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NUCLEAR
Japan nuclear plant fault kills four
Four dead, seven injured in accident at Japanese nuclear plant
Fatal accident another blow to Japanese confidence in nuclear power
Japan Nuke Plant Accident Kills 4 People
The world's worst nuclear accidents in the past 25 years
British Energy says safety slipped last year
Gulf War Illnesses -- At Home and Abroad
Pakistan sets limit to cooperation with UN nuclear probe of Iran
Rice Cites International Concern Over Iran's Nuclear Intentions
Rice Says Iran Must Not Be Allowed to Develop Nuclear Arms
Iran Dismisses Nuke Program Allegations
Bush Vows to Pressure Iran on Nuke Goals
The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9 1945 The Untold Story
On anniversary, a warning on arms
4 Die in Accident at Japan Nuclear Power Plant
List of Recent Nuclear Accidents in Japan
NAGASAKI PEACE DECLARATION
Peru: Stolen Nukes Can't Make Dirty Bomb
U.S. Expands Greenland Relations in Support of Missile Defense
Lessons of Nagasaki for Fighting Terrorism
Bush's policy endangers U.S. security
Nuclear Energy to Go: A Self-Contained, Portable Reactor
Nevada divided on Superfund site
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Board to have special review
Engineers Assess Vermont Yankee Bid to Step Up Nuclear Power
Neb. to Pay $141M Over Radioactive Dump
MILITARY
Taliban Maintains Grip Rooted in Fear
Windfalls of War
U.S. Contract to British Firm Sparks Irish American Protest
Contracts Awarded
Local Contracts SAIC to Help Keep Planes Flying
Russia Suspicious About U.S. Deal on Danish Radar
Radical Cleric Vows to Keep Up Battle, Defying Iraqi Premier
Premier Warns Gunmen In Najaf
Iraq's Premier Takes Hard Line Against Rebels
Iraq brings back death penalty as Allawi calls on militants to disarm
CIA 'effectively' gags agent critical of terror war
Iraq invasion a "tremendous gift" to bin Laden: CIA analyst
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in CIA Leak Case
Iraq judge has reason for his fear His caselaod covers the one for Saddam
Reporter faces jail over silence in CIA leak probe
Hill's police force stands by questioning of journalists
Tourist Copters in New York City a Terror Target
Capitol, lawmakers targeted, officials confirm
Tourist Copters in New York City a Terror Target
Immigrants Raise Call for Right to Be Voters
POLITICS
Senator Seeks Inquiry Into Abuse Report
Senator Presses White House on Leaking Qaeda Suspect's Name
Shed wealth, minister tells Bush family, congregants
Kerry vows to hire liaison to Indians
'Effective' Power Sought for Intel Chief
9/11 Panel Roiling Campaign Platforms
ENERGY
Kerry Offers 10-Year Plan for US Energy Independence
ACTIVISTS
Permit Denial for Big Park Rally Adds to Push for Protests There
Please Join in appeal to take nuclear weapons off alert
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Japan nuclear plant fault kills four
Local authorities say there was no radiation leak at the plant
Reuters
Monday 09 August 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/45BC955A-255D-4889-8D0A-716945DE78A8.htm
A steam leak at a Japanese nuclear power plant has killed four workers in the worst accident at a Japanese nuclear facility, but officials say no radiation escaped.
Seven others were injured, some seriously, officials said.
The incident on Monday, which took place on the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of the city of Nagasaki, is certain to increase public distrust of the nuclear industry in Japan, which depends on nuclear power for a third of its energy needs.
"Radioactive materials weren't contained in the steam that leaked out," an official at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
"We've received a report that there is no impact from radiation on the surrounding environment."
Police initially said five workers had died, but later corrected the figure to four.
Investigating
The accident occurred in a building housing turbines for the No.3 reactor at the Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture, 320km west of Tokyo.
An official at Kansai Electric Power Co Inc, which runs the plant, said the 826,000 kilowatt nuclear generation unit at the facility shut down automatically when the steam leaked from the turbine, which is in a separate building. The company was unsure when it would restart.
"We are now investigating the cause," the official said. The temperature of the leaking steam was 142C.
He said the workers involved, who were preparing to shut down the plant for maintenance, were all contractors, and 221 people were in the building at the time.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he had not heard details of the accident. "But I think we must do our best to investigate the cause, to prevent a repeat and to implement safety measures," he said.
Chief cabinet secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda added: "I think the cause will become clear within several days."
No reactor problem
A trade ministry spokesman said there was no technical problem with the core nuclear reactor at the plant.
The Mihama plant was the first nuclear plant built by Kansai Electric. The No.1 reactor began service in November 1970.
A number of towns in Japan have held referendums in the past few years and voted against construction of more nuclear plants.
Previous accident
The worst accident at a nuclear facility in terms of radiation was at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, a town north of Tokyo.
That took place on 30 September 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was triggered after three poorly trained workers mixed nuclear fuel in a tub.
The resulting release of radiation killed two workers and forced the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.
In a separate incident on Monday, Tokyo Electric Power Co, Japan's biggest power producer, said it had shut a nuclear power generation unit at its Fukushima-Daini plant due to a water leak.
----
Four dead, seven injured in accident at Japanese nuclear plant
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040809112433.b435bmfq.html
At least four workers were killed and seven others were severely burned Monday by a leak of non-radioactive steam at a nuclear plant in central Japan, in the latest blow the country's troubled nuclear industry.
The power plant at Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo, shut down automatically when an alarm sounded just before steam at a temperature of 200 degrees Centigrade (390 Fahrenheit) leaked from a turbine and scalded workers.
The plant's operators, the Kansai Electric Power Company, stressed there was no danger of a radiation leak and no need to evacuate the area.
"This incident will have no radiation effect on the surrounding environment," the company said in statement.
A police spokesman in Fukui prefecture confirmed four people were killed and seven injured in the accident, which happened in the turbine room of a pressurised water reactor at the plant.
A spokesman for the local fire brigade said the heart of another worker stopped beating at one stage, but it was not possible to confirm the patient's condition.
An official from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the leaked steam would not have contained radiation as the turbines in the water reactors do not come into contact with the nuclear reactors.
Monday's incident is likely to further undermine public confidence in Japan's nuclear industry which has been shaken by a series of accidents and scandals in recent years.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed regret at the loss of life and stressed the need for high safety standards in an industry that provides Japan with over a quarter of its energy.
"The cause of the accident must be clarified. Prevention efforts and safety measures have to be fully enforced," Koizumi said.
Hiroshi Matsumura, managing director of Kansai Electric, apologised. "It is extremely regrettable. To those who were injured and to the public, we apologise," he told a press conference.
The latest accident happened when a nuclear reactor and a turbine connected to the reactor automatically stopped because of an alarm, Kansai Electric said in a statement.
Following the shutdown steam at over 200 degrees Centigrade (390 degrees Fahrenheit) filled up the turbine room causing severe injuries to workers trapped inside, the statement said.
The cause of the alarm was under investigation, the company said.
It was the first fatal incident at a nuclear-related plant since September 1999, when two workers were killed at the Tokaimura uranium plant northeast of Tokyo.
More than 600 people were also exposed to radiation after the workers set off a critical reaction by using steel buckets to pour uranium solution into a precipitation tank.
About 320,000 people were evacuated in the incident, regarded as the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
Japan's nuclear power industry had only just been recovering from the crisis of confidence caused when Tokyo Electric Power Company, the world's largest energy utility, admitted in 2002 it had systematically covered up inspection data showing there were cracks in its nuclear reactors.
TEPCO was forced shut down all 17 of its reactors last year pending the all-clear from safety inspectors.
Japan, which is the third largest nuclear power producer in the world after the United States and France, is home to 52 nuclear reactors run by 10 private companies.
----
Fatal accident another blow to Japanese confidence in nuclear power
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040809120123.u7kpq2s7.html
The accident at a Japanese nuclear plant which killed four people Monday is the latest in a series of incidents which have undermined public confidence in an industry on which they rely for much of their energy.
The workers were killed and seven others injured by a leak of non-radioactive steam in a turbine room at the plant in the central Japanese town of Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.
Despite a deep-rooted aversion to nuclear facilities in Japan, the only nation to suffer an atomic bomb attack, atomic power is seen as a necessary evil by many here.
By an uncomfortable coincidence, the latest accident happened on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
There are 52 nuclear reactors operating in Japan, which, according to the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, provide one quarter of the electricity needs of a nation with virtually no natural energy resources.
Public unease turned to alarm in September 1999 when three workers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, set off a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, causing the country's worst-ever nuclear disaster.
Many Japanese shuddered when the plant's loose operating procedures were exposed.
The three had been using steel buckets to pour uranium into a precipitation tank and added too much -- 2.4 kilograms (five pounds) -- setting off the reaction.
The accident in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, was classified as the world's worst since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
It exposed more than 600 people to radiation and forced around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the three workers later died from their injuries in hospital.
Other nuclear accidents that shocked the nation include the December 1995 shutdown of the Monju fast-breeder reactor in western Japan after a massive sodium leak.
In March 1997, 37 people were exposed to radiation following a fire at another nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura.
The following month, a tritium leak at the Fugen advanced thermal reactor in western Japan exposed 11 workers to low-level doses of radiation.
Tokaimura was in the news again in August 1997 with the revelation that 2,000 drums of nuclear waste had been leaking for 30 years.
In July 1999 more than 80 tonnes of primary cooling water leaked in one of the country's worst spills, in Tsuruga, western Japan, close to the site of Monday's accident.
A year later a nuclear reactor in Fukushima, north of Tokyo, was shut down after a suspected interior radioactive leak, the third closure in the area after a big earthquake struck five days before.
The most recent black mark on the nuclear industry's record came when Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the world's largest private utility company, was forced to close all 17 reactors for checks in mid-2003 after scandals over the systematic cover-up of inspection data showing faults in reactors.
TEPCO was forced to admit it had covered up the appearance of cracks including those in steel "shrouds" enveloping the reactor core at its nuclear plants for years, although it was later independently confirmed they did not pose an immediate threat to the safety of nuclear plants.
The International Energy Agency urged Japan last November to regain public trust in its nuclear energy programme damaged by a series of accidents and scandals.
----
Japan Nuke Plant Accident Kills 4 People
By KOZO MIZOGUCHI
Associated Press Writer
Aug 9, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_NUCLEAR_ACCIDENT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TOKYO (AP) -- A nonradioactive steam leak killed four people and injured seven Monday in the worst-ever accident at a Japanese nuclear power plant, officials said. Two workers were reported in critical condition.
No radiation escaped the plant and there was no need to evacuate the area around the city of Mihama, about 200 miles west of Tokyo, officials said. Mihama's population is about 11,500.
The four dead suffered severe burns, said Takanori Amimoto, at the nearby Fukui state government office. Two workers had critical injuries, while three were in serious condition and two had minor injuries, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promised a thorough investigation of the accident, which follows a string of safety problems and attempted cover-ups at Japan's nuclear power plants, the source of 30 percent of Japan's electricity.
Worries about the safety of the country's 52 nuclear power plants have surged in recent years. A 1999 radiation leak northeast of Tokyo killed two workers and exposed hundreds to radiation, and three years later an investigation revealed that Tokyo Electric Power, the world's largest private utility, systematically lied about cracks in its reactors during the 1980s and 1990s.
Monday's leak was caused by a lack of cooling water in the reactor's turbine, said Kimihito Kawabata, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Kansai Electric Power. The steam was believed to be about 518 degrees.
After the accident, Kansai Electric officials found a hole in a condenser pipe, public broadcaster NHK reported. It did not elaborate on the size of the hole, which it said was believed to be the source of the problem.
Takahiro Seno, another spokesman for Kansai Electric Power, said the plant automatically shut down when steam began spewing from a leak in the turbine building area at the No. 3 nuclear reactor in Mihama. The No. 3 reactor started operations 1976. The Mihama plant's two other reactors were operating normally, officials said.
Koizumi expressed regret at the deaths, telling reporters that "we must put all our effort into determining the cause of the accident and to ensuring safety." He added the government would respond "resolutely, after confirming the facts."
The United States had a similar accident at the Surry nuclear power plant in southern Virginia almost two decades ago when an 18-inch steel pipe burst and released 30,000 gallons of boiling water and steam, killing four people.
In Japan's fatal 1999 accident, a radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, killed two workers and forced the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents. That accident was caused by two workers who tried to save time by mixing excessive amounts of uranium in buckets instead of using special mechanized tanks.
A string of safety problems and attempted cover-ups since then has undermined public faith in nuclear energy.
In the most recent before Monday, eight workers were exposed to low-level radiation at a power plant in February when they were accidentally sprayed with contaminated water. The doses were not considered dangerous.
----
The world's worst nuclear accidents in the past 25 years
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040809111016.xqimq2v9.html
The accident at the Mihama nuclear plant in central Japan on Monday, which killed at least four workers following a leak of non-radioactive steam, is the latest blow the country's nuclear industry.
Monday's incident was the first fatal accident at a nuclear-related plant since September 1999, when a radiation leak at an uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, kills two workers.
Following is a list of the world's worst nuclear accidents in the past quarter of a century:
- March 28, 1979: 140,000 people are evacuated after an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, United States. The reactor's core suffers partial meltdown, causing contamination within the plant but none outside. There are no casualties. The accident registers five on the International Atomic Energy Agency's seven-point scale of nuclear accidents.
- August 1979: A leak of uranium at a secret nuclear site near Erwin in Tennessee, United States, contaminates some 1,000 people.
- January-March 1981: Four radioactive leaks occur in succession at the Tsuruga nuclear plant in Japan. According to official figures, 278 people are contaminated.
- April 26, 1986: The world's worst nuclear incident occurs when Reactor Number Four at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant blows up after an experiment goes wrong and the top of the reactor blows off. Some 200 people are seriously contaminated, of whom 32 die within three months. The accident is only revealed after a giant radioactive cloud is registered moving across northern Europe. The fall-out is recorded as being equivalent to that from more than 200 atomic bombs of the type dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of residents are evacuated from the area and a similar number are estimated to have been contaminated by radiation. The incident registers the maximum seven on the international scale.
- April 1993: An explosion at a secret reprocessing plant in Tomsk-7 in western Siberia releases a cloud of radioactive gas, including Uranium-235, Plutonium-237 and various other fissile materials. The number of casualties is unclear.
- November 1995: Serious contamination is reported at Chernobyl during the removal of fuel from one of the plant's reactors. The incident is reported only after an apparent attempt to cover it up.
- March 11, 1997: Work at the experimental treatment plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, is partially halted after a fire and an explosion expose 37 people to radiation.
- September 30, 1999: Two workers die in an accident at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan -- the world's worst since Chernobyl, rating four on the seven-point scale. Workers at the plant pour too much uranium into a precipitation tank as they cut corners to save time and can only watch helplessly as a blue flash signals the start of Japan's most serious nuclear accident.
It exposes more than 600 people to radiation and forces around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the workers who triggered the disaster die from their injuries in hospital, three and six months after the incident. The first had been exposed to 17,000 times the average annual dose of radiation.
-------- britain
British Energy says safety slipped last year
REUTERS UK:
August 9, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26456/story.htm
LONDON - Safety standards at nuclear giant British Energy, the UK's biggest power producer, slipped during the last year, the company says.
"In all circumstances, safety is our number one priority...so it is disappointing to record that, during the last year, our performance against key industrial safety indicators declined slightly," Adrian Montague, chairman, told the firm's annual general meeting last week.
British Energy - which operates a fleet of eight nuclear stations across the UK and generates about a fifth of the country's electricity - was addressing the safety issue as part of a performance improvement programme, he added.
The firm is trying to boost the overall performance of its plants as part of a government-backed restructuring package agreed last year after slumping power prices pushed the firm close to bankruptcy.
"Everyone at British Energy is ready to embrace the change we need if British Energy is to re-establish itself as a safe, profitable and proud generator of emissions-free power," said Montague.
-------- depleted uranium
Gulf War Illnesses -- At Home and Abroad
August 9, 2004
dissidentvoice
by Janette Sherman, M.D.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Sherman0809.htm
Since "Those Weapons of Mass Destruction" was published in Acres USA (0ct. 2003), I had hoped that the mainstream press would have picked up the depleted uranium (DU) issue. Alas, this is not the case.
A conservative estimate of the DU used in the 1991 Gulf War is 340 tons. In the most recent war, more than 2200 tons of DU rained down on Iraq. [1] But that is not all, some 34 tons of DU weaponry were used in Bosnia, Kosovo and Herzegovina, contaminating ground water and soil [2] and an additional 1000 tons of DU were used in Afghanistan. [3] Living close to the land, the DU levels in Afghanis after US military intervention are the highest levels measured in a human population. [4]
The General Accounting Office (GAO) strongly criticized the Pentagon for failing to accurately study conditions leading to the illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans. A second GAO report criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) and the Pentagon for wasting "millions of dollars looking for the mental stress theory [when] it has been conclusively ruled invalid." [5]
Of the 698,000 service personnel who served in the first Gulf War (GW-I) more than 230,000 veterans have health claims that have been granted by the DVA as of Nov. 2002, the latest figures available. [6] Given that the average age of those who went to war was 36, the 11,074 who have since died since GW-I do not represent usual retiree mortality rates.
Among returning veterans, birth defects are increased in the children of both men and women personnel. The birth defects rate in the civilian Iraqi population have risen exponentially in the 13 years since GW-I. While the Pentagon continues to "study" the problem, Betty Mekdeci from the non-profit organization, Birth Defect Research for Children has found otherwise, documenting the very uncommon defect, named Goldenhar Syndrome in 26 children of GW-I veterans. [7]
While returning veterans have brought their contaminated bodies home with them, the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and sites in the US and Puerto Rico where DU was tested continue to live with the contamination. Cancer and leukemia have increased in southern Iraq, and physicians are seeing multiple cancers in patients and clusters of cancer in families near contaminated areas. [8]
The DU issue does not end with veterans and the war zones where civilians are contaminated, it extends to civilian workers in the U. S. as well. By the end of 2003, the Department of Energy (DOE) had processed only 6% of the 23,000 worker's compensation claims from former nuclear weapons plant employees. The bulk of the claims have been as a result of exposure at the nuclear facilities located at Oak Ridge, TN, Savannah Rive, SC, Paducah, KY, Hanford, WA, Rocky Flats, CO, Los Alamos, NM, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab, the Iowa Ordinance Plant, and in Ohio, the Fernald and Mound Plants and the Piketon uranium enrichment plant. [9]
It is clear that radioactive materials increasingly contaminate the world's landscape, including the U. S. We know that chronic exposure to low level radiation leads to cancer, birth defects and irreversible genetic damage. [10] Recently, the Bush Administration is proposing to develop a series of "mini" nuclear bombs and to restart the testing of nuclear bombs.
How can we as a civilized society condone the use of radioactive bombs that will adversely affect not only a targeted country, but our own population as well? The lifespan of radioactive materials involves the mining of uranium, separation of isotopes, creation of plutonium, manufacture of bombs and the armaments that carry them, disposal of "wastes", and the firing of radioactive munitions. The half-life of U238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. As it decays in four steps to become lead, it releases radioactivity with each step. There is no way to stop the decay process, and no way to clean it up.
The U. S. has lost stature over the torture of prisoners as such places as Abu Gharib and Guantanimo Bay in Cuba, and will certainly lose more when the facts are broadcast that the US has rained toxic and genocidal radioactive materials throughout the world. The use of these very effective, but toxic DU weapons has made us not less, but far more vulnerable to attacks, not only from Al Qaida, but from people who have been harmed and have no recourse to right their wrongs.
What can we do? Spread the word about the hazards to life from DU contamination. Support adequate medical care for returning veterans, compensate those harmed by the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, and compensate civilians harmed by the use of DU munitions. Most importantly, perhaps the US will regain its stature in the world community if it renounces the use of DU nuclear weapons, but more importantly by doing so we can stop adding irreversible harm to the world. Will our government listen to us the citizens? Will the international community support such measures? We can only hope so because not doing so will spell disaster for life on earth.
Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease. Dr. Sherman is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She has published more than 70 articles in the scientific literature. She also writes for the popular press to provide information to the concerned public. Currently she is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and Research Associate and Lecturer with the Radiation and Public Health Project. Visit her website: www.janettesherman.com.
REFERENCES
1) Leurendu@yahoo.com.
2) UNEP News release, March 17, 2003.
3) Prof. Marc Herold: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/page1.htm
4) Uranium Medical Research Center: http://www.umrc.net/
5) Williams, T. D., Hartford Courant. June 4, 2004.
6) Ibid
7) wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa040223_am_birthdefects.201a00bc.html
8) Al-Ali, oncologist from Basra. Data presented to the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, ct. 16-19, 2003
9) http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20040603/localnews/562235.html
10) Busby, Chris, Editor, 2003 Recommendations of the ECRR: The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. European Committee on Radiation Risk, ISBN: 1-897761-24-4, 2003.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan sets limit to cooperation with UN nuclear probe of Iran
TEHRAN (AFP)
Aug 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040809103415.pj20miqg.html
Pakistan's foreign minister insisted Monday his country was cooperating with a UN probe into Iran's suspect nuclear programme, but ruled out allowing inspectors into Pakistan as part of the crucial investigation.
"Pakistan is a responsible member of the international community. We have been cooperating with the IAEA and sharing information," said Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, who is on a two day visit to Tehran.
"Of course we will cooperate and are cooperating," he told a press conference.
"But as far as inspections of Pakistan are concerned, that is out of the question. We are not a signatory of the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)."
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have found traces of highly-enriched uranium inside Iran, leading to suspicions Iran has been trying to produce nuclear bombs and not just atomic energy as it insists.
But Tehran maintains the traces found their way into the country on equipment bought on an international black market operated by Pakistan's disgraced former nuclear chief, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Pakistan's cooperation with the probe is crucial in resolving one of the main outstanding questions related to Iran's bid to generate nuclear energy, seen by the United States as a cover for weapons development.
The IAEA wants to take so-called "environmental samples" from Pakistan to compare them with those found in Iran -- crucial in verifying Tehran's claims.
Kasuri refused to elaborate on how Pakistan would help the IAEA in this regard, prefering only to launch into a fresh run-down on how important to his country's national security the nuclear deterrent was.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi meanwhile said he was confident the IAEA's board of governors would not refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, a step the United States says is now more likely.
"America says that Iran's dossier should be referred to the Security Council. But for that to happen, there has to be violations -- whereas Iran has not committed any violations," he asserted.
Enrichment and the nuclear fuel cycle that surrounds it is the centre of contention between Iran and the international community.
The European Union's "big three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- have been pressing Iran to cease working on the nuclear fuel cycle in exchange for increased trade and cooperation and the guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel from abroad.
Such work is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but the concern is that once fully mastered, a country possessing such technology can easily divert it into military usage.
Many diplomats believe that even if Iran may not be working on nuclear weapons now, it would like to have the option in the future. Iran denies charges it is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb.
Iran has agreed to temporarily suspend enrichment pending the completion of the IAEA probe, but is working on other parts of the fuel cycle and has recently resumed making centrifuges used for enrichment.
The next IAEA meeting is in September.
-------- iran
Rice Cites International Concern Over Iran's Nuclear Intentions
By William C. Mann
Associated Press
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50644-2004Aug8.html
With Iran stepping up its nuclear program, a top White House aide said yesterday the world finally is "worried and suspicious" over the Iranians' intentions and is determined not to let Tehran produce a nuclear weapon.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said the Bush administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program. She credited the changed attitude to the Americans' insistence that Iran's effort put the world in peril.
She would not say whether the United States would act alone to end the program if the administration could not win international support.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced a week ago that his country had resumed building nuclear centrifuges. He said Iran was retaliating for the West's failure to force the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to close its file on possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
Kharrazi said Iran was not resuming enrichment of uranium, which requires a centrifuge. But, he said, Iran had restarted manufacturing the device because Britain, Germany and France had not stopped the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The United States was the first to say that Iran was a threat in this way, to try and convince the international community that Iran was trying, under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, to actually bring about a nuclear weapons program," Rice said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"I think we've finally now got the world community to a place, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to a place, that it is worried and suspicious of the Iranian activities," she said. "Iran is facing for the first time real resistance to trying to take these steps."
President Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, included Iran with North Korea and Iraq in an "axis of evil" dedicated to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Since then, North Korea has publicly resumed its nuclear development program. In Iraq, invading U.S.-led forces have found no such programs since President Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Iran announced in June that it would resume its centrifuge program. Afterward, the U.S. official whose job is to slow the global atomic arms race, Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton, told Congress that Iran was jabbing "a thumb in the eye of the international community."
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Rice reasserted that the world has fallen in line on Iran and said she expects next month to get a strong statement from the IAEA "that Iran will either be isolated, or it will submit to the will of the international community."
She also said: "We cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon. The international community has got to find a way to come together and to make certain that that does not happen."
--------
Rice Says Iran Must Not Be Allowed to Develop Nuclear Arms
August 9, 2004
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/09nuke.html?pagewanted=all
KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 8 - President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday that the United States and its allies "cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon" and warned that President Bush would "look at all the tools that are available to him" to stop Iran's program.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" that she expected that the International Atomic Energy Agency would make what she called "a very strong statement" in September forcing Iran to choose between isolation or the abandonment of its nuclear weapons efforts. But she stopped short of saying whether the United States could muster its allies to impose sanctions against Iran in the United Nations Security Council.
Until now, European powers and Russia have resisted American efforts to impose sanctions against Iran, which they see as a major trading partner.
Iran has insisted that its nuclear effort is entirely for the production of electric power, though the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency, has found evidence of covert efforts, stretching back more than 18 years, to produce highly enriched uranium suitable primarily for weapons production.
