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NUCLEAR
SA arrests over WMD violations
S. Africa Drops Charges in Nuclear Case
Nuke smuggler ready to 'tell all'
Britain sets nuclear deadline for Iran
CENSORED! NO. 4. HIGH URANIUM LEVELS FOUND IN TROOPS AND CIVILIANS
E.U. executive amends nuclear plan, greens cry foul
Top G-8 officials gather in Geneva to discuss nuclear tensions with Iran
Allies Resist U.S. Efforts to Pressure Iran on Arms
UK sets Iran deadline to end nuclear bomb work
Iran confirms move to end nuclear activities.
Iran Seen Using EU to Buy Time to Get Atomic Bomb
Ehime to accept Shikoku Electric's pluthermal project
North Korea Says Seoul's Nuclear Experiments Stoke Arms Race
US exposes more illicit nuclear activity by South Korea
Debate Heats Up Over Seoul's Nuclear Admissions
Libyan sincerity on arms in doubt
Beyond the horizon
Nuclear danger: `Potatoes were guarded better'
The radiological threat widens
Between Ossetia and Teheran
CENSORED! NO. 10. NEW NUKE PLANTS: TAXPAYERS SUPPORT, INDUSTRY PROFITS
Radioactive tritium found in highest levels yet at lab
Wireless at the Nuclear Cleanup
Interesting NJ Power Plant Facts
Seeing a Mushroom Cloud in New York
Rory Kennedy HBO Film on Indian Point De-Bunked
New York Nuclear Plant Called Dangerous Terrorist Target
Nuclear watchdog blasts DOE
MILITARY
U.S. Envoy Urged to Ask Afghans to Drop Torture Case Against 3
U.S. Drafts Resolution On Sudan Sanctions
Powell Declares Genocide in Sudan in Bid to Raise Pressure
US calls Sudan atrocities genocide
U.S. Planes Strike in Fallujah; Roadside Bombs Kill 2 Troops
U.S. Forces Take Action in Areas Dominated by Iraqi Insurgents
Iraq Airstrike Killed Civilians, U.S. Military Acknowledges
Sharon's 'Gaza Problem': It May Be Israelis, Not Arabs
Israeli Military Continues Major Push Into Gaza
Pakistani Jets Attack Suspected Militants
C.I.A. Hid More Prisoners Than It Has Disclosed, Generals Say
Pentagon Hurrying to Correct Conditions in Iraqi Prisons
Russia Says Siege Leader Brutally Killed 3 Followers
Russia's Antiterror Tactics: Reward and a First Strike
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy on the CIA's road to Abu Ghraib
Analysis U.S. Troops' Death Rate Rising in Iraq
For 1,000 Troops, There Is No Going Home
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bush Plan Draws on Advice of 9/11 Panel
Shooting Of Iraqi Called 'Humane'
U.S. border agents track militant
Ridge: U.S. Should Be on Guard for Attack
Ridge Says Bush Wants School Siege Plan
Suspect Is Freed From Guantanamo Release Is First Under Tribunals
POLITICS
Bush Now Backs Budget Powers in New Spy Post
Records Say Bush Balked at Order
Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard
Senators Criticize C.I.A. in Inquiry on Iraqi Prison Abuse
When an Explosive Charge Is Not Handled With Care
Censored Stories, Your Ass
Kerry Acts to Refocus Iraq Debate
Kerry Rips Cheney Statement
House GOP Seeks Own Response to 9/11
ENERGY
Biodiesel Boom Extends to New Colorado Terminal
Energy dependence on Mideast, Russia to grow, says study
OTHER
Environment takes unusual prominence in Colorado Senate race
ACTIVISTS
International War
Documentary by Kennedy kin envisages terror strike on nuclear plant
Indian Point advocates criticize film about reactors
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- africa
SA arrests over WMD violations
Mr Meyer withdrew a bail application shortly before charges were dropped
Thursday, 9 September, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3639244.stm
Two people have been arrested in connection with a probe into materials that could be used to make a nuclear weapon, say South African police.
The two people were detained by specialist enforcement units in Durban and Johannesburg.
They face charges under South African laws banning nuclear proliferation.
