that Mr. Uribe was linked to the top drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar.
The report, dated Sept. 23, 1991, and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archives, a private, nonpartisan research group based in Washington, says Mr. Uribe, then a senator from the northern state of Antioquia, was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels."
The report, which the archives is making public on Monday, calls Mr. Uribe a "close personal friend" of the cartel's leader, Mr. Escobar, and says Mr. Uribe took part in the drug lord's successful efforts to secure a seat as an auxiliary congressman. It said Mr. Uribe was linked to an unidentified business involved in narcotics in the United States, that as a senator he opposed extraditing traffickers to the United States and that his father, Alberto Uribe, was killed because of his drug ties.
In response to inquiries by The New York Times, Ricardo Galán, a spokesman for Mr. Uribe, issued an eight-point response on Friday that said the Defense Intelligence Agency report was of a preliminary nature. The statement said that in 1991 Mr. Uribe was studying at Harvard and that he had never had business dealings in the United States.
The statement also said Mr. Uribe's father was killed resisting Marxist rebels who were trying to kidnap him. It affirmed Mr. Uribe's commitment to extradition, though it only loosely explained then-Senator Uribe's opposition to a proposed referendum on extradition. It did not address the report's allegation that Mr. Uribe took part in the campaign that propelled Mr. Escobar to Congress.
Robert Zimmerman, a State Department spokesman, was more emphatic in denying the report's findings. "We completely disavow these allegations about President Uribe," he said, adding, "We have no credible information that substantiates or corroborates the allegations in an unevaluated 1991 report."
Still, the report is sure to raise new questions about allegations made in 2001 and 2002, when Mr. Uribe was campaigning for the presidency, about possible ties to drug dealers, including the powerful Ochoa clan in Medellín, Colombia's drug-trafficking center. Solid evidence was never presented, though, and Mr. Uribe won in a landslide based on his pledge that he would fight Marxist rebels and drug traffickers.
The United States has strongly supported Mr. Uribe since then, and he is considered among the Bush administration's closest allies in its effort to curb drug trafficking.
During his two years in office, much of Colombia's vast drug fields have been eradicated in defoliation efforts financed by Washington. About 150 Colombians accused of drug trafficking have been extradited to the United States, more than double the number extradited by Mr. Uribe's predecessor during his four-year term.
Senior diplomats and intelligence officials involved in the drug war in Colombia at the time cautioned against drawing conclusions from the report, noting that such documents were routinely produced with little vetting or oversight.
But Michael L. Evans, the director of the Colombia documentation project of the National Security Archive, said the report provided strong evidence of Mr. Uribe's involvement in the drug trade. "We now know that the D.I.A., either through its own reporting or through liaison with another investigative agency, had information indicating that Álvaro Uribe was one of Colombia's top drug-trafficking figures," he said, though it was unclear what other agency might be involved.
He said the document's summary categorically stated that the report provided "information on the more important Colombian narco-traffickers."
The report says information on some of the people cited in it has been crosschecked with other agencies, though it is not clear if Mr. Uribe was among those whose alleged involvement was carefully traced by another agency. It was sent to Washington with a corresponding list of photographs, indicating its possible use for investigative purposes.
"All indications are this is not your run-of-the-mill field report," Mr. Evans said. "I don't think it's a smoking gun. It's a document that the Defense Intelligence Agency had, and they took it seriously enough to forward to Washington with minimal, if any, caveats at the time."
The intelligence document lists 104 drug traffickers and associates, including lawyers, right-wing paramilitary fighters, a Peruvian rebel commander and a Colombian singer. A summary detailing each subject's ties to the drug trade follows.
Among those on the list are Mr. Escobar; Manuel Noriega, the former president of Panama now jailed in Miami on drug-trafficking charges and Adnan Khashoggi, an arms dealer.
Past questions raised about Mr. Uribe included allegations that he was friendly with the Ochoa family, which had been involved in trafficking cocaine with Mr. Escobar before he was killed by the Colombian police in 1993. Mr. Uribe was also accused of having granted, when he was head of the civil aviation authority, permits to pilots who were accused of transporting cocaine. From 1995 to 1997, when he was governor of Antioquia, drug-running paramilitary groups multiplied in that state.
Mr. Uribe has steadfastly denied the accusations. Furthermore, it is not unusual for politicians, celebrities or industrialists in Colombia, long plagued by drugs, to be acquainted with drug dealers. Mr. Uribe, for instance, says he knew the Ochoas only because of their common interest in Colombia's paso fino horses. Ernesto Samper, Colombia's president from 1994 to 1998, was accused of taking money from traffickers and subsequently was denied a visa to travel to the United States.
"It's not implausible, because the milieu in the 1980's was very much dominated by the drug trade and Pablo Escobar was such a dominant figure," said Michael Shifter, a senior analyst at Washington's Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group that closely tracks Colombia. "Regrettably, it wouldn't be so surprising for there to be some contacts between anyone who was an aspiring political figure and Pablo Escobar."
Morris Busby, who became the American ambassador shortly after the report was written and said he did not remember it, cautioned that some of the reports collected by intelligence agencies came to questionable conclusions.
He and other diplomats and intelligence officers, told about the report, noted that its labeling as "not finally evaluated" and indicated that its author relied on raw information that had not been confirmed.
"What it means is, we're telling you everything we're hearing," said Busby, now retired. "It's not evaluated in that it's been bounced against other things they had."
William Naughton, who was the Defense Intelligence Agency's officer for Latin America at the time, said the info in the report "may contain reliable information or not."
"It's not something you'd necessarily go to court on," he said.
Bernard Aronson, a former assistant secretary of state for Latin America who closely supervised the American war on drugs in Colombia in the 1990's, said intelligence reports on drug trafficking were sometimes influenced by rivalries for financing and prestige among the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration and others heavily involved in Colombia.
"These people tend to be brave people, but they're a special breed," Mr. Aronson said of those who work for such agencies. "They are sometimes cowboys and they are not always known for their analytical prowess."
-------- europe
Gibraltar detects snub as US warship pulls out of celebrations
GIBRALTAR (AFP)
Aug 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040802162449.wrwke23l.html
A US warship which was to have taken part in the 300th anniversary of British rule of Gibraltar pulled out at the last minute on Monday, the territory's Chief Minister Peter Caruana said, dubbing the move a "huge snub."
Caruana told local media that Gibraltarians have "always been supportive of the American use of Gibraltar when others have been much less supportive of such use," an allusion to anger in neighbouring Spain which lays claim to Gibraltar, lost it to the British in 1704.
Caruana said the apparent snub "will not be forgotten in a hurry."
The American nuclear submarine USS 'Albany' was recently in Gibraltar but Caruana said he believed that the US State Department had instructed the US Navy to withdraw the ship under protests from Spain.
Madrid is upset by the events to mark the capture of Gibraltar by the British on August 4, 1704.
The British Royal Navy, which helped in the capture, will be granted the freedom of the city of Gibraltar on Wednesday, to be marked by a spectacular military parade to be attended by British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon, who arrived in the territory on Monday afternoon.
The Spanish Government has described the visit as "an unfriendly act."
-------- iraq
VIOLENCE
Bombs Explode Near Churches in 2 Iraqi Cities
August 2, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/middleeast/02iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 1 - In the first significant attacks against Iraq's Christian minority, assailants staged coordinated car bombings on Sunday evening near four churches in Baghdad and another in Mosul, in northern Iraq.
In Baghdad, at least 11 people, including 2 children, were killed in the explosions, which were timed to coincide with Sunday evening Mass, and at least 20 people were wounded, witnesses and hospital officials said. One person died in the Mosul attack, and seven people were wounded, a United States military report said.
At least one church, in a Christian enclave in the Karada neighborhood of downtown Baghdad, was struck as the priest was giving communion. Next door, a Muslim family of five was killed by the blast, which was powerful enough to rip a row of bricks from the top floor of the building and shatter the windows in a courtyard well down the block. A hospital official said a Muslim passer-by also was killed in one of the blasts.
"It is a crime," Msgr. Raphael Kutemi said in front of the rectory of the Syrian Catholic church, Our Lady of Deliverance. "It is Sunday, and we were in prayer."
The bombings seemed to be another turning point in the already terrifying violence that has racked Iraq since the American-led invasion last year.
Even in this long-secular capital city, a rising tide of Islamist extremism since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government has shuttered liquor stores, often owned by Christians, and beauty salons, and compelled women and girls to cover their heads. It was not clear if the attacks on the churches were an extension of fundamentalist fervor or a calculated escalation by insurgents who have shown a willingness to broaden their attacks, even on fellow Muslims, in their fight against the American presence here and the new interim Iraqi government.
Minutes before the Syrian Catholic church was struck, another car bomb exploded in front of the nearby Armenian church during Mass. And inside a seminary compound in Doura, a neighborhood in southern Baghdad, two cars loaded with explosives blew up. A fourth blast was set off across town in an enclave called New Baghdad when a car carrying explosives crashed into the car in front of it and blew up yards from a Catholic church but in front of a mosque. Across Baghdad, the evening sky was laced with plumes of thick black smoke. American military helicopters hovered over the blast sites. The smell of charred metal lingered in the air long after the fires were extinguished and darkness fell.
About the same time Sunday evening, in Mosul, about 220 miles north of Baghdad, parishioners were leaving Mass at a Catholic church when a car bomb detonated. An American military report said the blast was caused by a bomb in a four-door Toyota Supra.
Meanwhile, the fate of seven foreign truck drivers taken hostage last week remained uncertain.
Agence France-Presse reported that a Kenyan government official in Nairobi had said that all seven - three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian - had been freed. But neither the Kuwaiti company that employed them nor the Muslim sheik who had tried to negotiate their release confirmed that. In fact, the sheik, Hisham al-Dulaymi, said Sunday evening that the hostage-takers, who call themselves the Bearers of the Black Banners, had warned him in a letter that they were prepared to behead their captives.
The sheik said he would not take part in any more negotiations, adding that he believed that the kidnappers would begin executing hostages soon.
"They are going to carry out their threat," he said Sunday afternoon, showing the letter, in a plain brown envelope, which he said had been sent to him by insurgents signaling that negotiations for the hostages' freedom had failed.
He said the hostages' employer, Kuwait Gulf and Link Transport, had refused to furnish what the kidnappers described as compensation money for those killed in clashes with American troops in Falluja, the western insurgency hotbed. He would not specify how much the kidnappers had demanded, but it was a suggestion nonetheless of less-than-ideological imperatives driving the taking of hostages.
Reuters, citing a Lebanese Foreign Ministry official, reported that on Sunday Iraqi soldiers freed a Lebanese citizen who had been seized separately. The fate of another Lebanese, taken captive with a Syrian driver on Friday, remained unclear.
Earlier on Sunday, a suicide car bomber raced to a police station in Mosul and blew up his vehicle, killing at least 5 people and wounding 53, American military officials said. In Baghdad on Sunday morning, another car bomb killed three and wounded three others.
The strikes on Sunday followed overnight clashes between American troops and insurgents in Falluja, 35 miles west of here, in which 10 people were killed, the United States military said.
But it was the church bombings that struck a singular note in the history of the 15-month insurgency. At no point since the March 2003 invasion have Christians, who represent less than 5 percent of the country's 24 million residents, come under fire in such a direct way. Guerrillas have largely directed their wrath toward Iraqi government representatives and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign workers, interpreters and anyone else accused of collaborating with the 140,000-member American troop presence here.
But the American invasion unleashed Islamist hard-liners, long suppressed during Mr. Hussein's rule. In Baghdad, a militia loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has been blamed for many of the attacks against the largely Christian-owned liquor stores. At the same time, the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi has been accused by United States officials of assembling a core of Sunni Muslim extremists, some from outside Iraq, to foment sectarian violence.
The coordinated strikes on Sunday shocked ordinary Christians and Muslims alike.
"Never, I'm never going to church again on Sunday," said Khawla Yawo Odishah, who had escaped the bombing because a family medical emergency had caused her to miss Mass.
At twilight, Ms. Odishah, 50, lingered across the street from the compound of St. Peter Seminary in Doura, where two car bombs had blown up, torching several other cars and filling the night air with the heat and stench of burning metal. The Mass was the one that many of her friends usually attended, she said.
Faris Talis, a Muslim, said he was in his tire repair store on Sunday evening when the first car bomb exploded on the street, spattering bits of glass and metal. He said he looked up to see a man, who he believed was involved in the attack, run into the seminary's parking lot. Then the second blast went off in the seminary compound. He ran inside to help what he said were scores of wounded and dead.
"I am a Muslim and I was evacuating them," he said. "I feel terrible about this. Whatever did this is a criminal. He doesn't have any mercy in his heart."
In the seminary parking lot, about a dozen cars sat scorched and smoking inside the front wall, at least one tipped on its side. Glass, ash and car parts were strewn around the lot, about 50 yards from the main building. Heat radiated off the blackened metal, as several men carried a blanket to one of the cars, apparently to retrieve the body of someone who had been trapped inside.
In the Karada neighborhood in central Baghdad, worshipers had gathered for Mass at the Armenian church, when, one witness said, a Volkswagen Passat pulled up and exploded. The engine flew 200 feet and landed in the street. Flames raced to the sky in front of the church.
Minutes later, a few blocks away, a second explosion erupted in front of the Syrian Catholic church, sending people running, engulfed in smoke.
Safaa Michael, who was at the service, heard the first explosion. When the second blast came, "all the glass fell down over our heads." Blood stained his temple.
The church went suddenly dark. The explosion had cut the electricity.
Zaid Gazee Al-Janabi, 30, a security guard and a Muslim who lives down the street, watched the bomb blast off the roof of a house next to the church. He pulled five bodies, including those of two children, from the ground floor. They were Muslims. They were his friends.
Fadel Aziz, 38, a Christian businessman who lives on the block, said he watched as the car exploded in front of him. Glass shattered along the block and a hunk of blackened metal careered into his yard. "It was very big," he said. He said he saw six or seven wounded people, and helped two of them into his house. Like many others, he blamed foreigners for the carnage.
"We have lived with Muslims for thousands of years," he said. "Nothing like this ever happened before. They cannot be Iraqis. They came to make trouble in the country."
James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. urges Israel to end settlements
(UPI)
August 02, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040802-073702-1929r.htm
Washington, DC, Aug. 2 -- The United States reminded Israel Monday the roadmap for peace in the Middle East calls for an end to all Israeli settlement activities on the West Bank.