A week ago, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said his country would resume producing parts for centrifuges, the equipment needed to enrich uranium, because European nations had not brought the Atomic Energy Agency's investigations to a close.
President Bush, who took a brief break from his re-election campaign to attend a family wedding here and visit his parents, said nothing in public on Sunday. He attended an early-morning church service, went fishing with members of his family and flew back to Washington, letting his aides take the questions about Iraq, terrorism, Iran and North Korea.
Ms. Rice was responding to an article in The New York Times on Sunday that said the Bush administration's flurry of diplomatic efforts during the past 20 months to stop the progress of nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea had so far failed.
In a veiled reference to the Clinton administration, Ms. Rice said "these are problems that developed in 1990's." She contended that there had been "diplomatic successes" in organizing North Korea's neighbors to confront the problem and spurring action against Iran at the Vienna-based Atomic Energy Agency.
"It was, in fact, the president who really put this on the agenda in his State of the Union address, the famous 'axis of evil' address," Ms. Rice said. "And our allies have really begun to respond."
She declined to say whether the United States would support action by Israel, which says Iran's program poses a particular threat to its national security, to attack Iran's facilities the way it attacked the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981.
"I think that I don't want to get into hypotheticals on this," Ms. Rice said. "I do think that there are very active efforts under way, for instance, to undermine the ability of the Iranians under the cover of civilian nuclear cooperation to get the components that would help them for nuclear weapons developments."
She said Russia had declared that it would provide help to Iran only if it returned its nuclear fuel to Russia so it could not be diverted for weapons. "I think you cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon," she said. "The international community has got to find a way to come together and to make certain that that does not happen."
Ms. Rice's answer about Israel was particularly notable because, in the period before the war in Iraq, she and other senior administration officials said history had vindicated the Israeli raid on Osirak. Had that attack not crippled Iraq's main nuclear reactor, they argued, Saddam Hussein might have had access to nuclear weapons before the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
But it is unclear that Israel has the military capacity to reach Iran's nuclear sites, which are much farther away and well hidden among cities.
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Iran Dismisses Nuke Program Allegations
August 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Monday the international community has no reason to be suspicious about its nuclear ambitions, despite allegations by the United States that it is trying to produce nuclear weapons.
``Iran has not violated any of its commitments to international treaties in its nuclear program,'' Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
His comments came a day after U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program. The world is finally ``worried and suspicious'' about the Iranian government's intentions and is determined not to let Tehran produce a nuclear weapon, she said.
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful. Kharrazi said that whatever Iran has done in the area of nuclear energy is based on its international commitments and is in line with the country's legitimate rights.
The U.S. government contends Iran is using a civilian nuclear program as a cover for atomic weapons development.
``I think we've finally now got the world community to a place, and the (International Atomic Energy Agency) to a place, that it is worried and suspicious of the Iranian activities,'' Rice said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``Iran is facing for the first time real resistance to trying to take these steps.''
On NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' Rice said she expects next month to get a very strong statement from the IAEA ``that Iran will either be isolated, or it will submit to the will of the international community.''
She would not say whether the United States would act alone to end Iran's program if the administration could not win international support.
Last week Iran announced it had restarted building nuclear centrifuges, which can be used to produce enriched uranium used in nuclear warheads, but Kharrazi said then that Iran was not resuming enrichment of uranium.
Kharrazi said Iran resumed work on centrifuges in retaliation for European nations' failure to force the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, to close its investigation into possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
President Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, included Iran with North Korea and Iraq in an ``axis of evil'' that he said was dedicated to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Since then, North Korea has publicly resumed its nuclear development program. In Iraq, invading U.S.-led forces found no such programs after Saddam Hussein was deposed.
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Bush Vows to Pressure Iran on Nuke Goals
August 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush pressed Iran on Monday to give up its nuclear ambitions as Iranian officials asked European nations to help them obtain advanced technology that could be used to make the weapons.
``The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Great Britain have gone in as a group to send a message on behalf of the free world that Iran must comply with the demands of the free world,'' Bush said. ``And my attitude is, we've got to continue to keep pressure on the government, and help others keep pressure on the government.''
In a document last week, however, Tehran asked the three European powers to back Iran's insistence that it have access to ``advanced (nuclear) technology, including those with dual use'' -- a term for equipment and technical expertise that have both peaceful and military applications.
U.S. officials say the new demands, which stunned German, French and British diplomats, effectively stalled negotiations.
The Europeans have not formally responded to that demand, which was made available to The Associated Press. Instead, they urged Iran to act on its pledge to clear up nagging suspicions about its nuclear efforts by Sept. 13 when the International Atomic Energy Agency meets.
Iran said Monday that the international community has no reason to be suspicious about its nuclear work. ``Iran has not violated any of its commitments to international treaties in its nuclear program,'' Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Kharrazi announced a week ago that his country had resumed building nuclear centrifuges. He said then that his country was retaliating for the West's failure to force the IAEA, the nuclear watchdog agency of the United Nations, to close its file on possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
For 3 1/2 years, the Bush administration has insisted that Iran was developing a dangerous nuclear capability. Past attempts to have the IAEA board refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council foundered, partly because of European resistance.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday the U.S. administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program.
Associated Press reporter George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna, Austria.
-------- japan
The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9 1945 The Untold Story
August 9, 2004
Nuclear Files
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/etreligiouspers/nagasaki.htm
56 years ago this week, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only 2 atomic bombs ever used as instruments of aggressive war (and against essentially defenseless civilian populations, at that) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only "doing their job"and they did it well.
It had been 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching for months for a way to honorably end the war. (The only obstacle to surrender had been the United States' insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan, an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)
The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there were extra incentives to end the war quickly. The US did not want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan was defeated.
The US bomber command had for months spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the conventional bombing that had leveled and burned 60+ other major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting relatively undamaged cities was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings--and their living creatures--when atomic weapons were exploded over them.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock's Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target (its plutonium bomb was code-named "Fat Man", after Winston Churchill). The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity", had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the site today, is called trinitite.
With instructions to only drop the bomb on visual sighting, Bock's Car arrived at Kokura, which was clouded-over. So, after circling three times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary's Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549, a Christian community which thrived and multiplied for several generations until, in the early 1600s, it became the target of brutal Japanese Imperial persecutions. Within 50 years of the planting of Xaviar's mission church, it was a capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant their beliefs suffered ostracism, horrific torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Christianity had been stamped out.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were still thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the governmentwhich immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian community had organized and, after decades of work, built the massive St. Mary's Cathedral, in the Urakami River Valley district.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary's Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock's Car bombardier had been briefed on, and, looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that day, he identified the cathedral, ordered the drop, and, at 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was carbonized, then vaporized, in a scorching, radioactive fireball. And so the persecuted, vibrant, faithful center of Japanese Christianity became ground zero, and what Japanese Imperialism couldn't do in 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds; the entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.
The above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500 man Army Air Force group whose only job was delivering the atomic bombs) was Father George Zabelka, who several decades later saw his grave theological error in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that is modern war. He finally recognized that the enemies of a nation were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus should also love. Fr. Zabelka's conversion led him to devote the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in any form, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who were troubled by the immorality of "the bomb", later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.
In Daniel Hallock's important book, "Hell, Healing and Resistance" the author talks about a 1997 Buddhist retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to deal with the hellish post-war existence of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans. Hallock commented, "clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are, in large part, the truths of Christ."
As a lifelong Christian, that comment stung me, but it was the sting of a sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically traumatized patients all too often, I know that it is violence, in its myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and that that trauma is deadly and highly contagious and spreads through the families and progeny of trauma victims.
One of the most difficult "mental illnesses" to treat is combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most severe form it is virtually incurable. It is also a well-known fact that whereas most Vietnam War recruits came from churches where they actively practiced their faith, if they came home significantly traumatized by the war, the percentage returning to the faith community approached zero.
This is a serious spiritual problem for any church that, either actively or by its silence on issues of militarism, glorifies war or fails to thoroughly inform its youth about what Jesus and the earliest form of Christianity taught about conscientious objection to war and killing: that both were forbidden to the followers of Jesus.
If a worshipping community fails to at least fully inform its confirmands about the gruesome realities of the war zone before they are forced to register for potential conscription into the military, it invites the condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5-6: "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
The purpose of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion (at least among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing by government, not from the perspective of national security ethics, not from the perspective of military ethics (an oxymoron, according to most critical thinkers), not from the perspective of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye retaliation, but from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount, the core ethical teachings of the founder.
Out of that discussion, if any are willing to engage in it, should come answers to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent Bible-believing Christians everywhere: Why are some of us willing to commit (or support or pay for others to commit) homicidal violence against other fellow children of a loving, merciful, forgiving God, the God whom Jesus clearly calls us to imitate? And what can we do, starting now, to prevent the next war, the next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the next Mylai massacre, the next Auschwitz, the next Dresden, the next El Mozote, the next Rwanda, the next Jonestown, the next black church bombing, the next Columbine, the next execution of an innocent death row inmate or the next Nagasaki?
August 9, 2001, Gary G. Kohls, MD, 1306 E.8th St., Duluth, MN 55805, for Every Church A Peace Church http://www.ecapc.org
----
On anniversary, a warning on arms
The Associated Press
Monday, August 09, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=533175.html
TOKYO The mayor of Nagasaki warned Monday that nuclear weapons the United States wants to develop would cause as much radiation contamination as the atomic bomb dropped on the southern Japanese city 59 years ago.
At the annual ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack, Itcho Ito recounted how tens of thousands had perished in the World War II bombing and said many victims continued to suffer.
"The mininukes that the United States is trying to develop possess terrible power, despite their smaller size," Ito told thousands gathered at the city's Peace Park. "The radiation destruction they would cause is no different from that of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki."
Ito said Washington must scrap its nuclear arsenal before the world can be free of nuclear weapons. He urged Americans to face the "terrifying reality" that the bomb's victims have lived with since the attack.
"It's clear that as long as the world's most powerful country continues to rely on nuclear weapons, other countries can't pursue nuclear nonproliferation," he said. "If humankind is to survive, the only path left for us is the abolition of nuclear weapons."
Washington has had a self-imposed ban on nuclear testing since 1992. But it has conducted so-called subcritical testing, which detonates bomb-grade plutonium but stops short of full-fledged nuclear blasts, since 1997. In June, U.S. lawmakers approved spending for research into nuclear warheads that would set off smaller explosions or destroy underground targets.
Ito pointed to the UN International Court of Justice's 1996 advisory calling for nuclear disarmament and the abolition of nuclear arms. However, the court's 15 judges were divided over whether to consider the threat or use of nuclear weapons illegal.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday reiterated Japan's policy banning the production, possession and transport of nuclear weapons within its borders.
"Our country won't change that stance," Koizumi said, echoing remarks he made Friday on the anniversary of the first atomic bombing in Hiroshima.
Koizumi also vowed to continue pressing for more nations to ratify a nuclear nonproliferation pact and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban nuclear arms testing and make developing new weapons almost impossible.
At the ceremony, officials placed chrysanthemum wreaths at the foot of a peace statue. Attendees observed a minute of silence as a bell tolled at 11:02 a.m., the minute the B-29 bomber Bock's Car dropped the bomb dubbed "Fat Man" on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. About 70,000 people were killed in the explosion.
Hiroshima had been bombed three days earlier, killing or wounding 160,000 people. On Aug. 15, 1945, Japan's surrender ended World War II.
Nagasaki this year added 2,707 people to a list of those who have died from aftereffects, putting the total number of the city's bomb victims at 134,592.
----
4 Die in Accident at Japan Nuclear Power Plant
August 9, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/international/asia/09CND-JAPA.html?hp
TOKYO, Aug. 9 - Blasts of non-radioactive steam killed four workers and severely burned seven others today in the first fatal accident at a Japanese nuclear power plant, according to officials.
"Radioactive materials weren't contained in the steam that leaked out," an official for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a news conference here. "We've received a report that there is no impact from radiation on the surrounding environment."
With no official concern over radioactive contamination from the 28-year-old plant, there was no evacuation from the nearby town of Mihama, home to 11,000 people on the Sea of Japan, about 40 miles north of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital.
But the accident is likely to further shake confidence in nuclear power, just as high oil prices and the Iraq war are making nuclear power more attractive to economic planners.
With the world's third largest nuclear power industry, after the United States and France, Japan relies on nuclear power to generate almost a third of its electricity. Fifty-two nuclear power plants operate in the country.
Heavily dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, Japan has moved aggressively over the past year to work with Russia to develop oil and gas deposits in Siberia.
Plans to build more nuclear power plants in Japan have been slowed as public opinion has become increasingly wary of nuclear power, as evidenced by the number of towns in Japan that have held referendums and vote against building more nuclear plants.
Wariness has been fueled by accidents and by a culture of cover-up where employees have shown a far higher loyalty to their companies than to the public's right to know.
Last summer, the Tokyo Electric Power Company was forced to temporarily close all 17 of its nuclear power plants after admitting it had faked safety reports for more than a decade.
"After the Tepco scandal of two years ago, today's accident would accelerate people's worry and suspicion about the safety management of the nuclear power plants," Satoshi Fujino, a staffer at Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a private nuclear power-watch organization, said in an interview today. "This plant is pretty old, and there are many plants even older."
Today's accident took place in the turbine building of the No. 3 nuclear reactor in Mihama, which was commissioned in November 1976 by the Kansai Electric Power Company.
In the accident, steam believed to measure about 200 degrees Centigrade, or nearly 390 degrees Fahrenheit, spewed into a room just after workers entered to take measurements before a scheduled maintenance shutdown, NHK television reported.
According to the Japanese nuclear safety official, who asked not be identified, it would be impossible for the leaked steam to contain radioactivity as the water in the steam turbines does not come into contact with water used as a coolant for the nuclear reactor.
Kansai Electric Power said it shut the 826,000-kilowatt nuclear generation unit at the facility and was unsure when it would restart.
"We are now investigating the cause," a Kansai Electric official said at a news conference.
"This incident will have no radiation effect on the surrounding environment," Kansai Electric Power said in statement. The company said that two other reactors in the Mihama complex, about 200 miles west of here, are operating normally.
Hiroshi Matsumura, managing director of Kansai Electric, apologized. "It is extremely regrettable," he said at a news conference. "To those who were injured and to the public, we apologize."
The accident took place on the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki in World War II, and political and industry leaders were quick today to assure that a thorough investigation would take place.
"I think we must do our best to investigate the cause, to prevent a repeat, and to implement safety measures," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.
Takuya Ito, public relations director of the Federation of Electric Power Companies, worried in an interview that the accident could further dent popular trust in nuclear power, "because these are the first deaths from an accident in a nuclear power plant in operation."
The only other fatalities in the nuclear power industry took place in 1999, at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo. A radiation leak killed two workers, exposed 600 people to low levels of radiation and led to the evacuation of thousands of local residents. That accident was caused by three workers who tried to save time by mixing excessive amounts of uranium in buckets instead of using special mechanized tanks.
It exposed more than 600 people to radiation and forced around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the workers who set off the disaster later died from their injuries.
More recently, in February, eight workers were exposed to low-level radiation at another power plant when they were accidentally sprayed with contaminated water. The doses were not considered dangerous.
--------
AT A GLANCE
List of Recent Nuclear Accidents in Japan
August 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Glance.html
Recent nuclear accidents in Japan:
-- December 1995: Sodium leaked in a secondary cooling system at the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor operated by the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., or Donen. No one was injured in that accident, and no radioactivity escaped, but Donen was found to have concealed videotape footage that showed the extensive damage to the reactor.
-- March 1997: At least 37 workers were exposed to low doses of radiation at a March 11 fire and explosion at a nuclear reprocessing plant operated by Donen in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo. Donen later admitted to initially suppressing information about the fire.
-- September 1999: Two workers were killed in a radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura when they tried to save time by mixing excessive amounts of uranium in buckets instead of using special mechanized tanks. Hundreds were exposed to radiation, and thousands of residents evacuated. The government assigned the accident a level 4 rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale ranging from 1 to 7.
-- February 2002: Two workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation and suffered minor burns when they accidentally punctured a spray can that ignited a plastic sheet during an inspection at Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in northern Japan.
-- February 2004: Eight workers were exposed to low-level radiation at another power plant in Tsuruga, western Japan, when they were accidentally sprayed with contaminated water. The doses were not considered dangerous.
-- Aug. 9, 2004: A cooling pipe at a power plant in Mihama burst, burning at least four workers to death and injuring seven others with a scorching explosion of steam. No radiation was released.
--------
NAGASAKI PEACE DECLARATION
By Iccho Itoh
Mayor of Nagasaki
August 9, 2004
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>
How many people in the world now remember that fateful day? At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, fifty-nine years ago, the city of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins by a single atomic bomb dropped from an American warplane, killing some 74,000 people and wounding 75,000.
Today, Nagasaki's verdant cityscape attracts visitors from around the world, and its residents maintain a distinctive set of traditions and culture. Nevertheless, the city's increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to suffer from the after-effects of the bombing as well as from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We the citizens of Nagasaki call upon the world with a renewed sense of urgency, even as we reflect upon the intense suffering of those who have already perished.
We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago. The International Court of Justice has clearly stated in an advisory opinion that the threat of nuclear weapons or their use is generally contrary to international law.
Notwithstanding, the US government continues to possess and maintain approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, and is conducting an ongoing program of subcritical nuclear testing. In addition, the so-called mini nuclear weapons that are the subject of new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of force. In terms of the radioactivity that such weapons would release, there would be no difference compared to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed.
People of America: The path leading to the eventual survival of the human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The time has come to join hands and embark upon this path.
We call upon the peoples of the world to recognize how scant is the value repeatedly being placed on human life, evidenced by events such as the war in Iraq and outbreaks of terrorism. Wisdom must prevail, and we must join together in enhancing and reinforcing the functions of the United Nations in order to resolve international conflicts, not by military force, but through concerted diplomatic efforts. Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, coinciding with the 2005 NPT Review Conference to be held at UN headquarters.
With the approach of the coming year, let there be a convergence among the citizens of the world, NGOs, and all concerned parties who desire peace, so that the way may be opened for the elimination of those symbols of inhumanity known as nuclear weapons.
We call upon the government of Japan to safeguard the peaceful underpinnings of its constitution, and, as the only nation ever to have experienced nuclear attack, to enact into law the threefold non-nuclear principle. The combination of the threefold non-nuclear principle with nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula will pave the road towards the creation of a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone. At the same time, the specifics of the Pyongyang Declaration must be agreed upon, while Japan itself must also pursue an independent security stance that does not rely on nuclear arms.
We call upon the world's youth to study the reality of the atomic bombings and to internalize a sense of respect for life, as our young people are doing in Nagasaki. The enthusiasm and hope manifested by youth who have considered the requirements of peace and are acting accordingly will serve to enlighten an increasingly confused world. Individuals who arise to take action close at hand can and will foster the realization of world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
We in Nagasaki will continue to share our experiences of the atomic bombing of our city, and will work to make Nagasaki a center for peace studies and peace promotion. It is our hope that we will thus be able to form bonds of friendship and solidarity with people throughout the world.
Today, on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we pray for the repose of those who died and recall to mind their suffering, we the citizens of Nagasaki pledge our commitment to the realization of true peace in the world, free from nuclear weapons.
-------- latinamerica
Peru: Stolen Nukes Can't Make Dirty Bomb
August 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Peru-Radioactive-Material.html
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- The head of the Peruvian Institute of Nuclear Energy said Monday that two stolen nuclear measuring devices used by miners do not contain enough radioactive material to produce a ``dirty bomb.''
Institute president Modesto Montoya told The Associated Press that the missing 44-pound industrial measurers each contain about 3.5 ounces of removable, encapsulated cesium 137. They were stolen on July 31, most likely for sale to a scrap collector, he said.
Although the amount of cesium 137 would not be enough to make a radioactive bomb, it could cause serious burns if carried around in a pocket for several days, Montoya said.
The radioactive material could also contaminate a scrap yard if accidentally melted down, he said after holding a news conference to warn Lima residents.
Montoya said the measuring devices were stolen from a Lima warehouse. Shaped like two cylinders separated by a u-clamp, the 14 inch by 8 inch contraptions can be attached to tubes and small tanks.
The devices are used to measure density flows of slurry being pumped from mines to determine how much of the liquefied ore is being processed and ensure pumps are not overloaded.
In all, 23 companies in Peru have 262 of the nuclear devices, Montoya said.
Cesium 137 is a soft, silvery white metal that melts at 83 degrees. Besides various industrial applications, it is also used to treat cancer patients with radiation.
The greatest source of cesium 137 contamination worldwide came from fallout generated by atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Most of that radiation has since decayed, however.
On the Net:
EPA web site about cesium-137: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/cesium.htm
-------- missile defense
U.S. Expands Greenland Relations in Support of Missile Defense
August 9, 2004
IGALIKU, Greenland, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-09-02.asp
Agreements broadening environmental, economic, and technical cooperation between the United States, Denmark and Greenland were signed here on Friday after two years of negotiation. The accord, which modernizes the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement, paves the way for an upgrade of radar facilities at Thule Air Base to support the U.S. missile defense program.
The agreements were signed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Greenland Deputy Premier Josef Motzfeldt, and Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller. Greenland became an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953 and was granted home rule in 1979.
During an interview with Greenland TV on Friday, Powell said the Thule Air Base is "really designed to make sure that we have in place the kinds of surveillance operations and activities that would be useful if these rogue nations, these nations that we know were developing long-range missiles and could carry weapons of mass destruction, actually are able to put these weapons in place."
At that time it would be too late to "locate them and protect ourselves," said Powell, "the time to do that is now."
Thule would be one point in the missile defense system known as Star Wars, along with Kodiak Island and Ft. Greely in Alaska.
Powell explained that what will take place at Thule in the short term are "some fairly modest software and fairly minor hardware upgrades to the facility, which will not be obvious to the average person passing by."
"We're some distance away from determining where we might need interceptors," Powell said, "but there are no plans right now for anything other than what we have already made known to the Home Rule government and to the Kingdom of Denmark."
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller expressed support for the U.S. missile defense system that is expected to be part of the future configuration of the Thule Air Base. "We have not said we are opposed to missile defense systems. We have never said that. We have said it cannot defend us against terrorism, all sorts of terrorism, but that doesn't mean you should not defend yourself against some sort of terrorism."
"One of the threats to the future will be wild weapons of mass destruction. So if you have better possibilities to stop one of those weapons of mass destruction, that's a good opportunity," Moeller said.
Under the new accord, an Environmental Subcommittee is established to meet regularly to identify and address environmental issues and recommend countermeasures to risks posed by environmental contamination affecting the Thule Defense Area and adjacent areas.
Powell told the TV audience, "With respect to Thule, we are going to be doing more to make sure that the environment is protected and that we are not doing anything at Thule that would in any way damage this beautiful country."
Most of Greenland lies beneath a sheet of ice up to 3,000 meters thick. This ice sheet measures 2,500 kilometers from north to south and up to 1,000 kilomters from east to west. It contains over four million cubic kilometers of ice. Around its edges, the icecap spills down in thousands of valley glaciers, which have sculpted the coast into deep fjords and dramatic landscapes.
The Declaration of Economic and Technical Cooperation establishes a Joint Committee which will oversee a Framework of Environmental Cooperation that is intended to protect the country's natural resources and landscapes. The Joint Committee's first meeting that will be held in Greenland this autumn.
Within this framework, projects outside the Thule Defense Area will take place, including surveys to plan cleanups. The parties stated the intention to conduct a survey of species in North Star Bay as a part of a broader environmental impact assessment in accordance with Arctic Environment Protection Strategy standards.
The framework includes capacity building for environmental protection and improvement, including cleanup. Greenland has the largest national park in the world. Cooperation on national park management is in the Framework of Environmental Cooperation as well as climate change assessments.
Assessments of the potential for oil and gas drilling and extraction of minerals are also planned.
At the Thule Defense Area, projects planned under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Subcommittee include measures to prevent leaks of toxic material to the Greenland environment.
Stabilization of the coastline at North Star Bay with sea walls is planned as well as the establishment of a drainage system to protect land against erosion.
Cleanup and removal of materials and infrastructure within the Thule Defense Area is set to continue, and surveys on air emissions and sewage are planned.
In addition, the U.S. intends to develop a framework for regular public presentation of environmental data for the Thule Defense Area.
Powell explained that the United States "reaffirms that the armed forces in the Thule Defense Area respect Greenland Home Rule Government environmental standards, as reflected in the Final Governing Standards applying at the Thule Defense Area, which the U.S. government updates periodically to reflect the more protective of the U.S. or Greenlandic environmental standards."
The U.S. will ensure that Thule meets environmental standards, said Powell, but other military facilities in Greenland have reverted to local authorities and are no longer a U.S. responsibility. The United States need do no more than provide technical suggestions for cleanup of those facilities, as the three parties agreed, he said.
Thule initially was created as a weather station by the United States in 1946, but its difficult relationship with the local people did not begin until May 1953.
At that time a population of 87 Inughuit, an ethnic group honored in the rest of Greenland for maintaining the old ways of hunting and fishing, was told by Danish authorities that the population had four days to leave so that the Thule Air Base could expand.
Hunting is more difficult at the resettlement community, Qaanaaq, says Uusaqqak Qujaukitsoq, leader of the exiles who are fighting a legal battle with the Danish government to get their land back. Qaanaaq is the most northerly municipality in the world.
Qujaukitsoq visited the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise that visited the area in August 2001 on a voyage to publicize the downside of the U.S. missile defense system, Star Wars.
The Greenpeace log of that voyage, which had a Greenlandic translator aboard, quotes Qujaukitsoq as saying he is opposed to Star Wars, which he fears will make his homeland a bomb target.