However, charges against businessman Johan Meyer, who was arrested last week accused of trafficking nuclear material, have been dropped.
The charges - which Mr Meyer denied - had followed a lengthy police investigation, which involved the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
Officials said the case was linked to an international nuclear black market set up in the 1980s by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
According to the official charge sheet, Mr Meyer was accused of offences between 2000 and 2001 relating to the import and export of regulated goods "which could contribute to the design, development, manufacture and deployment" of weapons of mass destruction.
He was also accused of "unlawfully and wilfully possessing... nuclear-related equipment and material" from 2002 to 2004.
The old apartheid regime in South Africa had a nuclear weapons programme.
But this was closed down by the white government before it relinquished power in 1994.
----
S. Africa Drops Charges in Nuclear Case
Man Accused of Possessing Arms Components Expected to Cooperate in Probe
Craig Timberg
Washington Post
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5652-2004Sep8.html
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 8 -- South African authorities abruptly announced Wednesday that they had dropped criminal charges filed last week against a Pretoria man accused of possessing components used to make bomb-grade uranium for nuclear weapons.
The move was part of a deal in which the man, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, 53, is expected to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of other targets, a source familiar with the probe said on condition of anonymity.
Police arrested Meyer last Thursday in Vanderbijlpark, an industrial town 50 miles south of Johannesburg, where he is a director of Trade Fin Engineering. He was charged with violating South Africa's strict laws against nuclear proliferation.
Eleven shipping containers of components for a gas centrifuge, used in the enrichment of uranium, were confiscated in the investigation, along with related documentation and a machine that can be used to make other weapons components, officials said.
The arrest was part of an international investigation into the nuclear black market established by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who helped Libya and other countries develop weapons programs.
Authorities were cautious in their public statements Wednesday. Sipho Ngwema, spokesman for the Scorpions unit, an agency similar to the FBI, declined to comment on whether Meyer remained under suspicion for wrongdoing, saying only that charges had been dropped.
Meyer's attorney also declined to comment, according to news reports.
--------
Nuke smuggler ready to 'tell all'
September 09, 2004
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040908-094911-6218r.htm
PRETORIA - South Africa dropped charges against a factory owner suspected of selling nuclear equipment to rogue states as part of a plea bargain in which the man agreed to "tell all," a senior official said yesterday.
"He's squealing and willing to do a deal to tell us, the Americans and the Europeans, all we want to know," a senior South African official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity.
Johan Meyer, 53, was arrested last week at his Tradefin Engineering company in Vanderbijlpark and charged with violating South Africa's weapons proliferation laws.
The charges included trafficking in highly sensitive nuclear equipment. At the time of his arrest, 11 containers of material useful for enriching uranium were carted away from his factory in an industrial town on the Vaal River, 85 miles south of the capital, Pretoria, police said.
His detention came amid an international investigation of the nuclear ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, who masterminded Pakistan's nuclear bomb and secretly set up a worldwide nuclear market that supplied Libya, Iran, North Korea and others with equipment and instructions needed to build atom bombs.
Mr. Meyer is believed to have been involved in a secretive South African government program to develop nuclear weapons.
South Africa revealed its program and allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to supervise its dismantling in 1994 - a decision made as the white regime was about to hand over power to majority rule.
Mr. Meyer's arrest was part of a worldwide operation that has netted suspects in Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
A South African-based Israeli businessman, Asher Karni, was arrested and charged in the United States with illegally exporting material that could have been used as electronic bomb triggers from Cape Town to Pakistan.
Mr. Khan, in exchange for immunity from prosecution in Pakistan, confessed to helping a number of countries, including Libya and Iran, in their attempts to build nuclear weapons.
Libya disclosed its nuclear program in 2003 and it has agreed to disarm.
-------- britain
Britain sets nuclear deadline for Iran
British officials say Tehran must suspend all uranium enrichment activities or face possible UN action
by Matthew Clark,
September 9, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0909/dailyUpdate.html
Britain has given Iran two months stop uranium enrichment or face a demand for United Nations sanctions, reports The Age of Melbourne, Australia.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) governing board meets next week and a senior British official cited by The Age said Western countries would seek a resolution designating the board's November meeting as the "point of decision".
