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NUCLEAR
Editorial: Nuclear waste dilemma
China Calls For Preventing Outer Space Arms Race
Depleted Uranium - The Real Dirty Bombs
Germans Allegedly Helped Libyan Nuclear Program
Prime minister to launch work on nuclear reactor
Israel's Arrow missile fails test
Kansai Elec Pres' Salary Cut Over Nuclear Accident-Kyodo
Background Brief on CH-53 Helicopter Accident
South Korea Plays Down Talk of North Summit
S. Korea Envoy to Discuss Nukes in U.S.
S. Korea pushing for inter-Korean talks to resolve nuke issue
Indonesia 'not paranoid' over Australia's missile purchase plan
Israel plays down failure of missile test in US
Israel's Arrow missile fails test
NIRS Appeals Licensing Board Denial at Grand Gulf expansion
Questions continue to swirl around Wen Ho Lee
Portion of former nuclear facility ready for reuse
Whistleblowers ask NRC to reconsider decision on petition
WIPP shipments through Albuquerque to resume
MILITARY
Rift in Kenya Cabinet over Masai land rights
Contractors and the Law Prison Abuse Cases Renew Debate
UN Peacekeeping Force in Haiti at 40 Pct.
Top Cleric Brokers Deal To End Battle In Najaf
Iraqi Holy City Left Broken by Urban Warfare
Militants Leave Shrine as Cease-Fire Deal Appears to Hold
Chirac hits out at international community's inaction in Middle East
NATO chief in Kosovo says security has improved
Chechnya outlaws wearing of masks
Russian Says Plane Broke Up in Midair
Traces of Explosives Found in Wreckage of Russian Jet
FBI Probes if Official Spied for Israel
From Inside Skeptic To Public Dissident
Bush Signs Order Bolstering C.I.A. Director's Power
Israeli Mole in Rumsfeld's Office?
U.N.: Guantanamo Situation Better But Could Improve
Top Brass Won't Be Charged Over Abuse
Army's Report Faults General in Prison Abuse
Report Is Likely to Prompt Criminal Charges
Missouri Plan to Let Military Cast Votes by E-Mail Draws Criticism
The unseen cost of war: American minds
Inside the Ring: Rummy's future, etc.
5,500 GIs get orders for Afghanistan
Pinochet Loses Immunity in Chile
Chile's Top Court Strips Pinochet of Immunity
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Detainee Tells Hearing He Was Member Of Al Qaeda
Terror Tribunal Defendant Demands to Be Own Lawyer
U.S. Tightens Security After Russian Crashes
Government to Begin Passenger Screening
An armor-clad Big Apple
Lost Evidence Is Found in Houston Crime Lab
Release of Prisoner 'Imminent,' U.S. Says
U.N.: Most Terror Attacks Cost Under $50G
POLITICS
Money to burn / The government tallies the misspending in Iraq
Bush Reminds Voters Of Response to Attacks
Bush Campaign Won't Pull Ad Despite Complaint by USOC
Kerry Seizes on News of Poverty and Health Care
ENERGY
Carbon Monoxide Joins Hydrogen as Fuel Cell Energy Source
OTHER
Administration Shifts on Global Warming
One Billion People Still Drink Unsafe Water - UN
New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials
More Americans Were Uninsured and Poor in 2003, Census Finds
Poverty Rate Up 3rd Year In a Row More Also Lack Health Coverage
U.S. poverty rate up in '03, census reports
ACTIVISTS
Protests Come Early, and So Do Arrests
It May Be Hard to Tell a Rally From a Lot of People in the Park
Anti - Bush Activists Launch NYC Convention Protests
Technology Playing Role in GOP Protests
Athens Police Break Up Powell Protest
Mordechai Vanunu Speaks about Space Weapons and Nuclear Weapons
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- canada
Editorial: Nuclear waste dilemma
Aug. 27, 2004
Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1093558210636&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795
One of the most difficult questions that the federal government will face over the next few years, regardless of which political party is in power, is what to do with the growing piles of radioactive waste being generated from Canada's nuclear reactors.
There are three possible solutions: burying it deep into the rocky Canadian Shield; storing it in an accessible "mausoleum" at one location; or continue storing it in "temporary mausoleums" at existing nuclear power stations, such as at Pickering.
Also to be decided, if Ottawa opts to put the used nuclear fuel in one location, is where that spot would be. Currently, nearly 90 per cent of the existing used fuel is stored in temporary facilities in Ontario, at sites like the Pickering nuclear power station.
These questions have just become more difficult with the release of a report that says Canadians don't want to dump the nuclear waste down a deep hole - and that they don't trust anyone with the job of handling any waste material.
The report, based on consultations with 450 citizens, is part of the public outreach by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, an agency created by Ottawa, yet funded by the nuclear industry, on how to dispose of 3.6-million bundles of used nuclear fuel. The waste fuel stays radioactive for centuries.
The agency must recommend to the federal cabinet by November, 2005, a preferred disposal method and where it would be located.
Over the next year, Ottawa has much work to do before it can come to grips with these issues.
First, it must ensure the public becomes engaged early in the discussions. Despite years of reports, most Canadians are unaware of the issue, or do not fully understand the complexity of nuclear waste disposal.
Second, Ottawa should consider creating a new agency to oversee the entire nuclear waste issue. The board of directors of the current agency are all industry officials. There should be lay people and environmentalists, as well as industry representatives, on board.
Each of these issues deserves much greater scrutiny by the public, as well as the government. That's because the piles of nuclear waste are only getting bigger. They can't be swept under a proverbial rug much longer.
-------- china
China Calls For Preventing Outer Space Arms Race
Geneva (XNA)
Aug 27, 2004
Xinhua News Agency
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04zzb.html
China called Thursday for international consensus and a legally-binding agreement on preventing an arms race in outer space.
China's Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs, Hu Xiaodi, told delegates to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament here: "In our view, the priority concern is to further consolidate an international consensus on prevention of weaponization and an arms race in outer space in the form of a legal commitment or a legal instrument."
Hu introduced two informal papers - initiated jointly by China and Russia - outlining the two countries' concerns over the lack of definition and verification of arms in outer space and concluding that verification will be highly difficult in terms of cost and technology.
Hu said a verification protocol may be needed in the future.
The papers also conclude that existing treaties have failed to effectively prevent the testing, deployment and use of weapons, other than those of mass destruction, in outer space.
"None of these instruments covers the threat or use of force from the Earth against objects in outer space," Hu said.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium - The Real Dirty Bombs
By Christopher Bollyn
8-27-4
Rense.com
http://www.rense.com/general56/dep.htm
Lost in the media circus about the Iraq war, supposedly being fought to prevent a tyrant from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, is the salient fact that the United States and Britain are actively waging chemical and nuclear warfare in Iraq - using depleted uranium munitions.
The corporate-controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - used and unused - remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radioactive WMD have been - and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.
The media silence surrounding these banned WMD, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new "Silver Bullet" in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.
While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.
Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Armyís Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the "clean up" of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles hit by friendly fire during the 1991 Gulf War. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.
Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have "totally disregarded the consequences" of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.
The first Gulf War was the largest friendly fire incident in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. "The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire," he told AFP.
DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.
Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan. The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.
THE REAL "DIRTY BOMBS"
"A flying rod of solid uranium 18-inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter," is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because Uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.
When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. "It's way beyond a dirty bomb," Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.
Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.
AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. "That's exactly what they are," Falk said. "They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way."
According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.
"The larger the bang" the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the "micron size" (virus size -ed) or smaller, he said.
While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas (or dust particles -ed).
A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during the Second World War, and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:
"As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs," the 1943 memo reads.
"In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a personís body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty."
The use of radioactive materials "as a terrain contaminant" to "deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations" is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.
"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and itís not going to decrease very much over time," Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience told the New York Daily News. "In the long run - veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."
"Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and "affect the master code - the _expression of the DNA," Falk told AFP.
Inhaled DU can "fool around with the keys" and do damage to "practically anything," Falk said. "It affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names," Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting Gulf War veterans.
Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first Gulf War are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq, 179,310 are receiving disability compensation and another 24,763 cases are pending.
The "epigenetic damage" done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of Americans have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.
The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.
Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the 9 soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.
"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. "Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more DU exposure," Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 Gulf War.
The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU "suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians," the Daily News reported.
"A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust," Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium said, "And the health impact is worrisome for the future."
HOTTER THAN HELL
"I'm hotter than hell," Rokke told AFP. The Dept. of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.
As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up, and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.
Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. "Once you're zapped - you're zapped," Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering as a result of DU contamination is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. "The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones," Rokke said.
"You fight for medical care every day of your life," he said.
"There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war," Rokke said.
The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.
"They have to be held accountable," Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British prime minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and "totally disregarded the consequences."
-------- europe
Germans Allegedly Helped Libyan Nuclear Program
27.08.2004
Deutsche Welle
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_1309094_1_A,00.html
Libya's nuclear disarmament has provided valuable information on its suppliers: Authorities are now investigating two German businessmen suspected of aiding Libya with nuclear arms in 2001.
A German man accused of trying to help Libya develop nuclear weapons has appeared before the Federal Court in Karlsruhe, the German Federal Prosecutor's Office said.
Authorities issued an arrest warrant against the 65-year-old for "acting as an accessory to attempted treason", as well as "aiding the attempted development of atomic weapons", the Office said in a statement.
The judge released the man, identified as Gerhard W., on bail on Thursday. W., who lives in South Africa, and a suspected accomplice named Gotthard L., residing in Switzerland, are believed to have played a role in an international ring that tried to procure materials for making nuclear weapons in 2001.
Supplying equipment for uranium enrichment
Prosecutors say W. worked as a mediator in obtaining an order for a South African company to make and supply aluminum tubing to be used in a uranium enrichment plant, the statement said. He was paid €1 million ($1.2 million) for his services, the Office added.
Nuclear technology underlies particular secrecy provisions and is classified as a state secret."According to our current level of knowledge, the tubing was never delivered to Libya," it said.
Swiss authorities have searched the home of his alleged accomplice, the 61-year-old L., and seized documents and bank statements. "To what extent L. was involved in the international procurement network is still being investigated," the Prosecutor's Office said.
Libya chooses disarmament
In the early 1980s, Libya began a program to develop uranium enrichment plants using so-called gas centrifuge technology. In 1997, the government decided to import centrifuges and related equipment.
Officials thus made contact with an international illegal procurement network, which mainly did business from Dubai in distributing gas centrifuge technology. Abdul Qadeer Khan (photo), the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, initiated this network in the 1980s.
Libya announced late last year that it was abandoning attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and revealed its weapons program to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Officials have thus had access to valuable information, particularly about foreign suppliers.
-------- india / pakistan
Prime minister to launch work on nuclear reactor
Aug 27, 2004
New Delhi, Kerala Online (India)
http://www.keralaonline.com/technews.asp?folder=Tech&file=8_669.xml
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Tamil Nadu Monday to lay the foundation stone for a fast breeder nuclear reactor at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research.
The prototype reactor at Kalpakkam, about 50 km from Chennai, with a capacity to generate 500 MW of electricity, will kick off the second stage of India's programme for commercial use of nuclear energy.
The atomic research centre has developed the complex technology for the reactor, while the Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd of the Department of Atomic Energy will build the prototype, officials said.
The reactor will use plutonium-uranium oxide as fuel, with liquid sodium as a coolant.
This will be Manmohan Singh's fourth domestic engagement outside New Delhi after assuming office May 22. He earlier visited Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Bihar.
The construction of the reactor coincides with the golden jubilee of the Department of Atomic Energy, which is under the direct control of the prime minister. India plans to double its installed nuclear energy capacity of 2,700 MW over the next four years, and reach 11,000 MW by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan in 2012.
-------- israel
Israel's Arrow missile fails test
(UPI)
Aug. 27 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040827-114204-6950r.htm
Jerusalem, Israel, -- Israel said Friday its Arrow anti-ballistic missile can intercept an Iranian Shihab-3 missile, despite its failure to do so in a test off California's coast.
Aryeh Herzog, the defense ministry official in charge of the Arrow, said it failed to destroy a target missile simulating an Iranian Shihab-3 and a Scud-D like Syria has, Ha'aretz reported Friday.
Even though the intercept failed, the Arrow did succeed in identifying the warhead in time, the ministry said.
Thursday's test came about a month after a successful test in which a Scud missile was destroyed in a direct hit.
Amos Yaron, the ministry's director-general, said the test was "substantive."
"Most of the systems tested worked. There was a malfunction that needs to be sorted out, and we will continue to prepare to meet development of any future threats," Yaron said.
The Arrow is being developed jointly by Israel and the United States.
-------- japan
Kansai Elec Pres' Salary Cut Over Nuclear Accident-Kyodo
Friday August 27,
Dow Jones
http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji§ion=news&news_id=dji-00030220040827&date=20040827&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw
NEW YORK - Kansai Electric Power Co. (9505.TO) said Friday its president, Yosaku Fuji, will receive a 50% pay cut for three months starting in September for Japan's deadliest nuclear power plant accident, Kyodo News reported.
Five workers were killed in the Aug. 9 accident at Kansai Electric's Mihama nuclear power plant, in which superheated steam burst from a ruptured coolant water pipe at the plant's No. 3 reactor. No radiation leaks were recorded in the accident.
The pipe ruptured as it had been corroded by coolant water to a thickness of only 0.6 millimeters, compared with its original thickness of 10 mm.
Kansai Electric, Japan's second-largest power utility, had neglected to inspect the pipe since the reactor went into operation in 1976, Kyodo reported.
----
Background Brief on CH-53 Helicopter Accident
August 27, 2004
U.S. Embassy Tokyo
http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20040827-61.html
Official from the 3rd Marine Expeditioniary Force in Okinawa: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is [name and title omitted]. Two weeks ago today, on Friday, August 13, a Marine Corps CH-53D crashed in Ginowan City while attempting to make an emergency landing at MCAS Futenma. I would like to state up front my deepest regret over this accident and my regret for the anxiety it has caused the citizens of Okinawa. I am very thankful that no citizens were injured as a result of this accident. The Marine Corps has said from the very outset of this accident that we take aviation safety very seriously, that we will conduct a complete and thorough investigation into the cause of this accident, and that we will take every appropriate measure to prevent any reoccurrence in the future. We remain committed to that mission.
I am here this morning to provide a clear and factual account of the events and actions taken for this unfortunate CH-53D helicopter accident. I will outline the steps taken by the Marine Corps following the accident and report on the progress in the investigation that has led to the determination that the cause of this accident was solely unique to the CH-53D involved in the accident.
These are my talking points:
At approximately 2:17 p.m. Friday, Aug. 13, the air traffic control tower on Marine Corps Air Station Futenma received an emergency distress call from an inbound CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 265.
Notification of Marine Corps Crash Fire and Rescue, along with local Okinawa fire departments, began immediately thereafter.
At approximately 2:18 p.m. the CH-53D made an emergency landing on the grounds of the Okinawa International University. During this landing, the CH-53D clipped a university building adjacent to the crash site.
At approximately 2:19 p.m., another military aircraft reported to air traffic control tower that they had observed an aircraft land and catch fire outside the confines of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
Marines stationed on Marine Corps Air Station Futenma witnessed the CH-53D going down, scaled two fences to get to the crash site, and pulled the three crew members away from the wreckage before the aircraft burst into flames. We think that the actions of these brave marines helped save the lives of the aircraft crew. These marines then administered first aid to the injured crew.
Other marines from MCAS Futenma entered the building that had been clipped by the helicopter and assisted in evacuating people from the building, for the safety of the students and the faculty inside. In a joint effort to minimize danger and protect lives, a combination of a Japanese fire truck, a Japanese ambulance and Marine Corps Crash, Fire and Rescue vehicles arrived on scene. Marines with the Provost Marshall's office and the Okinawa Prefectural Police arrived shortly thereafter and together coordinated their efforts to escort bystanders away from the accident site. Thankfully, there were no civilian injuries as a result of the crash.
Japanese and American ambulances transported the injured helicopter crew to U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa. Once the crewmembers were removed, the Okinawa Prefectural Police and the Marine Corps coordinated to secure the area to protect citizens from possible exposure to flammable materials that still existed at the crash site. An outer perimeter was established to re-route and control vehicular traffic, while an inner perimeter was established to protect pedestrians from inadvertently entering the crash site and endangering themselves.
For the next six days, the OPP [Okinawa Prefectural Police] and the Marine Corps, per long-standing U.S. and GOJ agreements, jointly secured the area until the wreckage could be removed and a thorough investigation could be conducted. I cannot emphasize enough the crucial role that Ginowan Police and Okinawa Prefectural Police played to ensure the safety of the citizens. The OPP had a riot-control unit on the scene for the majority of the first day, and their presence helped to ease and calm the situation. As other areas that needed additional security were identified, they immediately provided personnel that, combined in cooperative effort of the U.S. military and local law enforcement, definitely helped prevent injury to any Okinawan citizens.
By 3:00 p.m., MOFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], DFAB [Defense Facilities Administration Bureau] and OPG {Okinawa Prefectural Government} had been officially notified of the accident by Marine Corps officials.
Lieutenant General Robert R. Blackman, the Okinawa area coordinator, ordered the return of all helicopters to MCAS Futenma, and upon the return of the last aircraft, at approximately 4:00 p.m. that day, he suspended all further helicopter operations until a thorough and complete safety inspection could be conducted on all helicopters.
At approximately 6:30 p.m., Lieutenant General Blackman met with Mr. Kakazu, Diet member and JDA parliamentary secretary. During the meeting, Lieutenant General Blackman expressed his regret over the unfortunate accident and was thankful that no citizens were injured in the accident.
At 7:20 p.m., Lieutenant General Blackman held a press brief on the quarterdeck of Building 1, Marine Corps Base Butler, to express his regret for the unfortunate accident and any anxiety the accident caused the Okinawan people, especially the citizens of Ginowan City. He also personally thanked the joint efforts of the Okinawan Prefectural Police, local fire departments and the Marine Corps in responding to the accident.
At 9:00 p.m., Lieutenant General Blackman met with Vice Governor Makino to again express his regret over the unfortunate accident and thanked the Japanese police and fire departments for their quick response.
On 14 August, Lieutenant General Blackman paid a visit to Diet Member and JDA Parliamentary Secretary Arai to express his regret over the unfortunate accident and for any anxiety the accident caused.
First Marine Aircraft Wing convened an investigation to thoroughly investigate the cause of the CH-53D helicopter accident. The investigators immediately requested outside technical assistance from the U.S. Naval Safety Center and U.S. Naval Air Systems Command to assist in determining the cause of the CH-53D aircraft accident. In addition, First Marine Aircraft Wing directed all units to conduct a safety stand-down, for the purpose of completing all helicopter safety inspections and to review all safety-related operating procedures.
Later that day, the OPP met with the Marine Corps Base Japan staff judge advocate to request access to the site to conduct a criminal investigation into the cause of the accident. In response, Marine officials informed the OPP that the Marines would remain in charge of the site, in accordance with a long-standing agreement between the U.S. government and the government of Japan, under SOFA. A written notice from the Marine Corps was provided on 17 August, offering the Okinawa prefectural authorities access to the accident site and surrounding areas for the exclusive purpose of recording and observing any and all property damage.
On 17 August, following a thorough and complete safety inspection, the suspension on helicopter flight operations was lifted for all helicopters at Futenma except the CH-53D aircraft.
Following the safety investigators' initial investigation of the accident scene, removal of aircraft debris commenced on 17 August, in coordination with Naha DFAB and the Okinawa International University, to facilitate the ongoing aircraft accident investigation.
Removal of the debris was completed by 19 August. Following debris removal, Okinawan prefectural authorities conducted separate property damage inspections at the accident site. At the request of Okinawa prefectural authorities, the site was fenced off to prevent pedestrians from inadvertently walking over the site until the soil has been remediated and the site returned to its original condition.
The Marine Corps continues to work with Japanese and Okinawa prefectural authorities in site restoration and compensation for personal property damages. As early as 17 August, DFAB began contacting citizens to determine monetary settlements for personal property damage.
On 19 August, following a thorough and complete safety and maintenance inspection of the remaining helicopters, minimum essential flight operations resumed at MCAS Futenma for all helicopters with the exception of the CH-53D aircraft.
On 20 August, an essential phase of the investigation into the cause of the mishap led to the determination that the cause was solely unique to the CH-53D involved in the accident. A small retaining device in a sub-component of the tail rotor assembly was missing, leading to a loss of tail rotor control.
Following that determination, and after a thorough and complete maintenance and safety inspection of all remaining CH-53D helicopters, these aircraft were cleared for flight.
On 20 August, Ginowan Police Department requested the results of the investigation from the Marine Corps Base Japan staff judge advocate.
On 22 August, six CH-53Delta helicopters launched to join the 31st MEU [Marine Expeditionary Unit] on board the USS Essex to conduct combat operations in support of the global war on terrorism.
On 23 August, Marine Corps Base Japan staff judge advocate responded to the Ginowan Police Department with the proper procedures for requesting the investigation from the joint committee, as well as assurances that the request would be supported and expedited as much as possible by U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Forces Japan.
On August 24, the U.S. government provided funds for a Japanese company to perform an environmental assessment, in accordance with the National Japanese Soil Contamination Counter-measures Law, so that remediation efforts can proceed at the crash site.
That same day, Marines and master labor contract workers from Marine Corps bases G5 and the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, accompanied by DFAB personnel, began "gomen" visits [personal visits to express regret] to Ginowan residents who suffered personal property damage as a result of the accident.
On 25 August, "gomen" visits continued, and as of this date, several "gomen" visits remain to be made. These visits are pending coordination with the residents, through DFAB.
On 26 August, an environmental assessment meeting was conducted with official from the Marine Corps, DFAB, OPG and OIU [Okinawa International University] to discuss environmental assessment and soil remediation aspects of the crash site.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that concludes my talking points, but I would like to make one final point. Our deployment of the CH-53D helicopter to Futenma earlier this year was required to support mission-essential flights for the 31st MEU Operational Workup and Deployment phases. The reason that six CH-53Ds flew on 22 August was to join the 31st MEU, which had received an immediate deployment order issued by the U.S. Secretary of Defense to support the global war on terrorism.
The decision to return these six CH-53D helicopters to flight operations was not one made in haste. These six CH-53Ds were cleared for a direct flight to the USS Essex only after the commander had determined that the cause of the 13 August accident was solely unique to the CH-53D involved in the accident, and only after each of these six CH-53D aircraft had received a complete and thorough safety and maintenance inspection.
This deployment is now underway and those ships are headed for combat operations to fight the global war on terrorism, against a common enemy of both the U.S. and Japan. There have been no CH-53D flights since 22 August, because there have been no mission-essential flight requirements for these aircraft. We are still in the process of conducting our procedural stand-down on the CH-53D aircraft, and once that action is complete, the prudent measure is to move these aircraft ? these remaining CH-53D aircraft ? back to their home base on mainland Japan.
In conclusion, I want to reiterate that we remain deeply committed to our mission here in support of the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance. While the defense of Japan is our number one mission, U.S. forces in Japan take safety very seriously. Safety is paramount in all we do, and safe flight operations are as important to our personnel as they are to the citizens of Okinawa and Japan. We will continue to proceed with a complete and thorough investigation into the cause of this accident. We will continue to take every measure humanly possible to prevent a re-occurrence of this unfortunate accident, and we sincerely regret that this accident occurred and the anxiety that this mishap caused the people of Okinawa.
Ladies and gentlemen thank you very much. In order to better answer your questions today, I have with me today two aviation experts. (Name omitted) on my left is an experienced CH-53D pilot. (Name omitted) on my right is an experienced in aviation safety issues. We will now take a few of your questions.
Question: Thank you sir. I have just three questions. What's your reaction to the public anger? That's the first question. Second question is, what impact do you think this accident might have on the ongoing realignment of the U.S. military, especially in Okinawa, and third ...
Moderator: I'm sorry, but that, as I said at the top, is not the subject of this briefing.
Question: Oh, okay. Could you tell us then, when the Secretary of State issued this immediate deployment order? Was this on August 22?
Official 1: The aircraft flew out to the USS Essex on 22 August to satisfy the requirements to make that deployment order.
Question: When did the Secretary of Defense actually order this deployment though - when did this order come in?
Official 1: That information is generally not releasable, but the deployment order had been issued.
Question: Was this before the accident or after the accident?
Official 1: I'll have to defer that question and get back with you on that, whether that's releasable or not.
Question: You have said that the helicopter had crashed on the way back to Futenma. Where did it originate, the flight - the helicopter? Also, when the accident had occurred, the distress signal was received, but upon receiving the distress signal how much time (passed) before the actual crash? During this time, have you informed about the dangerous situation to the local police or the fire department? Can I ask you one more question? For a long time after the accident I was also on the site. Ginowan police force and the authorities and so forth - they've been asking the update to be made about the investigation, but not much response was made and in the following week, a rejection of that request was issued - why was that the case?
Official 1: That was three questions. The first question, "Where did the flight originate?" The CH-53/D involved in the mishap - that flight originated at MCAS Futenma, and the aircraft was returning to MCAS Futenma when the accident occurred. The next question is the timeline, the notification, I believe is what the question was - on when officials knew that the aircraft was in distress. I believe I covered that in my statements, but briefly - and again these points were already covered - at 2:17 p.m. on Friday, August 13, is when the air traffic control tower received an emergency distress call from that inbound CH-53 Delta. At approximately 2:18 p.m., the CH-53D made its emergency landing. At approximately 2:19 p.m., another military aircraft reported to the Futenma tower that they had observed an aircraft land and catch on fire. The Marine station at the air station then immediately thereafter began the notification process to all emergency agencies. The last question was concerning the accident and the progress of the accident, I believe is the way the question was phrased - and what we can tell you at this time is that we are still conducting a thorough and complete inspection and that inspection is ongoing.
Question: About the last question, my question was that - I was not asking about the continuation of the investigation. The Japanese police and fire department wanted to have their own investigation done, on their own, within the crash site, but that request was denied. What was the reason for that? My second question was that on the crash site - of course the distress signal was issued and after one minute it crashed. But according to witnesses, within five minutes of the crash, the Marine Corps people have gone into the crash site and have begun their recovery operation. Why was that so quick? So I was just wondering for what purpose that helicopter was flying on that day.
Official 1: I'll go ahead and respond to the question that was asked but was not understood, and that's the only one that I'll respond to in this set of questions. That question was, "Why were the Japanese authorities denied access to the actual crash site, so in order to conduct their own investigation?" - or words to that effect. That was already covered in my statement and we referred to a long-standing SOFA agreement between the US government and the government of Japan. In that agreement, the US is the primary office for handling the wreckage after a mishap.
Question: What about the remaining two questions of mine?
Moderator: I believe (name omitted) has responded to your questions, at least four of your questions already. So, can we have another questioner please?
Question: You emphasize that the accident was solely unique. Does that mean that it was caused by lack of diligence on the part of the mechanics that were in charge of the maintenance of the individual chopper? If so, do you plan any penalties for the individual mechanics or the group? Thank you.
Official 1: Thank you for that question. What I can tell you is that the investigation is still ongoing. We do not know why that part was missing - whether it was material failure, whether that retaining pin was installed improperly - we just don't know at this point, and that's why we are conducting a thorough and complete investigation.
Question: Thank you. Could you please explain a little bit more on what you mean by flammable materials on the site? Does that include depleted uranium? According to some Japanese press - they said that it might be transported on that plane. Thank you.
Official 1: That question has several parts. Yesterday, the US held a conference with the press, and at that time Lt. General Waskow addressed the depleted uranium and he denied that there were any depleted uranium rounds on that aircraft, and he also addressed contaminated soil. So, the answer doesn't change from what Lt. General Waskow had provided yesterday, but I would like to turn the second part of that question and that is the flammable materials, over to our mishap investigative expert.
Official 2: There are numerous hazards specifically associated with aviation mishaps. The flammable materials that you are referring to include fuel, oil and hydraulic fluid. Those materials themselves not only are flammable, but are hazardous materials, and trained personnel are required for the cleanup and restoration of the site.
Question: My question is, although the investigation is still ongoing, how come you concluded that the accident was solely unique on this helicopter? Thank you.
Official 1: We came to that conclusion after the initial phase of that investigation. In other words, investigators were able to pin down the - what they think is the sequence of events, the cause of why that helicopter crashed and why that is unique to that one helicopter.
Question: The same helicopter CH-53Ds, other than the craft in the mishap, how many units are there in Japan and in what bases?
Official 1: One squadron of CH-53 Deltas in Japan, and that squadron is currently deployed to FCS Futenma.
Question: Can I ask you three questions? First question - it's a follow-up in repetition of the previous question about the parts - the parts must have been placed wrong, that's one of the possibilities for the actual cause. But you do not know whether the parts have been placed right or not. Until you know that for sure, you will not be able to conclude that this was a unique cause only relevant to this particular helicopter. Also, was it really the case that depleted uranium ammunition was carried by that helicopter or not? Third question, the same type of helicopter has already resumed their flights, and in starting that re-flight, Japanese Government had requested the helicopter not to be flying again at this time, but you denied the request coming from the Japanese Government. How do you feel about that?
Official 1: Could we get that third question repeated?
Question: Talking about the CH-53D. In resuming the flights, the Japanese Government had requested to suspend the resumption of the flights, but the Japanese government's request was ignored and CH-53D began their flights once again. What was the reason that the Japanese government's request was denied?
Official 1: Regarding the first question, I will tell you that the investigators, the investigation should be able to determine what happened to that missing part. So, until that investigation is complete, I think it's premature to speculate what happened. With regards to your question on depleted uranium, that question was already addressed previously, and General Waskow responded to that yesterday at the Press Club. The final question had to do with resumption of flight, and I believe I already covered that in my opening statement.
Question: As for the duration of the investigation, it was mentioned that it will be around thirty days in the last press conference. Is it thirty days from the start of the inspection, and when was the inspection started, if that is the case?
Official 2: The investigation will take approximately thirty days to complete. That thirty days typically starts once the investigators begin their investigation.
Question: Could you tell us the exact date when the investigation team is actually going to start their investigation?
Official 1: Yes, the investigators were appointed on 14 August, but I want to make a clarification on the thirty days and I want to stress "approximately thirty days." This is a very complex process that we're talking about, and I think everybody in this room, and everybody in Okinawa wants to know the reason for the mishap. The investigation has got to be done correctly, and it will be done correctly. As I said before, we are currently doing a complete and thorough investigation. Generally, thirty days - approximately thirty days, but again, a very detailed process. Can I give you an end date? No, I can't give you an end date. Approximately thirty days. The more detailed the investigation, the longer the investigation will take.