He was also very concerned with the legacy of chemical and radioactive pollution from the U.S. military presence in this area, the log states.
In 1968 a U.S. B52 plane carrying four nuclear bombs crashed on the ice in Bylot Sound 12 miles from the base, and large quantities of plutonium were spread in the environment. Read an eyewitness account of the crash here.
Sediment from the ocean floor near where the plane went down showed high levels of radioactive plutonium contamination in a 1991 study.
In 1995, the Danish government admitted some responsibility and paid US$15.5 million to the 1,700 Danish and Greenlandic locals who had worked at the Thule Air Base and were exposed to high levels of radiation from the incident.
The Greenpeace log says Qujaukitsoq and other local hunters said that "they are now catching animals with deformities that they have never encountered before, including seals without hair."
In 1996, Qujaukitsoq's group, called the Hingitaq 53 (The Exiled 1953), filed suit on behalf of the survivors and their descendants, 610 individuals, seeking the right to return to Thule. If allowed, this suit would have closed the air base completely and given compensation for the loss of hunting and fishing rights.
A settlement of 17,000 kroner (roughly $2,288) was offered to each plaintiff in August 1999, with collective damages of 500,000 kroner ($67,294). The Inughuit, seeking 238 million kroner ($32 million), rejected the offer.
The case continues before the Danish Supreme Court. In September 2002, the United States agreed to give back by the end of the year Dundas, a town that had been absorbed by Thule. Locals believe this is a good first step but do not want to stop there, the Greenpeace log explains.
Local politician Axel Lund Olsen, who is deputy mayor of Qaanaaq and principal of Qaanaaq School, said, "If one day a war begins, people are afraid that if a bomb would hit Thule Air Base, all of the food we eat from the sea would be destroyed."
-------- terrorism
Lessons of Nagasaki for Fighting Terrorism
Monday, August 9, 2004
by Graham Allison,
Boston Globe / Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0809-07.htm
THE NUCLEAR bomb dropped on Hiroshima became an icon of the nuclear age, seared into the collective consciousness of postwar Americans by John Hersey's classic book. Fewer Americans remember much about the destruction of Nagasaki three days later on Aug. 9, 1945, and fewer still have reflected on lessons it offers for threats we face today.
The bomb dropped on Nagasaki remains the single most powerful weapon ever used. Dubbed "Fat Man," it produced an explosion greater than all conventional bombs dropped by Allied forces on both Germany and Japan in the war. Within four months, the blast and thermal radiation killed 70,000 people. In less than five years, half of the population of Nagasaki was dead.
In response to this second blast -- and the implied threat of more to come -- Emperor Hirohito raised Japan's white flag in unconditional surrender, announcing in a radio broadcast: "The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."
While the world avoided the extinction threatened by the Cold War, today we face a new nuclear threat in the form of terrorism. Today, in countries all over the world, thousands of bombs' worth of nuclear weapons and materials remain poorly guarded, vulnerable to theft by terrorists or opportunists looking to sell them to the highest bidder.
What if Al Qaeda acquired a nuclear bomb? In releasing its report, the 9/11 Commission underscored bin Laden's nuclear ambitions. As the commission members said, "Our report shows that Al Qaeda tried to acquire or make weapons of mass destruction for at least 10 years." In commission chairman Thomas Kean's words, "Everybody feels that they are trying to mount another attack, and everybody feels that, given their ideology, they're doing their best to make it chemical, biological and nuclear because it kills more people."
For most Americans, the question of what bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve by such devastation has been confused by Bush administration rhetoric that characterizes Al Qaeda as "nothing but cold-blooded killers."
To the contrary, any careful reader of bin Laden's fatwas, statements, and tapes will find a chilling but quite specific list of strategic objectives. Bin Laden's demands of America include:
- Withdrawal of all American troops from Saudi Arabia.
- Elimination of American political and economic influence from Muslim countries.
- End of the "Judeo-Christian crusades" that have occupied and/or corrupted Muslim countries.
- End of American's military, financial, and public support for regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab countries.
Imagine, God forbid, that bin Laden acquires two nuclear weapons in the months ahead and conducts a nuclear terrorist attacks on an American city. As horrible as that first attack would be, what would he then demand of the United States to prevent the second, and what would President Bush or his successor be willing to do?
This unthinkable scenario, in which an American president would have to consider compromise, even secretly, with a nuclear terrorist, need not become reality. The largely unrecognized good news about nuclear terrorism is that this ultimate catastrophe is, in fact, preventable. What is required is to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon or material from which such a weapon could be made.
A serious campaign to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons will require both more political will from the United States and our allies and a new strategic approach, emphasizing a doctrine of Three Nos.
The first strand of the strategy -- no loose nukes -- requires securing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material, on the fastest possible timetable, to a new gold standard.
No new nascent nukes means no new national capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium.
The third No -- no new nuclear weapons states -- draws a bright line under the current eight nuclear powers and says unambiguously, no more.
Such an approach is ambitious, and negotiating the politics of implementing it will require sustained attention at the highest levels. But it is feasible and affordable, and more important, it is absolutely essential to ensure that no American president is ever left with no better choice than Emporer Hirohito, forced to surrender, not to an army of liberation, but to a terrorist's blackmail.
Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His latest book is "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe."
-------- treaties
Bush's policy endangers U.S. security
Lawrence J. Korb
Monday, August 09, 2004
"IHT"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6670.htm
While unexpected, the decision by the Bush administration last month to oppose inspections and verification as part of the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty is not surprising. Since taking office, the administration has taken a number of steps that have undermined the ability of the United States and the world community to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
But given the fact that Bush agrees with most analysts that the greatest danger facing the United States is a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist group, his actions are counterproductive and defy good sense.
The fissile materials cutoff would ban the production of enriched uranium and plutonium, the two ingredients used for setting off a chain reaction nuclear explosion. It was designed to reinforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and impose restraints on the three nuclear powers which are not parties to that treaty.
By refusing to establish an inspection regime for the fissile materials cutoff, the Bush administration has thwarted a 10-year effort by the international community to lure Pakistan, India and Israel into accepting some oversight of their nuclear production programs.
The Nonproliferation Treaty strikes a grand bargain among the five declared nuclear powers and the rest of the world that the non-nuclear states will not develop nuclear weapons, in return for which the nuclear powers will reduce and eventually eliminate their own nuclear weapons.
Since coming into office, the Bush administration has undermined this reciprocal arrangement in a variety of ways, despite the fact that it could make America safer and more secure.
First, instead of eliminating nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is seeking funds to develop two new nuclear weapons, a low yield "mini-nuke" and a robust nuclear earth penetrator or "bunker buster." Second, because the development of these new weapons will require testing, the administration has refused to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification and has instead sought funds to ready the Nevada test site for future testing. In its proposed 2005 budget, the administration has requested $6.8 billion for conducting research and expanding U.S. nuclear capabilities.
This is twice the amount the U.S. spent in this area a decade ago.
Third, since these new nuclear weapons are in reality first-use weapons, the administration has revised its nuclear strategy. In its December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the administration made clear that it would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, including launching preemptive attacks with nuclear weapons against nations that were close to acquiring nuclear arsenals.
This new strategy may well have led North Korea and Iran to accelerate their own nuclear programs.
Fourth, while arguing that other nations cannot withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty, the Bush administration itself withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and has actually deployed a national missile defense system in Alaska. Although this system is designed to combat an intercontinental missile threat from North Korea, it has already provoked Russia to increase its nuclear capabilities and may well provoke China to do the same.
In addition to undermining the Nonproliferation Treaty, the Bush administration has weakened America's own nonproliferation efforts. For example, it has decreased funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative that has deactivated more than 6,000 nuclear warheads in the former Soviet Union.
Moreover, while the administration signed a Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty with Russia that commits both sides to reduce the number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2, 000 by Dec. 30, 2012, it plans to keep another 3,000 nuclear weapons in storage, refuses to include new verification mechanisms in the treaty, and has not agreed to compliance beyond 2012.
Preventing Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons or passing them on to a terrorist group like Al Qaeda was a primary justification for a war that has caused thousands of American casualties and cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
Yet in its approach to nonproliferation, the administration is doing things that increase the dangers of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.
Lawrence J. Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He also served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear Energy to Go: A Self-Contained, Portable Reactor
by Gabriele Rennie
July/August 2004
"Science and Technology Review",
published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboraty
http://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug04/Smith.html
NUCLEAR energy supplies 20 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. and 16 percent of that used throughout the world. But as the global use of nuclear energy grows, so do concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear plants and fuel materials to misuse or attacks by terrorists. A Livermore team is part of a Department of Energy (DOE) collaboration that is addressing both the growing need for nuclear energy and the concern over nuclear proliferation by pursuing a concept called SSTAR, a small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor.
SSTAR is designed to be a self-contained reactor in a tamper-resistant container. The goal is to provide reliable and cost-effective electricity, heat, and freshwater. The design could also be adapted to produce hydrogen for use as an alternative fuel for passenger cars.
Most commercial nuclear reactors are large light-water reactors (LWRs) designed to generate 1,000 megawatts electric (MWe) or more. Significant capital investments are required to build these reactors and manage the nuclear fuel cycle. Many developing countries do not need such large increments of electricity. They also do not have the large-scale energy infrastructure required to install conventional nuclear power plants or personnel trained to operate them. These countries could benefit from smaller energy systems, such as SSTAR, that use automated controls, require less maintenance work, and provide reliable power for as long as 30 years before needing refueling or replacement.
Many of the countries in need of nuclear energy are among the 187 nations that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) enacted in 1970. Under the terms of this treaty, the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states-the U.S., Russian Federation, United Kingdom, France, and China-agreed not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or related technology to those signatory states that have no nuclear weapons. These nonnuclear states agreed not to acquire or produce nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices, and in exchange, they have access to peaceful nuclear technology developed by the five nuclear signatories. Unfortunately, the NPT has some weaknesses, as demonstrated by the recent disagreements with Iran and North Korea. Although both countries had signed the NPT, their nuclear energy programs are not in keeping with their treaty agreements.
To address this problem, DOE is funding an initiative to develop a conceptual design of a reactor that will deliver nuclear energy to developing countries and significantly reduce the proliferation concern associated with expanded use of nuclear power. Three national laboratories are collaborating on this initiative. Lawrence Livermore, which leads the collaboration, is researching materials and coolants for the reactor and evaluating how it can be deployed. Argonne is designing the reactor, and Los Alamos is contributing its expertise on coolant and fuel technologies.
The SSTAR design will accomplish DOE's goals by allowing the U.S. to provide a tamper-resistant reactor to a nonnuclear state while still safeguarding the nation's sensitive nuclear technology. SSTAR will also secure the nuclear fuel because, after its operation, the sealed reactor will be returned to a secure recycling facility for refueling or maintenance.
Designed to be deployable anywhere in the world, SSTAR may also meet a national need. In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) oversees more than 100 nuclear power plants that were built during the 1960s and 1970s. SSTAR would provide a secure and cost-effective system to replace older nuclear reactors as well as aging fossil-fuel plants, particularly in an isolated location. Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Argonne national laboratories are designing a self-contained nuclear reactor with tamper-resistant features. Called SSTAR (small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor), this next-generation reactor will produce 10 to 100 megawatts electric and can be safely transported on ship or by a heavy-haul transport truck. In this schematic of one conceptual design being considered, the reactor is enclosed in a transportation cask.
One Size Fitting Many Needs
SSTAR is designed as a lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) that can supply 10 to 100 MWe with a reactor system that can be transported in a shipping cask. Fast reactors typically use liquid metal coolants, such as lead, lead-bismuth, or sodium, instead of water. Neutron kinetic energy is about 250 kiloelectronvolts in LFRs-much greater than in LWRs, where the low mass of hydrogen in the water coolant slows neutron velocity and, thus, energy to about 0.025 to 0.05 electronvolt. With fast-moving neutrons, SSTAR could produce the fissile material it needs to fuel continued operation at the same time that it generates energy. Spent fuel in the form of uranium and plutonium would remain in the reactor to generate power for up to 30 years. The spent reactor would then be returned to a secure recycling facility to close the fuel cycle and to minimize the high-level wastes generated by nuclear reactors, thus reducing the space and infrastructure needed for the long-term storage of radioactive wastes. The concept for recycling is to have almost all of the waste burned in the reactor's core.
According to project leader Craig Smith, a nuclear engineer in Livermore's Energy and Environment Directorate, the reactor will be about 15 meters tall by 3 meters wide and will not weigh more than 500 tons-small and lightweight enough to be transported on a ship and by a heavy-haul transport truck. "With SSTAR, countries won't need a large nuclear reactor industry to benefit from nuclear energy," says Smith. "Because the supplier nation will provide both the reactor and the associated fuel-cycle services, the host nation can produce electricity without needing an independent supply of uranium or other fuel at the front end of the cycle. The host nation also won't have to dispose of the nuclear waste at the back end of the cycle."
In addition, the current SSTAR design reduces the potential for a terrorist to divert or misuse the nuclear materials and technology. Nuclear fuel will be contained within the sealed, tamper-resistant reactor vessel when it is shipped to its destination, and the spent reactor core will be returned to the supplier for recycling.
SSTAR addresses proliferation concerns with other features as well. No refueling is necessary during the reactor's operation, which eliminates access to and long-term storage of nuclear materials on-site. The design also includes detection and signaling systems to identify actions that threaten the security of the reactor. And because of the reactor's small size and its thermal and nuclear characteristics, the design can include a passive method to shut down and cool the reactor in response to hardware or control failures.
When it is upright, SSTAR will be about 15 meters high and 3 meters wide, and its total weight will not exceed 500 tons. This compact size will allow the nuclear reactor to be transported on a ship and by a heavy-haul transport truck.
Reduced Operating Costs
SSTAR also offers potential cost reductions over conventional nuclear reactors. Using lead or lead-bismuth as a cooling material instead of water eliminates the large, high-pressure vessels and piping needed to contain the reactor coolant. The low pressure of the lead coolant also allows for a more compact reactor because the steam generator can be incorporated into the reactor vessel. Plus with no refueling downtime and no spent fuel rods to be managed, the reactor can produce energy continuously and with fewer personnel.
SSTAR may also reduce costs for the transportation industry by providing a cheaper source of fuel to power passenger cars. Because LFRs can potentially operate at high temperatures (up to about 800°C), the reactor can be used to generate the heat required for efficient production of hydrogen, which is the preferred fuel for fuel-cell vehicles and hybrid vehicles burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. (See S&TR, June 2003, Flexibly Fueled Storage Tank Brings Hydrogen-Powered Cars Closer to Reality.) As oil production becomes more expensive and constraints on carbon dioxide emissions tighten, the search for alternatives to fossil fuels becomes more important. SSTAR has the potential to address a critical national and international need for the future.
Tackling the Design Challenges
Several challenges must be addressed before the SSTAR design is ready for prototype testing. The Livermore team must develop materials for the fuel and coolant boundary that are compatible with the coolant. Lead, especially when alloyed with bismuth, tends to corrode the fuel cladding and structural steel. Controlling the oxygen in the coolant will help reduce corrosion. In addition, the team must identify materials that would best withstand the damaging effects of long-term exposure to fast neutrons. Structural damage could include material swelling and ductility loss, both of which may limit the life of the reactor.
In 2003, the Laboratory's SSTAR team participated in a feasibility study with a team from the Central Research Institute for Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) in Japan. In this study, the two teams evaluated a modified design, developed by the Japanese team, for a small liquid metal-cooled reactor using sodium as a coolant. A scientist from CRIEPI is now working at Livermore, and the teams are sharing the results from their respective projects.
Passive safety features also will be developed to ensure that any failure in the control system will shut down the reactor and initiate a natural convection system to cool the reactor core and reactor vessel. The characteristics of these features will depend on the geometry and mechanical support system provided for the nuclear reactor. In addition, the prototype will test the performance of the passive safety features and the system designed to monitor them.
Because the spent reactor will be radioactive, the research team must develop packaging and transportation systems so the reactor can be removed safely. The team also must design a process to cool the reactor while it is being shipped to the recycling facility. The design criteria for meeting these challenges may affect the maximum power level that can be achieved.
License-by-Test Certification
NRC plans to certify the SSTAR design using a new license-by-test approach, rather than the license-by-design approach that it used to certify most of the existing commercial nuclear power plants. NRC's license-by-test process is similar to the certification process used by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for commercial airliners. To be certified, the SSTAR prototype must demonstrate in a test environment that it can safely withstand accidents, including the most improbable ones such as failure of the active shutdown and shutdown heat-removal systems.
But the tri-laboratory collaboration has more work to do before an SSTAR demonstration. According to Smith, the team plans to refine the SSTAR design and then develop a prototype reactor, which could be ready for testing as early as 2015. The Livermore team feels confident that SSTAR will provide a new-generation reactor-one that is safe, proliferation-resistant, and able to operate anywhere in the world.
-Gabriele Rennie
Key Words: Central Research Institute for Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI); lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR); Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); nuclear reactor; small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor (SSTAR).
For further information contact Craig Smith (925) 423-1772 (smith94@llnl.gov).
-------- nevada
Nevada divided on Superfund site
August 09, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040809-121535-9567r.htm
RENO, Nev. - Gov. Kenny Guinn, under pressure from a ranking Nevada senator and the Environmental Protection Agency, says he might rethink his opposition to a federal Superfund cleanup declaration for a huge abandoned mine contaminated with toxic waste and uranium.
Mr. Guinn, other state officials and local politicians have contended that the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is making progress at the former Anaconda copper mine bordering Yerington, an agricultural town in northern Nevada.
They also have argued that one-time Anaconda parent Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) is cooperating. Officials also fear the stigma of the area's being labeled a Superfund site, a designation that would turn over responsibility and enforcement authority to the federal government.
Federal authorities, however, said the recent discovery of unusually high levels of radiation in soil samples at the mine is a sign that federal help is needed.
"We realize the cleanup is going to be much more significant than any of us anticipated," said Bob Abbey, Nevada director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Mr. Guinn's spokesman, Greg Bortolin, told the Associated Press last week that the Republican governor "is open-minded and is receptive to the possibility of a Superfund listing as a result of the information that continues to come to light."
Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said state regulators lack the muscle to force ARCO to clean up the hundreds of acres of toxic waste, some of it radioactive.
"This is big business overwhelming a little state, and the state doesn't have the power to fight them," said Mr. Reid, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.
"This is a cesspool full of very, very toxic substances, and [ARCO] should write a check to clean it up. The only way they will do that is if it is declared a Superfund site," Mr. Reid said.
Dan Ferriter, ARCO's environmental manager in charge of the site, took exception to Mr. Reid's criticism, saying the cleanup already is subject to "fairly extreme" regulatory oversight.
"We are doing much, much more than would be required for a mine closure by the state of Nevada, and we are doing more than we would at most Superfund sites," Mr. Ferriter said Friday.
Early groundwater tests at the 3,600-acre site showed uranium at up to 200 times the U.S. drinking-water standard, apparently the result of decades of chemical processing of copper ore in acid-leaching ponds. Uranium also was present in the copper ore.
One new soil sample shows alpha radiation levels at nearly 200 times more than natural background levels, and four other samples are in the range of 25 to 90 times normal, the BLM reported last month. More tests are pending.
Anaconda Copper Co. mined the site from 1953 to 1978.
ARCO is responsible for the cleanup because it once owned Anaconda and a more recent owner of the site has gone bankrupt. ARCO has spent about $50,000 since January testing wells and providing bottled water to about 40 households near the mine, Mr. Ferriter said.
-------- new mexico
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Board to have special review
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com,
Los Alamos Monitor
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/08/09/headline_news/news02.txt
Los Alamos National Laboratory will be getting a visit before the end of the month from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said John T. Conway, its chairman.
The DNFSB is an independent agency within the federal government that monitors defense related nuclear laboratories on health and safety issues.
The abrupt suspension of all activities at the laboratory on July 15 as a result of cascading security and safety violations is a concern to DNFSB.
"We have no responsibility on the security side," Conway said by telephone from Washington, D.C., on Friday. As for safety, he said, "We are watching very carefully. When you shut something down and then start it back up, you have to make sure you start it up in a safe manner."
Conway said he had met with lab Director G. Peter Nanos during his Washington trip and had spoken to him by phone since that time.
DNSFB has had an ongoing institutional dialogue with LANL on safety issues.
For example, a letter on May 21 from Conway to Linton Brooks, the nation's top nuclear official, warned of the "unmitigated consequences predicted for the worst nuclear accidents at Technical Area 18."
TA-18 is the Criticality Experiments Facility just off Pajarito Road, where nuclear materials are used in controlled reactive experiments.
While accidents at other LANL sites might be worse, Conway said in the letter, those would require a catastrophic event like an earthquake or major fire to happen, but TA-18's worst-case scenario could be caused by a sequence of operator errors.
An uncompliant operator's mistakes could lead to melting and partial vaporization of a plutonium core sample, he said, a very serious risk considering that the site is located only three miles from the town of White Rock.
A conservative estimate of maximum exposure in that case would be 40 times the level set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
DNFSB's site representative Charles Keilers said last week he has been monitoring the lab's surveillance and maintenance efforts for keeping the facilities in a safe state, pending the resumption of productive work.
He is providing daily updates to the board, in addition to his normal weekly reports.
"The problems will be fixed," he said. "No one has figured what it's going to cost or the timeline... LANL's going to do a lot of internal assessment."
In Keilers' most recent weekly report, dated July 2, he noted TA-18's own management self-assessment (MSA) validated DNFSB's warning letter of May 21.
"The MSA discusses the strong sense of pride, ownership, and accountability at TA-18, but mentions that personnel are concerned about: high levels of stress and anxiety, increasing programmatic pressure, and programmatic schedules and security requirement sometimes being prioritized over safety," said Keilers' report.
"TA-18 is a good example of what's driving the whole lab," Keilers said this week. "People who are highly stressed are trying to do a good job."
TA-18, he said, was shut down a week before everybody else.
He added, "They're good at what they do, it's just they have to be better than good."
Conway said a second site representative has been assigned to Los Alamos.
Tom Burns, who has been working at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, will be working with Keilers by mid-August.
"The board wants (the people at Los Alamos) to succeed," said Conway. "The work they're doing is essential to the national security of the country. We want them to succeed and to work safely."
Bradbury reopens
John Rhoades, director of the Bradbury Science Museum, said Friday that the museum would resume its normal schedule.
The doors will open Monday at 1 p.m., according to the regular hours.
The museum, operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been closed for more than two weeks as part of the total stand down at the laboratory.
Rhoades said all the staff and managers were involved in a comprehensive assessment.
"We looked at everything from our exhibit wiring to our science demonstrations, how we use ladders, how we drive our trucks," he said.
The museum has had more than a million visitors in its history without a serious accident.
But Rhoades said they did find things that needed fixing.
"Our recorded evacuation announcement wasn't loud enough. We need to be more careful in how we moved tables and chairs around for special events," he said. "There were things we could improve."
All in all, he added, "We're glad to be re-opening."
-------- vermont
Engineers Assess Vermont Yankee Bid to Step Up Nuclear Power
August 9, 2004
VERNON, Vermont, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-09-01.asp
Today a team of inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission begins a three week engineering design assessment at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to determine if the 32 year old reactor is capable of safely generating an additional 20 percent more power. The 510 megawatt boiling water reactor is located five miles south of Brattleboro, in the southeastern corner of the state.
The plant operator, Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for an "uprate" of 20 percent, equivalent to the greatest increase in a commercial nuclear power plant's maximum power level ever approved by the NRC. Uprates require major modifications to major equipment such as the high pressure turbines, condensate pumps and motors, main generators, and/or transformers.
Safety concerns have been raised by the Vermont government. The Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel voted unanimously at its July 29 meeting to seek a formal hearing on the issue of the pressure inside the reactor's containment system if a power uprate is approved.
The advisory panel, headed by David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, voted unanimously to pursue the federal hearing process over what it perceives to be the biggest safety issue if the power increase goes ahead.
'Brien said his department waited more than six months to hear the NRC's interpretation of Entergy Nuclear's proposal, and when it arrived it was "vague and unsatisfactory," he said.
Vermont Governor James Douglas, a Republican, has been noncommittal about the uprate.
The uprate issue was complicated by a fire in the Vermont Yankee's main transformer that forced a hot shutdown of the plant and an emergency declaration on June 18. It was the first "unusual event" declared there in seven years, officials said. There was "no release of radiation to the environment," Entergy said.
Entergy has identified that the root cause of the main transformer fire relates to "weaknesses with the preventive maintenance performed on the 22 KV electrical system."
The plant is now operating at full power, but the NRC still considers the fire an "unresolved item" because "additional information is needed to determine if these issues are more than minor," the federal agency said.
In addition, the NRC faulted Entergy for not notifying the officials of Vermont and surrounding states in a timely manner. In a July 26 Integrated Inspection Report to Entergy Site Vice President Joy Thayer, the NRC cited Entergy for "Failure to make timely notification of States upon declaration of unusual event on June 18, 2004."
In addition, Vermont Yankee staff lost track of two pieces of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, an oversight that come to public attention in April. On July 13, the two pieces were located in the power plant's spent fuel pool where they belonged, but the incident raised questions about the plant's management at a time when Entergy is doing its best to convince state and federal agencies and the public that an uprate is a safe and beneficial move.
The Vermont Public Service Board has ruled in favor of the uprate, but with the condition that an independent engineering assessment be performed to ensure the reliability of the plant.
The engineering assessment that begins today is supposed to be independent. Jim Dyer, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) at NRC headquarters, said, "Based on the team's qualifications and demonstrated ability to identify issues on previous inspections, I'm confident this team will perform a rigorous inspection at Vermont Yankee."