The new position was agreed by British, French, and German foreign ministers at a meeting in the Netherlands during the weekend, reports The Guardian, which says the deadline "effectively marks the failure of more than a year of negotiations between Tehran and the European troika of Britain, France, and Germany."
Refusal by Iran to comply would produce a new Middle East crisis in which the issue would almost certainly be referred to the United Nations security council, which could opt for punitive action.
Although the deadline is designed to pile pressure on Iran, the early signs from Tehran are that the theocratic regime is unwilling to comply unconditionally and that it is seeking major concessions from the west in return, including a trade agreement and transfer of civil nuclear technology.
The Age asserts that "an unspoken objective is to defer any crisis until after the US presidential election early in November." The decision brings the European countries closer the US stance on Iran. US Secretary of State Colin Powell Wednesday repeated demands that Iran be referred to the UN Security Council for allegedly trying to make atomic weapons.
European diplomats said Wednesday that Iran tentatively agreed to freeze some of its sensitive nuclear activities, reports The Guardian. The New York Times reported that the offer complicates the US bid to get allies' support on the issue. But BBC reports that British officials dismissed the reported Iranian offers. "This kind of thing should not come days before an IAEA meeting," they said.
A senior Russian nuclear official said Wednesday that an atomic reactor Moscow is building for Iran faces further delays, reports Reuters.
Diplomatic sources and specialists in Moscow have said President Vladimir Putin's growing recognition of Washington's concerns over Iran's nuclear program have pressured the Kremlin into delaying until the International Atomic Energy Agency determines that Iran's nuclear program is in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (which it has signed).
The official said the nature of the difficulty is technical and has nothing to do with US pressure.
A separate Reuters report cites Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh, who "has reported accurately on Iran's nuclear programme in the past," as saying that "Iran continues to use existing differences between the US and Europe to their advantage and tries to drag out talks with the EU to buy time."
'They feel they have bought at least 10 months,' Jafarzadeh said. He said he was citing sources in Iran familiar with the results of a recent high-level meeting on Iran's nuclear programme attended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Jafarzadeh said officials at the meeting also decided to allocate an additional $2 billion from Iran's central bank reserves to supplement some $14 billion already spent on what he called Iran's 'secret nuclear weapons programme'.
Jafarzadeh has been linked to various anti-Iranian groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Jerusalem Post in an interview Tuesday that the world is not doing enough to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons.
Sharon said 'there is no doubt' that Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons. 'That is their intention, and they are doing it by deception and subterfuge, using this cover or that. This is completely clear.'
Mr. Sharon told the Post that Israel "is taking its own measures to defend itself...."
In 1981, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear plant near Baghdad it said would soon be capable of producing atomic weapons.
US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton will visit Israel Sunday on his way to the IAEA meeting in Vienna. Mr. Bolton is scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and other senior Israeli officials, as part of efforts to transfer the "Iran case" to the United Nations Security Council, reports the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
-------- depleted uranium
CENSORED! NO. 4. HIGH URANIUM LEVELS FOUND IN TROOPS AND CIVILIANS
By Camille T. Taiara
09-09-04
Orlando Weekly
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/Story.asp?ID=4556
Last year Project Censored included the United States' and Great Britain's continued use of depleted-uranium weapons - despite ample evidence of their acute health effects - among its top 10 underreported stories. Almost 10,000 U.S. troops died within 10 years of serving in the first Gulf War, researchers had found. And more than a third of those still alive had filed Gulf War Syndrome-related claims.
In study after study, research pointed to the use of depleted uranium in U.S. and British weaponry as the culprit. But authorities concentrated their efforts into obfuscating the problem - downplaying its reach, discrediting scientists and ailing military personnel and erecting a smoke screen around the root causes of the "syndrome."
More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that has conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found overwhelming evidence that the United States is also using nondepleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than depleted uranium. "If the use of NDU indicates experimental application of new nuclear weapons, as the UMRC suggests, then it should alert the public that proliferation of small nuclear weaponry, proposed for some future use, has in fact already begun," Stephanie Hiller wrote in Awakened Woman.