Question: What was the purpose of the flight? If you can't disclose this information now, if it is related to the cause of this accident, could it be included in the final package of the - as a result of the investigation?
Official 1: The question is, "What was the purpose of the flight?" The purpose of that flight was to conduct a mission-essential training flight.
Question: One quick question. You said the August 22 resumption of flights... Can you explain to us what exactly the Sea Stallion CH-53D actually does, what kind of mission it undergoes and what are its responsibilities? And plus, sending in this immediate deployment order on August 22 - was this mission replaceable by other aircraft, or was it unique to the CH-53D?
Official 1: Two questions on that one. I would like to defer the first one to (name omitted) our CH-53D expert, the question of what type of missions do the CH-53D fly.
Official 3: For the 31st MEU and for all Marine heavy helicopter squadrons, the CH-53D provides heavy lift for the Marine Corps. Cargo, passengers, external cargo at times.
Question: Did this cargo include weapons as well?
Official 3: Yes, it could. Combat-loaded Marines or Marines going to do humanitarian assistance, or any number of missions.
Official 1: The second part of the question regards the op order for the 31ST MEU and were those aircraft required for that mission? And I think the question was paraphrased, "Could another aircraft be substituted for that mission?" And the answer is, in the case of the 31st MEU, no, their heavy lift capability comes from the CH-53 Delta.
Question: Just recently, I see that low altitude aviation training has been increasing. Is that really the case? You talked about the training needed, targeted at Operation Iraq (sic) , was that the case for this training that was to be done by the CH-53 helicopters as well?
Official 1: I don't believe that question has any bearing on why we are here this morning, so I will defer that question.
Question: At the time of the accident, what was this particular helicopter carrying?
Official 1: This particular aircraft was carrying no load. The individuals that were in the aircraft included the pilot, the co-pilot and the air crew chief.
Question: About this CH-53 D helicopter, on a daily basis - what training are they undergoing on daily basis around Futenma? How many people are deployed in having a regular maintenance stand to those fleets of aircraft? The inspections are conducted on what frequency, by how many people, and are the maintenance people also dispatched to the Iraq area as well, together with the helicopters themselves? If that is the case, then there is the likelihood that there might be some personnel to be reduced in Futenma area because some of the repairmen are now out in Iraq to undertake the job of maintaining CH-53D helicopters?
Moderator: That question goes to questions that we're not dealing with today - has to do with issues that are resolved in another forum - not here.
Official 1: I agree. Most of those questions, we are not going to cover here today, because that's not the purpose of this forum. There was a question on how much inspection - maintenance inspections, investment in safety - do we make for every flight of the aircraft. In that, again, I'll ask our CH-53D expert (name omitted) to answer that.
Official 3: Thank you. For every hour that we fly in a CH-53D, we work on the aircraft and do safety inspections for 15 to 20 hours, for every hour that we fly. We spend a lot of time on safety because it is paramount to both our Marines and everyone else that is near one of our aircraft - everyone.
Question: With regard to this crash accident, how are the investigations conducted, and how are the onsite investigations conducted between Japanese and the American authorities and that Okinawa is asking for the revision of SOFA. But the better approach suggested by the U.S. side is to just to revise on the implementation side. What would be the best way to do it? Would the SACO or would be the Joint Committee would be the forum to undertake this job or not?
Moderator: The question is about issues that we are not dealing with today. We're talking about a factual account of what we know about the accident and the investigation.
Question: You said there were four full days before you let the Japanese authorities come into the scene - not helping you, but getting into the scene to record or do whatever you let them do. Then I remember - please correct me if I am wrong - seeing in a newspaper, in an English newspaper in Tokyo, Japan, a picture of some personnel wearing these yellow gear, which is very colorful and also very scary for some people who know about this biological and nuclear materials. So could you explain to us what was this gear doing in this?
Official 1: I will ask (name omitted) to speak to the safety garb that the investigators were wearing.
Official 2: Thank you, sir. When the investigators arrive on scene, they conduct investigations out of our standard procedures. There are several standard procedures that are followed, regardless of which unit it is - it's Navy-Marine Corps-wide, worldwide.
The first procedure is to care for all injured personnel. The second procedure is to secure the mishap site, to preserve it, and the third, is to secure that wreckage. The first is obvious; take care of the injured. Now the second and third are done for a few specific reasons. The safety involved and the personnel in and around that area and for the security of the site, which will hold important clues to how or why this accident occurred.
Now referring to the personnel that you saw, specifically, those personnel are highly trained individuals in aircraft component recovery. The hazards associated with all aircraft, and especially military aircraft, had been briefed before, but I'll reiterate: that's fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, and possible composite materials. So, those personnel must protect themselves as they recover and investigate the scene. They do it all the same way, and that's for their safety. So, what you saw was a highly trained team protecting themselves from these hazardous materials as they secure the sight. Thank you.
Question: Well, I got something on the part missing, in question. Have you ever determined when the device in question actually came off ? did it occur during flight or ... ?
Official 1: I will tell you that the investigation that we are conducting - we'll need to make that determination and will make that determination. We are confident of that.
Question: Thank you. I wonder if you could give us some indication, in general terms, if it's possible for the helicopter in the model, to take off and travel normally for a time without that crucial device?
Official 1: I think that would be premature if I made a statement like that, and I would defer to the investigators to come up with the reason, the cause, and the timeline for that missing piece.
Question: CH-53Ds that are deployed in Futenma airfield, and you've mentioned that they will be returned to other bases. Is that Iwakuni base, Marine Corps Iwakuni base and when will they be returned to Iwakuni?
Official 1: The question concerns CH-53 Delta basing. Yes, those aircraft are on the UDP program and their normal home base, assigned in Japan, is Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. They were at MCAS Futenma on a further deployment to support 31st MEU workups and follow-on operational deployment. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
-------- korea
South Korea Plays Down Talk of North Summit
August 27, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-talks.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - A North-South summit could provide a breakthrough in the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, South Korea's prime minister was quoted as saying on Friday, but the government made clear no such meeting was planned for now.
There has been no indication that South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is set to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il any time soon, although diplomats say there has been speculation about such a summit, possibly in the Russian Far East.
Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan, in comments released by his office, also told the Japanese financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun that he expected the deadlock in bilateral ministerial talks between Seoul and Pyongyang to end soon.
``If a summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea were to be held, I hope it could help provide a breakthrough over the nuclear problems,'' Lee said in an interview conducted on Thursday.
But he made clear that such a summit was unlikely soon. Seoul is still waiting for Kim Jong-il to make the reciprocal visit to the South agreed to in June 2000 when the North Korean leader played host to then-president Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang.
``The government's position is to seek summit talks when it believes significant progress can be made in the nuclear problems through a summit meeting or when there's some more progress in solving the nuclear problems,'' a presidential spokesman said by telephone. ``There's no change in that position.''
North Korea stayed away from planned ministerial talks this month after South Korea airlifted 468 North Korean defectors to the South from Vietnam.
``I don't expect the deadlock to last long as inter-Korean exchanges are making progress. I think there will be ministerial-level talks in the near future,'' Lee said.
Diplomats say a North-South summit seems unlikely before progress is made in six-way talks on the nuclear crisis. Those talks involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The diplomats say U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice urged South Korean leaders during a visit to Seoul last month not to try to arrange a North-South summit, arguing it could undercut the six-way talks.
--------
S. Korea Envoy to Discuss Nukes in U.S.
August 27, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's top envoy to North Korea will travel to the United States for high-level talks amid stalled negotiations on getting the communist nation to give up its nuclear weapons program, officials said Friday.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young will leave Monday for Washington and meet with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
The two countries want to resolve the nuclear issue with the North in talks that also include China, Japan and Russia. However, the next round of negotiations scheduled to take place by the end of September has been thrown into doubt because the North says it won't attend preparatory meetings.
The dispute over North Korea's nuclear ambitions came after the isolated nation admitted in 2002 to running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
South Korean officials and analysts believe Pyongyang is seeking to put off the talks until after the November presidential elections, hoping it will have an easier time negotiating if Democratic challenger John Kerry unseats Bush.
North Korea has recently leveled strong rhetoric against Bush, calling him an ``imbecile'' and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
South Korea's prime minister, Lee Hae-chan, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il should visit the South -- fulfilling a pledge made after the landmark June 2000 summit between the two nations' presidents in Pyongyang -- before a summit be held between the nation's premiers.
--------
S. Korea pushing for inter-Korean talks to resolve nuke issue
27 August 2004
(AFP)
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2004/August/theworld_August727.xml§ion=theworld
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040827034016.otbqt7v3.html
TOKYO - South Korea hopes to break the impasse over North Korea's nuclear ambitions through a bilateral summit meeting, according to an interview with South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hai-Chan published in Japan on Friday.
"We could find a clue to resolving the problem if a North-South summit is held," the Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted Lee as saying in an interview with the economic paper in Seoul conducted on Thursday.
He also said Seoul had already proposed holding such a meeting to Pyongyang, the paper said.
The move reflected Seoul's strategy of deepening understanding at a summit and making the North take a softer stance, it said.
If realised, the meeting would be the first inter-Korean summit since then South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung met North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in June 2000 in Pyongyang.
Lee, who was in the South Korean delegation for the first summit, told the paper he had since been in contact with senior North Korean officials.
Lee was also quoted as saying "there has been an indirect request for a visit (by the South Korean leader) to the North."
"I think it is important to seek a clue to solving the North Korean nuclear issue," he told the paper, while adding the North Korean leader should come to South Korea this time round.
Six-nation talks, among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, aimed to solve the issue are deadlocked.
"There are many difficult questions to resolve in order to reach a concrete conclusion at a fourth round of six-way talks," which are supposed to be held by the end of September, Lee was quoted as saying.
The prime minister also said "it is only a matter of time" that the North will revert to an open-door policy while warning against the risk the state "would collapse if it implements reform and liberalisation programme too fast."
He said Seoul was ready to give wide-ranging assistance to Pyongyang if it abandons its nuclear programmes.
The stand-off over the North's quest for nuclear weapons began in October 2002 when Washington accused it of operating a secret programme based on enriched uranium in breach of a 1994 accord on freezing its separate plutonium program.
Pyongyang has denied running the uranium-based program but has restarted its plutonium program.
-------- missile defense
Indonesia 'not paranoid' over Australia's missile purchase plan
JAKARTA (AFP)
Aug 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040827074936.sky9j0pr.html
Indonesia on Friday said it had opened dialogue with Australia about its decision to arm itself with state-of-the-art cruise missiles, insisting it was "not paranoid" in voicing concerns on the purchase.
Jakarta has expressed alarm that it was not consulted over Australia's announcement to equip its fighter jets with missiles that Defence Minister Robert Hill said would give it the region's "most lethal" firepower.
Speaking a day after Hill's announcement, Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said his country was justified in expressing qualms over the purchase of the 400 kilometre (250 mile) range projectiles.
"We are not, to be honest, overly paranoid by the recent announcement by the Australian government," he said, adding that while the purchase was a "sovereign matter" for Canberra, talks with Jakarta "had been neglected".
"Problems arise when certain announcements are made without an attempt to obtain understanding on the matter and we may end up having misperceptions," Natalegawa told a press conference.
News of the missiles came a day after a poll showed that the Australian public views Indonesia as the country's greatest external threat.
----
Israel plays down failure of missile test in US
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Aug 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040827081355.g670l65u.html
Israeli officials tried to downplay Friday the failure of a joint test with the United States of a new missile system designed to intercept incoming missiles.
The Arrow-2 missile system failed to destroy the detachable warhead of an incoming missile fired by a US Airforce aircraft in a test off the coast of California on Thursday.
While the Arrow did identify the warhead, the interception failed because of an unidentified malfunction, defense ministry officials confirmed.
The Arrow system was originally designed to meet the threat of Iraqi Scud missiles during the rule of Saddam Hussein but is now being adapted to head off potential threats which intelligence sources say are being developed by Syria and Iran.
Aryeh Herzog, the defense ministry official in charge of the Arrow project, said Friday that the testing could be seen as a success and that only minor technical glitches needed to be ironed out.
"The element of distinguishing was successful, and the element of final interception had a local malfunction in the Arrow missile," he said. "We are now trying to identify the source of the malfunction."
A further test is expected in the next few months.
----
Israel's Arrow missile fails test
August 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040827-114204-6950r.htm
Jerusalem, Israel, Aug. 27 -- Israel said Friday its Arrow anti-ballistic missile can intercept an Iranian Shihab-3 missile, despite its failure to do so in a test off California's coast.
Aryeh Herzog, the defense ministry official in charge of the Arrow, said it failed to destroy a target missile simulating an Iranian Shihab-3 and a Scud-D like Syria has, Ha'aretz reported Friday.
Even though the intercept failed, the Arrow did succeed in identifying the warhead in time, the ministry said.
Thursday's test came about a month after a successful test in which a Scud missile was destroyed in a direct hit.
Amos Yaron, the ministry's director-general, said the test was "substantive."
"Most of the systems tested worked. There was a malfunction that needs to be sorted out, and we will continue to prepare to meet development of any future threats," Yaron said.
The Arrow is being developed jointly by Israel and the United States.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- mississippi
NIRS Appeals Licensing Board Denial at Grand Gulf expansion
From: Paul Gunter <pgunter@nirs.org>
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 27, 2004
CONTACT:
Michael Mariotte & Paul Gunter, NIRS, 202 328 0002
Brendan Hoffman, Public Citizen, 202 454 5130
Environmental, Civil Rights and Consumer Advocates Appeal NRC Licensing Board Denial of Public Hearing on Environmental Justice Issues at Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station Expansion
Washington, DC- Today a coalition of national organizations and their state chapters filed an appeal to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) challenging a decision by a federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) to deny a public hearing on environmental justice contentions. The August 6, 2004 decision involved an application from the Entergy Corporation's for an "Early Site Permit" to build one or more new nuclear reactors at its Grand Gulf site in Mississippi.
The appeal stated that the licensing board ignored factual evidence that demonstrated a significant dispute on the adequacy of the application on the environmental impacts of a new nuclear reactor on the minority and low-income community living within a ten-mile radius of the Grand Gulf site and also failed to explain its basis for rejecting the environmental justice contentions. Claiborne County is 84% African American with more than 32% living at or below the poverty line.
The appeal was filed by Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Public Citizen, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chapter of Claiborne County, Miss., and the Mississippi Chapter of the Sierra Club.
"While the agency's stated goal is to encourage 'effective public participation' and 'meaningful community representation,' the NRC's licensing board gives the public short shrift in denying a hearing on the matter of nuclear power and racial discrimination," said Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of Washington, DC-based NIRS. "The ASLB decision violates very basic principles of fairness and environmental justice-it would be more appropriate for apartheid-era South Africa than the United States of America in 2004."
The appeal states: "The ASLB's failure to explain its decision violates basic principles of fairness in administrative proceedings, in three important ways. The lack of an explanation for the ASLB's decision undermines Appellants' ability to mount an effective appeal in this proceeding, by turning the appeal into a 'guessing game.' It also frustrates the Commission's ability to hold the ASLB accountable for rationality and consistency in its administration of the law. Finally, the ASLB's failure to explain its decision undermines the future administration of the Commission's policies for consideration of environmental justice claims under NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act]."
"The application failed to consider the disproportionate safety and security risk to Claiborne County, due to its lack of economic and material resources to respond to radiological emergencies," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Public health and participation should be the first priority of the NRC."
The appellants' environmental justice contentions argue that construction of a new reactor would have a disproportionate impact on the community nearby. For example, the 10-mile emergency planning zone for Grand Gulf lies completely within Claiborne County, and a 1986 Mississippi tax law, promulgated shortly after Grand Gulf Unit-1 went online, has left the county with insufficient resources to respond to an accident or attack causing a release of radiation. As a result of this law, Claiborne County, which carries the brunt of the responsibility for emergency planning and preparedness for the nuclear power plant and its proposed expansion, receives only 30% of the property tax revenue from the site - a unique situation among nuclear power plants in the U.S. The utility's environmental report failed to evaluate the disproportionate and adverse impact of this discriminatory tax policy on emergency planning and preparedness that has resulted in documented deficiencies in the county police, fire, hospitals, and the maintenance of county roads needed for evacuation in the event of an accident or act of sabotage.
Moreover, the environmental report also failed to mention the low-income nature of the local population, and gave misleadingly low numbers for the African-American population, resulting in an inadequate assessment of the disproportionate impact on the local citizens.
To read the appeal, visit http://www.citizen.org/documents/GGappeal.pdf.
-------- new mexico
Questions continue to swirl around Wen Ho Lee
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/27/MNGG58F5PB1.DTL
From all appearances, these would seem to be days of vindication for Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos National Laboratory weapons scientist whose politically charged fight with the federal government is still being waged four years after he settled charges he mishandled nuclear secrets.
A suit Lee filed claiming the government improperly leaked private information about him has made progress, with a federal judge ruling that five journalists must disclose the sources of damning information they printed about Lee. And his former employer, Los Alamos, has suffered from a string of security scandals that mirror comments he and his attorneys had made about lax procedures.
However, more quietly, new details about the crime Lee committed are emerging, and they are reviving some of the unanswered questions and ambiguities over why he downloaded a trove of nuclear weapons secrets.
Lee never denied that he had downloaded a virtual library of data on weapons tests and designs and placed some of the material on 10 portable cassettes that he took home, seven of which he said he had destroyed and were never found. He insisted, though, that he had not leaked the data to anyone else and that the downloading had been for work purposes.
In order to learn some lessons from a security standpoint, the federal government recently concluded a long and careful technical reconstruction of all Lee's actions at Los Alamos. Several experts and government advisers who received a highly classified briefing at the Department of Energy on the results of that forensic analysis said in interviews that its conclusions were extremely critical of Lee, showing an extensive pattern of deceptions on his part in circumventing computer security safeguards, some of which were disclosed at hearings in his criminal case.
None of the experts would disclose what Lee had allegedly done to defeat computer restrictions on handling classified data, but during those hearings, the government described how Lee had allegedly transferred data from secure to unsecure computers improperly or borrowed workstations from colleagues to download secrets to cassettes.
Of even greater concern, said the experts, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, the analysis also made clear that the information Lee downloaded included some highly sensitive secrets relating to warhead designs and performance that posed a national security threat if they had been leaked. In hearings in his case it was disclosed that the information related to computer-based testing of different warhead designs.
"I was very surprised at how bad this was," said one of the experts.
During a hearing in Lee's case, one senior official had called the information "the crown jewels" of the weapons labs, while Lee had once referred to most of it as flawed "garbage" that would be of little use in actually designing a warhead.
The experts who heard the recent briefing said that the truth was somewhere in between and that at least some of the information on warhead specifications was highly important and its loss would have been quite serious for the United States.
Brian Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the weapons labs, confirmed that the technical briefings took place earlier this year. He said that since the information was classified, he could not comment further, other than to say the analysis provided a step-by-step look at what had happened -- but did not address the question of why Lee had downloaded the material -- and that the aim was to improve security.
Lee's attorney, Brian Sun, said he would not comment on the analysis, adding that he would not go beyond what Lee admitted in his one-count felony plea agreement -- essentially, mishandling classified information.
Lee's daughter, Alberta, who has been one of his most tireless supporters, said the analysis fit a pattern, in her view, of the lab's management finding scapegoats to blame for broader management weaknesses at Los Alamos.
"I think it makes logical sense for their careers to say this about my dad," said Alberta Lee, who is now a law student at UC Davis. "I maintain that my dad was just doing his job."
Lee had spent years as a nuclear weapons designer when he was investigated on suspicions he had stolen the nuclear secrets and possibly handed them to a foreign government. At one time, federal officials had said they believed he might have provided the information to China, a claim that eventually fueled charges from his supporters that Lee was a victim of racial profiling because he is Chinese American.
Lee was indicted on 59 counts in December 1999. He was held largely in solitary confinement until the government agreed to drop all but one of the least serious charges. Lee pleaded guilty on Sept. 13, 2000, and was sentenced to time served and released.
But that was hardly the end of the matter.
The federal district judge who handled the case in Albuquerque, James Parker, delivered a blistering rebuke of the federal government at the plea hearing. He blasted the government for fighting to keep Lee in solitary confinement on what he said were misleading claims about the nature of the offenses. Parker singled out the senior federal officials responsible, questioned the seriousness of the charges in the original indictment, which potentially carried a life sentence, and then issued an apology for the way Lee had been treated.
Parker made it clear, though, that there was plenty of blame to go around.
"Dr. Lee, you have pled guilty to a serious crime," he said. "It's a felony offense. For that you deserved to be punished."
And in a recent interview with The Chronicle, the judge reiterated that his criticisms of the government were for the way it handled the case, not the fact that it had prosecuted Lee.
"This often has been overlooked," Parker said. "I said to Dr. Lee at the time, 'You did commit a serious offense for which you should be punished.' "
However, he added, he believed the government had misled him about the threat that Lee posed. That may turn into just one of many unanswered questions.
Lee's attorneys had charged that Lee had been unfairly singled out for prosecution, known as selective prosecution, and that other officials who had committed similar offenses had been treated far less harshly. The defense won a motion demanding that the government hand over a huge volume of documents on the question of how others in a similar position as Lee had been handled. The government settled the Lee case just days before the deadline for providing that information. With the plea, the documents remained secret.
Lee's attorneys had also claimed that most of the information Lee had downloaded was actually available in scholarly journals and other unclassified sources. It appears now that that question will never be answered publicly.
Lee filed his civil law suit claiming his right to privacy was violated by deliberate government leaks to the media. He won a major victory when subpoenas to six journalists were upheld and then more recently when a federal judge cited five of the journalists for contempt for not disclosing their sources. The matter may now be settled in an appeals court.
Even then, Sun said, he is not confident that the reporters would actually reveal confidential sources. The leaks, he admitted, may always be a source of conjecture. He said that there had been some preliminary discussions with the government about settling Lee's civil case out of court, but that there had been no substantial progress.
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government would have no comment on the litigation.
E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.
-------- pennsylvania
Portion of former nuclear facility ready for reuse
Friday, August 27, 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04240/368677.stm
A 75-acre portion of the former Babcock & Wilcox plutonium processing plant site in Parks, Armstrong County, has been cleaned up enough to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards and released for unrestricted reuse.
The site is part of a 115-acre complex where, from 1960 until 1996, Babcock & Wilcox and previous owners used radioactive materials for nuclear fuel fabrication, research and development.
"Radioactive material on this site has been cleaned up to meet our strict criteria, and the site is now safe for other uses," said Daniel Gillen, deputy director for the Decommissioning Directorate in NRC's Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection.
Gillen said independent radiation surveys by the NRC and its contractor have verified the cleanup.
Assessment and cleanup efforts continue on the remaining 40 acres of the nuclear development facility known as the Parks Township Shallow Landfill, a legal nuclear disposal site 32 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
-------- vermont
Whistleblowers ask NRC to reconsider decision on petition
By CAROLYN LORI
Brattleboro Reformer Staff
Friday, August 27, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2362427,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Nuclear industry whistleblowers Paul Blanch and Arnold Gundersen asked officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider their decision on a petition filed by the two men last month.
On July 29, Blanch and Gundersen filed a petition with the NRC, claiming that Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee officials had failed to demonstrate how the plant conformed to design bases criteria.
They said that this information was vital for regulators as they review Vermont Yankee's bid to increase power by 20 percent.
The petition requested that the NRC demand more information from Entergy.
Last Friday, the NRC rejected the petition, stating that "the design bases of Vermont Yankee are clear and unambiguous."
"I contend that this is inaccurate," said Blanch to several NRC and Entergy officials taking part in a teleconference on Thursday afternoon. It was held to allow Blanch and Gundersen to make a case for reconsideration of the petition.
At issue is a set of design regulations first put forward in draft form by the NRC in 1967. Four years later, the regulations were clarified and finalized.
Blanch and Gundersen claim that the owners of Vermont Yankee -- both the previous owners, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., and present owners, Entergy Nuclear -- have made differing claims as to which criteria the plants meets.
Without clear criteria, they said, the engineering assessment currently being conducted at the plant would be "meaningless."
In the NRC's letter rejecting the petition, J.E. Dyer, director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, wrote that Vermont Yankee "is licensed to the draft GDC [general design criteria] published in 1967."
Dyer added that inspectors carrying out the engineering inspection have methods available to them for obtaining more information, making a demand for more information unnecessary.
Several times during Thursday's conference, Gundersen alluded to the expertise held by both he and Blanch, saying that if the information regarding design criteria was "clear and unambiguous" the two should have been able to locate it in the plant's Updated Final Safety Report and other documents.
"After a review of voluminous information, we cannot determine if Vermont Yankee is compliant with general design criteria," he said.
Blanch is an electrical engineer with more than 30 years experience in the nuclear industry. He became a whistleblower in the late 1980s, while working for the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut.
Gundersen, a nuclear engineer since 1971, was once vice president of Nuclear Engineering Services in Connecticut, when he blew the whistle in the early 1990s.
Both men have worked closely with the nuclear power watchdog group, the New England Coalition. When Vermont Yankee's uprate case was before the Vermont Public Service Board, Blanch and Gundersen served as expert witnesses for the group.
Although members of the coalition listened in on Thursday's teleconference, the organization is not officially part of the petition and did not participate in the conference.
Entergy officials were invited to comment during the call but chose not to.
Afterwards, Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams, dismissed the petition.
"The bottom line is that Vermont Yankee meets all applicable NRC regulations," said Williams.
Neil Sheehan, NRC spokesman for Region I, said that the information presented Thursday would be considered and the petition review board would make a decision "sometime soon."
-------- us nuc waste
WIPP shipments through Albuquerque to resume
8/27/2004
(AP)
http://www.krqe.com/environment/expanded.asp?RECORD_KEY%5BEnvironment%5D=ID&ID%5BEnvironment%5D=6697
Radioactive trash bound for a federal nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad will start coming through Albuquerque again this week.
A US Department of Energy spokeswoman, Susan Scott, says the next shipment of plutonium-contaminated waste will leave the Nevada Test Site today.
She says it should be trucked through Albuquerque sometime tomorrow, en route to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Most of the nearly three-thousand shipments that have gone to the underground repository have traveled through eastern New Mexico.
Only seven have gone through New Mexico's largest city.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Rift in Kenya Cabinet over Masai land rights
Friday, August 27, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-27/s_26754.asp
NAIROBI, Kenya - A Kenyan Cabinet minister threw his weight behind a campaign by Masai tribesmen to reclaim ancestral land allocated to British settlers Thursday, breaking ranks with the government on the controversial issue.
Masai tribesmen have held three demonstrations this month to demand the return of land given to British settlers in a 1904 colonial treaty, which the Masai say expired on Aug. 15.
However, the Kenyan government has rejected the claims and sent paramilitary police to keep Masai and their livestock off private ranches in the area.
Lands Minister Amos Kimunya said Wednesday the Masai were mistaken and that most of the land treaties signed were in excess of 900 years.
Minister of State William Ole Ntimama, a member of the Masai, denounced Kimunya's statements as a "fallacy."
"I think it is a fallacy ... it is not humanly imaginable that there was a treaty of 1,000 years between the Masai and the colonial government," Ntimama told a news conference on Thursday.
Ntimama, who is the highest-ranking Masai tribesman in the government, said the Masai had been forced off their ancestral land by British colonialists.
"The Masai have never accepted that there was an agreement at all. The Masai land was annexed under a state of war by the colonial government; they were moved forcefully," he said.
Ntimama called for dialogue among the government, white farmers, and the Masai to begin as soon as possible.
"The issue of compensation cannot be properly settled unless first the government accepts the fact that the land that was grabbed by the white man belongs to the Masai," he said.
Police fired tear gas to disperse dozens of Masai tribesmen who were marching to the British Embassy Wednesday to hand over a petition to High Commissioner Edward Clay.
Saturday, Kenyan police shot and killed a 70-year-old Masai man and wounded four other herdsmen grazing cattle on private land outside the central Kenyan town of Nanyuki.
Ntimama condemned the violence, saying the Masai were a law-abiding people. He appealed to white farmers to allow Masai herdsmen to graze cattle on their land, as there was no pasture or water due to the current drought.
"I would like to appeal to the ranchers to allow Masai to graze in some of the land. People are moving in desperation; there is no water or grass outside the electric fences (surrounding the farms)," he said.
-------- business
Contractors and the Law Prison Abuse Cases Renew Debate
By Ellen McCarthy and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37289-2004Aug26.html
Details of the role civilian contractors played in the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq sparked fresh debate yesterday about the effectiveness of laws and rules meant to govern workers hired to support the military.
Coming under particular scrutiny was the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act passed in November 2000 that allows for the prosecution of criminal acts committed by defense contractors accompanying the military to foreign lands.
Three generals investigating abuses at Abu Ghraib referred the cases of six contractors employed by Arlington-based CACI International Inc. and Titan Corp. of San Diego to the Justice Department, recommending that they be prosecuted for participating in or failing to report prisoner abuse. But the report itself raised questions about the potential success of such an effort, saying contract employees "under non-DOD contractors may not be subject" to the act. CACI's contract to provide interrogators at Abu Ghraib was managed by the Interior Department.
Some legal experts said it's unclear whether CACI is covered. "I guess the question is, who is a Department of Defense contactor?" said Steven L. Schooner, a professor of government contracting at George Washington University Law School. He said he would argue that because CACI is receiving Defense Department money and performing work for the department, it should be included. But he said that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, as written, may not technically cover CACI's interrogators.
An amendment broadening the act to cover contractors employed by other federal agencies is part of the defense authorization bill approved by the Senate in July. But the House version of the bill does not include the amendment.
Legal experts also point to another provision of the law, which says that individuals who commit assault overseas in areas administered by the United States are subject to criminal prosecution here.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that the Justice Department has received a letter with a copy of the Army report and is reviewing the material on the civilian contract employees. Federal officials declined to comment on the CACI case.
CACI also declined to comment. The lawyer for Steven A. Stefanowicz, a CACI interrogator accused in an earlier Army report of being one of four people either directly or indirectly responsible for abuses at the prison, said in a statement that Stefanowicz's actions were "appropriate, authorized, done with the knowledge of military superiors."
Stefanowicz, who is not identified in the report released this week, views the possible referral of his case to the Justice Department as "a face-saving punt by the Army," the attorney said.
The investigation also concludes that the military was ill-equipped to manage contractors. There were not enough government officials overseeing contractors at the prison and military officers did not check to make sure CACI employees were properly trained to conduct interrogations, according to the report.