The eight engineers conducting the inspection include three contractors and five NRC inspectors. The team leader is Jeffery Jacobson, a program manager in NRR's Inspection Program Branch. He has led inspection teams numerous times during his 19 years with the agency, said Dyer, "including several that raised significant safety issues."
"None of the NRC employees on the team has been involved in Vermont Yankee oversight in at least the past two years, and none of the private contractors has been employed by Entergy Nuclear in at least the past two years," Dyer said.
"The NRC is closely coordinating the inspection with the state of Vermont. Vermont state's Nuclear Engineer, Bill Sherman, will observe the inspection," said Dyer.
But Sherman already has gone on public record in support of the uprate. On November 5, 2003, Sherman testified on behalf of the Vermont Department of Public Service in an uprate hearing before the State of Vermont Public Service Board.
Estimating the costs and benefits, he said, "The proposal has a net benefit of approximately $9.8 million."
Sherman said that uprates granted elsewhere have been reliable. "Extended Power Uprate plants have accumulated over 25 reactor-years of operating experience at uprated power levels. While Quad Cities 2 has experienced extended outages, the other plants have had good operating records. This suggests that extended uprate-related outages are less likely rather than more likely."
Sherman's only comment on safety was an expression of confidence in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission." Based on my interaction, I can see that NRC does not take Entergy's application for granted, but is embarked on a thorough and questioning review," he said.
He reminded the Board that "nothing in these actions restricts" the Vermont Department of Public Service's review of nuclear safety or the positions it may take before the NRC.
The New England Coalition, an anti-nuclear watchdog group is urging state and civilian oversight of the engineering assessment. "State and citizen participation in the assessment process is the surest way to guarantee public safety," the coalition says.
To complicate matters, unionized workers at the Vermont Yankee have authorized a strike to begin in less than two weeks, during the NRC inspection.
The plant's 148 unionized workers voted unanimously on Wednesday to strike when the contract expires at midnight August 19.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Unit 8 chairman Corey Daniels told the "Brattleboro Reformer" newspaper that the strike could affect the plant's safety. People on the picket line would include maintenance mechanics, reactor plant operators, technicians, and radiation protection workers.
He said that although Entergy has a contingency plan to bring in other workers in case of a strike, no other workers understand the plant's unique characteristics.
The newspaper quoted Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams as saying, "It's common for nuclear power plants to have contingency plans, but the plant plans to concentrate on satisfying the union members." He would not speculate on what would happen if the workers strike.
New England Coalition Executive Director Peter Alexander said the Vermont Yankee should be shut down if a strike is called.
Entergy Nuclear, a unit of New Orleans based Entergy Corporation, is the second largest U.S. nuclear operator with 10 units and the largest operator in the Northeast. The company purchased Vermont Yankee in 2001.
The nuclear plant is located just north of the Massachusetts border across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire.
-------- us nuc waste
Neb. to Pay $141M Over Radioactive Dump
August 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Dump-Lawsuit.html
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Nebraska will pay $141 million for blocking efforts to build a low-level radioactive waste dump and will be allowed to continue to oppose locating the dump in the state, under the settlement of a lawsuit accepted Monday.
The dump was to have been built in northeastern Nebraska and take waste from Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Low-level radioactive waste includes contaminated tools and clothing from nuclear power plants, hospitals and research centers.
The Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission -- representing the five states -- voted 3-1 Monday to accept Nebraska's proposed settlement of the court fight. Kansas voted against and Nebraska could not vote.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Lincoln ruled in 2002 that former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated plot to keep the regional dump from being built in Nebraska. State officials had argued they did not license the dump because of concerns about possible pollution and a high water table at the proposed site.
Kopf ordered Nebraska to pay $151 million in damages plus interest, but did not address the issue of where the dump should be placed. Nebraska agreed Monday to drop its appeal of that decision.
The dispute had its genesis in 1970, when Nevada, South Carolina and Washington state grew tired of accepting low-level radioactive waste from the rest of the country. As a result, Congress told the states in 1980 to build their own dumps or join regional groups to dispose of the waste.
No regional compact has built a dump yet.
Jim O'Connell, Kansas' representative on the commission, said he voted against the settlement because of the way Nebraska blocked construction of the site.
``It means that a state can conduct ... what amounts to a sham review of a license application, do so at an exorbitant cost and then, when eventually being caught at it, can absolve itself by refunding the money,'' he said.
But Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns called the deal a success for the state, noting that with interest, the $151 million judgment would have brought Nebraska's total bill to $207 million. And the other states had initially insisted after the 2002 ruling that Nebraska was still obligated to host a nuclear waste dump, Johanns said.
``Considering the potential downside of this, this is a good settlement for the state,'' Johanns said. He said tax revenues are improving and he thinks he can pay the settlement without seeking a tax increase.
Nebraska is in the middle of an ongoing budget crisis and lawmakers will use the legislative session beginning January to find the money. ``It won't be easy, but at least it will be behind us,'' said state Sen. Roger Wehrbein, chairman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.
Nebraska has offered to pay Texas a flat fee of $25 million to take the low-level radioactive waste from the five states, plus $5 million to cover any unforeseen expenses for storing it. The Texas Legislature has already approved the establishment of two other private waste disposal facilities.
A spokesman for Nelson, David DiMartino, said the senator had not seen the settlement and could not be reached for comment because he was traveling overseas.
His chief of staff, Tim Becker, said he was sure the settlement will be an issue in Nelson's 2006 re-election bid, especially if Johanns runs against him as expected.
``It has been a political issue -- I suspect it will continue to be a political issue,'' Becker said.
On the Net:
Central Interstate Compact: http://www.cillrwcc.org/
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Taliban Maintains Grip Rooted in Fear
In Afghan Mountains, U.S. Forces Face Elusive Foe Bent on Disrupting Elections
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50666-2004Aug8?language=printer
PARLAY, Afghanistan, Aug. 8 -- Sifullah is just 14 years old, but he knows enough to be afraid to bring tea.
"If anybody sees me bringing tea, they'll ask me why I am helping the coalition forces," he said softly to a small group of U.S. soldiers and a reporter. "I'm afraid of the Taliban."
The Taliban guerrillas usually come out at night, walking from the other side of the mountain, Sifullah said. They have long beards and usually dress in white, with big black or white turbans. Often they carry AK-47 assault rifles on their shoulders and 9mm pistols at their sides. Sometimes they have satellite telephones. They search the stone huts of this village for weapons, making the women wait outside.
And they come with a message: Do not help the Americans and their allies fighting in Afghanistan, and do not register to vote in the Oct. 9 presidential election, or you and your family will be killed.
Here in the northeast corner of Kandahar province, still considered a Taliban stronghold more than 2 1/2 years after the repressive Islamic movement was ousted from power, Sifullah's story was corroborated over and over -- by an old man who fled to a nearby village after receiving threats, by a 16-year-old who was held for five hours while the Taliban searched for his older brother, and by a local militia commander whose brother was killed by the Taliban and who now works closely with U.S. forces.
Taliban fighters are abundant in the mountains, they all agree. When U.S. forces are in the area, the guerrillas emerge, staging hit-and-run attacks before disappearing back into the rock-strewn landscape.
U.S. troops say their battle against the Taliban is a classic guerrilla war against an elusive foe who refuses to show his face.
"They're scared," said Capt. Brian L. Peterson, commander of Alpha Troop, a reconnaissance and surveillance unit of the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, based in Honolulu. "We've got to pry them out of the rocks to come out and fight."
"They know the air power that we command is devastating for them if they try to mass in number, so they are comfortable working at the small-unit level," said Staff Sgt. Joe Schoch, 29, a member of a long-range surveillance team. He added: "The tactic they are using right now is either hit-and-run or bait-and-ambush. As soon as the choppers come, they're dropping their weapons and picking up their goats."
The biggest problem, U.S. soldiers and residents here say, is that as soon as the Americans leave, the Taliban will return. "We are happy that you guys are here," said Sifullah, who wore a green traditional Afghan shirt that was stained and dirty, a cap and black sandals. "But we are worried when you go back. They will ask why we were talking to coalition forces, and who helped them."
To Peterson and Schoch, Sifullah pleaded: "Please, make a base here and stay for a long time. When you are here, they are not disturbing us."
Taliban tactics were underscored as Peterson's unit left Parlay on Sunday, heading back toward Kandahar. At 5 p.m., the convoy discovered the bodies of seven men close to the roadside; all apparently had been killed at close range. Most appeared to have been shot in the back of the head, with the bullet wounds exiting in front, and one seemed to have had his head bashed in.
The soldiers collected the bodies using the only two available body bags, as well as rain ponchos, and carried the corpses on the hoods of their Humvees. The blood was still fresh, indicating that the attack had taken place only hours before, according to an Army doctor traveling with the group who inspected the bodies.
The initial speculation among U.S. troops was that Taliban forces might have executed members of an anti-Taliban Afghan militia. Peterson said the victims also could have been government workers or others helping with the forthcoming national elections.
Local Afghan officials said they thought the men might have been killed for having voter registration cards, but no cards were found among them. The position of the bodies indicated that the men might have been trying to flee their attackers.
At 6:30 p.m., word flashed over the soldiers' radios that a smaller contingent of 20 U.S. troops left behind at Parlay, the Third Platoon of Alpha Troop, had come under a brief but intense ambush by suspected Taliban attackers firing small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. No U.S. soldiers were reported hurt in the ambush, in which the attackers fired at least five mortar rounds and 15 RPGs.
The ambush appeared timed to coincide with the departure of the main force of Alpha Troop soldiers Sunday morning, and the tactic of ambushing and retreating was familiar to these soldiers. "That's what they do," said Staff Sgt. Sean Shirey of Culver City, Calif. "They won't come out and fight."
A similar incident occurred when Peterson and his 35-man unit arrived Thursday, along with a truckload of local militiamen. They were acting on tips from residents that as many as 300 armed Taliban members were in the area, intimidating villagers and making voter registration all but impossible.
But when Peterson's convoy of eight armored Humvees arrived, positioning themselves on a plain between the mountains and between two villages, the soldiers found most of the stone huts occupied by women, children and elderly men.
The Americans saw men racing away over the mountains as they arrived. The reconnaissance team and the militia fighters briefly gave chase, and two helicopters circled overhead. But the men disappeared over the rocks. The Americans found only a freshly burned pile of what appeared to be clothes.
The U.S. soldiers could also tell that they were under constant surveillance as they set up a temporary position. "See that guy over there!" shouted Spec. Nick Plummer, 25, of Klamath Falls, Ore., peering through binoculars from the gunner's hatch of Peterson's Humvee. "He appears out of nowhere. Then he disappears into the rocks whenever the aircraft fly overhead."
On Saturday morning, Peterson decided to lead a foot patrol through one of the tiny villages where the Americans had spotted suspicious activity at night. They also had, from local informants, the names of several high-ranking Taliban leaders in the area. But as the 16 soldiers and their Afghan militia allies arrived, racing through the almond groves, about 20 Afghan men could be seen fleeing across the mountains -- again, leaving behind women, children and elderly men sitting among sacks of almonds and dried apricots.
A quick search of one stone building in the compound found sleeping mats that could accommodate as many as 30 people -- far more people than were found there. There was also a rusting metal container, which, when opened, revealed a false bottom leading to a deep shaft, which could have been either a well or an escape tunnel.
The remaining villagers denied that any of the men who fled were with the Taliban. The men ran away, they said, because they feared being arrested. Peterson was unconvinced.
"When I come in and they run, that makes no sense to me," he told the villagers through his interpreter. "Who am I supposed to believe?"
For the troops, it was a familiar story. "We aren't going to find anything here," Schoch said. "We just have to wait for them to hit us."
Added Shirey : "This gets old."
The same unit did run into a Taliban ambush two weeks ago while returning from the same village. It was a classic ambush, with the Humvee convoy caught on low ground and peppered with automatic-weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The U.S. troops returned fire, killing perhaps five attackers, although they did not recover the bodies. They took four prisoners, including a 12-year-old boy who picked up an assault rifle dropped by another fighter and began firing on the troops. The boy was shot in the buttocks and is undergoing treatment at the U.S. base at the Kandahar air field.
"They probably shot 500 rounds at us," said Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Bishop, 34, of Fairfield, Ohio. Bishop was in the last vehicle of the convoy, which was hit with a grenade and several bullets, causing a flat tire. "I thought the vehicle was on fire because of all the smoke," he said.
Another threat to U.S. troops in this area has been the proliferation of improvised roadside bombs. Because the armored Humvees are able to withstand many such explosions, the Taliban fighters have switched to a new tactic -- triple-stacking antitank mines for more lethal effect.
With the enemy so elusive, little is known about the Taliban guerrillas here and how they continue to exert control in the area, except for the information coaxed from locals who are not too frightened to talk, and from Abdul Satar, the local militia leader.
Abdul Satar returned from exile in Pakistan when U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in late 2001. The Taliban has put a price on his head, he said, and has warned anyone here against cooperating with him or joining his forces.
About two months ago, the Taliban in Parlay killed Abdul Satar's 30-year-old brother, Abdul Ghaffar, along with another man, Abdul Ghani, who was working with Abdul Satar. They killed the two in front of a group of villagers, according to Abdul Satar and Hayatullah, Abdul Ghani's father.
"First they shot him, then they hit him with stones," Abdul Satar said of his brother. "They said, 'If you work with the Americans, this will happen to you.' "
He spoke during a meeting with Peterson and two dozen members of his own militia in the village of Mianishin, about two hours south of Parlay over rugged road. In a bare, unlit building that serves as the community mosque, with the militiamen's AK-47s hanging from pegs in the stone wall, the men conversed over strongly sweetened tea and biscuits.
Other Afghans who made their way to Mianishin told similar stories about the Taliban in the area. They spoke of as many as 300 Taliban guerrillas in the mountains, and how they threaten people not to vote and not to cooperate with the U.S. forces. They said the Taliban also leave what the Afghans called night letters -- warnings at the homes of people they want to scare.
Besides making contact with local militia leaders, Peterson's team also is assisting with basic medical needs in this desolate area. Every contact, Peterson said, is a chance to glean new insights into an enemy they cannot see.
"Everybody is an intelligence operative out here," he added. "Everybody we interact with is a chance to collect information. But it doesn't happen overnight. The further we spread out, the better picture we build."
-------- business
Windfalls of War
Post-War Contractors Ranked by Total Contract Value in Iraq and Afghanistan From 2002 through July 1, 2004
August 9, 2004
Center for Public Integrity
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=total
Archived version of ranking available
Contractor Contract Total
Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton) $11,475,541,371
Parsons Corp. $5,286,136,252
Fluor Corp. $3,754,964,295
Washington Group International $3,133,078,193
Shaw Group/Shaw E & I $3,050,749,910
Bechtel Group Inc. $2,829,833,859
Perini Corporation $2,525,000,000
Tetra Tech Inc. $1,541,947,671
USA Environmental Inc. $1,541,947,671
CH2M Hill $1,500,000,000
American International Contractors, Inc. $1,500,000,000
Odebrect-Austin $1,500,000,000
Contrack International Inc. $1,500,000,000
Zapata Engineering $1,478,838,958
Environmental Chemical Corporation $1,475,000,000
Explosive Ordnance Technologies Inc. $1,475,000,000
Stanley Baker Hill L.L.C. $1,200,000,000
International American Products Inc. $628,421,252
Research Triangle Institute $466,070,508
Titan Corporation $402,000,000
Louis Berger Group $327,671,364
BearingPoint Inc. $304,262,668
Creative Associates International Inc. $217,139,368
Readiness Management Support LC (Johnson Controls Inc.) $214,757,447
Chemonics International Inc. $167,759,000
Harris Corporation $165,000,000
Science Applications International Corp. $159,304,219
DynCorp (Computer Sciences Corp.) $93,689,421
Raytheon Aerospace LLC $91,096,464
Lucent Technologies World Services, Inc. $75,000,000
EOD Technology Inc. $71,900,000
NANA Pacific $70,000,000
CACI International Inc. $66,221,143
Earth Tech, Inc. $65,449,155
Development Alternatives Inc. $49,117,857
Vinnell Corporation (Northrop Grumman) $48,074,442
Abt Associates Inc. $43,818,278
Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group $43,361,340
International Resources Group $39,230,000
Management Systems International $29,816,328
SkyLink Air and Logistic Support (USA) Inc. $27,200,000
Ronco Consulting Corporation $26,131,923
AECOM $21,610,501
Blackwater Security Consulting L.L.C. $21,331,693
World Fuel Services Corp. $19,762,792
Laguna Construction Company, Inc. $19,536,683
Weston Solutions, Inc. $16,279,724
Motorola Inc. $15,591,732
Global Risk Strategies, Ltd. $14,696,499
Stevedoring Services of America $14,318,895
Miscellaneous Foreign Contract $13,489,810
Raytheon Technical Services $12,412,573
Kropp Holdings $11,880,000
Military Professional Resources Inc. $11,433,491
General Electric Company $8,525,498
Foster Wheeler Co. $8,416,985
Inglett and Stubbs LLC $8,175,245
Stanley Consultants $7,709,767
Liberty Shipping Group Ltd. $7,300,000
TECO Ocean Shipping Co. $7,200,000
University of Nebraska at Omaha $7,072,468
PAE Government Services Inc. $7,007,158
Anteon International Corporation $6,800,000
Michael Baker Jr., Inc. $5,999,566
Detection Monitoring Technologies $5,584,482
American President Lines Ltd. $5,000,000
Ocean Bulkships Inc. $5,000,000
S&K Technologies Inc. $4,950,385
Signature Science $4,704,464
United Defense Industries, L.P. $4,500,000
Simmonds Precision Products $4,412,488
AllWorld Language Consultants $4,051,349
Sealift Inc. $4,000,000
MZM Inc. $3,640,896
SETA Corporation $3,165,765
Diplomat Freight Services Inc. $2,604,276
Federal Data Corporation $1,991,770
Stratex Freedom Services $1,978,175
Social Impact Inc. $1,875,000
Global Container Lines Ltd. $1,850,000
Midwest Research Institute $1,765,000
Camp Dresser & McKee Inc. $1,700,000
Cellhire USA $1,465,983
J & B Truck Repair Service $1,353,477
Artel $1,254,902
Chugach McKinley, Inc. $1,210,846
Structural Engineers $1,113,000
Dataline Inc. $1,028,851
Red River Computer Company $972,592
Global Services $910,468
AOS, Inc. $866,988
McNeil Technologies, Inc. $716,651
DHS Logistics Company $601,497
Global Professional Solutions $590,232
Dell Marketing L.P. $513,678
Unisys Corporation $435,000
Tryco Inc. $400,000
Sodexho Inc. $324,120
Segovia Inc. $320,636
Force 3 $274,651
Baldino, George F. $263,000
Advanced Systems Development, Inc. $259,959
Triumph Technologies $228,924
Carmanah Technologies $213,263
Nuttall, James S. $187,000
Alexander, Deborah Lynn $168,625
International Global Systems, Inc. $157,383
Night Vision Equipment Company $153,118
Reabold, Miguel (Michael) $136,603
Native American Industrial Distributors Inc. $123,572
Ward Transformer Sales & Services $115,000
EGL Eagle Global Logistics $111,000
Young, Brian $106,150
Paro, Amy K. $94,457
Tekontrol, Inc. $85,146
Sampler, Donald L. $81,000
Giesecke & Devrient America $72,700
GTSI Corp $70,220
Expedited World Cargo Inc. $55,004
Lab Safety Supply $53,379
LandSea Systems, Inc. $47,750
Comfort Inn $47,324
Cartridge Discounters $40,492
Bald Industries $35,734
CDW Government, Inc. $35,174
S&C Electric Company $34,800
John S. Connor Inc. $34,153
Outfitter Satellite, Inc. $33,203
Logenix International L.L.C. $29,000
Landstar Express America Inc. $24,396
Redcom Laboratories $24,375
Export Depot $21,182
Intelligent Enterprise Solutions $19,835
The GPS Store, Inc. $19,761
Transfair North America International $19,351
Atlas Case, Inc. $17,243
Mediterranean Shipping Company $13,000
Capital Shredder Corporation $11,803
Bea Mauer, Inc. $9,920
SPARCO $9,215
The Electric Generator Store $6,974
Cybex International $4,838
Total Business $4,696
Hardware Associates $4,304
Staples National Advantage $4,194
EHI Company $3,956
JSI Inc. $3,376
The Complement, Inc. $3,358
MEI Research Corporation $3,276
WECSYS $3,040
Smith Office Machines Corporation $2,961
Kollsman Inc $100
Kroll Inc. Unknown Value
--------
U.S. Contract to British Firm Sparks Irish American Protest
Anger Over Iraq Deal Stems From 1992 Murder in Belfast
By Mary Fitzgerald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50566-2004Aug8.html
Irish Americans are lobbying the Bush administration to revoke a $293 million Iraq security contract awarded to a British firm after raising concerns about the chief executive's military past in Northern Ireland.
The contract, the largest yet awarded for security in postwar Iraq, was granted to Aegis Defense Services Ltd. in late May. It calls for Aegis to provide security teams for the Project and Contracting Office, the body responsible for overseeing $18.4 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds.
Aegis is run by Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards who sparked a political scandal in Britain in the late 1990s because of the involvement of his then-company Sandline International in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Some Irish American and human rights groups oppose the Aegis contract because of Spicer's support for two soldiers convicted of murder while under his command in Northern Ireland. The two soldiers shot Belfast teenager Peter McBride to death in 1992.
Spicer defended the two soldiers, and despite the original convictions and appeals in which the murder verdicts were upheld, he continued to insist they were innocent.
In a recent letter to President Bush, the Rev. Sean McManus of the Irish National Caucus (INC), a D.C.-based lobbying group, warned the contract award could damage the Bush administration's relations with Irish Americans in the run-up to the November election.
"Just when you need to reach out to Irish Catholics, your Department of Defense does something to insult and offend them," McManus wrote.
In an interview, McManus said the contract had caused outrage among Irish Americans.
"This is a deeply offensive and insensitive move and represents a real kick in the teeth for Irish Americans," McManus said. "President Bush should tear up this contract immediately out of decency and respect."
The State Department confirmed it had referred INC's concerns to Defense after McManus raised the issue during a briefing by Mitchell B. Reiss, Bush's envoy for Northern Ireland.
Paul O'Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre, a human rights group in Northern Ireland, also called for the contract to be withdrawn.
"As commander in Belfast, Tim Spicer believed his soldiers were above the law and he disputed their convictions for murder," he said. "We need to know if his background was taken into consideration when this contract was awarded."
In Britain, Sandline was at the center of a political controversy in 1999 after a parliamentary inquiry found that an intervention by the firm in Sierra Leone included shipping arms to the country despite a U.N. embargo.
Sandline said it had acted with British government approval, but the inquiry cleared British ministers of wrongdoing.
The company's involvement in efforts to quash rebels in Papua New Guinea in 1997 was followed by an army rebellion and a coup.
Spicer resigned as Sandline's chief executive in September 2000, and the firm wound up operations in April 2004.
DynCorp, a Texas-based security firm and one of six bidders for the contract, has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, contesting the grounds on which the contract was awarded to Aegis. The GAO is expected to report on the case Sept. 30.
Following DynCorp's complaint, the Department of Defense issued a "stay" notice, putting the contract on hold. This was later lifted, according to Sara Pearson, a spokeswoman for Aegis, and the contract is proceeding as planned.
"The awarding of the contract was extremely rigorous and all relevant facts were obviously known by the authorities. We have nothing further to add to that," she said.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) has raised concerns about Aegis's lack of experience in Iraq in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"It is inconceivable that the firm charged with the responsibility for coordinating all security of firms and individuals performing reconstruction is one which has never even been in the country," Sessions wrote.
--------
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50841-2004Aug8?language=printer
BearingPoint Inc. of McLean won a $3.1 million contract to provide an integrated criminal justice information system to Montgomery County. The ocmpany also won an 11-year, $19 million contract from North Carolina to provide a new retirement administration system.
CACI International Inc. of Arlington won a $15.3 million Army contract to continue intelligence support services in Iraq, including prison interrogators.
General Dynamics of Falls Church won a $19 million contract to enhance data communications networks for the Navy at 16 locations worldwide.
International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., won a contract to build a Linux-based supercomputer for the Army. The deal is worth tens of millions of dollars, but the company declined to give a specific value.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda won a $879 million contract from the U.S. Army to develop a next-generation airborne intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target identification system.
Northrop Grumman IT of Herndon won a 21-year, $1.2 billion to provide aircraft maintenance and design engineering support services to the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force. The company also won a 10-month, $1.3 million contract from public safety agencies of Santa Clara County, Calif., to provide an integrated voice-data wireless system.
SRA International Inc. of Fairfax won a five-year, $29 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency to support its I-Star Database System and Climate Protection Partnerships Division.
Unisys Corp. of Blue Bell, Pa., won a five-year, $31 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department for an integrated messaging system.
American Electronic Warfare Associates of California, Md., won a $17.4 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division for engineering services for the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Stimulation Division.
Contrack International Inc. of Arlington won a $50.5 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for design and construction of Afghan National Army Regional Brigade Facilities.
Lear Siegler Services Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $17 million contract from the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command for inspection and repair to technical manual standards as a reconstitution action for III Corps assigned Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.
Cosmos Corp. of Bethesda won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
EG&G Technical Services of Gaithersburg won a $13.5 million contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for materiel distribution services at the Defense Distribution Depot in Barstow, Calif.
IQ Solutions of Rockville won a $57.1 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Health Information Network.
Optimus Corp. of Silver Spring won a $16 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for federal lead-based paint program support.
Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems of Reston won a $40.5 million contract from the Navy's Naval Sea Systems Command for engineering services.
SmithGroup of Washington and Einhorn Yaffee Prescott, Architecture & Engineering PC of Washington each won a $1.5 million contract from the National Archives and Records Administration for supplemental A-E services for the National Archives and Records Administration nationwide, plus four options.