Israel announced earlier it has approved the construction of 600 new housing units in the West Bank area.
Commenting about that announcement, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the U.S. administration has the need to make progress on the settlement issue with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as well.
The progress towards the U.S.-proposed roadmap should begin "with the removal of unauthorized settlement outposts," he said. "We look forward to Israel abiding by that commitment and sticking by the roadmap."
--------
Palestinian Militants Face Off as Rifts Between Factions Grow
August 2, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/middleeast/02mide.html?hp
JERUSALEM, Aug. 1 - Gunmen loyal to Yasir Arafat fired into the air on Sunday to disrupt a political conference in Nablus arranged by members of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, in the latest display of internal Palestinian unrest.
No one was hurt in the incident. Afterward, those involved described it as a misunderstanding.
About 20 gunmen arrived outside the conference hall in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, and fired shots shortly before the meeting was to begin Sunday, witnesses said. The gunmen said they had heard there would be a conference critical of Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and they wanted to prevent it.
But organizers emphasized that the 150 people planning to attend were loyal members of Fatah, and that they had prepared a list of recommendations to send to Mr. Arafat, with the focus on fighting internal Palestinian corruption.
"We explained that we are not against the president," said Bilal Dwakat, a Fatah leader in the Nablus area. Mr. Arafat, he said, "is the symbol of our revolution."
"We cannot bypass this symbol," Mr. Dwakat added. "But we cannot close our eyes to the state of corruption that exists."
The gunmen agreed and allowed the conference to continue. About 90 Fatah members actually attended, Mr. Dwakat said.
In a separate incident in Jenin, north of Nablus, several thousand Palestinians marched in the streets to show support for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a radical faction linked to the Fatah movement.
On Saturday, the brigades ransacked and set fire to the offices of Jenin's governor, Qadoura Mousa, and burned a building belonging to the Palestinian intelligence services.
The leader of the brigades in Jenin, Zacaria Zubeidah, said Palestinian officials in the town had been cooperating with Israel's security forces. The Israeli forces have staged repeated raids directed at the brigades' members and other militants in Jenin.
Mr. Zubeidah said the march on Sunday had been arranged to emphasize the group's support for Mr. Arafat. "Some claim that this rally is against the president," said Mr. Zubeidah, who marched in front of a larger-than-life portrait of Mr. Arafat. "We want to affirm to President Arafat that we are with him."
In the past few weeks, militants have carried out attacks and kidnappings directed against the Palestinian Authority and the security forces, which are headed by Mr. Arafat. The militants insist that Mr. Arafat is their leader and that the actions are directed against corrupt Palestinian officials, not Mr. Arafat.
Most of the trouble has been in the Gaza Strip, but it has moved to the West Bank in recent days.
On Friday night, militants briefly kidnapped three church volunteers. The three, an American, a Briton and an Irishman, were released unharmed a few hours later.
In another development, one of Mr. Arafat's strongest Palestinian critics, the former security chief Muhammad Dahlan, took another jab at him in an interview published Sunday.
Mr. Arafat "is sitting on the corpses and destruction of the Palestinians at a time when they are desperately in need of a new mentality," Mr. Dahlan was quoted as telling the Kuwait daily Al Watan. The newspaper said the interview was conducted in Jordan.
Mr. Dahlan, 42, belongs to a younger generation of Fatah members who are pushing for a greater role in the dominant Palestinian political group.
Such direct and harsh attacks on Mr. Arafat are extremely rare, though Mr. Dahlan and others have been increasingly critical of an older generation of Fatah leaders who have been close associates of Mr. Arafat for many years.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, submitted his resignation on July 17 to protest the chaos in the Palestinian areas. But he reconciled with Mr. Arafat last week and agreed to remain in his post.
"We, the Palestinian people, must stand united in condemning this chaos in the same manner that we deterred the chaos that took place in Gaza," Mr. Qurei was quoted as saying Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds. "If this chaos reaches the West Bank, then we will be on the verge of an unprecedented and unacceptable disaster."
--------
Stranded on the Egypt-Gaza Border
Israel's Closure of Crossing Prevents Thousands From Returning Home
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32994-2004Aug1?language=printer
RAFAH, Egypt, Aug. 1 -- Like thousands of other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who do not have access to advanced medical care, Hani Hindi traveled across the border to Cairo for specialized treatment. Three months ago, Hindi said, he had been shot by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis while installing a rooftop satellite dish.
But when he tried to return home two weeks ago, Hindi said, he was stunned to find that Israel, which controls all access to Gaza with fences and military patrols, had closed the gates on July 17 and was letting no one in or out.
Hindi, 22, and his wife, Malina, who is eight months pregnant, have been stranded since then at the Rafah border crossing with about 2,500 other Palestinians who are unable to cross into Gaza but lack the money or travel papers necessary to return to Egypt.
Hundreds of men, women and children -- many of whom, like Hindi, are returning home after medical procedures not available in the Gaza Strip -- are crowded into the crossing's arrival and departure halls, according to aid groups and people inside reached by cellular telephone.
Temperatures soar above 100 during the day and drop into the 60s at night. Many people are sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes surrounded by mountains of luggage or in makeshift tents set up outside. Blankets, water and toilets are scarce, and there are no showers or cooking facilities. The Egyptian Red Crescent Society has set up a small clinic, and two ambulances stand at the ready.
Egyptian police refused to allow a Washington Post reporter to enter the border crossing on Sunday to observe conditions and talk to people stranded there. Six people inside were interviewed by phone; two others were interviewed through the large iron gates at the Egyptian entrance to the crossing.
"It's awful," said Maha Jundia, 35, an official with the Palestinian Foreign Ministry who arrived at the crossing more than two weeks ago after attending a government training course in China. Jundia does not have money for a hotel or to go to Cairo to wait out the impasse.
"We sleep here on the floor, children all over the place, sick people," she said in a telephone interview. "Some Palestinians and Egyptians who live in the area brought food and stuff, but it is not enough. They brought enough for hundreds, but we are thousands."
"There are hundreds of children," said Sigrid Bovsor, 37, a medical statistician at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg, who was on her way to Gaza to visit her husband's family when the border was closed. "They play with everything -- stones, broken things, empty bottles, their shoes," she said in an interview at the gate Sunday before Egyptian police ordered her away. "It's really boring."
Lt. Yaniv Alon, a spokesman for the Israeli army's Gaza liaison office, said Israel closed the border "due to a security alert regarding an attempt to dig a tunnel under the crossing." Palestinian militants dug a 1,000-foot-long tunnel under an Israeli army post in the southern Gaza Strip earlier this summer and detonated what they said were 3,000 pounds of explosives, collapsing a concrete building, killing one Israeli soldier and injuring five others.
An Israeli military spokesman said Egyptian and Palestinian authorities were told in advance of plans to close the crossing "to prevent the gathering of people." He said the Israeli government had offered to allow Palestinians to cross into Israel 27 miles south at a new border crossing facility and then be transported back up to the Gaza Strip, but that the Palestinians had refused.
Palestinians said the Israeli offer was limited to about 200 people per day, which they said was inadequate given the number of people stranded at Rafah. Other Palestinians opposed the deal on principle, saying Palestinians should not be forced to transit through Israel and be subjected to aggressive security checks when Egypt and the Gaza Strip share a seven-mile border.
Physicians for Human Rights, one of several groups that appealed to Israel's high court last week to open the border, said in a statement that the southern crossing proposal was a "symbolic" solution that was "not truly an option."
The situation underscores Palestinian concerns about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. Under the plan, Israel would continue to occupy a thin strip of land along the border between Egypt and Gaza, allowing Israel to seal off Gaza.
Jundia, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, charged that the people trapped inside the border crossing were being used by Israel as "a political tool to pressure the Palestinian Authority."
"This is truly collective punishment," she said. "They should release us from here and then negotiate."
"It's humiliating," said Sabah Hamas, 42, a Palestinian housewife from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, who was accompanying her 22-year-old daughter, Hanna, to Gaza City for her wedding when the border was shut. "It's hot here, like being in a prison dungeon. We need a solution."
About 500 guests were invited to the wedding, which had been scheduled for Saturday but was canceled, said the groom, Dia El-Jidi, 24.
"Now there is no date until the passage is open," he said in a telephone interview Saturday. "I feel very disillusioned and disappointed. I'm losing hope. This has become the saddest day in my life."
An Egyptian who works at the crossing, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about his job, said about 2,000 Palestinians were living in local hotels and many were arriving at the crossing each day because of rumors that the border would open.
"Rafah is everything to Gaza: passengers, white flour, rice, oil, cement," he said. "Because it is the only entry, everything that's in Gaza must come from Egypt. And now Gaza is a jail."
Bovsor, the medical statistician from Hamburg, said she could leave but chose not to.
"This is a desert camp. It's rough out here. The toilets, the hygienic situation is poor. There are hundreds of people stuck here. Sometimes there is shortage of water," she said.
In the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, Israeli troops opened fire Sunday, killing a 60-year-old woman and wounding four other Palestinians, Palestinian witnesses and medics told the Reuters news agency. The shooting occurred as Israeli tanks took up positions on the edges of the camp in what military sources said was an operation against "terrorist infrastructure." They did not elaborate.
In northern Gaza, Israeli soldiers opened fire on three Palestinian gunmen who approached a Jewish settlement, military sources told Reuters. It was not clear whether any of the gunmen were hit.
[An explosion ripped through a Palestinian prison in Gaza City on Monday, wounding several people, a Palestinian security source told the Reuters news agency. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast in the Palestinian security compound. Israeli military sources said Israel had nothing to do with the explosion.]
Special correspondent Samuel Sokol contributed to this report.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani-U.S. Raid Uncovered Terrorist Cell's Surveillance Data
By Walter Pincus and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32993-2004Aug1.html
The fresh intelligence that led to yesterday's extraordinary terror alert comes from documents discovered after Pakistani and U.S. forces broke up an al Qaeda cell in Gujrat, Pakistan, eight days ago, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday.
One of the men arrested in that raid led authorities to the documents, which contained the startling details of al Qaeda surveillance of corporate and government targets in Washington, New York and New Jersey.
Officials from several U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies huddled virtually round-the-clock Friday, Saturday and Sunday to discuss the fast-emerging information, government sources said, assembling intelligence from the arrested al Qaeda operatives and translating and culling through the documents.
"This is definitely a nail-biter," one law enforcement official said.
The information that emerged appears to confirm that al Qaeda continues to plan operations and conduct surveillance against targets inside the United States. It buttresses the warnings of law enforcement and intelligence officials that al Qaeda has operatives in the United States and that U.S. financial institutions -- particularly ones in New York and Washington -- remain favorite targets of the terror network.
The news also highlighted a victory for the CIA, which for several months has mounted campaigns, in coordination with allied foreign security agencies and U.S. Special Forces, to attack suspected al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere in northern Africa.
It was unclear yesterday whether the new documents, which a senior U.S. intelligence official called "a treasure trove," were plucked from two laptop computers recovered from the hideout in Gujrat where the al Qaeda operatives were arrested after a shootout July 25. But Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials had expressed great interest last week in the contents of the portable computers, computer disks and cell phones seized in the raid.
The joint Pakistani-U.S. raid netted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as five other Pakistani and African al Qaeda suspects. U.S. intelligence sources said the most important new information came not from Ghailani but from one of the other al Qaeda associates, who led them to the cache of documents in recent days.
Senior intelligence officials said yesterday that they do not have al Qaeda cells under surveillance in this country that might have intended to carry out the planned terrorist attacks. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said a woman arrested at a Texas airport has no apparent link to the surveillance, though she remains under investigation.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials interviewed yesterday stressed that although the new documents reveal a great deal about the plot against the Citigroup Center in Manhattan, the World Bank in Washington and other financial institutions, equally valuable insights were gained about how al Qaeda operates in the United States and around the globe.
"This greatly advances our understanding of the al Qaeda leadership that has slowly been coming into focus," one ranking intelligence official said. "It gives us a specificity . . . that we've never seen before."
Another senior U.S. intelligence official said the new information comprises a virtual playbook of the tradecraft al Qaeda surveillance teams use. It details, for example, the use of phony couriers and delivery people to get inside the buildings, intelligence officials said.
It also provides fresh insight into the roles of high-ranking leaders who provide overall direction and facilitators who handle logistical details.
Intelligence officials said the al Qaeda surveillance began before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and continued perhaps until recent months.
"This confirms what everybody has known for a long time, that al Qaeda operates on a very long lead time," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist with the Rand Corp. "It's also proof of their resilience, since they were able to be doing this even after all that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement has done for the three years after 9/11."
Surveillance, the first stage of a planned terrorist attack, is followed by planning and operational phases, Hoffman said. "The challenge now," he added, "is to determine when in the attack cycle al Qaeda is. . . . Are the planning and operational cells here also?"
The new information comes amid a summer of warnings from government officials that al Qaeda hopes to disrupt U.S. elections by attacking before November, or possibly around the time of the presidential inauguration in January. But U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday that they are uncertain whether the planned attacks on the financial targets were intended for coming months.
Word of the intelligence bonanza came as the Bush administration prepares to release its proposals for reforming the intelligence community in response to the Sept. 11 commission's report.
The information was given to top intelligence officials Thursday at the regular 5 p.m. meeting in the director of central intelligence's conference room at CIA headquarters, chaired by John E. McLaughlin, the acting DCI.
With representatives around the table from CIA counterterrorism units, the FBI and the Pentagon, operational plans for surveillance and arrests at home and abroad were developed. "There are a whole raft of operations going on right now overseas as well as at home," a senior intelligence official said yesterday. President Bush was briefed aboard Air Force One on Friday morning.
Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
Captured Qaeda Figure Led Way to Information Behind Warning
August 2, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02intel.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.
The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages.
A senior United States official would not confirm or deny that Mr. Khan had been the Qaeda figure whose capture led to the information. But the official said "documentary evidence" found after the capture had demonstrated in extraordinary detail that Qaeda members had for years conducted sophisticated and extensive reconnaissance of the financial institutions cited in the warnings on Sunday.
One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.
"This, for us, is a potential treasure trove," said a third senior American official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.
The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior American intelligence officials said. Much of that information had come from Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Pakistan, and some had also pointed to a possible attack on financial institutions, senior American intelligence officials said.
The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.