Experts said that means the government was not supervising the sensitive work of private firms. "It's the military contracting officer's responsibility to make sure that they are trained properly," said Paul C. Forage, a national security expert at Florida Atlantic University. "When these guys showed up to do their interrogating and to do their translating, the person they were reporting to was another contractor."
While contract interrogators may be necessary in emergencies, retaining the work within the military is preferable because it simplifies the command structure, the report said. In some cases CACI employees supervised soldiers, investigators found.
"It's pretty unusual. In the normal course of a contract, you don't have a reporting chain where a contractor is above a government employee, usually the government directs the contractors, that's the point," said Angela B. Styles, former federal procurement policy administrator at the Office of Management and Budget.
The report's finding that a CACI employee helped write the statement of work determining the parameters of the contract is also potentially troublesome, some contracting experts said. Schooner, of George Washington Law School, said it is a conflict of interest.
But Stan Z. Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an association of government contractors, said that such arrangements are not always a problem. "I think that's an area that you have to be very careful with. It may raise some questions or it could be more innocent than it appears."
Meanwhile, the treasurer of California yesterday called on the boards of the state's largest public retirement funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, which own a total of 286,982 shares of CACI, to consider asking for the resignation of CACI's chairman, J.P. "Jack" London. CACI declined to comment yesterday.
Staff writers Jerry Markon and Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
-------- haiti
UN Peacekeeping Force in Haiti at 40 Pct.
Fri Aug 27, 2004
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=734&e=1&u=/ap/20040827/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/un_haiti
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti has just over 40 percent of its troops and is facing a deteriorating security situation with armed groups still controlling parts of the country, according to U.N. diplomats and officials.
But Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Hedi Annabi told a closed Security Council meeting Thursday that despite deteriorating security, a fragile political situation and logistical difficulties, the peacekeepers have made an encouraging start.
He said about 2,700 peacekeepers are in Haiti and the United Nations (news - web sites) hopes to more than double the number in the next month or so, diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
That would bring it closer to the 6,700-strong force authorized by the council to replace a 3,600-strong U.S.-led multinational force sent to Haiti to restore order after a three-week rebellion culminated in the ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29.
The U.N. force is concentrated in three locations "but they do not control the whole area yet," said Germany's deputy U.N. ambassador Wolfgang Trautwein. "For example, the ports and airports are still very much under control of the militias."
Only 240 of the 1,622 civilian police authorized by the council have arrived and the United Nations is working on getting more, especially from French-speaking countries, Annabi said, according to diplomats.
The U.N. force is led by Brazil, which has nearly 1,200 troops, mainly in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Brazil's U.N. Ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg said the force is expecting a battalion of French-speaking Africans, another battalion from Spain and Morocco, and further troops from Sri Lanka and Nepal.
But he said troop pledges still fall short of the 6,700 total.
Sardenberg said Brazil had expected the U.S.-led force to start the disarmament process but it didn't so the U.N. force will have to tackle the problem of armed groups. But it needs more troops to start the process, he said.
The other major challenge for the U.N. mission is to help organize local, parliamentary and presidential elections next year, Sardenberg said.
"This process is just beginning and it must be accelerated," he said.
-------- iraq
Top Cleric Brokers Deal To End Battle In Najaf
Militia, U.S. Would Leave; Mortar Attack Kills Dozens
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34370-2004Aug26?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 -- In an agreement brokered by the top Shiite Muslim religious figure in Iraq, rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr agreed Thursday night to withdraw his militia from a contested shrine and other parts of the city of Najaf after three weeks of fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces, government and religious leaders said. The deal commits the country's interim government to significant concessions.
In exchange for Sadr's compliance, the government pledged to pull U.S. military forces out of Najaf and to allow Sadr, who had been wanted by the former U.S. occupation authority on murder charges, to participate in politics.
"He is as free as any Iraqi citizen to do whatever he would like in Iraq," said Qasim Dawood, a minister of state, after announcing the government's acceptance of the peace plan arranged by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
The accord was reached on a day when more than 45 people died in a mortar attack and other violence in Najaf and the neighboring town of Kufa, which are about 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Members of Sadr's Mahdi Army, a well-armed militia that numbers in the low thousands, will be allowed to leave Najaf and return to their homes without any sanction, despite having fought against U.S. and Iraqi security forces for three weeks. The agreement allows thousands of Shiite pilgrims to enter the closed-off city in the early hours of Friday morning to visit the shrine of Imam Ali, providing an opportunity for militiamen holed up there to melt into the throng and avoid detection as they depart.
At 6:30 a.m. Friday, authorities in Najaf permitted the pilgrims to enter the city and walk toward the shrine. The crowd, estimated at more than 10,000 people, was searched for weapons by Iraqi police officers at the edge of Najaf's Old City district, where the shrine is located. As they streamed toward the shrine, marchers chanted "God is great" and raised their hands in the air.
Sadr, who has reneged on peace deals in the past, did not issue a statement of acceptance, but senior government officials and a top aide to Sistani expressed optimism that Sadr would comply with the terms of this agreement, which was reached during a meeting between Sistani and Sadr. "Mr. Moqtada Sadr has agreed to the proposals from his eminence, Ayatollah Ali Sistani," said Sistani's top aide, Hamed Khafaf.
At 8 a.m. Friday, a message conveyed from Sadr was broadcast from the shrine's loudspeakers instructing militiamen to depart with the crowd. "Drop your weapons and leave Najaf and Kufa," the announcement said. "You have done a great job."
If Sadr's militiamen leave the shrine -- and the Reuters news agency reported some were turning in their weapons and changing into civilian clothes -- it would end a conflict that has claimed hundreds of lives and roiled Iraq's Shiite majority, who have been concerned that using force to resolve the standoff could damage the gold-domed edifice. "Iraq has achieved a victory today," Dawood said at a Thursday night news conference. "No more fights. Najaf and Kufa will be peaceful cities, free from arms, free from militias."
The U.S. military, which ceased offensive operations on Thursday because of the peace talks, did not withdraw from positions inside Najaf after the deal was announced. Dawood said U.S. forces would be instructed to "draw back" by the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, once Sadr's militia departs.
The arrangement was a vivid indication of the enormous clout Sistani wields among Iraq's Shiites. His objections to American plans for Iraq's political transition forced the U.S. occupation authority to make substantial changes on two occasions. But in recent months, some political and religious leaders wondered whether Sistani, a reclusive 73-year-old who believes in the separation of religion and government, was losing followers to Sadr, a mercurial man in his early thirties who lacks Sistani's clerical credentials but plays a more activist form of street politics.
Last week, Sistani's aides demanded that Sadr hand over the keys to the shrine, but Sadr's aides refused, insisting that a transfer had to be done on their terms. The exchange seemed to suggest that Sistani lacked the power to rein in Sadr.
But Thursday's compromise indicated Sistani was still the most influential cleric in Iraq, a man who can force both Sadr and the interim government to yield to his middle-ground approach. When Sistani arrived in the southern port city of Basra on Wednesday after a trip to Britain for treatment of a heart condition, Dawood and another cabinet minister flew to meet him and discuss his peace plan. Shortly after Sistani's police-escorted convoy reached Najaf Thursday afternoon, Sadr came calling.
"Sayyid Ali Sistani has played a very important role in bringing about peace," said Dawood, using the honorific reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad.
The deal also revealed the limits of the power of Iraq's interim government. Allawi and other senior officials had sought to avoid any resolution that would allow Sadr's militia to reconstitute itself, favoring the use of force to kill or capture as many militiamen as possible. But because the government could not rely on its security forces alone to deal with the threat, it was forced to seek assistance from the U.S. military. That put the government in an untenable position: If U.S. forces stormed the shrine, Shiites would be outraged, but if they didn't, Sadr's men could drag out the confrontation for weeks.
A senior Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Sistani's deal will allow the militiamen to return unchallenged to their homes in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "We're going to let most of them get away," the official said.
But the official expressed hope that by ending the standoff and allowing Sadr's supporters to participate in politics, the plan would cause the militia to be weakened and eventually demobilized. "If the shrine is clear, it will help us pursue our main objective of dismantling his militia," the official said.
Other Iraqi officials and Western diplomats in Iraq contend that any deal that allows Sadr and many of his most loyal followers to escape will pose an continuing threat to the interim government. The militia does not have a formal roster of members who can be offered jobs or cash incentives to lay down their weapons. And as long as Sadr, who has been charged with murder in the death of a fellow cleric, remains free to preach and rally his loyalists, he will have the power to reconstitute a militia, the officials and diplomats said.
Under the terms of the agreement, Najaf and Kufa would become "demilitarized zones" that are off-limits to militias and foreign military forces; only Iraqi police and National Guard units would be permitted to patrol the areas. Sistani also demanded that the interim government compensate residents whose homes were destroyed in the fighting.
The senior government official said a date has not been set for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Najaf. "It is contingent upon Najaf becoming a safe place, free of militants," the official said. "If the standoff is resolved and the militants leave Najaf, then the presence of foreign forces in Najaf will not be necessary."
U.S. commanders in the city said Thursday night that they had not received orders to withdraw.
The peace deal was forged after one of the most violent and chaotic days in the three-week confrontation.
On Thursday morning, before Sistani's return to Najaf, three mortar shells slammed into the grounds of the main mosque in Kufa, killing at least 27 people and wounding 63. The marble courtyard was covered with pools of blood and torn clothing as survivors frantically dragged the wounded to a makeshift first-aid station. Overwhelmed ambulance drivers ferried the wounded to the overflowing local hospital, where relatives wailed next to gurneys carrying bloodied young men.
People at the mosque blamed the U.S. military for the attack, but U.S. military officials denied responsibility. A military spokesman said no operations were being conducted near the shrine.
A short while later, unidentified gunmen fired into a group walking on the main road from Kufa to Najaf. At least 15 people were killed, according to hospital officials.
The shooting caused the marchers to disperse as they sought cover. When a small contingent reassembled, they began shouting: "Where are the religious leaders? Where is the government? They let the Iraqis kill each other."
After Sistani's arrival, there was a shooting in Najaf, as hundreds of his supporters, as well as many Sadr loyalists, tried to converge on the house where Sistani had decamped. Police officials said gunmen in the crowd began firing, prompting the police to return fire. At least 10 people were killed and 38 wounded, hospital officials said.
At Najaf's hospital, an employee told the Reuters news agency: "Go look at the morgue. It's full."
Iraq's Health Ministry put the death toll for the day at 74, with 315 wounded, but that count included militiamen killed in clashes with security forces.
The fighting in Najaf also claimed the life of a U.S. Marine on Thursday, the second to be killed in two days, bringing to 11 the number of American military personnel lost in Najaf since the conflict began on Aug. 5.
Correspondent Karl Vick and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
Iraqi Holy City Left Broken by Urban Warfare
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37040-2004Aug26?language=printer
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 26 -- Lt. Col. Jim Rainey describes the battle here as "tackle football in the hallway, with no roof on the hallway." It's an apt analogy for urban warfare in sometimes extremely close quarters.
But after 21 days of merciless battering by U.S. weapons, parts of Najaf have very nearly no hallway at all. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, negotiated a cease-fire Thursday, but not before parts of Najaf had been devastated.
Pinpoint fire and tight restrictions on munitions ensure that the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine remained all but unscathed. But the core of the city around it, a destination of longing for millions of Shiite Muslims, is so mauled that American commanders debate which famously ruined wartime cityscape Najaf now resembles most.
"It's like Stalingrad," a senior 5th Cavalry officer said.
"Sarajevo," Rainey maintained.
"Beirut," a Marine commander said.
"Not Dresden," an Army field officer said while standing watch at a panorama of blackened, half-destroyed buildings a few dozen yards north of the glittering shrine. "Not enough fire."
The damage to Najaf is the consequence of an urban setting for battle, a woefully overmatched enemy and an American military doctrine that unites terrifying firepower with almost zero tolerance for casualties in its own ranks.
"If we take fire from it, we destroy the whole building," an Army commander said Thursday, after he ordered junior officers in his headquarters to do just that, once they received clearance, against a structure the Mahdi Army militia, the enemy here, was using as a firebase.
The staff had a broad assortment of weapons available at the other end of their radio handsets: the Marines' 155mm howitzers just behind the headquarters, Apache helicopter gunships on alert or swooping menacingly over the battlefield and a fighter-bomber on station at 10,000 feet.
At one point this week, soldiers from a 1st Cavalry Division battalion led by M1-A1 Abrams tanks and heavily armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles watched in bemused wonder as their opponent sent a donkey with a rocket-propelled grenade strapped to its side onto the field of battle. The remote triggering device was a string running toward the building corner from which the animal had emerged.
"We actually had reports of 'engage and destroy the donkey,' " said Maj. Tim Karcher of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The animal appears to have died as another enemy casualty.
The 7th Cav, once led by Gen. George Custer at Little Big Horn, has fared better in Najaf. Since arriving from north of Baghdad and setting up a cordon around a large section of the city south of the shrine, the unit's 2nd Battalion has fought almost nonstop for two weeks without losing a single soldier.
Perhaps the closest call came this week, when a grenade exploded in a basement room where Sgt. Varitogi Taetulli was wrestling an insurgent. The fight was a miniature version of the larger battle: Taetulli, from American Samoa, weighs 230 pounds. The militiaman weighed perhaps half as much.
But the crucial advantage was that Taetulli was wearing an armored vest. He escaped the grenade explosion alive and hollering to get back in the fight. The militiaman died immediately.
"It's the best feeling in the world," Karcher said of the armor, technology and munitions that safeguard the U.S. force. "We've been given the best tools in the world for waging war."
The battle for Najaf has been a study in the urban warfare that conventional wisdom says can only cause high American casualties. That is what U.S. invasion planners feared -- and subordinates of deposed president Saddam Hussein promised -- would occur last year in a protracted fight for Baghdad that never came.
Officers of the 7th Cavalry said their experience over the past two weeks found such fears exaggerated. So far, 11 Americans have died in the fighting; Iraqi health officials say that hundreds of militiamen and other people have lost their lives.
The 2nd Battalion was told to tighten the armored cordon around Najaf's old city, moving more than a mile through dense residential neighborhoods where Mahdi Army irregulars had enjoyed free rein.
But there was little house-to-house fighting, officers said. Maj. Scott Jackson, the 2nd Battalion's executive officer, described U.S. forces advancing using a kind of citified version of the island-hopping strategy used in World War II in the Pacific, attacking the militia at its strong points and establishing strong points of its own, then dominating the surrounding terrain. Tanks were very useful.
One strong point was tall buildings, which offered platforms for scores of American snipers. Precision fire was a must, given the bar imposed on firing heavy guns toward the shrine.
The other strong point was schools. Militiamen found them convenient places to store arms and mount defenses. The 7th Cavalry took four on their march toward the shrine complex, in some cases shelling schoolhouses that other U.S. forces had boasted of rehabilitating as part of Iraq's reconstruction.
One recent day, at the forward-most school the U.S. soldiers had occupied, a heavy machine gun was mounted on a child's desk and an orange banner hung from a second-story window to warn pilots against bombing the school by mistake.
At the same time, the 7th Cavalry made efforts to show goodwill to residents who stuck it out through the fighting. More than once, medics set up a mobile clinic to treat Najafis, while soldiers handed out food -- pre-packaged chicken and beef dishes labeled in Arabic as halal, or approved for the Muslim diet.
"The way you defeat an insurgency is by co-opting the population," Jackson said. "You don't end an insurgency by leveling the city."
And yet, when the 7th Cavalry arrived at the road that rings the shrine's immediate neighborhood like a moat, it let loose a furious barrage. Multi-story buildings at the main intersection of the ring road crumbled under the Americans' combined-weapons warfare -- bombs and missiles from the skies, shells from distant artillery, direct fire from the 25mm chain guns of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and the 120mm cannons of tanks.
The intersection that pilgrims approach immediately before sighting the splendid shrine is now a hellish landscape of standing water, Swiss cheese walls and ruined hotels.
Less than a mile away, the northern approach to the shrine is battle-savaged as well, framed by a bent metal banner proclaiming that in the end only God will be alive.
"We are destroying this city," a Marine officer said with a sigh at one point in the battle, described by some locals as a siege.
How the Arab world sees the damage is a question that field commanders said they had little time to ask themselves as they constantly changed battle plans. Several noted it was Sadr who brought the fight to the holy city, not them.
Field commanders add that key decisions on what to attack in the city, and how strongly, were made by senior officials in the U.S. command and Iraq's interim government. The Iraqis, who saw the militia takeover of Najaf as the most severe test to date of its new authority, had the ultimate say, the Americans say.
But it would not hurt, one officer said, to announce reconstruction plans right away. If the destruction "is the price of shoring up the Iraqi government, then okay," one U.S. commander said while standing in the ruins. "But it probably wouldn't hurt if we found a way to make things right here."
--------
Militants Leave Shrine as Cease-Fire Deal Appears to Hold
August 27, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/international/middleeast/27CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 27 - An uneasy peace settled over this city today as guerrillas loyal to the insurgent cleric Moktada al-Sadr streamed out of the Imam Ali Shrine before a cordon of American troops, ceding control of the Shiite holy site to the mainstream religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and appearing to end a bloody three-week standoff.
The surrender of the shrine, carried out under the terms of a peace deal struck by the two men the night before, unfolded in dramatic fashion at 8:30 a.m., following a dramatic appeal by Mr. Sadr.
With thousands of civilians pouring into the shrine from all over Iraq, some who were weeping and kissing the walls of the damaged temple, the insurgents who had commandeered the holy site for nearly a month joined the departing pilgrims and headed out through its vaulting gates.
"In the name of Allah, my brothers in the Mahdi Army, I beg you, if civilians are in the shrine, leave with them, and leave your guns behind," intoned a voice from the shrines loudspeaker, reading a message from Mr. Sadr. "This is an order that you must obey."
With that, the fighters, many of them hollow-eyed and appearing strained after days under fire, walked into the streets and left the area, moving along what appeared to be an agreed-upon exit route that led out of the city. Others simply hung about, boasting of what they told themselves was an epic stand against the American Army.
As the Mahdi Army fighters did not surrender themselves, neither did they give up their guns. Instead, they took the assault rifles and rocket launchers with which they had commandeered the shrine and loaded them onto donkey carts, covering them with blankets and grain sacks and television sets and sending them away.
Hours later, Mahdi Army fighters, some still dressed in their signature black uniforms, could be seen stashing rocket launchers in crates and pushing them into roadside shops.
As the Mahdi fighters streamed out of the city, the American soldiers who had fought their way to within 75 yards of the shrine in some of the war's most ferocious fighting kept their distance, neither shooting the Mahdi fighters nor trying to take them into custody. American commanders said they were under orders to arrest no one, least of all Mahdi Army insurgents.
Later in the day, obviously tipped off about a cache of guns, a platoon of American soldiers rumbled up Rasool Street to the gates of the shrine and began searching sidewalks and cars.
Aides to Ayatollah Sistani, who brokered the peace agreement upon returning to the city on Thursday, moved into the shrine early today and told Mr. Sadr's men that they were now in charge.
"We are taking over the shrine," one of Ayatollah Sistani's senior clerics said. "We will not be making another comment."
By early evening, aides to Ayatollah Sistani were fully in control of the shrine itself. Iraqi police officers, backed by American soldiers and armor, converged on the area around the shrine, with the Americans moving to within 75 yards and then dropping back.
The reassertion of Iraqi government control, symbolized by the entry of the police, was one of the key demands made by Ayatollah Sistani of Mr. Sadr.
The Mahdi Army fighters who streamed out of the shrine this morning were in various states of distress. One fighter, with a comrade on each side, limped out, bloodied and wearing a bandage on his right hand. Another fighter, dead for some time, was carried out on stretcher.
Some of the young men seemed visibly reduced by the siege; after three weeks of relentless Americans assaults, the number of Mahdi Army fighters in the old city had fallen from several thousand to just a few hundred.
But for most of the Mahdi Army fighters still standing, morale seemed undiminished. In their days battling the Americans, they had constructed their own mythic tale about themselves, as the stalwart defenders of the holy shrine against a foreign army and its local satraps. It mattered little that they were vacating the place they had sought to defend or that the city had been destroyed in the event.
"Today is a victory," said Arkan Rahim, a 30-year-old Mahdi Army fighter, standing amid the wreckage near the shrine. "We didn't surrender the shrine to the Americans, the biggest army in the world. We didn't surrender it to the Iraqi police. We protected it for our religious leaders."
While the Mahdi Army fighters began heading home, the larger mystery seemed to be the commitment of Mr. Sadr. The upstart cleric began his latest uprising earlier this month when his men attacked the Najaf police station following the arrest of one of his aides. The August uprising was his second; in April, Mr. Sadr had called on his followers to expel the Americans following the closure of his newspaper.
This time, as before, the Americans and the Iraqi government, fearing his surging popularity, allowed him and his followers to go free in exchange for a promise not to cause any more trouble.
And this time, as before, Mr. Sadr's commitment to the peace deal he had signed seemed shaky best. After his meeting with Ayatollah Sistani late Thursday, Mr. Sadr dropped from view, making neither public appearances or statements of support.
Today, senior clerics around Ayatollah Sistani seemed determined to hold Mr. Sadr to his word, sharing with a reporter a copy of the peace deal he had signed the night before.
"This agreement is by the order of the religious leadership," said a note signed by Mr. Sadr on the bottom of the agreement, "and I am ready to obey all orders with all my respect."
Under the agreement, Mr. Sadr's fighters were obliged to leave Najaf and the neighboring city of Kufa and promise not to come back. The Iraqi police would take control in both places, and the Iraqi government must pay compensation for the losses caused by the fighting. Mr. Sadr also agreed to cooperate in preparing for the country's first nationwide elections, to be held by Jan. 31.
Indeed, the decision to allow Mr. Sadr to go free seemed to be based on the hope that the young leader, who commands a large following in Iraq's Shiite slums, could be coaxed into the political mainstream. So far, Mr. Sadr has shown little interest in taking part in the fledging democratic process that the Americans are trying to nurture here, rejecting an offer just a few weeks ago to join the national conference.
"I blame Moktada al-Sadr for what happened here, and the Iraqi government, too," said an old Iraqi man, identifying himself as Abu Mohammed, who had traveled from the city of Al Kut to show his support for Ayatollah Sistani. "We, the simple people, are paying for their mistakes."
Mr. Mohammed seemed to speak for many Iraqis here, who in dozens of interviews over the past several days denounced not only Mr. Sadr but the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, as well. With their homes and businesses in ruins, it seemed, for many Iraqis, that most of Iraq's new leaders had failed.
The end of the fighting here revealed a city center utterly devastated. Hotels crumbled into the street. Cars lay blackened and twisted where they had been hit. Goats and dogs lay dead on the sidewalks. Pilgrims from out of town and locals coming home walked the streets agape, shaking their heads, stunned by the devastation before them.
"Look at all the damage," an Iraqi man said to a friend as he walked down a street whose every building had been broken and crushed. "Let God take revenge on the Americans for this."
While the wreckage inspired anger in many Iraqis here, for others it prompted mainly despair. At an intersection here, Fadel Hejab spent much of the day trying to reassemble his livelihood: a small metal cart from which he sold light bulbs, electrical fixtures and parts.
Somehow, the fighting had tossed Mr. Hejab's stand out into the street, blown it over and smashed it flat. Crouched over the mess, he paused to consider his future.
"I will try to fix it and start again," Mr. Hejab said. "What else shall I do?"
-------- mideast
Chirac hits out at international community's inaction in Middle East
AFP
Aug 27, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040827/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_france_chirac_040827173611&e=4
PARIS (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac sharply criticized the international community's failure to help put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the world should "impose" peace talks.
"For how long will the world accept this tragedy that is crushing lives and peoples, that does damage to the development and stability of a region that is essential for the security of all, that is creating a gulf of resentment and lack of understanding between cultures, civilizations, religions?
"It is essential that the international community assume its responsibilities," Chirac told his country's ambassadors and top diplomats, closing a two-day meeting of the envoys in Paris.
The French leader said the world must "take stock of the disastrous results of its inaction and free itself of its false caution" with respect to the moribund Middle East peace process.
He urged the international community to "finally say in plain language that terrorism and denial of others are reprehensible and should be condemned and fought without weakness, but that occupation and colonization are unacceptable and must stop."
Recalling that the ultimate goal was the creation of a Palestinian state peacefully co-existing with Israel, Chirac said: "We must encourage, maybe even impose the resumption of a negotiations process between the parties."
The European Union -- along with Russia, the United States and the United Nations -- is a member of the so-called diplomatic "quartet" that has sponsored the roadmap for Middle East peace, which has resulted in next to no progress.
"Now we must move forward, as peace is possible. The world can no longer wait for goodwill on one side or the other," Chirac said.
The French president called for an international presence in the Gaza Strip, from which Israel plans to evacuate settlers and withdraw troops next year, reiterating French and EU willingness to participate in such a mission.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said in Paris this week that while the European Union could help rebuild Gaza, talk of an international presence was premature: "We don't think now is the time to deal with it."
-------- nato
NATO chief in Kosovo says security has improved
Aug 27, 2004
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040827131215.sve1qgpr.html
NATO's commander in Kosovo said Friday security had improved in the mainly Albanian province since bloody inter-ethnic riots in March that left at least 19 people dead. "There are no indications of new violence. To the contrary ... the security situation has improved significantly over the past few months," German General Holger Kammerhoff said.
Kosovo was rocked by two days of violence in March as the majority ethnic Albanian population took on minority Serbs in riots sparked by reports -- later rejected by police -- that local Serbs were involved in the deaths of three Albanian children.
Kammerhoff said the almost 18,000-strong NATO force in Kosovo (KFOR) had been equipped with more armoured vehicles in the aftermath of the violence, and the peacekeepers were undergoing crowd and riot control training.
KFOR was also more adept at reacting to volatile situations after streamlining operational procedures between the 36 contributing nations, he said.
"When we are meeting the local population, I believe that they have understood that what happened in March really damaged Kosovo's image," Kammerhoff said.
The German general is to end his one-year term as KFOR commander on September 1 and will be replaced by France's Lieutenant General Yves de Kermabon.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechnya outlaws wearing of masks
BBC
27 August, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3603646.stm
Security forces in Russia's war-torn region of Chechnya have been ordered to shoot dead anyone wearing a mask in towns after a bloody raid by rebels. Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov gave the order days after gunmen posing as police reportedly killed scores of people in the capital, Grozny.
The man tipped as Chechnya's next leader called for strict compliance.
Security forces in Chechnya and Russia regularly don balaclavas during anti-crime operations.
However, Mr Alkhanov, the leading candidate in Chechnya's presidential election on Sunday, said they had no reason to cover their faces.
"Law and order personnel have no business hiding their faces if they are acting lawfully," he said on Thursday.
"The order has been issued and I will demand its strict observance, irrespective of who is observed wearing a mask."
Fake checkpoints
A Russian military spokesman told the BBC that groups of fighters, many dressed as policemen, penetrated 12 parts of Grozny last Saturday night before launching attacks on a market and a police station.
According to Russian press reports, masked gunmen also mounted fake checkpoints, shooting dead anyone they stopped who was carrying security force ID.
Residents said people had stopped at the checkpoints since the rebels looked the same as regular police.
Unconfirmed reports speak of at least 70 killed.
Mr Alkhanov said most crimes were "committed by people who hide their faces behind masks and the population can't understand who they are dealing with, law enforcement officers or bandits".
--------
Russian Says Plane Broke Up in Midair
Contradicting Investigators, Official Says Terrorism Likely Caused Crashes
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35371-2004Aug26.html
MOSCOW, Aug. 26 -- One of the two planes that crashed almost simultaneously in the Russian countryside this week fell apart in midair just moments after sending a distress signal, a senior official said Thursday, adding that the plane might have been destroyed by a terrorist explosion.
The presidential envoy who oversees southern Russia for the Kremlin said the evidence, while not conclusive, pointed to a violent destruction of the plane long before it hit the ground, and he declared that the main theory for the cause of both crashes, whose death toll officials now put at 89, "remains terrorism."
The statements made by Vladimir Yakovlev contradicted those of investigators who, the day before, had largely discounted terrorism and cited human or technical error as the likely cause of the crashes. Yakovlev's words proved so sensitive that, later in the day, another official dismissed him as unauthorized to draw conclusions and state television stopped showing the clip of him citing terrorism.
Critics contend that the government is avoiding any use of the word terrorism, at least until after a sensitive election Sunday in the separatist region of Chechnya. President Vladimir Putin, usually quick to blame Chechens when unexplained attacks occur, offered no theory Wednesday and remained out of sight Thursday.
"We have had many tragic cases lately, and the deaths of more than 80 passengers does not add to the reputation of our President Putin," Viktor Ilyukhin, a member of the opposition Communist Party who sits on parliament's security committee, said in an interview. "That is why we are hearing contradictory statements. The authorities do not want to admit it is indeed a terrorist act."
Russian newspapers, which, unlike television, are not directly controlled by the Kremlin, were unusually blunt in criticizing the investigation. "The authorities are failing to see the links between the air crashes and the Chechen presidential election," read a headline in Izvestiya.
Other Russian newspapers, citing unnamed sources, raised questions about a female passenger with a Chechen surname on one of the planes. In response to those reports, the head of the investigation commission, Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, acknowledged late Thursday that authorities were investigating whether she was involved, because no relatives came looking for her body after the crash. "We do not have information that she was a terrorist," Levitin told reporters.
The two passenger jets, one operated by Sibir airline and the other by Volga-Aviaexpress, took off from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport within 40 minutes of each other Tuesday night, heading to different destinations in southern Russia. Both vanished from radar within three minutes of each other, plummeting to the ground about 500 miles apart.
The chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Ignatchenko, said in an interview Wednesday that the black-box flight recorders from both planes were being analyzed. On Thursday, various officials said the black boxes either were switched off before the crashes or severely damaged by the jets' impacts, and declared that it would be days, if not weeks, before they could be analyzed.
Ignatchenko had predicted the black boxes would prove negligence was the cause. But the FSB was silenced on Thursday. Ignatchenko would not come to the telephone because, an assistant explained, he was not "authorized" to talk.
On Wednesday, Sibir reported it had received a telegram from the government Tuesday night saying its plane's crew had activated a special hijacking alarm.
On Thursday, Levitin said the Sibir plane had sent not a hijacking alarm but a general distress signal just before it disappeared from radar screens, with no voice communication to indicate what the trouble was. But the airline has stuck to its position. "There was a hijacking signal, not an SOS," Sibir spokeswoman Yelena Surgutskaya said by telephone Thursday. "The button exists, but why they pushed this button we don't know."
