Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
WIPP driver avoids collision
Los Alamos lab waste reportedly found in the Rio Grande
Ontario faces electricity 'challenge'
Depleted Uranium, Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets:
Iran Producing Nuclear Defense Equipment
Why all the fuss over nukes?
Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'
Israel's Dimona, Threat to Human, Bird Life
School officials failed to dispose of more than 1,000 bottles
Brazil Police Seize Black Market Uranium Ore
Nuclear terror attack on US 'inevitable'
FirstEnergy to Cut 205 Nuclear Employees
FirstEnergy slashes 205 jobs at 3 nuclear sites
U.S. government to sit out challenge of radiation ruling
Pantex Nuclear Plant needs a $20 million safety overhaul
MILITARY
Alleged Vigilantes Show Footage of Afghan Operations
Army delays start of nerve agent destruction at Indiana facility
US warplanes violate Iran's air space
U.S. Forces Launch Offensive Near Shrine
In Najaf, Iraqi Politics Dictate U.S. Tactics
Iraqi Government Gives Rebel Cleric an Ultimatum
Shi'ite Gunmen Take to the Streets in Iraq's Basra
Israel Adds to Plans for More Housing Units in Settlements
Israel Urged to Change Stand on Geneva Convention
Governor, general at odds over Futenma flights
Pakistan Vows to Stop Taliban; Westerners Scoff
Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds
Russia plans to cut 100,000 troops by end 2005: report
Criticism From Many Quarters Greets Plan to Split C.I.A.
Many Are Cool to Intelligence Plan
Goss Backed '95 Bill to Slash Intelligence
CIA reshuffle plan panned
Marine on Trial in Death Of Iraqi Prisoner in 2003
Reservist to admit violations at prison
Scrutiny of Review Tribunals as War Crimes Trials Open
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge in Abu Ghraib Case Might Offer Deal to Senior Officers
Military trials set to begin at Gitmo
Survey Finds Border Agents Critical of Training, Resources
Study Finds Most Border Officers Feel Security Ought to Be Better
Police Bolster Presence at Penn Station
New York Hospitals See Lack of Preparedness for Disaster
Border Patrol union survey finds job discontent
No Welcome in Guantanamo as Rights Groups Land
Illegal Strip Searches and the Crackdown on Dissent in California
Military Tribunal Begins for Terror Suspects at Guantánamo
Second Soldier To Plead Guilty To Prison Abuse
POLITICS
Weapons of Mass. destruction: Hub cops sitting on DNC arsenal
Outside Panel Faults Leaders of Pentagon for Prisoner Abuse
Top Pentagon officials, night shift criticized for Abu Ghraib
Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses
Do You Hear What I Hear?
This just in: the factors behind newspapers' rush to contrition
Ludicrous, Lethal Government Secrets Cited
ENERGY
Iberdrola opens new wind park in Spain
Bush Aides, in Shift, Say Oil a Drag on Economy
OTHER
Federal Complaint Against "Bottom of the Barrel" Biosafety Committees
Number of Americans Who Have High Blood Pressure Up Sharply
ACTIVISTS
Judge Rejects Central Park Rally
Judge Rejects One Bid for a Central Park Protest
Tense NY Convention Seen for Protesters, Police
Sudan embassy shut
The beginning of history
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
WIPP driver avoids collision
Aug 24, 2004
By Victoria Parker-Stevens
Carlsbad, NM Current-Argus
http://www.currentargus.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=441&num=8503
Photo: http://www.currentargus.com/artman/uploads/web_chain_collision_580547723082004.jpg
CARLSBAD - It was something they had heard about in training, but didn't want to see firsthand - tail lights at the end of a 12-vehicle pile-up, and they were hauling a load of nuclear waste.
For two CAST Transportation drivers, it started out as just another trip east along Interstate 80 through Wyoming, heading from Washington state to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Mark Beene was behind the wheel around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, between Cheyenne and Laramie, and Claude Beebe was in the sleeper compartment.
Fog rolled in, and visibility was reduced to around a quarter of a mile.
A semi-truck passed by going at least 60 mph, Beene said, noting WIPP truck drivers are instructed to not exceed 40 mph in foggy conditions.
"His tail lights are what I saw first," Beene said. "Then, the rest of that pile of mess came into view."
Beene said the driver of the semi apparently hadn't had time to brake before running into the back of the last truck in a pile-up.
"I went to shutting it down and looking for a clear area to turn and not run into that mess," he said. "I drove off the highway into the ditch and kept going until I was way ahead of the accident."
It took some pretty aggressive driving, Beene admitted.
"It was all I could do to keep it on its wheels, and there were people running out of the way (of the pile-up)," he said.
Beene quickly discovered the value of scenarios he'd reviewed in a required defensive-driving course.
"Everything I learned that day kicked in in two seconds," he said, adding he wasn't immediately affected by the enormity of the situation. "It happened so fast it didn't really have time to sink in."
Beene, of Carlsbad, has been driving trucks for at least 12 years.
After coming to a stop about 20 yards from the highway, he began contacting authorities and checking to make sure there was no damage to the truck or waste containers.
Beene stayed with the truck to keep it secured, he said.
Meanwhile, more vehicles were becoming involved in the pile-up.
Beene said he figured there were 12 vehicles when they came upon the scene, and authorities now estimate at least 35 ultimately were involved.
For co-driver Claude Beebe, of Jal, the sudden feeling of brakes slamming and the truck going off the road woke him up.
He quickly got dressed and ran toward the wreck to see if anybody needed help, he said.
"There was one truck that was stuck in the rubble, and I could hear a man in there hollering for help," he said.
Beebe said he was among about five people who tried a number of things to free the man, including removing rubble. Finally, a firefighter was able to get the driver to a spot where they could get to him and pull him out.
The driver couldn't move his legs and was in a lot of pain, Beebe said.
A few minutes later, the truck was engulfed in flames, which were jumping from rig to rig, he said. Seven tractor-trailer rigs and three cars were burned, according to Associated Press reports.
Beebe said it appeared the man's truck would have hit the WIPP truck from behind if Beene hadn't gotten it off of the road.
Beebe placed his coat on the driver, as he only had a t-shirt on and it was cold and raining, and he ran back to the WIPP truck to get bedding to cover him.
Beebe also used some first aid training to help get the driver into an ambulance that arrived.
"I never had to use it before," he said, "but you never know when you might need to." Beebe received treatment himself for smoke inhalation. He said his adrenaline likely kept him going.
Although numerous folks stood by and watched, Beebe downplayed his role in providing assistance.
"I would hope that anybody would do what I did," he said. "I don't feel like I did anything heroic. It was something that needed to be done."
Beebe has been driving, including over the road, for almost 30 years and said he'd heard about accidents like this one but had never seen one firsthand.
"It shows (WIPP's) protocol and criteria for safety are a pretty good thing," he said. Beebe said people on the scene thought the WIPP truck should head out, but they needed to wait for a state police escort. That took until mid-afternoon as law enforcement had its hands full, he said.
They were escorted to Cheyenne, Wyo., and the truck was parked overnight at F.E. Warren Air Force Base. An inspection showed no release of radionuclides, Beene said. Beebe may be growing leery about entering the sleeper compartment while in Wyoming. A couple of years ago, he was also awakened when a WIPP truck left I-80 in the state. In that incident, the driver had blacked out.
Beebe said law enforcement personnel praised Beene's driving skills and were very thankful the truck wasn't involved in the pile-up.
"This is the worst crash I've seen in my 24 years with the patrol," Sgt. Steve Townsend, with the Wyoming Highway Patrol, told The Associated Press. "... we were very fortunate no tankers or (hazardous materials) carriers were involved. It could have been much worse."
Heavy fog, wet roads and speeding drivers are believed to be factors in up to six separate collisions, but officials don't know exactly what touched them off.
Close to 40 people were hospitalized, and four bodies were found in the wreckage. Traffic was backed up 25 miles before a 60-mile detour was set up.
Crews worked around the clock to clear the wreckage and repair a 100-foot section of roadway damaged by fire.
The collisions occurred in a stretch through the Laramie Mountains notorious for treacherous conditions, although not usually in the summer.
----
Los Alamos lab waste reportedly found in the Rio Grande, says report
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-24/s_26666.asp
LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico - In the latest dispute over possible contaminants from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Texas hydrologist says low concentrations of explosives and perchlorate suspected to be from the lab have reached the Rio Grande.
The report by George Rice, released last week, says the contaminants have reached the river through springs within the last 60 years.
Lab officials have said the Rio Grande should be safe from contaminants from the lab for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years, depending on where the contaminants are located.
Rice, who wrote the report after being hired by the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, believes these pollutants came from the lab. "I relied exclusively on samples collected by the lab and the state," he said.
The laboratory doesn't dispute that contaminants have entered the groundwater beneath its 40-square-mile property. What has been unclear is whether the waste has entered the Rio Grande.
James Rickman, a lab spokesman, said he had not read Rice's report.
"Looking at the spring data so far, the conclusion that there's a pathway of less than 100 years to the Rio Grande is in dispute and it continues to be under study," Rickman said.
For three decades, the lab has monitored groundwater on its property, trying to figure out the exact travel times of contaminants. Except for an explosive found once at a spring in 1991, Rice said, none of the samples of concern surpassed safe drinking water or federal environmental standards.
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety wants the lab to clean up contamination, remove all waste buried atop Pajarito Plateau, store future waste safely above ground, and manage buried waste in ways that protect the Rio Grande and the aquifer beneath the plateau.
State Environment Department spokesman Jon Goldstein couldn't respond specifically to Rice's conclusions but said his agency is also concerned about contaminants. Results from the agency's water sampling tests have led the state to believe pollutants could be migrating faster than the lab predicts, Goldstein said.
About a year ago, the lab found perchlorate in almost every area tested upstream and downstream from the lab and outside its immediate surroundings.
"We have no idea where it came from," Rickman said. The chemical is used in rocket fuels and is a byproduct of radiochemistry work, but there are other sources.
Rice said he took the complexity of perchlorate into consideration when drawing his conclusions about spring contamination.
Rickman said the lab has pinpointed the sources of high explosives, perchlorate, and radionuclides and is addressing the sites with the highest risk to the environment.
-------- canada
Ontario faces electricity 'challenge'
Pickering B nuclear reactors to be taken out of service much earlier than planned
By RICHARD MACKIE
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040824/ONTENERGY24/TPNational/TopStories
Ontario residents face a new squeeze on their electricity resources because of problems at the Pickering B nuclear generating plant, one of the major sources of electricity in the province.
The new problems will force reactors to be taken out of service for testing and maintenance earlier than planned and will add to the challenges facing the government in its attempts to keep the power flowing for the next few years, said Energy Minister Dwight Duncan.
"It points to another flaw in our [nuclear plants]. The regulator is aware of it and that is something we need to be concerned about. . . . That set of reactors is not without problems," Mr. Duncan said in a telephone interview yesterday.
At the very least, the problems that have been found in the pressure tubes in the four reactors at Pickering B will cause them to be taken out of service for regular testing starting this year, rather than three years from now, said John Earl, spokesman for Ontario Power Generation.
If the testing reveals unexpected problems in the tubes that contain the nuclear fuel, OPG and the government would have to decide whether to undertake a major rebuilding of the plants.
Together, the four nuclear reactors contribute 2,160 megawatts, about 10 per cent of the power consumed at peak hours in Ontario on a day of moderate demand.
OPG revealed the problems in its latest quarterly report. "As a result of recent inspections of fuel channels, conditions were identified that will require acceleration of planned remediation programs at the Pickering B station. These findings will result in additional inspections of the fuel channels, lengthening previously planned outages, and will advance certain maintenance procedures from 2007 and 2008 to 2004 through 2006."
Even before the latest news from OPG, the four units at Pickering B loomed as a problem for the government. They were built between 1983 and 1986, meaning a multibillion-dollar decision must be made within a few years on whether to refurbish or replace them.
Mr. Duncan did not underestimate the problem.
"It's a difficult challenge and Pick B is probably the biggest challenge that is going to face this government and governments in the next five to six years. It is not without large challenges. It's continuing to operate. We're monitoring it carefully. But obviously the challenges we have cannot be taken lightly."
Adding to the difficulty of the decisions to be made is the fact that the plans to rebuild the four units at the neighbouring Pickering A station have encountered delays and cost overruns.
They were started up in 1971 to 1973 and have been shut down for six years. Unit 4 was returned to service last September at a cost of $1.25-billion and work has begun to repair Unit 1 at a projected cost of $900-million.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium, Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets:
A Death Sentence Here and Abroad
by Leuren Moret
Dissident Voice
August 24, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Moret0824.htm
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."
-- Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam."
Vietnam was a chemical war, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.
And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.
This week the American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.
Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense's Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.
This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.
Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as "spectacular ... and a matter of concern."
This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.
In simple words, DU "trashes the body." When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: "I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."
Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.
The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.
They brought it home
Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.
In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans' families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.
How did they hide it?
Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.
Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry's father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.
Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.
They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.
The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.
The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.
Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.
Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.
The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.
Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.
Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.
Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon "and nothing overseas ... nothing political."
Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn't work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.
Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.
How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The "next DU war" had already been planned, and those planning it wanted "no skunk at the garden party."
The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret
A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America's Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire, details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU "show on the road" and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.
The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their "godfather" and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a "war against terrorism" long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.
Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby's neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.
When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world's oil deposits are located - he replied: "It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger."
In Zbignew Brzezinski's book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The "South" region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.
A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!
No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy."
Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the "smog of war" from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.
In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren't telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.
To learn more
Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:
- American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn. Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity"; Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked."
- Leuren Moret, "Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War," Dissident Voice, July 21, 2004.
- Carol Sterrit: "Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up - GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death," Coastal Post Online, August 2004.
- World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004
- International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat.
- "Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War" by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret.
Leuren Moret has worked at two US nuclear weapons laboratories as a geoscientist. In 1991 she became a whistleblower at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, and since then has worked as an independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the world, and contributed to the UN subcommission investigating depleted uranium. Her research on the environmental and public health effects of low level radiation from atmospheric testing fallout, nuclear power plants, and depleted uranium weaponry, is available on the internet and at www.mindfully.org. In 2003, she testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held in Japan, and presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and at the World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India in January 2004. She is a Contributing Editor to GLOBAL OUTLOOK, a City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner, and the Past President of the Association for Women Geoscientists.
Other Articles by Leuren Moret
- Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Moret0721.htm
-------- iran
Iran Producing Nuclear Defense Equipment
August 24, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Tuesday it was producing nuclear defense equipment to protect its citizens in case of any possible attack on its nuclear facilities, according to Tuesday media reports.
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said U.S. sanctions had forced Iran to seek self-sufficiency to meet all its defense requirements, the government-owned Persian daily Iran reported.
``Iran has produced nuclear defense equipment,'' Iran quoted Shamkhani as saying.
``If our nuclear power plants are targeted, there will be radioactive releases. You need special equipment to control it. Also, some countries in our neighborhood have achieved nuclear technology. We have to be prepared if there is an accident there,'' Shamkhani was quoted as saying.
The minister did not elaborate on the type of equipment Iran was producing.
Defense Ministry officials, contacted by The Associated Press Tuesday, refused comment.
India and Iran's western neighbor, Pakistan, have nuclear weapons. Israel is also believed to possess hundreds of nuclear warheads.
Shamkhani said U.S sanctions have benefited Iran, rather than harming it.
``One of the reasons for our success is various sanctions imposed on us. When we felt all technological doors are closed to us, we had no option but to seek self-sufficiency and produce our needs ourselves,'' he said.
Iran threatened last week to destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor should the Jewish state attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
In late July Israeli military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon issued a tacit warning about Iran's nuclear weapons program.
``In the past few days, the past two weeks, Iran in essence broke the rules of the game of the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspections and started operating this project again,'' he said in an interview with Israeli state-run television.
``We have to pay serious attention to Iran's intention to arm itself with nuclear capabilities. This should not only concern Israel, but all the countries of the free world,'' Yaalon added.
Iran announced last week it had successfully test-fired a new version of the Shahab-3, which has a range of 810 miles. Israel is about 600 miles west of Iran.
Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980-88 war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane.
-------- iraq / inspections
Why all the fuss over nukes?
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11268~2355541,00.html
DOES verification of nuclear weapons by inspection work? Judging by the U.N. inspection team under Hans Blitz that looked for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and never found them, it is effective. But judging by the standards used by the Bush administration in Iraq, it isn't.
That must be why the Bush administration has decided to oppose provisions for inspection and verification in an international treaty to ban production of nuclear material. For years the United States and other nations have pursued this treaty that would ban new production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration hedged its bet by telling an arms control meeting in Geneva that it still supported a treaty to ban production of nuclear material, but opposed verification. It appears to directly conflict with the Reagan doctrine of "trust but verify."
So what is the administration's explanation for this apparently implausible nuclear policy? It decided it would cost too much and require an overly intrusive inspection system while not assuring compliance with the treaty. But it declined to explain how U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.
It could be that the United States is protecting Israel against an intrusive inspection program because it is one of the few countries outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Or it could feel verification would jeopardize new nuclear programs in the United States. Or it could oppose inspections because it truly doesn't want to spend the money or depend on verification when it feels threatened by another nation, preferring its doctrine of pre-emption.
Daryl Kimball, director of the Washington Arms Control Association, says he is baffled that the administration is not supporting a meaningful treaty. It comes several months after President Bush declared this a top priority, preventing the production and trafficking in nuclear proliferation. The announcement kills a 10-year international effort to lure countries such as Pakistan, India and Israel to accept some oversight over its nuclear production. Failure to implement the program means that Pakistan may continue supplying materials for nuclear production to other states.
We have heard the president say that the U.S. invasion of Iraq forced Libya to review its nuclear program and give it up. That may be true. But it may have caused North Korea and Iran to go ahead with their nuclear programs with little being done to block such efforts.
What is amazing is that the Kerry campaign has not jumped on this change of policy to point out that once again, we are flouting the international community and ignoring the consequences to the security of the United States. It is amazing that the media has not highlighted this change in American foreign policy as a dramatic shift in our priorities.
If we are so concerned about weapons of mass destruction, why is the Bush administration turning its back on verification? In Russia, there is a joint program with the United States to secure 600 metric tons of nuclear materials. But after 12 years, only 135 tons have been safeguarded. The bipartisan Nunn-Lugar program is one of the most effective methods for keeping this dangerous material out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists, yet the Bush administration has proposed cutting funds to implement it.
The 9/11 Commission report lists the threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists as a serious one. No missile defense system is going to protect this country against such an attack. Yet we spend just $2 billion on safeguarding Russia's nuclear materials, $108 billion on missile defense and $37 billion on homeland security.
Condoleezza Rice said Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear arms. Is she saying that every time an unfriendly country goes nuclear, the United States is going to go to war to stop it from developing weapons of mass destruction?
-------- israel
Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'
August 24, 2004
By Abraham Rabinovich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040823-093433-2855r.htm
JERUSALEM - The distribution of anti-radiation pills to residents near Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona last month caused more puzzlement than panic. There had never been a known radiation leak from the facility and there were no signs of war that might pose a near-term risk to the reactor.
Pronouncements from military chiefs in Tehran and Tel Aviv, however, have cast the pill distribution in a new light.
"The entire Zionist territory, including its nuclear facilities and atomic arsenal, are currently within range of Iran's advanced missiles," Yadollah Javani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's political bureau, declared last week.
He was speaking after a test-firing of the ballistic Shihab-3 missile. With a range of 800 miles, it can reach any target in Israel, most particularly Dimona.
Mr. Javani said threats had been made by U.S. and Israeli officials to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. But with Israel now covered by the Shihab missile, he said, "neither the Zionist regime nor America will carry out its threats."
Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, the Israeli chief of staff, sounded no less pugnacious in an interview in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot. Iran's nuclear development, said the general, must be halted, one way or another, before it proceeds much further.
"Iran is striving for nuclear capability," he said, "and I suggest that in this matter [Israel] not rely on others," a clear reference to diplomatic efforts by the United States and European powers to get Iran to give up its ambitions.
Gen. Ya'alon noted that Israel had eliminated Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, destroying the facility in a long-range air attack just before it was to come on line. Imagine what it would be like, said Gen. Ya'alon, if Saddam Hussein had been permitted to achieve a nuclear capability.
Israeli officials say the diplomatic efforts have succeeded in slowing down Iran's nuclear development by about two years. An intelligence assessment made to the Israeli Cabinet last month said Tehran will be able to produce enriched uranium on its own for nuclear weapons in 2007, not in 2005 as previously thought.
However, an unusual sense of urgency was attached to the distribution of Lugol anti-radiation pills by the Defense Ministry and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. The agencies sent soldiers from house to house in two towns near the Dimona reactor and from tent to tent in adjacent Bedouin areas instead of keeping them stored in a regional facility until needed.
An air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities is well within Israel's operational capacity. A major reason its air force purchased F-15Is from the United States in the 1990s was to have a warplane capable of operating over Iran. Israel's Ofek satellite presumably is able to provide updated intelligence information on Iran's nuclear sites.
If Israel carried out an attack, it almost certainly would be done before Iran activated the reactor so as to avoid radioactive fallout that would endanger civilian areas. It is the political and strategic fallout that Israel would have to consider before undertaking such an attack.
Israel fears that some moderate and even friendly countries in the region might change their policies if they thought they could hide under an Iranian nuclear umbrella. "If Iran has nuclear capability," said Gen. Ya'alon, "it would be a different Middle East. Moderate states would become more extreme."
----
Israel's Dimona, Threat to Human, Bird Life
By Mohammed Zeyada & Yasser Al-Banna, IOL Correspondents
August 24, 2004
IslamOnline.net
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-08/24/article08.shtml
Israel 's infamous Dimona nuclear reactor is posing a grave threat to the life of Israeli citizens, those of neighboring countries and even to birds, according to Palestinian sources and Israeli reports.
Palestinian hospital reports show that around 500 cases with diseases of skin tumors and congenital distortions are reported on annual basis in the Palestinian areas adjacent to the Dimona reactor.
"The only explanation for the high rate of diseases is the nuclear radiations," Dr. Mahmoud Saada, founder of the Palestinian medical relief body told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, August 24.
"South of Hebron (Al Khalil), people suffering from cancer check into hospitals daily and there are numerous cases of deformed babies, in addition to other people suffering from skin tumors due to the reactor radiations," he said.
Saada further put at % 62the rate of infertility among men and women south of Hebron due to the radiations of the Dimona reactor.
For his part, Sakr Abu Saalouk, spokesman for the Araar town, located near the Dimona reactor said that the Arab residents are suffering from different kinds of diseases as well as high rates of infertility.
"A lot of residents have died out of cancer and others are suffering from the deadly disease," he told IslamOnline.net.
"The Israeli decision to distribute anti-radiation tablets was a clear evidence on serious health problem in the area," he added.
Abu Saalouk stressed that Israel has used to bury the nuclear wastes in areas located at a distance of 25 km from Araar.
Arab Knesset member, Abdul Malek Dahamsha, on his part, said that Israel no longer conceals the hazards of the Dimona reactor especially after its decision to distribute anti-radiation tablets among the Israeli citizens living near the reactor.
He told IslamOnline.net that the Dimona reactor was built 50 years ago which means that it has become very old and Israel no longer hides this, that is why it distributes anti-radiation pills among the citizens.
"At the beginning, the Israeli health ministry excluded the Arab citizens from receiving the anti-radiation tablets but later it backed down on its decision after the fuss made by the Arab citizens living in the area," he added.
Threats to Wild Life
Meanwhile, a group of 150 storks died and 30 other birds were injured after landing at a pool on the outskirts of Dimona, according to Israel's daily Ha'aretz Tuesday.
"In migrating season people are positioned near the pools in order to prevent the storks from coming close to them," said NPA inspector peter Ravin.
The officials attributed the causes of death to drinking the toxic waste water resulting from the Rotem chemical plant near the town of Dimona, in the Negev Desert.
The Israeli satellite channel had earlier warned neighboring countries against radiation leakage from the Dimona reactor, saying the Israeli reactor has become very old.
For his part, a physician expert has warned that the city of Hebron is polluted with radiations from Dimon.
"The climate in south Hebron is polluted with nuclear radiations as the area is close to the Dimona reactor," he said, quoting Akhbar Al Neqeb newspaper.
He said that the cement walls around the reactor don't iron out the radiation influences, consequently people in the area are affected by the nuclear radiation.
Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who was imprisoned for18 years in Israel for exposing its nuclear secrets to the world, has warned of the increasing risk of Dimona's nuclear reactor, demanding the Israeli government to shut it down.