Heery International Inc. of Landover and Jacobs Facilities Inc. of Arlington each won a $6 million contract from the National Archives and Records Administration for supplemental construction management/design build services for National Archives and Records Administration facilities nationwide, plus four options.
Systems Research and Applications Corp. of Fairfax won a $1.2 million contract from the Navy and the Marine Corps for the Human Resources Strategic Assessment Program analytic support.
R&K Engineering Inc. of Roanoke won a $3 million contract from the Federal Supply Service for management, organizational and business improvement services. Energy and Security Group LLC of Reston won a $1.4 million contract under the program.
Northrop Grumman Space & Mission System of Reston won a $4.58 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency for Kinetic Energy Intercept Ground-Based Boost-Ascent Element Development and Test.
Western Branch Diesel of Portsmouth, Va., won a $7.94 million contract from the United States Coast Guard for exchange/recondition of Detroit Diesel engines. Johnson & Towers of Baltimore won a $7.73 million contract for the same program.
Arnic Engineering Services LLC of Annapolis won a $2 million contract from the Air Force for engines.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Gaithersburg won a $161.3 million contract from the Air Force for Theater Deployable Communications modules and kits, follow-on acquisition. Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems of Reston won a $32.5 million contract for the same program.
NCS Technologies of Manassas won a $5.5 million contract from the Navy for the Homeland Security On-line Services Computer Suite.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
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Local Contracts SAIC to Help Keep Planes Flying
By Roseanne Gerin
The Washington Post
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50842-2004Aug8.html
Science Applications International Corp. will handle the nuts and bolts of keeping U.S. military planes in the air.
The San Diego-based research and engineering company won a 10-year contract worth up to $600 million from the Defense Logistics Agency to serve as supply-chain manager for depot maintenance on Navy and Marine Corps aircraft.
The contract, which will be managed from SAIC's office in Springfield, is worth $150 million over three years and has three option periods worth an estimated total of $450 million.
Under the contract, SAIC will coordinate the production, shipment and distribution of basic parts, electronics and hardware for repairing fighter and transport aircraft and helicopters, such as the F/A-18 Hornet strike-fighter, C-130 Hercules airlift aircraft and CH-46 Sea Knight assault helicopter. The company also will support the repair and maintenance of aircraft sub-assemblies, engines, ground-support equipment, and avionics equipment.
The work will be performed at the three naval air depots: Cherry Point in Havelock, N.C.; North Island in San Diego; and Jacksonville in Florida.
The contract "provides another way to make sure there are parts on the shelf and that the mechanics can do their jobs while the military concentrates on flying planes," said Ed Robinson, SAIC's assistant vice president and division manager for the Integrated Prime Vendor program.
The program is part of the Defense Logistics Agency's efforts to improve supply management and parts availability. The agency provides logistics support to Defense Department and other federal agencies, foreign governments and international organizations.
The contract "really identifies us as one of the leaders in supply chain management with the Defense Department, and no one else is doing this kind of work at this level," Robinson said.
SAIC provides similar services to the Air Force at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia, Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center in Oklahoma and Ogden Air Logistics Center in Utah. Such work at military depots means about $100 million a year for SAIC, Robinson said.
SAIC employs 44,000 workers and had revenue of $6.7 billion for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31.
For more details on this and other technology contracts, go to www.washingtontechnology.com. Roseanne Gerin is a staff writer for Washington Technology.
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Russia Suspicious About U.S. Deal on Danish Radar
August 9, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-usa-radar.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday a U.S. deal with Denmark to upgrade a radar in northwestern Greenland had raised fresh security concerns over Washington's planned missile defense shield.
The deal signed on Friday allows Washington to upgrade the Thule radar to use it in a chain of similar U.S. installations stretching from Alaska to Britain designed to avert potential missile attacks against North America.
In 2001, Moscow bowed to a U.S. decision to abandon the bilateral 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and develop a missile defense system after Washington said it wanted to defend itself against strikes from states like Iran or North Korea.
``The United States has more than once assured us that the future missile defense system will not be targeted against Russia,'' the Russian Foreign ministry said in a statement. ``However, the very geography of the radar in Greenland gives us reasons to think that even at this stage the U.S. missile defense could potentially threaten Russia's national security.''
Reports earlier this year that Washington planned to deploy elements of its missile shield on the territories of new NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe have alarmed Moscow.
``Russia will carefully analyze the situation from the point of view of its own security and reserves the right to take all appropriate measures to maintain it on an appropriate level,'' the ministry statement said without giving any details.
The Russian military meanwhile, has said it does not believe the U.S. missile shield will be effective and said it will not be a major security problem for Moscow in the next 25-30 years.
-------- iraq
Radical Cleric Vows to Keep Up Battle, Defying Iraqi Premier
August 9, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/international/middleeast/09CND-IRAQ.html?hp
Rrebel Shiite cleric leading a fight against American forces in Najaf said today that he would continue to battle there "until my last drop of blood," defying demands from Iraq's interim government that his militia pull out of the holy city.
In a village northeast of Baghdad, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb, killing six people and wounding the deputy governor of Diala Province, the presumed target.
A British soldier was killed and several others were wounded in Basra today when they came under fire from insurgents, the British ministry of defense announced in London.
Iraq's southern oil company stopped pumping oil to Basra, an official with the company said. About 90 percent of Iraq's oil exports are reported to move through the city.
The rebel cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, said at a news conference at Najaf's holiest shrine, the Imam Ali mosque:
"The Mahdi Army and I will keep resisting. I will stay in holy Najaf and will never leave. I will stay here until my last drop of blood."
Explosions and gunfire were heard throughout Najaf today and American helicopters hovered overhead, news agencies reported, as United States troops tried to drive the Mahdi Army militiamen from a vast cemetery they have repeatedly used as a base.
Smoke rose from near the cemetery, scene of hand-to-hand combat in recent days, as American aircraft flew overhead, Reuters said.
A Najaf hospital spokesman reported 3 people killed, including 2 policemen, and 19 wounded today, The Associated Press reported.
A senior American military official in Baghdad estimated today that 360 insurgents died in Najaf in the first four days of the battle, although Mr. Sadr's militia insists that the toll has been far lower.
Five American troops have been killed in Najaf, according to the military, and the United States official, who did not wish to be identified, said 19 had been wounded, The A.P. said. The official said 4 Iraqi national guardsmen had also been killed and 12 wounded.
New clashes broke out today in the sprawling Sadr City slum, a district of Baghdad named after Mr. Sadr's father. The government imposed a curfew from 4 p.m. until 8 a.m. until further notice in the area, which is home to two million people.
In the southern city of Basra, British forces fought gun battles through the day with Mahdi Army militiamen.
Two British military Land Rovers were set on fire by guerrillas as militiamen loyal to Mr. Sadr roamed the streets brandishing assault rifles and firing on troops with rocket-propelled grenades, Reuters said.
"There are ongoing engagements, it's certainly a conflict," a press spokeswoman in Basra was quoted as saying.
The A.P. reported that a military spokesman, Maj. Neal O'Brien, said the car bombing in Balad Ruz, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, was aimed at the home of Diyala Province's deputy governor, Aqil Hamid al-Adili, and that he was in stable condition and was being treated at a coalition medical facility.
Six Iraqi policemen were killed and at least 17 people were wounded, including policemen and passers-by, said Police Brig. Daoud Mahmoud, according to The A.P.
A white station wagon laden with explosives blew up outside Mr. Adili's home, shattering windows and blowing the doors off their hinges. Mr. Adili's 9-year-old son was lightly wounded, Brigadier Mahmoud said.
A car also blew up in the town of Khalidiya, killing four people inside the vehicle and injuring a pedestrian, Police Col. Falah Mubarak told The A.P. from Ramadi, a nearby city about 70 miles west of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, Iraq's defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, accused Iran of helping arm the Shiite militiamen.
"There are Iranian-made weapons that have been found in the hands of criminals in Najaf who received these weapons from across the Iranian border," Mr. Shaalan said in an interview with the Arab-language television network Al Arabiya.
Iran has previously denied interfering in Iraq, though it has acknowledged that fighters might be crossing its long border into Iraq illegally.
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Premier Warns Gunmen In Najaf
Arrest Warrants Issued For Chalabi, Nephew
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49487-2004Aug8?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Aug. 8 -- Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, made a surprise visit to the battle-scarred holy city of Najaf on Sunday and threatened to forcibly remove armed fighters if they did not leave voluntarily, taking a defiant stand against Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Allawi did not mention Sadr or his fighters, the Mahdi Army, but said he would not negotiate with any militia members. The Mahdi Army has battled U.S. and Iraqi forces intensely over four days.
"We hope this thing ends as soon as possible," Allawi said. "The gunmen should leave the city and holy shrine quickly, lay down their weapons and return to the rule of order and law, and if not, they will be out by force."
Later Sunday, Iraq's chief investigating judge announced that arrest warrants had been issued for Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile leader and a former member of the now-defunct Governing Council, on counterfeiting charges, and for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, on murder charges, the Associated Press reported.
Chalabi had long been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans before the U.S. occupation formally ended in June. Earlier this year, U.S. officials accused him of revealing U.S. secrets to Iran, and in May, Iraqi police backed by U.S. soldiers raided his home and the offices of his organization, the Iraqi National Congress. At one time, the group received $335,000 a month from the Pentagon for help in gathering prewar intelligence on Iraq.
The warrants, issued Saturday by Judge Zuhair Maliky, accused Ahmed Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, which were removed from circulation last year. Salem Chalabi, currently the head of the tribunal trying former president Saddam Hussein, is named as a suspect in the murder of a Finance Ministry official about three months ago, the Associated Press reported.
Both men denied the charges, dismissing them as part of a political conspiracy against them and their family. Ahmed Chalabi is currently in Iran, and Salem Chalabi reportedly is in London.
"The charges that I have been involved in counterfeiting Iraqi currency are false and outrageous," Ahmed Chalabi said in a statement. "I can easily prove that these charges are untrue and I intend to defend myself and clear my name."
The interim government also announced Sunday that it would reinstate the death penalty, which had been banned under the U.S.-led occupation, as part of an effort to quell the insurgency.
"Today is the most difficult day in my career because I am supposed to care for and guard human life," said Bakhtyar Amin, Iraq's human rights minister. "But the deteriorating security situation, the widespread armed attacks on civilian workers and foreign workers, and the increasing cross-border drug trade" forced the government to act, Amin said.
The death penalty would apply only in cases of murder, rape, armed attacks against police and government authorities, and trafficking in weapons and drugs, officials said.
Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq issued a videotape asserting that it had kidnapped an Iranian diplomat and showing a passport and business card that identified him as Fereidoun Jahani. The Iranian Embassy confirmed that Jahani had disappeared Wednesday while traveling from Baghdad to Karbala, another Shiite holy city.
The group issued a statement accusing Iranian officials at the consulate in Karbala of inciting strife between Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims and Sunnis loyal to Hussein.
Allawi's declaration in Najaf angered Sadr's top associates and escalated the war of rhetoric. Allawi has previously blamed criminal gangs, not Sadr and his militia, for the fighting, which broke out Thursday in the city and quickly spread to the southern cities of Amarah, Nasiriyah and Basra, and to Sadr City, a large Shiite slum in Baghdad. "It's very strange that Allawi asks the Mahdi Army to leave the city," said Ahmed Shaibani, Sadr's spokesman in Najaf. "How can people leave their city? They are Iraqis, not foreigners. We wish to negotiate. Allawi has to know that the Sadr trend has a big popular base in Iraq. He is making a big mistake by refusing to negotiate."
A spokesman for Sadr in Baghdad, Hazem Aaraji, said the fighters would not back down.
"Today Allawi came to give orders to his army to destroy the Sadr trend without knowing that the Mahdi Army fighters are ready for martyrdom," Aaraji told the al-Arabiya satellite network. "The Iraqi forces started the blood pool. The Mahdi Army are defenders, not attackers."
Iraqi religious and political leaders have called for negotiations to end the clashes.
Mohsen Abdul Hamid, a Sunni scholar who leads the Iraqi Islamic Party and was a member of the Governing Council, said Sadr "should handle the situation wisely and withdraw and go back to the negotiations."
Hamid said he was ready "to help in solving the problem," echoing a sentiment expressed on Saturday by Shiite political party leaders.
An official at Hakim Hospital in Najaf said 36 civilians were killed and 143 wounded during the past four days.
The fighting is the worst in Iraq since Sadr staged an uprising in April and May. An uneasy truce brokered in June to end that fighting fell apart Thursday. The Mahdi Army blames Iraqi and U.S. security forces for violating the truce, while U.S. and Iraqi forces blame the militiamen.
The heaviest fighting came on Thursday and Friday, when the U.S. military reported that more than 300 fighters were killed in battles with U.S. Marines and Iraqi security forces. Shaibani, the Sadr spokesman in Najaf, said 15 Mahdi Army fighters were killed and 35 wounded.
Fighting continued Sunday in Najaf and in Sadr City. The Iraqi Health Ministry reported Sunday that 40 people had been killed in the day's clashes.
Iraqi security forces and U.S. Marines withdrew from Najaf on Sunday, pulling out in a snake of green military vehicles. But U.S. forces continued to fight the militants from the air, using helicopters to fire on Mahdi Army encampments.
Mortar rounds hit the municipal building where Allawi and his interior and defense ministers were meeting with the governor of Najaf. Witnesses said that an unknown number of civilians were injured in the attack but that Allawi escaped unharmed.
A U.S. Marine was killed in action Sunday in western Iraq, the Reuters news agency reported. In a statement Monday, the U.S. military said the Marine was killed in Anbar province, which includes the volatile cities of Falluja and Ramadi, but gave no details.
The Mahdi Army set up illegal checkpoints in Sadr City on Saturday, preventing people from entering or leaving the area, and few residents wandered outside Sunday.
A U.S. Army helicopter made an emergency landing just north of the neighborhood on Sunday, the U.S. military said. Two pilots escaped uninjured.
Jubilant gun-toting men tore off pieces of the helicopter and attached pieces of the ragged metal to the butts of their rifles. They danced in the streets, shouting and showing off their souvenirs.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Calvary Division, which is responsible for security in Sadr City, said the Iraqi fighters had not gained full control of the large Shiite slum during the clashes.
"We have seen nowhere near the violence of April," Chiarelli said, referring to the Sadr-led uprising in which hundreds were killed.
Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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LAW AND ORDER
Iraq's Premier Takes Hard Line Against Rebels
August 9, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALEX BERENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/international/middleeast/09iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 8 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, reinforcing his reputation as a man ready to deal harshly with his adversaries, flew into the embattled city of Najaf on Sunday and said that there would be "no negotiations or truce" that would spare rebel fighters from American and Iraqi forces who have been waging a violent contest for control of the city's heart.
In Baghdad, Dr. Allawi's aides later announced that the government had approved a decree restoring the death penalty for a range of crimes, including some so broadly phrased that they appeared to cover virtually every kind of insurgent attack. A suspension of the death penalty was one of the earliest moves taken by the American occupation authority last year.
The two actions on Sunday, coming amid some of the fiercest fighting of the 15-month insurgency, seemed to set a new benchmark for Dr. Allawi, whose political trademark since his youth in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party has been one of relentless toughness. The restoration of capital punishment had been expected since he took office in June, with a twin-edged vow to curb the insurgency by reaching out to disaffected groups that have joined or condoned it, and to prosecute the war fiercely against those who fought on.
After he returned to Baghdad Sunday night, Dr. Allawi presided over yet another move, perhaps his boldest yet, to curb challenges to his power. The country's top investigative judge confirmed that he had issued warrants for the arrest of one of Mr. Allawi's fiercest political rivals, Ahmad Chalabi, once the Pentagon's favorite to become Iraq's new leader after Saddam Hussein, and of Mr. Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, who is chief administrator of the Iraqi Special Tribunal that was set up by the Americans to try Mr. Hussein and top associates in the ousted government.
In Najaf, the scene of intense fighting in recent days, Dr. Allawi laid down a hard line against the militiamen of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
"All the Mahdi Army fighters should abandon their weapons and leave the city," he said, referring to Mr. Sadr's militiamen, after meeting with Marine commanders at an American base on the outskirts of the city. He promised that an end to the fighters' occupation of Najaf's old city and its golden mosque, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines, would be followed by generous government financing for the city's reconstruction, but said that there would be no negotiating with the militiamen.
"This is the core of the matter, and we will not waver," he said. "There will be absolutely no negotiations and no truce."
On Saturday, his government had declared a 30-day amnesty for a range of relatively minor crimes involving support for the insurgency, but not for killing. That was followed, on Sunday, by the death penalty decree, which was wider in its scope than some Iraqis had expected when Dr. Allawi let it be known that he favored the move.
The move seemed certain to have a deep resonance for a people traumatized by the grim carousel of executions under Mr. Hussein, yet struggling now to cope with bombings, assassinations and other violence that have bludgeoned the country since Mr. Hussein's fall. At a news conference announcing the decree, Dr. Allawi's aides said the government was responding to Iraqis' demands for a "secure life," freed from the terrorist attacks that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians since the American-led invasion last year.
Officials at the news conference said the crimes eligible for execution would be a fraction of those that drew the gallows or firing squad under Mr. Hussein, involving more than 120 provisions in Iraq's criminal code, many of them essentially political crimes. The officials said that the reduced list of capital crimes had been scoured to eliminate any possibility of execution once again becoming a political tool, and said that they intended to make the restoration of capital punishment temporary, to be rescinded again when the insurgency has ended.
But the decree set out several wide categories of crime that could draw a death sentence for insurgents, including "endangering national security," "crimes affecting transportation" like ambushes and hijacking, and attacks on the country's infrastructure, as well as kidnapping and murder. Along with these, the decree provided the death penalty for drug trafficking, for rape, and, in a provision that appeared to be specially drawn to cover Mr. Hussein and his associates, for any activity relating to biological or chemical warfare.
Iraqi officials who outlined the new decree seemed uncertain when asked if it would be applied retroactively to acts committed in support of the insurgency in the 14 months since the death penalty was suspended by L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the American occupation authority. The officials said the penalty would be available to the courts with immediate effect, but added that it was a matter for legal experts, to determine whether that meant that it applied only to acts committed after the new decree was signed.
Privately, aides to Dr. Allawi said they believed that the penalty could now be applied to any insurgent act committed since the United States-led invasion. If this proves to be the case, the first executions could come quite quickly, an objective that Dr. Allawi seems likely to approve. Courts in Baghdad and other cities have been sitting for months to hear cases against people accused of involvement in bombings, ambushes and kidnappings, but have been limited to imposing lengthy jail terms.
In the case of Mr. Hussein and his associates, there appeared to be little doubt that capital punishment would apply. When he appeared with 11 aides for arraignment before a special tribunal in Baghdad on July 1, the investigating judge told each of them that the crimes of which they were accused carried the death penalty under Article 406 of the Iraqi criminal code - a provision that was part of the code under Mr. Hussein.
Officials at the news conference on Sunday said there was no doubt that Iraqis wanted the death penalty back as a punishment for those who were killing innocent civilians in the insurgency.
"Iraqis want to see those who are committing these crimes punished," said Adnan al-Janabi, a minister of state in the Allawi cabinet.
Dr. Allawi's trip to Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, in an American Black Hawk helicopter, gave him a close-up look at conditions in the city, which passed through its fourth day of fighting on Sunday. An Iraqi reporter said mortar rounds exchanged between Mr. Sadr's loyalists and Iraqi security forces landed close to the building in the center of Najaf where Dr. Allawi, accompanied by his defense and interior ministers, was meeting with Adnan Zurfi, the governor of Najaf.
One Western reporter who found a way past American checkpoints sealing off the city said that several hundred rebels were roaming the streets of the old city on Saturday, close to the golden mosque, and that they were derisive when told of the Marine claims that large numbers of rebels had been killed in the cemetery that was the scene of the fiercest fighting. These fighters put their own losses at no more than 40 killed. Spokesmen for the United States command in Baghdad said on Sunday that three Americans had been killed and about 20 others wounded.
The fighting on Sunday, as on Saturday, was relatively light compared with the clashes on the previous two days, when Marine commanders said 300 rebels had been killed.
In the cemetery, an American Army battalion that was moved into the city to replace exhausted Marine units clashed with the Sadr fighters, then pulled back. Marine officers said many of the fighters who had made their base in the cemetery had been killed or moved out, shifting the focus of the battle into nearby streets and other areas of the city.
There was still no trace of Mr. Sadr, who has remained out of sight since the Najaf fighting started.
John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf.
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Iraq brings back death penalty as Allawi calls on militants to disarm
By Donald Macintyre in Baghdad
Independent
09 August 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=549339
Iraq's United States-backed interim government yesterday reinstated the death penalty - suspended since the fall of Saddam Hussein - as Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, visited Najaf amid heavy security and called on Shia insurgents in the city to lay down their arms.
The reimposition of the death penalty for capital crimes, including murder and kidnapping, was announced a day after Mr Allawi's government unveiled an amnesty for lesser crimes in the hope of containing an insurgency which last week spread once again to gunmen loyal to the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr.
Ministers said the death penalty would last until security stabilised. It is intended to apply immediately, but it remained unclear last night whether it could be imposed retrospectively or apply to Saddam Hussein at the end of his trial.
Protected by a 100-strong contingent of American and Iraqi troops, police and foreign security contractors, Mr Allawi declared on his hour-long visit to the volatile Shia holy city that "those armed should leave the holy sites ... as well as leave their weapons and abide by the law." Within hearing distance of gunfire and explosions from continuing engagements between police and gunmen, Mr Allawi and two of his ministers met Adnan al-Zurufi, the Governor of Najaf, who on Friday set a still-unfulfilled 24 hour deadline for the insurgents to withdraw. Although there were no detailed casualty figures, Iraqi government officials said more than 40 Iraqis were killed in overnight fighting in Najaf and the mainly Shia Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
Members of Sadr's Mehdi Army, which was in control of the compound surrounding the sacred Shrine of Imam Ali, carried automatic rifles and rocket-propelled launchers as they searched cars at improvised checkpoints in the old city.
Mr Allawi said in Najaf that there were no plans to arrest Sadr but insisted there would be no negotiations until the militia laid down their arms. He added: "There are some elements who have broken the law and hurt this city. The situation will be defused soon." An Iraqi National Guard Officer, Lt Aqil Khalil, said yesterday that national guard troops had on Saturday chased Sadr militiamen to the cleric's house after a police patrol had come under fire. The troops had arrested the gunmen at the house but Sadr had not been there.
After Mr Allwai's visit, two US helicopter gunships attacked Shia militia positions close to Najaf's ancient cemetery where Mehdi Army militants have been hiding. And the television station al-Arabiya said one of its editors, Mou'yad Mousa, had been slightly wounded in yesterday's fighting.
In Sadr City, three US soldiers were reportedly wounded and an American observation helicopter made an emergency landing near the suburb after coming under fire, but without injuries to the crew. Jubilant armed men brandished the helmet of one of the crew. And there were at least six explosions in central Baghdad last night, including one which wounded at least three people close to the Baghdad Hotel, which is used by foreigners.
In Amarah, 110 miles south-east of Baghdad, which has been the scene of frequent clashes between insurgents and British troops, the Health Ministry said that four Iraqis had been killed in fighting between police and militants. And in Basra, police said that two insurgents had been killed in a battle with Danish troops in the southern town of Qurnah.
The restoration of the death penalty was announced yesterday by Adnan al-Janabi, a Minister of State, and Bakhtiar Amin, the Human Rights Minister, hitherto an opponent of the death penalty. Mr Amin said: "This is the most difficult day of my life." While the new list of capital offences will include drug-running, Mr Amin said it would be applied only in "exceptional cases".
Mr Janabi said the death penalty would remain in force until security was deemed more stable. "The law is to protect the Iraqi people in the face of ... indiscriminate murder. I think it may help," he said.
The Allawi government's 30-day ban on the Arab satellite television network al-Jazeera was criticised yesterday by Adnan Pachachi, the former member of the Iraqi Governing Council who in June turned down the interim presidency. In an interview with The Independent, Dr Pachachi recognised concern about the network transmitting film of hostage takers, but he added: "As a matter of principle I don't think we should try to intimidate or punish any news media."
Dr Pachachi also said he was "very upset" by the death toll in Najaf - estimated by US Marine officers on Friday at a contested and uncorroborated figure of 300 insurgents - and welcomed an offer by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, of mediation.
• Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmed Chalabi, a former governing council member, on money laundering charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges.
-------- spies
CIA 'effectively' gags agent critical of terror war
August 09, 2004
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
By Shaun Waterman
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040809-121539-3204r.htm
Mike Scheuer, the veteran Osama bin Laden hunter at the CIA whose anonymously published critique of the war on terror attacked the invasion of Iraq, has been "effectively gagged" to prevent him from speaking out against proposed changes to U.S. intelligence policy supported by President Bush.
"It is inappropriate for CIA personnel to comment on current events unless specifically sanctioned to do so," said a CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official said that since Wednesday, Mr. Scheuer - whose best-selling "Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War On Terror" was published last month - had been required to give five business days' notice to the public-affairs office of the CIA of any interviews he intended to conduct and submit "a detailed outline of what he plans to say for approval."
"We will then decide what is or is not appropriate for him to say," the official said.
"He has been effectively gagged," said Mr. Scheuer's editor, Christina Davidson, of Brassey's Inc., which published both "Imperial Hubris" and Mr. Scheuer's first book, "Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America."
"This is clearly an effort to stop him from saying what a lot of people in the CIA think about the president's proposals for reform [of the intelligence community]."
The changes would strip the director of the CIA of his role as the head of the other 14 U.S. intelligence agencies and give that job to a new national intelligence director, who also would take over the role as the president's top intelligence adviser.