She rejected an FSB suggestion that faulted the pilots or the airline. She also rejected theories of malfunction. "What happened happened very quickly," she said. "When we look at the distance between the fragments" where they came to rest on the ground, "we can assume there was an explosion."
Yakovlev, the presidential envoy, added that the wreckage was scattered over a large area in suggesting an explosion may have occurred.
Thursday was declared a national day of mourning for the victims.
--------
Traces of Explosives Found in Wreckage of Russian Jet
August 27, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/international/europe/27CND-RUSS.html?hp
MOSCOW, Aug. 27 - Russia's security service announced today that investigators found traces of explosives in the wreckage of one of the two passenger airliners that crashed simultaneously on Tuesday night, indicating that it crashed because of a terrorist act even as an Islamic extremist group claimed its fighters had hijacked the planes to avenge the deaths of Muslims in the war in Chechnya.
The chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, said investigators continued to analyze the traces of the explosive, identified as hexogene, to determine what kind of bomb might have brought down the plane, Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, which crashed near the southern city Rostov-on-Don. He said investigators had not yet found explosives on the second plane, Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303, which crashed near a village about 100 miles south of Moscow.
The discovery of explosives aboard one of the planes appeared to confirm initial suspicions that the twin crashes, which killed 89 people, were deliberate acts of terrorism, though not human or mechanical errors, as Russian officials initially suggested.
Mr. Ignatchenko added that investigators had identified "a circle of individuals" - both passengers aboard the Sibir Airlines airplane and others who were not - who might be connected to what he called, for the first time, a terrorist act. He declined to discuss the details, saying the investigation continued.
"Without a doubt hexogene is an indication of an explosion," he said in a telephone interview. "The only question is what kind of form it was. Additional analysis is being conducted to determine where it was and what level, why it led to this and so forth."
This morning, the Web site of an extremist group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for both crashes, though it described two hijackings and made no mention of any bombings, according to reports by The Associated Press in Cairo and Reuters in Dubai. Statements like this are impossible to verify independently, and Mr. Ignatchenko declined to discuss the veracity of the claim or the group in general except to say that it was not previously known to operate in Russia.
Earlier this month, the group claimed to have carried out an attempt to assassinate Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's prime minister-designate, in an attack that killed eight people but left Mr. Aziz unhurt. The group apparently takes its name from Lt. Khaled Islambouli, the leader of a group of Egyptians who assassinated President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
The website threatened new attacks in Russia, citing the war in Chechnya and what it called Russian involvement in other Muslim countries. The latter might be a reference to the killing of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former president of Chechnya who died when a bomb exploded in his vehicle in Qatar. Russia denied involvement in the killing, but in June a court in Qatar convicted two Russian secret agents for Mr. Yandarbiyev's murder.
"Russia's slaughter of Muslims is still continuing and will not stop except for a bloody war," the statement posted on the Internet said, according to Reuters. "Our mujahideen were able with God's help to deal a first strike, which will be followed by other operations in a campaign aimed at helping our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim countries enduring Russia's atheism."
Russian officials have long linked the war in Chechnya to international terrorism, something disputed by Chechnya's separatist leaders, who claim to be fighting an indigenous struggle for freedom. The involvement of a group believed to be behind an attack in Pakistan would be an ominous turn for Russia, which has endured a series of terrorist attacks - from the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 to a series of suicide bombings in the last two years, including one aboard a subway train in Moscow last February that killed at least 41 people.
The two airliners took off from Domodedovo International Airport, southwest of Moscow, both headed to cities in southern Russia. The fact that explosives could have been smuggled aboard indicated a grave breach of security, which Russian officials promised would be tightened even before acknowledging the possibility of terrorism.
Siber Airlines Flight 1047, a Tupolev-154 headed to Sochi on the Black Sea with 45 or 46 passengers, sent two distress signals shortly before disappearing from radar, including one indicating a hijacking. Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303, a Tupolev-134 headed to Volgograd with 43 passengers, sent no distress signals before crashing within a minute of the other flight near the village of Buchalki. The crashes occurred only five days before Chechnya is to hold an election to replace President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in a bombing in Grozny in May. That has led to speculation that the crashes, like other terrorist acts in Russia, were linked to the bloody conflict in Chechnya, now a decade old.
Mr. Ignatchenko cautioned, however, against drawing an immediate link, suggesting that, perhaps, other motivations were involved. He did not elaborate.
"We would not rush to say there is a Chechen link," he said, "because there is no evidence now."
-------- spies
FBI Probes if Official Spied for Israel
August 27, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Spy-Probe.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating whether an analyst for the Pentagon's No. 3 official acted as a spy for Israel, giving the Jewish state classified materials about secret White House deliberations on Iran, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
No arrests have been made, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. But a third law enforcement official, also speaking anonymously, said an arrest in the case could come as early as next week.
The officials refused to identify the Pentagon employee who is under investigation, but said the person works in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon.
Feith is a key aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, working on sensitive policy issues including U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. There are slightly more than a handful of people in Feith's office who specifically work on Iranian issues.
The investigation centers on whether the employee in Feith's office passed secrets about Bush administration policy toward Iran to the main pro-Israeli lobbying group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which then allegedly gave them to the Israeli government, one official said.
David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said: ``We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous.''
AIPAC said in a statement that the lobbying group was ``fully cooperating with the governmental authorities, and will continue to do so.''
It said any allegation of criminal conduct by the organization or its employees was ``baseless and false,'' adding that the group ``would not condone or tolerate for a second any violation of U.S. law or interests.''
Pentagon officials refused to comment, referring all questions to the Justice Department.
The investigation, first reported by CBS News, has included wiretapping and surveillance, and searches of the Pentagon employee's computer, the law enforcement officials said.
President Bush has identified Iran as part of an ``axis of evil,'' along with North Korea and the former Iraqi regime. Yet, his administration has battled internally over how hard a line to take toward Iran, with the State Department generally advocating a more moderate position and more conservative officials in the Pentagon and at the White House's National Security Council advocating a tougher policy.
Israel -- one of the United States' strongest allies -- and its conservative prime minister, Ariel Sharon, have pushed the Bush administration toward a harder line toward Iran.
Israel and Iran have been in an increasingly harsh war of words in recent months. Senior Israeli officials have left open the possibility of an Israeli attack on suspected Iranian nuclear weapons development sites.
In response, Iran threatened last week to destroy Israel's Dimona reactor should Israel carry out such an attack.
In 1981, Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in Iraq after becoming suspicious that Saddam Hussein was developing a nuclear weapons capability.
Despite the close U.S.-Israeli relations, this is not the first allegation of spying by Israel.
Jonathan Pollard, a former naval intelligence officer who gave top-secret documents to Israel, has been a point of contention in U.S.-Israeli relations. The Israeli government has repeatedly pressed for his release, but intelligence officials have called the information he passed to the Israelis highly damaging.
Pollard was caught in Washington in November 1985, and was arrested after unsuccessfully seeking refuge at the Israeli Embassy.
A congressional aide declined to say if the Senate Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the case but said the panel is generally briefed on espionage cases.
----
From Inside Skeptic To Public Dissident
Analyst Exposed by Defense Ministry Assesses Damage of Blair WMD Claims
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36903-2004Aug26?language=printer
LONDON -- For 15 years, Brian Jones headed the unit that analyzed nuclear, biological and chemical weapons intelligence data for Britain's Defense Ministry, a job so secret that even his mother did not know what he did.
Then one day last August, he and his wife, Linda, turned on the 6 o'clock news and saw that the lead item was about a confidential letter he had written to his supervisor.
"As it appeared, our chins fell closer to the floor," he recalled with rueful smile. "We had visions of a scrum of journalists gathered around the house. We really didn't want to be in the public arena in this way."
The letter appeared to contradict claims by Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that there was no significant dissent within the intelligence community over a controversial dossier that the government published in September 2002 to detail its charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Without telling Jones, the ministry had turned over the letter to a public inquiry, placing him at the heart of a highly charged dispute over intelligence, politics and the invasion of Iraq.
Since then, the formerly anonymous insider has become a public dissident in Britain, arguing that government officials exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq, overstated the evidence and backed up their conclusions with last-minute raw intelligence that they concealed from Jones and his analysts. The debate has echoed a similar one that broke out in the United States after occupation troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction, whose purported existence was the war's prime justification.
In Britain, two public inquiries have rejected the claim that the government deliberately distorted the spy agencies' reports. Still, Jones's views were exonerated last month when one of the inquiries, the Butler Commission, concluded he had been right to raise concerns about the dossier and that he and his analysts should have been shown the last-minute intelligence, which was later withdrawn as unreliable.
He contends that the government's mistaken claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction has done serious harm to the credibility of the intelligence community and to international efforts against such weapons.
"The damage has been considerable, and I think it will continue until exactly what went wrong is clarified," said Jones, sitting in his living room in southwestern England, with Linda at his side, in his first interview with a non-British news organization. Jones, who just turned 60, took early retirement a few months after the dossier was published.
He depicts himself as a reluctant whistle-blower whose original motivation was to protect himself and his colleagues bureaucratically rather than to make a stand on principle. Jones expressed his objections in writing, he says, so that no investigator could come along later and accuse him and his staff of signing off on a flawed dossier. His tale also sheds light on Britain's ultra-secret intelligence establishment's methods, calculations and vulnerabilities.
"In some ways, the whole controversy has done more damage here than in the U.S.," said Gary Samore, a weapons expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "There have been so many intelligence failures in the United States that the reputation of CIA was already dented, whereas here there is still a lot of mystique about MI6," Britain's secret intelligence service.
"It will be a long time before the intelligence community produces this kind of dossier again," Samore added.
When Jones, who has a doctorate in metallurgy, first took over as head of the technical intelligence branch of the agency in 1987, he recalled, his unit largely consisted of experts in weapons materials and chemistry -- with just two men whose specialty was chemical and biological warfare sitting in a corner.
That all started to change in the late 1980s, after the Soviet Union disclosed that it had produced chemical and biological weapons and Iraq began using chemical weapons against Iran. Over the next few years, Jones's unit began to concentrate on such weapons, and in the mid-1990s, it added nuclear components as well. It became known as the primary shop within the British intelligence establishment where data on weapons of potential mass destruction were analyzed and assessed.
MI6 "are the collectors," not the analysts, Jones said. "One of the great sins in intelligence is to allow the people who collect the intelligence to assess its quality, because the very fact they collected it means they are biased. That's why you have analysts who are independent."
During the summer of 2002, Blair had spoken about producing an Iraqi weapons dossier, but when Jones went off to Greece for vacation in late August, the project seemed to be on hold. He returned to the office on Sept. 18 to find it in full swing, with publication less than a week away -- and parts of his staff in dismay. Jones's most senior chemical weapons specialist was particularly concerned that the dossier's drafters, who worked for the cabinet-level Joint Intelligence Committee, had ignored his concerns about the document's claims concerning chemical weapons.
"He felt the language was much too strong," Jones recalled. "He was saying he could find no conclusive evidence that Iraq had produced [a] chemical warfare agent or weapons."
The dossier was being crafted by the JIC with help from Blair's political and press advisers. In its forward, Blair stated: "I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons . . . I am in no doubt the threat is current and serious."
The specialists were also skeptical about a claim, based upon a single source reporting information that he said he had heard from an Iraqi military officer, that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order.
Jones talked to his experts individually on the day he returned, then held a 30-minute session with all of them the following day, Sept. 19.
Among those who sat in was David Kelly, a government weapons expert who was not a member of Jones's staff but was a frequent visitor. After the session, Jones took the unusual step of writing a note to his immediate superior, Tony Cragg, registering his group's objections.
Filing a written dissent was a highly unusual step. "The whole culture of the JIC is that it produces consensus," Jones said. "At the end of the day, we want something that we're all agreed with. So if you are actually putting down a dissent, you're saying all this effort has failed. I maybe did it once, maybe twice before in 15 years. You don't do it lightly."
Cragg later told the Hutton inquiry, the other public investigation touching on Iraq-related intelligence, that he was surprised to read Jones's memo. He took up the matter with his superior, the chief of defense intelligence, and the two men decided the matter had already been resolved satisfactorily. The dossier went forward as written. "I was content for it to go to print," Cragg testified.
Word was passed to Jones that the reason his concerns were being ignored was that a new piece of intelligence had arrived a few days earlier that backed up the 45-minute claim. The source was said to be so sensitive that Jones and his analysts were not allowed to see the material.
"I was very wary," Jones recalled. "My job was all about being suspicious -- suspicious of other people, suspicious of the information you receive. What sort of information could this be that pops up all of a sudden that answers the dozen questions you've got? I thought our dissent was being finessed away."
In late May 2003, with the invasion completed and no weapons of mass destruction found, BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan reported that an unnamed source had told him of great unrest within the intelligence community about the dossier, especially its 45-minute claim. Gilligan mistakenly reported that Blair's aides probably knew the claim was wrong, but otherwise his report accurately captured the feelings of Jones and his staff.
The broadcast set off a bitter controversy between the BBC and the government, which denied the story, as well as a hunt for Gilligan's source that led eventually to Kelly. Kelly was forced to testify before Parliament's foreign affairs committee and subsequently committed suicide, in July 2003. Jones says it was only then that he realized that Kelly must have been Gilligan's informant, and that his longtime colleague had been talking about the discontent he had heard expressed by Jones's staff the previous September.
Jones soon found himself under the same spotlight that had burned Kelly. In early July, after Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the foreign affairs committee that he was unaware of any significant discontent within the intelligence community, Jones wrote a letter to Cragg's successor, reminding him of the previous note of dissent and asking whether he should inform the committee of the error. Less than two months later, the Hutton inquiry into Kelly's death made the note public, although with Jones's name expunged.
The Joneses expected Brian's name to leak -- and reporters to descend on their home. "We made arrangements to move out quickly if we had to -- to stay with one of Brian's sisters," Linda Jones recalled. "The bed there has been made up ever since."
But when the time came to testify, the Joneses decided that Brian would be better off coming forward publicly to preempt the kind of media frenzy that had engulfed Kelly. "We came to the conclusion that if Brian appeared as himself, the press would have his name and his photograph and that would remove the need for a scoop," she said.
Appearing before the House of Commons last month, a chastened Blair conceded that there should have been clear procedures for senior intelligence officers such as Jones to take their objections directly to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Blair also conceded that he and his government had made mistakes in the period preceding the war.
"What I do not accept," he quickly added, "is that it was a mistake to go to war."
Two public inquiries and two parliamentary reports have dismissed claims that the government deliberately exaggerated the threat, and opinion polls indicate that the prime minister is on track to win a third term. John Scarlett, the senior official responsible for the dossier, recently became head of MI6.
Kelly is dead, the two BBC senior executives who initially stood by Gilligan's report were forced from their posts, and John Morrison -- a former deputy chief of defense intelligence who publicly criticized the government -- recently lost his job with the committee that has oversight of British intelligence.
Jones said Scarlett's promotion might make it harder for the intelligence services to regain their public standing. "I can't comment on his competence, but his association with a major intelligence failure is unavoidable," said Jones. "Intelligence is about credibility, and we're in a situation with al Qaeda and the terrorist threat where credibility is absolutely vital. It makes things that much more difficult for credibility to be reestablished, with John Scarlett in that position."
What really troubles him, Jones said, is that British intelligence and its sister agencies in other countries failed to accurately assess Iraq's weapons programs despite a clear mandate to do so. This suggests to him the limitations of intelligence and compliance monitoring, including inspections.
"After Iraq lost the first Gulf war, we had greater access through inspectors than any of the existing arms control treaties would give us, and still we failed collectively through intelligence and through compliance monitoring to get the right answer," he said.
"The truth is, we need to do a whole lot better than we did in Iraq," Jones said, "but I am not confident that what is required can actually be achieved."
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Bush Signs Order Bolstering C.I.A. Director's Power
August 27, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27CND-INTE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - President Bush signed an executive order today that his spokesman said would grant more power to the director of central intelligence, designating him to fill much of the role envisioned for a future national intelligence director.
The president also ordered the establishment of a national counterterrorism center, said the spokesman, Scott McClellan.
Mr. McClellan said the order establishing new powers for the director of central intelligence was an interim measure, a first step toward putting into effect recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, whose call for a new, more powerful national intelligence chief would require Congressional legislation.
The White House will continue to work with Congress on legislation to create the national intelligence post, Mr. McClellan said. But the question of how much authority should be given to a new intelligence chief remains the subject of sharp debate between members of the Sept. 11 commission, legislators and the White House, and it is unclear whether it will be resolved before the presidential election.
The president's orders today are intended to "improve our ability to find, track and stop terrorists," Mr. McClellan said.
The interim action by the White House will strengthen the hand of the current director of central intelligence, who heads the Central Intelligence Agency and has nominal authority over all other intelligence agencies but whose actual powers beyond the C.I.A. have been limited. Government officials who have been briefed on the document said they understood that it would effectively create as powerful a national intelligence chief as permissible under current law.
Among other things, the executive order directs the heads of other agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, to allow the director of central intelligence to exercise his full authority on budgetary and other matters.
Officials said the National Counterterrorism Center, with authority to direct operations in the realms of diplomacy, the military, intelligence, law enforcement and financial matters, will report to the director of central intelligence. That follows a recommendation by the Sept. 11 commission, which said such a center should report to the national intelligence chief.
Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, has criticized the White House for not having earlier embraced the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation to establish a national intelligence chief with real power and authority over intelligence agencies. The White House said earlier this month that it favored the creation of such a post, but Mr. Kerry and others, including Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have criticized the plan that Mr. Bush announced early this month as not giving that intelligence chief sufficient authority.
John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, has served as acting director of central intelligence since the resignation of George J. Tenet on July 11. Mr. Bush has nominated Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, to become director of central intelligence, and Mr. Goss's nomination is to be taken up next month by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Members of the Sept. 11 commission have suggested that they would oppose any plan that continues to give the director of central intelligence responsibility for both the day-to-day operations of the C.I.A. and oversight of other intelligence agencies, believing that was too big a job for any single official. The commission recommended that the job title be changed from director of central intelligence to C.I.A. director, with responsibility only for the work of the C.I.A., an agency that commission members have described as dysfunctional.
"Rather than having three or four jobs, the director can now concentrate on the C.I.A. and rebuilding that agency, can ensure that the agency is really reformed so it can do its job," said Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the commission and a former Republican governor of New Jersey. "The idea is to have a C.I.A. director whose job is really the agency. He shouldn't have to run the whole intelligence community."
In an interview Thursday at his offices at Drew University in Madison, N.J., where he is president, Mr. Kean said a separate national intelligence director, unburdened by day-to-day responsibility for the operations of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, would focus solely on the responsibility of serving as "the top intelligence adviser to the president, who sets policy with the president."
Mr. Kean said that the White House had not shared with him a detailed plan for restructuring the government's intelligence agencies in response to the commission's report. But he said he was "convinced that the White House is acting with sincerity."
He added: "There are internal debates within the White House and a lot of conversation. At some point, you have to bring those conversations to a conclusion and the president has to decide what he wants to do."
Mr. Kean said he was more concerned with the pace of Congress in weighing the commission's recommendations, especially the panel's call for the House and Senate to restructure themselves to provide better oversight on intelligence issues.
The commission harshly criticized the House and Senate for what it described as virtually nonexistent oversight of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, and it called for Congress to consolidate its intelligence oversight into a single joint committee, or in a committee in each body that would have the right to recommend the appropriation of money to intelligence budgets, a right normally reserved only to separate appropriations agencies.
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Israeli Mole in Rumsfeld's Office?
Reuters
Fri Aug 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1266
The FBI believes Israel has a spy at the very highest level of the Pentagon who may have sought to influence U.S. policy on Iran and Iraq, CBS News reported on Friday.
The Israeli embassy immediately denied the report.
"The FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to ... roll up someone agents believe has been spying, not for an enemy, but for Israel, from within the office of the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld)," the network reported.
CBS News said the FBI believed it had solid evidence the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified material that included secret White House deliberations on Iran.
The network described the spy as "a trusted analyst" assigned to a unit within the defense department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy.
It said the analyst had ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both regarded as leading architects of the war on Iraq.
Asked about the CBS report, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy told reporters: "We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous."
CBS said the spy was believed to have been passing secrets to Israel through intermediaries at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.
"Our sources tell us that last year the suspected spy ... turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was 'in the draft phase'," the network said.
"This put the Israelis -- according to one of our sources -- 'inside the decision-making loop' so they could 'try to influence the outcome'," CBS reported.
I thought everyone in the Pentagon was an Israeli agent. I don't know why the FBI never noticed before. Anyway, the Israelis denied it, so that's settled.
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U.N.: Guantanamo Situation Better But Could Improve
Reuters
By Moritz Doebler
Aug 27, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=723&e=10&u=/nm/20040827/wl_nm/un_guantanamo_dc
BERLIN (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) human rights chief said Friday a U.S. decision to let Guantanamo detainees appeal against their imprisonment was a big improvement, but warned Washington there was still more it could do.
Most of the nearly 600 detainees held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay were captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and have been held at the base on Cuba for over two years without access to lawyers or courts.
"In the case of Guantanamo Bay we have turned a major corner with the United States Supreme Court decisions that judicial review is applicable," High Commissioner Louise Arbour told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a Berlin conference.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo prisoners may challenge their detention in U.S. courts, and lawyers for several prisoners have already filed appeals.
Currently pre-trial hearings are held at the naval base to determine whether the prisoners are "enemy combatants," a status that denies them protection under the Geneva Conventions.
Human rights groups deplore the use of Guantanamo as a "legal black hole," but Arbour said the Supreme Court ruling may have changed that.
"I think prior to these decisions there was cause for extreme concern that in fact there was a legal black hole, that there were people on this planet who had no access to any system of impartial justice," she said.
"SOPHISTICATED MACHINERY"
Detainees found not to be enemy combatants will be returned to their home countries, others will have separate reviews later at Guantanamo to determine if they pose a threat.
Arbour said the Supreme Court ruling was "a step in the right direction," adding she would have preferred for these trials not to be held in military courts "with all the trappings of military justice that inevitably raise suspicions."
"I think there is still cause for concern, but at the same time for some optimism that a proper process will eventually prevail," said Arbour, adding she was certain the "sophisticated United States judicial machinery" would play its proper part.
"It has taken a lot of time to get there so there is a sense of urgency for the proper disposition of these cases."
Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor and Canadian Supreme Court justice, was chosen in February as the new U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva.
She replaced Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, who took leave from the post last year to become chief U.N. representative in Iraq (news - web sites) and was one of 22 people killed in a bomb blast last August at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.
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Top Brass Won't Be Charged Over Abuse
Army Reports Find Officers Responsible, but Not Culpable, in the Abu Ghraib Scandal
By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36943-2004Aug26.html
The dramatic leadership failures revealed by two investigations into the abuse of Iraqi detainees will haunt the Army for months or even years as defense attorneys explore them in court in attempts to mitigate accusations and ease punishments for more than a score who could be charged, military legal experts said yesterday.
But the senior officers cited for indirectly allowing the abuse to flourish at the Abu Ghraib prison will not face charges under the findings of an Army report issued this week -- a fact that three Army generals explained and defended yesterday in interviews. Those in the U.S. command structure who failed to supervise their subordinates, who handed down unclear and in some cases illegal policies, and who ignored signs of abuse were found in Army reports to be "responsible" for the problems but not "culpable" because they did not have a direct hand in the mistreatment.
Pfc. Lynndie R. England's attorneys want to use the investigative reports to show that their client was following orders to abuse detainees at Abu Ghraib. (Chuck Burton -- AP)
"That's the differentiation that's being made," Gen. Paul J. Kern -- who supervised the Army's most recent investigation, by Marine Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones -- said in an interview yesterday with Washington Post editors and reporters. "Are we letting them off the hook? I don't think so. In fact, we put the spotlight on them and said, 'You didn't do your job right.' "
Two investigative reports released this week detailed a wider scope of abuse at Abu Ghraib than was previously known, involving military intelligence soldiers, consistent use of illegal tactics and a collapsed leadership -- findings that could begin to receive heavy play in a courtroom as soon as Monday, when one MP charged with abuse is scheduled to reappear at a preliminary hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Pfc. Lynndie R. England's attorneys have said that they want to put the reports into evidence and to begin mining them for additional witnesses, contradictory testimony and evidence that their client was following orders when she was captured in photographs showing abuse at Abu Ghraib. Though England's face became synonymous with the scandal -- she was the young woman holding the leash strapped to a naked detainee's neck -- her defense team's assertions that military intelligence told her what to do gained a bit of credence from the reports, one of which concluded that "some MI personnel encouraged, condoned, participated in, or ignored abuse" and that military intelligence solicited MPs to help.
"Both reports leave two options for what happened: that it was a failed command structure that led to the abuses, or that the failed command structure is a cover-up to hide sanctioned violations of the law," said Richard A. Hernandez, England's lead attorney. "I think it clearly confirms what we've been saying all along."
Seven military police soldiers have been charged so far with crimes as a result of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the report released by the Army this week could ultimately result in additional criminal charges against as many as 29 military intelligence soldiers, four more MPs, two medics and six civilian contractors who either were directly involved in abuse or failed to report it. That could mean more than two dozen courts-martial or civilian trials on charges including dereliction of duty, sexual humiliation, forcible sodomy and rape.
Military lawyers said that the Army's conclusions about poor leadership are unlikely to exonerate soldiers -- unless evidence shows direct orders to commit the abuse -- but that the findings could ease sentences.
Retired Marine Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, who was a military lawyer for 26 years and is now a defense lawyer in Carlsbad, Calif., said the defense is sure to use the leadership failures in an attempt to soften the blow of the other evidence. "You want this evidence," he said. "A badly trained soldier who was not properly prepared by his seniors to deal with the chaos of Abu Ghraib, with guidelines that are fuzzy at best, and with pressure from above to demean and soften up prisoners -- that could cause members to think: Shouldn't we be lenient? It becomes an extenuating factor."
For the Army's officer corps, one of the most painful aspects of the scandal is that no officer stepped forward to stop the abuse, even though many of them knew or should have known what was going on.
"The embarrassing thing to all of us is that it was a young soldier who first raised his hand," Kern said. When asked whether the abuse in the infamous photographs would have been prevented if the leadership structure had been solid, and if military intelligence interrogators had not begun introducing harsh techniques earlier at the prison, he said: "I don't know. There was an environment there which was not healthy."
Military experts and retired officers said they were especially disturbed by the Fay report's findings of insubordination among Army units, which they took to be a worrisome sign of leadership problems.
"It's a black spot on the Army," said retired Army Col. John Antal, who commanded a training regiment at Fort Knox, Ky. "Any professional soldier sees this, it tears his heart." He said it brought home to him the need for the Army to hold accountable the commanders involved, to emphasize that standards must be upheld.
Retired Army Col. James Lacey, a veteran of the 101st and 82nd airborne divisions, said it was particularly "sad to think that all of this could have been avoided by one strong captain who had a basic education in the difference between right and wrong. I think about many of the officers I grew up with in the infantry and what they would have been like as company commanders at that prison. Would they have walked around checking on their men day and night? Damn right they would. Would they have checked with their [noncommissioned officers] . . . to get the pulse of the unit? Damn right again." Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.), a son and grandson of Army generals who was a reconnaissance platoon sergeant in the Army during the Vietnam War, said he was surprised by the account in the Fay report of enlisted soldiers telling an officer from another unit to leave them alone when he told them to stop beating an Iraqi detainee. "It is completely unacceptable to have an Army in which a lieutenant would see behavior like that and not stop it," he said. "If that is symptomatic of today's officer corps, that needs to be changed."
Kern said yesterday that although he is troubled by the abuses, he wants to remind the public that those responsible represent a tiny fraction of the more than 200,000 U.S. troops and civilians who were in Iraq at the time, doing their jobs admirably.
"We have all these people who are every single day going out there doing the right thing, more than 900 have been killed," he said. "We have people who are conducting interrogations correctly, we have people who are conducting security correctly, we have people who we know stories of where they are sharing food, helping people, doing things the right way. We have thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, that are out there rebuilding schools, doing good things.
"And not only does it trouble me because they feel the same condemnation that all of us do about Americans doing this, but they continue to do the right thing," Kern said, "and we're missing that."
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ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL
Army's Report Faults General in Prison Abuse
August 27, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27abuse.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - Classified parts of the report by three Army generals on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison say Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
Moreover, the report contends, by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions, which they understood poorly anyway.
Military officials and others in the Bush administration have repeatedly said the Geneva Conventions applied to all prisoners in Iraq, even though members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo did not, in their estimation, fall under the conventions.
But classified passages of the Army report say the procedures approved by General Sanchez on Sept. 14, 2003, and the revisions made when the Central Command found fault with the initial policy, exceeded the Geneva guidelines as well as standard Army doctrines.
General Sanchez and his aides have previously described the series of orders he issued, although not in as much detail as the latest report, which was released Wednesday with a few classified sections omitted. They have described his order of Oct. 12 as rescinding his order of Sept. 14.
But the Army's latest review instead finds that the later order "confused doctrine and policy even further,'' a classified part of the report says. It says the memorandum, while not authorizing abuse, effectively opened the way at Abu Ghraib last fall for interrogation techniques that Pentagon investigators have characterized as abusive, in dozens of cases involving dozens of soldiers at the prison in Iraq.
The techniques approved by General Sanchez exceeded those advocated in a standard Army field manual that provided the basic guidelines for interrogation procedures. But they were among those previously approved by the Pentagon for use in Afghanistan and Cuba, and were recommended to General Sanchez and his staff in the summer of 2003 in memorandums sent by a team headed by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a commander at Guantánamo who had been sent to Iraq by senior Pentagon officials, and by a military intelligence unit that had served in Afghanistan and was taking charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.
The report says the abusive techniques not sufficiently prohibited by General Sanchez included isolation and the use of dogs in interrogation. It says military police and military intelligence soldiers who used those practices believed they had been authorized by senior commanders.
"At Abu Ghraib, isolation conditions sometimes included being kept naked in very hot or very cold, small rooms, and/or completely darkened rooms, clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions,'' a classified part of the report said.
The passages involving General Sanchez's orders were among several deleted from the version of the report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay that was made public by the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Classified parts of the 171-page report were provided to The New York Times by a senior Defense Department official who said fuller disclosure of the findings would help public understanding of the causes of the prisoner abuse scandal.
Army officials said Thursday that some sections of the report had been marked secret because they referred to policy memorandums that were still classified.
But the report's discussion of the September and October orders, while critical of General Sanchez and his staff, do not disclose many new details of the orders and do not appear to contain sensitive material about interrogations or other intelligence-gathering methods.