Vanunu told Al-Jazeera satellite channel Monday, August 23 that the Dimona reactor became very old, and unless it shuts down, another " Chernobyl " disaster might occur again in the region.
-------- japan
School officials failed to dispose of more than 1,000 bottles of radioactive waste
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-24/s_26663.asp
TOKYO - School officials failed to dispose of more than 1,000 bottles of radioactive waste, leaving them in a university lab in southern Japan for years, the government said Monday.
No radiation leaked as the bottles were sealed and there was no damage to the environment at Tokushima University, about 515 kilometers (320 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Coming just two weeks after Japan's worst nuclear accident, the news still raised concerns about safety practices for radioactive materials. Four workers were killed in the Aug. 9 accident at a nuclear power plant operated by Kansai Electric, though no radiation leaked.
Most of the bottles contained tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that is dangerous only if consumed in large quantities. The bottles had been abandoned by university officials after experiments carried out from 1976-1997, the Education and Science Ministry said in a statement.
Leaving the bottles in the lab violated government regulations requiring that radioactive material from experiments be disposed of in a specially designated area.
The ministry issued a warning to Tokushima University. It also ordered the institution to regularly report on its storage of radioactive materials for the next three years.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil Police Seize Black Market Uranium Ore
August 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-brazil-uranium.html
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Police have seized a load of uranium and thorium ore taken from a secret mine in the jungle in northern Brazil and destined for sale in the black market, an official said on Tuesday.
Based on a lead from an informant, federal police seized 1,320 pounds of ore containing the radioactive metals in a pickup truck about 75 miles from Macapa, capital of Amapa state, near the mouth of the Amazon River.
Police said they believed it was Brazil's first such case.
The Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB) group, which produces nuclear fuel for atomic power plants, said in a written reply to Reuters the natural ore could not be used to make a nuclear bomb and the confiscated quantity did not inspire fear.
``Judging by the quantity mentioned in reports and because it is ore, the material hardly has any commercial value,'' INB said. Police said they believed the shipment's owner had told the prospective buyer it had been refined to metal.
``We got a fax from the laboratory in Rio de Janeiro yesterday saying the cargo had significant levels of uranium and thorium,'' officer Luiz Carlos told Reuters, adding that the truck was seized last month.
Samples were sent to another lab in Minas Gerais, which is expected to report on the concentration of the radioactive material, Carlos said.
Police said that based on confessions from some of those involved, they estimated that the owner of the cargo was expecting to get over 1 million reais ($330,000) for the ore.
``Neither 600 kg nor 6,000 kg of uranium and/or thorium ore is hazardous for human health,'' the INB said. Uranium has to be extracted from ore and highly enriched to make a bomb.
Pure uranium would have various applications in guidance devices and shielding material. Thorium is expected to be used as a nuclear reactor fuel in the future, but is not widely used today. It is used in portable lamps and various metal alloys.
The investigation was continuing. A man fled from the truck carrying the illegal material when police stopped it.
``The location of the mine is still unknown. We believe it is in the jungle in the Serra de Navio region,'' Carlos said.
``This is the first case that we've run across in the state, and I believe in Brazil,'' he said.
Brazil has the world's sixth-biggest reserve of uranium. It is considered government property and strictly regulated.
Natural uranium is sufficiently radioactive to expose a photographic plate in an hour or so. Much of the Earth's internal heat is considered attributable to the presence of uranium and thorium.
Uranium on the Earth's surface, not as rare as once thought, is now considered more plentiful than mercury or silver.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear terror attack on US 'inevitable'
24.08.2004
New Zealand Herald
By ANDREW GUMBEL in Los Angeles
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3586236&thesection=news&thesubsection=world
The Bush Administration insists its top priority is keeping weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists' hands.
But in a withering new book, one of America's foremost nuclear weapons experts argues that the White House has been heedless of the threat and nuclear armageddon in one or more United States cities is now "more likely than not" over the next decade.
Graham Allison, a defence official under both Republican and Democratic Administrations and now a leading Harvard researcher, describes the Bush Administration as "reckless" for its failure to secure fissile materials around the world and its apparent lack of interest in preventing North Korea and Iran becoming nuclear powers.
His book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, lays out a series of measures to minimise the risk of al Qaeda or another group building or buying a nuclear weapon and smuggling it into the US.
Allison demonstrates that the Bush White House, for all its bullish rhetoric, has taken none of them.
Al Qaeda is known to have tried to obtain nuclear weapons since 1992.
"On the current course," Allison concludes, "nuclear terrorism is inevitable."
The most likely scenario, say security experts, is that terrorists would buy or steal fissile material and build their own bomb, using science that has been in the public domain for 30 years.
Hence the urgent need to secure the world's relatively restricted stockpiles of that fissile material - either highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
However, a programme for securing nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, pioneered by US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, is so poorly funded that it will take 13 more years to finish at today's pace.
"The incandescent and incontestable fact is that in the two years after September 11, fewer potential nuclear weapons' worth of highly enriched uranium and plutonium were secured than in the two years before September 11," Allison told the Independent.
If North Korea developed a full nuclear production line it would be "the greatest failure of American diplomacy in all our history".
An effective "war on nuclear terrorism", Allison argued, would cost around US$5 billion a year - out of a budget "that devotes more than US$500 billion to defence and the war in Iraq."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
FirstEnergy to Cut 205 Nuclear Employees
August 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-FirstEnergy-Job-Cuts.html
AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- FirstEnergy Corp. will eliminate 205 jobs in its nuclear operating subsidiary, or about 7 percent of that unit, as part of a previously announced reorganization.
About 120 FirstEnergy Operating Co. employees will lose their jobs immediately, company spokesman Todd Schneider said. The Perry plant in northeastern Ohio will lose 55 employees, the Davis-Besse plant in northwestern Ohio will lose 35 and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania will lose 29, Schneider said. One nuclear job at the company's headquarters also will be eliminated.
The nonunion job cuts, including managers and supervisors, are from almost all departments, including engineering, operations and work management, he said.
Another 85 employees will be let go as soon as their present assignments are finished, Schneider said Monday.
The cuts are part of a plan to improve safety and efficiency, a spokesman for the electric utility said Tuesday. But critics expressed concern about safety. Two of the Ohio plants have been under federal scrutiny.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a longtime FirstEnergy critic, said the cuts were ``all about protecting corporate profits'' and he planned to file a challenge with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said the reorganization is designed to coordinate three nuclear operations to upgrade overall performance.
``This reorganization is not driven by costs,'' Schneider said. He said he had no figures available on how much the job cuts might save the company.
When all the jobs are eliminated, the nuclear subsidiary will have about 2,630 employees spread out at the company's plants, headquarters and suburban Cleveland laboratory. Overall, FirstEnergy employs about 14,000 people.
The job cuts are the final part of a reorganization of nuclear operations the Akron-based electric utility announced in June.
``It's hard for anybody outside of the organization to say a number is too high or too low,'' said David Lochbaum, nuclear expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group. What counts is whether FirstEnergy manages the plants better and achieves the right performance, he said.
FirstEnergy shares rose 27 cents to close at $39.90 Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
^On the Net:
FirstEnergy: www.firstenergycorp.com
--------
FirstEnergy slashes 205 jobs at 3 nuclear sites
Move includes 63 at Davis-Besse plant
By JON CHAVEZ
THE TOLEDO BLADE BUSINESS WRITER
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040824/BUSINESS01/408240358/-1/NEWS30
FirstEnergy Corp. is eliminating 205 salaried jobs at its three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, including 63 at the Davis-Besse plant, as the final step of a reorganization.
The company, which owns Toledo Edison, laid off 120 workers yesterday, from engineers to maintenance and administration employees. It will cut 85 others as soon as projects they are working on are done, within the next year, the company said yesterday. None are union workers.
At Davis-Besse power plant near Oak Harbor, 35 employees were cut yesterday and 28 more will be gone when their projects are done, which will leave about 740 workers.
At the firm's nuclear plant in Perry, Ohio, 55 were let go and 35 more will be laid off later, leaving about 710 employees. At Beaver Valley nuclear plant in Shippingport, Pa., 29 were let go yesterday and 23 more will be gone later, leaving about 1,050.
The changes are the final step in the Akron utility's bid to make staff and management operate uniformly at its three nuclear plants. The moves occur a few months after FirstEnergy was able to restart Davis-Besse after a two-year shutdown because of a variety of safety problems, including a corroded reactor head.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was aware of the changes but had no specific objections.
"We don't regulate the number of employees at a nuclear plant. We focus on ... performance and safety," said agency spokesman Jan Strasma.
"It is the utility's responsibility to make cuts and still ensure performance and safety standards."
FirstEnergy said its reorganization started in June with the appointment of senior executives and selection of managers and supervisors.
Gary Leidich, president of the FirstEnergy subsidiary that oversees nuclear operations, said in a statement that the moves are aimed at improving performance and keeping safety as the top priority at the three plants.
The plants had different management structures, different job descriptions, and other variations that made it difficult to move someone from one plant to another.
Those let go were all full-time workers and will get severance, health benefits, job training, and placement assistance, a company spokesman said.
Mark Sadeghian, an analyst at Morningstar Inc., said he wants to see how the restructuring works but acknowledged that it might make corporate monitoring easier at the three power plants.
"Is it good to eliminate people per se? That's hard to say," he said.
"If you could no longer run [the plants] as efficiently as before, then it wouldn't be. The evidence is going to be in how they operate the plant from now on."
Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128
-------- nevada
U.S. government to sit out challenge of radiation ruling
By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Aug-24-Tue-2004/news/24607508.html
WASHINGTON -- The nuclear power industry will be alone in appealing a federal court ruling that struck a blow to the Yucca Mountain Project.
Government officials decided Monday not to join a legal challenge of the nuclear waste project. Instead, the government will seek to rework a 10,000-year radiation protection standard thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.
"Our general belief is that the framework the court decision required is a workable deal," Davis said. "Our best way to proceed is not to engage in litigation but to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a regulatory response.
"Whatever standard they come up with, our commitment is to ensure the repository will meet the standard," Davis said.
The Justice Department with attorneys from the Energy Department and the EPA made the choice to go with the court's July 9 decision, Davis said.
Davis said the Energy Department plans to file a repository application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year, but NRC officials have said they are unsure whether it can be docketed without complete safety standards.
The government's decision to sit out appears to give some shape to other paths forward for the embattled Yucca Mountain Project, which seeks to entomb the nation's nuclear waste 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Besides the possibility of reworking repository radiation standards, Yucca Mountain supporters in Congress are considering an attempt to overturn the court's ruling through legislation. That option was encouraged by The New York Times in a Monday editorial.
And while Davis said the government will not seek a rehearing at the appeals court level, he did not rule out asking the Supreme Court to take up the case directly. A deadline to file a Supreme Court petition falls in November.
An EPA official, John Millett, said discussing agency plans to rework the radiation standard would be premature.
Nevada officials had expected a government appeal but welcomed the absence of one.
"For us, it seems to be good news in the sense they are acknowledging we were right on the merits of the EPA standards, and it keeps us from having to pay lawyers more money," said Bob Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
While the government is staying out of court, attorneys for the Nuclear Energy Institute planned to submit a 15-page petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by a midnight Monday deadline, spokeswoman Melanie Lyons said.
The NEI will request the court reconsider its July ruling, which threw out an EPA standard requiring the nuclear repository shield the public from radiation doses for 10,000 years.
A three-judge panel said the EPA deviated from a National Academy of Sciences study that recommended safeguards be extended thousands of years longer.
-------- texas
Pantex Nuclear Plant needs a $20 million safety overhaul
8/24/04
KXAN-TV
Texas Briefs
http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=2214430&nav=0s3dQC7s
The Pantex Nuclear Plant needs a $20 million safety overhaul. According to a government report, a sealant used in recent repairs needs to be replaced.
The repair would limit the release of plutonium if there is an accidental blast. The plant near Amarillo is the only place in the country that assembles and disassembles stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26931-2004Aug23.html
Sealant used in the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas to prevent plutonium from leaking in case of an accidental blast is peeling, and repairs could cost $20 million, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The sealant was applied to faulty door welds on underground workshops after officials learned weld repairs were never completed.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Alleged Vigilantes Show Footage of Afghan Operations
U.S. Defendants Seen Meeting Officials
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25353-2004Aug23?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 23 -- Three Americans on trial for allegedly detaining and torturing Afghans in a secret prison showed videotapes Monday of themselves meeting with senior Afghan officials, questioning one man who described a bomb plot and arresting another in the presence of Afghan troops and foreign peacekeepers.
The dramatic and at times chaotic court hearing, which broke off for a third postponement of the case, included an emotional outburst from one of the group's alleged victims and a businesslike recitation from two others who complained the Americans had stolen their wristwatches and TV sets.
The three Americans -- Jonathan "Jack" Idema, Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo -- are accused of illegally arresting, imprisoning and torturing several Afghans in a private jail as part of a self-described anti-terrorist operation they contend U.S. and Afghan officials were informed about. Four Afghans who worked for the men as interpreters, cooks and guards are also facing charges.
U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington have denied employing, authorizing or knowing anything about Idema and his operation, but U.S. military officials in Kabul have acknowledged receiving one prisoner from him.
At the hearing, Caraballo and his American attorney, Michael Skibbie, presented several video clips as evidence that the group had operated with the knowledge and approval of some Afghan and foreign authorities and that the Afghans detained by the Americans at their Kabul base were terrorists who planned to kill Afghan officials.
The tapes were made by Caraballo, who claims he was acting only as a journalist during Idema's operations. The tapes were confiscated by FBI agents here after the men were arrested in early July. After weeks of requests, Skibbie said he was finally able to get access to several hundred tapes and view a portion of them for use at trial.
One tape showed the Afghan education minister, Yonus Qanooni, thanking Idema for uncovering a plot to assassinate him and offering to send his personal security troops with the Americans to arrest the culprits.
Another showed one of the alleged detainees, Ghulam Sakhi, being questioned in Idema's custody and quietly describing how he had been hired to plant bombs that would "target" Qanooni and the Afghan defense minister, Mohammed Fahim.
Sakhi has claimed that his confession was obtained under torture and that he was hung upside down and scalded with hot water in Idema's secret facility in Kabul. He repeated that claim Monday in a brief conversation with journalists after court adjourned.
But Idema, who guffawed, objected and interrupted speakers throughout the four-hour hearing, gestured sarcastically toward Sakhi's image on a small TV placed next to the judge.
"Ghulam Sakhi told this court I hung him upside down, poured boiling water on him, tortured him and burned him," Idema said. "Yet here he is, sitting calmly, unrestrained, sipping a Miranda," a soft drink, "eating kebab and talking about terrorists."
A third tape showed Idema and dozens of other men, including Afghan military officials and foreign peacekeeping officers, raiding a house in Kabul and displaying objects that Idema said they had found there, including a pillow stuffed with explosives, rice bags full of bullets and explosive detonators.
Idema said one kind of explosive they found was so rare and difficult to detect that the peacekeepers thanked him "profusely" and planned to use it to train dogs to sniff it out. He said Sakhi and an accomplice were planning to plant bombs on trucks that deliver fuel to the main U.S. military air base at Bagram, north of the capital.
Skibbie, the defense attorney, said several tapes were damaged, missing or partly erased after the FBI took custody of them. He added that one of the tapes showed "a very important conversation" between Idema and U.S. officials. He said the damage constituted "continuing evidence that the FBI has interfered with the Afghan justice system."
But as in previous hearings in the case, testimony was largely overshadowed by verbal sparring between Idema and the other participants. Idema, 48, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier from Fayettville, N.C., who is representing himself, objected so often during others' testimony and comments that the judge threatened twice to eject him from court.
The hearing, before a special security court, was marked by intermittent efforts at maintaining order and by extemporaneous asides and arguments among many participants. The case is a highly publicized test of Afghanistan's fledgling postwar justice system and is being closely followed by the Afghan and international news media.
The proceedings were also thrown into confusion by unintelligible or missing translations. Sometimes so many people spoke at once that court interpreters were stumped; at other times the interpreters themselves began arguing.
While Caraballo and Skibbie were attempting to show the videotapes, both Idema and the prosecutor repeatedly interrupted to comment on what was being shown. Although Caraballo's defense is separate from Idema's, Idema kept saying he had a right to speak in his own defense after every tape.
The prosecutor, meanwhile, argued that Idema's taped meetings with Qanooni and other officials were "illegal, unofficial and personal." Skibbie asked several times that the prosecutor's remarks be stricken as "hearsay" and opinion.
Idema, wearing his now-familiar military-style fatigues and dark glasses, pointed at the prosecutor and accused him of lying in various statements.
In one outburst, Idema accused the prosecutor of telling "an absolute lie. Let him take an oath before Allah. I dare him to do that." This was in response to the prosecutor saying he had given Idema and the other defendants a copy of the charges against them.
At another point, one of Idema's alleged victims, a turbaned cleric and judge named Siddiqullah, rose from his seat in the audience and berated Idema for insulting him from the dock. Judge Abdulboset Bakhtiary ordered Siddiqullah to sit down and be quiet, but after court adjourned, the cleric greeted the judge and other officials and held murmured conversations with them.
Two other witnesses in the case, Sakhi and a taxi driver named Sher Jan, were called to testify. But instead of addressing the key issue of whether they had confessed under the Americans' torture or recanted under Afghan police abuse, they were asked only to list items they said Idema's group had stolen from them, including Jan's taxi and Sakhi's TV.
An Afghan lawyer read a statement from one Afghan defendant, named Sherzai, saying he had been hired as a servant in Idema's office and should not be considered responsible for any criminal activities there.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Judge Bakhtiary suspended the hearing for one week to allow the third American, Bennett, to obtain an attorney. Bennett asked for an attorney several times in court Monday and said his previous requests had gotten nowhere.
-------- biological weapons / chemical weapons
Army delays start of nerve agent destruction at Indiana facility
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
By Rick Callahan,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-24/s_26658.asp
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana - The Army has delayed until later this year plans to begin destroying a deadly nerve agent stockpiled in western Indiana after the project's test run raised nearly 200 operational and safety issues, officials said Monday.
The delay is the latest at the Newport Chemical Depot, where Army officials expressed hope this spring that they could begin chemically neutralizing 1,269 tons of VX nerve agent in July or August.
The 2.5-year project is now expected to start between October and December, said Jeff Brubaker, the Army's site project manager. However, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must first complete its own review of the project and how the resulting waste product will be handled.
Two teams of government officials who witnessed July's tests at the complex built to destroy the stockpile raised 190 issues about its operation or safety.
Army spokeswoman Terry Arthur said 156 of the 190 issues have not been resolved by the Army and its contractor, Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group of Pasadena, California, which has a $612 million contract for the VX project.
Among the changes the teams recommended were installing more air-monitoring equipment inside the complex, boosting backup power in its laboratory, and eliminating condensation dripping from air ducts in the lab, Arthur said.
The CDC is examining the Army's methods of destroying the VX, its plans to ship the waste byproduct to New Jersey, and whether a DuPont Inc. plant there can safely treat and dispose of it.
The Environmental Protection Agency is helping the CDC evaluate the environmental impact of DuPont's plans to dump the byproduct, treated hydrolysate, into the Delaware River. Those plans have generated strong opposition in both New Jersey and Delaware.
CDC spokeswoman Stephanie Creel said Monday there was no timeline for the agency to complete its review.
-------- iran
US warplanes violate Iran's air space
Aug 24, 2004,
IRNA
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_3464.shtml
Five US warplanes entered Iran's air space last Thursday night from the southwestern Shalamcheh border and flew over the city of Khorramshahr for a while, press reports said Tuesday.
According the Persian daily Seday-e Edalat, 'the jet fighters which flew at high speed and altitude, then headed to the Arvand River'.
"They flew at a height of 10 kilometers and maneuvered over Khorramshahr for a while," the paper said.
"While the objective behind the fighters' violation of the Iranian air space is not known yet, some military specialists believe such moves are aimed at assessing the sensitivity of the Islamic Republic's anti-aircraft defense system," it added.
It said military and air force officials had refrained from commenting on the incident when contacted.
Iran has been wary of the occupation forces' presence on its doorsteps in Iraq and carefully watched their movements.
Tehran, while opposing Iraq's invasion, took a position of `active neutrality' at the time of the attack.
In June, Iranian naval guards seized three British boats with eight crew in the country's territorial waters in Arvand river, which borders Iraq.
The servicemen, two Royal Navy sailors and six Royal Marine commandos, were later released.
Their equipment reportedly consisted of personal weapons, radios and navigation equipment, including echo sounders to measure the depth of the water, global positioning systems to identify the exact position and up-to-date maritime charts.
-------- iraq
U.S. Forces Launch Offensive Near Shrine
Najaf Raid Meets With Little Resistance
By Karl Vick and Naseer Nouri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25693-2004Aug23.html
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 24 -- U.S. military forces intensified pressure on Shiite Muslim militiamen early Tuesday around the shrine of Imam Ali, with cavalry units mounting armored attacks to the north and east of the holy site while Marines exchanged fire with guerrillas to the west.
In an unusually active night of offensive operations, explosions echoed across Najaf and black smoke from heavily shelled buildings billowed over the shrine's brightly lit minarets and signature gold dome.
At one point shortly after midnight, the view from the western edge of the vast cemetery north of the shrine was a tableau of organized violence. In the sky to the left, a 155mm illumination round hung in the air, fired by Marine howitzers to light an area at the behest of Iraqi police. Straight ahead, cavalry armor fired volley after volley of red tracer fire at several tall buildings just inside the road that rings the shrine. Each burst of 20mm shells exploded in a golden flurry on impact, igniting a fire that soon engulfed much of the area in smoke.
The sound, like steady knocking on a door, was later overtaken by the chain gun of an AC-130 Spectre gunship, which destroyed a booby-trapped roadblock. AH-64 Apache attack helicopters hovering behind a nearby ridge fired volleys of Hellfire missiles.
To the east of the shrine, armor from another cavalry outfit was involved in what a commander described as heavy fighting for control of a complex of buildings.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad's heavily Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, an explosion killed four people and injured nine, Qasim Saddam, the director of Sadr Hospital, told the Associated Press. The cause of the blast was unclear, and the U.S. military said it was unaware of the incident.
In Fallujah, in the restive Sunni Muslim region west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes reportedly carried out an airstrike early Tuesday. Witnesses told the AP that it was unclear what the target was, but they reported flames and smoke in southern neighborhoods.
The raid on central Najaf from the north was the first in which U.S. forces penetrated the jumbled neighborhood immediately surrounding the shrine. It brought little resistance from the Shiite militia force, the Mahdi Army, and commanders of units waiting in the nearby cemetery said they were surprised to have encountered no fire at all.
"I think they're tired of us beating on them, but it doesn't mean they've given up," said Army Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division's 5th Regiment, which mounted the raid.
The morale of the Mahdi Army is of great interest to U.S. commanders and the Iraqi officials who approve or reject major combat operations. Officers say they have intelligence indicating significant numbers of the Shiite volunteers, who are loyal to rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr, have either been killed or retreated.
"We hear from multiple sources there are some guys drifting away, but at the same time there seems to be no shortage of dedicated guys up there," said one U.S. commander.
"We have many killed and wounded and we cannot count them because of this situation," said Ahmed Shaibani, a Sadr aide, who appeared tired. He said Sadr's organization was burying the fighters because it could not get the corpses to the families, many of whom are in Baghdad, a major recruiting center for Sadr.
No movement was reported in the sporadic negotiations among Sadr's representative, mediators and the Iraqi government.
With no end to the fighting in sight, civilians in the area around the shrine are feeling the effects of the conflict.
"I want the whole world to see my situation," said a mother of two, who wore dirty clothes because water and electrical power have been shut off in her neighborhood. "What have we done that they do such a thing to us? We don't have food and water, and my husband is sick. Oh God, what did I do?"
-------
In Najaf, Iraqi Politics Dictate U.S. Tactics
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27049-2004Aug23?language=printer
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 23 -- The company commanders had their maps, their orders and their rules of engagement.
"As for the timeline, I'm going to ask you to remain flexible," said Army Maj. Doug Ollivant, who was running the pre-battle briefing one day this month. "You've just entered the world of political war, and it's not a guy wearing a uniform who is going to be making the final decision on where and when this happens."