Mr. Scheuer told UPI in an unpublished portion of a recent interview that he thought a structural change was unnecessary.
"You need change in the leadership, and in the personnel," he said, adding that it was "nonsense" to say - as the September 11 commission report concluded - that the structures for information sharing among intelligence agencies were not already in place. "The FBI has always had agents inside [the CIA counterterrorism center]. Everything we knew, they knew."
Since the publication of the report and Mr. Bush's embrace of its recommendation for a new intelligence director, Mr. Scheuer has become more outspoken.
"That's a recipe for having September 11s forever," he said of the proposal, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
After interviews in which he slammed the proposal, Miss Davidson said, CIA public affairs began to enforce restrictions on Mr. Scheuer's press contact.
"For the past couple of months, he just had to report the names of the journalists who had interviewed him after the fact," she said, "but it was a formality."
Now with between 70 and 80 requests for interviews pending, "the new process will be extremely arduous," says Miss Davidson, adding that Mr. Scheuer will have to ask journalists to submit questions in advance and then wait five business days for the public-affairs office to clear the outline of his planned answers.
"I'm not sure reporters will accept those conditions," she said.
Mr. Scheuer, a two-decade CIA veteran who ran the agency's Osama bin Laden unit until 1999, was required by his superiors to publish both books anonymously and says he has kept his promise never to reveal his identity. But his authorship was widely known among those who follow the workings of U.S. intelligence, and he was publicly identified last month by the Boston Phoenix.
"Imperial Hubris" is a bitter condemnation of U.S. counterterrorism strategy. In it, Mr. Scheuer argues that the West is losing the war against al Qaeda and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has been a "Christmas present" for bin Laden.
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Iraq invasion a "tremendous gift" to bin Laden: CIA analyst
AFP
August 9, 2004
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040808/1/3mad0.html
The US invasion of Iraq was a "tremendous gift" to Osama bin Laden and a major setback in the struggle against al-Qaeda, according to a CIA terrorism expert who has written a scathing account of the conduct of the US "war on terror."
In an interview with AFP, the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror" blasted the efforts of successive US governments and the US intelligence community in fighting what he describes as a a global Islamic insurgency.
"Anonymous," as he is known, painted a dismal picture of the situation in Iraq, a "very bleak" outlook for Afghanistan and advocated debate about US policies which he claimed are providing a fertile recruiting ground for al-Qaeda in the Muslim world.
A senior CIA analyst, "Anonymous" has been widely identified as the head of the bin Laden unit at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He was allowed to write the book on condition he not reveal his identity.
Published last month with an initial print run of 10,000 copies the provocative work, which was vetted by his employer for classified material, has climbed to number five on the New York Times list of non-fiction best-sellers.
It has gone back to the printers for another 200,000 copies and translations into nearly a dozen languages are planned. They include Arabic, French, Greek, Japanese and Turkish.
"Anonymous," a bearded, professorial man in his 50s, is blistering in his criticism of the US decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein.
"It's a disaster," he said. "I'm not an expert at all on Saddam or WMD (weapons of mass destruction) or Iraq but as it factors into the war against al-Qaeda or al-Qaedaism it was a tremendous gift to bin Laden.
"It validated so many of the arguments he's made over the past decade," "Anonymous" said, particularly the claim by the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader that the West seeks to occupy the Islamic holy places.
"We have the first one, the most important in the Arabian peninsula, we occupy that in their eyes," he said in a reference to Saudi Arabia. "We now occupy Iraq, the second holiest place, and the Israelis have Jerusalem, the third.
"The idea that we would smash any government that posed a threat to Israel -- that's validated by our actions," he continued. "And his claim that we lust after control of Arab oil; Iraq has the second greatest reserves in the Arab world.
"So it's been an astounding victory for Osama bin Laden in terms of perceptions and perceptions are reality so often," "Anonymous" said.
He said the situation in Iraq, where more than 900 US soldiers have died, "looks like Afghanistan in the '80s with the Soviets, kind of a mujahedeen magnet.
"I think you can see already the fighters that are flowing in from Algeria and from Saudi Arabia and from Malaysia and from all other places," he said.
As for Afghanistan, "Anonymous" said: "It's very bleak."
"The insurgency is increasing day by day in small measures," he said. "Eventually we'll be faced with a lose-lose situation of either increasing our forces dramatically or leaving."
"Anonymous" said capturing or killing bin Laden would be important "symbolically" but "he's also very valuable in death as a martyr.
"If he dies he'll be replaced and the movement goes on so the worth of taking him out is still there but it's drastically reduced from what it was four or five years ago in terms of its impact on improving American security," he said.
"Al-Qaeda is transforming really into al-Qaedism, if you will, more of a movement than just an organization," he said. "Not all of it agrees with bin Laden's theological arguments or his military actions but they're all united at least in the sense of detesting our policies."
To counter al-Qaeda, "Anonymous" advocates a coordinated strategy of tough military action, diplomacy, intelligence, energy independence, propaganda and debate over longstanding US policies.
"Rhetoric is not going to work," he said. "There's no one listening out there. I think the best we can do in the near term is to undercut the room bin Ladenism has to grow.
"And because we don't have any diplomacy that's working, because our policies basically are hated in the Muslim world, we only have a military option.
"It seems to me that the one national security effort we haven't made is to debate whether policies that have been on autopilot for 30 years are still serving us well," he said.
Asked what the reaction to his book has been at his workplace, "Anonymous" said "I think it represents a good deal of the views of the people who actually work this issue on a day to day basis.
"I can't claim that I speak for anyone but me but the reaction among my colleagues has certainly been positive," he said. "On the other hand from my superiors there's been kind of a thundering silence."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in CIA Leak Case
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
By James Vicini
Mon Aug 9, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=FHU04GMRANWHGCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=5915093&pageNumber=0
- A federal judge ordered a reporter held for civil contempt on Monday and ruled that journalists at NBC News and Time magazine must testify in the investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the media.
U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine for violating their First Amendment rights.
The subpoenas, issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, require that Russert and Cooper appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations with an unidentified government official who was a confidential source.
In an order on Monday, Hogan said Cooper and Time at a hearing on Friday refused to comply with the subpoena despite his ruling and he held them in civil contempt of court. The ruling was dated July 20, but released on Monday.
The reporter was ordered "confined at a suitable place" and Time was fined $1,000 a day until they complied. The judge did not specify where Cooper would be confined.
Hogan stayed Time's fine and granted Cooper bail while they appeal the contempt finding to the U.S. appeals court. He said the appeals presented "substantial legal questions."
Citing a 1972 Supreme Court ruling, Hogan said a reporter called to testify before a grand jury about confidential information enjoyed no First Amendment protection.
"The information requested from Mr. Cooper and Mr. Russert is very limited, all available alternative means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for the completion of the investigation and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt," Hogan wrote.
NO REPORTERS' PRIVILEGE
He ruled that Cooper and Russert have no reporters' privilege, qualified or otherwise, that would excuse them from testifying before the grand jury.
"There have been no allegations whatsoever that this grand jury is acting in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing these two journalists," the judge concluded.
A number of top administration officials have been questioned in the leak investigation, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The grand jury has been hearing testimony in an attempt to establish who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media last year.
Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country.
A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium claim.
The White House subsequently said Bush should not have cited the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media.
Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed by the Justice Department late last year as special prosecutor, an announcement made at the same time that Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from the politically charged probe.
-----
Iraq judge has reason for his fear His caselaod covers the one for Saddam
The New York Times
John F. Burns
Monday, August 09, 2004
BAGHDAD American troops with M-16 rifles patrol the corridors outside his office. At his door, Iraqi bodyguards lurk with holstered pistols. Outside, Humvees wait to escort him to his home, where his wife and their three small boys live behind concrete blast walls designed to withstand rockets and vehicle bombs.
If Raid Juhi al-Saadi is not the world's most endangered judge, he must be close. His current load of 12 cases, for mass murder and other crimes, begins with Saddam Hussein and includes many of the men most feared by Iraqis until Saddam was toppled by American troops last year. Collectively, the 12 defendants are being investigated for the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis during Saddam's 24 years in power.
To Iraqi guerrillas who are fighting the Americans, and who have assassinated at least a dozen senior Iraqi officials in recent weeks, Juhi, the 34-year-old judge who presided at Saddam's first court appearance last month, is an apostate. American and Iraqi officials who set rules for media coverage of the July 1 hearing considered the risks to Juhi so great that they ordered his name withheld from news accounts, a stipulation he withdrew on Wednesday during a 90-minute interview with The New York Times.
In agreeing to abandon his anonymity, Juhi was in part recognizing that full-face photographs of him taken in the court had been published in Iraq and around the world, making moot any attempt to disguise his identity. Newspapers and magazines here and elsewhere had also defied the courtroom rules and published his name.
But in the interview, Juhi gave another reason for identifying himself, one with which many who watched the television coverage of his tense 26-minute courtroom confrontation with Saddam would very likely agree. "There is something very good in Iraqis being able to see that Saddam is gone and that he and other members of his regime now have to face the authority of a judge, of an ordinary man like me," Juhi said, speaking in halting English.
Of his performance in court - enduring Saddam's finger-wagging assaults before calmly and firmly instructing him to behave like what he has become, a criminal defendant, and not like what he insistently told the court he was, Iraq's lawful ruler - Juhi added, "I think I gave an example of what the law can be."
If the arraignment of Saddam and his associates made Juhi a standard-bearer for a new Iraq under the rule of law, it was only a momentary glimpse.
Since the hearing five weeks ago, proceedings against the 12 men have once again fallen behind a curtain of secrecy.
According to Juhi, no further hearings in open court will be held until he decides whether there is a case for each of the defendants to answer, and, if so, he passes the dossiers on to a full trial court.
In the interview, he said he expected it to be at least a year before any of the 12 come to trial, and so that long before any of them will be seen in public again. In all likelihood, this would mean that Saddam's trial would be delayed much longer. Iraqi court officials and the American lawyers advising them have said his case would be most likely to succeed if his associates are tried before him and given the chance to build up a body of evidence against him in an attempt to absolve themselves.
Juhi said that what mattered was not when Saddam would be judged, but that the first crucial step, placing him before a court, had been taken. "We have started the case against him, and we'll finish it," he said. "They say a journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step, and we've taken that step.
"Maybe soon we will be walking faster, but at least we have crossed the starting line."
One early obstacle, he said, has involved the failure to find lawyers ready to defend Saddam and the others. At the court hearing, Saddam refused to sign papers formally acknowledging the proceedings, saying he wanted to appoint lawyers first.
The other 11 men signed the papers, but only after each had requested lawyers, some by name. Several demanded that they be represented by lawyers from other Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, as well as by Iraqis.
"You heard the accused asking for special lawyers," Juhi said. "Well, up to now, I haven't been able to find any, not Iraqis, not Jordanians, not anybody else. When I contact them, they don't refuse, they just say, 'Sorry, I can't do it, not now.'"
If none of the lawyers specified by the 12 come forward, and if there are no volunteers, Juhi said, the proceedings would resume with court-appointed lawyers. Meanwhile, he said, he would continue to interview the witnesses who arrive daily at his office, many of them family members volunteering evidence against the alleged killers of their relatives, and to work through the pile of dossiers assembled on his desk, each dealing with crimes attributed to the accused.
"There is Halabja," he said, lifting a pink file folder with documents relating to an Iraqi chemical weapons attack on a Kurdish town in 1988 in which at least 5,000 people died. Hoisting another, he said, "And that's the Barzanis," a reference to the killing of hundreds of members of a prominent Kurdish family in the 1980s. "And this is 1991," he said, referring to the killing of tens of thousands of Shiites after an uprising in southern Iraq.
At the court appearance last month, Juhi was widely praised by Iraqis - and condemned by those still loyal to Saddam - for the resolute way in which he handled Saddam's courtroom attacks. Faced with a man who so terrorized Iraqis that many once trembled at the mention of his name, Juhi seemed utterly at ease, giving no sense of the psychological fealty still common among Iraqis when Saddam's name comes up. When Saddam called Kuwait's leaders animals and said they had wanted to turn Iraqi women into "10-dinar prostitutes," Juhi admonished him not to use abusive language. When Saddam rebuked him for citing the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 among his possible crimes, saying Kuwait belonged to Iraq and that only an Iraqi in the service of Americans would see it otherwise, Juhi listened quietly before cutting Saddam off, telling him the court was convened to advise the defendants of their rights, not to hear speeches.
Asked if he had not been nervous about confronting Saddam, Juhi seemed perplexed. "I was in that court as a judge," he said. "I was in charge, not Saddam. As a judge, I am trained to work from the facts.
"When I saw Saddam enter the court, my thought was, 'This person is an accused. I have documents, I have witnesses, I have a case to hear.' If I had started to think, 'These are men who killed many thousands of Iraqis,' I couldn't do my job."
--------
Reporter faces jail over silence in CIA leak probe
Time correspondent refuses court order to testify
August 9, 2004
CNN Washington Bureau
Kevin Bohn and Terry Frieden
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/09/leak.probe/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Time magazine reporter chose to fight a court order requiring him to testify in the Justice Department's probe into the leak of a CIA operative's name, while an NBC executive chose to cooperate, according to court documents and parties involved in the case.
The July 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan was unsealed Monday.
He ruled that Time reporter Matthew Cooper and NBC Washington Bureau chief Tim Russert must comply with the subpoenas requested by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in his probe of the leak to the media of the CIA role of Valerie Plame, wife of former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson.
Revealing the name of a CIA operative is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
The politically sensitive leak created waves when Wilson blamed Bush administration political operatives for leaking the information to syndicated newspaper columnist Robert Novak, who disclosed it.
Cooper and Russert went to court to block their subpoenas to testify before a grand jury, citing their reporter's privilege to confidentiality. Hogan rejected that argument.
"This court holds that the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally rejected any reporter's privilege rooted in the First Amendment or common law in the context of a grand jury acting in good faith," Hogan declared.
NBC disclosed late Monday that during the time the ruling was sealed, Russert -- facing potential jail time and fines -- negotiated an agreement with the prosecutor and submitted to questioning Saturday.
NBC said Russert offered to be interviewed by Fitzgerald if it would be done under oath but not before a grand jury, and if he would not be asked questions that would have required him to disclose information provided in confidence.
NBC said the interview was conducted under those conditions Saturday. Russert has maintained he was not the recipient of a leak concerning Plame's identity.
Cooper, however, refused to cooperate, and in an order made public Monday along with the court ruling, Hogan found Cooper in contempt of court.
Hogan said Cooper would be sent to jail for up to 18 months if he does not agree to comply. Time Inc. would be fined $1,000 a day until Cooper complies. However, Hogan agreed to stay the penalties pending an appeal, which Time announced it will file.
Wilson, a longtime career Foreign Service officer with expertise in African affairs, believes his wife's name was leaked by Bush administration officials in retaliation for his criticism of the administration.
He recounted what he thinks happened in his book "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir," published in April.
Wilson visited Niger in early 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate reports alleging that Iraq had tried to buy significant quantities of yellowcake uranium ore there and in other African countries. He said he found the reports groundless.
Almost a year after Wilson delivered his findings to the CIA, President Bush cited the African uranium connection in his 2003 State of the Union address as evidence Iraq was trying to restart its nuclear weapons program.
Novak revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative in an article published July 14, 2003, saying the CIA sent Wilson to Niger at his wife's suggestion. Novak, who also is a CNN contributor, attributed the information to two senior administration officials.
The uproar over the leak led Attorney General John Ashcroft to appoint Fitzgerald as a special counsel to investigate the leak's origin.
NBC said that during the interview Saturday, Fitzgerald asked Russert limited questions about a telephone conversation initiated by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in early July of last year.
At the time of that conversation, Russert told the special prosecutor, he did not know Plame's name or that she was a CIA operative and "he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby," the NBC statement said.
Time and CNN are related companies, both part of Time Warner Co.
Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly told CNN "we're disappointed" with the ruling and said the publication plans to file its appeal as soon as Tuesday.
Hogan, in his ruling, emphasized his view that the government's investigation was being conducted "in good faith."
"The information requested from Mr. Cooper and Mr. Russert is very limited, all available alternative means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for the completion of the investigation, and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct innocence or guilt," Hogan wrote.
-------- homeland security
Hill's police force stands by questioning of journalists
August 09, 2004
By Elizabeth Green
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040809-122739-5849r.htm
U.S. Capitol Police officials yesterday said officers were wrong to tell two representatives of a small D.C. newspaper that they could not take photographs of security barricades on Capitol Hill.
However, photographing anti-terror measures is cause for questioning, and the officers were right to approach the editor and reporter about their actions, spokeswoman Sgt. Contricia Sellers-Ford said.
"They did a great job," Sgt. Sellers-Ford said of the Capitol Police officers, who stopped the journalists in separate confrontations Friday. "They did what they were taught to do, and they did it correctly."
Officers have been rebriefed on proper procedures since Kathryn Sinzinger, editor and publisher of the Common Denominator newspaper, took public her complaint that she and intern reporter Michael Hoffman were "unlawfully detained" and Mr. Hoffman's camera, film and notebook confiscated.
In an interview yesterday, Mrs. Sinzinger maintained that the officers violated the pair's First Amendment rights and civil liberties.
"I think [the Capitol Police] are being less than truthful in the way that they are trying to minimize what they did to us," said Mrs. Sinzinger, whose scrappy Common Denominator is published every other week.
The incidents, which occurred Friday afternoon, caught the attention of Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C. Democrat, who has criticized the tighter security imposed in the District in the past week.
Mrs. Norton, who described the officers' actions as "shameful" in a Saturday news conference, yesterday said the moves were "a direct result" of security excesses.
"What we've done is to trade security for openness," Mrs. Norton said. "That is an impossible tradeoff that we will not accept in this city."
Still under dispute is whether Mrs. Sinzinger and Mr. Hoffman, a rising junior at American University, were "detained," as the editor put it in an online update of her newspaper Friday, or simply interviewed, as Capitol Police maintain.
" 'Detained' is if a person is under the impression that they cannot leave under their free will," Sgt. Sellers-Ford said. "That did not happen here. They could have just not provided any information and walked away, and that was advised to both of them."
But Mrs. Sinzinger said that although an officer told her she was "free to go," the officer had requested and taken her driver's license and press credentials after he saw her photographing barricades on First Street Northeast.
When Mrs. Sinzinger asked for her license back, the officer refused for about 15 minutes, she said.
"I asked him again if I was being detained ... and he told me, 'No, you're free to go,' and I said, 'Then can I have my driver's license back?' But he wouldn't give it back to me," she said.
Sgt. Sellers-Ford said she had no comment on those details.
Mrs. Sinzinger contends Mr. Hoffman's rights were violated in an interrogation that lasted nearly an hour, and that officers also did not return her reporter's driver's license until it was "checked out."
Officers gave back the reporter's notebook within a half hour, but did not return his disposable camera, according to the newspaper's online report. In that account, Mr. Hoffman said he signed a consent form allowing police to seize his camera "because I was worried and didn't know what to do."
Capitol Police turned over a set of prints and the negatives to Mrs. Sinzinger about 7:30 p.m., some three hours later. Police retained copies of the photos over her objections.
Mr. Hoffman could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Sgt. Sellers-Ford said Mr. Hoffman was approached by a Capitol Police officer in the 200 block of First Street after the officer saw him taking pictures.
When the college student could not provide press credentials, she said, officers interviewed him, eventually asking Mr. Hoffman to empty his pockets and turn over his camera, notebook and Social Security number.
Mr. Hoffman "piqued officers' interest" when they noticed "a series of inconsistencies in his story," Sgt. Sellers-Ford said.
"During part of an interview, officers tend to ask the same questions, but in a different way," she said. "He wasn't answering them consistently."
Inconsistency is a pattern of behavior that could help officers distinguish terrorist surveillance from harmless photography, Sgt. Sellers-Ford said. Other behaviors include repeated questioning about security procedures, she said.
"Michael was scared," Mrs. Sinzinger retorted. "He is a summer intern. He is not an experienced journalist."
The run-ins illustrate a tension between police on the lookout for terrorists and residents who don't want their civil liberties violated as they go about their daily lives.
Capitol Police officers have worked 12-hour days six days a week since Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the terror alert to Code Orange on Aug. 1.
After the September 11 attacks, Capitol Police classified the photographing of buildings and security measures as suspicious. Recent intelligence reports detailing the extent of al Qaeda's surveillance of financial institutions in the District, New York and New Jersey only increased the urgency of "making contacts" with anyone spotted photographing buildings, Sgt. Sellers-Ford said.
"I mean, we do respect [Mrs. Sinzinger's concerns]. We're not violating anyone's rights," Sgt. Sellers-Ford said. "But at the same time, we're trying to keep all the visitors, members of Congress and ... ourselves safe. And it's a difficult task."
She declined to say whether Capitol Police have received other reports of purported civil liberties violations.
"We've got to get control of Terry Gainer, because obviously this comes from the top," Mrs. Norton said of Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer.
Mrs. Norton said she will cite the incidents in a meeting today with D.C. and Capitol Police officials.
Chief Gainer is away on vacation, she said, but she expects to meet with his deputy, as well as the sergeants-at-arms of the House and the Senate. The District's police, fire, transportation and emergency medical chiefs and the city administrator also were expected.
Mrs. Sinzinger planned to detail the incidents and her dissatisfaction in a front-page editorial in her newspaper this morning.
"You tell me what the motive is of any police officers on a public payroll who doesn't tell the truth to the public," she said in the interview. "If this was done for our protection, why can't they at least tell the truth?"
--------
SECURITY
Tourist Copters in New York City a Terror Target
August 9, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/09terror.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - Pakistan has given American officials what they regard as credible and specific information indicating that Al Qaeda has considered using tourist helicopters in terror attacks in New York City, domestic security officials said Sunday.
As a result, the officials said, security measures for helicopter operators in New York City will be stepped up in a new directive as early as this week. Among the new measures under review is a requirement for operators to conduct airport-style screenings of passengers for suspicious items, said an official with the Department of Homeland Security who had been briefed on the plan. So far, no groundings of helicopter operators are planned.
Personnel at several Manhattan helicopter charter companies said Sunday that although they had already conducted varying degrees of passenger screening themselves, they had heard of no specific safety concerns in recent days from the federal government.
Separately, a senior American intelligence official said that more than 1,000 computer disks had been seized by British authorities during arrests last week of 12 suspected operatives for Al Qaeda in England.
The seized files are now being subjected to intensive analysis by British and American intelligence, but they appear to contain evidence of previously unknown terrorist planning activities in the United States, the official said. As a result, Bush administration officials are preparing for the possibility of expanded public and private threat alerts.
The senior official, who has been briefed on the information from Britain and Pakistan, would not discuss specific operations that were emerging from the new computer data, saying that the evaluation of the material was still under way.
The Bush administration raised the country's terror alert level on Aug. 1, after computer information turned over by authorities in Pakistan about possible reconnaissance gathering by operatives of Al Qaeda led American officials to tighten security at five financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington.
The senior intelligence official and security advisers to President Bush have said they increasingly see the intelligence about the financial institutions and about possible plans by Al Qaeda to stage an attack in the United States as part of a unified terror plot to disrupt the elections in the fall.
The reconnaissance missions appear to have been conducted three or four years ago, but officials said they considered the information about Al Qaeda's possible interest in things like helicopters and financial institutions to be critical in understanding how or where terrorists might strike, if not when.
"Current intelligence streams, concurrent with our own threat analysis, is leading us in this direction," the homeland security official said of the threat to chartered helicopters.
Still, intelligence officials have long pointed out that Al Qaeda has planned for possible attacks over several years only to abandon many of them. It was still unknown whether the group's top leaders had decided whether to carry out any specific plot against the financial companies or tourist helicopters.
An article in the Aug. 8 issue of Time magazine said that after conducting surveillance of the Prudential building in Newark, operatives of Al Qaeda wrote a report suggesting that a limousine carrying enough explosives to destroy the building might be able to enter the parking lot more easily than trucks or vans. A law enforcement official who has received regular briefings on counterterrorism matters in the region confirmed the report on Sunday.
The computer information found last month in Pakistan and last week in Britain continues to yield new details about who carried out the reconnaissance operations at the five financial institutions in 2000 and 2001, the official said.
The authorities now believe that one of the men who conducted the surveillance at the New York Stock Exchange was Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, who was born in Saudi Arabia, has relatives in Florida and on May 26 was the subject of an F.B.I. bulletin seeking information about seven men with suspected ties to terrorists. Some intelligence officials believe that Mr. Shukrijumah is a close associate of Abu Issa al-Hindi, a suspected operative of Al Qaeda who was one of the men arrested last week in Britain and who was believed to have traveled to the United States at the direction of senior terrorist leaders to supervise and take part in the surveillance of the financial institutions.
There are no charges in the United States against Mr. Shukrijumah, but officials said investigators had been seeking him since shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks because he is believed to have taken flight training and is fluent in English.
The F.B.I. said in its bulletin that Mr. Shukrijumah carried a Guyanese passport but might try to enter the United States with a Saudi, Canadian or Trinidadian passport. One law enforcement official said recent sightings had suggested that he has been in Mexico and Honduras, but those have not been confirmed.
In London, one Western official said that in coming days there will be a focus on the legal process, with American and British officials working to see if, under British law, there is enough information to hold the 11 men arrested with Mr. Hindi.
An article in The Washington Post on Sunday said that Mazen Mokhtar, from New Brunswick, N.J., was under investigation because of suspected ties to Babar Ahmad, a computer specialist who was among the men arrested in London last week. Citing an affidavit released Friday by the United States attorney's office in Connecticut, the report said Mr. Mokhtar operated a Web site identical to one used by Mr. Ahmad to solicit money for terrorist groups.