They do show in much clearer detail than ever before how interrogation practices from Afghanistan and Guantánamo were brought to Abu Ghraib, and how poorly the nuances of what was acceptable in Iraq were understood by military intelligence officials in Iraq.
The classified sections of the Fay report reinforce criticisms made in another report, by the independent panel headed by James R. Schlesinger, the former defense secretary.
That panel argued that General Sanchez's actions effectively amounted to an unauthorized suspension of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq by categorizing prisoners there as unlawful combatants.
The Schlesinger panel described that reasoning as "understandable,'' but said General Sanchez and his staff should have recognized that they were "lacking specific authorization to operate beyond the confines of the Geneva Convention.''
In an interview on Thursday with reporters and editors of The Times, Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who supervised General Fay's work, said the Fay inquiry had not addressed whether General Sanchez was authorized to designate detainees in Iraq as unlawful combatants, as the administration has treated prisoners in Afghanistan.
A secret passage in the report, though, says that with General Sanchez's first order, on Sept. 14, national policies and those of his command "collided, introducing ambiguities and inconsistencies in policy and practice,'' adding, "Policies and practices developed and approved for use on Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions' protections." It goes on to cite several further problems with the order.
Asked whether General Sanchez's actions opened the door to use of interrogation techniques from Afghanistan, General Kern said, "He didn't close the door, and he should have."
Together, the Schlesinger and Fay reports spell out the sharpest criticism of missteps by American commanders in Iraq involving what they described as a crucial question of making clear to soldiers what was permitted and what was not in interrogation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
General Sanchez and his deputies have always maintained that the only approaches they authorized for use in Iraq were consistent with the Geneva Conventions, which spell out rules for the treatment of prisoners of war and other combatants. They have said the directive issued by General Sanchez in October had made it clear that the use of dogs and isolation could be used in interrogations only with the general's approval.
"Interrogators at Abu Ghraib used both dogs and isolation as interrogation practices," a classified part of the report said. "The manner in which they were used on some occasions clearly violated the Geneva Conventions."
The classified section of the Fay report also sheds new light on the role played by a secretive Special Operations Forces/Central Intelligence Agency task force that operated in Iraq and Afghanistan as a source of interrogation procedures that were put into effect at Abu Ghraib. It says that a July 15, 2003, "Battlefield Interrogation Team and Facility Policy,'' drafted by use by Joint Task Force 121, which was given the task of locating former government members in Iraq, was adopted "almost verbatim'' by the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which played a leading role in interrogations at Abu Ghraib.
That task force policy endorsed the use of stress positions during harsh interrogation procedures, the use of dogs, yelling, loud music, light control, isolation and other procedures used previously in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those measures were initially authorized by General Sanchez for use in Iraq in his September memorandum, then revoked in the policy he issued a month later, but not in a way understood by interrogators at Abu Ghraib to have banned those practices, the classified version of the Fay report said.
Among those who believed, incorrectly, that the use of dogs in interrogations could be approved without General Sanchez's approval was Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the report said.
"Dogs as an interrogation tool should have been specifically excluded,'' a classified section of the report said. It criticized General Sanchez for not having fully considered "the implications for interrogation policy,'' and said the manner in which interrogators at Abu Ghraib used both dogs and isolations as interrogation practices "on some occasions clearly violated the Geneva Conventions.''
The role played by members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., some of whom were identified as having taken part in the abuses, is given particular attention in the classified parts of the report.
Members of the unit had earlier served in Afghanistan, where some were implicated in the deaths of two detainees that are still under investigation, and the report says commanders should have heeded more carefully the danger that members of the unit might again be involved in abusive behavior.
The unit had worked closely with Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan, and "at same point'' it "came to possess the JTF-121 interrogation policy'' used by the joint Special Operations/C.I.A. teams, the classified section of the report says.
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THE INQUIRY
Report Is Likely to Prompt Criminal Charges
August 27, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27legal.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The Defense Department report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, issued Wednesday, will almost certainly give rise to criminal charges or disciplinary action against many of the more than 50 people found responsible. But the report's most immediate impact will probably be in the handful of pending cases against low-level military police personnel.
One of the seven soldiers charged, Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits, has pleaded guilty. Another, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, has said he plans to plead guilty to some charges.
Lawyers for the remaining five say the report's findings lend support to their central defense - that they were following orders from military intelligence officers and others.
"The M.P.'s being prosecuted claim their actions came at the direction of M.I.," the report said, referring to military intelligence. "Although self-serving, these claims do have some basis in fact."
Richard A. Hernandez, a lawyer for Pfc. Lynndie R. England, one of the accused soldiers, said the report was a vindication.
"This was not seven rogue soldiers," Mr. Hernandez said. "It clearly is more than that. They were getting orders from M.I."
"It makes it a little easier for us," he added. "We can clearly say that she was following orders. Now the question is whether the orders were lawful and, if not, whether she had reason to know they were unlawful."
Legal experts differed about whether the report helped or hurt Private England and the other accused military police officers.
"Many of the accused can now legitimately claim that the orders they received, either informally or directly, were legitimate," said Michael F. Noone Jr., a law professor at Catholic University and an expert in military justice.
"But people are still going to say, 'You've got to be kidding. Are you serious that people ordered you to make people masturbate?' "
Gary D. Solis, a former military judge who teaches law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said the defendants should take no comfort from the report.
"It provides no help for those whose cases are pending," Mr. Solis said. "With each new report, we see a new facet of improprieties and illegalities. The 'following orders' defense was a slim reed to begin with. These reports only add fuel to the prosecutorial fire.
"It is true that military intelligence was there," he said. "The C.I.A. was there. But their pressure and even their urgings don't let these individuals off the hook."
To succeed in a following orders defense, Professor Solis said, the soldiers would have to prove that they actually received an order and that it was from a superior. He said there was no evidence to suggest either.
"Even if they could meet those two challenges," he added, "they would have to show they acted reasonably in following what they understood to be a lawful order."
The report, by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, concluded that 42 military intelligence soldiers, officers, medics and civilian contractors bore some degree of responsibility for the abuses. It also said four more military police officers had a role in the abuses.
The findings were forwarded to military commanders and the Justice Department for possible criminal charges and disciplinary actions, and additional prosecutions beyond the first seven are inevitable, legal experts said. Military personnel face a range of potential punishments, including reprimands, extra duty, the loss of rank or pay, discharge and incarceration. Only the most serious charges require a court martial.
Civilians, including government employees like C.I.A. agents and civilian contractors, are not subject to the military justice system. But the Justice Department may file criminal charges against them in federal courts in the United States, though defendants may contest those courts' jurisdiction over events in Iraq.
The next round of charges are likely to be filed against military intelligence soldiers.
"You'll see junior officers and enlisted folks being charged," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib. "You'll see a bunch of them making deals, if the charges are relatively minor. I would expect at least as many new cases as there are existing ones."
Mr. Puckett said the report released on Wednesday, which focused on military intelligence personnel rather than military police, was unlikely to give rise to disciplinary or other action against his client.
The report paints a picture of a prison in chaos, and that may help current and future defendants. But other aspects of it may affect potential jurors negatively, said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
"Questions may well be raised," he said, "about the ability of people currently under charge or about to be charged to obtain a fair trial."
The report may also renew requests for a change of venue. Except for the court martial of Private England, the remaining courts-martial are likely to be held in Baghdad. That may be just as well, Professor Noone said.
"There may be more sympathy for these guys in Iraq than if they were brought back and tried at Fort Hood," he said.
Mr. Fidell said that the military was a global enterprise these days, meaning that one venue may be as good as any other.
"A general in the Pentagon can't sneeze without somebody in Baghdad saying gesundheit," he said.
The report also found that civilian contractors from private companies were complicit in the abuse. Prosecuting them in the United States for crimes committed in Iraq may present novel and difficult jurisdictional issues.
"It's a very hard question that can only be answered in little snapshots," said Elizabeth Hillman, who teaches military justice at Rutgers University. "It's changing very quickly. This is new terrain."
Gary Myers, a lawyer for Staff Sgt. Frederick, said the most important legal question had yet to be addressed.
"Since these trials have become essentially political trials," he said, "the inquiry becomes what do we do and how high do we go. We're looking at the court martial of at least one senior officer, in my estimation."
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Missouri Plan to Let Military Cast Votes by E-Mail Draws Criticism
By Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36781-2004Aug26.html
A plan to make the presidential battleground of Missouri the first state to allow military voters serving in combat zones such as Iraq to cast their absentee ballots via e-mail is renewing concerns about the security of online voting.
Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a Republican running for governor, announced the plan Wednesday, saying that "simplifying the voting process for these heroes is the least we can do." The move surprised some computer security experts and voting watchdog groups, who said yesterday that the new rules could lead to Election Day fraud.
Under a deal with the Defense Department, Blunt's office said, Missouri voters serving in designated combat areas will have the option of filling out absentee ballots, scanning them into a computer file and e-mailing the scanned document back to the Defense Department. The department will fax the ballot to local Missouri election officials.
Missouri is the first state to adopt such a system, according to the Defense Department, which sees it as a way to ensure that mail delays do not disenfranchise military voters. "This provides an alternative . . . for citizens who believe the regular absentee ballot cannot be received, voted and returned by mail in time to be counted," said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a department spokeswoman.
In February, the Defense Department dropped a $22 million pilot plan to test Internet voting for 100,000 U.S. military workers and civilians overseas after a panel of scientists identified security concerns. The agency said it could not ensure the legitimacy of votes cast online.
Missouri's system is different, Krenke said, because it is not entirely based on the Internet. The ballots are signed and then scanned before being e-mailed so local election officials will be able to compare voters' signatures to ones on file.
Service members who use the system will forfeit keeping their ballot secret; the Defense Department and county officials will know the candidates chosen. Krenke said the military will use fax numbers to create an audit trail, and all ballots returned to local election officials will contain an official cover sheet. The type of e-mail software will depend on what is available in the field, she said.
The state has not done an independent study of the new system's security, said Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson. "We trust the military," he said.
But Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert on the board of the National Committee for Voting Integrity, said that the public has a right to more details about how the system will work. How will independent observers ensure that the Defense Department does not "lose ballots?" he asked. "There's been no discussion, no audits, no information about how will it prevent phony votes or hacking. Missouri is setting itself up to be the next Florida."
Elliot M. Mincberg, legal director for the People for the American Way Foundation, said he is concerned service members will feel pressured by commanders and colleagues to give up their right to vote in secret. "We are going to look closely at this," he said.
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The unseen cost of war: American minds
Soldiers can sustain psychological wounds for a lifetime
By M.L. LYKE
Friday, August 27, 2004
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/188143_ptsd27.html
The soldier's eyes dart from ceiling to floor, window to door. The rough hands -- hands that poked dead animals and probed human body bags in search of enemy explosives -- wrap around a cup of high-octane buzz he doesn't need. He's wired, wound tight -- a buff, tough sergeant ready to explode inside a strip-mall Starbucks.
"I knew I had a problem in Iraq when I wanted to start machine-gunning whole towns," says the National Guardsman, who returned to Fort Lewis from active duty in late March after an extended deployment.
He landed at McChord Air Force Base, got off the plane and flamed. "I wanted to start tearing people's heads off."
Neighbors in his Bellingham block may remember the soldier. He's the one who was outside shouting "You missed me again, - - - - - - - !" on the Fourth of July.
He's the one who screamed at the television when an Arabic speaker came on.
He's the one who still jumps out of his skin when someone drops a pan in the kitchen. "My heart rate goes up to 220."
He is one of a growing number of local soldiers returning from Iraq with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a brain condition that has wreaked havoc on warriors' nervous systems since the first shell-shocked Johnny came marching home with a thousand-yard stare and a million-dollar question:
Will anything ever be the same?
"Those guys on the side of the road with the cardboard signs. I can see how they get there. ... I'm afraid of losing everything I came home to," said the 35-year-old Guardsman, who bitterly calls himself a poster child for PTSD.
"I've got some serious issues."
A tremendous cost
Puget Sound PTSD specialists call the disorder one of the "hidden wounds of war." It can't be stitched up, earns no Purple Heart and can fester over a lifetime.
The specialists predict the trickle of affected soldiers from Iraq now coming into clinics will turn into a flood, with serious consequences for strained Veterans Affairs budgets and for taxpayers who foot disability bills.
"We hear about the thousands of injuries -- brain injuries, leg injuries, arm injuries -- but rarely do we hear about the psychological casualties in war," said PTSD expert Dr. Evan Kanter, a neuroscientist and staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle
"There will be tens of thousands of these, and the cost of that will be tremendous."
An Army survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 1 said 15.6 percent to 17.1 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq exhibited signs of anxiety, major depression or other mental health problems. A new study of 1,300 Fort Bragg paratroopers who took part in the Iraq invasion echoed the findings, showing 17.4 percent exhibited PTSD symptoms.
No one is sure why one soldier is affected by a traumatic event more than another. "The boundary line between 'normal' and 'pathological' response to the extreme demands of battle is fuzzy at best," notes the Iraq War Clinician Guide, prepared by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
But PTSD specialists say reservists and National Guard soldiers appear particularly vulnerable. War is not the full-time job of the estimated 160,000 "weekend warriors" now in Iraq -- civilian soldiers who have been called up in the largest numbers since World War II. They have off-duty lives, careers and demands back home that increase stress.
Symptoms of PTSD include short tempers and erratic sleep habits. Many patients have difficulty holding onto marriages and jobs. One local counselor treats a veteran who has had 30 jobs in 30 years.
Self-medicating with booze and drugs is common. So are nightmares, flashbacks and "intensive memories.' The thwap-thwap of a news helicopter has sent more than one Vietnam vet diving for the nearest ditch. For some Iraq vets, simply slamming a door, using a nail gun or clicking a camera can unglue them.
"The body remembers. It fires up without even checking in with the cerebral part of the cortex," said Seattle clinical psychologist Thomas Wear, one of the counselors contracted to help vets through the Washington state Department of Veterans Affairs' PTSD program.
The narrowed attention, jitteriness and hypervigilance of wartime often carry over into civilian life. PTSD counselors tell of patients who walk the perimeter of their bedroom every night or sleep with their guns.
The National Guardsman with "issues" locked all his weapons away after he got home. He has learned to trust no one. Including himself.
"I don't need to carry guns," said the sergeant, now in treatment. "I've pointed so many at so many people for so long that it's too easy to put one in someone's face and not think a thing about it."
There's a war going on inside him. He wonders why, and for what.
"It's all a game over there. It's all about politics, oil -- who the heck knows? I'm livid."
The 'Nam factor'
Anger and insomnia are common symptoms of PTSD. So is the numbness one counselor calls "a freezing of the heart."
A hardened heart may serve in battle. Back home, still numb, it creates its own kind of pain.
"The Vietnam vets, the first year they came back, would get half-loaded and go pick a fight with the biggest guy they could find, just to get some adrenaline pumping, some feeling back into a gray, meaningless life," said Wear.
Comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are frequent in counseling circles. While an estimated 2 percent to 10 percent of veterans exposed to combat in the brief 1991 Gulf War developed combat-related PTSD, in Vietnam it was an estimated 30 percent.
Half of those Vietnam cases are resolved, half remain chronic, said Kanter, who also serves as Northwest regional director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. "We have every reason to believe this will be the case again."
One positive psychological twist for Iraq veterans is that today's soldiers, unlike Vietnam vets, are being welcomed home to cheers. Many vets from the Vietnam War -- when PTSD symptoms were often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder -- still hold harsh memories of being spit on and called "murderers" or "baby killers."
After 35 years, many still give each other a big bear hug and say "Welcome home" in greeting. "That gives you an idea of how psychologically devastating that was," said Kanter.
Other comparisons that counselors draw are more troubling:
# In Iraq, as in Vietnam, it's not always clear who the enemy is. Iraqi fighters don't wear uniforms, they fade in and out of crowds. And in the pressure cooker of urban warfare, it may be a grandparent or grandchild waving hello with one hand and holding a crudely improvised bomb with the other. "You find yourself asking, 'Is that a toy gun or a real gun?' " said one returning soldier.
# Soldiers in Iraq, like those in Vietnam, face danger 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from a 360-degree sweep around them. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates 95 percent of Marines and Army soldiers in Iraq have been shot at, 56.5 percent have killed an enemy combatant and 94.5 percent have seen bodies or human remains. Ambushes, sneak attacks, random mortar fire and roadside bombings are standard enemy operations. But fighting can get up close and personal in patrols and raids. "Everyone is vulnerable most all of the time," said Steve Hunt, director of the deployment health clinic at the VA Medical Center in Seattle.
# As in Vietnam, some soldiers in Iraq find the mission confusing. Are they putting their lives on the line for a war, an occupation, a liberation? "We never really knew what was going on. We were told, 'We're here to do good, to help Iraqis, they want us here.' And we know that's just pep talk from politicians -- a bunch of professional liars," said an Army infantryman recently home on leave from Iraq and counting the days till he leaves the service.
Like other soldiers, the 21-year-old Army specialist came home still seething. "Everything in Iraq pissed me off," said the infantryman. That included his extended deployment, the smell of raw sewage dumped outside doors, friends' endless "Dear John" letters, unpalatable rations, orders to dry shave for lack of water, body armor that weighed 70 pounds in 130-degree heat, orders to kick in doors of Iraqi families based on suspect "intelligence."
"You never knew if the guy in there was innocent or not, and half the time he was," said the soldier, interviewed at a mall coffee shop in Bellevue. His voice rose as he talked. It was loud, too loud, his sentences laced with expletives. People moved away as he talked about "stupid" people at home asking him if he'd killed anyone in Iraq.
"I just told them to shut up or I'd kill them!"
Yeah, he said, he was counseled about combat stress overseas.
Almost everyone is.
Acting on lessons learned from Vietnam, the military and Department of Veterans Affairs have focused on early intervention of PTSD, sending teams of chaplains, counselors and other mental health personnel into the field to work with soldiers.
Yeah, he said, they handed him PTSD fliers, asked him if the questions applied. "I said, ---- no and tossed them."
And sure, a couple guys in the unit claimed to have PTSD.
"They were just faking it."
Suck-it-up
Persuading returning soldiers it's OK to seek mental help is its own high-stakes battle.
Certainly gains have been made since the famous episode in 1942, when Gen. George Patton accused a hospital patient suffering "shell shock" of cowardice and slapped him across the face. Patton was later upbraided by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and forced to make a public apology.
More than a half-century later, clinical attitudes about PTSD have evolved dramatically. "It's no different than treating a shell-fragment wound or problems of environmental exposure," said Hunt, the VA deployment health clinic director.
Still, the suck-it-up, soldier-on, deal-with-it culture lingers.
"There's a strange pressure on these soldiers not to have any problems with what they are doing. It's that old idea that a real man and a true warrior will stand strong," said Issaquah psychologist Michael Phillips, a trauma specialist who works with vets under a joint contract with King County's veterans program and the state VA's PTSD program.
Most soldiers, said Phillips, first try to handle problems by themselves. It's not until they see a pattern, or others point it out, that they may finally seek help. Or they may not.
The New England Journal of Medicine report shows more than half the soldiers who served in Iraq and met the criteria for psychological disorders said they would not seek help. They cited fears they would be stigmatized or that their military careers would be hurt.
Interviews with soldiers point out another scenario. Many returning soldiers, they say, answer "Not me, sir," in PTSD screenings simply because they want to go home. Immediately.
"The basic thought in our unit was, 'If you say yes to any questions, you will be held back from going on leave,' " said the Army infantryman.
The blur of home
If "yes" is a hard word to say, the words that follow can be excruciating.
PTSD counselors say their new patients are raw, fragile, prone to emotional outbursts and still barely able to talk about what's happening to them as the fog of war becomes the blur of home.
"I used to not be able to talk about it at all. My blood pressure would escalate, my throat would close up and I would have an anxiety attack," says a young Marine reservist, a scholar of history and ancient languages who left studies at Western Washington University to serve in Iraq.
Activated in January 2003, his unit was one of the first into Iraq, and faced gunfire and missile attacks as soldiers set up water and fuel lines to supply battalions moving into Baghdad.
The reservist experienced his first PTSD symptoms in August 2003, two months after he returned. It took him another six months to call the VA and get help.
In his Bellingham apartment, the mild-mannered 22-year-old does talk to a reporter -- haltingly, thoughtfully, apologizing when he can't go on.
Over there, he said, soldiers joked that they'd all go nuts. Now it's not so funny.
The lance corporal, who signed up with the reserves out of high school to pay for college, has had several breakdowns, struggled with sleep, lost his temper, lost his appetite, turned to booze, started fights in bars. "My friends had to pull me off, calm me down."
Nothing's the same now. Especially him.
It's hard to concentrate in class. He walked out of a lecture on the Iraq war; the history teacher was a liberal, he says.
When someone brings up the war at a party, a casual conversation can quickly morph into an ugly situation. "I get more and more involved, it builds and builds, then they cut me off because I've freaked them out."
If a battle scene from Iraq rolls on the TV news, he freezes. "I know I should change the channel, get away, but I can't move."
Pictures of Iraq wind and rewind in his mind: the starving children crawling out from beneath homes of old rubble and debris as U.S. troops roll in; the cheers for Americans with water systems and food supplies, come to make everything OK; the warnings from commanding officers that any villager could be armed with explosives.
"These people are happy to see you, they're cheering, and you're wondering if the same guy cheering for you might blow you up," he says.
It's a complicated past, tied to an unreadable future.
"I just don't want all of it to be for nothing," says the Marine reservist. "This took a big chunk of my life away -- and I want it to count for something."
His head falls into his hands. When he looks up, there are tears welling in his eyes.
"Sorry," he says softly. "I'm sorry."
No one understands. And he can't translate.
GETTING HELP
Veterans Affairs medical centers throughout Washington offer confidential mental health care for returning soldiers. Washington's Department of Veterans Affairs has 19 contractors in a PTSD outpatient program throughout the state, plus eight contractors funded through the King County veterans program.
For information about services and referrals, call state VA PTSD Program Director Tom Schumacher at 360-586-1076 or 800-562-2308.
A complete list of state VA PTSD providers, their locations, and contact information can be found at www.dva.wa.gov; click on "PTSD."
The VA Medical Center in Seattle has a special deployment health clinic to handle mental and physical post-combat evaluation and treatment, as well as counseling on family issues, VA benefits and other issues. Early intervention in PTSD, say administrators, is key. "It's a little like anemia. It can creep up on your over time and affect your life profoundly," says director Steve Hunt. Call 206-764-2636.
The 24-hour line to call for help at the VA center is 206-762-1010.
Federal vet centers offering readjustment and bereavement counseling in storefront locations around the region include: Tacoma 253-565-7038, Spokane 509-444-8387, Bellingham 360-733-9226
HISTORY AND SYMPTOMS
In the Civil War, veterans with psychological combat disorders were diagnosed with "soldier's heart." In World War I, the term was "shell shock" and in World War II "combat fatigue." The term "post traumatic stress disorder" was added to official Veterans Affairs' diagnostic codes in the early 1980s.
The brain disorder affects the body's nervous system to varying degrees. Symptoms include:
- A hyperalert state
- Startled reactions to noises or sudden movements
- Anger, anxiety, suicidal feelings
- Numbness, lack of emotion
- Insomnia, nightmares
- Self-medication with drugs, alcohol
- Guilt, depression
- Difficulty with concentration
For some soldiers, "three hots and a cot" in the field will relieve symptoms. For others, problems may fade with the return to families and routines. PTSD specialists say that if symptoms last longer than a month, soldiers should consider seeking help.
ABOUT THE SOLDIERS
All the soldiers in these stories have served in Iraq. Most asked that their name not be used, for fear of repercussions. They agreed to talk in hope it would help others serving in uniform. Those diagnosed with PTSD and PTSD symptoms are all in treatment. P-I SERIES
This is one in an occasional series on soldiers returning from Iraq and the challenges that await them at home.
We would like to hear from soldiers and their families on the home front or war front. Call 206-448-8344
or email us at WarComesHome@seattlepi.com
P-I reporter M.L. Lyke can be reached at 206-448-8344 or m.l.lyke@seattlepi.com
----
Inside the Ring: Rummy's future, etc.
August 27, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Rummy's future
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likely will step down in mid-2005 if President Bush wins re-election.
That is the word being passed around in the Pentagon for staffers trying to plan their futures. Our sources say Mr. Rumsfeld, 72, would have most of his transformation programs well in place by the time he left in the summer of 2005, or possibly that fall.
His spokesmen have declined to discuss his future. Mr. Rumsfeld has said his tenure as secretary is up to the president.
Talking points
The military is circulating these talking points to sell President Bush's plan for drawing down troops in Europe and South Korea.
•Give military personnel more time at home and fewer moves over a career
•Give military spouses few job changes
•Save billions of dollars in the long term by closing down bases overseas and using excess capacity in the United States.
• Increase the armed forces' flexibility by designating U.S.-based units for a large number of contingencies overseas.
China eyes PACOM
Defense officials tell us China's intelligence service agents and diplomats are scrambling to find out what was behind the announcement last week that Air Force Gen. Gregory S. Martin will be the new chief of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Gen. Martin aced out at least one Navy admiral for the job, and the Navy is said to be upset that the key post went to an Air Force general and not an admiral.
Recent past Pacific commanders have leaned toward the "China-is-not-a-threat" school of military officers who have tended to downplay the growing military buildup in China.
Traditionally, the Army usually gets the command of U.S. forces in South Korea and the Air Force has tended to be the lead service over military forces in Japan, while the Navy for decades has had the lead on forces in Hawaii and the rest of the Pacific.
The appointment of Gen. Martin is viewed by defense officials as an effort by Mr. Rumsfeld to toughen up the U.S. defense posture in the region, specifically toward China.
A senior defense official said a key feature of Mr. Rumsfeld's troop relocation plan is to "move the center of gravity [of U.S. forces] from Europe to Asia."
Gen. Martin has been involved in developing the Air Force's next generation of advanced weapons - arms that should make the Chinese think twice before attempting to invade Taiwan and risking U.S. retaliation.
A specialist on high-technology warfare who favors precision guided weapons, based on advanced sensors and good intelligence, Gen. Martin said in a speech in November that modern warfare is more about "integration" of forces and information, than just the idea of employing "joint" forces.
"I'm very high on the concept of integration," said Gen. Martin, who will be moving to Hawaii from his current job as commander of the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
"I'm very high on the concept of making sure we have standards and systems that do communicate and pass information, because frankly I don't care if it's an Air Force space system, an [National Reconnaissance Office] space system, a Navy airborne system, an Army trooper on the ground that gives me the last piece of information that puts the cursor over the target. It won't happen if they aren't integrated, so I'm absolutely dedicated to that."
Missile defense
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took a jab at critics of U.S. missile defense efforts during a speech last week in Huntsville, Ala.
When he joined a commission on ballistic missile threats in 1998, "I was stunned by how theological the missile defense debate had become. It was really a hair knot," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"Everyone felt something very, very strongly about it. Even the proponents disagreed very strongly. And the opponents disagreed very strongly. And things were pretty much on dead center as a result of it. It was a shame."
Mr. Rumsfeld said President Bush ended the impasse by junking the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He noted that two years after Mr. Bush announced the decision to finally deploy a missile defense system, "in the past few weeks, the first interceptor has been put in place in Fort Greeley, Alaska," and that "by the end of this year we expect to have a limited operational capability against incoming ballistic missiles."
Mr. Rumsfeld said the initial deployment represents "the triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism." The deployment probably is "somewhat of a disappointment for those who were convinced it would fail," he said.
He noted his cordial discussions days earlier with Russian officials on missile defense and said that critics, primarily liberal weapons-control advocates, who think U.S. missile defenses would be destabilizing were wrong.
"The sky-is-falling group was wrong. The sky did not fall. It's still up there."
Mr. Rumsfeld also was asked about the danger of terrorists or rogue states attacking the United States by putting a short-range Scud-type missile on a freighter and firing it close to U.S. shores.
He said one Middle East nation already has "launched a ballistic missile from a cargo vessel."
"They had taken a short-range, probably Scud missile, put it on a transporter-erector launcher, lowered it in, taken the vessel out into the water, peeled back the top, erected it, fired it, lowered it, covered it up. And the ship that they used was using a radar and electronic equipment that was no different than 50, 60, 100 other ships operating in the immediate area."
Other U.S. officials have said the nation was Iran, which tested a freighter-launched missile in the Caspian Sea in the late 1990s.
"It is true that the big distinction we make between intercontinental, medium-range and shorter-range ballistic missiles doesn't make a lot of sense if you're going to move the missile closer to the target," he said.
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5,500 GIs get orders for Afghanistan
Stars and Stripes
By Jon R. Anderson,
August 27, 2004
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24050
HEIDELBERG, Germany - Army units in Germany and Italy have begun receiving marching orders for the next rotation of forces into Afghanistan, according to a spokesman for Army forces in Europe.
More than 5,500 troops from Europe will deploy into the combat zone beginning in late fall, with most of the forces in place by the end of the winter, said Michael Tolzmann, U.S. Army Europe spokesman.
It's unclear, however, what U.S.-based units will round out the deployment into Afghanistan.
The rotation marks the first major contingent from Europe embarking for duty in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion almost three years ago.
The Italy-based Southern European Task Force is slated to take over command of the mission in March. The 2,000-strong SETAF, commanded by Brig. Gen. Jason Kamiya, will replace the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division which has been on the ground since spring.
With force levels in Afghanistan expected to hold steady at about 17,900 troops, SETAF's two battalions of paratroops will not be able to do the job alone. Europe-based troops will provide some of the help.
Joining them will be Germany-based AH-64 Apache Longbow and UH-60 Black Hawk crews, as well as a wide variety of intelligence, medical, military police and other support units.
While few if any of the Europe-based units have been to Afghanistan, many are veterans of the war in Iraq. SETAF, for example, jumped into Kurdish-held territory in the north at the beginning of the war there while the 2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, a V Corps Apache unit based in Illesheim, provided deep-strike and close-air support through the invasion from Kuwait. The Illesheim unit returned from Fort Hood, Texas, last month after converting to the updated Longbow version of the Apache.
Troops from the Giebelstadt-based 3rd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, a Black Hawk unit, learned they will be headed to Afghanistan, barely a year after finishing an extended 13-month tour in Iraq.
The news of another year at war drew resigned sighs from the 3-158 Aviation's combat veterans. Several said they're at least relieved they'll be going someplace different.
"I'd prefer a change in scenery - and a little cooler climate," said Spc. Brian Ferry, 20, of Rockland, Pa.
To others, though, the change matters little.