At the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo in December, a team of attorneys from Japan, the United States and Germany indicted Bush on a number of war crimes charges - among them the use of depleted-uranium weapons. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified at the trial and later reported that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that a full two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse. But those are just some of the images of war we never see on the evening news.
Sources: "UMRC's Preliminary Findings From Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction, Indiscriminate Effects," Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team, Uranium Medical Research Center, January 2003. "Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan," Stephanie Hiller, Awakened Woman, January 2004. "There Are No Words ... Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs," Bob Nichols, Dissident Voice, March 2004. "Poisoned?," Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, April 2004. "International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan at Tokyo: The People vs. George Bush," Niloufer, Bhagwat J., Information Clearinghouse, March 2004.
-------- europe
E.U. executive amends nuclear plan, greens cry foul
Thursday, September 09, 2004
By Jeff Mason,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-09/s_27027.asp
BRUSSELS - The European Union's executive amended its controversial proposals for nuclear safety and waste management legislation on Wednesday, but a leading environmental group slammed the package as misleading and helpful to industry.
E.U. Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio, considered a proponent of nuclear energy in Europe, presented the revised proposals, which call for unified standards on safety at nuclear installations throughout the 25-nation bloc.
They would also require member states to create plans for dealing with radioactive waste, but a Commission-imposed deadline for those plans was dropped from the latest drafts as a concession to win backing from some sceptical E.U. governments.
"One of the main problems in the nuclear energy issue is there is too little information," de Palacio told a news conference. "These (proposals) are key instruments for ensuring greater transparency, rationalizing the debate and dispelling public fears regarding this source of energy."
Other changes to the original plans, which were first presented in January 2003, included withdrawing a proposal for so-called "peer reviews" in which inspectors from one E.U. country would check nuclear installations in another country.
Member states would instead be required to submit national reports on nuclear safety to the Commission for review.
Environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth said the proposals were unlikely to be passed by E.U. governments and accused the Commission of favouring industry by implying additional safety measures that were an "illusion."
"Nothing in the directives would substantially add to nuclear safety," said Friends of the Earth spokesman Mark Johnston, saying the proposals would duplicate safety standards already in place at an international level.
"It gives the suggestion that something is being done about nuclear safety, particularly in regard to Soviet-designed nuclear plants that have recently come into the E.U."
De Palacio said there was a blocking minority of countries against the proposal as it stood, but talks were underway with states that could be persuaded.
Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Finland are among those countries that have opposed the measures in the past, and a spokeswoman for Britain's E.U. representation in Brussels said it had not changed its position.
De Palacio, whose term expires at the end of October, wants the legislation to be approved before she leaves.
Friends of the Earth said it expected incoming energy commissioner Laszlo Kovacs of Hungary to be less enthusiastic about nuclear energy.
The group called on the new Commission to adopt a different approach and to finish an investigation over long-term decommissioning and waste management funding in Europe's nuclear industry.
-------- iran
Top G-8 officials gather in Geneva to discuss nuclear tensions with Iran
September 9, 2004,
(AP) / The Canadian Press
http://www3.cjad.com/content/cp_article.asp?id=/global_feeds/canadianpress/worldnews/w090945A.htm
GENEVA - With pressure building to curb Iran's nuclear program, top disarmament officials from major countries gathered Thursday for two days of meetings that the United States says will focus on Tehran in the campaign to stop the spread of atomic weapons.
The Group of Eight session comes as threats mount to haul Iran before the UN Security Council unless it renounces uranium enrichment, which the United States and other countries say will lead to nuclear weapons.
The discussions will give the officials a chance to sort out differences over the approach to next week's meeting of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which could trigger Security Council action.
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a leading critic of Iran, is hosting the Geneva session with his counterparts from Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, who were holding separate consultations following their arrival Thursday. The full meeting is planned for Friday.
The United States wants the IAEA to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which could force Security Council action. European countries have urged less precipitate action.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has demanded that Iran renounce uranium enrichment, which the United States regards as a step toward the development of nuclear weapons.
Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only is interested in nuclear power, which can be created with lower levels of enrichment.