Ollivant was, in fact, flexible when the order to scrub the mission reached his armored Humvee that night, on the way out of the main gate of the principal U.S. base in Najaf with a column of Abrams tanks raring to go behind him. But three nights later, when his radio crackled with the same message -- no go -- passed down from the same guy not wearing a uniform, the 1st Cavalry Division officer slapped the dashboard and cursed.
"Welcome to my world," he ruefully told a Special Operations officer who also had been whipsawed for two weeks by the shifting political calculations dictating how U.S. forces go about defeating a Shiite Muslim militia fighting from inside the holiest shrine in Shiite Islam.
"We're in the same world," the officer said with a smile. "Especially down here."
If there is any doubt that the new Iraqi government is calling the shots in this country, the supporting evidence is mounting daily in Najaf.
Here, on the order of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, night raids bolt forward or are halted, bombs fall from the sky or remain snuggled beneath the wings of F-15s, howitzers roar or are silenced, and ambitious combined arms operations are meticulously planned and then shelved, only to be revived a day later when a shift in the political winds has been detected.
"This mission is like Normandy, only instead of the weather, we're waiting on the politics," said Capt. Brian Ennesser, intelligence officer for the 1st Cavalry's 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment.
Though sometimes trying, even to commanders trained to be elastic, the situation is broadly welcomed by the U.S. military.
The Najaf battlefield revolves around the shrine of Imam Ali, now one of the most sensitive religious sites in the Muslim world. Since the invasion of Iraq 17 months ago, U.S. commanders have known to avoid the gold-domed site and leave its security largely to the Iraqi police.
But now that a Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army has made the splendid shrine complex both hideout and firebase, U.S. officers say they welcome advice on how aggressively they can pursue a confrontation without enraging Muslims the world over.
"The only way people will accept this is if it is to be the desire of Iraqi leaders, not just the U.S. military," said an American official in Iraq who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In addition, U.S. officials and commanders say they are eager to see the Iraqi government step up and assume real authority.
"That's what we want: We want them to take charge so we can get the heck out of here," said Col. Dewitt Mayfield, senior planner for U.S. forces in Iraq. "It's their country, a sovereign government. Not very good, maybe, but sovereign."
Since the U.S.-led occupation authority transferred power to the Iraqis on June 28, the chain of command has kept its structure but changed personnel.
"It's civilian control of the military," said Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who commands the 1st Cavalry. "That's what our system's all about."
Except now the civilians are not Americans.
At the austere desert headquarters of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit outside Najaf, war plans were being made last week in marathon meetings kicked off by Iraq's defense minister, Hazim Shalan.
"He sets the tone," an officer who was present said.
Shalan was one of three senior Iraqi cabinet members on the base, shuttling from Baghdad to give first-hand counsel to the generals, who understand that he speaks for Allawi. The prime minister, they say, also relies on Interior Minister Falah Naqib when making major decisions regarding the shrine, a cardboard model of which dominates the planning room.
"We're following strict guidance from the prime minister," said Capt. Carrie C. Batson, spokeswoman for the Marine command in Najaf. "We're talking to them probably five or six times a day. We're in constant contact with them."
It's a dramatic change from before June 28, when the Americans could do as they pleased.
"I used to have lunch with these guys," said one U.S. commander in Najaf. "We never talked about tactics a year ago. They only wanted to talk about politics. Now we're asking them what our options are, and what they aren't. Everything we're going to do is based on what the Iraqi government says."
Officers said the ban placed on U.S. troops firing toward the gold dome of the shrine was worked out with the Iraqis, who understood the propaganda catastrophe that could result from damage to the site.
On Friday, at the request of Iraqi officials, artillery units stopped firing 155mm rounds several hours before the Interior Ministry erroneously reported that the Mahdi Army was about to hand over the shrine to Iraqi police.
The Iraqi government also requests occasional pauses in U.S. offensive operations, as well as the lifting of such pauses for raids that perhaps remind Moqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric who leads the Mahdi Army, just how big a hammer lay at hand.
So it was that on Saturday night, Ollivant was finally leading a column of tanks out of the main gate of Forward Operating Base Hotel toward a midnight rendezvous in the vast cemetery north of the shrine.
"We have to meet Bushmaster at the body washer's," the driver, Spec. Adam Dye of Chattanooga, Tenn. said. He was referring by radio code to the armored column that would be waiting at the mortuary where bodies are washed and wrapped before burial, in accordance with Muslim practice.
Ollivant, who has a doctorate in political science from Indiana University and taught political theory at West Point, was philosophical about the last scrubbed mission, which was yanked back by Allawi's announcement that Iraqi forces would lead the way in Najaf.
"Actually, in the long term, putting on my theory cap, it's a good sign," he said. "You've got a prime minister now who's actually countering Sadr's call."
But now, the theory cap was off and night-vision goggles were on for a mission that, for the first time, brought U.S. armor to the militia's backdoor, punching holes in a section of a parking garage not 400 yards behind the shrine. By 1 a.m., Ollivant and his battalion commander were looking down on the assault from the eerie beauty of tombs silhouetted by the colored lights draping the shrine's minarets.
Then a red line arced across the starry sky -- tracer fire from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, answering a machine gun deep in the warren of mausoleums. A series of mortar explosions quickly followed as the militia homed in on the Bradley.
So it went for more than an hour, fire to the left, fire to the right, and from down the hill a rainbow of stuttering light -- now red, now yellow, now white white white -- as the Cavalry's armor detonated a string of roadside booby traps and lurched toward the target.
Edging closer to the action, the five command Humvees crawled through a narrow cemetery road when the machine gun opened up again. "Back up!" Ollivant shouted, as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated nearby and the Humvee's gunner ducked down from his turret. "Now!"
But the entire column had to back up in unison at an excruciating crawl, flanked by rows of tombs with their doors standing open. "You know what that was, Brian?" the major asked his intelligence officer back at the base, with the Cavalry armor headed home from a mission accomplished with no casualties. "That was a good old-fashioned cowboy raid!"
And that, apparently, is what Iraq's prime minister wanted. As the weeks have passed in Najaf and more ambitious military plans have been detailed, rehearsed and, in every case, set aside, Allawi has made his wishes clear. Accordingly, U.S. forces have calibrated an extremely slow but steady tightening of the armored noose around the shrine and Sadr's militia, while the government continually insists "a few hours" remain for Sadr to agree to a negotiated peace.
"This is classic, what Karl von Clausewitz said about war being politics advanced by other means," Ollivant said the morning after, referring to the Prussian military theorist. "And if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that's what I was doing last night -- using violence to make a political point.
"And in the end, that's what we do. Whether patrolling or occupying or overthrowing governments, we advance politics."
Textbook stuff?
"It's partly what I was teaching," Ollivant said. "More what I've picked up in the last couple years."
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
--------
Iraqi Government Gives Rebel Cleric an Ultimatum
August 24, 2004
By ALEX BERENSON and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/international/middleeast/24CND-IRAQ.html?hp
NAJAF, Iraq, Wednesday, Aug. 25 - As American forces pressed new attacks on guerrillas loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the interim Iraqi government ordered Mr. Sadr to surrender immediately or face an attack on his headquarters at the shrine of Imam Ali.
In an overnight assault, marines attacked a building in the inner ring of Najaf's Old City, less than 400 yards west of the shrine. The assault was first time that American forces had tried to take and hold ground inside the inner ring, instead of simply attacking and leaving.
On Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers took a tentative step into the battle, beginning mop-up operations in the Judaada neighborhood south of the shrine, which had already been cleared of insurgents by American forces. While American troops are doing almost all the fighting here, the interim Iraqi government has repeatedly said that only Iraqi forces will be allowed to attack the shrine.
On one street, a group of Iraqi national guardsmen advanced on foot toward the holy shrine, peeking around corners and pointing their guns ahead of them. A pair of American armored vehicles shadowed them about 200 yards away.
One of the soldiers, Qasim Hallan, a young Iraqi from the northern city of Mosul, said he and his comrades were ready to move into Najaf and fight Mr. Sadr's forces.
``If they don't resist, and they don't fight, we will not hurt them,'' said Mr. Hallan, who identified himself as a member of an antiterroist unit. ``But if they resist, and they fight, we are going to kill them.''
Iraqi political leaders echoed that confidence. Hazim Al-Shalaan, the interim defense minister, again called on Mr. Sadr's insurgents to give up the shrine and surrender their weapons or face an imminent attack.
``We are ready to go into the shrine, or for their surrender,'' Mr. Shalaan told the Arabic-language news channel al-Arabiya. ``They have a few hours to surrender.''
The governor of Najaf, Adnan Al-Zorfi, said Iraqi forces were ready and could attack at any time. ``We are waiting the decision by the political leadership,'' he said.
As the pressure mounted, the mood of Mr. Sadr's supporters was grim.
In an impromptu press conference on Tuesday, Ali Smesim, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said that his leader wanted a negotiated peace but that his good intentions had been thwarted by the Iraqi government and its American benefactors. In the lobby of the Sea of Najaf Hotel, a building several hundred yards behind the American lines that is home to Western and Arabic-language journalists, the white-turbaned Mr. Smesim recited a litany of what he called deliberate efforts by the government of Ayad Allawi to block Mr. Sadr's peace efforts and make war more likely.
Reading from his list, Mr. Smesim seemed like an unhappy man, one who feared that Mr. Sadr and his militia might not survive the battle for Najaf. Mr. Sadr should not be blamed for the fighting, he said.
``This government wants to fool us by killing or arresting Muqtada Al-Sadr, and they want to insult Sadr's movement,'' Mr. Smesim said, seated in a lobby chair. ``Now, we are saying it very clearly, that we are ready for negotiations.''
With that, Mr. Smesim stood up, waved away questions and disappeared into Najaf's streets.
Just a week ago, Mr. Sadr felt confident enough to turn away a delegation that had traveled from Baghdad to Najaf to meet him and mediate an end to the standoff. But Mr. Sadr's rebuff of the mediators appears to have galvanized the Iraqi government against him. In the days since, Iraq's prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has authorized steadily increasing attacks by American troops, drawing the ring tighter around Mr. Sadr's insurgents and pushing closer to the shrine.
Now the insurgents appear weary and overmatched by American tanks, artillery and air power. Some guerrillas have fled, and American commanders here say they believe they are close to breaking the will of the remaining insurgents.
In the last 10 days, the Army battalion fighting in southern Najaf has killed several hundred of Mr. Sadr's while having only two soldiers seriously wounded and none killed, said Maj. Tim Karcher, the battalion's operations officer.
``They know we're coming, and they have to feel relatively incapable of stopping us,'' Major Karcher said. ``They see us coming every day.''
Around the shrine, Mr. Sadr's guerrillas prepared for a final battle. Overnight, supporters had erected a makeshift barricade of shelves, metal carts used by streetside tea peddlers, and oil barrels to protect themselves against American snipers who were only a few hundred feet away. Guerrillas ducked sniper fire as they ran to reach the shrine's entrance. And a steady flow of injured men entered the shrine's makeshift hospital on long flatbed vegetable carts. Another two were killed, their bodies wrapped in light-colored sheets in preparation for burial.
But Ahmed Shaibani, a senior aide to Mr. Sadr, said the rebels were winning.
``The war has developed and changed and the Americans know that,'' he said. ``We have full control.''
Erik Eckholm contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Najaf.
-------
Shi'ite Gunmen Take to the Streets in Iraq's Basra
August 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-basra.html
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Scores of Shi'ite militiamen took to the streets of the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Tuesday, brandishing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and demanding U.S.-led forces pull out of Najaf.
Residents said the militiamen, supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had made roadblocks from burning tires. Iraqi government National Guardsmen were defending the headquarters of the South Oil Company in the city, they said.
Basra, Iraq's second largest city, is mainly Shi'ite. Supporters of Sadr in the city have repeatedly clashed with British troops and Iraqi security forces this month since fighting erupted in Najaf.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Adds to Plans for More Housing Units in Settlements
August 24, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/international/middleeast/24mideast.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 23 - Israel plans to rezone land within existing settlements to allow for the construction of 533 more housing units, most of them close to Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Monday.
The announcement came a week after the government issued tenders for the construction of 1,001 new housing units on the West Bank and said it was planning to issue tenders for another 633 units, though it has not yet done so. Together with the new units from rezoning, this would amount to 2,167 permits to build dwellings beyond Israel's 1967 boundaries.
By comparison, 908 new units were offered for sale in those areas in 2003, 647 were offered in 2002 and 917 in 2001, the year Ariel Sharon became prime minister, according to the daily Yediot Aharonot.
The announcements came after the United States signaled that it would accept housing growth within the boundaries of existing settlements. The Palestinian Authority and the Arab League say such expansion would be a direct violation of Israel's agreement in 2001 to freeze all settlement activity, including "natural growth."
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian spokesman, said, "If this land grab continues, the question that is asked is where will the Palestinian state be established?"
The Palestinian Authority and the Arab League have said the United States, by turning a blind eye to settlement activity that breaks Israel's own promises, is destroying the "road map" to peace originally worked out by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations and agreed to by Israel and the Palestinians last year.
The Israeli side contends that the road map is tattered, partly because of Palestinian support for the violence of the intifada.
American officials say they are trying to help Mr. Sharon out of a difficult political spot, given that his own Likud Party is badly split over his plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and to dismantle settlements there, as well as four small settlements in the West Bank.
The announcements about new settlement activity appear to be an effort by Mr. Sharon to retain the support of Likud, but even some settlers question whether he is sincere about moving ahead with so much construction.
Mr. Sharon appears to be willing to give up Gaza as too costly to Israel - only 8,000 settlers live there in any case - as a way of achieving strengthened Israeli control over strategic parts of the West Bank, where a vast majority of Israeli settlers live. More than 230,000 settlers live there, though the number is more than 430,000 if it includes Israelis who moved into East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed.
The 533 new units would be distributed among Har Gilo, where bulldozers were already at work on Monday, and Har Adar, which have become upper-class suburbs of Jerusalem, as well as two other settlements, Adam and Emmanuel.
The construction would extend Jerusalem southward and eastward. Final approval from the government is expected, but Housing Ministry officials said construction in Adam and Emmanuel might not go ahead.
Mr. Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, is to travel to Washington on Sept. 9 to discuss the Gaza withdrawal, settlement issues and Israel's progress on dismantling illegal outposts built by settlers after March 2001. The United States has criticized Israel for going slowly on the dismantling, another promise made in the negotiations over the peace plan.
Baruch Speigel, a senior adviser to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, told Parliament on Monday that 84 of 104 illegal outposts built since 2001 had been dismantled, and that the last 20 had been held up by legal challenges. A Defense Ministry spokeswoman said 59 outposts had been built before 2001 and had also not been dismantled.
But a dovish member of Parliament, Ran Cohen, disputed the figures. "This seems absolutely false," he said. "If indeed 84 illegal outposts would have been evacuated, one can only imagine the immense uprising that would have surely followed. I have toured the settlements with Peace Now and have seen them with my own eyes. The illegal outposts which have been there for two years have doubled and tripled in size."
Yossi Sarid, another dovish member, called the figures a "cock and bull" story. He suggested that one outpost might have been dismantled "just for the record, but if one was evacuated, two were built instead."
Another member of Parliament, Uri Uriel, a settler leader on the far right, was also critical of Mr. Mofaz, telling the Israeli radio that "the high number was reached to begin with because they counted absurd locations - for instance, if someone stuck two barrels and a flag somewhere, someone else declared it as an outpost."
Mr. Mofaz also said 12 changes had been approved in the route of the separation barrier Israel is building that would bring it much closer to the 1967 boundaries, which are based on 1949 armistice lines.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, for his part continued to move politically on Monday to try to bring disaffected reformers back under his authority while avoiding concrete, public promises to take action.
He finally met with Muhammad Dahlan, who has been a symbol of disaffection with the inefficiency and corruption of the Palestinian Authority, but did so in a group, over lunch. Mr. Arafat has also moved to bring his first prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, back into an important role as his representative to work with Egypt, which is trying to encourage Palestinians to come up with a consensus over the Israeli withdrawal plans for Gaza.
After Mr. Abbas contacted Mr. Arafat, the current Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, went to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Mr. Abbas, Palestinian officials said, and the two men had a second meeting in Ramallah on Sunday before meeting with Mr. Arafat.
They said Mr. Arafat wanted to show that Mr. Dahlan and Mr. Abbas recognized his authority before he took any concrete steps to change or reform the Palestinian administration.
--------
Israel Urged to Change Stand on Geneva Convention
August 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hoping to avoid sanctions, Israel's attorney general wants Israel to consider applying to Palestinians the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguarding the treatment of occupied people, a spokesman said Tuesday.
It was another sign of emerging Israeli disquiet about the risk of international sanctions following a World Court decision in July that declared illegal its West Bank barrier built across Palestinian farmland.
Israel has said previously the Geneva Convention's clauses on occupation do not apply to it because Jordanian and Egyptian control over the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 was not internationally recognized.
Some 3.6 million Palestinians live in the two territories which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel says it does its best to heed humanitarian standards in Palestinian areas but Palestinians dispute this, pointing to Jewish settlements, roadblocks and other Israeli controls.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last week urged the right-wing government to reroute its barrier swiftly to minimize the risk of sanctions, and the High Court gave it 30 days to issue a statement on the ramifications of the World Court decision.
A Justice Ministry spokesman said Mazuz now wanted the government to ``deeply consider'' the possibility of adopting the 1949 Convention, which forbids abuses of civilians in conflict zones and transferring citizens of an occupying power onto captured territory.
But Israel is seen as unlikely to embrace the Convention in the near term as this could be tantamount to recognizing that its Jewish settlement enterprise is illegal.
A senior security source criticized the opinion. ``We have not changed our diplomatic or political point of view. If Israel were to adopt the convention in its own context, it would tie the military's hands in fighting terrorism,'' he said.
However, a senior political source said Mazuz's stance reflected Israeli concerns ``about repercussions from the World Court decision because of the effect on international public opinion.''
Israel says the planned 600 km (360 mile)-long barrier, of which some 200 km have been built, is aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.
Palestinians, who launched an uprising in 2000, denounce the project as a precursor to annexing territory, which could thwart their aspirations to a viable state promised by a troubled U.S.-backed peace plan.
BARRIER'S ROUTE
Significant sections of the barrier charted so far would take in a string of Israeli settlements containing most of the 240,000 Jews who have moved into the West Bank and Gaza since the 1967 Middle East war.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, reacting to Israel's own High Court, this week approved a new path for a segment of the barrier which would fence off less than half the 8,500 acres affected by its original course.
The court had ordered the government not to separate West Bank Palestinians from their livelihoods, schools and hospitals.
In fresh violence in Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 20-year-old farmer Tuesday, medics said. A military source said soldiers had opened fire to thwart a bombing near a crossing with Israel.
In Israeli prisons, a Palestinian hunger strike for better conditions went through its 10th day and Israel declared its hospitals off-limits to any of the 2,800 inmates on the liquids-only fast who might fall ill.
Despite the tensions, the Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers made plans to hold a rare meeting Thursday at an Italian interfaith conference, sources in Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's office said.
-------- japan
Governor, general at odds over Futenma flights
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida,
Stars and Stripes Pacific edition,
Monday, August 23, 2004
http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=23143&archive=true
NAHA, Okinawa - The island's top U.S. general and governor were at odds Saturday over resumption of most air operations at Futenma Marine Corps Air Station.
During a meeting at the Okinawa Prefectural Government office building, in a small meeting room packed with Japanese media, Marine Lt. Gen. Robert L. Blackman apologized for the Aug. 13 crash of a Marine CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter on the grounds of Okinawa International University in Ginowan, adjacent to the air station's southern fence line.
"Governor, I returned from an exercise in Korea today to speak with you directly and to express my deepest regret for the helicopter accident that occurred a week ago from yesterday," Blackman said. "I fully understand the anxiety that the accident has brought in particular [to] the citizens of Ginowan City."
Gov. Keiichi Inamine frowned as he listened. Then he reiterated his demand that all flight operations at Futenma be halted until an investigation into the crash is complete and made public.
The meeting was courteous, but cool. The two men did not shake hands at the beginning and bowed slightly to each other when it was over 30 minutes later.
The Sea Stallion experienced mechanical difficulties shortly after taking off from Futenma, according to witnesses. Okinawa police said the Marines informed them that there was a failure in the tail rotor assembly.
Around 2:20 p.m., parts of the tail rotor detached. A large piece of the blade later was found in a driveway on top of a moped some 100 feet from the main crash site. Witnesses say they watched the helicopter lose altitude and clip the university's administration building before crashing to the ground and exploding into flames.
The three crewmen, Marines from Hawaii on Okinawa for training under the Unit Deployment Program, survived the crash. No civilian injuries were reported. The university was on summer break.
Since the accident, many Okinawa officials have demanded flight operations at the base be halted. Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha, who wants the base closed permanently within five years, said the accident proved his point that the air station, located in the middle of his city, was an "accident waiting to happen."
"The accident is now being thoroughly and completely investigated," Blackman told Inamine on Saturday. "A number of subject matter experts from the Navy Safety Center and Naval Air Assistant Command are here on Okinawa as a part of investigation team. I will meet with them later this afternoon to access the progress of the investigation and to determine if they have made any initial conclusion at this time."
He said the CH-53Ds remained grounded.
"As you know, sir, we initiated minimal, operational essential helicopter flying with the exception of CH-53Ds earlier this week, specifically in preparation for deployment for 31st MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) to the Arabian Gulf," Blackman told Inamine. "I assure you personally each and every one of those helicopters were thoroughly inspected for safety and that all procedures are thoroughly reviewed prior to the operations.
"And, again, I express to you personally and to the citizens of Okinawa my deepest regret [for] this accident," Blackman said. "It is certainly something we did not want to happen and certainly never want to happen again.
Inamine, who had cut short his trip to visit Okinawans now living in Bolivia, said he visited the crash site Saturday morning and was shocked at what he saw.
"The accident was much more serious than I had initially imagined," he said. "Debris was scattered in a large area. Damage to the building was more serious than it appears because there were damaged computers and other equipment in the office."
He said what upset Okinawans as much as the accident was the way the Marines took over security of the area, refusing entrance at first even to Okinawa police.
"What the president and faculty at the university was most concerned with is that their entry to the site was restricted after the accident," Inamine said. "They are upset because autonomy in the university was violated.
He said he will ask the national government to review the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement "so that an investigation by the Okinawa prefectural police in civilian areas becomes possible in cases such as this accident."
"I will strongly demand a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident and to make public the findings," he said. "The wreckage was removed from the site, making an investigation by the police impossible. Residents are greatly concerned about the situation."
He said Okinawans also were angry that flights had resumed.
"Despite our strong demand to suspend all flight operations, helicopters are flying," he said. "The people of Okinawa are irate about this. Until effective safety steps are taken, all the aircraft at the air station, including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, must be halted.
"Resumption of flight operations is absolutely unacceptable," he said.
"Governor, I assure you that the accident, as I said earlier, will be thoroughly investigated," Blackman responded. "We will find the cause of the accident in order to ensure this type of thing may never happen again.
"I would like to add that the cooperation at the crash site itself with local authorities was excellent," he added. "At every step of the way we were able to cooperate and to ensure the integrity of the crash site, so we could, in fact, conduct the most thorough and the most complete investigation that we could."
He promised that an "environmental remediation" of the crash site would take place soon, including a cleanup of any hazardous materials.
-------- pakistan / india
PROTECTING AFGHAN VOTE
Pakistan Vows to Stop Taliban; Westerners Scoff
August 24, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/international/asia/24stan.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 23 - Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, promised Monday that his country would not allow Islamic militants to disrupt the Afghan election from Pakistani soil, but Western diplomats in Afghanistan charged that Pakistan was, in fact, a sanctuary for Afghan militants.
While Mr. Musharraf, playing host to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, vowed that anyone seeking to act against Afghanistan from his soil would be stopped, the diplomats said Pakistan was turning a blind eye to just such activity.
"They are training, financing and organizing these operations on Pakistani soil," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "There is evidence from people who have been picked up in Afghanistan that they are receiving training in Pakistan."
Three senior diplomats, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were speaking now because Western intelligence agencies had concluded that the Taliban were planning major attacks to disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential election, scheduled for Oct. 9, including spectacular attacks in Kabul, the capital.
They called on Pakistani officials to rein in Taliban operations immediately.
"If these attacks do take place, the responsibility will be shared," one diplomat warned, referring to Pakistan. "Our process is being attacked from the territory of Pakistan. That is the responsibility of Pakistan."
The blunt comments about Pakistan appear to be the first public step in an effort to press Pakistan regarding the Taliban ahead of the Afghan election.