The American officials would say only that the Qaeda figure whose capture had led to the discovery of the documentary evidence had been captured with the help of the C.I.A. Though Pakistan announced the arrest last week of a Qaeda member, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the bombings of American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the American officials suggested that he had not been the source of the new threat information.
An account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Mr. Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Mr. Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential American and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a "new Al Qaeda."
The Pakistani official described Mr. Khan as a fluent English speaker who had told investigators that he had visited the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries. Mr. Khan was one of thousands of Pakistani militants who trained in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the 1990's, the Pakistani official said.
If indeed Mr. Khan was the man whose arrest led the C.I.A. to new evidence, his role as a kind of clearinghouse of Qaeda communications, as described by the Pakistani intelligence official, could have made him a vital source of information. Since his arrest, Mr. Khan has described an elaborate communications system that involves the use of high and low technology, the Pakistani official said.
The question of how much to rely on information obtained from captured foes has always weighed on the intelligence business. In recent weeks, even as they cited accounts from some captured Qaeda members as the basis for new concerns about terrorism, American intelligence officials have acknowledged that another captured Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had recanted claims that Iraq had provided training in illicit weapons to Qaeda members.
Mr. Libi's earlier claims had been the primary basis for assertions by President Bush and his top advisers that Iraq had provided training in "poisons and gases" to Qaeda members.
In explaining the decision to call a new terror alert, American officials would say only that the evidence obtained by the C.I.A. after the arrest of the Qaeda figure in Pakistan had provided a richer, more credible source of intelligence than could have been provided by any single individual. They declined to say whether the "documentary evidence" included physical documents or might also include electronic information stored on computers, like copies of e-mail communications.
The Qaeda communications system that Mr. Khan used and helped operate relied on Web sites and e-mail addresses in Turkey, Nigeria and the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan, according to the information provided by a Pakistani intelligence official.
The official said Mr. Khan had told investigators that couriers carried handwritten messages or computer disks from senior Qaeda leaders hiding in isolated border areas to hard-line religious schools in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.
Other couriers then ferried them to Mr. Khan on the other side of the country in the eastern city of Lahore, and the computer expert then posted the messages in code on Web sites or relayed them electronically, the Pakistani official said.
Mr. Khan had told investigators that most of Al Qaeda's communications were now done through the Internet, the official said. After a message was sent and read by the recipient, the entire communication and related files were deleted to maintain secrecy, he said. Mr. Khan had told investigators that e-mail addresses were generally not used more than a few times.
The young computer engineer, who received a bachelor's degree from a university in Karachi, is the unemployed son of an employee of Pakistan's state airline and a college botany professor, the official said. Heavily built and 6 feet 2 inches tall, he speaks English with a British accent, and was arrested carrying a fake Pakistani identification card.
The Pakistani official said Mr. Khan told investigators that he had received 25 days of training at a militant camp in Afghanistan in June 1998. By the time Mr. Khan had risen to his current position, the official said, Qaeda figures had arranged his marriage and were paying him $170 a month for rent for his house in Lahore and $90 for expenses.
Mr. Khan was in contact with the brother of the Indonesian Qaeda leader Hambali, who was studying in a religious school in Karachi, and who was deported in December 2003. Mr. Khan has told interrogators that his Qaeda handler was a Pakistani he knew as Adil or Imran, who assigned him tasks related to computer work, Web design and managing the handler's messages. His correspondents included a Saudi-based Yemeni, Egyptian and Palestinian nationals and Arabs in unknown locations, and someone described as the "in-charge" in the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.
Asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Khan has told interrogators that even the top Qaeda commanders do not know, the Pakistani intelligence official said.
Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Rohde from Karachi, Pakistan.
-------- us
MILITARY
Special Warriors Have Growing Ranks and Growing Pains in Taking Key Antiterror Role
August 2, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02mili.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, August 1 - The military's Special Operations Forces, which played a pivotal role in toppling the Taliban government in Afghanistan and in capturing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, are now grappling with proposals to give them an expanded and more complex mission in the global campaign against terrorism, senior commanders and top Pentagon officials say.
While their ranks are growing and their budget is increasing even faster, Special Operations Forces have yet to fulfill completely Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's order 18 months ago to take control of the military's counterterrorism mission.
The command has restructured the staff at its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., to meet the new assignment managing the military's mission against terror. But it has been deliberately slow in taking on operations of its own in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots, as Mr. Rumsfeld directed. Instead, its troops there are subordinated to the overall regional commander.
"The Special Operations Command has some growing pains that it has to work on," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is a member of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to Mr. Rumsfeld.
Now, the Special Operations Command may be given even greater responsibilities, as the bipartisan 9/11 commission has recommended that it take over from the Central Intelligence Agency the authority for all of the nation's paramilitary operations.
"Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department," the report concluded. "There it should be consolidated with the capabilities for training, direction and execution of such operations already being developed in the Special Operations Command."
The recommendation for the C.I.A. to cede to the military the lead role for covert strikes to capture or kill terrorists and disrupt their cells in coordination with local allied fighters would expand an effort already under way at the Pentagon.
The effort, however, has run into the very bureaucratic resistance feared by the panel. "The United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces," the report concluded.
The C.I.A. has resisted surrendering its historic domain of paramilitary missions, despite successful cooperation with elite military commandos in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon and Congressional experts said. The State Department has restricted the intelligence-gathering activities of Special Operations Forces assigned to some American Embassies, fearing that service members will bypass diplomatic channels and report directly up a military chain of command, lawmakers and senior officers said.
The Special Operations Command is perhaps the most misunderstood military organization within the Department of Defense. It was created in 1987 by Congress, in a landmark bill reorganizing the military's top commands, over the objections of many within the Pentagon. The change came seven years after the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran.
The command operates like a miniature armed service, ordered to organize, train and equip the nation's premier warriors. It was given unique budget and procurement powers to develop and buy quickly the one-of-a-kind weaponry and communications gear needed by such specialized fighters as Army Green Berets or Navy Seals.
Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the regional combatant commanders, who dominate American war-fighting, all want these elite warriors to be committed to their areas of responsibility, even as they are aware of their limited numbers. But these commanders have been reluctant in some cases to support the concept of giving missions over to the Special Operations Command, or Socom, especially on their turf.
"Socom's true mission hasn't truly been tested yet," said Representative Martin Meehan of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism, conventional threats and capabilities, which oversees Special Operations Forces. "If anything, Socom has erred too much on the side of caution by being too deferential to regional commanders."
In one recent week, 6,500 Special Operations Forces were deployed around the world, about 80 percent of them in the Central Command's region, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, working under the regional combatant commander and his senior battle staff. In the past four months, these elite warriors have carried out just under 200 missions in Iraq, virtually all under the traditional chain of command.
Discussions among commanders have been particularly pointed as the Special Operations Command has sought to follow Mr. Rumsfeld's orders across the military to reshape the global footprint of overseas forces. The command is coming up with new designs to rotate its troops overseas temporarily, deploy them and join in training missions with foreign forces in locations that give it greater agility to strike at terrorists. That sometimes means canceling traditional exercises and trimming its presence in some places.
"We want to be postured where we're most needed, not just where we've been, and that's not always easy," Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the Special Operations commander, said in a recent interview.
The command wants to hand off to conventional troops such tasks as training foreign troops in conventional missions, dealing with chemical and biological weapon threats, and even many house-to-house raids of the sort carried out daily in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving commandos to pursue only the most important insurgents.
Senior Special Operations commanders say they are well aware that major terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi remain at large, and that the terrorists' networks cross national and regional boundaries. "Since 9/11, we can no longer deal with this threat in pieces," said a senior Defense Department official. "You've got to have a global perspective, and that's what Socom is responsible for."
Mr. Rumsfeld remains personally involved in shaping the command's expanded duties and specific missions, senior Pentagon officials and military officers say, summoning General Brown and his top aides to Washington for briefings every two weeks or so, and talking to General Brown by phone regularly, senior officers said.
The 9/11 commission report clearly agrees with Mr. Rumsfeld's overall design for the Special Operations Command and, indeed, pushes it farther and faster.
John F. Lehman, one of the 9/11 commissioners and a former secretary of the Navy, said the commission's recommendation stemmed from the conclusion that C.I.A.-run paramilitary operations were inevitably "ad hoc" missions that could be carried out more efficiently by Special Operations Forces.
The Special Operations Command "is so improved and so capable that it has the ability to do almost any kind of special operation, from largest to smallest, more effectively than an ad hoc arrangement by the C.I.A.," Mr. Lehman said.
Richard Shultz, a scholar who specializes in issues of terrorism, intelligence and special operations at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said Mr. Rumsfeld's efforts have not been welcomed at the C.I.A.
"It's turf," said Mr. Shultz, who also serves as director of research at the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence in Washington. "I think the report has it right when it says that we have two capabilities here, potential capabilities, and what we really need to do is have one. The report is right in saying this is something that should go to the military."
Shifting more covert missions to the military would no doubt place new strains on the armed forces at a time with the troops already are stretched thin. As the Special Operations Command is growing to meet these new demands, it is facing a potential exodus of its most seasoned enlisted forces for higher-paying civilian security jobs in places like Baghdad and Kabul.
Senior Army Green Berets and Navy Seals with 20 years or more experience now earn about $50,000 in base pay, and can retire with a $23,000 pension. But private security companies are offering, in some cases, up to $1,000 a day to the most experienced Special Operations Forces.
To address this, General Brown last December gathered 20 senior members of the Navy Seals, Army Green Berets and Air Force commandos - and their spouses - at his headquarters for a weeklong session to discuss career-extending incentives, special pay bonuses and additional education benefits.
The command's noncommissioned officers are the backbone of a relatively small force in which only one-third of the 49,848 personnel budgeted this year are "trigger-pullers" or "operators," from Green Berets to civil units coordinating reconstruction to the super-secret Task Force 626, formerly known as Task Force 121, specifically charged with hunting high-level insurgents. Of the more than 730 American forces killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, 48 have been Special Operations Forces.
With the backing of Congress, the command's forces will grow over the next five years to 52,559. The command's annual budget has been growing steadily, and rose 35 percent in the last year, to $6.8 billion.
The command is still wrestling with several challenges. Any attempt at transforming how the nation strikes out at terrorists, for instance, is more dependent than ever on gathering precise information on an adversary's movements in a timely fashion. Passing the job of planning and carrying out such missions to the military from the C.I.A. cannot guarantee success without dramatic improvements in intelligence, according to Special Operations commanders and troops.
"It's too early to tell how this thing is going," said Gen. Wayne Downing, a retired head of the Special Operations Command. "The question is, how successful will this be after Rumsfeld leaves, because to carry this out will require the absolute, total support of the top levels of the Defense Department."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Police batten down city after alert
August 03, 2004
By S.A. Miller and Isaac Wolf
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040803-121323-5323r.htm
U.S. Capitol Police have begun inspecting every vehicle passing near the Capitol, partly in response to a heightened terror alert likely to remain in effect until after the Nov. 2 general election.
Traffic on Capitol Hill is expected to snarl as officers conduct around-the-clock searches of vehicles nearing the Capitol at checkpoints on Constitution, Independence, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania avenues, and at First and Second streets.
Capitol Police also have closed heavily traveled First Street NE between Constitution Avenue and D Street.
In Northwest, Metropolitan Police have closed H Street between 18th and 20th streets adjacent to the headquarters of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), two financial institutions thought to be targeted by terrorists.
D.C. police officers yesterday searched every truck on 19th Street NW near the buildings and monitored the area with closed-circuit television cameras.
Metro Transit police also increased security yesterday, deploying SWAT-style special response units armed with MP-5 submachine guns and explosive ordnance protection officers with bomb-sniffing dogs at subway stations.
"They are going station to station, train to train and railcar to railcar," said Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the transit agency, which also closed all public restrooms at D.C. stations.
The District's increased security mirrored those implemented at financial institutions in New York City and Newark, N.J., after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced Sunday that "unusually specific" intelligence indicated that al Qaeda terrorists were planning attacks on the facilities.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow yesterday said the U.S. financial system continues to operate normally and can withstand any terrorist attack because of safety mechanisms that protect against disruptions.
The targeted facilities include the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Inc., Newark's Prudential Financial Inc., and the District's World Bank and IMF.
Yesterday's closure of H Street NW did not cause significant delays in the District, but traffic tie-ups are expected today as Capitol police staff the checkpoints on every street surrounding the Capitol.
At a press conference announcing the security measures, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer advised motorists to avoid the Capitol or use public transportation. He said those who must drive through the area can expect delays, though each car should spend only about five seconds stopped at the checkpoint.
Chief Gainer said the vehicle checks likely would continue until after the Nov. 2 elections and possibly until after the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.
At the checkpoints, every vehicle must come to a complete stop and undergo a quick visual inspection by officers. Suspicious vehicles will be directed to pull to the side of the road for a more thorough search.
Chief Gainer said heavily armed officers stationed nearby will be prepared to fire on vehicles that do not heed instructions at the checkpoints.
"Everybody who arrives on this Hill will go through some screening process," he said. "Nobody gets a pass because of your rank or position in life."
Capitol police will spend as much as $750,000 a week for about 300 officers working 12-hour shifts to staff the checkpoints day and night. Chief Gainer said plans to expand the Capitol's security perimeter are not new, but the decision to implement them yesterday was prompted by the heightened terror alert.
D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey yesterday declined to say how much the alert was costing the city, saying, "We are worried about safety [and] security, not expenses."
Mr. Ridge on Sunday increased the terrorist threat level from Code Yellow to Code Orange, indicating "high" alert status, at the financial institutions identified in the intelligence report. D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams and D.C. police raised the District's alert level to Code Orange Sunday.
While the World Bank and IMF were the only institutions in the District named in Mr. Ridge's announcement, authorities intensified security at several other financial facilities, including the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Mint.
"We do have a lot of targets of opportunity, and when you harden one, you can create opportunities in others," Chief Ramsey told the Associated Press, adding that security measures were being coordinated between his department and other law-enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, Maryland and Virginia put state and local law-enforcement agencies on alert, though the extra security was not as intensive as that in the District.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, said police would take aggressive and random action to thwart terrorist plans. "We will remain vigilant and responsive for the duration of this current threat situation," he said.
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, said information contained in the terror alert was vital to the state's emergency preparedness planning, but the public should not panic.