Reached at his home on Sunday, Mr. Mokhtar said, "I am not interested in giving any interview, at least until I better understand what is going on."
On Sunday, President Bush's security advisers said some of the surveillance activity and possible plots might be part of an effort by Al Qaeda to disrupt the November elections. They said they believed that the arrests may have interfered with at least some of the group's plans.
"I certainly think that by our actions now that we have disrupted it," said Frances Fragos Townsend, Mr. Bush's domestic security adviser, on the television program "Fox News Sunday." "The question is, have we disrupted all of it or a part of it? And we're working through an investigation to uncover that."
Some democrats have expressed skepticism about the timing of the administration's reports about possible terrorist plots, and they have specifically accused the White House of playing politics when it recently stepped up the terror alert based on possible actions by Al Qaeda that happened more than three years ago.
In an appearance on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, dismissed such complaints of political motivation.
"The idea that you would somehow play politics with the security of the American people, that you not go out and warn if you have casing reports on buildings that are highly specific - are you really supposed to not tell?" she said.
Intelligence officials were continuing to analyze new material from Pakistan on Sunday. While no specific timing for any potential attack has been established, "we've seen that Al Qaeda appears determined to attack again in the near term,'' a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sunday.
Officials say they are particularly concerned about the possibility of an attack before the November election, but they say there is still no evidence that indicates Al Qaeda moved from the planning to actual preparations to launch such an attack.
In New York, tourist helicopters operate out of three main heliports and are considered "an area of identified risk based on specific and credible intelligence that United States intelligence officials have recently received," the domestic security official said. "This is restricted to New York right now," the official said.
Counterterrorism officials have been concerned that terrorists might seek to use a wide range of vehicles and other instruments for attacks, from crop-duster planes and hazardous-material trucks to underwater bombs carried by scuba divers because people who work in those industries are generally subjected to less rigorous security measures.
The possible use of chartered helicopters in a terrorist attack has also attracted fresh scrutiny from the F.B.I., officials said. Helicopters "are on the list with everything else - it's another one of the areas we're concerned about," a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sunday.
Helicopter tour operators in Manhattan offer a popular way for tourists, usually up to seven at a time, to get an aerial view of landmarks. Tours can be as quick as five to seven minutes.
At the West Side heliport overlooking the Hudson River, the city posted two police officers last week near the gate where some 600 to 700 helicopter flights take off and land each week, said Edward Miletich, who works for Air Pegasus, which operates the heliport, and Rich Curry, a pilot for New York Helicopter, a tour and charter company. But the move appeared to be a response to the news about Al Qaeda's reconnaissance of nearby financial companies rather than specific information from the federal government.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Patrick E. Tyler in London, Jason George in New Brunswick, N.J., and Michelle O'Donnellin New York.
--------
Capitol, lawmakers targeted, officials confirm
August 09, 2004
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040809-123154-2019r.htm
Congressional leaders have been told that federal lawmakers and the U.S. Capitol, in addition to five financial centers identified last week, are targets for attack by al Qaeda terrorists.
Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser at the White House, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, both appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," confirmed the threats and their extent as officials remain concerned about pre-election terrorist attacks, including abductions and assassinations.
The disclosures helped explain traffic checkpoints and other tighter security imposed last week around Capitol Hill.
When asked directly by interviewer Bob Schieffer whether "there have been some threats against the Capitol and members of Congress," Mrs. Townsend replied "yes."
Mrs. Townsend confirmed that the previously undisclosed threats to Capitol Hill are part of a "continuing threat stream" of intelligence.
"We knew that al Qaeda was practiced in the training camps for assassinations and kidnappings, and there are a number of others like that that are continuing threat streams," she said.
Mr. Biden, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was notified Friday in Delaware over a secure FBI phone line, but questioned the authenticity of the threats against Congress.
Although Mr. Biden told CBS, "I take it seriously," he also said: "I'm not impressed by some of the sources.
"Some of the sources, by the admission or statement of our intelligence people, were of questionable credibility, because we've received disinformation before," Mr. Biden said.
"But I don't want the American people or specifically my wife listening to this thinking that there's hard data that is incontrovertible from hard sources that has targeted individual officeholders or targeted specific places in Washington, D.C.," he said. "But there is a lot of talk about - there's a whole lot of traffic out there.
"There's reason to be concerned. I don't think there's reason to be alarmed," he said.
With the exception of lawmakers on the several committees holding hearings on the September 11 commission's report, most legislators are out of Washington until after Labor Day for the summer recess.
Mrs. Townsend said more targets might be named later as information is gathered from arrests in Britain, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
She said the administration initially shared detailed information gathered from earlier overseas arrests in an "unprecedented" manner.
However, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey says his department was not privy to the new information and was surprised at the sudden security crackdown around the Capitol, which snarled traffic.
"The security measures taken by the Capitol Police last week supposedly was in response to the Orange alert, which affected the financial district, and we weren't given a heads-up on that," Chief Ramsey told CNN's "Late Edition."
"So we've worked that out. I hope that in the future that sort of thing won't happen, but obviously, the city still has concerns," the chief said.
Chief Ramsey's frustration is notable since his former No. 2, Terrance W. Gainer, is chief of the Capitol Police.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said the heightened terrorist alert issued Aug. 1 should not be politicized. Mr. Hastert pointed to former Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean as an example of what his new book, "Speaker," calls going beyond "the necessary watchful eye of oversight into the realm of uninformed hysteria."
Mr. Dean last week accused the Bush administration of purportedly timing the latest terror alert for political advantage.
"Because of the timing, one would suspect strongly that politics had something to do with this announcement," Mr. Dean said.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, Mr. Hastert, Illinois Republican, singled out "Howard Dean's comment the other day that all this [alert action] ... was political," when prompted by host Tim Russert for an example of "uninformed hysteria."
"I think we have to be very, very cautious, and when we have intelligence and new intelligence, even if it's old new intelligence, take that and meld it with everything else and come up with the conclusion of what's right and what's wrong," Mr. Hastert said.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, also a former Democratic presidential candidate, tempered his response to the alert and said it contained "a lot of substance."
"I believe they did the right thing, but they did it the wrong way," he told CNN.
"The way the information dribbled out over time, it undercut the credibility of the system. That's the last thing we want," Mr. Clark said.
--------
Tourist Copters in New York City a Terror Target
August 9, 2004
nytimes
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/09terror.html?pagewanted=1&ei=1&en=399223295eb3c369&ex=1093023098
ASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - Pakistan has given American officials what they regard as credible and specific information indicating that Al Qaeda has considered using tourist helicopters in terror attacks in New York City, domestic security officials said Sunday.
As a result, the officials said, security measures for helicopter operators in New York City will be stepped up in a new directive as early as this week. Among the new measures under review is a requirement for operators to conduct airport-style screenings of passengers for suspicious items, said an official with the Department of Homeland Security who had been briefed on the plan. So far, no groundings of helicopter operators are planned. Personnel at several Manhattan helicopter charter companies said Sunday that although they had already conducted varying degrees of passenger screening themselves, they had heard of no specific safety concerns in recent days from the federal government.
Separately, a senior American intelligence official said that more than 1,000 computer disks had been seized by British authorities during arrests last week of 12 suspected operatives for Al Qaeda in England.
The seized files are now being subjected to intensive analysis by British and American intelligence, but they appear to contain evidence of previously unknown terrorist planning activities in the United States, the official said. As a result, Bush administration officials are preparing for the possibility of expanded public and private threat alerts.
The senior official, who has been briefed on the information from Britain and Pakistan, would not discuss specific operations that were emerging from the new computer data, saying that the evaluation of the material was still under way.
The Bush administration raised the country's terror alert level on Aug. 1, after computer information turned over by authorities in Pakistan about possible reconnaissance gathering by operatives of Al Qaeda led American officials to tighten security at five financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington.
The senior intelligence official and security advisers to President Bush have said they increasingly see the intelligence about the financial institutions and about possible plans by Al Qaeda to stage an attack in the United States as part of a unified terror plot to disrupt the elections in the fall.
The reconnaissance missions appear to have been conducted three or four years ago, but officials said they considered the information about Al Qaeda's possible interest in things like helicopters and financial institutions to be critical in understanding how or where terrorists might strike, if not when.
"Current intelligence streams, concurrent with our own threat analysis, is leading us in this direction," the homeland security official said of the threat to chartered helicopters.
Still, intelligence officials have long pointed out that Al Qaeda has planned for possible attacks over several years only to abandon many of them. It was still unknown whether the group's top leaders had decided whether to carry out any specific plot against the financial companies or tourist helicopters.
An article in the Aug. 8 issue of Time magazine said that after conducting surveillance of the Prudential building in Newark, operatives of Al Qaeda wrote a report suggesting that a limousine carrying enough explosives to destroy the building might be able to enter the parking lot more easily than trucks or vans. A law enforcement official who has received regular briefings on counterterrorism matters in the region confirmed the report on Sunday.
The computer information found last month in Pakistan and last week in Britain continues to yield new details about who carried out the reconnaissance operations at the five financial institutions in 2000 and 2001, the official said.
The authorities now believe that one of the men who conducted the surveillance at the New York Stock Exchange was Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, who was born in Saudi Arabia, has relatives in Florida and on May 26 was the subject of an F.B.I. bulletin seeking information about seven men with suspected ties to terrorists.
Some intelligence officials believe that Mr. Shukrijumah is a close associate of Abu Issa al-Hindi, a suspected operative of Al Qaeda who was one of the men arrested last week in Britain and who was believed to have traveled to the United States at the direction of senior terrorist leaders to supervise and take part in the surveillance of the financial institutions.
There are no charges in the United States against Mr. Shukrijumah, but officials said investigators had been seeking him since shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks because he is believed to have taken flight training and is fluent in English.
The F.B.I. said in its bulletin that Mr. Shukrijumah carried a Guyanese passport but might try to enter the United States with a Saudi, Canadian or Trinidadian passport. One law enforcement official said recent sightings had suggested that he has been in Mexico and Honduras, but those have not been confirmed.
In London, one Western official said that in coming days there will be a focus on the legal process, with American and British officials working to see if, under British law, there is enough information to hold the 11 men arrested with Mr. Hindi.
An article in The Washington Post on Sunday said that Mazen Mokhtar, from New Brunswick, N.J., was under investigation because of suspected ties to Babar Ahmad, a computer specialist who was among the men arrested in London last week. Citing an affidavit released Friday by the United States attorney's office in Connecticut, the report said Mr. Mokhtar operated a Web site identical to one used by Mr. Ahmad to solicit money for terrorist groups.
Reached at his home on Sunday, Mr. Mokhtar said, "I am not interested in giving any interview, at least until I better understand what is going on."
On Sunday, President Bush's security advisers said some of the surveillance activity and possible plots might be part of an effort by Al Qaeda to disrupt the November elections. They said they believed that the arrests may have interfered with at least some of the group's plans.
"I certainly think that by our actions now that we have disrupted it," said Frances Fragos Townsend, Mr. Bush's domestic security adviser, on the television program "Fox News Sunday." "The question is, have we disrupted all of it or a part of it? And we're working through an investigation to uncover that."
Some democrats have expressed skepticism about the timing of the administration's reports about possible terrorist plots, and they have specifically accused the White House of playing politics when it recently stepped up the terror alert based on possible actions by Al Qaeda that happened more than three years ago.
In an appearance on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, dismissed such complaints of political motivation.
"The idea that you would somehow play politics with the security of the American people, that you not go out and warn if you have casing reports on buildings that are highly specific - are you really supposed to not tell?" she said.
Intelligence officials were continuing to analyze new material from Pakistan on Sunday. While no specific timing for any potential attack has been established, "we've seen that Al Qaeda appears determined to attack again in the near term,'' a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sunday.
Officials say they are particularly concerned about the possibility of an attack before the November election, but they say there is still no evidence that indicates Al Qaeda moved from the planning to actual preparations to launch such an attack.
In New York, tourist helicopters operate out of three main heliports and are considered "an area of identified risk based on specific and credible intelligence that United States intelligence officials have recently received," the domestic security official said. "This is restricted to New York right now," the official said.
Counterterrorism officials have been concerned that terrorists might seek to use a wide range of vehicles and other instruments for attacks, from crop-duster planes and hazardous-material trucks to underwater bombs carried by scuba divers because people who work in those industries are generally subjected to less rigorous security measures.
The possible use of chartered helicopters in a terrorist attack has also attracted fresh scrutiny from the F.B.I., officials said. Helicopters "are on the list with everything else - it's another one of the areas we're concerned about," a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sunday.
Helicopter tour operators in Manhattan offer a popular way for tourists, usually up to seven at a time, to get an aerial view of landmarks. Tours can be as quick as five to seven minutes.
At the West Side heliport overlooking the Hudson River, the city posted two police officers last week near the gate where some 600 to 700 helicopter flights take off and land each week, said Edward Miletich, who works for Air Pegasus, which operates the heliport, and Rich Curry, a pilot for New York Helicopter, a tour and charter company. But the move appeared to be a response to the news about Al Qaeda's reconnaissance of nearby financial companies rather than specific information from the federal government.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigrants Raise Call for Right to Be Voters
August 9, 2004
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/09immig.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - For months, the would-be revolutionaries plotted strategy and lobbied local politicians here with the age-old plea, "No taxation without representation!" Last month, some of the unlikely insurgents - Ethiopian-born restaurateurs, travel agents and real estate developers in sober business suits - declared that victory finally seemed within reach.
Five City Council members announced their support for a bill that would allow thousands of immigrants to vote in local elections here, placing the nation's capital among a handful of cities across the country in the forefront of efforts to offer voting rights to noncitizens.
"It will happen,'' said Tamrat Medhin, a civic activist from Ethiopia who lives here. "Don't you believe that if people are working in the community and paying taxes, don't you agree that they deserve the opportunity to vote?''
Calling for "democracy for all," immigrants are increasingly pressing for the right to vote in municipal elections. In Washington, the proposed bill, introduced in July, would allow permanent residents to vote for the mayor and members of the school board and City Council.
In San Francisco, voters will decide in November whether to allow noncitizens - including illegal immigrants - to vote in school board elections. Efforts to expand the franchise to noncitizens are also bubbling up in New York, Connecticut and elsewhere. Several cities, including Chicago, and towns like Takoma Park, Md., already allow noncitizens to vote in municipal or school elections.
But in most cities, voting remains a right reserved for citizens, and the prospects for the initiatives in Washington and San Francisco remain uncertain. The proposals have inspired fierce opposition from critics who say the laws would undermine the value of American citizenship and raise security concerns in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Washington's mayor, Anthony Williams, has expressed his support for extending voting rights to permanent residents, but has yet to garner a majority of supporters on the 13-member City Council. In San Francisco, critics have questioned whether the law would violate the state's Constitution.
In this city, where Ethiopian restaurants and El Salvadoran travel agents dot many urban streets, advocates argue that permanent residents are paying taxes and fighting and dying for the United States as soldiers in Iraq while lacking a voice in local government. They describe the ban on immigrant voting as akin to the kind of taxation without representation that was a major cause of the American Revolution.
They also note that the United States has a long history of allowing noncitizens to vote. Twenty-two states and federal territories at various times allowed noncitizens to vote - even as blacks and women were barred from the ballot box - in the 1800's and 1900's.
Concerns about the radicalism of immigrants arriving from southern and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led states to restrict such voting rights. By 1928, voting at every level had been restricted to United States citizens. Today, some argue, those rights should be restored to noncitizens.
"They're paying taxes, they're working, they're contributing to our prosperity,'' said Jim Graham, the councilman who introduced the bill here. "And yet they're not able to exercise the franchise.
"This is part of our history. A lot of people don't know what the history of this nation is in terms of immigrant voting; they don't understand even that localities can determine this issue. It's a very healthy discussion.''
Critics counter that the proposed laws would make citizenship irrelevant and pledges of allegiance to the United States meaningless. It is a touchy political issue, particularly in an election year when many politicians across party lines are lobbying for support from Hispanic voters, and many politicians have tried to sidestep it altogether.
Democrats have most often sponsored the initiatives, but some also oppose them. In Washington, where Congress has the right to override city laws, some Republicans said they would try to overturn the immigrant voting bill if it passed.
"Is it really too much to ask that American citizenship be a prerequisite for voting in American elections?'' Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, asked in a letter to members of Congress last month.
"One of the things that differentiates American citizenship from simple residency is the right to vote,'' said Mr. Tancredo, who rallied opposition to the bill. "The passage of this measure would not only blur that distinction, it would erase it - allowing as many as 40,000 aliens in the District of Columbia to vote.''
In San Francisco, some critics have also argued that the proposals raise security concerns. Louise Renne, a former city attorney in San Francisco and a longtime critic of the concept, recently raised the question of whether terrorists would soon be allowed access to the polls. "If noncitizens can vote,'' she asked reporters, "can Osama bin Laden vote in a school election?"
Advocates for noncitizen voting rights dismiss concerns about threats to national security, noting that several countries, including Belgium and Ireland, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. New Zealand allows permanent residents to vote in local and national elections.
They argue that immigrants will still aspire to citizenship because it is the only way they can vote in federal elections. And having the right to vote, they argue, will help noncitizens feel more politically engaged and committed to this country.
"A lot of communities are not represented by representatives who reflect the diversity in their communities and are responsive to their needs,'' said Ron Hayduk, a professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and an advocate for immigrant voting rights. "It raises basic fundamental questions about democracy.''
In Washington, Connie Mann, a 44-year-old permanent resident from Namibia, is already dreaming of voting for the mayor. Sergio Luna of Guatemala, a community outreach specialist for the city, hopes to improve this city's struggling schools, where his son is a student. "If we have the opportunity to vote for the school board, the Council and the mayor, we'll be making some changes,'' he said.
Mr. Graham, who was applauded by his Ethiopian supporters last week for introducing the voting legislation here, says he believes the bill will become law, even if it not this year. He says he needs the support of only two more members of the Council and is working to woo them, even if that means reintroducing the legislation next year. Lobbying Congress, he said, would be the next step. "This is not a 50-yard dash issue,'' he said. "This is an issue you just have to keep working on.''
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Senator Seeks Inquiry Into Abuse Report
Associated Press
Monday, August 9, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50703-2004Aug8.html
PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 8 -- A senator sent the Pentagon a letter Sunday seeking an investigation into a report that U.S. soldiers were ordered to abandon an effort to prevent Iraqi jailers from abusing prisoners.
The request from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld followed a report by the Oregonian newspaper that guardsmen saw dozens of Iraqi prisoners being abused on June 29, one day after Iraq's interim government assumed power.
The newspaper reported Sunday that Oregon National Guard soldiers tried to stop Iraqi jailers from abusing the prisoners but were ordered to return the prisoners to the jailers and leave.
Wyden said the incident suggests that "the policy of the U.S. is that we will no longer engage in torture, but we will turn a blind eye as it is committed by others."
A Defense Department spokesman said officials will respond to the letter as soon as "the facts surrounding this incident can be determined."
"Any reports of torture or abuse are investigated thoroughly," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Alvin "Flex" Plexico at the Pentagon.
The newspaper had a reporter with the Oregon National Guard 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, when a soldier spotted a man beating a prisoner in a courtyard near the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Members of that unit later saw other prisoners who appeared to have been beaten and items that could have been used to torture them, including metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. The incident occurred after Iraqi officials announced a crackdown on crime.
--------
Senator Presses White House on Leaking Qaeda Suspect's Name
August 9, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-usa-khan.html?hp
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. senator asked the White House to explain how and why the name of an al Qaeda informant was leaked to the press, amid concerns it had hurt the war on terror, a letter from the lawmaker showed on Monday.
A Pakistani intelligence source said on Friday that U.S. officials confirmed the name of captured al Qaeda suspect Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan while he was still cooperating with Pakistani authorities as part of a sting operation against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, thereby compromising his cover.
It is not clear who was the first to disclose Khan's name, but his unmasking triggered criticism on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as speculation about the motives behind the leak. Security and terrorism are top issues for both parties in this year's U.S. presidential elections.
``I respectfully request an explanation to me and any other member of Congress who might wish one of who leaked this Mr. Khan's name, for what reason it was leaked, and whether ... reports that this leak compromised future intelligence activity are accurate,'' Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote in a letter to White House domestic security adviser Frances Townsend on Aug. 8.
A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters on Monday.
Information from computer expert Khan led the United States to issue a high alert at financial institutions against a possible al Qaeda attack earlier this month, and led Britain to arrest 12 al Qaeda suspects.
Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia, said on television on Sunday: ``In this situation, in my view, they should have kept their mouth shut and just said, 'We have information, trust us.'''
Terrorism experts said the reasons for the release of Khan's name could range from a judgment error to a sophisticated ploy designed to put al Qaeda on edge about the extent to which the network has been infiltrated by moles.
One former senior U.S. intelligence official said he suspected a political motive.
``I don't think that the U.S. intelligence community has shown enough creativity over the last few years for anyone to think of anything as smart as misdirection, or trying to send signals to al Qaeda,'' he said.
Asked about the release of Khan's name, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday it was a hard line to draw between giving the public too much or too little information about terrorist threats.
``We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name,'' Rice said, adding that it had been given ``on background.'' She did not say when or by whom the name was first revealed.
Khan's capture was part of a Pakistani crackdown, which began a month ago and has dealt al Qaeda a major blow.
-------- propaganda wars
Shed wealth, minister tells Bush family, congregants
August 9, 2004
By Scott Lindlaw,
Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/08/09/shed_wealth_minister_tells_bush_family_congregants
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- When the president worships on the road, it is customary for the pastor to pretend he's not there -- or to, at most, greet him and maybe remember him in a prayer.
No one told that to the Very Rev. Martin Luther Agnew Jr., who was up from Shreveport, La., for eight weeks as the summer minister at St. Ann's Episcopal Church, less than a mile from the Bush family estate at Walker Point.
Saturday was George P. Bush's wedding, to a Texas lawyer. So his uncle, President Bush, spent the weekend at his folks' place, and 10 or so Bushes went to the 8 a.m. service at St. Ann's. The dynasty, including Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, who is the president's brother and George P. Bush's father, got an exhortation about the biblical imperative to sell your goods and give the proceeds to the poor.
Agnew got personal during his message about tithing and stewardship. He began by acknowledging he had ruffled some feathers the previous week, when he warned that gated communities ''tend to keep out God's people."
Plunging ahead, he singled out the George H.W. Bush's golf prowess during a parable designed to make the point that an ''intimate, meaningful relationship" with Christ requires shunning earthly possessions.
''Our material gifts do not have to be a wall -- they can very well be a door," Agnew said. Then, referring to Luke 12:33, the minister said, ''Jesus says, 'Sell your possessions and give alms.' "
''I'm convinced that what we keep owns us, and what we give away sets us free," he said.
A plaque in the church entryway notes that the organ is dedicated in memory of the former president's mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, ''whose family provided the lead gifts." Former president Bush is listed in the bulletin as an emeritus vestryman.
Agnew held up a golf iron and asked his flock to imagine the first President Bush taking repeated swings to try to hit a ball out of the rough. The former president made what Agnew called ''a mighty swing" at the ball, resting atop an anthill, and missed, killing about 346 ants.
With Agnew brandishing the club for effect, he said the former president whiffed again and killed 641 ants.
The former president continued to swing wildly, in Agnew's telling, and finally one ant said to another, ''If we're going to live, we better get on the ball."
This was received with silence in a church where the parking lot was full of Volvos, Mercedes, BMWs, and Land Rovers.
''What God is reminding us to do," Agnew said, ''is to get on the ball."
Barbara Bush looked at her husband with a small smile. Her son the president nodded a few times, but the former president sat stone-faced through the story, according to an Associated Press reporter who had a good view of them.
It was an unusually stoic reaction for ''old number 41," as the 43d president calls him. The elder Bush had been kidding around all weekend, merrily hurtling right at photographers in his 825-horsepower speedboat, Fidelity III, then making sure to spray them with his wake as he suddenly turned away.
After the parable, Agnew stepped down into the pews and jovially high-fived the former president. Old number 41 sportingly returned the gesture, but did not smile during the rest of the sermon.
-------- us politics
Kerry vows to hire liaison to Indians
August 09, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Stephen Dinan
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040809-121538-3732r.htm
CHURCHROCK, N.M. - Targeting an audience often overlooked by presidential candidates, Democratic nominee John Kerry yesterday promised American Indians he will raise their profile in the federal government.
"There's a feeling that people haven't been respected, people haven't been listened to," Mr. Kerry told hundreds of Indians at the powwow marking the close of the 83rd Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, held every August. "So I also intend to put a Native American in the White House, directly responsible for our relationship, working directly with all the tribes."
"This is my pledge to you ... John Edwards and I get in there, we will raise the funding for the Indian health system, we will put the director of the Indian Health System directly into the health care we're going to provide for all Americans. And all America's children will have health care automatically, immediately," Mr. Kerry said.
On the 10th day of his post-convention tour across the country, Mr. Kerry rode by train from Albuquerque, N.M., to Flagstaff, Ariz., stopping along the way to speak at this gathering of members of tribes from the Four Corners area of the Southwest.
In Colorado late Saturday, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards proposed a type of neighborhood watch for the war on terror, much like World War II civil defense wardens.
"We need a neighborhood-watch kind of system so that we have a way to notify people, they know what they're supposed to do," Mr. Edwards told reporters on the campaign train. "We shouldn't have millions of Americans, or hundreds of thousands, trying to figure out at 3 o'clock in the morning what they are supposed to do. They ought to know what they're supposed to do."
Mr. Kerry also promised to continue funding research for missile defense, even though just two months ago, he called missile defense "the wrong priority" for a war on terror and said he supported some cuts.