The diplomats in Kabul said Taliban operations in Pakistan, particularly in Baluchistan Province, appeared to be so extensive that Pakistan's military intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence, which has a sprawling network along the Afghan border and across Pakistan, must be aware of it. They added that the security situation in Afghanistan's south and east was not going to improve unless Pakistan dealt with the Taliban inside its borders.
Pakistani officials dismissed the allegations and said their forces were doing all they could to apprehend Taliban members. In a telephone interview, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, said the Taliban were thriving inside Afghanistan, not Pakistan.
"This is totally absurd," he said of the charges.
The Taliban, a hard-line Islamic religious movement made up of Afghans, was financed and equipped by Pakistani military intelligence when it won control of most of Afghanistan in the mid-1990's, according to Pakistani and American military analysts. Their leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, later gave shelter to Osama bin Laden and his cadre of Al Qaeda, who were mostly Arabs and other foreigners.
Pakistan's military backed the Taliban in the 1990's as a means to give Pakistan "strategic depth" if it were attacked by its neighbor and longtime rival India, according to Pakistani and American military analysts.
After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, General Musharraf announced that Pakistan had severed all ties with the Taliban and was siding with the United States in the campaign against terrorism. When American forces invaded Afghanistan that fall, thousands of Taliban fighters fled into Pakistan.
At the center of the debate lies the question of General Musharraf's true intentions and his control over his intelligence and military leaders.
"Musharraf does not have complete control over everybody," a senior military officer in Washington said. "But he's trying methodically to do what he can. When he kicks over a rock and the cockroaches scurry, he tries to kill them."
Other officials argue that it is difficult for General Musharraf to control the isolated tribal areas that lie along the border because of alliances that have built up between the tribesmen there and the Taliban.
Still others argue that he is playing a double game with the United States. He hopes to keep the Taliban alive to influence events in Afghanistan, particularly if the United States should capture Mr. bin Laden and abandon the region, those analysts say.
"They think we don't have the staying power to stay here indefinitely," said one of the Western diplomats in Kabul. "There will be another play for Afghanistan, and they would like to have some horses."
In recent months, a debate has gone on inside the Bush administration over how much to press General Musharraf on the Taliban issue. Pakistan's strong cooperation in the hunt for Al Qaeda is one factor, as well as the large amount of pressure already on him.
The general narrowly escaped two Qaeda-linked assassination attempts last December. Some American officials have argued that continued Pakistani cooperation in arresting Qaeda operatives is more important than having Pakistan round up Taliban members.
At the same time, the death toll in Afghanistan is rising. This year, 23 Americans soldiers died in combat there. In 2003, 12 were killed. The death toll for Afghans by suspected Taliban is above 200, 45 percent higher than last year's.
The three Western diplomats said they were particularly concerned about the election. In the last four months, 12 election workers have been killed and 33 wounded in Taliban attacks, and as the election approaches, 100,000 election workers will fan out across the country.
"The number of targets is going to be phenomenal," a diplomat said.
Pakistani officials say that more than 70,000 troops are now posted on or near the border and that at least 70 Pakistani troops died in operations there this spring. They say it is virtually impossible for Pakistan to control its 2,500-mile border with Afghanistan.
They acknowledge that low-level members of the Taliban may be present in Pakistan but say the large number of Afghan refugees still in Pakistan makes it impossible to identify and arrest all Taliban fighters who cross the border.
"Who is a Taliban?" General Sultan asked in the interview. "We also have 1.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan."
But the three diplomats in Kabul said Pakistan's efforts against the Taliban did not match its assault on Al Qaeda.
The diplomat added that Pakistan's Embassy in Kabul was still "full of ISI." That shows, he said, that the Pakistanis still view Afghanistan "through a strategic security lens almost to the exclusion of everything else."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
-------- prisoners of war
Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds
Officials Say Inquiry Also Confirms Prisoners Were Hidden From Aid Groups
By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27048-2004Aug23.html
An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.
Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.
"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib," said an Army officer familiar with the report, one of two investigations on detainee abuse scheduled for release this week. "It has nothing to do with interrogation. It was just them on their own being weird."
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released, other officials at the Pentagon said the investigation also acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations. The report also mentions substantiated claims that at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib, sources said.
"The report will show that these actions were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic," said one Defense Department official. "But it will show that they were the actions of a few, actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures."
The investigative report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay focuses on the role of military intelligence soldiers in the prison abuse. It will expand the circle of soldiers considered responsible for abuse beyond the seven military police soldiers already facing charges, officials said, to include more than a dozen others -- low-ranking soldiers, civilian contractors and medics. Sources have said that the report also criticizes military leadership, from the prison and up through the highest levels of the U.S. chain of command in Iraq at the time.
One Pentagon official said yesterday that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is named in the report for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison as he tried to manage 150,000 troops countering an unexpected insurgency. Sanchez, however, will not be recommended for any punitive action or even a letter of reprimand, the source said. About 300 pages of the 9,000-page report will be released publicly, according to Army officials.
Another report regarding the prison abuse, commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is expected to be released this afternoon. That independent commission, chaired by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, will be critical of the guidance and policies set by top Pentagon and military officials as they worked to get more useful intelligence from detainees in Iraq, said a source familiar with the commission's work.
The Schlesinger report is not expected to implicate high-level officials by name, but it would be the first report to link the abuse at Abu Ghraib to policies set by top officials in Washington. The Fay report, by contrast, does not point a finger at the Pentagon and instead assigns most of the blame to military intelligence and military police who worked on the chaotic grounds of the overcrowded and austere Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfeld had not been briefed on the commission's findings as of yesterday, a Defense Department source said, and the commission likewise has not briefed members of Congress, who have been anticipating the reports for months. Initially, the Schlesinger commission was slated to take 45 days, and Rumsfeld suggested that it consider limiting itself to reviewing the work of other investigations. But the commission hired a staff of more than 20 people and conducted dozens of interviews, taking more than two months to complete its work.
The reports are part of several investigations into U.S. detainee operations around the world, and so far they have expanded the scope of culpability beyond the seven MPs charged in connection with the most notorious incidents of abuse, such as stacking naked detainees in a pyramid, posing them in mock sexual positions and beating them. Pentagon officials said yesterday that the abuse came not as the result of direct orders but rather as "off-the-clock mischief" that arose from vague instructions and a general lack of oversight.
The core conclusion of the Fay report, said one general who is familiar with it, is that there was a leadership failure in the Army in Iraq that extended well beyond a handful of MPs. "There's a vacuum there," he said. "Either people knew it and turned a blind eye, or they weren't paying attention."
In particular, top leaders failed to give proper attention to reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross that decried conditions at Abu Ghraib, reported allegations of abuse and raised warning flags about detainees being hidden from them. Top Pentagon officials have denied keeping detainees from the ICRC, but the Fay report will concur with an earlier Army investigation that cited the prison for keeping "ghost detainees."
"This report will address the ghost-detainee problem, and it was an outright policy violation," said one Pentagon official familiar with the report. "It did happen, and accordingly it is still being investigated."
Another officer at the Pentagon said he felt that the latest revelations, including the use of dogs to frighten juveniles, were some of the most worrisome of the scandal. He said one particular worry at the Pentagon is how the use of dogs against Arab juveniles will be viewed in the Middle East.
"People know that in war, you know, you have to break eggs," he said. "But this crosses the line."
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia plans to cut 100,000 troops by end 2005: report
MOSCOW (AFP)
Aug 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040824155426.mleahx0p.html
Russia's military plans to cut its armed forces by 100,000 troops by the end of 2005, an undisclosed military source told the Interfax-AVN new agency Tuesday. The armed forces currently comprise 1.2 million military personnel and 800,000 civilians, the report said, although some analysts have earlier suggested the total figure may be closer to three million.
Russia has repeatedly delayed cutting staff from its Soviet-era armed forces, with generals hoping to keep their troops despite orders from the Kremlin for money-saving reforms.
President Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin have issued repeated instructions to transform the army, now bogged down in a guerrilla war in Chechnya but originally built for fighting the United States during the Cold War, into a smaller, more mobile force.
The plan has been opposed by generals who fear that a switch from mandatory conscription to contracted military service would decimate the numbers of Russian soldiers including senior commanders.
Russia had initially planned to eliminate the draft by 2000. Now the plan has been pushed back by at least a decade.
-------- spies
Criticism From Many Quarters Greets Plan to Split C.I.A.
August 24, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/politics/24panel.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - A radical proposal by Republican senators to break up the C.I.A. and transfer other intelligence agencies out of the Pentagon met with an expected rush of strong criticism on Monday from influential lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, and drew a noncommittal response from President Bush.
The president, speaking to reporters outside his ranch in Crawford, Tex., said he had not seen details of the proposal announced on Sunday by Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Senator Roberts is a good, thoughtful guy who came up with an idea, and we'll look at it," Mr. Bush said. "But there's going to be a lot of other ideas, too, as this debate goes forward."
Mr. Roberts's proposal, which has the support of several other Republicans on the committee, would divide the responsibilities of the Central Intelligence Agency among three new agencies and have them, as well as intelligence agencies that now operate in the Defense Department, report directly to the newly created office of a national intelligence director.
Aides to Mr. Roberts predicted that his proposal would be fiercely criticized as soon as it was made public, and they were proved right. But the aides said that the senator believed that momentum was gathering for an overhaul of collecting and sharing information and that the proposal had a good chance of adoption in something like its current form.
In a meeting reporters on Monday in his office, Mr. Roberts said that "if this proposal seems radical to some," he had this response:
"What should we do, most especially after 3,000 people died in regard to 9/11, after the Iraqi W.M.D. intelligence failures, after we have commission after commission, report after report?"
A report released by Mr. Roberts's committee last month accused the C.I.A. of misrepresenting and overstating the intelligence about Iraqi weapons that the White House used to justify the invasion of Iraq last year. In its final report, the Sept. 11 commission catalogued a long series of intelligence failures by the Central Intelligence Agency in the months and years before Sept. 11, 2001.
C.I.A. and Pentagon officials have withheld a formal response to Mr. Roberts's plan, saying they are studying its details.
Senior intelligence officers have denounced the proposal as unworkable. They were joined on Monday by George J. Tenet, former director of central intelligence, who said in a statement that the proposal "reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of the business of intelligence."
"Senator Roberts's proposal is yet another episode in the mad rush to rearrange wiring diagrams in an attempt to be seen as doing something," said Mr. Tenet, who resigned just ahead of the release of the critical reports by the intelligence committee and the Sept. 11 commission. "It is time for someone to say, 'Stop!' Someone needs to stand up for all the good that is done by the men and women of C.I.A. It is time for someone to slam the brakes on before the politics of the moment drives the security of the American people off a cliff."
Mr. Roberts's proposals for overhauling intelligence go well beyond the recommendations last month by the independent bipartisan Sept. 11 panel.
Although the commission called for the creation of the powerful post of national intelligence director to oversee the 15 intelligence agencies, it did not call for the breakup of the C.I.A. and it did not call for the removal of Defense Department intelligence agencies from Pentagon control.
A spokesman for the commission, Al Felzenberg, said its chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, a Republican, did not have details of Mr. Robert's measure but considered it "an interesting proposal, from what he has heard of it" in news reports.
The ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said he believed that Mr. Roberts's proposal "departs significantly from the 9/11 commission's blueprint for reform" and that Mr. Roberts had acted without seeking Democratic support on the committee.
"It would evidently do away with the Central Intelligence Agency as we know it at a time when the agency is leading a global fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations," Mr. Rockefeller said. "Having not seen the details of the Roberts proposal, my reaction is that disbanding and scattering the Central Intelligence Agency at such a crucial time would be a severe mistake."
A spokesman for Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is a member of the Intelligence Committee as well as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Warner would have "concerns about any plan that would transfer critical, well-functioning intelligence assets away from the Department of Defense during wartime and limit the secretary of defense's budget and appointment authority over programs that support our men and women in uniform."
A Democrat on the intelligence panel, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said that Mr. Roberts's proposal was "a complete surprise to me" and that "I don't think such surprises, especially when they are without any effort to reach a bipartisan consensus, are helpful with our nation at such risk of terrorist attack."
Ms. Feinstein, who has introduced bills to create the position of national intelligence director, said she had "real concern about a wholesale dismantling of the C.I.A." The proposal "may well create chaos in the intelligence community," she said.
There was praise elsewhere on Capitol Hill for Mr. Roberts, less for the details of his proposal than for his willingness to restructure intelligence agencies boldly.
"The only way to fix our broken intelligence system is to move forward on a bipartisan basis," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, "and it is welcome news that most Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee favor major structural reform."
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which has been given overall responsibility by Senate leaders for drafting legislation in response to the Sept. 11 commission report, said Mr. Roberts had "done a great service here."
"There are important questions that his proposal raises and that I haven't yet answered for myself," Mr. Lieberman said. "But he did something here that is creative and gutsy. He has clearly taken seriously not only the indictment that the Sept. 11 commission made of the status quo, but also the indictment that his own committee made in its recent report."
--------
Many Are Cool to Intelligence Plan
Bush Expresses Reservations; Tenet Says GOP Senate Proposal Would 'Gut the CIA'
By Dan Eggen and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26772-2004Aug23?language=printer
A far-reaching proposal by Senate Republicans to dismantle the CIA and remove key intelligence agencies from the Pentagon ran into heavy political opposition yesterday, not only from key members of Congress but also from longtime former CIA director George J. Tenet.
President Bush also responded coolly to the proposal by Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) and seven other GOP members of the Senate intelligence committee. Bush said that "we're looking at all options" but cautioned he would oppose any proposal that would create a new layer of bureaucracy in the president's national security team.
Bush did indicate that he would consider giving a new national intelligence director authority over the intelligence budget, which Roberts and the Sept. 11, 2001, commission have advocated.
"We'll take a look at it, determine, you know, whether or not it works or not," Bush told reporters in Crawford, Tex. "But there's going to be a lot of other ideas, too, as this debate goes forward."
The reaction of Tenet, who stepped down as CIA director in July, was much more critical. He released a statement saying Roberts's proposal would "gut the CIA" and reflects "a dangerous misunderstanding of the business of intelligence."
"Senator Roberts' proposal is yet another episode in the mad rush to rearrange wiring diagrams in an attempt to be seen as doing something," Tenet said. "It is time for someone to slam the brakes on before the politics of the moment drives the security of the American people off a cliff."
The skeptical reactions were based not only on the substance of the plan -- which calls for more sweeping changes than any other proposal for intelligence reform this year -- but also on anger over the way it was unveiled. Roberts disclosed the proposal during a television appearance on Sunday, and Democrats and some Republicans complained yesterday that they were not warned. Roberts released the text of the 139-page bill yesterday.
The generally negative reception contrasted sharply with the response to the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, whose best-selling report last month prompted almost immediate vows of reform from Bush and lawmakers in both parties.
The only Republican on the Senate intelligence committee who has not embraced Roberts's plan is Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee. His office issued a statement yesterday saying Warner "has not been briefed on this proposal, but would have concerns about any plan that would transfer critical, well-functioning intelligence assets away from the Department of Defense during wartime."
The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), complained in a statement that "Senator Roberts did not afford me or any Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee an opportunity to work with him in drafting the proposal." He also said the plan "departs significantly from the Sept. 11 Commission's blueprint for reform."
"Having not seen the details of the Roberts proposal, my reaction is that disbanding and scattering the Central Intelligence Agency at such a crucial time would be a severe mistake," the statement said.
Roberts seemed surprised by the fervor of the criticism, and vigorously defended his bill in an hour-long session with reporters in his Senate office. Although he said he is open to modifying the details, he maintained that his plan offers the best way to implement the goals of the Sept. 11 commission. The panel offered 41 recommendations for reform in its report, including naming a national intelligence director who would work out of the White House.
Under his plan, Roberts said, the CIA would cease to exist by name, but every CIA employee would continue working in his or her current capacity. "We are not terminating the CIA -- we are making it more powerful," he said.
Roberts also said that by creating a highly influential national intelligence director (NID) with budgetary and personnel authority over virtually all the government's intelligence operations, his bill would make efforts in that area more coordinated and focused.
Under the proposal, the CIA's three major components -- operations, analysis and technology -- would report to different assistants to the NID. These three assistants, plus a fourth dealing with military intelligence, would oversee agencies now scattered throughout the federal bureaucracy.
The assistant director for intelligence collection, for example, would oversee the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence divisions, in addition to the CIA's operations arm. The bill would leave with the Pentagon budget authority for some battlefield intelligence programs.
Roberts's bill amounts to a selection of elements from various proposals, including others by Senate and House members and the Sept. 11 commission, according to a senior Senate staff member who is familiar with the measure. Responding to criticism that the measure could jeopardize intelligence by breaking apart the CIA, the staff member said, "Nothing working now will be changed unless the NID thinks it should. There will be no reason to move people."
Roberts said he moved quickly, without consulting committee Democrats during the August recess, because he believes legislation will progress rapidly when Congress reconvenes after Labor Day and his panel must "lay down a marker" now. He said some GOP colleagues told him, " 'If we wait, we'll end up on the sidelines.' We don't have weeks left -- we have days."
To merely write the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations into a proposed bill would be "political posturing," Roberts said, adding that he believes his bill best represents the commission's overall intent.
"If this proposal seems radical to some," Roberts said, " . . . my response would be, what should we do?" There have been 38 proposals for revamping the nation's intelligence operations since 1949, he said, and most went nowhere. "We cannot afford to fail this time," he said.
Acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin tried to reassure his employees by saying he doubts that the agency would be broken apart as part of an intelligence reorganization. "I would certainly speak out against such a move, which would, in my judgment, be a step backward," he said.
Staff writers Helen Dewar, Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
--------
Goss Backed '95 Bill to Slash Intelligence
Plan Would Have Cut Personnel 20%
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27092-2004Aug23.html
President Bush's nominee to be the director of central intelligence, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), sponsored legislation that would have cut intelligence personnel by 20 percent in the late 1990s.
Goss, who has been chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the past eight years, was one of six original co-sponsors of legislation in 1995 that called for cuts of at least 4 percent per year between 1996 and 2000 in the total number of people employed throughout the intelligence community.
The legislation, part of a wide-ranging budget-cutting measure that included abolishing the Energy Department and privatizing the air traffic control system, never received a vote. But the nine-year-old legislation, exhumed by Democrats, presents a political hurdle for Goss.
The Bush reelection campaign has been blasting Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry as deeply irresponsible for proposing intelligence cuts at the same time. A Bush campaign ad released on Aug. 13 carried a headline: "John Kerry . . . proposed slashing Intelligence Budget 6 Billion Dollars."
But the cuts Goss supported are larger than those proposed by Kerry and specifically targeted the "human intelligence" that has recently been found lacking. The recent report by the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks called for more spending on human intelligence.
Kerry, in September 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget. But three months earlier, on June 22, Goss was one of six original co-sponsors of legislation titled H.R. 1923, called the Restructuring a Limited Government Act. Among other things, the legislation, written by then-Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), directed that "the president shall, for each of fiscal years 1996 through 2000, reduce the total number of military and civilian personnel employed by, or assigned or detailed to, elements of the Intelligence Community by not less than 4 percent of the baseline number" of employees on Sept. 30, 1995.
There are believed to be about 20,000 employees of the CIA, and an unknown number of others in the military intelligence agencies.
Goss has declined all interview requests while his CIA nomination is pending. A House Republican aide familiar with the 1995 legislation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Goss signed on to the legislation as a member of Solomon's Rules Committee.
"The bill called for change in just about every aspect of government at a time when the Congress was very focused on balancing the federal budget," the official said. "It was tied to intelligence reform and was calling for a reorganization of the intelligence community and centralizing authority." The aide further noted that House legislation has increased funds for intelligence activities in each of the eight years Goss has been committee chairman.
Democrats said the Goss-backed legislation proves that Kerry's intelligence cuts were not irresponsible and that both parties favored intelligence reductions in the post-Cold War era. "We all believed the world would be more peaceful," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee. Comparing the two cuts, "Goss's bill is obviously much more severe" than Kerry's, she said. "What Kerry was doing was a pale shadow of what the Solomon bill would have done."
The Solomon legislation included cuts to programs in education, agriculture, transportation, housing and defense, and overhauls of welfare and Medicare. Some of the legislation sounds much like current proposals, including a plan to "reduce redundancy and overlapping jurisdiction of intelligence components and to centralize . . . responsibility and authority for intelligence activities."
---------
CIA reshuffle plan panned
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
By Shaun Waterman
August 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040823-110349-4396r.htm
Intelligence officials and Democrats yesterday sharply criticized the proposal to radically restructure U.S. intelligence drafted by the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican.
Former CIA chief George J. Tenet said that the proposal "reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of the business of intelligence." And the Democratic vice chairman of the committee, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, accused Mr. Roberts of "squander[ing] the momentum we achieved last month" when the panel released a unanimous, bipartisan report on Iraq prewar intelligence.
Mr. Roberts' proposal goes even further than the reforms suggested by the September 11 commission. It breaks the CIA into three parts: an operational National Clandestine Service, an analytical Office of National Assessments and an Office of Technical Support.
All three parts would be placed under the control of a new spy chief, the National Intelligence Director, who would also take over the human intelligence service of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the three agencies - currently in the Pentagon - that build and run the nation's spy satellites and listening posts.
Mr. Roberts said, in designing the proposal, he had told his staff to start with a blank page: "Let's try to do what is really right in regard to the national security of the country. ... Don't take a look at turf, don't take a look at agencies ... don't worry about boxes."
Democrats said they were blindsided by the proposal.
Mr. Rockefeller said it was regrettable that Mr. Roberts "did not afford me or any Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee an opportunity to work with him in drafting the proposal."
"The first time I saw it was when I came into work this morning," said a senior Democratic staffer of the draft bill.
Mr. Roberts acknowledged it was unfortunate there had not been more consultation, but blamed the speed with which he felt he had to act.
With the administration poised to present its own proposals, and some Democrats promoting a bill that simply wrote the 41 recommendations of the September 11 commission into law, he said the committee had to "put down its flag" or else be sidelined and allow the debate over intelligence reform to be waged along partisan lines.
-------- us
Marine on Trial in Death Of Iraqi Prisoner in 2003
Associated Press
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26929-2004Aug23.html
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 23 -- A Marine went on trial Monday on charges he delivered a karate kick to the chest of an Iraqi prisoner who authorities say later suffocated from a crushed windpipe.
The assault case against Reserve Sgt. Gary Pittman is the first court-martial known to be connected to the death of a prisoner in Iraq.
The POW, Nagem Sadoon Hatab, had been rumored to be an official of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and part of the ambush of a U.S. Army convoy that left 11 soldiers dead and led to the capture of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and five others.
Within 48 hours of the Iraqi's arrest in June 2003, a guard found a lifeless Hatab lying naked and covered in his own waste in a yard at Camp Whitehorse, a makeshift lockup outside Nasiriyah that has since been closed.
According to a fellow Marine who has been granted immunity, Pittman karate-kicked the handcuffed, hooded Hatab in the chest so hard that he flew three feet before hitting the floor.
An autopsy concluded that Hatab had seven broken ribs and slowly suffocated from a crushed windpipe. Defense lawyers say Hatab died of natural causes, perhaps from an asthma attack.
On Monday, the judge in the case, Col. Robert Chester, agreed to let a doctor testify for the defense that the markings on Hatab's body were not consistent with a kick to the chest.
Pittman, who in civilian life was a guard at a federal prison, is one of three men charged in Hatab's death. Eight Marines originally were charged with crimes ranging from dereliction of duty to negligent homicide. However, a judge ruled that it could not be determined who caused Hatab's death.
Pittman could get more than three years in a military prison if found guilty of assault and dereliction of duty.
--------
Reservist to admit violations at prison
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP)
August 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040823-110350-2629r.htm
One of the Army reservists charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison said yesterday that he will plead guilty to some offenses.
Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick, of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company, said in a statement given to the Associated Press by his attorney: "I have accepted responsibility for my actions at Abu Ghraib prison. I will be pleading guilty to certain charges because I have concluded that what I did was a violation of law."
Sgt. Frederick does not specify the charges to which he will plead guilty and it wasn't clear whether he will continue contesting any of the accusations. He is charged with maltreating detainees, conspiring to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty and wrongfully committing an indecent act.
Sgt. Frederick, 37, of Buckingham, Va., has a pretrial hearing scheduled for today in Mannheim, Germany.