The British government said Wednesday that, to avoid Security Council action, Iran would have to fulfil its pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activity by November.
The United States has repeatedly complained about Russia building a nuclear power plant under a formal contract with Iran, saying that spent nuclear fuel from the plant could be used to help Iran develop nuclear weapons.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly claimed Thursday that "spent nuclear fuel will be returned to Russia, and this will ensure it will be impossible to use the power plant to make nuclear weapons."
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Lavrov as saying that a new IAEA report found progress in resolving questions it had about Iran's program and "expresses the certainty the differences will be settled in the near future."
Lavrov said his country was determined to continue its nuclear-power co-operation with Iran.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder expressed concern Wednesday about the tensions between Iran and the West.
"This conflict is highly alarming," Schroeder told the lower house of parliament.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview Wednesday that the world was doing too little to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that Israel was taking its own measures to protect itself.
"There is no doubt" that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, he told the Jerusalem Post. He said Israel was especially threatened because Iran has tested a long-range missile than could reach Israel.
In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor to stop what it said were Iraqi plans to make atomic weapons.
The Geneva gathering is a followup to an agreement reached at the G-8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga., in June, which Prime Minister Paul Martin attended. U.S. officials said the meetings are being held about once a month in different locations.
The summit countries agreed to address proliferation problems and expand export controls worldwide, working "together to address the threat posed by" North Korea and Iran.
Developments on the Korean peninsula also make that region a prime topic for discussion at the Geneva meeting. The United States has been trying to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
But North Korea has said that recent South Korean disclosures could lead to a "nuclear arms race" in Northeast Asia.
South Korea said last week that it conducted a secret uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000, and said Thursday that it extracted a tiny amount of plutonium in a nuclear experiment in 1982.
The U.S. ally acknowledged "differences" with the IAEA over its activities. The UN agency is charged with verifying compliance with the nonproliferation treaty, which permits only peaceful uses of the atom.
----
Allies Resist U.S. Efforts to Pressure Iran on Arms
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
September 9, 2004
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/middleeast/09iran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - The Bush administration's campaign to persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons programs is running into resistance among some allies and disputes over the seriousness of a new Iranian offer to suspend part of its activities, administration officials said Wednesday.
The officials said Iran made the offer during negotiations with the three European nations - Britain, France and Germany - that are trying to get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and avoid punitive action sought by the United States.
The informal Iranian offer has not been made public, but officials who say they have seen details describe it as involving a suspension of some of Iran's nuclear programs in return for normal relations with the West and an end to threats of sanctions.
The United States has demanded that Tehran give up all its uranium enrichment activities, saying they are needed only to produce weapons, not electricity. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he had seen reports of the Iranian offer, but was more interested in action. A senior official said Thursday that the offer, while inadequate, was a sign that American pressure is working.
"It was very telling that in the past 24 to 48 hours, the Iranians have started to try to deal again," said a senior administration official. "That indicates a great concern on their part.''
Other officials said, however, that the Iranian offer may have the effect of forestalling the action that the United States seeks next week at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The agency has deplored Iran's lack of willingness to answer questions about its nuclear program but has taken no action.
The Bush administration wants the agency's 35-member board of governors to refer Iran's lack of cooperation to the United Nations Security Council, where sanctions and other forms of pressure might be considered.
On the other side, Germany and France argue that more pressure will make Iran less willing to consider curbs on its nuclear programs, which most experts regard as close to giving it the ability to make nuclear weapons.
Later this week, during a meeting in Geneva of top nuclear proliferation specialists from the major industrial countries, John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for nonproliferation affairs, will be trying to build a consensus to increase pressure on Iran.
The United States has tried and failed five times to get the votes to refer the matter to the Security Council, and Mr. Powell said last week that it would try again.
"We've been trying for the past five meetings to achieve that result," Mr. Bolton said in an interview before leaving for Geneva, referring to the effort to bring the matter before the Security Council. "We're going to try again in the sixth meeting. Whether or not that's possible, we've been unambiguous that we would make that push."