"I believe in pursuing and researching and developing missile defense. I've supported missile-defense research," Mr. Kerry said, though he said he doesn't "believe in rapid deployment of a system that hasn't been adequately tested."
"I will continue missile-defense research, I will continue missile-defense work, because it's important for the country," he said.
That Mr. Kerry was spending time yesterday working for the Indian vote in New Mexico is both a reminder of Al Gore's 366-vote victory there in 2000 - the smallest margin in the nation that year - and a way of underscoring Mr. Kerry's message that Mr. Bush is purportedly ignoring minorities in America.
The Indians brought their own concerns to Mr. Kerry, including an appeal to do something about federal laws and regulations that strictly control the collection of eagle feathers, which were used in ceremonial outfits yesterday at the powwow.
"If we spent as much time chasing after the terrorists, rather than bothering Native Americans about their religion, we'd be a much stronger nation," one Indian speaker said.
When an eagle feather fell from a dancer's outfit yesterday, Mr. Kerry joined in retrieving it from the dance circle.
"I can't tell you how special it was for me to be asked, as a veteran, to walk through the line and have the honor of helping pick up that fallen feather," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Edwards split off from Mr. Kerry and the campaign train yesterday to head back to Kansas for some damage control.
Friday night, the campaign train blew through Lawrence, Kan., in 55 seconds, past hundreds of supporters who had waited hours, having been told that the train would slow as it passed through town and that Mr. Kerry would say a few words.
A television station's video from the platform clearly shows the crowd's frustration as the train lights disappear in the distance, including one man saying, "That's it," and a woman shouting, "Kerry, you suck."
The campaign blamed the train conductor for not knowing the plan, and it hastily arranged a rally yesterday.
"Y'all called this rally, and we're glad to be here with you," Mr. Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, told supporters in Lawrence yesterday.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
'Effective' Power Sought for Intel Chief
President Has Not Ruled Out Budgetary, Hiring Authority for Proposed Post, Rice Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50677-2004Aug8.html
President Bush and his senior aides are studying ways to give a new national intelligence director "effective authority" over the U.S. intelligence community, including budgetary authority, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
Asked whether the president would give budgetary and hiring-and-firing authority to the holder of the new position, Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press," "The only thing that he's taken off the table [is] that this person shouldn't be in the White House and shouldn't be part of the Cabinet."
Saying the national intelligence director "needs to have more effective authority than the director of central intelligence has," Rice said, "we're discussing the mechanisms by which that might be done."
Last week, during the initial House and Senate hearings on changes to intelligence gathering recommended by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Republicans and Democrats criticized Bush's desire to limit the powers of the new intelligence director.
They pointed to the Sept. 11 commission report, to studies by outside commissions and to the joint House-Senate intelligence committee's investigation in 2002, all of which recommended that any new director of the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community have budgetary authority and control of top personnel in those agencies. Anything less would be "a shell game," as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put it at a hearing last week.
During his announcement last Monday on establishing a national intelligence director, Bush said that individual would "oversee and coordinate the foreign and domestic activities of the intelligence" community. One of Bush's top aides later told reporters at a session in which they agreed not to identify him by name that the new director would not have control of budgets, only "tremendous clout in developing a budget."
Upcoming hearings on intelligence community changes may focus on budgetary authority, particularly the one before the House Armed Services Committee next Monday, at which top Defense Department officials are scheduled to testify for the first time on the Sept. 11 commission's proposals. In the past, Pentagon officials, who receive more than 80 percent of the $40 billion intelligence budget, have opposed giving full budgetary authority to the director of central intelligence.
Rice yesterday seemed to join those who called last week for slow deliberations in revising the intelligence community's activities, which have been substantially changed since the 2001 attacks.
"You obviously want to do this in a way that is deliberative and sound because these are major reforms," she said. "You have a war ongoing."
The most recent intelligence on threats by the al Qaeda terrorist network included mention of the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress, a senior White House official said yesterday for the first time.
White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," answered "yes" when asked whether there had been recent threats to the Capitol and the legislators. "In the past and as part of this continuing threat stream, and so we shared that with them," she said.
Targets identified specifically by the administration in raising the threat level to orange last week had been financial institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey, specifically the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York and Prudential Financial in Newark.
Townsend said the new intelligence about other targets, such as the Capitol, was not as detailed as those targets mentioned by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in his original announcement last week.
The decision by Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer to close part of First Street NE and create 14 checkpoints on Capitol Hill in response to the renewed threat was the latest of several aggressive steps he has taken in recent months to heighten security in the area. The latest action created an uproar among D.C. officials.
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey has said that he was thoroughly briefed by the FBI and heard nothing in the briefing that would justify checkpoints and street closures on Capitol Hill.
A senior intelligence official pointed out yesterday that when the recently discovered al Qaeda surveillance activities were taking place in 2000 and 2001, Osama bin Laden's network was far advanced in its plans to attack the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Capitol, which apparently was to be struck by the airliner whose passengers and crew forced it to crash in Pennsylvania.
Townsend said she expected additional information to emerge over the next few days from interrogations underway in Pakistan and Britain as more al Qaeda terrorists are seized. She particularly noted the capture in the United Arab Emirates of a senior al Qaeda figure, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who was flown to Lahore, Pakistan, for questioning.
Townsend described him as "very important, particularly for Pakistan," during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "He's wanted in connection with the two assassination attempts on [Pakistani] President Musharraf," she said, and was "also involved in the training camps in Afghanistan."
Townsend said announcing the precise targets and raising the alert level in Washington and New York may have had an impact on the terrorists' plot. "I certainly think that by our actions now that we have disrupted it," she said on Fox. "The question is, 'Have we disrupted all of it or part of it?' "
In 1997, the original plot to blow up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was interrupted when senior al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi were arrested by that country's police, aided by CIA operatives. Nevertheless, because none of those seized disclosed the plot, bin Laden sent new operatives to Kenya, and the attacks took place a year later.
Staff writer Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.
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9/11 Panel Roiling Campaign Platforms
Members' Lobbying Is Driving Politics
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50674-2004Aug8?language=printer
The Sept. 11 commission is shaking up the 2004 presidential campaign, helping to make a key political issue of its recommended changes in the nation's intelligence system and reshaping the anti-terrorism platforms of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.
The commission's report criticized U.S. intelligence failures and cited systemic flaws in intelligence gathering. Since the report's release three weeks ago, the lobbying by commission members for action on their recommended policy changes not only has forced Congress and the White House to respond but also has driven the politics on one of the campaign's most important issues, the war on terrorism, analysts and advisers to both campaigns say.
Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, has seized on the report to bolster his anti-terrorism message and beat back accusations from Republicans that he is indecisive. He endorsed the panel's 41 recommended policy changes two days after they were issued, called on Congress to skip its August recess to write them into law and asked Bush to extend the life of the commission. This allowed Kerry to "become the leader on the 9/11 issue" for the first time, a senior Kerry adviser asserted. Now, the report is the heart of his anti-terrorism platform and campaign strategy.
Bush, who initially opposed creation of the commission, last week dropped his opposition to two of its most prominent recommendations: creation of a national director of intelligence post and of a federal intelligence clearinghouse. Yesterday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice indicated that Bush might also accept giving budgetary and staffing authority to the new intelligence director.
The president has made clear he wants to go slower than the fast-tracked pace Kerry and the commission members want. The Bush campaign has accused Kerry of blindly endorsing the commission's work for political gain. Kerry is showing his "anti-terror agenda is whatever can get him short-term political advantage," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in an interview.
The continued prominence of the Sept. 11 commission underscores how it, unlike the scores of commissions before it in U.S. history, will play an unusually important role in the presidential and congressional elections, advisers to Bush and Kerry and political historians say.
The commission is set to expire Aug. 21, but Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in an interview last week that panel members hope to obtain private funding to sustain their lobbying campaign at least through the election. They want to pressure Bush, Kerry and Congress to cement their recommendations into law this year.
Kean and the nine other commissioners plan to appear before at least 10 congressional committees; hold public meetings in several cities, including some in election battleground states; and maintain their regular presence on television news programs. "We want to be part of the debate," Kean said.
In an interview with the New York Times, Kean said voters should factor candidates' responses to the commission's report into their voting decisions. Many relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks plan to monitor the presidential and congressional candidates and pressure those who do not aggressively seek to implement the proposed intelligence changes.
Even if the commissioners and victims' relatives recede into the background of the election -- which is unlikely considering that the third anniversary of the attacks is in the midst of the campaign and the issue of terrorism is such a dominating one -- Kerry is planning to make the commission report a major issue almost every week until Election Day, his advisers say.
The report has resonated with the public, leading strategists from both sides to say the Bush and Kerry campaigns must contend with the recommendations. The paperback version of the report is a national bestseller, a first for such a commission report, and polling shows nearly two-thirds of voters approve of the panel's deliberations. A Pew Foundation poll conducted a few days before the report was released indicated the commission enjoyed strong and similar support among Republicans, Democrats and independents. A new Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans want the commission to continue its work.
"Bush has got to act because if, God forbid, something happens, he's to blame" for not moving decisively, said Stephen J. Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. "Kerry is trying to protect himself, too. If there is a terrorist attack . . . he wants to be able to say [Bush] did not do enough."
Not since the Kerner Commission on urban riots reported its findings in 1968 has an outside commission shaken up a presidential election the way the Sept. 11 panel has, historians say.
The Kerner Commission, named after its chairman, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, determined that urban rioting in places such as Detroit was attributable to a deep-seated racism in the United States that was fomenting "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." The report was a major issue in the Democratic primary but was often overwhelmed by Vietnam and other issues in the general election race between Hubert H. Humphrey and Richard M. Nixon. The Kerner report, which recommended education and employment initiatives, never prompted swift or widespread action from Congress or the White House. Nixon's victory doomed many of the recommendations.
Other famous commissions such as the Roberts Commission investigating Pearl Harbor in the early 1940s and the Warren Commission probing the assassination of John F. Kennedy two decades later never dominated political campaigns. Indeed, most commissions -- frequently established for work too controversial for elected officials to handle -- have fleeting fame and influence, if any.
The Sept. 11 commission is different, historians say, because of an unusual marriage of timing and circumstance. Few commissions have received such high marks from both parties for their investigations, hearings and recommendations. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic representative from Indiana, set the tone by holding both parties accountable for past failures and current actions.
More important, observers say, the commission was dealing with an issue that is dominating election-year discussions and decided to inject itself into the campaign by publicly lobbying for its ideas. When Bush elevated the alert level in New York, Washington and Newark on Aug. 1, commissioners swung into action, saying the potential terrorist attacks should serve as a wake-up call to candidates to promptly embrace their recommendations.
Not everyone is pleased with the rally-around-the-commission spirit. Allan J. Lichtman, a political historian and presidential scholar at American University, said calls for a far-reaching, immediate overhaul of the nation's massive intelligence apparatus is "most unwise."
"It's not as if adopting this tomorrow will make us safer," Lichtman said. "In the short run, it may make us less safe because of the chaos." Lichtman said it was a mistake for Kerry to bless the commission's work without more thought given to future consequences. "It shows a lack of consideration of the facts," he said.
Several Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill agree that such a large government reorganization would require greater study and should be put off until after the election.
Kean disagrees. "I worry more about delay, about being put off another a year and [to] a new Congress," he said.
Kerry, more than Bush, shares Kean's impatience. The Massachusetts senator is planning to emphasize the issue in the weeks ahead, aides say, by working with the commissioners to press for quick implementation.
Kerry believes Bush is most vulnerable politically for refusing so far to provide such an intelligence director with the budgetary and appointment powers the commission called for and for "foot-dragging" on the other 40 recommendations, a top aide said. But Kerry also plans to use the report as a shield from attacks over his positions on issues such as expanding the battle in Afghanistan and securing nuclear weapons, the aide said.
"In the months ahead, we will use the 9/11 commission's recommendations to validate [Kerry's] approach to the war on terror . . . and prove that our approach is more effective," said James P. Rubin, a top national security adviser to Kerry.
Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, said yesterday that the president is working on adopting most of the commission's recommendations. "The fact that we've already begun implementing 36 of the 41 [recommendations] has enabled us to get in front of it," she said on "Fox News Sunday." "It's good work. We need to improve on it. But that's why it was important for us to take the time to read it, to understand it and to move forward with it."
Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, said the president will try to push the debate beyond the commission. "One of the most important issues of this election . . . is how do we reform government to deal with this anti-terrorism threat," he said. In the end, Mehlman said Bush will prove his ideas are superior to Kerry's -- and those of the commission.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Kerry Offers 10-Year Plan for US Energy Independence
August 9, 2004
Thomas Ferraro
REUTERS USA:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26471/story.htm
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - With crude oil prices at a record high, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry last week offered a 10-year, $30 billion proposal to move the nation toward energy independence.
Under the measure, aides said, American companies and consumers would receive financial aid to develop and buy more fuel-efficient motor vehicles.
In addition, it would set twin goals to have, by the year 2020, an even 20 percent of the nation's motor fuel and electricity come from alternative sources such as solar, wind, ethanol and biodiesel fuel.
Kerry, on a cross-country campaign tour, arranged to formally announce the proposal during a visit to a family farm outside Kansas City.
The measure would provide $10 billion to help automakers retool plants to build high-technology, fuel-efficient vehicles, and give consumers a tax credit of up to $5,000 to buy them.
It would also earmark $5 billion for a research partnership between government and industry into fuels made from agricultural waste, and $10 billion to transform the current generation of coal-fired utility plants into cleaner and more efficient facilities.
The Massachusetts senator has made energy independence a centerpiece of his campaign for the White House and his proposal fleshed out earlier ones he has promoted on the campaign trail.
The cost of the measure would be partially offset by reinstatement of a tax on polluters, aides said.
Kerry has contended greater energy independence would create jobs, provide for a cleaner environment, bolster security and make sure American soldiers do not have to go to war over Middle East oil.
President Bush has said a massive energy bill blocked by Kerry and other Senate Democrats would help reduce the demand for foreign oil largely by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
In early trading Friday, oil prices climbed close to $45 a barrel, the highest level in 21 years for U.S. light crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Permit Denial for Big Park Rally Adds to Push for Protests There
August 9, 2004
NY Times
By MICHAEL BRICK
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/nyregion/09protest.html?ei=1&en=87e22af32e6e2997&ex=1093021822&pagewanted=print&position=
To officials of both New York City and the largest coalition of protest groups expected at the Republican National Convention, negotiations over the use of Central Park for a huge protest rally during the convention had ended more than two weeks ago with an agreement to hold the rally at an alternative site, along the West Side Highway.
However, to many protesters from all across the political spectrum - from self-described Clinton Democrats to Libertarians - losing the battle for Central Park was a galvanizing moment, a new cause for protest and all the more reason to gather in the park, although individually or in much smaller groups than originally planned by the coalition, United for Peace and Justice.
"I think they can expect a lot of people are going to end up congregating in Central Park during the convention," said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "There's widespread unhappiness with the city's decision. Many people will go there simply to protest that closure."
The Parks Department has granted eight permits for Central Park events that it describes as convention-related, including rallies, races and readings that range in size from groups of 80 people to more than 32,000. Several are scheduled for the week leading up to the convention, which opens on Aug. 30. All are in parts of the park officials describe as less susceptible to damage than the Great Lawn, the site for which United for Peace and Justice had sought a permit for 250,000 people to gather on Sunday, Aug. 29.
City officials said their response to protesters gathering without permits would depend on how they behave.
"They can carry signs, they can stand up on benches and declaim to their hearts' content," said the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe. "They just have to respect the rights of others."
"Anybody's welcome to go to Central Park," Mr. Benepe said. "On a busy summer weekend, you'll get 200,000 people in Central Park. It'd be hard to notice a few more."
The Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said that small groups of protesters who are not using amplified sound would probably draw no response from officers. "You can think of permits as sometimes allowing things that would not otherwise be permitted, such as blocking a street," Mr. Browne said. "Free speech is allowed at any time, but if you're going to use amplified noise or speakers, we would react accordingly."
United for Peace and Justice spent more than a year seeking the permit for the Great Lawn demonstration. The Parks Department rejected the request on the ground that a group that size would severely damage the grass. The coalition ultimately agreed to accept the West Side Highway location rather than sue the city.
"At this point, the park has become symbolic of the First Amendment," said Jim Lesczynski, chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party, which has publicly called for what it describes as an unauthorized protest in the park on Aug. 29. "Just because of the fact that there were negotiations, there's outrage that they could be told when and where they can protest."
At the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month, protesters largely ignored so-called free speech zones set up outside the convention center, deriding them as cages and choosing instead to hold impromptu gatherings in other parts of the city. In doing so, they established something of a precedent for protesters at the Republican gathering in New York, among them Erik Henriksen, 29, a graduate student who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Mr. Henriksen said he plans some kind of personal protest in the park, but he is not sure what form it will take. "It's just to be there, just to claim my couple square feet to stand on," he said. "I'm not killing the grass, I'm not part of any organization, and I'm not seeking a permit."
Last Tuesday, the Not In Our Name Project, the group that organized a Central Park gathering that drew thousands of people to the East Meadow in October 2002 to protest the planned invasion of Iraq, issued a statement calling for a reopening of the permit application for Central Park.
"There are things circulating around the country, people have put out things saying, 'Do not go to the West Side Highway, go to Central Park,' " said AiMara Lin, an organizer of the group. "We're trying to tap into that popular sentiment."
These calls for a convergence on Central Park have won support not just from the fringes of anarchists, Maoists and assorted malcontents, but also from mainstream opponents of the convention.
"Some people have decided they're going to go there anyway," said Bill Perkins, a city councilman from Upper Manhattan. "It reminds me of the Boston Tea Party. It's as American as apple pie."
Edward I. Koch, who was mayor during a huge June 1982 protest in Central Park against the buildup of nuclear weapons and who is chairman of the convention volunteers' committee, said that demonstrators who intend to break the law to protest the denial of a permit should remember the definition of civil disobedience.
"I believe in civil disobedience, so long as it's nonviolent, and so long as you're willing to pay the penalty," Mr. Koch said. "When you're arrested, you can't go before the court and say, 'Don't punish me.' "
For all their anger, some demonstrators may find the whole exercise little more than a tense but ultimately uneventful day in the park.
"I don't plan to make any signs and parade in the park," said Drew Olewnick, 44, a protester who lives in New York and works in the finance industry. "I'll try to time my biweekly bike ride for that day, then meet people on the Great Lawn, like I normally do. But I'm picking this particular time on this day for a reason."
----
Please Join Dalai Lama, Oscar Arias, 6 Nobels, and over 80 NGOs/Parliamentarians in appeal to take nuclear weapons off alert
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>
Date: Mon Aug 9, 2004
TO SIGN PLEASE email nonukes@foesyd.org.au with your name, organisation, title, and location.
Please note that this appeal has now been signed by 6 Nobel prizewinners including the Dalai Lama and Oscar Arias
Dear Parliamentarian:
You are invited to endorse the statement below calling for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons systems, and for the adoption of resolutions on this issue in parliaments and international forums.
Attached is an example of a parliamentary resolution adopted by the Australian Senate and a model resolution for the UN General Assembly.
(This text is being sponsored by the Association of World Citizens and Friends of the Earth)
When signing please include your title, name of organisation, and location.
STATEMENT OF ENDORSEMENT
The Distinguished individuals and organisations below, make the following appeal concerning nuclear weapons, and the danger posed by the maintainance of thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems on launch-on-warning status.
We call on the governments of the United States, Russia, China, France, and the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, to support and implement steps to lower the operational status of nuclear weapon systems in order to reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe and as part of thier obligations, affirmed by the International Court of Justice, to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons under strict and effective international control.
We note that:
1)To this day, thousands of nuclear weapons in the US and Russia are on Launch-on-warning status, and that the megattonage involved remains more than enough to destroy civilisation and perhaps the human race.
2)That the Indian subcontinent is increasingly on a 'hairtrigger' status.
3)That there have been numerous incidents in which a nuclear exchange involving thousands of warheads could have taken place, and in which the fate of the earth has depended on the correct judgement of a single individual.
4)That the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK have failed so far to make further progress to achieve the total and unequivocal elimination of their nuclear arsenals, as called for under international law.
5) That, in addition to the failure of the 'officlal' nuclear weapons powers to fulfil their treaty obligations, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea also posess nuclear weapons, and that the risk of their use is very real.
6)That a number of calls have been made by the UN General Assembly and by the European Parliament to lower the operational status of nuclear weapons.
Accordingly we call on the governments of the United States, Russia, China, France and the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, to:
a)Take immediate steps to lower the operational status of nuclear weapons, and to revise nuclear doctrines, policies and postures to reflect such lowered operational status.
b)To implement in good faith their obligations under international law , to accomplish the total and unequivocal elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
c)To implement the steps toward nuclear disarmament outlined in the '13 steps' of the final declaration of the Year 2000 NPT Review Conference.
d) We call on non- nuclear nations to press for nuclear disarmament in every available international forum especially including the United Nations General Assembly First Committee and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
e)We call on legislators worldwide to pass resolutions in national and other parliaments pressing for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament as mandated by international law.
We draw the attention of legislators and diplomats to the two texts below:
i) A model for a resolution in the UN General Assembly calling for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons (Note that in the process of getting it through the GA First Committee it may experience some alterations in text)
ii) Motion passed by the Australian Senate congratulating Colonel Stanislav Petrov on preventing nuclear war during the Serpukhov 15 incident of Sept 26 1983, and calling for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons.
You are invited to endorse the statement above calling for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons systems, and to give your support to measures such as the texts below.
i) Model for a resolution in the UN General Assembly Calling for the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons
Operational status of nuclear weapons
The General Assembly
Convinced that the possible use of nuclear weapons poses the most serious threat to humanity and to the survival of civilization,
Convinced also that the maintenance of nuclear weapons systems at a high level of readiness-to-use increases the risks of unintentional or accidental use of such weapons which would have catastrophic consequences,
Noting that a high level of nuclear weapons readiness-to-use has contributed to a number of circumstances when nuclear weapons have become very close to being used,
Welcoming steps taken by States possessing nuclear weapons to reduce nuclear risks and prevent nuclear war,
Welcoming particularly the agreement by Russia and the United States of America on the Establishment of the Joint Center for the Exchange of Data from Early Warning Systems and Notification of Missile Launches, but noting that the agreement has not yet been implemented,
Considering that, until nuclear weapons are eliminated, it is imperative that further steps be taken to prevent the accidental, unauthorized or unintentional use of nuclear weapons,
Expressing its deep concern that thousands of strategic warheads remain on Launch-On-Warning status,
Expressing its concern also about emerging approaches to the broader role of nuclear weapons as part of security strategies, including rationalizations for the use, and the possible development, of new types of nuclear weapons,
Recalling the program of action agreed at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference which called for concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems
Recalling resolutions [specify resolution numbers] on the floor of this assembly have called for reductions in the operational status of nuclear weapons,
Mindful that concrete steps to reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems will help reduce tensions, build confidence and support negotiations leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons,
1. Calls for a review of nuclear doctrines emphasizing concrete steps to reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons,
2. Encourages States to immediately implement unilateral steps including, inter alia, the rescinding of launch-on-warning policies, and to urgently conclude negotiated steps, pending agreements for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons,
3. Calls on all States possessing nuclear weapons to undertake not to increase the number or types of weapons deployed and not to develop new types of weapons or rationalizations for their use,
4. Calls for further confidence-building and transparency measures to reduce the threats posed by nuclear weapons,
5. Requests States possessing nuclear weapons to report to the 60th session on steps they have taken to implement this resolution
6. Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its 60th session the item entitled "Operational status of nuclear weapons."
ii)Motion passed by Australian Senate 23 June 2004 congratulating Colonel Stanislav Petrov
21 FOREIGN AFFAIRS-NUCLEAR WEAPON SYSTEMS-COLONEL STANISLAV PETROV
Senator Allison amended general business notice of motion no. 895 by leave and, pursuant to notice of motion not objected to as a formal motion, moved-That the Senate -
(a) recalls the incident that took place in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at Serpukhov-15 on 26 September 1983 at 12.30 pm Moscow time, and the role of Colonel Stanislav Petrov in this incident;
(b) notes:
(i) that the Serpukhov-15 incident, in which a newly installed Soviet surveillance system reported that the United States of America (US) had launched nuclear missiles at the USSR, is considered by many analysts to have been the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war,
(ii) that the megatonnage that was likely to have been used at that time was between 30 and 60 times the amount required to produce a nuclear winter, and that the number of nuclear weapons that would have been launched would have been enough to end civilisation and kill most living things,
(iii) the role played by Colonel Petrov in refraining from launching a number of thousands of warheads at the US in retaliation and in pressing his superiors to consider the report a false alarm,
(iv) that the Canberra Commission of 1996 recommended that strategic nuclear weapons be taken off `Launch on Warning' status, and
(v) the resolution of the European Parliament of 11 November 1999, and the Senate's own resolutions as well as repeated calls to lower the alert status of strategic nuclear weapons made by the Non-Aligned Movement and the New Agenda Coalition that have been passed year after year by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly;
(b) offers its congratulations to Colonel Petrov for being presented with the World Citizen Award on Friday, 21 May 2004, in recognition of his actions; and
(c) urges the Government to give support to measures aimed at lowering the readiness to launch nuclear weapon systems and to support such measures on the floor of the UN General Assembly.
Question put and passed.
url for this motion:
http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/view_document.aspx?id=95635&table=journals
From: John Hallam Nuclear Weapons Campaigner Friends of the Earth Australia, nonukes@f... 61-2-9567-7533, fax 61-2-9567-7166 1 Henry Street Turella NSW Aust 2205
Doug Mattern, Association of World Citizens, 55 New Montgomery Street, Suite 224, San Francisco, CA 94105. 1- 415 541 9610.
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