"The mission's the same," said Spc. Juan Haninger, 23, of Stockton, Calif. "It's just a different location."
There is currently the rough equivalent of seven infantry battalions operating in Afghanistan, including three light-infantry battalions from the 25th ID's Third Brigade, one battalion of Marines, and one battalion from the Virginia Army National Guard.
Meanwhile, one field artillery regiment from the 25th ID is performing a mix of infantry and artillery duties while the division's cavalry squadron also is performing largely light-infantry duties.
With only two infantry battalions so far slated to deploy, it's unclear what other combat forces will round out next rotation.
The 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment is one of the few ground combat units in Europe that has not just returned from Iraq or currently is there. In fact, the unit was attached to SETAF to provide an armored punch for the unit as it pushed toward Baghdad from the north.
According to senior Army officials in Europe, the unit is now training for infantry duties at the Combat Maneuver Training Center in eastern Germany. Officials, however, could not confirm whether the battalion would deploy to Afghanistan.
"That unit has not been given deployment orders," said Hilde Patton, a V Corps spokeswoman.
Even if 1-63 Armor does join the deployment, that still leaves four battalions worth of infantry off the roster.
So far, all the Pentagon has said is that "elements of XVIII Airborne Corps" would provide the balance of forces.
-Steve Liewer contributed to this report.
Operation Enduring Freedom 6
The next rotation of European-based units are expected to begin deploying to Afghanistan in late fall.
They include:
Southern European Task Force
Headquarters and Headquarters Company, SETAF
Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 173rd Airborne Brigade
1st Battalion, 508 Infantry Regiment
2nd Battalion, 503 Infantry Regiment
173rd Forward Support Battalion (Provisional)
74th Long Range Surveillance Detachment
Battery D, 319th Field Artillery Regiment
13th Military Police Company
24th Quartermaster Company
V Corps
Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 12th Aviation Brigade
2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment
3rd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment
Company F, 159th Aviation Battalion
Company C, 3rd Battalion, 58th Aviation Regiment
212th Military Police Company
92nd Military Police Company
Task Force 165th Military Intelligence
77th Ordnance Company
26th Quartermaster Company
79th Medical Detachment
71st Medical Detachment
254th Medical Detachment
21st Theater Support Command
Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 29th Support Group
14th Movement Control Battalion
720th Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal)
Elements of 191st Ordnance Battalion
23rd Ordnance Company
5th Maintenance Company
69th Transportation Company
Elements of the 251st Transportation Company
Nine military working dog teams
5th Signal Command
44th Signal Battalion
Elements of the 509th Signal Battalion
1st Personnel Command
Headquarters, Headquarters Detachment, 510th Personnel Support Battalion
Company C, 510th Personnel Support Battalion
Several postal platoons from the 510th PSB
266th Finance Command
Headquarters, Headquarters Detachment, 39th Finance Battalion
Company A, 39th Finance Battalion
Company B, 208th Finance Battalion
18th Engineer Brigade
Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 18th Engineer Brigade
60th Engineer Detachment
7th Army Reserve Command
Reserve augmentees for SETAF
66th Military Intelligence Group
Three tactical human intelligence teams
-------- war crimes
Pinochet Loses Immunity in Chile
Ruling May Lead to Human Rights Trials
By Kathleen Day and Pascale Bonnefoy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36970-2004Aug26.html
Chile's Supreme Court yesterday stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution, paving the way for possible trials of the 88-year-old general on charges of human rights abuses during his 17-year rule.
The court's 9 to 8 decision, leaving Pinochet open to prosecution for his role in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of 19 political dissidents, upheld a lower court decision earlier this year that lifted his immunity as a former head of state. On previous occasions, the Chilean court had refused to revisit the immunity issue because Pinochet had been found mentally unfit to stand trial.
In a hearing Wednesday, prosecutors argued that he was competent, citing evidence including recent disclosures that Pinochet secretly held and managed millions of dollars at Riggs Bank in Washington while he was under house arrest in London pleading that he was too sick to be extradited to Spain to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
The ruling, which cannot be appealed, suggested that the lower court judge investigating the 19 murders order new psychiatric exams for Pinochet.
Chile's high court had lifted Pinochet's immunity before, in 2000, but his defense lawyers argued -- and the following year the court agreed -- that mild dementia made him unfit for trial. Two further attempts to lift his immunity to face other human rights charges were turned down.
Pinochet's lawyers say they will argue again that he is mentally incompetent. "I believe that sooner or later, he will be exempted because of the medical reasons established by the Supreme Court [in 2001]," said Pinochet's lead attorney and former government official under his regime, Ambrosio Rodriguez, after yesterday's decision.
But human rights lawyers say it will be tougher this time because of the clarity of mind they say Pinochet showed in a Miami television interview in November and in the handling of his international financial transactions in recent years. Prosecutor Hiram Villagra said he is hopeful that today's ruling will allow for renewed investigation of scores of other human rights cases. "This decision set a precedent for future efforts to lift his immunity: The mental exams practiced on Pinochet in 2001 do not hold true for the 300 or so other criminal cases pending in courts. With this precedent, we can ask to lift his immunity for dozens of other cases now," Villagra said.
After years of wrangling in the courts over Pinochet's status in hundreds of different human rights cases, the ruling does not necessarily set a precedent for other cases against Pinochet. Additional decisions on immunity will have to be made in other cases.
"With all of the scandals surrounding the Pinochet family lately, we hope that the government and the courts understand that they have to clean the name of this country in the face of the international community, and there is only one way to do it: putting Pinochet on trial," said Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared and daughter of a Communist Party leader who disappeared in the mid-'70s. Pinochet seized power from socialist president Salvador Allende in a bloody coup in 1973.
Pinochet's legal problems have been growing in recent months. Last month, Chilean investigators opened a probe into the source of the millions of dollars in Pinochet's accounts abroad following the release of a Senate report on possible money-laundering violations at Riggs Bank. The violations included evidence Pinochet actively managed as much as $8 million at Riggs from 1996 to 2002 to hide assets from international prosecutors seeking restitution for the families of his alleged victims.
The report sparked a judicial investigation into how Pinochet's wealth was accumulated, specifically whether it was obtained from state funds or other illegal means. And it set off a fierce debate among political conservatives who once backed Pinochet but are now reassessing that support and the political damage it could cause them. Within the past four weeks, a judge questioned Pinochet's wife and children, and finally, even Pinochet himself for 45 minutes.
"The decision is enormously significant," said Mark Falcoff, a Latin American scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "The discovery of the bank accounts at Riggs has put into motion a process within the Chilean right to distance themselves from Pinochet. This lifting of the immunity is proof of just how far that has gone. This could mean the de-Pinochetization of the Chilean right."
"The right wing doesn't want to carry any more baggage for Pinochet, and this gives them excuse to distance themselves," he said. "It's conceivable Pinochet will be tried."
A spokesman for the Latin American bureau of the State Department would not comment on yesterday's ruling, except to say, "We . . . fully respect the Chilean legal system." The Justice Department, which is probing activities at Riggs, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Special correspondent Bonnefoy contributed from Santiago.
--------
Chile's Top Court Strips Pinochet of Immunity
August 27, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/international/americas/27pinochet.html
SANTIAGO, Chile, Aug. 26 - Chile's Supreme Court stripped the former dictator Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution in a notorious human rights case on Thursday, raising hopes of victims that he may finally face trial for abuses during his 17-year rule.
The ruling upheld a lower court decision in May that removed the immunity that had been granted him as a former head of state.
The lower court said the retired general, who is 88, could be charged in connection with the disappearance of 19 leftists in the mid-1970's as part of Operation Condor, a joint effort by South America's military dictators to help each other wipe out dissidents.
The ruling is the latest in six years of back-and-forth court decisions in hundreds of human rights cases in which General Pinochet has been accused of ordering the secret police to kidnap, torture and kill leftists.
General Pinochet took power in a coup in 1973, and at least 3,000 leftists were killed during his rule. He has been out of office since 1990 but has remained untouchable in the courts.
Human rights lawyers say the odds are now against General Pinochet as public opinion has turned further against him after the recent discovery of secret multimillion-dollar accounts, leading to new accusations of fraud and embezzlement.
"We're happy and we're going to keep pushing," said Lorena Pizarro, president of the association of relatives of the disappeared.
Operation Condor was the military code name for an intelligence-sharing network between Chile and other South American dictatorships in the 1970's that rights groups say aimed to eliminate dissidents throughout the region.
But General Pinochet's lawyers told the Supreme Court in hearings this week that the collaboration between countries in Operation Condor was comparable to antiterrorism efforts in Europe since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
In Chile, previous court rulings do not set precedent, so each separate case against General Pinochet winds through the system to the Supreme Court, which must rule whether to remove immunity from prosecution.
The highest court removed General Pinochet's immunity once before, in 2001, but his defense lawyers successfully argued that his mild dementia made him unfit to stand trial.
They are expected to present that defense again, which could stall a trial indefinitely.
However, human rights lawyers say making that defense will be more difficult this time because General Pinochet gave a lucid interview to a Miami television station in December. A psychiatrists' analysis of the broadcast, presented by plaintiffs, concluded that he was in good mental health.
A United States Senate committee's report in July that revealed that General Pinochet held up to $8 million in secret offshore bank accounts outraged many Chileans.
"There's a sensation that Pinochet is not as untouchable as he was before," said Juan Subercaseaux, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Detainee Tells Hearing He Was Member Of Al Qaeda
Suspect Seeks to Represent Self in Military Proceeding
By Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35065-2004Aug26?language=printer
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 26 -- A detainee accused of coordinating propaganda for Osama bin Laden admitted Thursday at a military hearing here that he was an al Qaeda member and began to address the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before he was cut off.
Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul, 36, of Yemen, made the admission while arguing that he wants to represent himself before the military commission, which will decide whether the suspect conspired to commit war crimes against the United States.
"I am from al Qaeda, and the relationship between me and September 11 . . .," Bahlul said before Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III stopped him and continued the hearing behind closed doors for 30 minutes.
Brownback told the five other commission members, who will serve as judges and jurors in the case, to disregard Bahlul's statement because he was not under oath. Brownback directed them not to consider it as evidence.
But prosecutors said they believed the statement could be used. A commission spokeswoman, Navy Lt. Susan M. McGarvey, said later that Bahlul's statement may be introduced as evidence because rules do not require officials to inform suspects that what they say can be used against them.
It was not clear what Bahlul intended to say about his relationship to the Sept. 11 attacks. He did not pick up where he left off when the public proceedings resumed.
The scene was similar to Zacarias Moussaoui's July 2002 declaration during a federal court hearing that he was an al Qaeda member and wanted to plead guilty to his role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States with involvement in the attacks, was representing himself at the time. A week later, he rescinded his guilty plea and claimed that he had no advance knowledge of the attacks.
Also Thursday, military officials pledged to examine growing complaints of translation problems in the courtroom and in other hearings the military is holding here to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted "enemy combatants" access to federal courts.
Bahlul, allegedly a longtime associate of bin Laden's, was wearing a polo shirt, trousers and black sneakers when escorted into the hearing room. He was not shackled.
Prosecutors say Bahlul served as a bodyguard for the al Qaeda leader and as his propagandist, creating motivational videos, such as one that glorified the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in a Yemen harbor that killed 17 sailors. Military prosecutors also contend that Bahlul unsuccessfully tried to arrange a satellite feed so bin Laden could watch news coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bahlul is the third of four men scheduled to have the equivalent of pretrial hearings here this week. They are the first to be brought before U.S. military commissions since the end of World War II.
After Bahlul sat next to his military-appointed defense team -- Navy Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Army Maj. Mark A. Bridges -- the presiding officer of the commission began to ask about his legal counsel. Bahlul said he wants to represent himself or have a Yemeni attorney.
"No one should worry about me causing problems or being loud or saying anything that will be inflammatory," Bahlul said through an interpreter. "I can give you my word."
Brownback told him military commission rules do not permit defendants to represent themselves and require that defense lawyers be U.S. citizens who can be given security clearances to review sensitive evidence.
But Bahlul insisted that he will not participate in the trial if he cannot represent himself or work with a lawyer from Yemen. "If the American system will not allow me to represent myself, I will be forced to attend and I will be a listener," he said.
The translations of some of Bahlul's remarks raised questions about the quality of the interpreters. At one point, an interpreter reported that Bahlul said the "American government is under no pressure" to make the Sept. 11 statement, when he actually said the American government had not pressured him to make the statement, according to Fuad Yahya, a court-appointed interpreter who was sitting in the audience.
Yahya and Arabic-speaking journalists said they noticed numerous problems Thursday with interpreters, who are in short supply because they must be U.S. citizens who can hold security clearances. The defense lawyer for another suspect said his client could not understand the interpreter.
"What happened today, I really didn't expect it to this extent," Yahya said after the hearing. "Part of it could be nervousness. Part of it could be the transmission. Part of it could be they are not up to the task."
Civil liberties and human rights groups monitoring the hearings here said correct translations are critical to fair trials, and representatives questioned how a military commission could permit a suspect to implicate himself in a crime and then use that as evidence in the upcoming trial.
"What we saw today was a failure," said Deborah Pearlstein, an attorney for Human Rights First.
The legal adviser to the commissions disagreed. "It's been our goal all along to have a process that is fair," Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemmingway said at a news conference at the Pentagon, adding that he will examine the complaints about the interpreters. "We feel that the process that has been set up complies with international norms. And I think you've seen that we've got some very talented counsel on both sides who are working this issue."
At the end of Thursday's two-hour hearing, Brownback gave defense lawyers and prosecutors several weeks to prepare legal arguments over whether Bahlul can represent himself or hire a foreign national as an attorney. A decision by the chief of the military commissions is not expected until after Sept. 30.
--------
Terror Tribunal Defendant Demands to Be Own Lawyer
August 27, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27gitmo.html
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 26 - A 36-year-old Yemeni on trial here for conspiracy to commit terrorism threw the military commission proceedings into confusion on Thursday by saying that he was a member of Al Qaeda and declaring that if he was not allowed to represent himself he would boycott the trial and, if forced to attend, would only sit silently in the courtroom.
The defendant, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul, who has been charged with being a top aide to Osama bin Laden, engaged, through translators, in a polite but aggressive 30-minute colloquy with the presiding officer in which he attacked the fairness of the process and demanded to serve as his own lawyer.
Col. Peter E. Brownback III, the presiding officer on the five-member commission panel, who seemed taken by surprise when told of Mr. Bahlul's request, first read aloud the rules drafted for the military commissions, which explicitly require a defendant to have a military lawyer. He then said: "So, the answer is that you may not represent yourself."
A few minutes later, after Mr. Bahlul said, "You have ruled I cannot serve as my own lawyer," Colonel Brownback replied that he did not recall saying that. He then ruled that Mr. Bahlul's request would be forwarded to authorities in Washington.
In addressing Colonel Brownback, Mr. Bahlul at one point asked not to be interrupted. He declared that there was no evidence as important as a confession given freely and that everyone in the courtroom and around the globe should know that he was speaking without being forced.
He then said: "I am from Al Qaeda. And the relationship between me and Sept. 11 -- "
At that point he was abruptly cut off by Colonel Brownback, who apologized for interrupting but said he wanted to remind his fellow panel members that Mr. Bahlul's statements should not be taken as evidence to be used against him. When Mr. Bahlul resumed speaking, he did not pick up where he had left off and never completed the sentence about his relationship to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway of the Air Force, a commission official, told reporters at the Pentagon in Washington after the session that Colonel Brownback had only been trying to protect Mr. Bahlul. There is, however, no protection against self-incrimination in the military commission proceedings.
The day's events raised the possibility that the proceedings specifically established to provide a more efficient alternative to the nation's civilian criminal courts could become as problem-ridden as the terrorism trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, which is now tied up in knots in federal court in Virginia. Mr. Moussaoui was initially allowed to represent himself with qualified lawyers acting as standby counsel, but the trial judge eventually ruled that the system was not working and ordered him to accept legal representation.
In the two cases heard earlier this week in the first military commissions since the end of World War II, the defendants have spoken only sparingly. Thus the criticism of the system heard from other defense lawyers and the representatives of some human rights groups who have been observing the proceedings.
But on Thursday, Mr. Bahlul himself expressed objections about the fairness of the proceedings, noting at one point that under the tribunals' rules, he is prevented from seeing evidence to be used against him if Colonel Brownback deems it classified or "protected information."
"I don't think it's fair that the evidence will not be presented,'' Mr. Bahlul said. "An accused cannot defend himself without seeing evidence himself or through an attorney."
The commission planners had expected to deal with that situation by requiring that defendants be represented by a military lawyer with security clearance. Mr. Bahlul was adamant, however, that he would not accept such representation, pointing to the two military lawyers seated beside him and saying, "They do not represent me."
The other principal criticism raised by civil liberties and human rights groups is that the proceedings are inherently unfair because there is no independent appeals process. All appeals are to military panels and to the secretary of defense.
Mr. Bahlul is charged with making a videotape celebrating the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole as a Qaeda recruiting tool.
The day's proceedings were marred by translation difficulties, which have been a chronic problem throughout the week. Translators hired by defense lawyers in the audience provided alternate translations and criticized the choppy versions offered by the tribunal's interpreters.
At one point, Mr. Bahlul suggested that he might accept a Yemeni lawyer, but he mostly seemed to insist on representing himself.
"In short, I would like to represent myself," he said, adding that he would not be obstreperous or make inflammatory statements.
"If American law does not allow me to represent myself, and if I will be forced to attend, I will be a listener only."
Neal R. Sonnett, a Miami lawyer who is observing the proceedings for the American Bar Association, said the problems that arose over Mr. Bahlul's request and the pending decision in Washington were the result of using an entirely new set of rules being "written on the run."
The first round of hearings for four defendants is expected to end Friday.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
U.S. Tightens Security After Russian Crashes
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37269-2004Aug26.html
U.S. officials have quietly stepped up security measures on inbound flights from Russia after two commercial jets crashed within minutes of each other after departing from a Moscow airport earlier this week.
The move reflects U.S. authorities' concern that the crashes, which killed 89 people, may have been acts of terrorism, even though Russian officials continue to suggest they were coincidental accidents.
Los Angeles residents reported seeing U.S. fighter jets escort an Aeroflot Russian Airlines flight Wednesday on an unusual path over the ocean on approach to the airport. An official familiar with the security procedures said military jets are likely to continue tracking Russian flights into U.S. cities, including those bound for Washington, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
U.S. security officials said they did not request the escorts but the military unit in charge of domestic defense, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, took the action on its own. The officials said they are considering whether to require carriers operating flights to the United States from Moscow -- Delta Air Lines and Aeroflot -- to tighten security on those routes. Such measures could include additional screening of passengers and their luggage before boarding, extra screening of luggage and the placement of armed air marshals on board.
"We constantly evaluate security measures in the United States every day," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "Based on our current assessment of intelligence and threat reports, we are not implementing any additional security measures at this time."
A NORAD spokesman said the military unit does not discuss its operations.
U.S. officials declined to comment publicly as to whether the plane crashes in Russia -- neither of which involved Russian carrier Aeroflot -- appeared to be accidental, saying that it was up to Russian investigators to determine the causes of each crash. U.S. officials offered to provide technical assistance to the investigations but the Russian government has not yet requested it, a State Department spokesman said.
Even though intelligence reports do not indicate any new terrorist threats to U.S. airliners, security officials said they are monitoring the events in Russia because they come at a time when security is already being tightened this weekend in New York for the Republican National Convention.
"We are closely monitoring the crash investigations," said one U.S. security official.
--------
Government to Begin Passenger Screening
August 27, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/27fly.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - Officials from the Department of Homeland Security formalized plans on Thursday to begin screening airline passengers against a list of potential terror suspects, taking over a responsibility now carried out by the airlines.
The officials said they planned to begin testing the system, which will compare passenger names against terrorist watch lists, in November. They hope to review the results in December and to start screening passenger lists provided by airlines in January. The decision to assume responsibility from the airlines was announced last week.
Advocates for tougher screening requirements and civil libertarians have criticized the current system, under which airline employees check passenger names against government watch lists to ensure that terror suspects do not board airplanes and that law enforcement officials are promptly notified of potential security risks.
Rear Adm. David M. Stone, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, said the new system, called Secure Flight, would be more secure. And with one agency handling the screening as opposed to several dozen airlines, passengers will find it easier to resolve problems if their names happen to resemble those of suspected terrorists, Admiral Stone said on Thursday in a conference call with reporters.
--------
An armor-clad Big Apple
The Christian Science Monitor
By Alexandra Marks
August 27, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0827/p03s01-usgn.html
NEW YORK - Call it Fort New York. Street barricades are going up, heavily armed antiterror squads are making unannounced rounds, bomb-sniffing dogs are inspecting cars and trucks, Coast Guard boats are patrolling the Hudson, and new high-tech helicopters are hovering in the skies over Manhattan. That's not to mention the thousands of officers who've been taken off their desk jobs to ride the rails underground.
And the Republican convention doesn't even start until Monday.
In the ramp-up to what officials are calling the most "intense and comprehensive" security effort ever to protect a national political convention, the New York Police Department - in conjunction with the US Secret Service, state, and other federal agencies - are putting on a show of force designed to give any Al Qaeda operative pause.
While there's been no new intelligence indicating that a terrorist threat is imminent, the Joint Terrorism Task Force continues to comb through the hundreds of Al Qaeda files and computer disks discovered last month in Britain and Pakistan that indicated New York financial institutions had been thoroughly cased. They are also analyzing all new intelligence that comes in "24/7."
"We've been preparing intensely for threats like this for the last 2-1/2 years," says Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "We can't say precisely what's coming or when, but we've never been better prepared than we are today."
Security experts from across the country are praising the city's overall effort from the comprehensive nature of the planning to its ability to keep key specifics of their security operation under wraps. But they caution, no matter how well-prepared police may be, terrorists have proven time and again to be wily and versatile. And New York presents more challenges than most cities because of its size, diversity, and insistence on maintaining business as usual.
Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg is urging people to come and enjoy the city, despite the convention and more than 100 planned protests, to say nothing of the ones promised by various anarchists.
Then there are the nonconvention events that will get under way next week, from the US Open Tennis Tournament to home series for both the Mets and the Yankees, a half marathon in Central Park, plus a number of concerts and other such cultural affairs. "There are so many events, and despite having the biggest police force in the world, there are still only so many folks you can put on the ground in one place," says Mark Moore, eastern region director of The Steele Foundation, an international security firm. "The softer the target the more vulnerable it is to these guys."
Mr. Moore contends that Al Qaeda has not "made its living" by hitting large, highly secure and scheduled events. The only time they tried recently was during the millennium, when Ahmed Rezzam, an Al Qaeda operative based in Canada, was arrested as he crossed into the US with a bomb in his car that he planned to detonate at the Los Angeles airport. But US intelligence agencies and the NYPD are taking seriously recent intelligence that indicates that Al Qaeda hoped to interrupt this fall's election.
"They know it's certainly a target, let's not forget what happened in Madrid before the elections," says Richard "Bo" Dietl, a security consultant to the Republican National Convention. "This is a threat that's really there and it's always going to be there now, and people have to realize that."
Many New Yorkers like Rabbi Shimon Grama are already quite accustomed to the regular armed presence and roadblocks near tunnels and bridges where trucks are stopped and checked. And like most New Yorkers he has an opinion about it. Rabbi Grama was once a sergeant major in the Israeli army, and while he applauds the NYPD for doing "almost everything they can," he also had a few concerns.
"I didn't see them checking gas tanks. In Israel, we had a simple stick that we put into the gas tank to see whether the depth is proper and sometimes we came across a situation with a fake bottom," he says. "Any terrorist who's going to come in, isn't going to put the bomb in the back of the truck, they're going to hide it in their gas tank."
But Detective Joe Putkowski, who's been a bomb technician with the NYPD for 16 years, says it's impossible to check every single truck that comes into the city. "New York has a unique situation that no other city has, we have all of these people and vehicles in and out, trucks double parked all over the place making deliveries," he says. "If we determine a truck is suspicious we run a dog around it, but there are certain things you don't have to do every time."
Detective Putkowski, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is confident that if there's trouble, the city will be prepared.
-------- police
Lost Evidence Is Found in Houston Crime Lab
August 27, 2004
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/national/27lab.html
HOUSTON, Aug. 26 - Internal police investigators looking into the already discredited Houston police crime laboratory have found 280 boxes of lost evidence that include a fetus and body parts and involve some 8,000 cases, including murders, going back to the 1970's, the Houston police chief announced Thursday.
The unexpected disclosure by Chief Harold Hurtt that the items were found a year ago, before his arrival, staggered defense lawyers and criminal justice officials, who said they could not begin to assess the effect on an already overworked criminal justice system.
The cases affected date from about 1979 to 1991, Chief Hurtt said. "Some of them are open cases, open murder cases," he said.
After his announcement, at downtown Police Headquarters, reporters were shown to a 24th-floor office where cartons stacked from floor to ceiling were being opened, emptied and cataloged by a half-dozen laboratory workers in face masks and rubber gloves.
Chief Hurtt said it could take up to a year to sort out the material and match it to inmates in prison or suspects in other cases. Some of the evidence, he said, may be linked to the 379 cases in which prisoners convicted in Harris County have requested the retesting of DNA evidence to establish their innocence.
Chief Hurtt, who arrived from Phoenix in February with a mandate to clean house, said the boxes, mislabeled with case numbers that did not reflect the evidence workers had been "shoveling" inside, were found last August in a police property room where they had been sent by the laboratory. He said that the significance of the discovery had not been immediately recognized, that he had been made aware of it only in April or May and that the inventorying of the contents did not begin until last week.
Capt. Mark Curran of the inspections division said the items included "a fetus that had been tagged and brought back" and "some other body parts from different homicide cases."
Asked how the department could have lost track of so much evidence, Chief Hurtt cited unnamed laboratory staff members and said, "What we know right now has happened because of poor work habits and sloppy efforts." The laboratory's toxicology division, which tested DNA, blood and hair evidence, was shut down in January 2003 after an audit found that technicians there were poorly trained, kept shoddy records and misinterpreted data. One prisoner, Josiah Sutton, convicted of rape at 16 in 1999, was released last year and pardoned after DNA retesting showed the Houston crime laboratory's results implicating him had been faulty.
The Harris County district attorney, Chuck Rosenthal, whose prosecutorial district is the third-largest in the country, after those of Los Angeles and Chicago, said his felony trial bureau and writs section took the news hard. "I thought they were going to cry," Mr. Rosenthal said.
Defense lawyers voiced amazement. "This is in a league by itself," said Barry Scheck, a defense lawyer and director of the Innocence Project, which represents prisoners claiming to have been unfairly convicted. He called the mishandling of evidence "unparalleled in the Houston police lab's legacy of fraud, incompetence and confusion."
Earlier this month, the group attacked as faulty the testimony of the former supervisor of the laboratory's DNA section, James Bolding, that sent a Houston man, George Rodriquez, to prison for 17 years for rape. The real evidence, Mr. Scheck said, pointed to another man. Chief Hurtt, in a written statement Thursday, noted that Mr. Bolding had "inappropriately documented" property in another case. Mr. Bolding, who resigned in June 2003 in the face of a recommendation by the chief at the time that he be fired, did not respond to a telephone message left at his home.
Mayor Bill White, who took office this year succeeding Lee P. Brown, a former New York City police commissioner and a three-term occupant of City Hall, called the mishandling of evidence intolerable, adding, "It's hard to get away from the fact that sloppiness in anything of this matter is inexcusable." But he said he had confidence in Chief Hurtt, whom he appointed.
Mr. White said that while no current prosecutions seemed affected by the misplaced evidence, he was hopeful that the recovered evidence could establish the innocence of wrongfully convicted prisoners.
Mr. Rosenthal, the district attorney, said that in some of the 379 cases in which prisoners had filed for the retesting of DNA evidence that convicted them, the police reported that the evidence had been destroyed or lost, and so prosecutors told the courts that it was unavailable. Now, he said, his lawyers may have to go back to court to say some of the evidence, if found, is available after all.
Chief Hurtt said there were more questions than answers at this point. He said he was in the process of hiring outside investigators and a project manager to conduct the inquiry. "We don't know what we have in these boxes," he said.
Asked if anyone should be held accountable, he said, "If we need to conduct further investigations, whether administrative or criminally, we will do that."
Captain Curran said he and the chief were themselves astonished at the multitude of boxes. "Yes, they're bigger than I thought," he said, "and the chief, when he saw them, he said, 'Wow, they're big.' "
Maureen Balleza contributed reporting for this article.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Release of Prisoner 'Imminent,' U.S. Says
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36712-2004Aug26.html
The Justice Department said yesterday that "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi's release is imminent and asked a federal judge for an additional week to work out final details of a settlement with Hamdi's attorneys.
Hamdi, who has been held incommunicado in Navy brigs for two years after being captured with Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001, probably will be sent to Saudi Arabia, prosecutors said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Norfolk. Hamdi is a U.S. citizen, but he spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia, where his family lives.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar has yet to rule on the request for a seven-day stay of the proceedings against Hamdi, which would put off a federal court hearing scheduled for Monday. Doumar last week granted a separate request for a delay but ordered the government to produce Hamdi at Monday's hearing.
Neither Hamdi nor a second U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant -- Jose Padilla, who is accused of plotting to set off a radiological bomb in the United States -- has been seen publicly since being detained. The Hamdi case has been a major test in the war on terrorism, with the Bush administration refusing to allow Hamdi to challenge his detention and holding him for much of the past two years without access to a lawyer. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that, as a U.S. citizen, Hamdi must have access to the U.S. legal system.
Prosecutors and Hamdi's attorneys revealed this month that they were nearing a deal to release Hamdi. People familiar with the negotiations have said that the terms of release are likely to include Hamdi renouncing his U.S. citizenship and accepting travel restrictions and some monitoring by Saudi officials. In addition, he may have to agree not to sue the U.S. government over his detention.
In yesterday's filing, the government said those negotiations "have continued steadily, and considerable progress has been made.'' The filing said that a draft agreement is being circulated and that "only the details" remain to be negotiated.
"In short, [the government] believes that an agreement in principle that will result in Hamdi's release is imminent, and can be reached within the seven-day period for which a stay is sought,'' said the document, which was signed by Justice Department officials including Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria.
The filing cited the "extraordinary nature" of Hamdi's case, which is "fraught with complex and thorny issues" that would require the court to balance national security needs with Hamdi's constitutional rights. Bringing Hamdi to a court hearing "would serve no useful purpose given the likelihood of his imminent release and repatriation to Saudi Arabia,'' the papers said.