His civilian attorney, Gary Myers, did not immediately respond to e-mailed questions about Sgt. Frederick's case. Telephone calls to Mr. Myers' hotel room in Mannheim went unanswered.
Sgt. Frederick, a Virginia state prison guard in civilian life, is among seven members of the Cresaptown, Md.-based 372nd charged in the scandal, which involves physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners.
He would be the second of the seven to admit wrongdoing. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., pleaded guilty to three abuse charges in May and was sentenced to a year in prison.
Sgt. Frederick, who worked as a prison guard in Virginia, was the senior enlisted soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison between October and December, when the mistreatment reportedly occurred.
He was among the first to be identified by CBS' "60 Minutes II" when the program broke the story April 28.
Sgt. Frederick has claimed that the abusive treatment - inmates stripped naked and cuffed to their cells - was orchestrated by military intelligence officers rather than military police officers, according to a diary that his family made available.
-------- war crimes
Scrutiny of Review Tribunals as War Crimes Trials Open
August 24, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/politics/24gitmo.html
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 22 - Starting Tuesday, the United States military will begin war crimes trials at a secure courtroom here under the eyes of a large international contingent of news organizations and human rights observers. But for the last month, the military has been conducting other tribunals under far more obscure circumstances here to review whether the 585 detainees on this Navy base have been properly deemed unlawful enemy combatants.
Officials said on Monday that these special tribunals had so far completed the process for 14 inmates and that all had been determined to be enemy combatants despite objections and denials from most of them. The proceedings, which have been open to a small number of reporters, can take nearly two hours for each prisoner, said the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified.
Like the prosecutors and panel members in the war crimes tribunals who have also asked to remain anonymous in news accounts, the combatant review officials said they feared retribution from Al Qaeda.
The tribunals to determine if someone is an unlawful enemy combatant were put in place with unusual speed after the Bush administration suffered a defeat in the Supreme Court in June. In the ruling, the court held that the federal judiciary's reach extended to Guantánamo Bay and that prisoners there must receive an opportunity to challenge their detentions before a judge or other "neutral decision maker."
Defense Department officials said they hoped the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, as they are called, might satisfy the court's requirement. A wide array of legal analysts, including some in the government, have said they believe that the combatant review tribunals fall far short of what the court required and that they expect that the issue may be before the federal courts again soon.
Neil R. Sonnett, a Miami lawyer who heads a special American Bar Association panel to monitor the military proceedings at Guantánamo, said on Monday that the combatant review tribunals did not come close to meeting the court's standard.
The military officials who spoke to reporters said that they had held hearings for 31 prisoners to date, 12 of whom refused to take part in what officials said appeared to be a way of registering a protest of their imprisonment and the proceedings.
"The detainee doesn't have to come to the proceeding," an officer said. "There's no arm twisting."
The hearing is conducted by three officers and the detainee is given a "personal representative" who is neither a lawyer nor an advocate. The representative, a military officer, is supposed to pass along to the panel any evidence the detainee wishes to offer as well as any incriminating evidence the detainee has told him.
The detainee may also be denied information about how, where and from whom the information about the accusations supporting the enemy combatant charge originated if officials deem it classified.
Human rights groups as well as many prominent international lawyers have asserted that the United States violated its obligations under the Geneva Conventions for more than two years by refusing up to now to hold individual hearings to determine if the detainees qualified for prisoner-of-war status.
The definition of an unlawful combatant that is used by the tribunal is:
"Any individual who was part of supporting Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or was associated with forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed belligerent acts or directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Judge in Abu Ghraib Case Might Offer Deal to Senior Officers
August 24, 2004
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/international/middleeast/24CND-GERM.html
MANNHEIM, Germany, Aug. 24 - The judge in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case said today that he might award immunity from prosecution in exchange for the testimony of several senior military intelligence officers who prosecutors said were likely subjects to be charged in the case.
The judge, James L. Pohl, referred specifically to Lt. Col. Steven Jordan and Col. Thomas Pappas, both commanders of a military intelligence brigade responsible for interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad.
He was responding to a request by one defendant, Sgt. Javal Davis, that higher officers in the chain of command be induced to testify, presumably to show that the abuses that took place had authorization and were not the work of rogue enlisted men and women acting on their own.
"Isn't the fundamental issue whether there was some authorization given that authorized extreme measure such as the accused are being charged with?" Judge Pohl said, asking prosecutors why he should not grant immunity to Colonel Jordan and Colonel Pappas.
Military prosecutors had argued against a grant of immunity for the two men and several others, saying that they are also being investigated for possible prosecution, and that a grant of immunity would probably make it more difficult to bring charges against them.
But Judge Pohl, who seemed sympathetic to the defense request, dismissed that reasoning, saying Sergeant Davis's right to a fair trial took precedence over the government's interest in prosecuting Colonel Jordan and Colonel Pappas. He gave the prosecution until Sept. 17 to show cause why immunity should not be granted.
Judge Pohl was presiding at a second day of pretrial hearings in which a defense lawyer for one of the accused said he had reached an agreement with the government for his client to plead guilty.
The defendant, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, would plead guilty to some charges while others against him would be dropped, his lawyer, Gary Myers, told reporters outside the military courtroom here.
"He has, unlike many, accepted responsibility for certain corrupt behavior generated by the circumstances that existed at Abu Ghraib," Mr. Myers said.
Sergeant Frederick was the second of the seven to indicate a willingness to plead guilty. The first, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in exchange for a one-year prison term.
In Sergeant Frederick's case, no mention of his agreement was made in the hearing today, and he is unlikely to make a formal plea before the next hearing in his case, scheduled by Judge Pohl for Oct. 20 in Baghdad. Mr. Myers said a deal had been reached with the government over both the charges and the sentence, but he refused to give details.
Today's hearing, held at an American military base here, was taken up with numerous defense motions, including Sergeant Davis's, made by his lawyer, Paul Bergrin, that Colonel Jordan and Colonel Pappas be called to testify. Both men have been named in investigations as being deeply involved in the interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but both have also reportedly refused to testify in continuing investigations.
The hearings gave some strong indications of the different strategies being planned as defense lawyers prepare their cases. Some defendants, Sergeant Davis among them, seem intent on demonstrating that whatever they are accused of doing in mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib, their actions were legal because they were approved by higher-ups in the chain of command.
Mr. Bergrin made a motion today to call Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to testify in the case, saying that in a memo distributed to military commanders Mr. Rumsfeld approved the specific methods said to have been used at Abu Ghraib.
Judge Pohl denied the motion on the ground that Mr. Bergrin had demonstrated no link between his defendant and Mr. Rumsfeld, but he said that if such a link could be demonstrated with evidence then he might be willing to reconsider his decision.
"If my client is guilty," Mr. Bergrin said to reporters outside the courtroom, "then so are the higher-ups in the chain of command, going all the way to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."
Mr. Bergrin argued that what his client, Sergeant Davis, did was right under the circumstances, where American lives were in danger and information was needed in order to save them.
Mr. Myers, Sergeant Frederick's lawyer, seemed to take a far different tack, saying that what happened at Abu Ghraib represented a criminal breakdown of the system. But he, too, ridiculed the notion advanced by senior American officials that the mistreatment of prisoners was due to rogue soldiers acting on their own.
"After this, we won't hear anything more about seven rogue soldiers," Mr. Myers said. "The government's second line of defense is that there are 28 rogue soldiers," he continued, referring to reports that charges will be brought against additional enlisted men and women. "Who knows what will be next?"
---------
Military trials set to begin at Gitmo
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Guy Taylor
August 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040824-124551-5136r.htm
U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Dozens of journalists, human rights advocates and military lawyers will cram into a makeshift court on the naval base here this week to witness the opening of the first military commissions by the United States since just after World War II.
The commissions are expected showcase why the United States feels that the men held here pose so serious a threat that they must be tried outside the realm of the world's civilian courts.
Preliminary hearings will begin today for four men charged by the Pentagon with war crimes based on their suspected ties to al Qaeda. Under a system designed by the Defense Department, they will be represented by military-appointed lawyers and their fates will be decided by a panel of military officers.
The manner with which the commissions are to be conducted has drawn fire from human rights groups, who call the military-dominated system unfair. Civilian lawyers will be allowed for the defendants, but their role is expected to be stunted whenever the military introduces classified materials as evidence.
"We're concerned that the military commission rules lack key fair-trial protections," said Wendy Patten, who will witness this week's hearings as the U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The military serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, appeals court and potentially even as executioner."
President Bush authorized the use of the commissions in November 2001 to try suspects in the war on terror. To date, the administration has declared 15 detainees eligible for the special trials. The first four charged are Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul and Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, David Matthew Hicks of Australia and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan.
Like the majority of the 585 suspects held here, the four were arrested during the 2001 campaign to topple the al Qaeda-supporting Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They largely are considered al Qaeda foot soldiers, and their trial by military commissions could serve to refine the process for higher-profile terror suspects in the future.
Pentagon documents show that each man is accused of using several aliases during their involvement with al Qaeda. Hamdan is accused of having served as a driver for Osama bin Laden, and al Bahlul and al Qosi are suspected of serving as bodyguards for him. Hicks is accused of training in al Qaeda camps and of having membership in the terror network. His parents are thought to be on hand here to witness the opening of his trial.
Military officials have said that although the commissions authorize use of the death penalty, it is not being sought in the four cases. Retired Army Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., whom the Pentagon has appointed to oversee the commissions, has said opening hearings largely will resemble the pretrial motions phase of civilian trials.
Much of the time is expected to be spent hashing out issues such as how classified materials will be handled and how interpreters will fit into the process. Other issues might include whether military prosecutors will be able to use as evidence statements made by the accused under interrogation.
Speaking with reporters in Washington last week, Gen. Altenburg acknowledged, "The conditions of any interrogations and the conditions under which any statements that have been made are used in evidence will be looked at scrupulously."
Noting that the order for the military commissions has been in place for nearly three years, Gen. Altenburg said his concern "is not how quickly we get to the military commissions, but what's the quality of how we do this and how. We want to get this right."
"We haven't done it in 60 years," he said. "I'm very concerned because the charter, of course, is to have a full and fair trial for each person that's brought before a commission, and we want to get that right."
The decision to move forward with the commissions has sparked debate about their significance in light of a June Supreme Court ruling that granted U.S. civilian courts jurisdiction over the cases of foreign nationals held here.
A central complaint made by commission opponents is that the trials set a precedent for an unfair system of justice that ultimately challenges the existing American legal system. Still, although the Constitution does not clearly outline a pretext for military commissions, defense officials and some legal experts agree that significant historical precedents form a basis for them.
But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the design of today's commissions falls short of international due-process standards and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which set guidelines for treating persons captured in conflicts after World War II.
In preparing for his own departure to Guantanamo last week, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said, "The system that I am going to witness cannot be seen as legitimate.
"These are not full and fair trials in keeping with the best of American traditions," he said. "Key evidence can be kept secret by the prosecution, the only venue for appeal is up the chain of command, and defense attorneys will be hamstrung by bad procedure and lack of privilege."
In addition to the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, other organizations attending the commissions include Amnesty International, the American Bar Association and Human Rights First.
-------- homeland security
Survey Finds Border Agents Critical of Training, Resources
By Mary Fitzgerald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26934-2004Aug23.html
A dispute has broken out between the Department of Homeland Security and unions representing Border Patrol workers and immigration officers after the publication of a survey that found that most employees believe they have not been given sufficient resources, training and support to fight terrorism.
The survey was commissioned by two labor organizations, the National Homeland Security Council and the National Border Patrol Council, together with the American Federation of Government Employees. It consisted of telephone interviews with 250 Border Patrol agents and 250 Bureau of Customs and Border Protection inspectors.
Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said they were somewhat or not really satisfied with the "tools, training and support" they have for dealing with terrorist threats. Sixty-two percent said Homeland Security could do more to protect the country from terrorist attacks, with two in five believing the department could do "a lot more."
While 77 percent said they had seen a significant shift in their responsibilities since Sept. 11, 2001, 44 percent said they believe the country is no safer today than it was on that date.
Most of those polled cited a recently introduced hiring freeze and proposed new pay systems and personnel regulations as having a negative effect on their ability to accomplish the department's mission, with just under two-thirds reporting low morale among fellow employees.
"The results we are releasing today don't come as a surprise to those of us who work on the borders; however, it should be very disturbing news to most Americans," Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council, said at a news conference.
The Department of Homeland Security questioned the methodology used in the survey, contending that the poll was not representative.
"The survey is, in our opinion, inaccurate, biased and agenda-driven," said Christiana Halsey, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. "They did not survey a large enough pool to create an accurate picture. We are an agency of nearly 42,000 employees. They only interviewed 500 people for this survey."
Halsey added that those polled were all union members. "They did not survey a good sampling of the workforce. That throws the idea of a balanced survey out the window," she said.
Responding to the finding that most of those questioned believe the department could do better, she said: "We don't disagree with that. That's why we are continuing to assess and look at areas of weaknesses and create programs, initiatives and partnerships to confront those weaknesses. We will continue to evolve to address the terrorist threat.
"The findings do cause concern," Halsey said, "but in the sense that it is disheartening that they would release a survey that misinforms the workforce about what is being done at a time of increased risk when we need employees to focus on their priority mission of antiterrorism."
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the department failed to acknowledge the concerns raised in the survey.
"They are just trying to obfuscate by choosing to focus on the methodology used in this survey rather than the strong feelings of their workers and the real issues they face," he said. "They are just burying their heads in the sand."
Geoffrey Garin, president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, the firm that carried out the poll, defended the findings.
"My guess is that this is more about the department not liking the results more than anything else," he said. "I would be happy to administer the survey amongst the remaining employees. My suspicion is that the results would be the same."
--------
Study Finds Most Border Officers Feel Security Ought to Be Better
August 24, 2004
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/politics/24border.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - More than 60 percent of Border Patrol agents and immigration officers surveyed for a study issued on Monday said the Department of Homeland Security could do more to stop potential terrorists from entering the country, and more than a third said they were not satisfied that they had the tools and training to do so.
The survey, of 500 border agents and immigration inspectors, was conducted for the unions representing them by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. It found them sharply divided on whether the country was safer now than before the 9/11 attacks: 53 percent said it was, but 44 percent said it was no safer or was less safe.
"Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, it was extremely easy to enter the United States illegally," said T. J. Bonner, president of one of the unions, the National Border Patrol Council. ''Incredibly, this has not changed in any meaningful way."
The survey also found low morale to be pervasive.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security dismissed the survey as biased and inaccurate, saying it offered only a limited snapshot of the views of the department's 42,000 employees. They cited a number of strides, among them airport inspectors' collection of digital fingerprints and photographs from more than six million foreign visitors since January, the first move toward creating a comprehensive system to screen travelers.
In the last six months, the officials said, the department has turned away hundreds of criminals, travelers with fake documents, including fraudulent passports, and others barred from entry to the United States.
The study did include some positive findings. Sixty-four percent of the employees surveyed described themselves as very satisfied or fairly satisfied with their workload, and 59 percent said they received the support they needed from their immediate supervisors.
The study, conducted from July 30 through Aug. 7, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.
--------
SECURITY
Police Bolster Presence at Penn Station
August 24, 2004
By MARY SPICUZZA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/nyregion/24penn.html
The New York City Police Department stepped up security in and around Pennsylvania Station yesterday, flooding the area with officers to prepare for the Republican National Convention next week.
"We've ramped up a week in advance to thwart any terrorist plans, although we have no information to indicate that a specific plot is under way," said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.
Mr. Browne said that 10,000 officers were involved in convention security, including patrols of Madison Square Garden, the convention site; delegate hotels; and the transit system. He declined to discuss the specific number of police officers patrolling Penn Station yesterday, citing security concerns.
Groups of police officers were patrolling the platforms yesterday, walking throughout the station and around the perimeter of Madison Square Garden.
"I've never seen this many officers," said Jimmy Curry, 65, a Tampa, Fla., resident who was waiting for an Amtrak train to Orlando. "You don't see this many police in a month in Tampa."
Mr. Curry, who was standing next to about 100 officers gathered along 31st Street outside the station, said their presence made him feel "more secure."
Sikdar Khair, who operates a hot dog and kebab stand near the corner of 31st Street and Eighth Avenue, said he had not seen so many police officers in one place since the last police cadet graduation ceremony at the Garden.
"With these guys around, we're safe," Mr. Khair said, shortly before a police officer stopped at his stand to buy a hot dog.
His friend Clinton Robinson disagreed.
"Why do you feel safe?" he said. "It's a waste of taxpayers' dollars. I don't feel safer, not me."
Law enforcement and transit officials said that people should expect more security before and during the convention, which runs from Monday to Thursday next week. Most agencies said they had been preparing about a year for the convention and had been increasing security for months.
Marcie Golgoski, an Amtrak spokeswoman, said that the railway had been on a "heightened state of alert for some time," but that she could not discuss specific convention security measures.
Scott O. Sandman, a spokesman with the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, said the New York National Guard was also providing convention security, but added that its members had been patrolling Penn Station and Grand Central Station since Sept. 11, 2001.
Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said yesterday's increase in city police officers would help them acclimate to patrolling Penn Station before the convention began.
"Patrolling a train station is different; the environment is different," he said.
He and other officials said customers should expect more security officers in the days ahead.
"That is the new normal for that week," said Dan Stessel, a spokesman for New Jersey Transit.
Mr. Browne said that bomb-sniffing dogs and plainclothes officers would also be part of increased convention security.
--------
New York Hospitals See Lack of Preparedness for Disaster
August 24, 2004
By MARC SANTORA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/nyregion/24hospitals.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Nearly three years after Sept. 11, and with New York bracing for the Republican National Convention, hospital officials across the city say they still lack much of the important protective clothing, decontamination facilities and essential drug supplies that could be needed to respond to a biological, chemical or nuclear strike.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the federal government said it was essential that the nation's hospitals improve their ability to handle complex, catastrophic disasters, and it warned the hospitals that they might have to wage that response without outside aid from the government or military for as long as 48 to 72 hours after any terrorist attack. But hospital officials in the city say Washington has failed to provide adequate direction on how to run such extraordinary responses, and have not come anywhere close to providing the kind of money they say they need.
Those officials say the recent preparations for the challenge of the convention - they describe them as serious and ambitious - still underscore how much remains to be done.
"What the convention does is create a singular moment in time when all the planning and all the resources have to be at an optimal level,'' said Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, which oversees 250 hospitals and other medical facilities in the region, including roughly 70 in New York City. "The problem is that the federal government has not provided the resources or done their fair share of what they needed to do.''
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which was given the responsibility for overseeing the planned improvements in preparedness among hospitals, said it would issue guidelines for what needed to be done and provide the expert advice. It also pledged to provide some of the money to do it. But what guidance the agency has offered has often been confused, public health experts say, and the money provided has been a fraction of what the hospitals need.
In New York City, a number of hospitals have spent about $5 million apiece since 9/11 to install decontamination showers, buy protective equipment and train staff members.
For this effort, they have each been reimbursed roughly $75,000 from Washington, according to Mr. Raske's association.
The hospitals, which are facing many other financial pressures, say they would have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to make more meaningful progress toward readiness.
Given the unpredictable nature of the terrorist threat, preparing for every situation may be impossible. But public health experts - who note that even the matter of who would be responsible for providing security at a hospital handling contaminated patients has not been clearly communicated - say there are four key areas where more progress needs to be made.
One is what is known as surge capacity: a hospital's ability to deal with a sudden influx of patients. The federal health agency has made hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to hospitals throughout the country to help them prepare, but the 2005 federal budget actually calls for a reduction in those grants.
A second concern, officials say, involves decontamination facilities, a potentially vital aspect of any response to a biological or chemical attack.
While individual hospitals, like St. Vincent's Manhattan Hospital, have taken steps to add showers and train staff members, there remains little federal information on a question as basic as how many patients a city with New York's population should seek to be able to handle per hour.
The third chief worry involves burn beds. These special beds would be needed in the event of nuclear attack, and currently the city only has a handful.
The final area of vulnerability deals with what are called isolation facilities. In the event of a smallpox attack, for instance, the ability to quarantine people in a hospital would be essential and is currently lacking.
Dr. Irwin Redliner, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said the lack of preparedness was inexcusable. "The fundamental fact is that this country is not ready to handle a significant terrorist event,'' Dr. Redliner said, referring to the hospital systems.
Officials with Health and Human Services, despite repeated requests for interviews, did not offer a response to the complaints of public health experts. But Tommy G. Thompson, the director of the federal agency, has previously defended efforts and spending.
Dr. Redliner's skepticism, though, is shared by the public. A poll conducted by Marist College for Columbia, to be released this week, found that nationwide the public is losing faith in the health care system to deal with a biological or chemical attack. Only 39 percent of those asked said they had confidence in the system, down from 53 percent two years ago. The poll, which surveyed 1,234 adults in July, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Perhaps even more striking, 78 percent of those surveyed said they were not familiar with any disaster response plan in the event of a terrorist attack.
Dr. Redliner said the poll results highlighted the second half of the problem with the federal government's homeland security planning: inadequate communication and education. "It is as if we are fighting a war on the battlefield without a central command and we had platoons operating ad hoc without a sense of the goals,'' Dr. Redliner said.
Many of these concerns are not new, particularly when it concerns bioterrorism.
Last year, the federal government conducted its largest counterterrorism exercise since 9/11, called Topoff 2. It was planned to test the ability of Chicago area hospitals to deal with simultaneous attacks featuring both biological agents and a crude radiological device, or a dirty bomb, the test raised serious concerns. There were problems in communication, the ability to deal with the surge of patients and shortages of medical supplies. Although the drill was conducted in May 2003, one year later, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, said little had been done to correct the problems.
In a letter that he addressed to Mr. Thompson at Health and Human Services, Mr. Lieberman wrote, "Last year's Topoff 2 exercise also showed that there continues to be confusion about roles and responsibilities of government agencies in responding to a bioterror attack, even during a carefully designed and scripted one.''
Mr. Thompson, in a letter responding to the criticism, said Mr. Lieberman was "just plain wrong.'' While not addressing the details of the Topoff 2 drill, Mr. Thompson said the Bush administration had increased its spending on bioterrorism preparedness annually since 2001 and would be spending $4.1 billion on bioterror and public health preparedness in 2005.
Hospital officials in the city were careful to note that much has been done to prepare for a serious nonconventional attack, work that even predated the 9/11 attack. Ever since a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995, for instance, city agencies have been staging drills for a similar event in New York.
But the health care system is still not where many believe it could or should be, some politicians and public health experts insist.
"There is not a serious effort to assess what is needed in our hospital and health program,'' said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat from New York. "It is shocking to me how poorly prepared we are.''
Mrs. Clinton pointed to the response to the smallpox threat as evidence of Washington's confusion. In January 2003, President Bush talked about the threat of smallpox in his State of the Union address, and a program was started to vaccinate about 500,000 first responders from the virus. However, the vaccination program faded away and, in the end, only about 37,000 were vaccinated.
Steven Kuhr, who worked as the deputy commissioner for New York City's Office of Emergency Management from 1996 to 2000 and is now the chief operating officer for Criterion Strategies, a counterterrorism training and consulting company, said hospitals have been taken for granted by everyone.
"Hospitals and the public health care systems have largely been left to scrape up the crumbs after the more visible agencies or those with better lobbying have gotten their share,'' he said.
But again, he took pains to credit what had been done on the initiative of individual hospitals.
For instance, St. Vincent's will soon complete a new $20 million trauma center at its downtown facility, built largely with private funds. It will have decontamination facilities that can treat 200 patients per hour. Currently, St. Vincent's has the decontamination showers in an ambulance bay and can treat 90 to 120 people an hour, depending on the agent used in the attack.
"We are at a high level of preparedness,'' said Mark Ackermann, the senior vice president at St. Vincent's.
On 9/11, St. Vincent's was the closest trauma center to the World Trade Center. Mr. Ackermann said his hospital was taking steps to be prepared regardless of the federal help that is received.
But, he said, "It is very fair to say that federal agencies have not worked well with hospitals over the past three years.''
He noted that on 9/11 roughly 25,000 people surrounded St. Vincent's, many looking for information. While that may be a natural reaction, Mr. Ackermann said, "If it was chemical or biological attack, the worst place to be is near a hospital.''
It is basic information like this that public health experts say should have been communicated long ago.
"What we have are basically random thoughts on one of the most critical questions of our time,'' Dr. Redliner said. "This should be part of national strategy.''