"While there were no specific sites identified in Virginia, it is prudent that we reinforce the need for awareness among local and state officials, as well as our citizens," he said.
In the District, Metropolitan Police officers stopped trucks on 19th Street between G and H streets, where the road passed between the World Bank and IMF properties. Truck drivers had to show officers their driver's licenses and registration and open the backs of their trucks for inspection.
"It is the least we can do," said Officer Neil Morgon, who was searching trucks with his partner. "We are not afraid."
Armed security guards also redoubled checks at the entrances and garages of the World Bank, located in the 1800 block of H Street NW, and the IMF, located in the 700 block of 19th Street NW.
Otherwise, business proceeded as usual inside and outside the targeted institutions. Workers filed in and out of the buildings, and window washers squeegeed the glass high above the parade of tourists and businessmen on the sidewalk.
"You can't just freeze because someone crazy out there is trying to attack you," said Teresa, a teller at the credit union inside the World Bank building who did not give her last name. "If somebody wants to harm you, they are going to do it one way or another."
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Washington and N.Y. Put on Alert
Al Qaeda Plotting Attacks on Financial Sectors, Officials Say
By Dan Eggen and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31951-2004Aug1?language=printer
The federal government raised the terror alert level yesterday to orange for the financial services sectors in New York City, Washington and Newark, citing the discovery of remarkably detailed intelligence showing that al Qaeda operatives have been plotting for years to blow up specific buildings with car or truck bombs.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the newly acquired information points to five potential targets: the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York; and the Prudential Financial building in Newark.
The intelligence shows that al Qaeda has been methodically casing those buildings, and perhaps others, since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and also since then, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters on the alleged plot. Authorities said they do not know when the operatives were planning to carry out any of the bombings.
The surveillance, recounted in chilling detail in newly obtained documents, included the location of security desks and cameras in the buildings; traffic and pedestrian patterns surrounding them; employee and vehicle routines; the locations of nearby fire departments, police stations, libraries and schools; and what kinds of explosives would do the most damage to the structures.
U.S. officials said the operatives noted that one of the buildings had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. "Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did," one operative added.
The heightened alert, announced by Ridge at 2 p.m., included a level of detail unprecedented in previous warnings. It is the first time that Homeland Security officials have focused the government's color-coded threat system on specific geographic areas. The five earlier orange alerts -- which indicate a high risk of terrorist attack -- were applied to the nation as a whole, most recently on Dec. 31, 2003.
"The quality of this intelligence, based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Ridge said.
The alert comes as President Bush is under pressure from Democrats and from his opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), to show that the government has done everything possible to fend off another terrorist attack. Bush is to announce today his plans for reorganizing the nation's intelligence agencies in response to recent recommendations by the Sept. 11 commission.
In response to Ridge's announcement, authorities in Washington, Newark and New York scrambled to beef up security before government offices and financial markets opened this morning.
New York, which has remained under an orange alert since the Sept. 11 attacks, will host the Republican National Convention Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Police teams and anti-terror squads will bar trucks from certain bridges, establish checkpoints throughout Manhattan and double security around key office buildings, including the Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings mentioned in the federal alert. In Newark, heavily armed police set up posts around the 24-story Prudential headquarters.
In the District, police announced plans to stop and inspect cars and trucks around the IMF and World Bank buildings and other sensitive sites downtown, to activate additional surveillance cameras and to flood the areas with foot and car patrols. Authorities indicated that security would be tightened at other facilities, including the White House, Capitol, State Department and U.S. Federal Reserve Board, in case secondary targets were selected.
U.S. intelligence officials' sources of terrorist information are typically more vague and fragmentary. Officials said during briefings with reporters yesterday that the documents related to the latest suspected al Qaeda plot were among the most specific the government had received. But they said they believe that the plans had been in the works for years and contained no specific date for an attack.
In one example of detailed surveillance cited by a senior administration intelligence official, operatives logged the flow of pedestrians outside one targeted building at midday in the middle of a week. "Fourteen persons pass by every minute" on one side of the block, they concluded.
Other communications focused on security barricades, traffic patterns, the use of sewers as escape routes and the locations of nearby fire and police stations, schools and libraries, officials said. For one building, potential attackers discussed how visitors must sign a book telling where they are going, but "on Sunday there is no security. This is not the case on Saturday."
The operatives focused on structural features of the targets that might "prevent the buildings from toppling down," including the thickness of window glass. They discussed separate plans to hijack oil tankers but warned that some contain tracking devices, officials said.
Operatives also intensively monitored employees of the targeted buildings, noting the locations of employee offices in relation to parking garages and identifying local bars and restaurants where employees of the institutions could be met, officials said.
One senior U.S. official likened the new intelligence to a homeowner learning that someone had broken into his house years ago and had been monitoring the occupants all that time.
Such sophistication of planning is a hallmark of al Qaeda. At the U.S. embassy bombings trial in 2001, Jamal Amed al-Fadl, a former associate of Osama bin Laden's, testified that similar surveillance took place four years before the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998. Testimony showed that a team arrived in Nairobi in 1994, headed by Ali Mohammed, a former U.S. Army Green Beret now in prison, who had taught surveillance to al Qaeda recruits in Afghanistan training camps.
The team photographed buildings; analyzed access routes, building entrances and guard stations; and kept track of crowd flow around the embassy and other buildings in the area. Surveillance reports were sent to Afghanistan for review by bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, then his chief military planner. Atef, who made one visit to Kenya to review the scene, was killed in November 2001 during a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan.
An Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing obtained by the Sept. 11 commission included a warning about possible surveillance of federal buildings in Manhattan. The FBI has never located the Yemeni man who asked two other Yemenis to take photographs of the buildings.
A White House aide said Bush was informed of the potential threat Friday morning aboard Air Force One by his traveling CIA briefer, during a daily intelligence briefing. At that time, the CIA was still trying to cull the data, and Bush was told about "emerging information that might require us to take preventive action on certain specific targets," the aide said.
The CIA worked round-the-clock on the information for 72 hours before Ridge's announcement, officials said. Members of Bush's Cabinet met about the matter on Saturday and again at 10 a.m. yesterday for more than an hour.
Around noon, Bush authorized Ridge to make the announcement. White House officials said they wanted to make the announcement outside business hours so that workers in the buildings would not panic.
Just before Ridge went on television, Homeland Security officials offered Kerry a classified briefing detailing the intelligence, and the briefing was being scheduled yesterday afternoon, according to the Kerry campaign.
Kerry's senior adviser for national security, Susan Rice, said in a statement yesterday that the heightened alert indicates "we are not as safe as we could or should be" and underscores the need to implement the Sept. 11 panel's recommendations.
"John Kerry and John Edwards will bring all aspects of our nation's power to crush al Qaeda and destroy terrorist networks," Rice said.
Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate, also questioned yesterday "how much of this is real and how much of this is politics." He said in an interview on CNN that "every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays his trump card, which is terrorism."
Other Democrats, including Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), said they did not doubt the credibility of the warning.
"I don't think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons," said Lieberman, who also sought the Democratic nomination for president. "That's outrageous."
Ridge said in a conference call with journalists that mayors and governors were notified before yesterday's announcement. He said teams of federal officials met with security officers at the targeted buildings yesterday afternoon.
Ridge indicated that other targets might be part of a al Qaeda plot, but that authorities are still working through the details. "There may be more to come," Ridge said. "We decided not to wait until we were done. We better get out with what we know now."
Staff writers Mike Allen, Juliet Eilperin and Spencer S. Hsu in Washington, and Michael Powell in New York, contributed to this report.
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Police Plan Traffic Stops Near IMF and World Bank
By Serge F. Kovaleski and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32878-2004Aug1?language=printer
Law enforcement agencies said yesterday that they will inspect vehicles for explosives around the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings, as well as downtown Washington and on Capitol Hill, while maintaining police patrols citywide to safeguard against possible attacks on other targets.
D.C. police said they have activated surveillance cameras trained on areas near the IMF and World Bank headquarters in Northwest Washington, just off Pennsylvania Avenue about two blocks from the White House. Authorities also said teams of bomb-sniffing dogs are sweeping the vicinity.
Police officials said there were no immediate plans to close streets as a result of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's announcement of an orange alert -- one rung below the highest level -- for the financial institutions in Washington as well as New York and Newark. Residents, workers and motorists near the IMF and World Bank and elsewhere should expect disruptions, they said, although they added that they hoped to keep inconvenience to a minimum.
"We will be more aggressive in making traffic stops of cars, trucks and limos," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said in an interview. "We have to pay attention to just about anything that could be explosive or chemical."
Tony Bullock, spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), said the security effort also will focus on other federal buildings that "are significant to financial markets in the country." Those include the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
He said officials will consider "whether there will be a need for some street or Metro closures due to the proximity of tunnels and air shafts to certain buildings."
After yesterday's federal announcement, the Williams administration and D.C. police raised the city's terrorism threat level one category to orange, strengthening security and identification checks at government buildings and mobilizing more personnel. A Special Threat Action Team of 200 police officers trained to respond to terrorist attacks is on standby.
Police officials plan to meet this morning with security officials from both institutions and will also discuss security measures with other financial organizations, such as banks, Ramsey said. "Even though the threat was specific to the IMF and the World Bank, you can imagine that other institutions are going to be concerned," he said. "If you harden one target, you make another soft."
World Bank spokesman Damian Milverton said that the FBI, Secret Service and D.C. police "are increasing their support to us as the bank enhances its security measures in response to the threat alert. There have been no specific threats against the bank, however, and we will be open for business as usual Monday."
Although D.C. officials acknowledged that the threat was the most specific and credible against the nation's capital since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon, they urged people to go about their routines, while taking care to be highly vigilant and to review their emergency preparedness plans.
"If you go to work around these buildings, if you are going to go shopping, if you are going to have friends for dinner, go about your business. This is our way of life. This is our strength," Williams said.
Williams and Ramsey urged people to notify authorities of suspicious activity, including strangers photographing possible targets and people or vehicles making unusual movements. The mayor said that police will have the necessary staffing to respond to such calls without reducing community patrols.
Dozens of federal law enforcement agencies are coordinating security measures at high-priority sites, including the White House, the Capitol and the State Department.
U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said security checks for cars and trucks on Capitol Hill will increase today, affecting traffic specifically on and near Independence and Constitution avenues and First, Second and Third streets.
After a noon teleconference with federal and local law enforcement officials, Gainer said he decided to assign his officers to 12-hour shifts, with only one day off each week.
Law enforcement officials said the announcement itself was one of the best defenses against attack, possibly prompting terrorists to change their plans. "We seek to disrupt whatever plans and operations they have. That is the whole goal here," Ramsey said.
Ridge's announcement set off a flurry of activity in Washington, New York and Newark. While heavily armed police took up positions around the Prudential Insurance Co. in Newark and New York City officials said that heavily army squads would bar some trucks from some of its bridges, D.C. police sought to maintain a lower profile.
"We're not in competition with New York. We're responding to the threat information that we have," Ramsey said.
New York City officials, in business attire, held a news conference shortly after Ridge's 2 p.m. television appearance. District leaders held their news conference at 5 p.m., with emergency officials dressed in such attire as polo shirts, shorts and sneakers.
D.C. officials said Ridge contacted Williams on Saturday night after ABC News reported that New York City had already announced an increase in its security posture in response to a threat. Williams said only that communication from the federal government could be improved.
Homeland Security officials said they received the information about the Washington sites later than the information about New York. They said it was refined overnight before the decision was made yesterday to raise alert levels. Homeland Security officials said that New York had more targets, in larger skyscrapers, in denser city blocks. The IMF and World Bank are smaller and easier to secure, officials said.
In a joint statement, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) sought to reassure residents, noting that threat levels in their states were not raised.
In the District, Matt Nehmer, spokesman for George Washington University, near the IMF, said the campus advisory Web site and emergency information phone line were updated within an hour of Ridge's news conference.
"The university is open and operating on a regular schedule," Nehmer said, adding that he learned about the new threat level from TV.
George Ronetz, general manager of Kinkead's restaurant, several blocks west of the IMF and the World Bank, said some customers started changing their dinner plans soon after Ridge's briefing.
"We are already getting cancellations from people who are asking about street closures and other things related to the threat level," Ronetz said. But, he added, "we are going to stay open. . . . We live life as normally as possible."
Staff writers Del Quentin Wilber, Hamil R. Harris, Sari Horwitz and Lyndsey Layton and staff researcher Don Pohlman contributed to this report.
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N.Y. Grapples With Terror Threat, Stiff Security
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32977-2004Aug1?language=printer
NEW YORK, Aug. 1 -- Teams of heavily armed police and counterterrorism squads will bar trucks from certain bridges and tunnels, establish checkpoints along Manhattan streets and double security around key office buildings, from the New York Stock Exchange to Citigroup Center and the United Nations.
In Newark, police in tactical gear and carrying assault rifles set up posts around the gleaming 24-story Prudential Financial headquarters, which is said to be a terror target. Police erected metal barricades closing streets on either side of the office tower and barring access to the sidewalk and curb in front.
The most stringent security measures will go into effect Monday morning, as officials warned commuters to expect delays on the roads and at garages and office security stations.
New Yorkers have lived in a state of orange alert since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But this alert is different, confined as it is to five buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington, after evidence emerged that terrorists apparently conducted extensive surveillance of these buildings.
"You might think of this as the enemy's intelligence report," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told a City Hall news conference. "There's no question that they've done a bit of research and they're serious."
City officials will bar trucks from the Williamsburg Bridge spanning the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan by diverting the trucks to the Manhattan Bridge, where they will put in place extra squads of police. Likewise, Port Authority officials have barred trucks from the Holland Tunnel, which connects New Jersey and Manhattan.
The extra security may be harder to notice in neighborhoods such as Wall Street. On most days, the New York Stock Exchange already resembles an armed camp, with black cement barriers, bomb-sniffing dogs and police officers armed with rifles. But city officials will dispatch still more officers with their Operation Atlas counterterrorism teams to patrol streets and subway stations in Lower Manhattan.
The Coast Guard has dispatched several vehicles to patrol near the targeted buildings.
Elsewhere, 76 surge teams of police officers will continue to swarm certain blocks with squad cars and tactical trucks, sirens blaring and lights flashing. The idea, counterterrorism officials say, is to create a sense of uncertainty and disorient potential attackers.
"We will spare no expense and take no chances," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "Some of it will be visible and intentionally so. And some of it is virtually invisible."