In their response, Hamdi's attorneys said they do not object to a seven-day delay, but they chided the government for continuing to hold Hamdi in solitary confinement after the Supreme Court decision. Federal public defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. wrote that the conditions of Hamdi's confinement are "inhumane.''
Earlier in the day, Hamdi's attorneys filed papers challenging the government to explain its detention of Hamdi, who was captured with pro-Taliban forces on the battlefield in northern Afghanistan in November 2001. He was brought to the Navy brig in Norfolk and then the Navy jail at Charleston, S.C., after it was learned that he was born in Baton Rouge, La.
The military designated Hamdi an enemy combatant and held him incommunicado, but his case entered the legal system after Dunham read about his confinement in news accounts. A series of lower-court decisions led to the Supreme Court ruling, in which all the justices except Clarence Thomas rejected the Bush administration's contention that the federal courts could exercise no supervision over such a case.
-------- terrorism
U.N.: Most Terror Attacks Cost Under $50G
August 27, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Terror-Costs.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Al-Qaida terror network spent less than $50,000 on each of its major attacks except the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings and one of its hallmarks is using readily available items like cell phones and knives as weapons, a U.N. report says.
The report released Thursday by a new team monitoring the implementation of U.N. sanctions against al-Qaida and the Taliban detailed just how little it cost to mount terror operations.
For example, the report said the March attacks in the Spanish capital, Madrid, in which nearly 10 simultaneous bombs exploded on four commuter trains, used mining explosives and cell phones as detonators and cost about $10,000 to carry out. The blasts killed 191 people, Spain's worst terror attack.
Only the sophisticated attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, using four hijacked aircraft ``required significant funding of over six figures,'' the report said. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, the vast majority in the collapse of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.
The report said U.N. sanctions have only had ``a limited impact,'' primarily because the U.N. Security Council has reacted to events ``while al-Qaida has shown great flexibility and adaptability in staying ahead of them.''
It cited al-Qaida's transformation from an organization with an established base supporting Afghan fighters run by Osama bin Laden, ``to its current manifestation as a loose network of affiliated underground groups'' with common goals.
The global network of groups doesn't wait for orders from above but launches attacks against targets of their own choosing, using minimal resources and exploiting worldwide publicity ``to create an international sense of crisis,'' the report said.
``There is no prospect of an early end to attacks from al-Qaida associated terrorists,'' it said. ``They will continue to attack targets in both Muslim and non-Muslim states, choosing them according to the resources they have available and the opportunities that occur. While they will look for ways to attack high profile targets, soft targets will be equally vulnerable.''
With the exception of the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida's operations have been inexpensive, the monitoring team said in the report to the Security Council.
The twin nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002 killed 202 people and cost less than $50,000. So did the twin truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed 231 people, including 12 Americans, the report said. And the November 2003 attacks in Istanbul, Turkey -- four suicide truck bombings that killed 62 people -- cost less than $40,000.
U.N. sanctions require all U.N. member states to impose a travel ban and arms embargo against a list of those linked to the Taliban or al-Qaida, currently 317 individuals and 112 groups, and to freeze any assets. Sanctions were first imposed on bin Laden's network in 1999.
The report said not a single country reported stopping an arms shipment or banning entry to a Taliban or al-Qaida member on the U.N. list.
One of al-Qaida's ``hallmarks'' is the simplicity of its methods including the transportation and weapons it uses -- just small arms and knives in the attack on a residential compound in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in May 2004 that killed 22 people, the report said.
But there is evidence al-Qaida wants to acquire ``the means to construct bombs that would disperse chemical, biological or radiological pollutant,'' the monitoring team said, ``and the threat to use such a device was repeated, albeit obliquely, in a communique from the Abu Hafs Brigade, an Al-Qaida offshoot, on July 1, 2004.''
``Al-Qaida related groups have tried at least twice to buy the basic ingredients for a dirty bomb and a good deal of the necessary technical knowledge is available on the Internet,'' it said. ``There is real need therefore to try to design effective measures against this threat.''
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Money to burn / The government tallies the misspending in Iraq
August 27, 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04240/368256.stm
Further evidence that the Bush administration rushed into war in Iraq with no clue to a postwar plan is clear in a recent government report detailing how millions of dollars were frittered away by the U.S. occupation authority.
The report, by the inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority, presents an incredible picture of incompetence, waste and abuse in the expenditure of taxpayer dollars and Iraqi oil money on the part of U.S. officials dispatched to administer Iraq after the March 2003 invasion. At least 27 criminal investigations are pending.
In one case, a civilian employee of the U.S. Defense Department was appointed to coach an Iraqi amateur sports team and was given a $40,000 advance for travel -- in cash. The coach gave the money to his military aide, who gambled most of it away.
That's only a small example. The report documents instance after instance in which contracting, procurement and operating safeguards were ignored, resulting in $200,000 spent for police trucks with no verification that the vehicles were ever delivered; a $7.2 million security contract improperly awarded by a U.S. official who "manipulated" the process and $3.3 million paid for nonexistent workers on an oil-pipeline repair contract.
"In the early days, there was no record keeping," a former CPA official told the Los Angeles Times. "They were flush with money and seized assets. People just didn't follow established procedures."
No wonder the administration was in a hurry to transfer the business of running Iraq back to an interim Iraqi government. The CPA, except for its inspector general, has been disbanded. The mess is now somebody else's problem, but the bill eventually will be paid by -- no surprise -- U.S. taxpayers.
The justification, according to the inspector general, is that CPA officials "faced a variety of daunting challenges, including extremely hazardous working conditions." But that doesn't excuse why the administration didn't put off the invasion until it had a proper occupation plan and competent personnel in place.
The government's report is only more confirmation that Iraq has become a large hole in the desert into which the United States is destined to continue dumping taxpayer dollars.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Reminds Voters Of Response to Attacks
President Trades Compliments With Giuliani
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36848-2004Aug26.html
LAS CRUCES, N.M., Aug. 26 -- It's about 1,900 miles from Ground Zero to this desert outpost, but the attacks on the World Trade Center three years ago were never far from President Bush's lips as he campaigned through New Mexico on Thursday.
With Rudolph W. Giuliani serving as his warm-up act, Bush and the former New York mayor praised each other's responses to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in three rallies across this battleground state.
"During the worst day of my life, the worst days of my life, President Bush stood by us," Giuliani said in his introduction. "He kept every commitment, did everything he could, to rebuild my city and to make my city and my country better than they were before that terrible event."
Bush promptly returned the compliment. "I'm so proud to be traveling with a man who is a strong leader, a man who brought calm to the citizens of New York City during a tragic day, a man who helped lift the spirit of that important part of our country," he said.
The mutual adoration had a purpose. With the Republican National Convention beginning Monday in midtown Manhattan, the Bush campaign is eager to refresh Americans' memories of the president's finest hour: his actions after the terrorist attacks, when a divided country unified behind the president. To underscore that point, Bush is planning to visit a fire station during the convention, and Giuliani is to address the assembly in prime time.
As he does in most stump speeches, Bush on Thursday recalled his response to the attacks. "None of us will ever forget that week when one era ended and another began. On September the 14th, with Rudy by my side, I stood in the ruins of the twin towers," Bush said. "There were workers in hard hats yelling at me, 'Whatever it takes!' A fellow just came out of the rubble, he had bloodshot eyes -- he looked at me right in the eye and said, 'Do not let me down.' "
Neither Bush nor Giuliani made reference to the news produced Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, which reported that the number of Americans in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, to 35.8 million, and the number without health insurance increased by 1.4 million, to nearly 45 million.
The Kerry campaign quickly noted that 5.2 million people have lost health insurance under Bush and 4.3 million have fallen into poverty. Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, also here Thursday (Air Force One and Edwards's plane rested across from each other on the tarmac here), called for a higher minimum wage and vowed: "We say no forever to any American working full time and still living in poverty!"
Bush, however, was buoyant about economic prospects. "Because we acted, our economy since last summer has grown at a rate as fast as any in nearly 20 years," he said. "Because we acted, we've created about 1.5 million new jobs over the past 12 months."
Bush acknowledged that "we have more to do to make quality health care available and affordable," but he reminded audiences that he added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
As is often the case, Bush discussed much of his presidency through the prism of Sept. 11. "The world changed on a terrible September morning, and since that day we have changed the world," he said. He then discussed gains in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, prefacing each comparison with the refrain "before September 11th." Bush also justified his decision to invade Iraq with the 2001 attacks. "Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th, and trust the word of a madman, or take action to defend America?" he asked.
It was Bush's first time campaigning this season with Giuliani at his side, and both men clearly enjoyed the novelty of having a New Yorker campaigning in the Southwest. Giuliani began his speech here with faux confusion, saying, "It's great to be here in Brooklyn."
Bush, who just finished a week of vacation on his Texas ranch, said in an aside to Giuliani: "This is a part of the world, Rudy, where the boots outnumber the suits. Nice to be in country where the cowboy hats outnumber the ties."
--------
Bush Campaign Won't Pull Ad Despite Complaint by USOC
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36102-2004Aug26.html
ATHENS, Aug. 26 -- President Bush's reelection campaign said Thursday that it would continue to run television ads crediting his policies for the presence of "two more free nations" at the Olympics, despite objections from the U.S. Olympic Committee and Iraqi athletes.
The USOC sent the Bush campaign a letter late Wednesday formally asking it to cease the broadcasts. The committee cited an act of Congress, most recently amended in 1999, that bars the use of the terms "Olympic" and "Olympiad" for political or commercial purposes.
"It is the responsibility of the USOC to manage Olympic marks, terms and images in the U.S., and also to remain apolitical," said Darryl Seibel, a spokesman for the USOC.
A Bush campaign official said Thursday that the ad was an acceptable form of free speech, however, and that it would continue to air until at least Sunday, the last day of the Summer Olympics. "We are on firm legal ground to mention the Olympics to make a factual point in a political advertisement," Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.
The advertisement flashes the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan over a stadium and a swimming pool as an announcer says: "Freedom is spreading through the world like a sunrise. And this Olympics there will be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes."
Bush has cited the Iraqi men's soccer team -- which can win a bronze medal if it defeats Italy on Friday -- as one of the most inspiring stories to emerge from this summer's Olympics. The ads and Bush's statements have provoked bitter feelings among some Iraqi Olympians, who have been quoted in recent days as blaming the president for the destruction of their homeland.
"How will he meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women?" Ahmed Manajid, a midfielder on the soccer team, told Sports Illustrated last week. "He has committed so many crimes."
Members of the International Olympic Committee have also expressed reservations about the Bush ads, saying they ran the risk of sullying a global trademark that has tried to remain above politics.
"We're watching, and we hope they will stop the commercial," Gerhard Heiberg of Norway, the head of the IOC panel on marketing, told the Norwegian news agency NTB. "We don't want to get involved in politics. We are neutral."
The small Olympic delegations from Iraq and Afghanistan received sustained cheers during the Opening Ceremonies on Aug. 13. U.S. athletes here have received a much more muted reception, and people willing to express anti-American feelings are not difficult to find at the Olympics.
Greek labor unions and antiwar protesters are planning to march outside the U.S. Embassy here on Friday to demonstrate against Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's trip to Athens this weekend. Powell is scheduled to attend the Closing Ceremonies on Sunday and meet with Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.
"Colin Powell is coming here while the Americans are killing people in Iraq," Yiannis Sifakakis, a protest organizer, said at a press conference Tuesday. "He is a hawk, a war criminal and an arch murderer. . . . We do not want him here."
Greek officials have urged labor and anarchist groups that have a long history of loudly opposing U.S. policies to curb their protests during the Olympics, but said they would not interfere in Friday's demonstration as long as it remains peaceful.
"The right to free expression in this country is enshrined by the Greek Constitution," government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said Tuesday. "I would hope that the organizers of any such demonstrations will take into consideration the highly critical nature of this period, amidst the Olympic Games, and that they will safeguard the image of Greece."
-------- us politics
Kerry Seizes on News of Poverty and Health Care
Democrats Cite New Statistics, Blame Bush
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36897-2004Aug26.html
ANOKA, Minn., Aug. 26 -- Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday blamed President Bush for the steady rise in the number of uninsured and poor, saying the White House has made life harder for millions of Americans by failing to curb the everyday costs of driving a car, going to school and visiting a doctor.
"Your wages are going down, your jobs are going overseas, your health care is disappearing, your kids are having a harder time getting the kind of education they want, your college-education door is getting slammed in the faces of some kids," Kerry told a few hundred voters assembled here at Anoka Technical College. He came here armed with new census data showing that the number of Americans without health insurance grew by 1.4 million while 1.3 million fell into poverty over the past year.
This was a key part of the Democratic ticket's message Thursday, as vice presidential nominee John Edwards told several hundred at an outdoor event in Las Cruces, N.M.: "Some people are working two jobs, but they're working for minimum wage and still living in poverty. . . . When John Kerry is president, we will raise the minimum wage and bring jobs to communities where they are so badly needed."
Edwards, who followed Bush to this city about an hour north of the border, said "I can't believe the American people will reelect a man that cost 1.4 million people their health care."
In Anoka to court undecided voters, Kerry also defended himself from allegations that he lied about his war record and that he waffles on the solutions to the very problems he discussed here. "America deserves a discussion like we are having here today," the Democratic presidential nominee said, and he challenged Bush to weekly debates. The Bush campaign declined the offer.
During a question-and-answer session, a local man pressed Kerry to explain whether he is a flip-flopper, as the Bush campaign is contending. The Democratic nominee cited two examples to explain why he considers the charge bunk: trade and education.
Kerry said he has been accused of reversing his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. "I did vote for NAFTA," he said, but he said he now criticizes it because the pact's labor standards are not being enforced.
Kerry said he has also been accused of backpedaling on the No Child Left Behind education law, which sets new performance standards and punishments for schools failing to reach them. Kerry voted for the law but frequently criticizes Bush for failing to fully fund it and not giving schools more leeway in attaining the new standards. "I think we have to fix it," Kerry said.
Kerry sought to appeal to swing voters by emphasizing his values and commitment to fiscal discipline. "I am a Christian, but that should not be what decides whether or not somebody votes for me," Kerry said. "I as president will uphold the Constitution of the United States, which the Founding Fathers smartly, brilliantly made clear separates the affairs of church in speech."
Still, it was domestic issues, health care in particular, that dominated the day. Kerry said his first act as president will be to press for a massive expansion of federal health care programs financed by a repeal of tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year. "This administration has had four years to put a plan in place," he said. "Four years, no plan."
Kerry's has proposed a more ambitious health program than Bush. The Democrat would expand several existing programs, offer new tax credits and reimburse businesses for major costs from catastrophic cases. The plan carries a price tag of between $650 billion and nearly $1 trillion, experts say. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), speaking on behalf of Bush, said the plan would "not lower cost of health care" but "will simply transfer the cost to taxpayers."
While largely avoiding the debate over his war record and television ads criticizing his antiwar protesting after the Vietnam war, Kerry told the crowd: "You are now learning about the lie and how the lie was put out there. I am telling you the God's honest truth about what happened over there."
As Kerry spoke, the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released an Internet ad accusing him of lying about crossing into Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968, an event that Kerry initially said was "seared" into his memory but that he has since suggested through a spokesman might not be accurate.
Edwards, as he has at every stop this week, also called the ads lies and reminded the crowd of Kerry's military service record. "When a man loves his country enough to put his life on the line and put the lives of his men before his own, that's someone who represents real American values," Edwards said.
Staff writer David Nakamura, traveling with Edwards, contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Carbon Monoxide Joins Hydrogen as Fuel Cell Energy Source
August 27, 2004
MADISON, Wisconsin, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-27-09.asp#anchor8
Carbon monoxide (CO) has been a major technical barrier to the efficient operation of hydrogen fuel cells. But now, chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have cleared that barrier and have discovered a method to capture carbon monoxide's energy.
To generate electricity in a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrocarbons such as gasoline, natural gas or ethanol must be reformed into a hydrogen rich gas.
A large, costly and critical step to this process requires generating steam and reacting it with carbon monoxide. This process, called the water-gas shift, produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
Scientists have now eliminated the water-gas shift reaction from the process, removing the need to transport and vaporize liquid water in the production of energy for portable applications such as fuel cell cars.
James Dumesic, professor of chemical and biological engineering , postdoctoral researcher Won Bae Kim, and graduate students Tobias Voitl and Gabriel Rodriguez-Rivera reported their work in today's issue of the journal "Science."
The team uses an environmentally benign polyoxometalate (POM) compound to oxidize CO in liquid water at room temperature. The compound removes CO from gas streams for fuel cells, and also converts the energy content of CO into a liquid that can be used to power a fuel cell.
"CO has essentially as much energy as hydrogen," says Dumesic. "It has a lot of energy in it."
Dumesic says the process is especially promising for producing electrical energy from renewable oxygenated hydrocarbons derived from biomass, such as ethylene glycol derived from corn - because these fuels generate hydrogen and carbon monoxide in nearly equal amounts during catalytic decomposition.
The hydrogen could be used directly in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell operating at 50 percent efficiency, and the remaining CO could be converted to electricity via the researchers' new process.
The overall efficiency of such a system is equal to 40 percent and, unlike traditional ethylene glycol reforming, does not require water. The overall efficiency is equivalent to 60 percent of the energy content of octane.
Dumesic believes the advance will make possible a new generation of inexpensive fuel cells operating with solutions of reduced POM compounds.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Administration Shifts on Global Warming
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37232-2004Aug26.html
A Bush administration report suggests that evidence of global warming has begun to affect animal and plant populations in visible ways, and that rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity.
The report to Congress, issued Wednesday, goes further than previous statements by President Bush. He has said more scientific research is needed before he imposes new restrictions on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
In 2001, after the release of a National Academy of Sciences report on global warming, Bush said the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased, in large part, because of human activity, but he emphasized that other factors could have influenced warming. Referring to the NAS report, he said, "We do not know how much effect natural fluctuations may have had on warming."
Several administration officials characterized the study as a routine annual summary of scientific research on global warming. John H. Marburger, the president's science adviser, said the report has "no implications for policy."
"There is no discordance between this report and the president's position on climate," Marburger said.
But environmentalists and conservatives said the report reveals contradictions within the administration's stance on global warming.
Jeremy Symons, who heads the National Wildlife Federation's global warming program, characterized the study as "nothing new in terms of the science of global warming, but this is definitely new in terms of the administration's position."
Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, also said it signals a change. "We're frustrated and disappointed the administration seems to have an incoherent global warming policy," Ebell said.
Although the government issues this report each year, in this instance the overview covers two years of research on climate change. In one key finding, it describes carbon dioxide as "the largest single forcing agent of climate change."
Administration officials, including James R. Mahoney, director of the administration's climate change science program, said that although carbon dioxide is the primary human-generated influence on climate change, the largest influence on climate conditions is water vapor. He added that the report "was not a significant science finding or policy finding."
But Annie Petsonk, international counsel for Environmental Defense, said the report underscores the need for immediate curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.
"The administration is finally admitting what the National Academy of Sciences and virtually every other scientific body has concluded: Climate change is happening now," Petsonk said. "It's time for the United States, the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, to step up to the plate and start cutting emissions."
The overview also concludes that based on studies of more than 1,700 species, "the balance of evidence" shows global warming effects are evident in plants and animals.
In response, Marburger said: "Climate change can have broad implications for our environment, and that is why the president has put forward an aggressive strategy to develop the best science and technology to address the issue."
--------
One Billion People Still Drink Unsafe Water - UN
REUTERS USA:
August 27, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26800/story.htm
GENEVA - More than one billion people drink unsafe water and over 2.6 billion, around 40 percent of the world's population, have no access to basic sanitation, U.N. agencies said yesterday.
"Around the world, millions of children are being born into a silent emergency of simple needs," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "We have to act now to close this (health) gap or the death toll will certainly rise," she added.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the Children's Fund, said in a report children were particularly vulnerable to sicknesses brought on by dirty water and poor hygiene.
Diarrhea kills some 1.8 million people each year, most of them children under five, with millions left permanently debilitated, they said.
The report - Meeting the Millennium Development Goals - aims to measure progress in achieving the U.N. target of halving the percentage of people around the world without safe water and sanitation by 2015.
For water, the goal was clearly achievable, with some 83 percent of people already having access to supplies giving some guarantees of safety, up from 77 percent in 1990 - the base year for the millennium goals, they said.
But progress was uneven, with some 42 percent of the 1.1 billion people without access to safe water living in sub-Saharan Africa.
On sanitation, however, the picture was less encouraging, with the percentage of those with at least a minimum acceptable standard rising only to 58 percent in 2002, the last year for which figures were available, from 49 percent in 1990.
On current trends, that would leave 2.4 billion without such access in 2015, little changed from the current figure.
Some 1.5 billion of those currently without access to safe sanitation were living in India and China.
-------- genetics
New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials
JEREMY MCDERMOTT IN BOGOTÁ
Fri 27 Aug 2004
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1002462004
DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia's drugs industry.
The new variety of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was found in an anti-drug operation on the Caribbean coast, on the mountainsides of the Sierra Nevada, long known as a drug-growing region.
Samples of the plant were sent for laboratory analysis and experts then pronounced drugs traffickers had developed a new breed.
"This is a very tall plant," said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police. "It has a lot more leaves and a lighter colour than other varieties."
A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."
Experts estimate that the drugs traffickers spent £60 million to develop the new plant, using strains from Peru and crossbreeding them with potent Colombian varieties, as well as engaging in genetic engineering.
The resulting plant has also been bred to resist the gliphosate chemicals developed in the US that are sprayed on drugs crops across Colombia.
While traditional coca plants are dark green and grow to some 5ft, the new strain grows to more than 12ft.
"What we found were not bushes but trees," Col Caicedo said.
Such an investment by drugs traffickers is small compared to the earnings from what is the most lucrative business on earth. Traffickers can produce a kilogram of cocaine for less than £1,500. That kilogram will sell in Miami for £14,000, in London for £34,000 and in Tokyo would bring £50,000.
The discovery threatens to undermine the successes the US-funded crop eradication programme has enjoyed.
Over the last two years, thanks to an unprecedented aerial eradication campaign, Colombian authorities have sprayed hundreds of thousands of hectares of drug crops, reducing narcotics cultivation by more than a third.
Two years ago Colombia produced an estimated 800 tonnes of cocaine a year. That figure is believed to have dropped below 600 tonnes.
On Monday, Mexican authorities signalled a major blow for the drugs-smuggling gangs when they announced the arrest of the man thought to be a leader of a crime organisation responsible for nearly half the cocaine and marijuana entering the United States.
The US had offered a $2 million (£1.1 million) reward for Gilberto Higuera Guerrero's capture.
However, such success could be immediately wiped out if the potent new coca strain spreads across Colombia.
In the southern province of Putumayo, once the coca capital of Colombia, drug farmers have changed the way they sow crops in the face of repeated aerial fumigations.
"We know the spray planes need a target area of three hectares," said Sebastian Umaya, standing in the middle of a tiny field of coca. "Now we just have smaller fields, but with more intensive farming of the coca bushes."
Should the new strain be introduced, these smaller fields could yield up to four times more drugs and be immune to aerial eradication, meaning anti-narcotic police would have to eradicate them manually, an impossible task in the southern jungle provinces controlled by Marxist rebels.
The introduction of the new coca strain could undermine the efforts of the Oxford-educated president Alvaro Uribe to win the 40-year civil conflict.
By destroying drugs crops, the president was hoping to weaken the warring factions, both Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, who between them earn more than £500 million a year from drugs.
The US, the primary destination for Colombian drugs, finances the war effort with £400 million a year and has hailed reduction in drug crops as evidence that its war on drugs is finally bearing fruit.
-------- poverty
More Americans Were Uninsured and Poor in 2003, Census Finds
August 27, 2004
By DAVID LEONHARDT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/national/27census.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - The ranks of the poor and those without health insurance grew in 2003 for the third straight year, the government reported on Thursday, in a sign of the lingering pain being caused by a long slump in the job markets.
Those trends, spelled out by the United States Census Bureau, signaled a clear shift in the way the 2001 recession and its aftermath have spread across the country. The economy's troubles, which first affected high-income families even more than the middle class and poor, have recently hurt families at the bottom and in the middle significantly more than those at the top.
Median household income rose at about the same rate as inflation last year after three years of relative declines, according to the report. But the disparity in incomes between the rich and poor grew after having fallen in 2002. Pay did not keep pace with inflation in the South, already the nation's poorest region, in cities, or among immigrants. And the wage gap between men and women widened for the first time in four years.
Poverty rose most sharply among single-parent families last year. Health-insurance coverage fell only for families with annual income of less than $75,000. [Page C1.]
On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush has been saying the country has overcome the recession and a stock market decline in part because of his tax cuts. Democrats Thursday accused the Bush administration of trying to the bury the new numbers by releasing them all at once in late August, rather than reporting the poverty and health-insurance data on separate days in September, as they had in recent years.
"They're trying to lump, dump and run," Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, said.
Census officials said that politics played no role in the change and that the two sets of data had also been released simultaneously in the mid-1990's. The bureau published the numbers in August to coincide with the release of local economic numbers it compiles, officials said.
"Normally we're not criticized for bringing out data earlier," Charles Louis Kincannon, the director of the Census Bureau, said.
The national poverty rate rose to 12.5 percent last year, from 12.1 percent in 2002. After dropping rapidly in a long economic boom and a government war on poverty in the 1960's, from more than 22 percent in 1960, the rate has changed relatively little over the last four decades. It was slightly higher in 2003 than in 1969. A family of two adults and two children with an income of less than $18,660 was considered poor last year.
"We have had a generation with basically no progress against poverty," said Sheldon Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. "The economic growth is not trickling down to the poor."
Depending on their political beliefs, economists tend to place varying portions of blame for this on a rise in single-parent families, a withering of good jobs for people without college degrees and a shift away from anti-poverty programs by the federal government.
The number of uninsured Americans rose last year largely because fewer companies were providing health benefits to their workers than in the past, the Census Bureau reported. Almost 16 percent of people did not have health insurance last year, up from 14.2 percent in 2000.
Median household income declined slightly last year, by $63 to $43,318, but census officials said the change was not statistically significant. Since peaking in 1999 at the equivalent of $44,922 in 2003 with inflation taken into account, median household income has fallen more than $1,600, or 3.6 percent, though it remained higher last year than at any point before the late 1990's. The candidates for president offered sharply different views of the economy on Thursday. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, argued that the report offered new proof that the Bush administration had put the interests of wealthy families ahead those of most Americans.
"The census figures are facts," Mr. Kerry said, while campaigning at Anoka Technical College in a suburb of Minneapolis. "They're not political diatribe. They're facts, statistics, and they tell a story when you add them all up."
Mr. Bush, in Farmington, N.M., said: "Because we acted, our economy since last summer has grown at a rate as fast as any in nearly 20 years. Since last August, we've added about 1.5 million new jobs.''
Terry Holt, a spokesman for President's Bush campaign, said that the census numbers were outdated because they covered only 2003. "Absent from these numbers is the strong economic growth we've seen in the last 11 months," Mr. Holt said.
Mr. Bush has helped the economy recover from recession by cutting taxes, Mr. Holt added, and has attacked poverty by signing a tax cut that eliminated income taxes for five million low-income people.
Unlike most economic downturns, the one that began in early 2001 was something of an equal-opportunity recession, hurting high-income and low-income families alike. The bursting of the stock market bubble, the collapse of many technology ventures and the decline of the manufacturing sector all led to the elimination of many good-paying jobs.
But as the economy continues its uneven recovery, growing but adding many fewer jobs than is typical, families in the lower part of the spectrum have begun to lose ground again, as they did in much of the 1970's, 80's and 90's.
Pay fell last year for households in rural areas and in cities, where income is less than the national average, by a greater percentage than it did for those in suburbs, the bureau said. After reaching an all-time high in 2002, the earnings of full-time female workers relative to their male counterparts fell slightly last year, to 75.5 percent. Income also dropped more for Hispanics than for whites, though it remained essentially unchanged for black households.
Over all, the highest-earning fifth of households took home 49.8 percent of the nation's income last year, up from the 49.7 percent in 2002 and 44.7 percent in 1983. Those figures exaggerate income inequality somewhat, however, because they do not include taxes and because wealthy households are larger on average than poor ones.
"There's a very large transfer of resources to poor people that is not captured in these poverty numbers,'' said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a research group. Whatever the true level of inequality, though, it grew last year, with the greatest increases in poverty coming among some of the nation's poorest groups. The poverty rate among households headed by a single woman rose to 28 percent, from 26.5 percent in 2002.
Of families with children under 6, 19.8 percent, or 4.6 million, were considered poor last year, up from 18.5 percent in the previous year.
Whites Aren't Texas Majority
HOUSTON, Aug. 26 (AP) - Non-Hispanic whites are no longer the majority in Texas for the first time since the 1800's, according to a Census Bureau survey.
The survey said whites stopped being the majority as of last year. Most of Texas' population expansion since 2000 has come from births and international immigration, both sources of predominantly Hispanic growth.
Estimates show that the state was 49.5 percent white in 2003, down 1.5 percentage points from 2002 but still a large plurality.
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Poverty Rate Up 3rd Year In a Row More Also Lack Health Coverage
By Ceci Connolly and Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35175-2004Aug26?language=printer
The number of Americans living in poverty or lacking health insurance rose for the third straight year in 2003, the Census Bureau announced yesterday, reflecting a job market that failed to match otherwise strong economic growth.
Overall, the median household income remained stagnant at $43,318, while the national poverty rate rose to 12.5 percent -- 35.9 million people -- last year, from 12.1 percent in 2002. Hit hardest were women, who for the first time since 1999 saw their earnings decline, and children. By the end of 2003, 12.9 million children lived in poverty.
As expected, the number of people without health insurance grew last year, to 45 million -- an increase to 15.6 percent from 15.2 percent. White adults, primarily in the South, accounted for most of the increase. The proportion of people receiving health insurance through an employer fell to 60.4 percent, the lowest level in a decade, from 61.3 percent.
The census report provided hard numbers to anecdotal evidence that the recent recovery has missed certain regions and segments of the population. An additional 1.3 million Americans fell below the poverty line in 2003, as incomes dipped for the poorest 20 percent of the population. An additional 1.4 million became newly uninsured.
"This recovery has failed to reach those in the bottom half," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
As President Bush prepared to head to New York for the Republican National Convention, yesterday's data gave Democrats an opening for picking at his perceived weakness on traditional bread-and-butter issues.
"While George Bush tries to convince America's families that we're turning the corner, slogans and empty rhetoric can't hide the real story," said Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic presidential nominee. "Under George Bush's watch, America's families are falling further behind."