But European diplomats, asking not to be identified because the sensitive talks are continuing, expressed doubts that the referral would succeed. Some suggested instead that the United States give Iran one more chance to comply with the demands, with the clear understanding that failure will lead to sending the matter to the Security Council in November.
To some diplomats, the November meeting is critical because it would come after the American presidential election. Many experts say Iran is waiting to see the outcome of the race before deciding whether to negotiate with the Bush administration, even though Senator John F. Kerry has also taken a tough stance on the issue.
Administration officials said they had not yet been able to achieve a consensus on the board of governors. Normally the board takes action by consensus or not at all, which means that a strong dissenting minority can prevent it from acting.
Failing to get a consensus could signal a change of strategy for the administration, administration officials said. If there is no consensus, the administration may try to get a simple majority of the agency's board to send the issue to the Security Council. As a last resort, the administration may have to put the matter off until November.
"We're working it really hard right now," said a senior American official. "We may have to wait until next time, but we're really pushing hard to get this now." The official said that Mr. Powell had been on the telephone in the past week to press the issue.
If there is a yes-or-no vote, according to diplomats from countries involved in the talks, the United States might be able to get the votes of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, perhaps Japan and perhaps Spain and the Netherlands. The American strategy appears to be to line up enough votes that wavering countries might go along.
----
UK sets Iran deadline to end nuclear bomb work
Ewen MacAskill, Kasra Naji in Tehran and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Thursday September 9, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1300322,00.html
The British government yesterday set a November ultimatum for Iran to suspend all activities linked to production of a nuclear bomb - a deadline that effectively marks the failure of more than a year of negotiations between Tehran and the European troika of Britain, France and Germany.
Refusal by Iran to comply would produce a new Middle East crisis in which the issue would almost certainly be referred to the United Nations security council, which could opt for punitive action.
Although the deadline is designed to pile pressure on Iran, the early signs from Tehran are that the theocratic regime is unwilling to comply unconditionally and that it is seeking major concessions from the west in return, including a trade agreement and transfer of civil nuclear technology.
A British official said yesterday that Iran must comply by the November board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog body.
"Iran needs to meet its commitments. We would like it to meet its commitments before then, but if it doesn't, Iran needs to know and it needs to know now, that there is going to be a decision point in November and at that point a very serious option ... is referral to the United Nations security council," he said.
"We cannot have any kind of negotiation that goes on forever. At some point you have got to decide whether negotiating further makes sense, or whether you need to do something else."
The new position was agreed by British, French and German foreign ministers at a meeting in the Netherlands at the weekend.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, yesterday warned that Iran's nuclear activities were "extremely alarming" and the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, described the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East as the "nightmare scenario". Israel is the only Middle East country with the nuclear bomb.
A French government source echoed the British and German positions, saying that Iran had reneged on commitments it had given to the European trio in Tehran last year.
The US, Israel and the Europeans all claim Iran is covertly engaged in building a nuclear weapon.
Tehran denies the accusation, insisting its nuclear programme is purely for the production of electricity.
The European countries' new position brings them closer to the US, which is hawkish on Iran and has long expressed scepticism about the European policy of "constructive engagement".
If the security council opted for punitive action, the likeliest course of action would be sanctions.
But senior members of the US administration have in recent months threatened Iran with more serious options, including covert military operations, and Israel has warned it could mount a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear reactor.
An Iranian source said this week that the Bushehr plant in southern Iran, being built with Russian help since the early 1990s, was scheduled for completion within the next two years.
At a meeting in Vienna on Monday, the IAEA board is expected to reiterate continued concern over Iran's intentions.
Iran this week offered some concessions ahead of the IAEA meeting. But the British official said they were late and were neither clear, nor had been formally put forward.
In a statement, Iran's defence minster, Ali Shamkhani, said yesterday that "Iran will not achieve peace by giving concessions".
On Tuesday, Mr Shamkhani suggested test-firing Iran's nuclear-capable medium-range missile Shahab 3 in front of observers, after press reports abroad suggested that an August 11 test may not have been as successful as Iranian officials had claimed. The missile is capable of reaching Israel.
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post published yesterday, the Israeli prime minster, Ariel Sharon, urged the security council to impose sanctions.