-------
Border Patrol union survey finds job discontent
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
August 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040823-110353-2427r.htm
Three unions representing the nation's border agents and inspectors say a survey of their members shows front-line officers are not getting the proper tools, training or support to stop terrorists from entering the United States.
The survey, released yesterday, concludes that the Department of Homeland Security should be doing more in the war on terror, disagrees with its fundamental enforcement strategies and believes mismanagement and lack of support has caused morale to "plummet precipitously" among border agents and inspectors along America's 6,000 miles of international border.
"The bureaucratic bungling that plagued and hampered the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has not only survived, it has thrived in the new Department of Homeland Security," T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), said in announcing the survey results.
"Business as usual is no longer acceptable, however, since there can be no margin of error when dealing with terrorists," said Mr. Bonner, whose council represents all 10,000 of the patrol's nonsupervisory agents. "While no system is foolproof, the current system is just plain foolish."
According to the survey, 64 percent of those questioned believe they do not have the tools, training or support they need to combat terrorism, 44 percent said the country is no safer today than it was on September 11 and 62 percent said Homeland Security could be doing more to protect the country from terrorist attacks
The survey, commissioned by the NBPC, the National Homeland Security Council and the American Federation of Government Employees, also found that 60 percent said morale within the border force is low and 45 percent said they had considered leaving the job, mainly citing poor management.
But a top U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official called the review "inaccurate, bias and poorly done."
CBP spokeswoman Christiana Halsey said only 500 of 42,000 CBP employees were questioned, and those interviews involved agents and inspectors in the unions' databases, including union representatives and stewards. She said only 250 Border Patrol agents and 250 former INS inspectors were surveyed and no effort was made to talk with new CBP officers from the U.S. Customs Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
"We have undergone the largest reorganization in government in 50 years, combining four agencies with four different missions and four different budgets into a single, unified organization to put one face at the border," she said. "It was an enormous step, certainly a stressful time, but we have made sure they have the right tools and the necessary training.
"To say otherwise would be absolutely inaccurate," she said. "We're evolving to confront the threat of terrorism, and we continue to do so. Every day, dedicated border personnel are turning away someone who poses a risk to this country."
Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council, which represents 18,000 former INS agents and inspectors now assigned to Homeland Security, yesterday said: "We are here today to give our nation's policy-makers, lawmakers and all Americans a message: the war on terror is in danger of being lost at the borders, the airports and the seaports."
Mr. Bonner said that pending budget cuts within the patrol - estimated at $18 million in the coming fiscal year - will continue to hamper efforts to control America's borders. He noted that $64.1 million had been reallocated in the Border Patrol budget for sensors and surveillance technology, and another $10 million for unmanned aerial vehicles.
"While such technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator," he said.
-------- human rights
No Welcome in Guantanamo as Rights Groups Land
ACLU, Amnesty International Finally Arrive to Witness Terrorism Trials, but Military Forgets to Greet Them
By Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26930-2004Aug23.html
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 23 -- For more than two years, Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, had been trying to persuade the Pentagon to provide access to Guantanamo Bay, where suspected terrorists are held amid extraordinarily tight security measures that span the naval station here. A few weeks back the Pentagon granted the request, inviting the ACLU and several other groups to witness the historic military trials scheduled to begin Tuesday morning with initial hearings. But Romero and a representative of Amnesty International said they were surprised when they touched down here Saturday on a charter flight to find no one from the military to meet them. Or check their passports. Or dispatch bomb-sniffing dogs to screen their luggage. Or take their photographs for security badges. Instead, Romero and Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty, said they roamed around a portion of the base for nearly an hour, hoping to find someone -- anyone -- who could take them where they were supposed to go. Wherever that might be.
"I thought to myself, 'Finally, we had gotten to Guantanamo,' " Romero said. "I sure wasn't expecting this."
It would be 40 more hours before Romero and Musa received their security badges. In the meantime, they were detained Monday morning because they did not have security badges.
Red-faced military officials on Monday said the pair was not picked up because of a "communication breakdown." Although security was breached, the officials noted, the 585 detainees at Guantanamo Bay were confined in cage-like cells across a deep channel of water several miles away from Romero and Musa.
"We are doing our best to accommodate the international organizations while on Guantanamo," said Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jennifer D. Young. "However, our resources are limited and we ask for flexibility while we work out the kinks. . . . The international organizations are welcome guests."
Ever since the U.S. military began detaining suspected terrorists and Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, human rights and civil liberties groups have been petitioning the Pentagon for permission to visit the base. From the start, the military took members of the media on closely guided tours of the facilities here and permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross to inspect the prison camps and interview the detainees. The advocacy groups wanted to see firsthand what they had been condemning as a "legal black hole."
Earlier this year, after the Bush administration announced that military trials would begin in the cases of four suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, the advocacy groups asked the Pentagon if they could monitor the proceedings. Several weeks ago, they began receiving letters asking them to watch the first military commissions since World War II. In addition to the ACLU and Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First and a representative of the American Bar Association were invited.
Normally, security at the Guantanamo Bay airport is intense. When nearly 50 reporters and photographers landed here Saturday, their luggage was screened by bomb-sniffing dogs. Some bags were pulled for hand searches. Military personnel carrying pump-action shotguns stood guard. The journalists were escorted into a room, where their passports were checked and photos taken. Before they were led away, they were ordered to wear at all times badges that read "ESCORT REQUIRED."
But when Romero and Jumana landed about 5:45 p.m. Saturday, they stood at the terminal for about 15 minutes, waiting for base personnel to introduce themselves. When no one did and a bus pulled up, they climbed aboard. They headed to the island's ferry terminal, where boats take military personnel, contractors, intelligence officers, journalists and others to the other side of Guantanamo Bay, where the detainees are housed.
At the ferry terminal, Romero and Jumana said, a contractor they met on the plane called his supervisor and tried to help. He had no luck, and the pair decided to call the base operator. "I said, 'I'm Anthony Romero and I'm the executive director of the ACLU. I'm here to observe the military commissions.' The operator didn't know anything," Romero said.
Romero and Jumana then looked through the materials they had received from the military and spotted phone numbers for the barracks where they were supposed to stay. They called. Romero repeated who he was and why he was there. "They said, 'I'm sorry. We don't have any reservations for you,' " he recounted. The pair then decided to call security. A woman in a small pickup truck drove into the ferry terminal parking lot.
"She said, 'We've been looking for you,' " Jumana recalled. "I said, 'We've been waiting for you.' " But the woman said she was there to pick up only Jumana. She did not know anything about Romero and summoned another vehicle to take them back to the airport for screening and processing.
By Monday morning -- 40 hours after they arrived -- Romero and Jumana still had not received security badges. When they tried to board a boat with the press corps for an 8 a.m. trip across the channel, they were stopped, along with Sam Zia-Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, who also had not received a badge. The three were detained for about 45 minutes, until they retrieved their passports from their hotel rooms.
Once they were on the other side of the island, a military officer greeted them and handed them security badges.
"At long last," Romero said, taking his badge.
"Sorry about that," the officer said.
Military officers then escorted Romero, Jumana and Zia-Zarifi away, informing them that they could not attend briefings, visit the prison camps with the press corps, or interview members of the military commission and prosecutors. Romero and the others would be permitted only to observe the military commissions.
"At first I thought this was funny," Romero said as he was led away. "I've lost my sense of humor."
--------
Illegal Strip Searches and the Crackdown on Dissent in California
Tuesday, August 24th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/24/2110246
We speak with Sacramento civil rights attorney Mark Merin who recently won the largest settlement in the history of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department over strip-search violations at the county jail. He is prepared to file another suit targeting a controversial parade ordinance in Sacramento that restricts what protesters can wear and carry. [includes rush transcript] We go from New York to California where I am in Sacramento as part of our 100 city "Exception to the Rulers" book and media tour.
A controversial parade ordinance in Sacramento is coming under heavy criticism from activists and civil rights lawyers. The emergency ordinance restricting what parade participants could wear and carry was adopted by the City Council in June 2003, as officials braced for the Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology.
But the scope and severity of the ordinance were soon called into question, including bans on carrying signs with 4-inch posts, possessing any glass container and even wearing bandannas.
Civil rights attorney Mark Merin says a class-action lawsuit targeting the ordinance could be on the horizon. Merin recently won the largest settlement in the history of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department over strip-search violations at the county jail. He has filed similar suits in other counties in California as well as in Miami where protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas where held last November.
Mark Merin, civil rights lawyer in Sacramento, California.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by Mark Merin, who is an attorney, who has been involved in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the treatment of detainees. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
MARK MERIN: Excellent to be here, Amy, thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It is great to have you with us. Can you talk about the suit and what has come of it?
MARK MERIN: Yes. Well, just recently, we got preliminary approval of a settlement for $15 million to be shared among 16,000 people, who over the last four years have been arrested in Sacramento for minor crimes and then subjected to humiliating complete visual body cavity searches in groups in the Sacramento County main jail. And this had been going on for years until a group of activists who arrested in a demonstration in March of 2000 stood up to the jail administration and said, we are not going to cooperate in this dehumanizing practice that you seem to think is routine. Then they came to me, and we discovered that it wasn't just activity reserved for the activists, but it was mistreatment that was very common, and in fact once we started peeling back the layers of secrecy involved in this practice, we discovered that there were 16,000 people who were illegally strip searched.
AMY GOODMAN: Give me an example?
MARK MERIN: An example of the strip search? A group of women who didn't know each other, could be 18 years old to 78, would be brought into a room, six or eight at a time, in a room that was no longer - no larger than six by eight feet with footprints painted on the floor. Then were totally naked. They had been disrobed before they entered the room. Then they had to in groups bend over, expose their body cavities, spread their genitalia for visual inspection with someone with a flashlight looking in, harassing them, ordering them at times to jump, to dance. People -- Mormons who wear a religious garment so they can enter the temple were ordered to rip it off, or to remove it or it would be ripped off. Women who were menstruating without any sanitary napkins were required to remove tampons and stand there bleeding in other people's blood. I mean, absolutely unbelievable. And it was videotaped. All of these were archived. These videotapes were archived so that they - they thought they could actually use these to show that perhaps there was some kind of security need that they had to inspect people's crevices in order to insure that things wouldn't be smuggled in.
AMY GOODMAN: Over how long a period did this take place?
MARK MERIN: Well, we know that it took place at least from 2000 up to the present day, because we got discovery, but we believe that it went back until 1984. Interestingly enough, that was the year in which Sacramento - I mean, the State of California passed an act prohibiting strip searches in county jails. And what's really fascinating is that because this did get some publicity, we discovered that in San Francisco, a very similar and even in some ways more egregious practice has been going on, and that is that they is have been requiring people to sign consents to being illegally strip searched. People who could not be strip searched. And in one year 4000 people were required to sign these consents. People who refused to sign consents, such as, again, activists who contacted our office, were then illegally forcibly strip searched in rooms which were essentially isolation rooms where they were then held naked for 12 or 24 hours at a time as kind of punishment for having resisted the direction to consent.
AMY GOODMAN: That was in San Francisco?
MARK MERIN: That's in San Francisco. We recently have had a court certify that to move forward as a class action. The County of San Francisco has asked us to mediate that dispute. It looks like we're looking at thousands of plaintiffs in that case, and these are people who were just picked up for drunk driving, for loitering, for being under the influence. Anything.
AMY GOODMAN: I heard about a case in Sacramento of a woman who was taken out of - was it a city council meeting?
MARK MERIN: You may be talking about Mary Bull, who - a fantastic activist who runs the Stop the Gap Campaign and Save the Redwoods. She was at a Board of Forestry meeting together with six, seven others, and they protested the planned timber harvest of old growth redwoods. They were removed and then taken to the county jail and strip-searched. It was she who initiated this challenge to this widespread practice. And I said that we discovered it in San Francisco. We also have a suit pending in Miami Dade, Florida, because following the FTAA convention or activities there, the demonstrations, demonstrators were picked up and segregated, women and men, and the women were strip-searched. So, we are attacking that practice. It seems that it's very current with the Abu Ghraib disclosures to discover that nudity, forced nudity and group nudity and activities in the nude is a way that the administration in these facilities oppress and dehumanize the jail population.
AMY GOODMAN: When you heard about what happened at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq, your thoughts?
MARK MERIN: I realized that the people who were sent over there from the United States to run those prisons were just extending the experience that they had here in our prison system. It seems that it was just a further step that they were taking to use nudity to control and dehumanize and humiliate. And I - of course, I was shocked, but I have been shocked every time I learn about new abuses here in Marin County or San Mateo, where we have other suits pending.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see suits as the effective way to stop this kind of behavior?
MARK MERIN: Some of this is so abhorrent that once it's exposed and the general population realizes that this is going on and that they themselves and their daughters and their friends could be subjected to similar dehumanizing treatment does result in a call to stop the abuses. So, we have experienced some support from local media, who have editorialized in opposition to jail practices.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, moving from what's happened in the jails to the right to protest, you have challenged a controversial parade ordinance here in Sacramento. Can you talk about this? In our next segment, we are going to be talking with anarchists in New York about the targeting of particular activists. But can you share your experience here?
MARK MERIN: Yes. Right before the agricultural ministerial that was held here two years ago in Sacramento, the city council passed an emergency ordinance, just drastically restricting the rights of people to protest, to parade, to use the public parks here in Sacramento. For instance, they could not carry anything that could not be thrown. If you think about it, anything in your pockets could be thrown. Your cell phone can be thrown. Your camera, your keys. They vastly limited, severely limited things that could be used to display a message. For instance, signs. The dimensions of the sign, the thicknesses of the wood. It was so restrictive that almost anytime someone stepped off the curb to join a march, they could be arrested for violating the ordinance. While it was passed as an emergency measure, it remains on the books. It's interesting that Sacramentoans of all types who regularly parade, including the girl scouts, are outraged at the severity of the restrictions and have come forward. The city council is now reconsidering, because they acknowledge that parts of the ordinance is illegal. So, they are reconsidering the ordinance, and on September 7th, I believe there will be another city council meeting to reconsider the advisability of such restrictive language in an ordinance.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. That's also the date, just having come from Eureka, Arcada where the pepper spray activists - the trial will take place once again. This is the case of the police who applied pepper spray using q-tips to eyes of the protesters who were protesting the clear cutting of old growth redwoods.
MARK MERIN: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Merin, I want to thank you for being with us, attorney here in Sacramento.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Military Tribunal Begins for Terror Suspects at Guantánamo
August 24, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/international/24CND-GITM.html?hp
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 24 - A retired Army colonel called to order the first United States military tribunal proceedings since the end of World War II here today, opening the case against a 34-year-old Yemeni who is accused of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism for which he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, became the first of more than 800 people who have been imprisoned at a high-security detention center at the naval base here to appear in court to answer charges of war crimes. Mr. Hamdan has admitted that he was a driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but has denied the military's charges that he was involved in any way with Al Qaeda or terrorism. He is one of four people whose trials formally begin this week with preliminary hearings on their lawyers' motions.
Mr. Hamdan entered the courtroom that was fashioned from an old dental clinic at the navy base with a bemused look but without any shackles, as military officials had earlier planned. When he caught sight of his military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, he grinned widely.
Clad in a flowing white robe covered by a suit coat and a white shawl, Mr. Hamdan spoke only briefly in Arabic in response to questions from the presiding officer of the panel, Peter Brownback, the retired colonel. Mr. Hamdan said, according to the translation provided, that he understood his right to a lawyer and was satisfied with Commander Swift's representation but thought he should have a second lawyer, something Commander Swift told the court he has requested many times.
Much of the morning was taken up with Commander Swift's efforts to portray Colonel Brownback as incapable of serving impartially because of extensive contacts with senior Pentagon officials overseeing the military tribunals. Colonel Brownback, who volunteered to come out of retirement to serve on a tribunal, seemed annoyed at Commander Swift's request that he step aside and said he would forward it to the Pentagon.
Mr. Hamdan's case is one of four scheduled to be heard this week in the brightly-lit courtroom that overlooks the harbor at the base. All four are charged with some version of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
On Wednesday, the tribunal is scheduled to begin hearing motions in the case of David Hicks, a 29-year-old Australian drifter and convert to Islam who was apprehended at the end of the Afghanistan War and charged with being a soldier for the Taliban. Mr. Hicks, who is also charged with attempted murder and aiding the enemy, is the only one of the four to face additional charges to the conspiracy count.
The tribunal will begin the cases of Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen on Thursday and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan on Friday.
While the immediate focus of the proceedings is the guilt or innocence of the four men, the proceedings are part of a wider drama involving the standing and reputation of the United States for fairness and even-handed justice.
The detention facility at Guantánamo, which currently houses about 585 people, has been widely viewed throughout the world by foreign governments and human rights organizations as a demonstration of Washington's high-handedness and willingness to flout international law. While many inmates have been released, most of those here have been held for more than two years without any charges against them.
Military officials have sought to emphasize the rights given to defendants in the tribunals, like a presumption of innocence, and seem baffled and annoyed by complaints about the features of the proceedings that critics say fall short of the standards of American justice.
The trials are being observed by officials from various organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First and Amnesty International. Anthony Romero, the executive director of the civil rights union, told reporters the shortcomings in the system far outweigh the rights built in. He said that the most troubling aspects were the loose standards for admitting evidence and the fact that there is no provision for appeal to a body outside the military.
In challenging Colonel Brownback's qualifications to preside at the hearings, Commander Swift was pursuing a general strategy followed by all the military defense lawyers in raising the idea that the tribunals are inherently unfair.
He said that Colonel Brownback's top aide was also advising the senior Pentagon official on how to change the rules, suggesting that the deck had been stacked against the accused. He also said that as the only lawyer on the panel, Colonel Brownback would have undue influence on the other four members. "You will have an unequal voice," on legal issues, Commander Swift said.
Colonel Brownback's manner in dealing with the challenges was a combination of solicitousness alternating with barely concealed impatience. "Yeah, go ahead and ask your question," he said at one point in a weary tone.
The chief prosecutor in the Hamdan case, Commander Scott M. Lang, rose to Colonel Brownback's defense, saying there was no reason to believe he would not be impartial. The other members of the panel said under questioning that even though Colonel Brownback was the only lawyer among them, they would not be unduly influenced by his views on legal issues.
-------- torture
Second Soldier To Plead Guilty To Prison Abuse
Abu Ghraib Reservist Urges Others to Take Responsibility
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25395-2004Aug23.html
MANNHEIM, Germany, Aug. 23 -- An Army reservist accused of sexually humiliating inmates at Abu Ghraib prison will plead guilty to charges of abuse, according to a statement his attorney released Monday. Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick would be the second of seven American soldiers charged in the mistreatment scandal to enter that plea.
"I have accepted responsibility for my actions at Abu Ghraib prison," he said in the signed statement. "I will be pleading guilty to certain charges because I have concluded that what I did was a violation of law."
He expressed hope that other Army personnel "who contributed to or participated in the chaos that was Abu Ghraib will also come forward and accept responsibility." The statement was issued a day before Frederick is scheduled to appear at a pre-trial hearing at a U.S. military court in this southern German town.
At hearings here on Monday for two other accused soldiers, the presiding judge expressed frustration with delays by the Army in providing information to the defense and ordered the prosecution to re-investigate and refile charges against one of them.
Revelations of abuse at the prison west of Baghdad touched off expressions of outrage around the world, at a time when the Bush administration was trying to establish a moral high ground for its occupation of Iraq. According to soldiers there, it also increased antipathy toward U.S. forces.
Later this week, two major U.S. government reports concerning Abu Ghraib are due for release. One, commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, concerns U.S. authorities' overall response to the scandal. The second, from the Army, examines what role military intelligence units played in bringing about abuse.
The defense teams for Frederick and other charged members of the 372nd Military Police Company have argued that senior officers ordered the mistreatment. It was not the work of renegade, undisciplined guards, they maintain, but part of a strategy to extract intelligence from captured Iraqi rebels at a time of mounting U.S. casualties.
Investigators allege that Frederick, who was in charge of the military police who worked the night shift at the prison, forced naked detainees to form a pyramid and to simulate sexual acts. He is also alleged to have been involved in forcing a prisoner to stand on a box with wires placed on his hands. Shown in a widely publicized photograph, the inmate was falsely told he would be electrocuted if he fell off, the military contends.
In an interview, Gary Meyers, Frederick's civilian attorney, said: "We are making prudent choices," with the hope of mitigating Frederick's potential sentence. The statement made no mention of a plea bargain, and did not say which charges Frederick would acknowledge.
In his statement, Frederick expressed concern for the safety of Spec. Joseph Darby, the soldier who helped expose the abuses at the prison by turning over photographs taken there last November. Last week, Darby was placed under protective custody because of threats to his life, news reports said.
"To all who have supported me, I want you to know that I have no bad feelings towards Specialist Darby and neither should you," Frederick said. "He did what he thought was right, and it was right. I ask you to accept that and move on."
In May, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits pled guilty to four criminal counts in connection with actions at Abu Ghraib and was sentenced to a year in prison. Proceedings have continued against six other soldiers.
Frederick will appear Tuesday before military judge James L. Pohl, an Army colonel who is also overseeing hearings for Spec. Charles Graner, Spec. Megan Ambuhl and Staff Sgt. Javal Davis.
Graner is shown in several abuse photos, including one in which he smiles at the camera from behind a pyramid of naked prisoners. Investigators contend his acts included jumping on piles of prisoners, punching, and stamping on hands and feet; he faces charges that include assault, conspiracy and adultery.
Ambuhl is accused of being present during abuse. The charges she faces include cruelty and ill treatment and indecent acts.
Pohl conducted hearings for both Graner and Ambuhl on Monday and in each case had critical words for the prosecution. U.S. government delays in providing potential evidence for the defense threaten to delay the Graner prosecution, Pohl indicated in court.
The Rumsfeld probe and the military intelligence investigation are behind schedule, as is a third by the Criminal Investigation Command, prosecutors said Monday in offering an explanation for why information had not been turned over to defense attorneys. Graner's civilian attorney, Guy Womack, said he wanted to see testimony from all the probes and get the names and phone numbers for civilian contractors who worked at Abu Ghraib.
Prosecution lawyers offered one illustration of the problems. They told Pohl that as part of the Criminal Investigation Command probe, only one investigator had been tasked with inspecting hundreds of thousands of electronic pages on a secret military Web server in Iraq.
"In what millennium will this be done?" Pohl asked prosecutors. He set an October deadline for information from all the probes. If there appears to be excessive further delay, he warned, he would "seriously revisit" a motion by Womack to dismiss the case against Graner, until all government probes had ended. "The government has to figure out what they want to do with this case," he said.
But not all went well in Monday's hearing for Graner, who wore desert fatigues but not the moustache he sported in photos from Abu Ghraib. Pohl ruled that information and images gleaned from a computer that he used at the prison was admissible as evidence. Graner's attorneys had argued that the computer was improperly inspected after being seized in the MP's Abu Ghraib quarters.
However, Pohl eliminated from future proceedings a statement that Graner made to the initial Army investigator. The defendant told the investigator that everything he was looking for was on the computer. Among the data found were photos of sexual abuse at the prison. Graner had made the statement after saying he wanted a lawyer present during questioning.
Graner's hearing took place in the morning; an afternoon session considered the case of Ambuhl, who also wore fatigues to court.
Pohl told prosecutors they must reinvestigate and refile charges against her. The prosecution had failed to notify her or her defense team of three of the original accusations, the prosecution acknowledged.
The actual trials are scheduled to take place in Baghdad. Womack and other lawyers are pressing for a change in venue to the United States. He said that U.S. civilian witnesses cannot be forced to travel abroad, he told reporters after the hearing.
Monday's hearings were the first time any of the accused had left Baghdad since the scandal broke. Their unit, based in Cresaptown, Md., has returned to the United States.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Weapons of Mass. destruction: Hub cops sitting on DNC arsenal
bostonherald
By Thomas Caywood
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=41170
Armed to the teeth for a DNC disaster that never happened, Boston police are sitting on a weapons stockpile of stun grenades, projectile launchers, rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas they may never use in a real-life crisis.
Footing the bill: federal taxpayers.
The city so far has submitted $1.9 million in expenses, including roughly $540,000 in police and fire overtime and $1.4 million for supplies and equipment, to the feds.
The police department bought more than $160,000 worth of crowd-control firepower - including nearly $14,000 worth of ``Stinger'' rubber-ball-and-tear-gas-spewing concussion grenades - for a political shindig that saw only one minor scuffle with protesters and five related arrests.
``We are going to be recycling these as part of our training. They are not going to sit on the shelf and expire,'' Boston police spokeswoman Beverly Ford said of the munitions.