Bush, campaigning in New Mexico, had no comment. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said the census data looked "backward in time at an economy that was substantially weaker" than it is today. He predicted that the numbers will improve as Bush "continues to press extremely hard to create the right conditions and business climate" for job growth and broader health coverage.
Yet the census report stood in sharp contrast to an economy and a stock market that grew briskly in 2003, especially in the second half of the year. "The impact of a persistent jobless recovery is all over these results," Bernstein said.
With fewer people working and fewer small businesses offering health coverage, the uninsured figure is likely to remain high until the unemployment rate drops to about 4 percent, said Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
"It's not just about how many people have jobs, but it's about the kind of jobs they have," he said. "Even though people are employed, they are less likely to have access to coverage."
In this region, more people were without health coverage in 2003 than in 2002. In Virginia, the uninsured rate rose to 13.3 percent from 12.2 percent; in both Maryland and the District, it rose to 13.6 percent from 12.8 percent.
The national poverty rate declined from 1993 to 2000, when it reached a low of 11.3 percent. In the next three years, 4.3 million more people fell below the poverty line, and the median household income dropped by more than $1,500 in inflation-adjusted terms.
Locally, poverty rates rose in Virginia to 10 percent from 8.9 percent, and in Maryland to 8 percent from 7.3 percent, according to the Census Bureau's two-year averaging. In the District, it declined 0.7 percent, but, at 16.9 percent, it remained higher than the national average.
The poverty line is not a single, consistent number; it varies with time and family size. In 2003, the average poverty line for an individual was $9,393. For a family of four, it was $18,810. Despite the recent increase in poverty rates, the rates remained lower than the average for both the 1980s and the 1990s.
Economic issues -- including the availability and affordability of health insurance -- remain top concerns among voters. In several recent Washington Post and Gallup surveys, voters gave the president no better than a 51 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy, and in a head-to-head matchup with Kerry on economic matters, Bush trailed 41 percent to his challenger's 52 percent.
Yesterday's report showed that several swing states saw an increase in the poverty rate, the percentage of uninsured or both -- including Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
"It's definitely not the news that the president was hoping for," said Rea S. Hederman Jr., senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
Children made up an especially large segment of the newly impoverished, accounting for more than half of the overall increase as 733,000 more youngsters slipped below the poverty line. Similarly, the number of families in poverty headed by a single mother jumped 1.5 percent, to 3.9 million.
Sheldon H. Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, said the rise in poverty represents fallout from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Because the new policy shifted government benefits to reward those who work, single mothers who were employed received additional assistance when jobs were plentiful but are struggling now that the economy has 1.2 million fewer jobs.
"They did fine when the economy was booming, and even in the early part of the recession," he said. "But now there's been an increase in the number of women who have no work and no welfare."
Hederman disagreed with Danziger, noting that the child poverty rate, although up for the year at 17.6 percent, is still well below the 20.5 percent it hit in 1996.
"You've seen a lot of people who left poverty and who haven't returned back to it even after the economic downturn," he said.
Single mothers were not helped by the fact that the earnings of women overall suffered, declining by 0.6 percent. Women made 76 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2003, compared with 77 cents in 2002. Others who felt the sting included Hispanics, whose median income dropped 2.6 percent last year.
Viewing the increase in poverty by race, Asian Americans were hit hardest, but census officials said the rise appeared to be a statistical anomaly resulting from a small sample size.
Since 2000, the number of uninsured Americans has grown by 5.2 million people, or 13 percent.
"The latest data indicate that loss of insurance is of particular concern for middle-income and low-wage workers," said Karen Davis, president of the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health and social policy trends.
More Americans were enrolled in government health programs such as Medicaid and Medicare than at any time in the past two decades. Last year, 26.6 percent of the population was covered by government health insurance, the highest percentage since 1995.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program appeared to be the leading reason the number of youngsters without coverage did not rise, even though millions more fell into poverty.
At the libertarian Cato Institute, Michael Cannon, the director of health studies, attributed the rise in uninsured to government regulation. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said it was the Senate's fault, even though Republicans control both houses of Congress.
"The big failure is not what is happening in the administration. We are doing everything we can," he said in a conference call. "Individuals in the United States Senate have failed to adopt the president's proposals dealing with health care."
Proposals to cap malpractice awards, to provide tax credits for individuals purchasing insurance and to create small-business insurance purchasing pools "show a president that is leading and a Congress that is not," he said.
The Census Bureau normally releases its income, poverty and health insurance figures in September. It moved the release date up a month to make it coincide with the release of a separate set of data. Democrats have charged that the timing is suspicious, given that many people take vacations in August and could miss the bad news.
Senior polling analyst Christopher Mustie contributed to this report.
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U.S. poverty rate up in '03, census reports
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Joyce Howard Price and S.A. Miller
August 27, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040827-121107-4449r.htm
The nation's poverty rate rose by almost a half percentage point in 2003 over 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday, prompting Democrats to dismiss President Bush's claim of an economic recovery.
In 2003, the poverty rate was 12.5 percent, or 35.9 million people, up from 12.1 percent, or 34.6 million people in 2002.
The median household income - $43,318 - remained unchanged during the same period, according to "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003."
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said the new data debunk Mr. Bush's statements that the "economy has turned the corner." He said the report is "new evidence" that the president's economic policy "continues to fail millions of our citizens."
But Robert Rector, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation who specializes in economic issues, countered, "It's important to recognize that the census poverty figures ... are one year old. They cover 2003, not the current year.
"Given the current economic conditions, it is extremely likely that [the poverty rate] fell during 2004, although the official figures will not be available for the next 12 months."
Locally, the poverty rate declined slightly in Washington, although the poverty rate in the District remained the nation's sixth-highest at about one in six persons, declining from 17.6 percent in 2001-02 to 16.9 percent in 2002-03.
"The 2000 census ranked us as number 2, so it's a jump," said Lynn French, senior policy adviser to the D.C. deputy mayor for children, youths, families and elders. "There has been an improvement ... [but] we still have a long way to go."
The five states with higher poverty rates in 2002-03 than the District are Arkansas (18.8 percent), Louisiana (17.2 percent), Mississippi (17.2 percent), New Mexico (18.0 percent) and West Virginia (17.1 percent).
Ms. French said the poverty data should be viewed in the context of the District's unique status.
"We are just an urban city," she said. "Poverty nationally tends to be concentrated in cities. It is kind of unfair to compare us to states."
As defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget and updated for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2003 was $18,810. For a family of three, it was $14,680; for a family of two, it was $12,015; and for individual persons, it was $9,393.
Nationally, the poverty rate remained strongest among immigrants, with 21.7 percent of foreign-born noncitizens living below the poverty line in 2003, up from 20.7 percent in 2002. This percentage of poor among noncitizens is almost twice the 11.8 percent figure for native-born Americans, and more than twice the 10 percent for foreign-born naturalized citizens.
The median household income of people born in the United States was $44,347 in 2003, the same as it was in 2002. But the median household income of the foreign-born declined by 3.5 percent to $37,499.
The District's neighboring states had relatively low poverty rates coupled with some of the nation's highest median household incomes, according to the census data. Maryland's poverty rate was 8.0 percent, or 49th among the 51 jurisdictions compared, and Virginia's 10.0 percent ranked it 36th.
Maryland had the second-highest average median household income at $55,213, just dollars shy of the top median household income in New Jersey of $55,221. Virginia had the seventh-highest average at $52,587.
The median household income in the District averaged $42,597, at 28th and near the national median of $43,527.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, was "very pleased" to see his state's wealth reflected in the census report, although he remained determined to further boost the economy and foster job growth.
"There is always room for improvement," said Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell. "What that census does not show is that the governor inherited a serious deficit and an anti-business climate in Maryland."
A spokeswoman for Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, also tempered the chief executive's satisfaction with his state's standing.
"Virginia may be doing a bit better than other states in regard to poverty, but we are still seeing an increase in that population," spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said. "The most important thing the governor thinks we can do for people living in poverty is to educate and train them for a better job."
The census report also showed a difference in the numbers of Americans who gained and lost health insurance from 2002 to 2003. Specifically, the number with health insurance increased by 1 million to 243.3 million during that one-year period, but the number of those uninsured also rose.
In 2003, 45 million people were without insurance compared with 43.6 million in 2002. The percentage of the nation's uninsured population was 15.6 percent in 2003, up from 15.2 in 2002.
Other findings of the new census report include:
•Nationally, the South was the only region of the United States where the median household income dropped last year.
•Women saw their earnings decline 0.6 percent to $30,724 in 2003. This was the first such decline since 1995. The ratio of female-to-male full-time earnings in 2003 was 76 cents for every dollar. That was down from 77 cents per dollar the year before.
• Amy Fagan contributed to this report.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protests Come Early, and So Do Arrests
August 27, 2004
By DIANE CARDWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/campaign/27protest.html
The anarchists have not even had their day in the streets, but the protests surrounding the Republican National Convention have already kicked into high gear, with arrests at three events yesterday totaling at least 21, more than three times the number of arrests during the entire Democratic convention in Boston.
The events yesterday offered a preview of what delegates may expect when they actually arrive this weekend: spontaneous acts at high-profile locations meant to draw maximum attention.
In one event yesterday, several members of Act Up blocked traffic, naked, on Eighth Avenue in front of Madison Square Garden, the convention site, to protest the Bush administration's record on AIDS. That resulted in 11 arrests on misdemeanor charges, according to police officials.
In a second, five members of a group called the No Police State Coalition were arrested at Union Square and 14th Street after they continued to use a bullhorn after the police warned them that they could not.
In the third event, members of a group called Operation Sibyl rappelled down the front of the Plaza Hotel to drape its facade with a giant anti-Bush banner. A police officer responding to the scene was injured on the roof of the hotel, and four of the people arrested were charged with felony assault, an indication that the police plan to deal harshly with certain protesters. According to the police, the officer received 38 stitches for injuries to his leg.
A lawyer for the group said that the assault charge was inappropriate because the officer was injured falling through a skylight that one of the protesters had warned him was cracked.
"It is really a bogus charge, probably to try to scare off future demonstrators," said Gerald B. Lefcourt, adding that he had been defending protesters since the Vietnam era and had never seen an assault charge applied in a similar situation. "Assault requires an intent to cause injury and taking steps to cause that injury," he said.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in talking more generally about anarchists yesterday, said, "If somebody wants to break the law, they're going to find that the N.Y.P.D. is going to enforce the law." "They're going to be arrested, and Bob Morgenthau, our district attorney, is going to prosecute them and take it very seriously," he said. "In this day and age, when we have to worry about terrorists, I think the tolerance for throwing things or trying to hurt somebody else - even if they think it's a prank - it's no longer a prank in this day and age."
The banner displayed on the hotel had two arrows pointing in opposite directions, one bearing the word truth, the other the word Bush. The group enlisted consultants in shaping its message and its members have stressed that they are not part of a radical fringe, although they are hardly new to protest activities or arrest. They secretly planned the event for months, practicing by dangling from the ceiling of an unfinished loft in Brooklyn.
Members said their message was an attempt to sway undecided voters by dispelling what they called the lies and myths that have sustained the Bush presidency.
"They're ordinary people," said Evan Thies, the group's media coordinator and the spokesman for City Councilman David Yassky. "They were scared to death up there today."
Mr. Thies, who was later arrested and charged with criminal facilitation, said members of the group checked into a room at the Plaza on Saturday night. "They were planning on getting arrested," he said, "and they don't know what their future is going to bring. These are people with careers, people with something to lose."
The four who participated in the draping, who have also been charged with several misdemeanors, were Terra Lawson-Remer, a graduate student at New York University studying for a law degree and a doctorate in law and society; Cesar Maxit, an architect from Texas; Rebecca Johnson, a seminary student from Oakland, Calif., who is studying to become a Christian minister; and David Murphy, who runs his own business in the city.
In the demonstration outside the Garden, the 11 protesters were arrested after several of them stripped off their clothes and began chanting, "Bush, Stop AIDS, Drop the Debt" while blocking traffic. The demonstrators, members of Act Up, marched in a single file into the middle of a crosswalk on 33rd Street. They turned to face the traffic, and then shed their clothes to reveal the words "Stop AIDS, Drop the Debt" painted on their backs, a reference to the AIDS pandemic in African countries that are heavily in debt. Ten minutes later, the police swarmed the disrobed demonstrators and arrested them along with two others who were standing on top of a parked trailer with a banner.
The protest elicited stares and gasps from people who gathered around them. "Think of the children," two people cried out.
"I really think this is very disrespectful to New Yorkers because this is our town," said Gerard Schneyer, who works in the area. "If they want to do something like that they should go someplace else where they don't disrupt the traffic. Besides no one is really paying attention right now, at least not until Sunday."
Eddy Ramírez and Judy Tong contributed reporting for this article.
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THE MARCH
It May Be Hard to Tell a Rally From a Lot of People in the Park
August 27, 2004
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/campaign/27plans.html
Organizers of two large protests against the Republican National Convention planned for this weekend said yesterday that they would not directly encourage supporters to go to demonstrations in Central Park. But the leader of one group said she would be in the park, and the other group began handing out fliers spelling out legal ways to gather there.
The groups toed a fine line between not defying court rulings upholding the city's refusal to grant permits for the use of the Great Lawn and acknowledging what appears to be a mounting effort among large numbers of people to gather there tomorrow and Sunday. City officials have refused to make the Great Lawn available for large demonstrations, saying they have to preserve the lawn's grass.
United for Peace and Justice - the group that is organizing what is expected to be the largest demonstration related to the convention, an antiwar march on Sunday - announced an agreement with the city yesterday about a march route. Starting at noon, the group will head up Seventh Avenue past Madison Square Garden, where the convention will begin on Monday, then head east on 34th Street and turn down Fifth Avenue and Broadway to Union Square. But organizers made clear that after the march, supporters would head to Central Park despite the lack of a permit, and seemed to at least tacitly encourage it.
Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, which expects more than 200,000 people at the march, said she would have a picnic on the Great Lawn after the march dispersed.
"I will be going to Central Park after the march is over," Ms. Cagan said, adding that she would invite other people to accompany her but not under the group's banner.
Another group that was denied permission for a large rally on the Great Lawn, the Answer Coalition, began passing out leaflets yesterday alerting New Yorkers to their right to peacefully assemble there. The group's application for a rally at 1 p.m. tomorrow, filed jointly with the National Council of Arab Americans, was rejected by the city, a decision that was upheld by a judge.
The flier does not explicitly urge people to gather, but it reminds people that "casual visits" to the park are allowed, and it includes reminders about the right to drum during daytime hours and the size of signs allowed without a permit (up to 2 feet high and 3 feet wide).
Organizers of the weekend marches said that the city was unintentionally encouraging protesters to gather in the park by declaring it off-limits.
"They are coming Saturday and they are coming Sunday, and Mayor Bloomberg may well be creating Central Park as the free-speech center of New York City," Brian Becker, national coordinator of the Answer Coalition, said at a news conference.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the police would enforce laws against using a sound system in the park without a permit and would send "adequate police protection" to keep the public safe. He sounded conciliatory at a news conference.
"We welcome people to the park, and hopefully the weather will be good," Mr. Bloomberg said. "There's a lot of people in the park - there's roughly a quarter of a million people in the park on a normal Sunday afternoon - and this will just add to that. So it will be crowded but it will be a lot of fun."
If the past is any guide, demonstrators may not find an unfettered path. Over the last decade, the Police Department has frequently diverted pedestrians headed for large public gatherings and sent them on lengthy detours to reach the main assembly areas. At an antiwar rally on Feb. 15, 2003, tens of thousands of people sent on detours were not able to reach the central meeting site on First Avenue near 51st Street.
New York City Transit said the following bus routes would be rerouted for the march on Sunday:
M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M9, M10, M14, M16, M20, M23, M34 and Q32.
Winnie Hu and Jim Dwyer contributed reporting for this article.
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Anti - Bush Activists Launch NYC Convention Protests
August 27, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-protest.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thousands of cyclists brought traffic in midtown Manhattan to a virtual standstill on Friday in the first significant protest ahead of the Republican convention at which President Bush will be nominated to run for a second White House term.
Thousands of cyclists swarmed down Broadway from Central Park in a parade stretching more than a mile on Friday evening -- a time when the area is typically crowded with theatergoers and people out for dinner and drinks.
The protest lasted several hours, with many chanting ``No more Bush,'' and was the first sizable demonstration ahead of the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 convention. Many locals in the mostly Democratic city stopped to applaud the cyclists as they passed through a bustling Times Square.
At least 30 cyclists were detained and handcuffed at various locations along the route after small altercations between riders and motorists who were irritated at the congestion, according to Reuters witnesses.
The New York Police Department said it had no immediate information about arrests.
The event was mounted by a group called Critical Mass, which wants to boost the rights of cyclists in traffic-clogged city streets and holds its rides in cities around the world on the last Friday of each month.
More demonstrations are expected in the coming days.
The biggest anti-Bush protest is set for Sunday, when more than 200,000 are expected to march to decry the Bush administration's economic policies, the war in Iraq and what they see as the erosion of civil liberties at home after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The group organizing Sunday's march was denied a permit to rally in Central Park on the grounds such a large crowd would damage the grass.
An unprecedented security effort has been put in place to protect the Republican convention after Washington said the event, and last month's Democratic convention in Boston, were possible terrorist targets.
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Technology Playing Role in GOP Protests
August 27, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Wired-Rabble-Rousers.html
NEW YORK (AP)-- Gary Boston and Jeff Adler are just two guys with a dream: shutting down New York City for a day. What they want is a general strike, with everyone from Broadway dancers to Madison Avenue street sweepers calling in sick Wednesday to protest the Republican National Convention, which begins on Monday.
Both men are in their 30s and have full-time jobs, and neither has any organizing experience. Boston, who had never built a Web site before, put together ShutItDownNYC.com in three days, using Microsoft FrontPage software and the book ``FrontPage for Dummies.'' The site has received more than 22,000 hits since it launched in late June.
``It's pretty amazing the amount of attention we've been able to generate with very simple tools,'' said Boston, a Wall Street analyst.
Technology has changed how protests are organized.
Activists are using the Internet to arrange housing for out-of-towners, organize a mass-flash of underwear emblazoned with anti-Bush messages and tell protesters what to say if they're arrested (``I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with a lawyer.'').
There are at least two Web guides for protesters packed with calendars of events and dining guides -- including Dumpster diving tips for those on a tight budget.
Cell phones work well for on-the-fly mobilizations, and text messages add to their power. Some protesters are signing up for 10 p.m. daily text updates telling them where the next day's events will be.
The phones have also put a technological twist on street theater.
An activist who calls himself Rev. Billy and members of his organization, The Church of Stop Shopping, plan to gather Tuesday at the commuter train station at Ground Zero, where they are to mill around reciting lines from the First Amendment into their cell phones for a half-hour, then recite it together, then disperse.
Technology, predictably, has also changed crowd control and surveillance.
Earlier this month, the New York Police Department showed off a machine called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting at an earsplitting 150 decibels -- as loud as a firecracker, a jet engine taking off or artillery fire at 500 feet, according to the Noise Center at the League for the Hard of Hearing.
The NYPD said it would use the machine to direct crowds to safety if there's a terrorist attack or remind protesters where they're allowed to march. Police said they wouldn't use the earsplitting screeching noise feature at the convention.
``It's only to communicate in large crowds,'' Inspector Thomas Graham of the police department's crowd control unit said.
Free speech advocates say New York's police have videotaped past protests, so organizations like United for Peace and Justice are encouraging protesters to bring their own video cameras to videotape the police. A Web protest guide from Just Cause Law Collective suggests that protesters who see police brutality document it by leaving a detailed cell phone message for themselves or recording what they see on their portable music player.
Mobile bloggers, or mobloggers, are expected to show up in droves and quickly post on the Web photos, text and even video chronicling events as they happen.
``People will be able to quickly upload what is being seen, what is being felt and what is being done,'' said Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of a tech-steeped civil disobedience group called The Electronic Disturbance Theater. ``We will be able to keep an eye on the police the same way they keep an eye on us.''
The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will be using cell phones and two-way pagers to monitor demonstrations. Its legal team will be in close contact with the police ``so we can hear about problems and trouble-shoot them instantly,'' said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Will the convention be a target for hackers?
``The word 'target' is inappropriate,'' said Emmanuel Goldstein, editor and publisher of 2600, a hacking magazine. ``Hackers are interested in what the cops are doing, how the city is being operated during that (convention) period, what kinds of technology are being implemented here for the first time, as well as all sorts of ways to infiltrate and spread information.''
Not many hackers are warning of electronic disruption.
One speaker at this summer's Defcon, an annual hackers conference, advocated disrupting the convention. And one group released tools online to mount so-called denial-of-service attacks aimed at overwhelming the main Web sites for the convention, the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign, said Greg Shipley, chief technology officer of the security company Neohapsis Inc. Such tactics have been used in the past to try to disrupt annual meetings of the global business elite run by the World Economic Forum.
``I don't anticipate much of an online 'hacker' response,'' said Bryan Burns, who attended Defcon. ``People I know who can hack and are politically motivated see themselves as more effective doing civil disobedience in person.''
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Athens Police Break Up Powell Protest
August 27, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-OLY-Powell-Protest.html
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Police used tear gas Friday night to disperse more than 2,000 demonstrators who lit fires, smashed windows and beat up journalists while marching through downtown Athens to protest the weekend visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The demonstrators, who scuffled with police in front of the Parliament, fought running battles with riot squads trying to prevent them from reaching the U.S. Embassy. The embassy is not near any Olympic venues, but it is near the hotel being used by the International Olympic Committee and located on a major Olympic traffic lane.
The protesters shouted slogans against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
Powell was expected to arrive Saturday to meet Premier Costas Caramanlis and attend the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics on Sunday night.
Earlier, hundreds of riot police with shields prevented the protesters from heading toward the embassy, and the two sides faced off in front of the Greek Parliament building.
The protesters marched in front of Athens University, beating drums, spraying graffiti on the walls and unfurling banners criticizing President Bush.
``Powell is the man who peddled Bush's lies on Iraq,'' said protest organizer, Yiannis Sifahakis. ``He is a murderer and we don't want him here.''
In Washington, deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said only that officials were aware of protest plans and that: ``We are committed to visiting our Greek friends and sharing in this very important occasion.''
Some of the demonstrators shouted slogans in English, taking advantage of the international TV crews covering the event. They called on passers-by to join them on a march to the U.S. Embassy.
Among those who joined in before the violence broke out was Andrea Murray, 22, who graduated from Duke University in North Carolina. She said she was looking for Athens' National Museum and instead found the demonstration.
``I found this and I thought, like wow! I am participating because I am American and I want Greeks to know that not all Americans are drones or idiots,'' Murray said.
A spectacular, moonlit Acropolis served as a backdrop to more than 500 riot police who were positioned in the central Syntagma Square in front of the Parliament building and elsewhere in central Athens.
One Olympics volunteer in the trademark Athens 2004 polo shirt and shorts held up a sign that read: ``Any volunteers against U.S. policy?''
Another demonstration by 200 people in Thessaloniki, a northern port and Greece's second-largest city, dispersed peacefully after protesters marched by the U.S. consulate to complain about Powell's visit.
Greece's top law enforcement official said the demonstrators had a right to protest but asked them not to cause any trouble.
``We organized games in an environment of security and discretion. Everyone recognizes this,'' Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said. ``I want to believe that the events that have been planned will respect what with great effort all Greeks have accomplished.''
Some Greeks worried that Powell's visit could destroy the festive atmosphere that has been present in Syntagma Square and the rest of the capital in recent days.
``I hope it won't spoil the party because the city is buzzing and everyone's pro-Olympics,'' said Marissa Daras, 26, a human resources specialist, as she walked through the square.
The right to demonstrate is cherished by Greeks, following harsh restrictions imposed during a 1967-74 military dictatorship. Protest groups have said they would oppose any police attempt to prevent them from marching on the U.S. Embassy.
Greece's small but influential Communist Party also said it was organizing a protest march on Saturday from central Athens to the embassy.
Associated Press writers Niko Price, Miron Varouhakis and Toula Vlahou contributed to this report.
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Mordechai Vanunu Speaks about Space Weapons and Nuclear Weapons
Jerusalem,
August 27, 2004
From: "Global Network" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Background:
Mordechai Vanunu was a technician at Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear facility, from 1976 to 1985. He discovered nuclear weapons were being secretly produced and in 1986 he leaked photos and information to the London Sunday Times showing Israel had stockpiled about 200 hundred nuclear warheads, with no authorization from its parliament or citizens. At that time Israel was insisting it would not introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. Vanunu was kidnapped by the Israeli Mossad in Italy and returned to Israel for a secret trial. He spent 18 years in prison, including 11 years in solitary confinement. After completing his sentence he was released in April 2004 and ordered not to speak to foreigners or leave the country. He has received death threats and has been given refuge at the Anglican cathedral of St George's in East Jerusalem.
An American member of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (see www.space4peace.org) was visiting the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Vanunu agreed to speak with the GN member, defying his court order, and gave permission for his interview to be distributed on the Internet.
Interview:
Question: Are you familiar with plans to move the arms race into space?
Vanunu: Yes, this is open information that was available to read from the news media and was available to me in the prison years. I knew about the Cassini case and now I know about the new initiative by George Bush to develop nuclear weapons for the space program. This was also worked on in the Clinton administration. George Bush raised it again. I hope this program will not materialize and not be developed. We don't have any enemies in space and the US does not have any enemies. We don't need any nuclear weapons in space or any nuclear race in space.
Question: Do you feel weapons in space are dangerous?
Vanunu: Yes! We don't need nuclear weapons in space! We are alive to see space and enjoy the sky, not to be frightened from the sky. People should raise their eyes and look to the sky and heavens and enjoy and feel God and the love of God, not to fear nuclear weapons. No other state should follow the US and play this game of weapons in space.
Question: Are you familiar with the nuclear power reactors that are planned to be used in provide power for space-based weapons?
Vanunu: No, I don't know much about this, only some things I've read. Cassini was a spacecraft with a reactor working with plutonium.
Question: Are you familiar with the joint Israeli/US system to create a missile defense system called the Arrow system? This would give, they say, both a sword, as a weapon, and a shield, as a defense, to Israel.
Vanunu: Yes, I heard about this. In the last two days the latest Arrow test failed. Israel tries to create an environment that it needs missiles, enemies to fight, all this propoganda to keep up the race, to develop these nuclear weapons and a new generation of missiles. They encourage and push other states like India, Pakistan and Iran to follow. We should tell them and tell Israel that we, the world, are living in a new age, a new century, post-Cold War. The last century had a lot of weapons and wars. This century should be century of peace and disarmament of all kinds of weapons. All missiles should be destroyed. We need to have a new century of peace, of human beings living in peace that don't need any kinds of weapons. No is going to fight Israel and no one is going to fight the United States. The human race needs to learn to live in peace and to work together. We don't need any weapons.
Question: What are the enormous military expenditures over time are doing to the Israeli economy?
Vanunu: Thirty percent and more, maybe fifty percent of the Israeli budget is for defense. All this money on defense is coming from not giving to others what they deserve in life - high education and high health - especially the minority Palestinians in the occupied territories. Instead of giving them help, Israel spends the money on the army and incursions and fighting the Palestianians. The way to peace is also by reducing the defense budget, reduce it on a large scale. The same with the United States. Since George Bush has been in office he has raised the budget fromm $280 billion to $400 billion. All this is not necessary in this age. The defense budget is one of the most powerful ways to impose on people psychologically and through policies, in Israel and the United States. The people behind the very large defense budgets are the new modern secret power. We should fight it by reducing the defense budget in every country. Many countries in Europe have had to reduce their defense budgets, armies and weapons systems. Israel has continued to keep its large weapons program, in spite of the fact that we are living in a different age. We the people should be free the from the defense budget. We should be able to use it and control it and hopefully in the future reduce it to a very small amount, maybe 5%.
Question: What advice would you give to activists in the United States in the US who see our country becoming more militarized and having less democracy? How can we best make an impact on our government when corporations are increasingly controlling it, military corporations like Boeing and Lockheed?
Vanunu: This is my advice to those in the US who are working for peace, who want to control those industries behind the huge production of weapons systems and nuclear weapons. Demand to reduce the large army power, the amount of weapons, the budgets sent to these huge defense corporations. Try to force government from developing new and more advanced weapons, more advanced aircraft, more advanced submarines, because there are no future enemies who are going to fight them. Maybe there are states who are competing economically, in health and social standards, but not in weapons. There is no enemy who wants to destroy Israel or the US. The human race has learned that they do not want to kill each other. They want to compete, develop, they do not want to kill each other. We should be fight by demanding a reduction to all these weapons and the weapons industry. The companies behind it, like Boeing and Lockheed, they should go into civilian production for the US and for the world.
Question: You have expressed you would very much like to come to the US.
Vanunu: I believe in the US constitution, I believe in US democracy and in individual freedom. I believe in the liberty of the US as it was established 230 years ago. The US constitution was the most advanced, it has survived, and I believe it will continue to be advanced. I want to come the United States and be one of your citizens. To give my support to keep the US free spirit, liberty and freedom of speech, which is very important for the US people. I want to live there, to experience it, to support it, especially since 9/11 and the Patriot Act, which is bad for the people. And I hope, that without fighting anyone, that I can contribute to reducing nuclear weapons in the US and the world, with the message that we the people in the US and Israel and all the world don't need nuclear weapons. The US and the US Defense Dept. does not need to fear these views. The US can survive and be good and strong without nuclear weapons. Human rights are more powerful than nuclear weapons.
Question: How can we help you to reach the US and to increase your safety here in Jerusalem?
Vanunu: I would like the people to write to their Congress to demand from them to know about my story and situation. I need activitsts in the US people to help intervene. I am not under a sentence by court but under restriction by Israel law which is not according to democracy. They have taken from me the basic human rights of freedom of speech and freedom of movement. The US and Congress has the right to protect these very important human rights. Congress was involved when the Jews in Russia were under these restrictions and the US put sanctions against Russia until they let the Jews leave. Now the US should do the same to Israel. The US should speak and raise these issues. But first of all demand that Israel to let me go and be free. I am not safe here. I don't feel safe here.
I would like to bring these matters to Congress. If Congress or visitors can come to visit me here, I would be glad to see them here. Isreal is not the democracy that is presented to the US media. The US has the right to intervene and to protect human rights such as freedom of speech.
For more information about Mordechai Vanunu, see:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/18/136217&mode=thread&tid=25
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/1355209
www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone) globalnet@mindspring.com http://www.space4peace.org
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