This last was a reference to the fact that security officials have placed detectors throughout the city's business district in hopes of ferreting out possible chemical and radiological weapons.
Bloomberg and Kelly acknowledged that they face a clever and competent enemy and that the risk is that police will focus on securing a half-dozen buildings while terrorists ready an attack elsewhere. "There's no question there's a limited amount of resources," Bloomberg said.
Police officials urged landlords to secure their air-conditioning and ventilation systems against the possibility of a chemical attack. Still, Kelly said that intelligence reports lean more toward the possibility of a bomb attack. "Explosives are considered more likely at this time," Kelly said.
City and state officials mixed talk of imminent terror attacks with admonishments that New York and New Jersey residents should go about their lives and shop and eat and enjoy life in the city. That extends even to the buildings that may be targeted. At the 59-floor Citigroup Center on 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue, security officials closed the street-level glass atrium and 16 police officers surrounded the building. But the subway station beneath the building remained open, and a restaurant and theater were packed in a plaza at the foot of the building.
The seeming dissonance in the official messages has worn on many residents, quite a few of whom have come to discern a political agenda in such alerts.
Richard Murdock rode the F-line subway into Brooklyn on Sunday, studiously unconcerned about the hubbub around him. "I wonder if it has anything to do with this," he said, pointing to a newspaper headline that President Bush was readying new political ads attacking Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. "I believe this is all about politics and fear and creating a climate. I have zero worries."
In Manhattan, architect Beth Miller lives and works near the New York Stock Exchange. "It's one of the ploys by the Republicans to take attention away from the stupidity of what they are doing," Miller said. "It's a media frenzy. You can get hit by an air conditioner falling out of a window."
The view of official government motives was no brighter in Newark, where vendors passed a sultry Sunday selling bootleg DVDs of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "The Manchurian Candidate." "I don't believe it," Jamil Smith, a salesman, said of the terror alerts. "It's President Bush trying to win the election."
Toni Dolce, 25, lives in Lower Manhattan above Fraunces Tavern, where Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his officers after the Revolution. She and four friends split a $3,000 monthly rent and she digs the neighborhood. She shakes her head when asked whether anything would persuade her to leave.
"Only the second coming of Christ," she said. "We see the dregs of the earth on the subways and the sidewalks. We have such a nonchalant attitude."
Still, not all are so sanguine about the risk. Ben Eubanks, 29, a chef, lives in the Exchange, an old financial district office building converted into residential quarters. His parents called earlier Sunday, and he admits to a few jitters.
"Clearly, it's pretty discomforting given that [the Stock Exchange] is right across the street," he said. "If you live in New York, you understand this every day, the threat."
A few moments later, Frank Porro, a young computer consultant, walks out of the Exchange. He shrugs when asked about bombs. He knows a risk attends to life here.
"Everyone knows it's . . . a target since 9/11," he said, adding that his strategy is to "get out [of his apartment] early and come back late."
Porro had a friend visiting Sunday. "I told him to go do some sightseeing -- uptown."
Staff writers Dale Russakoff in Newark and Ben White in New York contributed to this report.
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Americans Urged to Stick to Routines Despite Terror Alert
August 2, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN and MARIA NEWMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/nyregion/02CND-THRE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
Officials in New York, New Jersey and Washington urged people today to go about their normal activities, but to be vigilant in the face of new terror warnings from the Department of Homeland Security.
In New York City, workers and commuters endured some waits as they made their way to work this morning, but most said they understood the need for the extra security checks.
"The terrorists want to scare us," Senator Charles Schumer of New York said at a news conference outside the New York Stock Exchange, identified as a potential target in the Bush administration's declaration on Sunday of a high risk of terror attacks. Other named targets are the Citigroup Building in midtown Manhattan, Prudential Financial in Newark and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington.
Senator Schumer said that if every time terrorists "made a threat, we stopped doing what we're doing, they'd win, and so we feel it's almost a moral imperative for everybody to go about their jobs."
He added: "One thing we know - New Yorkers are a plucky group. We showed the world after 9/11 that we were not going to let terror deter us." But he added that "you can't be too careful in the post-9/11 world."
Similar comments were made in television interviews today by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who raised the threat level to the penultimate code orange - or "high risk" - for northern New Jersey and Washington. New York City has been on "high risk" alert since the system was created after Sept. 11, 2001. The new warning represented the first time that the color-code public threat system cited a specific sector or region.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York described the latest terror alert "as a good wake-up call to everybody in every building."
"Just because your name wasn't on the list doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions," he said. "And the more precautions you take the safer you will be."
Mr. Ridge acted after Washington said it received information that Al Qaeda had conducted detailed reconnaissance at certain sites and had moved ahead with plans to use car bombs or other modes of attack against prominent financial institutions.
The chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, John A. Thain, said at the news conference with Mr. Schumer: "We are open for business. We intend to keep the exchange functioning both for the benefit of the U.S. markets and for the benefit of the world markets.
"Security has always been an issue for the New York Stock Exchange. We take our security precautions very seriously. The security of our people and everyone inside the building are very important to us."
He added, "We intend to keep the place open."
At the Citigroup Building in Manhattan, a line of employees waiting to clear a security check trailed almost a block from the main entrance. Employees were met by police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs and others carrying machine guns.
Before they entered, security guards checked identification and looked through employees' and visitors' bags.
Clare Nolan, a fire warden on the 51st floor of the building, said she made sure she wore flat shoes today, in case she had to leave quickly. She also made sure there was enough bottled water in the building and extra batteries for flashlights and whistles for employees in case of any emergency.
"It's disturbing, but that's the way we live after Sept. 11," she said. "I'm from Staten Island, and we lost so many people on 9/11, so I take it very seriously."
Another Citigroup employee, Mary Schwartz, said: "I'm a little bit unsettled. But I think because of the extra security, it's a little bit safer."
She said she did not consider calling in sick to avoid the anticipated delays.
"I'm a little overly responsible, so I wouldn't call in sick," she said as she waited in line.
Gina Pastorino, who works for the commercial real estate firm of Jones, Lang & LaSalle, was sanguine about the delays.
"They can't rule our lives," she said. "You have to live life to the fullest."
But others were not taking the waiting too well. Joe Giamanco, a locksmith waiting to go to work on one of his contracts at the Citigroup Building, looked disgusted as he saw the police searching through garbage cans.
"It wasn't like this 20 years ago," he said. "It makes you want to get out of New York. It looks like we lost some of our freedom. Do you think people want to come to work and see machine guns?"
The Gov. Jim McGreevey of New Jersey was asked in an interview on CNN how the 1,600 employees of Prudential Financial in Newark could be assured that they would be safe when they turned up for work today.
Mr. McGreevey said the number of local and state police officers at the site had been increased, and that road barriers had been set up, very much like those at a military installation.
"We have our canine, we have our bomb units out," he said. "State police are on ferries, on trains, and also we automatically implement every time we go to level orange certain safety protocols that have been adopted by the financial services industry."
He said New Jersey had been preparing for such a situation for two and a half years, and that now the plans were being into place "on an almost seamless basis."
"The only thing we ask the public, obviously, is show up to work, continue life as normal," he said, "but if you do see suspicious activity, understand your responsibility as a citizen and report that suspicious activity to the state police."
Mr. Ridge said on ABC television that Americans must accept that their nation is a target and get on with business as usual, adding, "The reality of living in America after Sept. 11 is that we have to accept the fact that from time to time that we're going to get information about attacks."
In an interview on NBC's "Today" program," Mr. Ridge said: "It is impossible to shut down access to any potential target.
"We're the most open society in the world. People walk down our streets and through our neighborhoods. We don't always know who they are."
He added, "That is one of the great strengths of our country, but it also is one of the great vulnerabilities."
Asked on the CBS "Early" program why he had singled out specific buildings, Mr. Ridge replied: "Well, it's difficult to explain specifically. But I do think, given their interest in trying to undermine the U.S. economy, they might naturally gravitate toward these financial institutions."
He added: "But what bin Laden and the terrorists don't understand is that the economy is very resilient. The destruction of any single building, however horrible it would be, would not impact on the overall strength of our economy, both domestically and internationally."
--------
THE OVERVIEW
U.S. Warns of High Risk of Qaeda Attack
August 2, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02terror.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The Bush administration on Sunday declared a high risk of terrorist attacks against financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas after receiving what it described as alarming information that operatives of Al Qaeda had conducted detailed reconnaissance missions at certain sites.
Intelligence information gathered and analyzed since Friday, intelligence officials said, indicates that Al Qaeda has moved ahead with plans to use car bombs or other modes of attack against prominent financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup buildings in Manhattan; Prudential Financial in Newark; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington. There was no indication of when an attack might occur, although federal officials said it would probably be in the "near term.''
Intelligence officials said they believed people associated with Al Qaeda had studied these institutions repeatedly both before and since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, collecting detailed information on things like building security measures, architecture, pedestrian traffic, access ways and nearby shops that provided cover. Officials involved with the investigation in New Jersey said suspects were found with blueprints of the Prudential site and may have conducted a "test run" for an attack in recent days.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security raised the threat level to code orange, or "high risk," for the financial sector in New York City, northern New Jersey and Washington. It was the first time that the color-coded public threat system, often maligned for being too vague, has targeted a specific sector or region.
While the administration has issued terrorist warnings from time to time, officials said Sunday's announcement was more dire than in the past because the threat information was highly unusual in its specificity and, in the words of one senior intelligence official, "chilling in its scope.''
After past terror warnings, critics have at times accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the threat for political purposes. But on Sunday, few prominent Democrats were making that charge, and many Democrats appeared to take the threat seriously. The code-orange announcement, by Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sent immediate tremors through financial, political and law enforcement worlds, with reverberations from Wall Street to the presidential campaign trail.
In New York and New Jersey, stepped-up security was expected to complicate the start of the workweek on Monday. Tens of thousands of employees, customers and visitors to Wall Street, Midtown Manhattan and downtown Newark were warned to expect tighter personal screening, closer scrutiny of backpacks and packages, more parking and traffic restrictions and other disruptive precautionary measures. [Page A11.]
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said teams of officers would be posted at "sensitive and symbolic" sites throughout New York City, including landmarks, major subway stations and train and bus terminals, and on bridge and tunnel approaches, where trucks and other large vehicles are to be halted at random and searched for explosives.
In New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey said the state would immediately deploy antiterrorist officers on highways, commuter trains and ferries and begin intense inspections of trucks within 20 miles of the targeted buildings. A thousand state investigators were assigned to work on the case.
Mr. Ridge said the federal government was working with private financial institutions in New York and Washington and taking steps of its own to intensify security. He also asked for increased public vigilance.
"The quality of this intelligence, based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Mr. Ridge said.
Unlike last December, when officials raised the threat level to orange because of concerns about international flights over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, intelligence officials said they had no information to conclude an attack was now imminent and no specific indication about when one might be carried out.
The elevation of the threat level for the financial institutions was set off by the recent arrest of a Pakistani computer engineer who may have been involved in Qaeda communication efforts. A senior American intelligence official, while not discussing the source of the information, said analysts were reviewing recently discovered documents that amount to "a potential treasure trove." Officials emphasized that the threat information went beyond intelligence "chatter" picked up from intercepted communications or Internet traffic, which has formed the basis for past warnings.
Several episodes in the United States have recently drawn scrutiny from counterterrorism officials, including the apprehension of a Pakistani woman in Texas with a suspicious passport as well as reports from passengers on a recent flight to Los Angeles about odd activity by a group of Syrian musicians. But officials said that neither of these incidents was a direct factor in the decision to go to Code Orange.
The information uncovered in recent days overlapped with broader concerns that Al Qaeda might plot an attack on or before the Nov. 2 presidential election in an effort to repeat the disruption caused by the Madrid bombings in March. Officials said they believed that senior Qaeda leaders along the Afghan-Pakistani border, including Osama bin Laden, were personally involved in such plots.
Mr. Ridge said he was concerned that Al Qaeda might seek to attack financial institutions in one of three ways: the physical destruction of a building, an outside cyberattack intended to cripple financial markets or an internal attack that would allow someone within an organization to disrupt its operations. From the intelligence gleaned so far, he said, "the preferred method of attack or what's being suggested in the reporting is car and truck bombs - the physical destruction or attempted physical destruction of these facilities."
Like the World Trade Center, financial targets like the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank are seen as attractive to Al Qaeda largely for symbolic reasons in its effort to wage psychological warfare against the United States, officials said.
"Even the destruction of a single building is not going to undermine the greatest and strongest economy in the world," Mr. Ridge said. "So, to a certain extent, they are almost iconic. They're visible targets perhaps known around the rest of the world."
Officials said they hoped that public scrutiny might help to disrupt a plot, as happened in December 2002, when an alert flight attendant on a trans-Atlantic flight saw Richard Reid trying to light an explosive in his shoe. Or public attention might even prompt terrorist to call off a plot, officials said, as they suspect happened when an Ohio truck driver suspected of surveying the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003 told associates in Pakistan that security was "too hot."
Intelligence officials said they were most concerned about what they described as the fresh evidence that Qaeda associates had conducted reconnaissance missions against important financial targets.
Al Qaeda is long known to have undertaken surveillance of its potential targets. But intelligence officials said they were struck by the detail in recently uncovered evidence, showing Al Qaeda to be focused, patient, disciplined and committed in its desire to attack prominent American targets.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was evidence of reconnaissance missions at all five of the financial institutions cited by the Department of Homeland Security. "This information is about as specific as you can get," the official said.
Intelligence officials listed several dozens pieces of information that they said Qaeda operatives had collected in their reconnaissance missions on security procedures and vulnerabilities at financial institutions. These included the flow of pedestrian traffic, possible escape routes, elevator schedules, neighborhood landmarks, the patterns and number of security personnel, details on surveillance cameras and architectural details that would influence how a building might fare in a bombing, officials said.
"The new information is chilling in its scope, in its detail, in its breadth," said a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It also gives one a sense the same feeling one would have if one found out that somebody broke into your house and over the past several months was taking a lot of details about your place of residence and looking for ways to attack you."
Mr. Ridge said he believed toughened federal security measures since the Sept. 11 attacks, including the use of air monitors to detect biological threats, explosive-sniffing dogs, beefed-up undercover and emergency response teams and other measures, have left the country better prepared to defend itself against a possible attack.