Boston Fire Department officials also made major purchases of equipment but say some of the new supplies are already in use on the street, while the rest are reserved for training.
The eight-page expense report offers a chilling glimpse into the worst-case scenarios apparently considered by Democratic National Convention planners.
The fire department spent tens of thousands of dollars on the kinds of concrete-cutting power saws and jackhammer bits needed to rescue people from rubble and on sophisticated chemical and radiation monitoring equipment.
Other security expenditures forwarded in the first reimbursement request included nearly $5,000 worth of military-style pants, bull horns, batteries, bolt cutters, thousands of gas-mask filters, lumber, high-tech radio systems and a $300,000 custom surveillance camera system.
City officials expect the federal government to reimburse the multimillion-dollar shopping spree out of an initial $24.8 million grant and a second one nearing final approval. Police have estimated the total bill including overtime at $35 milllion to $40 million.
Boston Chief Financial Officer Lisa Signori said the city can submit DNC expenses as frequently as monthly and hopes to have them all in by midfall.
One item not yet submitted for reimbursement is the $256,000 custom Lenco B.E.A.R. armored personnel transport the BPD rolled out with such fanfare before the DNC.
Gerard Fontana, the fire department's chief of operations for field services, said none of the dozens of saw blades, drill bits and jackhammer chisels bought for the DNC will go to waste.
``We spend a lot of money replacing that stuff whether we have incidents are not,'' he said. ``We have to train.''
The fire department also is flush with high-tech communications and gadgets for dealing with hazardous materials, thanks to the DNC. The department spent $383,000 on haz-mat gear, including sophisticated chemical and radiation monitoring equipment.
Some of the gear, such as the eight Neutron Rae radiation detectors for $28,360, doesn't seem particularly useful now that the Hub is no longer on its convention-terror footing. But Fontana said even the exotic stuff could come in handy.
``There's radiation in the construction industry, in hospitals,'' he said.
-------- investigations
Outside Panel Faults Leaders of Pentagon for Prisoner Abuse
August 24, 2004
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/politics/24CND-ABUS.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - The prisoner abuses photographed at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq were unauthorized "acts of brutality and purposeless sadism" that served no intelligence-gathering purpose, but indirect responsibility for these and other, more widespread abuses goes all the way up the chain of command, an independent panel reported today.
Problems at the prison "were well known" within the military, the panel's chairman, James R. Schlesinger, said, and corrective actions "could have been taken and should have been taken." But the panel found that military commanders and staff officers in the field and in Washington bore more responsibility than the Pentagon's civilian leaders for not preventing the abuses, which prompted outrage at home and abroad when the photographs were disclosed in April.
The report, issued at a Pentagon news conference, was the first official finding in several reviews conducted so far that assigned any responsibility for the Abu Ghraib offenses to anyone who was not stationed at the prison itself.
"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," the panel said in its report. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."
In Iraq, top commanders and staff officers did not adequately supervise commanders at the prison, the report found, and up the chain of command to Washington other officers did not recognize that guards at the prison were overwhelmed by their task as an insurgency took hold and the prison population swelled.
But while the report criticized as inadequate the Pentagon's planning for operations to stabilize Iraq after the regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted in May 2003, it did not single out Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for blame. Mr. Rumsfeld commissioned the panel in May, asking its members for "your independent, professional advice."
Asked today if Mr. Rumsfeld or other high-ranking officials should resign, Mr. Schlesinger, himself a former defense secretary, said that "his resignation would be a boon for all of America's enemies."
The Schlesinger panel said that it agreed with new findings by another investigation, opened by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, that "military intelligence personnel share responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib with the military police soldiers" who were cited in an earlier investigation, headed by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The Fay report is expected to be made public as early as Wednesday.
Some of the 44 abuse accusations investigated by General Fay, the Schlesinger panel said, involved military intelligence personnel directing the actions of military police guards. The panel said it did not have access to enough information to assess whether officers of the Central Intelligence Agency had played any role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib or elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. It called for further investigation of this question.
Among those the panel criticized by name for the problems at Abu Ghraib was the commanding general in Iraq at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.
"We believe Lt. Gen. Sanchez should have taken stronger action in November, when he realized the extent of the leadership problems at Abu Ghraib," the report said, adding that his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, and the headquarters staff in Baghdad "should have seen that urgent demands were placed to higher headquarters" for more troops at the understaffed prison.
The panel said that so far there had been about 300 incidents of reported abuse of prisoners, and that of 155 completed investigations, 66 had found abuses of prisoners under United States control. Of those, 8 occurred at Guantánamo, 3 in Afghanistan and 55 in Iraq, the report found. About one-third were related to the interrogations of prisoners.
The report found that interrogation techniques approved for limited use at Guantánamo had "migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were neither limited nor safeguarded." In its recommendations, the panel called for far-reaching re-examinations of how prisoners are treated and interrogations are conducted in what it called "the new era of warfare," the continuing worldwide campaign against terrorism.
In particular, it called for defining the status and treatment of all prisoners "in a way consistent with U.S. jurisprudence and military doctrine and with U.S. interpretation of the Geneva Conventions." It said the nation's approach to international humanitarian law "must be adapted to the realities of the nature of conflict in the 21st century." Mr. Schlesinger warned that the "chilling effect" of the Abu Ghraib abuses might undermine reasonable attempts to obtain better intelligence through interrogations.
It also called for more and better-trained military police and intelligence specialists.
The report was prepared by a four-member panel that was led by Mr. Schlesinger, who was defense secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and that included Harold Brown, President Carter's defense secretary; Tillie K. Fowler, a former Republican congresswoman from Florida and the chairwoman of an investigation last year into sexual misconduct at the United States Air Force Academy; and Gen. Charles A. Horner, a retired four-star Air Force officer, who led the air campaign in the Gulf War in 1991. All of the panel members sit on the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to Mr. Rumsfeld.
The panel interviewed about two dozen people, focusing its attention on senior policy makers and commanders. Among those interviewed were Mr. Rumsfeld (twice), Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East.
--------
Top Pentagon officials, night shift criticized for Abu Ghraib
8/24/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-08-24-abu-ghraib-report_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. soldiers running the Abu Ghraib prison are mainly to blame for the inmate abuses there, but fault also lies with the Pentagon's most senior civilian and military officials, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent panel of civilian defense experts.
Senior leaders did not establish clear guidelines on permissible techniques for interrogating various categories of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, the report said.
High-level commanders failed to shift resources to an understaffed and ill-trained prison detention unit once it became apparent that the system was out of control, the report said.
The findings were presented at a Pentagon news conference by James Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense who headed a four-person commission created last May by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"There was chaos at Abu Ghraib," Schlesinger said, and it was due in part to the fact that the prison was a regular target of shelling by an Iraqi insurgency not adequately anticipated by U.S. leaders.
The report said the direct responsibility lay with soldiers and commanders in the field rather than in Washington.
"There was direct responsibility for those activities on the part of the commanders on the scene up to the brigade level, because they did not adequately supervise what was going on at Abu Ghraib," Schlesinger said. "There was indirect responsibility at higher levels, in that the weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well-known and that corrective action could have been taken and should have been taken."
He said Rumsfeld's office could be faulted for inadequate supervision, but he strongly objected to the suggestion that Rumsfeld should step down from his post.
"His resignation would be a boon to all of America's enemies," Schlesinger said.
Asked later about the culpability of senior military commanders, Schlesinger said "they were not focused on the detention operations," but even so they should not be forced to resign or be punished. He referred specifically to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the top U.S. commander in Iraq during the period in question.
The mistreatment of prisoners, described by the commission as "acts of brutality and purposeless sadism," would have been avoided with proper training, leadership and oversight, the report said.
In most cases, the abuse was not carried out with the purpose of achieving intelligence from prisoners, Schlesinger said.
"There were freelance activities on the part of the nightshift at Abu Ghraib," he said. "It was a kind of 'Animal House' on the night shift."
The report did not suggest that Rumsfeld ordered any of the abuses or did anything to encourage them. But it indicated that his policies created some confusion at lower levels of the military.
"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," the report said. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."
The commission was particularly critical of Sanchez and other commanders.
"We believe Lt. Gen. Sanchez should have taken stronger action in November when he realized the extent of the leadership problems at Abu Ghraib," the report said. It concluded that he "failed to ensure proper staff oversight" of detention and interrogation operations.
Sanchez also takes a portion of the blame in a separate Army investigation which looked specifically at the role of military intelligence soldiers.
That probe has been completed and is expected to be publicly released as early as Wednesday. It is expected to say that at least two dozen lower-ranking military intelligence soldiers, as well as civilian contractors, were responsible for the abuses, which were depicted in photographs and videos taken by U.S. soldiers.
The Schlesinger commission made no recommendations about disciplinary action against any civilian or military officials.
The question of how high responsibility for the abuse goes continues to be one of the central unanswered questions in the scandal - and it is key to the ongoing criminal cases against several low-ranking military police soldiers charged with mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
Six military police accused of abusing prisoners at the prison near Baghdad insist they were following orders from military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. A seventh soldier pleaded guilty May 19 to taking pictures of naked prisoners and was sentenced to a year in prison.
None of the investigations has found that Rumsfeld or Myers ordered or encouraged any mistreatment of prisoners. In May, Rumsfeld told the House and Senate that as secretary of defense "I am accountable" for the events at Abu Ghraib and he issued "my deepest apologies" to the Iraqis who were abused.
The Schlesinger commission interviewed Rumsfeld twice during its investigation, which began in May. The three other commission members are former defense secretary Harold Brown, former Republican Rep. Tillie Fowler of Florida, and retired Air Force Gen. Charles Horner.
When he chartered the commission, Rumsfeld told its members that he wanted independent advice on a wide range of issues related to the abuse allegations. "I am especially interested in your views on the cause of the problems and what should be done to fix them," he wrote at the time.
-------- propaganda wars
Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses
Bush Again Declines To Condemn Attack Ad
By Lois Romano and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26519-2004Aug23?language=printer
The Kerry campaign ratcheted up its defense of the Democrat's military record yesterday, producing three veterans to attest to John F. Kerry's valor in Vietnam while pointing reporters to other veterans who expressed disgust at the attacks on the presidential nominee.
In a conference call with reporters arranged by the campaign, three Navy Swift boat officers who served with Kerry 35 years ago but who said they have not been in touch with him for years defended his service and his bravery. Rich McCann, Jim Russell and Rich Baker said Kerry served honorably and took issue with questions raised by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about his commendations.
"He was the most aggressive officer in charge of Swift boats," Baker said. "With no disrespect to anyone out there, the whole Swift boat operation took courage and guts every time you stepped on those boats. But John Kerry was one step above the rest of us."
The conference call was part of a Kerry offensive aimed at regaining control of an issue that has been the centerpiece of his presidential bid -- his Vietnam service. The campaign has been roiled by an ad that questions Kerry's valor and accuses him of misrepresenting the facts that led to some of his commendations.
President Bush yesterday repeated his condemnation of unregulated money that he said was "pouring" into the political process. But he stopped short of denouncing the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is being aired in three battleground states and is funded largely by Republicans.
Bush praised Kerry's military service in Vietnam. "I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record," he said.
But, pressed several times by reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., about whether he would specifically condemn the ad, Bush would only say: "That means that ad and every other ad. I'm denouncing all the stuff."
In Oshkosh, Wis., Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, blasted Bush for not being more critical of the ad and the claims by the group. "Today, George Bush faced his moment of truth and he failed," said Edwards, who has repeatedly called on the president to denounce the veterans group's ad. "He failed to condemn the specific attacks on John Kerry's military record. We didn't need to hear a politician's answer, but unfortunately that's what we got."
Adm. Roy Hoffmann, a founder of the anti-Kerry group, issued a statement in response to Bush's comment: "It would make no difference if John Kerry were a Republican, Democrat or an Independent, Swift Boat Veterans would still be speaking the truth concerning John Kerry's military service record in Vietnam, his actions after returning home and his lack of qualifications to be the next Commander in Chief."
While getting off to a slow start in responding to the ad, Kerry's campaign is frantically trying to mobilize veterans to speak out. Former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost three limbs in Vietnam, spent the weekend in Wisconsin denouncing the Swift boat ads and attacks, and Kerry's crewmates have been fanning out across the country to defend him.
In Pennsylvania, crewmate Del Sandusky said at a news conference that he witnessed the combat missions for which Kerry received Silver and Bronze stars and two of his three Purple Hearts. "He deserved every one of his medals," Sandusky said.
William L. Sweidel, a decorated Korean War veteran who appeared with Sandusky, said later that he voted for both Bushes for president but will support Kerry because of these attacks. "I called the campaign to express outrage. I was disappointed. I was diminished," Sweidel said. "Nobody was talking about how it was hurting all veterans to have them criticize Kerry's medals. The whole system is now suspect based on what these people are saying. It's pernicious."
Phil Butler, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, took issue with suggestions by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Kerry's antiwar protests caused the POWs to be treated badly. "I lived with two of the POWs who are now in that group -- Mr. [Ken] Courdier and Mr. [Paul] Gallanti -- and I am telling you, they are full of it. We never heard a blooming thing about John Kerry while we were there," said Butler, who contacted the campaign months ago to support Kerry and only recently heard back from Kerry's veterans coordinator, John Hurley.
Butler said that while he was tortured and mistreated until 1969, by the time Kerry was protesting the war and speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1971, the POWs were better treated.
On Friday, a company called First Run Features is slated to debut a documentary about Kerry and his Swift boat crewmates, "Brothers in Arms," in a New York theater. Director Paul Alexander, who calls it "a very sympathetic portrait," said that no one was interested when he finished it last Christmas but that the recent controversy has given it a boost. He said the film will be sold as a DVD and could reach theaters around the country.
In the conference call, Baker said he thought that former senator Robert J. Dole's critical comments Sunday about Kerry's medals were inappropriate and that Dole had no "business" judging the injuries for which Kerry received three Purple Hearts. "John Kerry is lucky to be alive today," Baker said. "The fourth Purple Heart could have been an AK-47 through his heart."
McCann said that he tried to stay out of politics but that when he saw that the Swift boat group had identified him on its Web site as being "neutral" on Kerry without asking him, he was furious. Kerry's commendation record "has stood for 35 years and suddenly you've got people coming forward saying, 'Well, I've had second thoughts about this,' " McCann said. "That is dishonoring not only John Kerry, it is dishonoring all veterans."
In anticipation of the airing of the group's ad attacking Kerry's antiwar efforts, the Kerry campaign has launched a new ad, calling the Swift boat commercials "smears and lies" and accusing the Bush operation of using the same tactic it used against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2000 GOP primaries.
In response, the Bush campaign yesterday sent letters to 27 television stations in 11 cities in the battleground states of Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia that called the Kerry campaign ad "false and libelous" for its contention that Bush was illegally coordinating with the Swift boat group. The letter did not ask the stations to ban the ad.
Rick Lipps, general manager of WNWO-TV, the NBC affiliate in Toledo, said TV stations were caught in the crossfire between the campaigns. Although he had not seen the Bush campaign's complaint as of late yesterday, Lipps said his station "tries to do its homework" by asking all political advertisers to verify advertising claims. "There isn't much way to take it further than that," he said.
The president's comments yesterday were similar to those he made on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Aug. 12, when King asked him if he would denounce the anti-Kerry ad. "Well, I haven't seen the ad, but what I do condemn is these unregulated soft-money expenditures by very wealthy people," Bush said.
Privately, Bush aides said they felt under no pressure to change their position on the Swift boat ads because the controversy seems to be hurting Kerry more than Bush. But they are irritated that the media have been taking seriously the Kerry complaint to the Federal Election Commission. The complaint, filed yesterday, accuses the Bush campaign of breaking election law by coordinating the ads with the independent group. The Bush aides are determined not to give Kerry an opening by criticizing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth directly.
Questioned after Bush's remarks, White House press secretary Scott McClellan repeatedly declined to criticize the content of the Swift boat ads. "Senator Kerry wants to have it both ways," by selectively calling on Bush to condemn one group's ads, McClellan said. "Senator Kerry can help put an end to all of this by joining us in calling for a stop to all of these ads."
Dole yesterday went back on CNN, where he had made his critical remarks the previous day, to say that he had received a call from Kerry. "I said, 'John, I didn't mean to offend you,' " Dole said. "But I said, 'You know, when you continue to attack George Bush . . . you know, George Bush is my guy.' . . . The final words were 'John, I wish you good luck up to a point.' "
Milbank reported from Crawford, Tex. Staff writers Paul Farhi and Howard Kurtz in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Do You Hear What I Hear?
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A15
The 2004 presidential campaign sometimes resembles the children's game of "telephone." Here are some quotations as they came out of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's mouth -- and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney later recounted them.
"Every performer tonight in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." -- Kerry, July 8
"The other day, my opponent said he thought you could find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood." -- Bush, Aug. 18
"My goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship is to get our troops reduced in number and I believe if you do the statesmanship properly, I believe if you do the kind of alliance building that is available to us, that it's appropriate to have a goal of reducing the troops over that period of time [the first six months of a Kerry administration]. Obviously, we'd have to see how events unfold. . . . It is an appropriate goal to have and I'm going to try to achieve it." -- Kerry, Aug. 9
"I took exception when my opponent said if he's elected, we'll substantially reduce the troops in six months. He shouldn't have said that. See, it sends a mixed signal to the enemy for starters. So the enemy hangs around for six months and one day. . . . It says, maybe America isn't going to keep its word." -- Bush, Aug. 18
"I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States. I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history. I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists wherever they may be before they get us." -- Kerry, Aug. 5
"Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a 'more sensitive' war on terror. America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. . . . Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed." -- Cheney, Aug. 12
"Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, has said this administration is not moving with the urgency necessary to respond to our needs. I believe this administration and its policies is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries. We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world. We haven't done the work necessary to protect our own ports, our chemical facilities, our nuclear facilities. There is a long, long list in the 9/11 recommendations that are undone."
-- Kerry, Aug. 2
"My opponent says . . . that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts. I think the logic -- I know the logic is upside down. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature of these people. See, during the 1990s, these killers and terrorists were recruiting and training for war with us, long before we went to war with them. They don't need an excuse for their hatred. It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back." -- Bush, Aug. 18
"Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to use force in Iraq]. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has. My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" -- Kerry, Aug. 9
"He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, the Massachusetts senator now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." -- Bush, Aug. 18
Now for an update on the White House's ongoing effort to kill the press corps. The White House travel office signed a contract last week with an airline called Primaris to fly the press corps to Bush events. The two-month-old company has only one airplane. True, media representatives gave their blessing to the deal. But that was before they learned that the company's president twice had his pilot's license revoked related to his flying of an "unairworthy" aircraft, that the chief executive flopped in his last attempt to start an airline and that the 15-year-old plane itself was damaged in a hailstorm a decade ago and spent most of the past two years mothballed in France.
--------
This just in: the factors behind newspapers' rush to contrition
By Randy Dotinga
The Christian Science Monitor
August 24, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0824/p02s01-usgn.html
To judge from this year's rash of apologetic postmortems, American newspapers are a very sorry bunch.
The New York Times acknowledged downplaying skepticism about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. USA Today explored how it let a top foreign correspondent fool editors for years with fake reports. Earlier this month, The Washington Post ran a front-page story that said the newspaper's prewar coverage "in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times." And, perhaps most amazingly, a Kentucky newspaper in July admitted that it had virtually failed to cover the civil rights movement.
Some of this, of course, is damage control in an era when the news media are struggling to restore faltering credibility with readers. But beyond that, there's a debate over what this trend signifies - a mere bout of self-analysis that amounts to navel-gazing, or a break with the newspaper industry's tradition of considering itself above reproach. "We have a culture of thinking that we're always right," says Arlene Morgan, associate dean at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and former assistant managing editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In reality, of course, newspapers make plenty of blunders, from confusing actress Angelica Huston's last name with the largest city in Texas to declaring that President Bush carried a fake turkey to soldiers in Iraq last Thanksgiving. (He didn't.)
Readers notice the errors. In 1999, a landmark industry report found that nearly a quarter of newspaper readers surveyed discovered factual errors in newspapers each week; 73 percent said they'd become more skeptical of media accuracy. Then, last year, the credibility of the press fell even further when alert journalists began exposing colleagues who fabricated and plagiarized their stories.
In a world where Jayson Blair became fodder for a David Letterman Top 10 list, it's perhaps not surprising that The New York Times, in particular, has been sensitive about mistakes. Among other things, it hired a reader's representative who promptly annoyed staffers with a series of critical columns.
In addition to postscandal damage control, there's another factor in the growing list of mea culpas, according to Geneva Overholser, faculty member at the Missouri School of Journalism. The Internet, she says, gives critics a louder voice than they had in the past, when they needed access to a printing press to spread their opinions across the country. "Each of these criticisms is far more powerful than it used to be," she says, "and in turn causes newspapers to feel more compelled to be transparent. That is a good thing."
Otto von Bismarck famously said that it's best not to see how laws or sausages are made - and some say the chaotic inner workings of newspapers shouldn't get a public airing, either. In many cases, however, readers seem to like knowing how editors make decisions. San Antonio Express-News editor Robert Rivard says his weekly column about the newspaper's successes and failures "goes a long way toward placating a lot of readers who have questions. What readers don't want is a vacuum, an information vacuum. They want to know the story behind the story."
Then again, some critics think newspapers have gone too far. In the influential online magazine Slate, media critic Jack Shafer ripped Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader for its "appetite for painless self- flagellation" after it explored the failure of its predecessors to cover the local impact of the civil rights movement. "If the Herald-Leader had any real editorial guts," Mr. Shafer writes, "it would exhume a defective story from five years ago - a story touched by its current crew of editors and reporters - and run it through the Revisionator."
Mr. Rivard agrees that the past doesn't always need to be rehashed. "You have to keep it contemporary," he says.
Journalists also have to be careful to avoid "fawning over one another as though the entire world is as interested in us as we are," Ms. Overholser says.
Whether extensive self-analysis is good or bad, much of the American media remains untouched by regular displays of contrition. Many newspapers, like The Christian Science Monitor, communicate directly with readers only through occasional editor's columns or published corrections when substantial mistakes are uncovered. The Monitor, for instance, ran a front-page correction and apology after publishing a story about a British member of Parliament that turned out to be based on forged documents. Just a few dozen of the nation's 1,500 daily newspapers have ombudsmen or reader's representatives, and they're virtually unheard of in the broadcast industry.
Why? Thin skin is one explanation, but lack of money is another. Overholser admits that, when she was editor of The Des Moines Register, she would rather have spent $40,000 to hire a police reporter than an ombudsman.
Even if newspapers do examine themselves, that's no guarantee of improvement. "Do you really fix the systemic problems of not listening to your staff, of shutting down when people are concerned about certain ethical practices?" asks Ms. Morgan. "Are you really fixing the problem and then disclosing to the public how you fixed it?"
Halfhearted efforts, she says, will risk being like many of the recent internal exposés - "more public relations than public information."
-------- secrecy
Ludicrous, Lethal Government Secrets Cited
August 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Government-Secrets.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former dictator's cocktail preferences and a facetious plot against Santa Claus were classified by the government to prevent public disclosure.
Also stamped ``secret'' for six years was a study that concluded 40 percent of Army chemical warfare masks leaked.
These and other ludicrous and lethal examples of classification were cited Tuesday by members of Congress and witnesses at a House subcommittee hearing into the Sept. 11 commission's conclusion that secrecy is undermining efforts to thwart terrorists.
Some classifications were made in error or to save face.
The CIA deleted the amount Iraqi agents paid for aluminum tubes from page 96 of a Senate report on prewar intelligence. The report quoted the CIA as concluding, ``Their willingness to pay such costs suggests the tubes are intended for a special project of national interest.''
That price turned out to be not so high. On page 105 of the same Senate report, the same security reviewers let CIA's figure -- up to $17.50 each -- be printed twice, along with other estimates that the Iraqis paid as little as $10 apiece.
``There are too many secrets'' and maybe too many secret-makers, said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform Committee's national security panel. There are 3,978 officials who can stamp a document ``top secret,'' ``secret'' or ``confidential'' under multiple sets of complex rules.
No one knows how much is classified, he said, and the system ``often does not distinguish between the critically important and comically irrelevant.''
The problem is growing, said J. William Leonard, director of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which monitors federal practices. Officials decided to classify documents 8 percent more often in 2003 than in 2002. Total classification decisions -- including upgrading or downgrading -- reached 14 million.
``The tone is set at the top,'' Shays said.