Mr Sharon said he has no doubt Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons.
"That is their intention, and they are doing it by deception and subterfuge, using this cover or that. This is completely clear," he said. "I don't see that [international pressure] against them is enough to stop them from obtaining nuclear weapons. And that is a very big danger."
Mr Sharon added that Israel was "taking measures to defend itself".
----
Iran confirms move to end nuclear activities.
ABC News online
9 sept 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200409/s1195186.htm
Iran has confirmed it is offering European representatives and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a compromise deal that would see an end to its more questionable nuclear activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, who has just come back from several days of talks in Europe, has confirmed that Iran has offered to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
But he says Iran will decide to suspend these activities only after the meeting of the board of governors of the IAEA.
He also has a warning - if the Europeans do not respect their commitments or present, in his words, an illogical or harsh resolution, Iran will go ahead with its response.
He says that response will not be just diplomatic.
Some hardliners have been calling on the Iranian Government to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - a step which will end all UN inspections of its nuclear installations.
----
Iran Seen Using EU to Buy Time to Get Atomic Bomb
Thu Sep 9, 2004
(Reuters)
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6192559&pageNumber=1
VIENNA - Iran is using negotiations with the European Union's "big three" on suspending sensitive nuclear activities to buy the time it needs to get ready to make atomic weapons, an Iranian exile and intelligence officials said.
With intelligence sources saying Iran could be months away from nuclear weapons capability, the United States wants Iran reported to the U.N. Security Council immediately, charging Tehran uses its civilian atomic energy program as a front to develop the bomb. Tehran vehemently denies the charge.
France, Britain and Germany want to avoid isolating Iran and have taken a go-slow approach, negotiating with Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
"Iran continues to use existing differences between the U.S. and Europe to their advantage and tries to drag out talks with the EU to buy time," Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian exile who has reported accurately on Iran's nuclear program in the past, told Reuters.
"They feel they have bought at least 10 months," Jafarzadeh said. He said he was citing sources in Iran familiar with the results of a recent high-level meeting on Iran's nuclear program attended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Jafarzadeh said officials at the meeting also decided to allocate an additional $2 billion from Iran's central bank reserves to supplement some $14 billion already spent on what he called Iran's "secret nuclear weapons program."
The EU trio has expressed disappointment at Iran's failure to keep promises it made in October to suspend all activities related to the enrichment of uranium, a process of purifying it for use as fuel for atomic power plants or in weapons. But the three remain committed to a process of engagement with Tehran.
However an intelligence official said a failure to act now as Washington would like, could be decisive for the development of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
"The Europeans express helplessness, despair and lack of strategy, which is exactly what (the Iranians) want to hear," a senior non-U.S. intelligence official said.
"This is their golden opportunity, between now and the coming of a new (U.S.) administration."
"PLAYING FOR TIME"
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been investigating Iran's nuclear program ever since Jafarzadeh announced in August 2002 on behalf of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled opposition group, that Iran was hiding several massive nuclear sites from the IAEA.
Although the EU trio are reaching the point where they too might support a referral of Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions, diplomats in Vienna say they will give Iran one more chance to end its enrichment activities before the November IAEA meeting.
On Tuesday, diplomats said Iran had agreed with the Europeans in principle to renew its suspension of centrifuge production, assembly and testing. But U.S. and other officials dismissed this as a ploy to escape a Security Council referral.
"Iran is playing for time," a Western diplomat told Reuters.
The IAEA Board of Governors meets next week to discuss Iran's nuclear program, parts of which it hid from the U.N. nuclear watchdog for nearly two decades. Vienna diplomats say the EU three oppose a U.N. Security Council report next week.
Diplomats and intelligence officials say this may give Iran just enough time to reach the point where it has all the technology and expertise it needs to develop an atom bomb at a time of its choosing.
"It is a matter of several months, up to a year, most probably less than a year (for nuclear capability)," the intelligence official said. "By that time we think they will have enough feed material for the centrifuges so they won't be dependent on foreign input."
Iran recently announced it would convert 37 tons of raw "yellowcake" uranium into uranium hexafluoride, the feed material for centrifuges. Experts say this is enough for a bomb.