"These added security measures mean that from curb to the cockpit, at our ports of entry and borders in between, and our public places in cyberspace, on air and land and sea, we are better protected than we ever have been before," he said.
But the final report of the Sept. 11 commission released last month said wide-scale reforms in intelligence-gathering and domestic protection were needed to predict and prevent another attack, and the White House and Congress are grappling with how that might be best accomplished.
White House officials said Sunday that President Bush was likely to move ahead on Monday with plans to announce an executive order addressing some of the weaknesses in the nation's defenses identified by the commission. The officials declined to be specific about those plans, but they said Mr. Bush would also respond to the commission's call to create the post of national intelligence director and establish a counterterrorism center within the White House to coordinate the response to threats at home and abroad.
David Kocieniewski contributed reporting from New Jersey for this article and Richard W. Stevenson from Washington.
-------- police
Counterterrorism Exchange
Agencies Shared Intelligence That Led to New Alert Daily 5 p.m. Sessions Boost Cooperation
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 2, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32937-2004Aug1.html
At 5 p.m. Thursday, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin, in his other capacity as acting director of central intelligence, conducted the daily counterterrorism meeting where the first information about the latest detailed al Qaeda threats was discussed among senior CIA, FBI and military officials. They set in motion plans for antiterrorism operations in the United States and overseas, ultimately leading to yesterday's announcement of an elevated terrorism threat more specific than any the government had ever issued.
Surrounding McLaughlin were officers who once were prohibited by law or habit from working together: CIA operatives from the clandestine service who work today at the agency's Counterterrorism Center and its Terrorist Threat Integration Center; FBI agents; representatives from the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications around the world; analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency; and senior military officers who help the CIA execute or coordinate foreign operations.
Once considered as separate as church and state in the United States, these agencies have worked together for more than two years, meeting daily at 5 p.m. in response to the missed opportunities recognized after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Sunday's action is a classic example of how fusion [in intelligence operations] now works in the post-9/11 environment," a former senior intelligence official said yesterday.
The agencies' cooperation on planning counterterrorism activities has not been previously highlighted. Before the developments last week that led to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's announcement yesterday elevating the terror alert for the financial sector and specific buildings in Washington, New York and New Jersey, this cooperation by the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA and military had led to the arrest of Jose Padilla in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport for allegedly plotting possible attacks in the United States with al Qaeda.
Although federal law prevents the CIA from carrying out operations within the United States, nothing bars it from discussing plans for domestic activities with the FBI, and recent changes in the law permit more open sharing of information. For example, CIA officers are stationed at many of the FBI's joint terrorism task force centers in cities across the country.
"There is no ban on talking jointly," said a senior counterterrorism official, citing the case of someone the CIA has been surveilling overseas who arrived in the United States. "The FBI takes the lead but has CIA support in this country," he said, speaking with the understanding he would not be named.
Even before Ridge's announcement yesterday, CIA officials had agreed Friday to make the senior counterterrorism official available to discuss the 5 p.m. meetings and interagency cooperation for the first time because they were frustrated that the Sept. 11 commission and the public may force a radical change in the system without taking time to understand what already is occurring. The officials said that changes more modest than moving the operation under the direct control of the president, as the commission has urged, could be sufficient.
The commission wants to replace the current system by establishing a national counterterrorism center within the Executive Office of the President. The center would report to a new national intelligence director, also inside the White House. The bipartisan commission, based on its study of the 2001 terrorist attacks and their aftermath, concluded that the system in place then did not work and required establishment of a separate counterterrorism center.
As commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton explained at Friday's hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee: "One of our principal feelings is that in dealing with counterterrorism, you must get away from -- this division of foreign intelligence is over here and domestic intelligence is over here and never the twain shall meet. That's a prescription for disaster, we think."
Asked about Hamilton's statement, the senior counterterrorism official said, "We keep looking at how to keep expanding this interagency program" being run by the director of central intelligence.
"A lot of the intelligence war involves people overseas and in the U.S. and requires cooperation across the government," the official said. "There are five or six around the table briefing on the war, sometimes involving a tactical operation here or in country X against an al Qaeda operative to take him down."
"The 5 o'clock meeting has an operational focus," said one former senior intelligence official familiar with the sessions. "There is full transparency with information shared across the table."
One irony of the commission's proposal is that it sees the CIA-established Terrorist Threat Integration Center as the starting point for its new national counterterrorism center, but it would use CIA and FBI analysts and operational personnel already involved with the CIA-run Counterterrorism Center. Even before the commission's recommendations were formulated, plans were being carried out to bring together the Threat Integration Center, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and elements from the FBI's counterterrorism center in the same Northern Virginia building.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will have an opportunity to explore the 5 o'clock group's activities at a hearing Tuesday, when witnesses from the CIA's two antiterrorism centers and the FBI are scheduled to testify.
A second purpose of the daily 5 p.m. multi-agency session is to prepare McLaughlin, again in his role as acting director of central intelligence, for meeting the next morning with President Bush. Sometimes the 5 o'clock group concludes that the president needs to talk to a foreign leader to provide sensitive aid on a case or take some other action at a senior level. When Bush is in Washington, the morning meeting provides an opportunity to share plans with Ridge and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who both normally attend the Oval Office session.
The current purpose of the 5 p.m. meeting "is light-years different than it was . . . years ago" when "it involved military planning versus the Taliban," the counterterrorism official said. After the Sept. 11 attacks, "it evolved more into the global war on terrorism, foreign relationships with U.S. dimensions pushing data to the FBI and now even assurance that Homeland Security gets and passes information out locally."
"But despite some problems over timing and information sharing, I think the reason the [terrorist] war has remained offshore is due to disruptions we have caused," he said. "Now it seems a success, but only against three years ago."
Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.
--------
Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency
August 2, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02whistleblower.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could go.
In the early 1990's, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.
So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group.
But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a "pariah." He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time - the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"What's so frustrating for me," Mr. German said in an interview, a copy of the Sept. 11 commission report at his side, "is that what I hear the F.B.I. saying every day on TV when I get home, about how it's remaking itself to fight terrorism, is not the reality of what I saw every day in the field."
Mr. German refused to discuss details of the 2002 terrorism investigation, saying the information was classified.
But officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla., area and centered on an informant's tip about a meeting between suspected associates of a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, who were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said.
Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.
The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr. German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned that "the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security."
He also wrote, "Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur, which is purported to be the F.B.I.'s number one priority, continue to be lost, yet no one is held accountable."
The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating Mr. German's case, reviewing both how the F.B.I. handled his complaints and whether he was retaliated against as a result, an official there said.
Donna Spiser, an F.B.I. spokeswoman, said that the bureau "thoroughly investigates all allegations of wrongdoing," but that it could not comment on Mr. German's case because of the continuing investigation.
Some law enforcement officials remain somewhat skeptical of Mr. German's claims. But several prominent senators who have been privately briefed on the case in recent weeks said they were troubled by what they learned.
"Retaliating against F.B.I. agents and employees who point out problems or raise concerns seems to be becoming the rule, not the exception," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. He noted that Robert S. Mueller III, acting director of the bureau, "has said many times that whistle-blower retaliation is unacceptable, yet it looks like some F.B.I. bureaucrats haven't gotten the message."
The F.B.I. has wrestled with accusations from a number of employees who said they were discouraged from voicing concerns, including Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who protested the handling of the Zacarias Moussaoui terror case in August 2001. In a report disclosed just last week, the inspector general found that complaints by an F.B.I. linguist, Sibel Edmonds, about the bureau's slipshod translation of terrorism intelligence, played a part in her dismissal in 2002.
In Mr. German's case, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that "when an F.B.I. agent with a distinguished record questions whether terrorism leads are being followed, the F.B.I. needs to listen." He said Mr. German's complaints "reflect the kind of insularity the 9/11 commission identified as a major management failing in the F.B.I.'s antiterrorism work."
Indeed, Mr. German's assertions echo concerns raised about the F.B.I. in the commission's report.
The commission said that while the bureau had made progress in overhauling counterterrorism operations, its investigation "also found gaps between some of the announced reforms and the reality in the field." One concern was that the F.B.I.'s 56 field offices still retain the power to reallocate agents and resources to local concerns that may diverge from national security.
Mr. German's account of what he considers undue restraint in pursuing terrorism leads may give pause to civil libertarians who have accused the F.B.I. of rushing to judgment and using overly aggressive tactics in some terror cases.
At the same time, however, his assertions raise questions about whether the bureau has fixed some of the bureaucratic problems that stymied terrorism investigations before the Sept. 11 attacks, and his perspective could add grist to the debate over restructuring intelligence operations.
Mr. German, in his letter to lawmakers, cited "a continuing failure in the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism program," which he said was "not the result of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of action."
Officials said Mr. German also complained internally about a second case in the Portland, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he was blocked from going undercover to pursue a domestic terrorism lead. That case was also thought to center on a militia group suspected of plotting violence.
In the Tampa case, officials said Mr. German complained that F.B.I. officials had mishandled evidence concerning a suspected domestic terrorist group and failed to act for months on his request in early 2002 to conduct an undercover operation. That failure, he said, allowed the investigation to "die on the vine."
While Mr. German would not confirm the location of the investigation, he said in an interview at the office of his Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, that his problems intensified after he complained about the management of the case in September 2002. He said F.B.I. officials whom he would not name backdated documents in the case, falsified evidence and falsely discredited witnesses in an apparent effort to justify their approach to the investigation. He cited institutional inertia, even after Sept. 11.
"Trying to get approval for an operation like this is a bureaucratic nightmare at the F.B.I.," he said.
Mr. German said that beginning in late 2002, he took his concerns to his supervisors at the F.B.I. and to officials at headquarters in Washington, including Mr. Mueller himself, in an e-mail message that he said went unanswered. He also went to the Justice Department's inspector general and, frustrated by what he saw as a languishing investigation, brought his concerns this spring to several members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.
In the meantime, Mr. German said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an "unblemished" record and an award for his work in the Los Angeles skinhead case.
Soon after raising his complaints about the 2002 terrorism investigation, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. officials wrongly accused him of conducting unauthorized travel, stopped using him to train agents in "proactive techniques" and shut him out of important domestic terrorism assignments.
"The phone just stopped ringing, and I became a persona non grata," he said. "Because I wouldn't let this go away, I became the problem."
For now, he has no job and is uncertain about his future.
"My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was doing the right thing here," he said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
After Guantánamo, More Jail for 4 Frenchmen
August 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/europe/02fran.html?pagewanted=all
PARIS, Aug. 1 - A judge ordered four French citizens, who were returned to France after more than two years in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be kept in jail, judicial officials said Sunday.
The four - Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel - were handed over to the French authorities last Tuesday. The authorities here struggled for months to secure their release and are still negotiating the return of three other Frenchmen held at Guantánamo.
On Sunday, a judge ordered the four men, all of whom were detained during the American-led campaign in Afghanistan in 2001, to be jailed provisionally in France - a decision defense lawyers plan to challenge.
The ruling followed a decision by antiterrorism judges to place the men under investigation, a step toward formal charges.
They are all being investigated for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," the authorities said. Investigators suspect that they frequented groups that planned terror attacks in Europe. Several of the men confessed to training in Afghanistan in the use of explosives and weapons, officials said.
Mr. Sassi, 22, and Mr. Benchellali, 24, are also under investigation for using false documents. The two are childhood friends and went to Afghanistan together in June 2001 with stolen passports, officials say. They were arrested in December of that year and taken to Guantánamo.
The two have said they were mistreated by the American authorities at Guantánamo, their lawyers said.
Mr. Benchellali is the son of Chellali Benchellali, an imam who was arrested in connection with a suspected terrorist network that authorities say was planning attacks on Russian interests in France. Several other members of the family were rounded up as well.
The other two suspects, who were also apprehended in the American-led campaign that toppled Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban government, did not describe mistreatment at Guantánamo but said their lives there were difficult, lawyers said.
Mr. Yadel, 33, is believed to have left for Afghanistan several months after he was convicted in absentia in December 2000 and sentenced to a year in prison for involvement in a foiled plot to attack the 1998 World Cup in France, judicial officials said.
Mr. Yadel's lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Rozes, said his client had no intention of training for terrorist attacks back at home but wanted to offer his support to the Taliban.
Mr. Kanouni, 27, remained in Kabul during his time in Afghanistan and never trained in any Taliban-run military camps, said a lawyer, Félix de Belloy. The suspect went to Afghanistan because he supported the Taliban "morally and intellectually," Mr. de Belloy said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
The Progressive Peacenik Myth
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, American imperialism is, at its roots, a left-wing disorder rather than a conservative impulse.
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
August 2, 2004
The American Conservative
http://amconmag.com/2004_08_02/article1.html
A seemingly ceaseless supply of new books and radio talk-show commentary in support of George W. Bush and his foreign policy give the impression that the only controversy in America worth mentioning involves patriotic Bush supporters and knee-jerk opposition to war by liberals.
Two arguments are being made here: that the Iraq War and foreign-policy aggressiveness constitute the self-evidently correct conservative position and that liberals are philosophically and historically squeamish about going to war. The first of these arguments has been addressed at length in these pages. It is the second claim, involving the American Left's alleged aversion to war, that remains to be overturned, for ever since the Spanish-American War of 1898, leftists have more often than not been at the forefront of calls for American military intervention abroad.
The progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the tendency toward American territorial expansion and foreign-policy aggrandizement. Domestic reform and foreign intervention, to many progressives, were simply two sides of the same coin: just as an invigorated federal government would achieve order and social justice at home, an interventionist foreign policy would spread the benefits of progressivism around the world. "At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War," explains historian William Leuchtenburg, "few men saw any conflict between social reform and democratic striving at home and the new imperialist mission; indeed, the war seemed nothing so much as an extension of democracy to new parts of the world, and few political figures exceeded the enthusiasm of William Jennings Bryan for the Spanish war." The Spanish-American War lasted a mere three months. The humanitarian aspect-namely, liberating Cuba from Spanish rule-was bound to appeal to progressives. And support it the progressives did. Feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton was typical: "Though I hate war per se," she wrote, "I am glad that it has come in this instance. I would like to see Spain ... swept from the face of the earth."