``This administration believes the less known the better,'' added the Connecticut Republican, noting sadly he was speaking of a GOP administration. ``I believe the more known the better.''
The panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, noted that former President Clinton directed that in cases of doubt, the lowest or no classification be used. But in 2003, President Bush ordered officials to use the more restrictive level.
Steven Aftergood, director of a Federation of American Scientists project on secrecy, said some classification was clearly designed to conceal illegality or avoid embarrassment, even though that is forbidden.
Aftergood cited the ``secret'' stamp on Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report of ``numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses'' inflicted on Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
Carol A. Haave, deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security, said most misclassification was unintentional, resulting from misunderstanding or failure to declassify no-longer-sensitive data. She said a weakness, particularly for anti-terrorism efforts, was that those who collect intelligence determine its classification.
``Collectors of information can never know how it could best be used,'' Haave said. ``We have to move to a user-driven environment.''
Leonard, of the Archives, said another obstacle to sharing anti-terrorist data as the Sept. 11 commission envisioned was that federal law divides the authority for writing the rules that govern secrets. The CIA director has authority to protect intelligence sources and methods, the Energy Department has power to write regulations to shield nuclear secrets, the Pentagon has control over classifying NATO data and the National Security Agency can define communications eavesdropping secrets.
``All these variations have nuances that impede cooperation,'' Leonard said.
Aftergood, who is fighting in court to declassify the overall budget for intelligence agencies, argued that declassifying that total ``could break the logjam'' of over-classification. That was also recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.
Leonard said a 2000 law created a public interest declassification board to recommend release of secrets in important cases, but the president and Congress never appointed members. ``The executive branch is ready to make nominations,'' Leonard said, urging Congress to select its choices.
For the curious: the CIA classified for 20 years longtime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's preference for pisco sours, according to subcommittee staff members citing previously classified documents published by the National Security Archive, a private anti-secrecy group here.
And a CIA employee made up a story of a terrorist plot to hijack Santa Claus and inserted it into some classified traffic. ``So apparently the fact that CIA had a sense of humor was classified,'' said subcommittee counsel Lawrence J. Halloran.
On the Net:
National security subcommittee: http://reform.house.gov/NSETIR/
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Iberdrola opens new wind park in Spain
REUTERS SPAIN:
August 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26743/story.htm
MADRID - Spanish power utility Iberdrola (IBE.MC: Quote, Profile, Research) , already second in the world in renewable energy capacity, has opened a new 49.5 megawatt wind park in Spain.
The park - near Cuenca, 120 kms (75 miles) southeast of Madrid - is powered by 33 turbines built by General Electric (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and is expected to produce 118 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, Iberdrola said in a statement.
Iberdrola has added 407 MW of capacity in renewable energy sources this year to reach a total of 2,664 MW, up 18 percent from the end of 2003. That figure is exceeded only by Florida Power & Light (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) .
Iberdrola's renewable capacity comes largely from hydroelectric power and wind energy. The state has encouraged renewable energy to counter Spain's near total dependence on imported energy and to help meet Europe's Kyoto Protocol commitments on limiting carbon dioxide emissions.
-------- energy
Bush Aides, in Shift, Say Oil a Drag on Economy
Story by Adam Entous and Jeremy Pelofsky
REUTERS USA:
August 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26749/story.htm
CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush's economic advisers are warning that high energy prices have become a drag on the U.S. economy and not merely a threat to growth, chipping away at Bush's upbeat election-year projections and increasing pressure on him to act.
Treasury Secretary John Snow warned on Friday that, "We're seeing some slowing in the United States directly attributable to high energy prices."
Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, went farther on Sunday, warning in a letter published in The New York Times: "High energy prices are now a drag on the economy, as well as a strain on family budgets."
The warnings appeared to be part of a concerted shift in tone by Bush's top economic advisers, who for months have sought to minimize the risk of an economic slowdown in the run-up to the November presidential election.
Bush's economic advisers have long described high energy prices as a threat or a burden to the U.S. recovery, but they said the impact was mostly being felt abroad rather than at home.
"It has nothing to do with the election," an administration official said of the new warnings on energy prices. "It's a reaction to changes in the economy."
CRUDE OIL NEAR $50 BARREL
Crude oil prices have soared to near $50 a barrel, and higher costs could eventually make their way through the refining system to send high gasoline prices higher. Crude oil prices account for nearly half the cost of making gasoline.
A senior Fed official acknowledged last week that high oil prices will be a dampener on growth, citing studies that a sustained $10 increase in oil cuts economic growth by about 0.5 percentage point in a year.
The economists' warnings could help the administration lower growth expectations in case the economy slows more than expected, though Bush's advisers say they remain upbeat.
Despite the drag from energy prices, Mankiw wrote on Sunday that the U.S. economy is "heading in the right direction," and that growth for the coming year is expected to remain "well above" 3 percent and that the unemployment rate would continue its decline.
The new warnings could also turn up pressure on Bush to tap into the nation's emergency oil stockpile, as called for by Democrats. Snow said on Friday that there had not yet been a large enough disruption to the supply of oil to warrant tapping the stockpile. "I don't think we're there yet," Snow said in an interview with the financial cable news channel CNBC.
Bush's Democratic presidential rival, John Kerry, has made record gas prices a centerpiece of his campaign. He has accused Bush - a former Texas oilman - of inaction and of breaking a 2000 pledge to step up pressure on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to keep prices low.
KERRY WANTS RESERVES TAPPED
To lower gasoline prices, Kerry has called on Bush to temporarily stop putting crude supplies into strategic oil stockpile, which now holds about 660 million barrels.
So far, the Bush administration has insisted it will continue to fill the reserve. Currently about 100,000 barrels per day flow into the underground storage caverns in Texas and Louisiana.
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Friday that the administration would act in order to "protect consumers and our economy" in the event of a national emergency or a severe disruption of supply.
The administration has refused to define what would be a triggering event for tapping the emergency reserve, and McClellan would not say whether an economic slowdown caused by rising energy prices would justify such a declaration.
Even signaling a willingness to tap the reserves could impact energy prices.
Robert Ebel, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said suspending deliveries or making a "test sale" of 5 million barrels to U.S. refiners could be among the administration's options, though that is unlikely to have a significant impact on prices.
The Bush campaign has sought to deflect blame onto Kerry and other Democrats in Congress for blocking the president's energy reform package.
-------- OTHER
-------- health
Federal Complaint Against "Bottom of the Barrel" Biosafety Committees
http://www.sunshine-project.org/
Research Transparency: Federal Complaint Against "Bottom of the Barrel" Biosafety Committees
(Austin - 23 August 2004) - Today, the Sunshine Project has filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health against four US universities that have the worst biosafety transparency out of more than 225 institutions nationwide that have replied to a Sunshine Project survey of Institutional Biosafety Committees. The complaint names Princeton University (Princeton, NJ), the University of Texas Southwestern (Dallas, TX), the University of Vermont (Burlington, VT), and the University of Delaware (Newark, DE).
"It was difficult selecting only four institutions to label as the worst", says Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond, "hundreds of labs have lousy biosafety recordkeeping or haven't replied to the Sunshine Project's requests at all." However, Hammond says "These four schools fall into a special category of rotten." Their biosafety committees function, but "these universities' biosafety committees have nothing but contempt for public disclosure. They black out their meeting minutes or write down virtually nothing, so as to frustrate public access."
The Sunshine Project's complaint was filed with the National Institutes of Health Office of Biotechnology Activities, which oversees the NIH Guidelines on Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules. It is under these federal guidelines that the Sunshine Project is conducting its survey of biosafety committees. According to the Guidelines, minutes of biosafety committee meetings "shall be made available to the public upon request".
Briefly, on each institutional biosafety committee (IBC):
- Princeton University provides useless documents to the public because it records nothing of substance about safety review of its biological research in its IBC minutes. Says Hammond, "Princeton might have impressed the editors of US News," who this week named it a top US university, "but its biosafety committee's sense of public responsibility is bottom of the barrel."
- Like Princeton, the University of Vermont records virtually nothing of substance when its IBC reviews project safety. Vermont took six months to reply to a request for its IBC minutes, and then provided no useful information. - The University of Delaware takes a different approach. It replied quickly to the Sunshine Project's request; but not before applying a fat magic marker to its IBC minutes, blacking out page upon page about biosafety at the university, and rendering its minutes completely useless.
- In Dallas, UT-Southwestern takes a novel approach to evading public accountability: It puts all the substance of its IBC meeting in an "annex", which it does not release to the public. Then, in its sparse committee minutes, it records that the annexes are approved "without additional comment".
The Sunshine Project's complaint asks NIH to terminate biotechnology research funding to the four institutions until they comply with the federal research guidelines.
Minutes of one biosafety committee meeting of each university are available online:
Princeton University: http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/IBC/pu.pdf
University of Vermont: http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/IBC/uvm.pdf
University of Delaware: http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/IBC/udel.pdf
University of Texas Southwestern: http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/IBC/utswmed.pdf
--------
Number of Americans Who Have High Blood Pressure Up Sharply
31 Percent of Adults Suffering From Hypertension, Study Finds
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27138-2004Aug23.html
The number of Americans who have high blood pressure has increased dramatically in the past decade, with almost one-third of adults now suffering from the life-threatening condition, federal researchers reported yesterday.
A new analysis of data collected by the federal government found that the number of U.S. adults who have hypertension increased from about 50 million in the period from 1988 to 1994 to at least 65 million in the period from 1999 to 2000.
Although the study was not designed to examine the cause of the increase, the trend is probably being driven primarily by the rapidly rising number of elderly people and those who are overweight, experts said.
Whatever the cause, the trend is disturbing because high blood pressure can lead to a wide range of serious health problems -- including the nation's biggest killers, heart attacks and strokes.
"From a public and health professional perspective, it is important to be aware of high blood pressure, to have blood pressure checked regularly, and if blood pressure is elevated, to initiate appropriate counseling and treatment," said Larry E. Fields, senior executive adviser to the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who led the study. Blood pressure rates had been dropping in the United States since the 1960s, but researchers last year discovered that trend had reversed in the early 1990s. The new analysis, published in the journal Hypertension, represents the first attempt to determine how common high blood pressure has become.
In the new study, researchers analyzed data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a large, ongoing federal survey of health measures.
Fields and his colleagues concluded that the total hypertension prevalence rate was 31.3 percent, which translates into about 65.2 million American adults ages 18 and older. That is a 30 percent increase from the period 1988 to 1994, when the number was about 50 million. High blood pressure is defined as 140 over 90, or above.
High blood pressure is divided about equally between men and women, with about 35 million women and 30 million men suffering from the condition. Blacks tend to have the highest rate -- 39.8 percent -- followed by Mexican Americans at 28.7 percent and non-Hispanic whites at 27.2 percent.
"The increased prevalence of high blood pressure represents a reversal of previous declines observed between 1960 and 1990, suggesting that previous beneficial population influences -- for example, increased availability of fruits and vegetables -- have been overwhelmed by negative influences -- for example, increased obesity," said David C. Goff Jr. of Wake Forest University Health Sciences, speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association. "These findings have serious implications for health care policy and public health policy."
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recently created a medical classification known as pre-hypertension, which is intended to encourage doctors to alert patients that they are at risk of developing high blood pressure and should take steps to prevent it. Many people can reduce their blood pressure by losing weight, eating better and exercising. Drugs can also help.
"We hope that this new data will serve as a wakeup call to physicians, other health care professionals and the public. More aggressive prevention and treatment of high blood pressure is needed," NHLBI acting Director Barbara Alving said in a statement released yesterday.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Judge Rejects Central Park Rally
Associated Press
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26293-2004Aug23.html
NEW YORK, Aug. 23 -- A federal judge refused Monday to allow a large rally on Central Park's Great Lawn during the Republican National Convention but urged protesters and the city to work toward a compromise.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III agreed with the city's concern that the Saturday rally by a projected 75,000 people -- and another for 250,000 people on Sunday by United for Peace and Justice -- could ruin the Great Lawn, which was restored in 1997 at a cost of more than $18 million dollars.
A state court hearing is scheduled Tuesday on a United for Peace and Justice lawsuit.
The federal case was brought by the antiwar ANSWER coalition and the National Council of Arab Americans. Pauley noted that neither side had negotiated revisions of the permit application that would allow use of the lawn before the lawsuit was filed.
During arguments Friday, Brian Becker, national coordinator for the ANSWER coalition, characterized the Great Lawn as "the heart and soul of New York City."
Gail Donoghue, of the city's corporation counsel, had argued that the city treated all protest groups equally when it rejected five requests to use the lawn during the convention.
--------
Judge Rejects One Bid for a Central Park Protest
August 24, 2004
By DIANE CARDWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/nyregion/24protest.html?pagewanted=all&position=
A federal judge in Manhattan refused yesterday to force the city to allow a rally on Saturday on the Great Lawn in Central Park, after the Bloomberg administration and protest organizers failed to reach a compromise during a sudden round of weekend negotiations.
In denying the request, by the National Council of Arab Americans and the Answer Coalition, United States District Judge William H. Pauley III cited security concerns, the plaintiffs' delay in bringing the lawsuit, and the potential for damage from a rally of 75,000 people just two days before the start of the Republican National Convention.
The city has vigorously opposed letting protesters use the Great Lawn around the time of the convention and is battling a similar effort in state court by a group that wants to hold an even larger rally in the park on Sunday. Yesterday's decision is a significant victory for the city, but it does not resolve the issue of where the many protesters expected to arrive in Manhattan this weekend will be able to demonstrate.
Judge Pauley urged the two sides to work toward a compromise "that would allow a political assembly on the Great Lawn," an area that the plaintiffs argued represented "the heart and soul of New York City." Writing that the lawsuit seemed to be "the first time that the parties engaged in a meaningful way and discussed the proposed assembly," the judge called their negotiations to that point "a Kabuki dance of correspondence."
The Arab-American group wants to hold its rally on Saturday, the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to call attention to what it sees as civil rights abuses of Muslims and Arab-Americans since Sept. 11. Holding the rally on the Great Lawn was important, they argued at a hearing on Friday, because it offered an "unconfined, family-friendly mass rally venue whose historic tradition is devoid of confrontation and conflict," where its members would feel comfortable. Brian Becker, national coordinator for the Answer Coalition, which is coordinating the event with the Arab-American group, said the Great Lawn was New York's equivalent of the Lincoln Memorial, and Judge Pauley wrote that gathering there was "part of their political message, namely acceptance and equality of Arab-Americans."
But city officials argued that since the $18.2 million restoration of the Great Lawn in the late 1990's, they have strictly limited large-scale events there with careful crowd control policies and plans to cancel events in wet weather. Without a way to guarantee a limit on the size of the crowd, an acceptable contingency plan and a bond to pay for damage, officials said, they could not agree to the rally.
In his ruling, Judge Pauley largely agreed with the city, especially because of the parallel suit in State Supreme Court brought by another group, United for Peace and Justice, seeking to hold a rally the next day on the Great Lawn, as well as the East and North Meadows.
"Given the intense public interest in these proposed events, the possibility exists that a demonstration estimated to be 75,000 could swell several magnitudes, overwhelm the police and destroy the Great Lawn," he wrote. "Plaintiffs concede that destruction of the lawn would be 'a terrible thing.' "
Protest organizers said they were unsure whether they would appeal, but Mr. Becker noted that the decision did not explicitly bar them from gathering in Central Park. "Thousands of people are coming, and many of them intend to come to Central Park, and we believe that it is their right to be in Central Park," Mr. Becker said at a news conference in the East Village. At the same time, he emphasized that the group still wanted to obtain a permit from the city.
City officials indicated that they were open to that possibility.
"Despite the late date, we remain willing to discuss with them whether there is a way to provide for an alternative park location where their demonstration could be held," Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said in a statement, noting that the judge had ruled that the city offered other suitable locations: the East Meadow in Central Park, Flushing Meadow Park in Queens or Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
It was not immediately clear what the ruling might mean for the suit for the Sunday rally organized by United for Peace and Justice. A hearing in that case is scheduled for this morning, and the rally, which organizers say could draw more than 200,000 people, is taking shape even though the organization does not know where it can be held, since the city has rebuffed efforts to hold it in Central Park.
The group has been busy working to mobilize its members for a march up Seventh Avenue from below 23rd Street past the convention site, Madison Square Garden, but it lacks a destination. Although the two cases are separate - in different courts with different sets of facts - they have become inextricably linked.
At the Friday hearing, for example, Judge Pauley tried to sow the seeds of an agreement by asking city lawyers if they could agree to a permit if the organizers offered a rain-contingency plan and a bond to cover damage. Gail Donoghue, special counsel of the city's Law Department, said that if just the Saturday event were involved, officials could consider it, but because of the possibility that a state judge could force the city to allow the rally the next day as well, risking extreme damage to the lawn, she said they could not.
Organizers of the Saturday rally, for their part, offered to merge their event with the Sunday rally if the back-to-back events were indeed at issue. Over the weekend, Mr. Becker said, they had told officials that they would be willing to post a reasonable bond and move their rally to the pavement of Central Park West in case of rain, but that the city rejected those terms.
Judge Pauley, evidently conscious that his decision would not silence the issue, said on Friday, "I have lots of jurisdiction and power, but it doesn't extend across the street" to State Supreme Court. Today, that court is set to witness again a clash of what Judge Pauley called the "intersecting public interests" of "the right 'of the people peaceably to assemble' and the stewardship of a unique pastoral oasis amid a towering urban landscape."
--------
Tense NY Convention Seen for Protesters, Police
August 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-protests.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Activists and police are preparing for a tense standoff and possible violence on New York streets when hundreds of thousands gather to decry the Iraq war and Bush administration polices during the Republican convention.
``People have been saving themselves for this,'' said Eric Laursen, one of the organizers of the civil disobedience campaign targeting convention delegates and corporations that donate money to the Republican Party.
He said protests at July's Democratic Party convention in Boston were small because ``the re-coronation of George W. Bush at Madison Square Garden is the act that people really want to make a statement against.''
Not all the mostly left-wing demonstrators support Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, but most would rather have him in the White House than Bush, who will accept the Republican nomination to run for a second term at the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 convention at Madison Square Garden.
Demonstrators young and old from across the political spectrum will march on Sunday past the convention arena under the banner ``The World Says No To The Bush Agenda.''
All week, delegates and locals will be met with protests from street theater to art displays and marches. They will protest the administration's HIV/AIDS policy, tax cuts for the wealthy and some activists' belief that Bush's war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks has curtailed civil liberties, immigrant rights and further militarized U.S. society.
But it is unannounced actions by self-styled anarchists who disrupted the 1999 world trade meeting in Seattle and other events that authorities fear could cause the most problems.
LAW-ABIDING
``Those who break the law will be subject to arrest. We expect they will constitute a distinct minority, and our officers have been trained to respond in a disciplined and effective way,'' Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week as he watched a convention security drill.
During the drill, officers displayed saws they will use to cut the chains of protesters linked together to block streets and a mega-megaphone to make announcements to large crowds.
But there is distrust among protesters and police alike after a huge anti-war protest in New York on Feb. 15, 2003, turned into chaos when police angered demonstrators by penning them behind barricades and arresting scores of people.
That distrust is magnified because the FBI has questioned activists who may be coming to the convention and New York police have a long history of infiltrating protest groups.
``I go there with other friends to express our seething discontent with our administration and if that's allowed, that will be a glorious day, and if it isn't, then it will end up in jail,'' said law student Jason Flores-Williams, 34.
Other activists say they will follow some of the 4,853 delegates around town and harass them verbally and with leaflets at hotels, Broadway shows and parties. An entire Web site http://www.RNCnotwelcome.org has been established to help coordinate ``direct action'' during the convention.
PEACE DISCOUNTS
In one effort to discourage any violence, the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered discounts at museums and hotels for those presenting city-issued buttons that say, ``Welcome Peaceful Political Activists.''
For months, tensions have run high between police and the United for Peace and Justice organizers of Sunday's march over whether an estimated 250,000 protesters could rally on Central Park's Great Lawn. City officials denied a permit saying the grass would be damaged, an alternate site was rejected by UFPJ and the matter is in court.
The city has issued permits for other anti-Bush protests in Central Park that are expected to draw smaller crowds, but even some police officers have questioned Bloomberg's stance on denying a park permit.
``From a policing point of view, Central Park is the perfect place to hold a rally because you can control protesters exiting and entering and once inside they are contained,'' said a park patrol supervisor who asked not be identified.
Without a resolution, the march may end in central Manhattan some two miles from the park with the demonstrators having nowhere to go. Some activists say they will go to the park after the march with or without permission and that is when many here believe trouble could start.
--------
Sudan embassy shut
August 24, 2004
Embassy Row
Washington Times
By James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/embassy.htm
The Embassy of Sudan, the site of daily protests over the massacres in the Darfur region of the African nation, closed yesterday for an indefinite period.
The closure comes as a vast coalition of demonstrators is planning nationwide protests for tomorrow. Actor Danny Glover, the latest celebrity to join the movement, is expected at the noon demonstration outside the embassy at 2210 Massachusetts Ave. NW.
The embassy Web site (www.sudanembassy.org) issued this brief announcement: "This is to inform that the embassy will be closed starting from Monday, Aug. 23, 2004, until further notice."
However, the demonstrators say they are not concerned whether the embassy is open or closed. The building is symbolic of the government that Congress last month condemned for "genocide" against black African farmers in Darfur by Arab militias initially armed by the government to fight rebels.
"We have demonstrated every day since June 29, and we will continue to demonstrate whether they are inside [the embassy] or not. They never answered the door, anyway," said protest leader and radio talk-show host Joe Madison, who is in his sixth week of a hunger strike to draw attention to the crisis in Darfur.
"What we want them to shut down is not the embassy. We want them to shut down the genocide. We want them to shut down the refugee camps. We want them to shut down the atrocities that are taking place."
Mr. Madison said the Washington-based Sudan Campaign wants President Bush to heed the congressional resolution and declare Sudan guilty of genocide.
The militias, called the Janjaweed, are blamed for killing 50,000 people and displacing 1 million. The U.N. Security Council on July 30 gave the Sudanese government 30 days to stop the bloodshed.
Meanwhile, another group, the Save Darfur Coalition, is urging communities throughout North America to stage demonstrations tomorrow.
Calling the protest a "Day of Conscience," the coalition said it wants to "raise public awareness about the horrific situation in Darfur and to demand that the international community take immediate and decisive action to stop the killing, the rape and the destruction of villages and to assure that humanitarian relief reaches all those in need."
In Washington, Mr. Glover intends to add his name to a long list of elected leaders and average citizens who have been arrested on embassy grounds for unlawful assembly, a charge that carries a $50 fine.
Mr. Madison said the list includes an 82-year-old grandmother and a 75-year-old woman who got arrested last week on her birthday.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders and several members of Congress also have been arrested.
Mr. Madison, who continues to host his show on WOL-AM from 6 to 10 p.m. on weekdays, has consumed only chicken broth on his hunger strike.
Leaders of the think tanks TransAfrica Forum and Africa Action also plan to be arrested tomorrow.
----
The beginning of history
Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation?
John Berger
Tuesday August 24, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1289515,00.html
Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event. Most commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage the film. We will see why later.
The artists on the Cannes film festival jury apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore's film the Palme d'Or. Since then it has touched many millions across the world. In the US, its box-office takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than $100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what Harry Potter made during a comparable period. Only the so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it.
The film, considered as a political act, may be a historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain perspective for the future is required. Living only close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do, reduces one's perspectives. The film is trying to make a small contribution towards the changing of world history. It is a work inspired by hope.
What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective and independent intervention into immediate world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to succeed in making such an intervention, and in interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November.
To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.
This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections. And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former.
Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground.
For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event.
To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it.
The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon were taken over in the first year of the millennium by a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth serve the global interests of the corporations: a stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It demonstrates that - despite all the manipulative power of communications experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press conferences - a single independent voice, pointing out certain home truths which countless Americans are already discovering for themselves, can break through the conspiracy of silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of feeling politically impotent.
It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which millions of Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is shared one can fight against the odds.
In more than a thousand cinemas across the country, Michael Moore becomes with this film a people's tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist.
There is something else which is astounding. The aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war.
Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade after the declared end of history, one of the main theses of Marx's interpretation of history again becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of the catastrophes being lived.
It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices, Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes. For how much longer?
There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the world today which ignores this question. And this is why the film was made and became what it became. It's a film that deeply wants America to survive.
· John Berger is a novelist and critic
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.