One of the war's outcomes was the American acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Once it became clear that the United States would not grant immediate independence to the Philippines, where a struggle against Spanish rule had been under way for some time, rebel fighters turned on the Americans with whom they had fought side by side against the Spanish. The result was a protracted conflict, known to history as the Philippine insurrection, far longer and more costly (in money and in lives) than the Spanish-American War. Forrest McDonald estimates that some 200,000 Filipinos perished, either as a direct result of the fighting or because of a cholera epidemic that was aggravated by wartime conditions.
Events in the Philippines evoked concern and soul-searching among Americans of all political persuasions: what was America, born in a war for independence from its own European mother country, doing holding colonies? This was the question that the Anti-Imperialist League, formed in Boston in June 1898, proposed to ask.
Although a short-lived phenomenon, the anti-imperialist movement in the United States was an especially intriguing one. "It would be no mean task," says historian Robert Beisner, "to think of another issue that has united such a collection of Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, party stalwarts and independents, businessmen and labor-union chiefs." But for all their diversity, Beisner says, most of them were "traditionalists who believed imperialism to be in sharp conflict with established ideals and practices," and who continued to believe, along with such 19th-century predecessors as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, that America's proper role was to "serve the world not through force but through the force of her example."
Although a few progressives were consistently antiwar, Leuchtenburg notes, "first and last, it was the conservatives who bore the burden of the anti-imperialist campaign."
This newfound application of the federal government's power abroad was bound to have its domestic counterpart. Herbert Croly, whose book The Promise of American Life (1909) was one of the most influential and revealing progressive texts, pointed to a connection between an aggressive foreign policy abroad and "social reform at home." He wrote that it was the war that had made Hamiltonianism-that is, the philosophy of a strong central government-once again fashionable at home. "Not until the end of the Spanish War," he wrote, "was a condition of public feeling created, which made it possible to revive Hamiltonianism. That war and its resulting policy of extra-territorial expansion, so far from hindering the process of democratic amelioration, availed, from the sheer force of the national aspirations it aroused, to give a tremendous impulse to the work of national reform."
Big government at home went philosophically hand in hand with big government abroad. As Leuchtenburg explains:
The Progressives believed in the Hamiltonian concept of positive government, of a national government directing the destinies of the nation at home and abroad. They had little but contempt for the strict construction of the Constitution by conservative judges, who would restrict the power of the national government to act against social evils and to extend the blessings of democracy to less favored lands. The real enemy was particularism, state rights, limited government ...
Half a century later, American conservatives like Richard Weaver and journalist Felix Morley could still be found who considered 1898 an unfortunate and portentous departure from the noninterventionist foreign policy recommended by the Founding Fathers. They also sensed a connection between intervention abroad and big government at home. Weaver, described in George Nash's book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 as one of the three most influential traditionalist thinkers in the U.S. during the postwar period, believed that the old America had suffered a regrettable blow in that fateful year:
One cannot feign surprise, therefore, that thirty years after the great struggle to consolidate and unionize American power [i.e., the War Between the States], the nation embarked on its career of imperialism. The new nationalism enabled Theodore Roosevelt, than whom there was no more staunch advocate of union, to strut and bluster and intimidate our weaker neighbors. Ultimately it launched America upon its career of world imperialism, whose results are now being seen in indefinite military conscription, mountainous debt, restriction of dissent, and other abridgments of classical liberty.
The idea of compulsory military training in America also emerged from the progressive movement. And no wonder: it contained the spirit of nationalism and of service to the central government that was so fundamental to progressivism. Theodore Roosevelt, Bill Clinton's favorite Republican president, endorsed it. Raymond Robins said that compulsory universal military training "will do more in one generation to break down class and section prejudice, develop disciplined, vigorous and efficient citizenship, and to unify the diverse groups of our national life in a vital Americanism than all other forces combined." (That the leftism of yesteryear sounds eerily similar to present-day neoconservatism is not to be overlooked.)
Woodrow Wilson's hideously failed crusade to "make the world safe for democracy," which contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power just over a decade after the president's death, was leftist in its very nature. Wilson proposed to fight not for specific and finite objectives like the defense of his country and people but rather on behalf of ideology and abstract principles. To those who feared that his proposed League of Nations would compromise American sovereignty, Wilson replied that he looked forward to the day "when men would be just as eager partisans of the sovereignty of mankind as they were now of their own national sovereignty."
George W. Bush is far from the first president to refuse to acknowledge an obvious foreign-policy blunder: when the disastrous peace settlement made perfectly clear that Wilson's grandiose visions for self-determination, "peace without victory," and world order-on behalf of which he had sent 120,000 of his countrymen to their graves-were as dead as could be, he simply denied the evidence of his senses and praised the Treaty of Versailles anyway. It was the "incomparable consummation of the hopes of mankind," he said; at one point he even called it an "enterprise of divine mercy." As Sigmund Freud said of Wilson, "He was rapidly nearing that psychic land from which few travelers return, the land in which facts are the products of wishes, in which friends betray and in which an asylum chair may be the throne of God."
Few were more bloodthirsty and savage in their support for total war against Germany than leftist clergy, as historian Richard Gamble shows in The War for Righteousness. Having lost whatever belief they once may have had in the orthodox faith, they nevertheless continued to think and speak in a Christian idiom. Except this time, Satan was Germany and Christ was the United States.
Historians have sometimes suggested that World War I marked the end of progressivism. To the contrary, the war in fact represented the culmination, even the fulfillment, of the progressive program. With the exception of people like Jane Addams and Randolph Bourne, the political Left in America was delighted with the war, not only because it was being waged for what in their view was a righteous cause but also because wartime conditions would give them the opportunity to manage the U.S. economy and, they hoped, leave the free economy behind forever.
Shortly after American entry into the war, philosopher and educational theorist John Dewey exclaimed with delight, "this war may easily be the beginning of the end for business." Matters involving production and sales had passed from private hands into those of the government, Dewey observed, and "there is no reason to believe that the old principle will ever be resumed .... Private property had already lost its sanctity." The New Republic magazine, perhaps the chief repository of progressive thought in America, was pleased to see the massive increase in state control over the economy that the war had brought about in European countries, and looked for the same result in America.
The wartime spirit brought with it "the substitution of national and social and organic forces for the more or less mechanical private forces operative in peace." Although war and social reform obviously had different purposes, "they are both purposes, and luckily for mankind a social organization which is efficient is as useful for the one as for the other." No wonder wartime analogies were so prevalent in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Lyndon Johnson's "War" on Poverty, and Jimmy Carter's energy policy (the "moral equivalent of war")-these domestic crusades involved massive material and ideological mobilizations analogous to those of a foreign war.
Support for military interventionism among liberals persisted into the post-World War II period and into the Cold War. It was Harry Truman whose administration set the stage for the global interventionism of the Cold War. The false impression that American leftists have been traditionally reluctant to use military power, therefore, must come not from Truman but from left-wing opposition to the Vietnam War.
It is important to remember, though, that Vietnam was in fact the brainchild of establishment liberals. As historian Walter McDougall argues, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society had its foreign-policy analogue in the Vietnam War. In the attempt to protect South Vietnam's anti-Communist government from overthrow by a Communist insurgency tied to the North, the U.S. government sought to defeat the enemy by establishing good liberal government in the South that would win the undisputed allegiance of the South Vietnamese. The National Security Council declared in 1961 that U.S. policy in South Vietnam would be "to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society."
Such war aims went well beyond anything that even Truman had asked for from recipient countries when aiding Greece and Turkey or defending South Korea against Communist aggression. But members of the liberal generation that went to war in the 1960s were exponents of what McDougall calls "global meliorism," an ideological model of global uplift based on American cultural, economic, and political models. He declares that "those who thought the war symptomatic of a fascistic 'Amerika' were wrong: Vietnam was a liberal war."
Novelist Graham Greene, who hated the war, was nevertheless attracted to the social-work aspect of the American intervention. "Our foreign policy must always be an extension of our domestic policy," he wrote in 1966. "Our safest guide to what we do abroad is always what we do at home." The American presence in Vietnam, he said, "had its origins in the same presidential impulses that gave birth to the Great Society and the April 1965 offer to North Vietnam of a billion-dollar economic development program for the Mekong River."
Since the 1990s, some on the Right have observed wryly that the political Left is indeed willing to use military force after all, just so long as no discernible American interest is at stake. This point carries a certain weight, to be sure; recall Robert Frost's playful description of a liberal as someone who refuses to take his own side in an argument. The American Left by and large supported Bill Clinton's interventions in the Balkans, whose connection to American security and national interests were essentially nonexistent.
But this point can only be applied so far. After all, it was not Clinton but George H.W. Bush, during the waning months of his presidency, who initiated American military action in Somalia, perhaps the most frequently cited example of a purely "humanitarian" intervention. Conversely, the establishment Left, along with the overwhelming majority of the media, strongly supported the recent war with Iraq, which was justified primarily in terms of American security. Hillary Clinton was still defending the flawed pre-war intelligence long after most normal people had grown embarrassed by it.
"Even today," admits neocon stalwart Dinesh D'Souza, "there is surprising consensus of opinion regarding Iraq within our national leadership. Even the New York Times recently reported that the Iraq policies of Bush and Kerry share many similarities. They both support the June 30 transition to civilian power, an increase in U.S. troops if necessary, and no deadline for bringing our troops home." This is why the term "War Party" is so apt: the architects of the warfare state and American empire transcend the superficial boundaries of party politics in America.
Neoconservatives typically claim that they are not naïve Wilsonians but hard-headed realists concerned to use American military might for the sake of American security and the country's national interest. But just like Wilsonianism itself, the neoconservative conception of the American national interest is so malleable and imprecise that it can be called into service to justify whatever intervention is being contemplated. It has become for American foreign policy what the general welfare and interstate commerce clauses are for the U.S. Constitution: a term once intended to delimit government power that is now invoked to justify that power.
Thus the neoconservative Project for a New American Century made the case for empire in the Middle East in the name of American security. Yet the connection between the two is far from obvious, and in fact there is more likely an inverse relationship between American security and the exercise of American hegemony in the Middle East. Phase one of the neoconservative plan, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has served American interests in no identifiable way. The United States is more diplomatically isolated than at any time in recent memory. The secular regime of Saddam Hussein, detestable as it was, was nevertheless among the more liberal states of the region. As many observers predicted at the time, in the absence of Saddam it may now be replaced by an Islamic state. That is what American security and the "American national interest" have gained from a conflict whose financial cost alone will surpass the cost of America's share of World War I sometime next year.
It is rather a subtle distinction to make between a Wilsonian left wing that advocates global democracy as an end in itself and a right wing that advocates global democracy because American security is said to be best served by a world of democracies (since they are supposed to be so peace-loving). Practically speaking, what is the difference between these positions?
And for all their supposed realism, the fact is that plenty of figures who describe themselves as conservative, including Bill Kristol and Sen. John McCain, favored Clinton's intervention in the Balkans, griping only that it was not severe or overwhelming enough for their tastes.
That was no anomaly. "Humanitarian" rhetoric is never far from the surface of the neoconservative apologia: ever since the wheels started to come off the most recent Iraq intervention, the oft-heard refrain from the usual suspects has been to accuse their opponents of not wanting to liberate the Iraqi people, and to say that at least Saddam has been removed from power. In practice, Wilsonianism turns out to be the last refuge of the neocon.
In foreign policy, the typical liberal shares much more in common with the Fox News brand of conservative than the likes of Rush Limbaugh may care to acknowledge. The real ideological divide in America is not between aggressive "conservatives" and supposedly war-averse liberals, but rather between the bipartisan War Party-to which establishment liberals and establishment conservatives jointly belong - and the only real conservatives worth mentioning: the noninterventionists.
-------- us politics
Kerry Pledges Iraq Troop Cut Within 4 Years
Details Not Offered on Ways To Get More Aid From Allies
By Dan Balz and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32898-2004Aug1.html
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio, Aug. 1 -- John F. Kerry pledged Sunday he would substantially reduce U.S. troop strength in Iraq by the end of his first term in office but declined to offer any details of what he said is his plan to attract significantly more allied military and financial support there.
In interviews on television talk shows, the Democratic presidential nominee said that he saw no reason to send more troops to Iraq and that he would seek allied support to draw down U.S. forces there. "I will have significant, enormous reduction in the level of troops," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Kerry accused President Bush of misleading the country before the war in Iraq, burning bridges with U.S. allies and having no plan to win peace. But when questioned about saying Thursday in his acceptance speech, "I know what we have to do in Iraq," he would not tip his hand.
"I've been involved in this for a long time, longer than George Bush," he said. "I've spent 20 years negotiating, working, fighting for different kinds of treaties and different relationships around the world. I know that as president there's huge leverage that will be available to me, enormous cards to play, and I'm not going to play them in public. I'm not going to play them before I'm president."
Reminded that he sounded like Richard M. Nixon, who campaigned in 1968 by saying he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, Kerry responded: "I don't care what it sounds like. The fact is that I'm not going to negotiate in public today without the presidency, without the power."
Kerry previously has discussed his desire to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq but declined to attach any timetable to that goal. He spoke more extensively about Iraq after his acceptance speech, suggesting he has an exit strategy.
Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, gave interviews to four Sunday news programs on Saturday afternoon between stops on their two-week, coast-to-coast bus and train trip. The candidates were rolling again Sunday, starting the day in Columbus, Ohio, attending church in nearby Springfield, holding a rally in Bowling Green and later participating in a softball game and picnic in Taylor, Mich.
As the long caravan headed north on Interstate 75 through western Ohio on Sunday, Kerry and Edwards occasionally slowed the buses to acknowledge groups of supporters lined up along the road, holding signs and waving U.S. flags. Kerry and Edwards continued to draw sizable and enthusiastic crowds, with an estimated 8,000 people here on a hot and sunny afternoon.
Bill May, 61, a registered Republican and military veteran who voted for Bush, said he probably will vote for Kerry in November. "It's time for a change," May said, "and I don't think Bush can do what needs to be done in Iraq."
Keith Kreager, 56, a veteran and Democrat who voted for Ronald Reagan, said he supports Kerry. "The president is indecisive," Kreager said. "He went after the wrong person. Instead of Osama, he attacked Saddam, when he's been a threat for years and there wasn't anything there."
A new poll showed that Kerry had received no real bounce in the polls from last week's Democratic National Convention in Boston. A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll showed that among likely voters, Bush led Kerry by 50 percent to 46 percent, with independent Ralph Nader at 2 percent. In a pre-convention poll, Kerry led Bush 47 to 46 percent. Among registered voters, Kerry and Bush were tied. It is unusual for a candidate not to gain ground from his convention.
Kerry's assertion in his acceptance speech that he has an exit strategy for Iraq drew repeated questions from the four television hosts. The Massachusetts senator said the administration had failed diplomatically, and he asserted that a change in presidents would produce more international support for the United States in Iraq.
"I think that a fresh start changes the equation . . . for leaders in other countries who have great difficulty right now associating themselves with our policy and with the United States because of the way this administration has burned those bridges," Kerry said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Kerry defended his and Edwards's votes against an $87 billion authorization for military and reconstruction costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the Bush campaign has used repeatedly to question Kerry's commitment to U.S. forces. Kerry said he learned in Vietnam that presidents should not get a blank check for policies that do not work.
"We voted to change the policy," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "We voted in order to get it right."
Kerry supported an amendment that would have paid for the $87 billion by reducing some of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The amendment did not require significant policy changes.
Kerry and Edwards were interviewed before Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the terror alert level on five buildings and the financial sector in Washington, New York and part of New Jersey. But he criticized the president for failing earlier to take steps to improve homeland security recommended by the bipartisan commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I think this administration has dropped the ball on homeland security," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
"I think they are now moving to catch up. But what America wants is leadership that's ahead of the curve," he said.
On domestic issues, Kerry gave a "rock hard" pledge not to raise middle-class taxes if he becomes president, though he said a national emergency or war could change that.
Reminded that the country is at war already, Kerry said, "We're going to reduce the burden in this war, and if we do what we need to do for our economy, we're going to grow the tax base of our country."
-----
Bush Endorses New Post to Oversee Intelligence System
August 2, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02CND-BUSH.html?hp
President Bush said today that he backed creating the post of national intelligence director, one of the main recommendations of the 9/11 commission's report, which had called the nation's intelligence agencies collectively dysfunctional.
The report, issued last month, has gained importance politically in advance of the November elections, as the Bush administration and the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry try to keep pace with each other.
In an announcement in the Rose Garden at the White House, Mr. Bush also said that he would adopt another commission recommendation, the creation of a national counterterrorism center, which the commission sought to conduct strategic analysis of intelligence, plan and assign intelligence operations, and oversee what intelligence is collected.
"This new center will build on the analytical work - the really good analytical work - of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center," Mr. Bush said in referring to an office that already exists, "and will become our government's knowledge bank for information about known and suspected terrorists."
The president added that his administration had already taken steps that had made the United States safer since the attacks. "Yet we are still not safe," Mr. Bush said.
"Today I am asking Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director," he said. "The person in that office would be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and will serve at the pleasure of the president."
But the intelligence director will not be a cabinet post, he said. The commission called for a cabinet-level national intelligence director within the White House who would control the budgets of all 15 federal intelligence agencies.
"I don't think the person should be a member of my Cabinet," Mr. Bush said. "I will hire the person and I can fire the person." At the same time, the president said, "I don't think that the office should be in the White House, however, I think it should be a stand-alone group to better coordinate."
Currently the director of central intelligence is both the top overseer of the 15 intelligence agencies and the manager of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under the new system, Mr. Bush said, the C.I.A. will be managed by a separate director, and new national intelligence director will oversee the foreign and domestic activity of the various intelligence agencies as the president's "principle intelligence adviser."
The White House is under pressure to act quickly on the commission's findings, especially in light of recent intelligence warnings that Al Qaeda intends to strike before the November elections.
Mr. Kerry has come out in favor of creating the post of national intelligence director to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies, saying that if he were president he would enact many recommendations immediately by executive order or other presidential action.
"I regret that it has taken us almost three years to get to the point where these recommendations are now being adopted," said Mr. Kerry today, speaking after Mr. Bush made his announcement.
Mr. Kerry has said that he supports making the new intelligence post a White House position because that will mean greater accountability.
"I believe you get more out of the position, you actually create more protection for Americans, because you give greater power and leverage to the person who is national intelligence director, if they are seen as speaking directly for the president within the White House," he said. "You also coordinate more effectively with the other agencies that you need to coordinate in order to summon the greatest possible response to protect Americans."
On Sunday, the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, said that there was unusually specific intelligence information that Al Qaeda was prepared to attack five buildings in New York City; Washington, D.C., and Newark, N.J. But he added that he did not believe that the attacks were not imminent.
In response, the security alert level was raised one notch, to orange, the penultimate level, in the nation's capital and northeastern New Jersey. New York City has been on orange alert since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The elevation of the threat level in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., is a serious reminder, a solemn reminder, of the threat we continue to face," Mr. Bush said.
A sense of urgency to act on the 9/11 report has also been evident on Capitol Hill, with senior members of both parties making plans for hearings.
White House officials said last week that Mr. Bush and his senior aides were examining the extent and range of control of the intelligence position and the big issues like keeping it free of political interference. Mr. Bush did not say whether the new director would have budget authority over any agencies.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Kerry-Edwards' New Plan Has Energy-Environment Component
August 2, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-02-09.asp#anchor1
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and his vice presidential running mate John Edwards released their new "Plan for America's Future," on Sunday - energy independence without environmental destruction is a central theme.
Job creation is number one in the plan, and tax credits for renewable energy are one way the Democrats intend to stimulate the growth of new jobs. The wind power industry had enjoyed a tax credit for new construction until it expired on December 31, 2003. The reauthorization of that tax credit is part of the Bush energy bill that is stalled in Congress, and as a result the wind industry is stagnant this year after boom years in 2002 and 2003.
To creat "energy independence for a stronger America," Kerry and Edwards propose a new Energy and Conservation Trust Fund. This fund will use existing oil and gas revenues to accelerate the development of innovative technologies, such as the more efficient cars and trucks, the development of biofuels, and creating clean, secure, hydrogen-based energy.
The Democratic team supports a national goal of producing 20 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydrogen by 2020, a goal supported by conservationists.
The plan states the Democrats' intention to work with Canada and Mexico to expand North America's natural gas supplies and develop our own stranded gas supply on the North Slope of Alaska.
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. affiliate, plans to construct a 745 mile, $6.3 billion pipeline extending from the North Slope of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay to the Alaska-Yukon border. As designed, it would move 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day through a new, companion pipeline to be built in Canada to deliver gas to Canada and the lower 48 states.
Cleaner coal is part of the Kerry and Edwards plan. They will invest $10 billion over the next decade - a five-fold increase - to harness technology to deploy clean electricity from this abundant domestic resource.
Clean coal technology is already in the works. The Bush administration last week accepted $6 billion worth of research and development proposals and promised $1 billion in matching funds.
Kerry and Edwards promise to "cut the government's energy bill 20 percent within 10 years - saving the federal government $14 billion." They also will provide tax credits for energy-efficient buildings and homes.
Kerry and Edwards are committed to a significant increase in the fuel economy of automobiles, and will provide tax incentives for consumers to buy the efficient vehicles of their choice.
"To secure our full independence and freedom, we must free America from its dangerous dependence on Mideast oil," the Democrats said. "By tapping American ingenuity, we can achieve that goal while growing our economy and protecting our environment."
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
THE TARGETS
Landmarks of Capitalism Strengthen Already-Strict Security
August 2, 2004
By LESLIE WAYNE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02companies.html
They are among the biggest symbols of capitalism, and now they are being cited as potential terrorist targets. Companies and institutions like Citigroup, Prudential Financial Services and the World Bank, beacons of the free market already hunkered down behind barricades, are strengthening security protections currently in place.
These additional precautions are taking place amid tight secrecy after Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, announced yesterday that Al Qaeda was planning to strike at five financial institutions in New York and Washington, including the New York Stock Exchange and the International Monetary Fund.
Many financial institutions were reluctant to discuss their security measures, saying that merely to be identified as a potential target might draw attention to them. Others said they were worried that Mr. Ridge had publicly identified this group, rather than warning them in private. Mr. Ridge's public action, they said, could become self-fulfilling, almost daring terrorists to attack.
"We don't want to raise our heads, because that could put lives at risk," said an official at one financial firm who asked not to be identified.
In his news conference, Mr. Ridge called on employees at these firms to carry on as normal, saying he hoped that "folks who work at these sites would have the resolve and defiance to say, 'We're going to go about leading our lives.' "
Even so, financial institutions are treating this latest threat seriously. Police armed with assault rifles have been put into place around the Newark headquarters of Prudential, where about 2,800 people work, and a two-block radius around the firm has been sealed off.
Nonetheless, Prudential issued a statement yesterday saying, "The company will be open for business on Monday, August 2." Without disclosing specifics, the statement also said the company had taken "additional safety measures to ensure the safety of our employees, customers and visitors to our offices."
At Citigroup, whose distinctive 59-story tower with its sloping roof is a Manhattan landmark, employees were sent an e-mail message saying that the company had "increased the level of security measures employed at our NYC buildings," without specifying the measures taken. With 25,400 employees, Citigroup is the largest private employer in Manhattan.
Citigroup's security department "makes every effort to ensure your safety at all times and particularly in light of recent reports of possible threats and the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York City," said the statement, which continued, "In the coming days and weeks, you can expected to see additional security measures being implemented."
Leah Johnson, a Citigroup spokeswoman, declined yesterday to elaborate on the measures.
In Washington, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have both symbolic and geographic importance. Both institutions, which are next to each other, are within blocks of the White House. And both have been criticized as having lending policies that destabilize the economies of developing countries.
Both institutions said they had taken additional security measures, including the addition of two bomb-sniffing dog units to patrol the World Bank, which has 7,000 employees in Washington. About 2,400 people work at the monetary fund building.
At the New York Stock Exchange, which is already ringed with police and sealed-off streets, a conference call among the exchange's specialist firms - the traders who populate the busy exchange floor - was scheduled for late last night.
The exchange is perhaps the most visible symbol of capitalism, and it is only blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center. Its executives spoke yesterday with Mr. Ridge, although a spokesman for the exchange, Ray Pellecchia, declined to comment on what was said and on any security measures.
As a show of support, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, once a Wall Street trader himself, will ring the exchange's opening bell this morning.
In a statement, the exchange said it "would continue to be open for business on our normal schedule."
A top executive of one specialist firm who asked not to be identified said: "We've already got a high level of security in the area. We are going to treat it like every other day and go to work."
The exchange is probably one of the most heavily guarded financial institutions in the city, with checks of every vehicle that enters the closed-off zone and strict identification requirements for anyone entering the building. Its once-popular tours were canceled after the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the attacks, some financial firms that were located around Wall Street moved to Midtown Manhattan. And nearly every firm has new security measures in place, including checks of photo identification, bag searches, electronic entrance turnstiles and concrete barriers.
The move by the firms has made some elements of protection more difficult. The narrow streets of the financial district can be easily closed off because there is little through traffic, but that would be impossible in the middle of Manhattan, with its wider thoroughfares. The Citigroup building, for instance, fills an entire block on Lexington Avenue from 53rd Street to 54th Street, both of which are used for through traffic and would be virtually impossible to close.
Landon Thomas Jr. contributed reporting for this article.
-------- ACTIVISTS
What if I got Drafted: an American Nightmare
alternet.org
By Miles Harwell
August 2, 2004.
http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/19431/
"I've lost a lot of friends along the way who died before their times but never anyone who died fighting in a war outside of the country. My second reaction however, was 'That's not going to be me.'"
I have a reoccurring dream from time to time that I'm sitting at home, and I get a phone call from someone with the Armed Forces saying that I've been drafted to go to war, and that I need to report for boot camp in a week. Although this is only a dream, and has never been anything more than that, I realize that if things keep going the way they've been going in Iraq, and a draft is reinstated, young people like me will have to go and fight in this war. This makes me think, what would I do if I was drafted?
Just recently this year, I had one of my closest and oldest friends in San Francisco sign up for army training and ship out for boot camp across the country. He had never been successful in the classroom and hadn't found a job that would keep him, so when he passed his GED test, he went and signed up for the army, seeing it as the only way out. My first reaction to this was to look at him like: "You stupid ass f-k!" But then I looked at it like: "Damn, he could get sent to Iraq." I've lost a lot of friends along the way who died before their times but never anyone who died fighting in a war outside of the country. My second reaction however, was "That's not going to be me."
The movie Dead Presidents has a section based on the Vietnam War. In this portion, they capture the emotions and attitudes of soldiers in the battlefield. Larenz Tate, who plays the main character Anthony Curtis, displays the attitude of a true soldier who really wanted to fight in the war. Chris Tucker, on the other hand, who plays Skip - Curtis' best friend - displays the attitude of someone who doesn't want to be there, and states, "Them Vietcongs ain't done nothin to me." This is how I feel about the war in Iraq. The Iraqi people haven't done anything to me, and I wouldn't want to go over there and shoot at them just because some drill sergeant tells me to. Despite all the 9/11 propaganda, I don't have any personal issues with any Iraqis, and I'm not going to develop any just because they live there. But with a draft, people are called to go to war against their will, and a lot of times don't have a choice in the matter, which brings me back to my original question, "What would I do if I was drafted?"
I think the first thing I would do if I got drafted would be to find the easiest way to avoid going to war. Considering my current situation, I would have to follow in the footsteps of Vice President Dick Cheney and attempt to get a deferment, so I could keep going to school. Going to school is way more important than fighting in a war that has nothing to do with me. Although I'm not as well-off financially as Cheney probably was when he was going to college, I figure it's better to give it a shot than to just hand over my freedom and go to boot camp.
I heard back when the Vietnam War was happening, young men who got drafted fled the country to Canada and Mexico to avoid going to war. To me, that doesn't sound like a bad idea as opposed to going to war. I would have to adjust to living in another country for a while, but it's a small price to pay for one's freedom.
If neither of those plans worked, I guess I'd try to lay low for as long as possible, before the law came looking for me. If I got caught, I would probably rather go to jail than to fight in a war and be forced to kill people for the fact that they live in a particular country. I'd rather kill someone in jail for looking at me the wrong way in the showers.
I think I speak for most people in my same position, when I say that wars should be fought by experienced professionals and people who generally want to be involved with the Armed Forces. Wars shouldn't be fought by people who don't want to be there, which is what a draft would essentially cause. In the Vietnam War, people were drafted and sent to war against their will, often at young ages, and as a result, the United States lost the war. This clearly proves that instating a draft has negative results, and only leads to more soldiers coming home in body bags. That's not going to be me, by any means.
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