The official said the IAEA was making a mistake by being so cautious about what the agency has called a lack of any evidence proving Tehran has a covert military atomic program.
"If the IAEA would wait forever to see a smoking gun ... it will be too late," the official said.
-------- japan
Ehime to accept Shikoku Electric's pluthermal project
Thursday, September 9, 2004
(Kyodo News)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=311599
MATSUYAMA - Ehime Gov Moriyuki Kato on Thursday indicated his intention to accept Shikoku Electric Power Co's "pluthermal" project to burn plutonium-uranium mixed oxide at a nuclear reactor in Ikata in the prefecture.
"I see no reason to bar the power utility from filing an application for the central government's approval," he told a news conference.
-------- korea
North Korea Says Seoul's Nuclear Experiments Stoke Arms Race
September 9, 2004
By JAMES BROOKE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/asia/09korea.html?pagewanted=all
TOKYO, Thursday, Sept. 9 - North Korea warned on Wednesday that a recently disclosed South Korean experiment with uranium enrichment could "accelerate a northeast Asia nuclear arms race," and accused the United States of applying a "double standard" to the nuclear programs of the two Koreas.
In North Korea's first public reaction to reports last week of the clandestine experiment four years ago, Han Song Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, lambasted the United States. But he did not specifically rule out attending a new round of regional talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
South Korea acknowledged Thursday that it had conducted plutonium-based nuclear research in the early 1980's, Agence France-Presse reported. A government official cited a recent visit by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to a South Korean government-run nuclear research center as a reason for revealing the previously undisclosed research.
"We view South Korea's uranium enrichment program in the context of an arms race in northeast Asia," Mr. Han told the Yonhap news agency of South Korea. "It has become difficult to prevent expansion of a nuclear arms race because of South Korea's test."
Last week, South Korea admitted publicly that in 2000 government scientists had enriched tiny amounts of uranium in what it called an "academic" exercise.
On Wednesday, South Korea said it should have reported the uranium enrichment experiment to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency.
"We should have reported that uranium was used during this experiment," a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters at a briefing in Seoul. South Korea has said that the uranium was enriched to only 10 percent. Last weekend, I.A.E.A. inspectors took a .10 gram sample to Vienna for testing to determine if the enrichment approached bomb-grade levels, or over 85 percent.
South Korea has one of the world's largest nuclear power industries. Nineteen nuclear power plants supply 40 percent of the nation's electricity. It is also seeking to build nuclear power plants in China. Under a 1994 nuclear disarmament accord, South Korea was helping to build North Korea's first two commercially viable nuclear power plants when work was suspended last year as a result of North Korea's violation of the accord.
Two years ago, American officials say, North Korea admitted that it was secretly enriching uranium. In January 2003, it expelled I.A.E.A. inspectors and said it started to process stored fuel rods for nuclear weapons material. Since then, it has claimed to have produced "a nuclear deterrent," North Korea's ambiguous phrase for a nuclear weapons arsenal. After the American-led invasion of Iraq last year, Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, said the United States would not have attacked Iraq if it had had nuclear weapons.
Since then, China and the United States have lead a regional effort to try to persuade North Korea to give up its weapons, most likely in return for economic aid and security guarantees. Although China has set a Sept. 22 date for the start of the fourth round of talks, North Korea has not committed to attending.
In New York, Ambassador Han called Washington "worthless" as a negotiations partner and said that American policy toward North Korea made it "no longer worth meeting." But these are phrases that have been used in the periods before talks.
--------
US exposes more illicit nuclear activity by South Korea
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Sep 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040908221352.ebtdi33e.html
South Korea may have been involved in illicit nuclear activity even before its recently disclosed experiment to enrich uranium, the United States said Wednesday as North Korea warned of a nuclear arms race.
"Our understanding is that over 20 years ago, the South Koreans did experiments involving trace amounts of plutonium," a senior US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Highly enriched uranium and plutonium could be used to make nuclear bombs.
Seoul last week admitted that South Korean scientists had carried out an unauthorised experiment at its state-run nuclear research center to enrich uranium four years ago but says it was not linked to any weapons program.
The clandestine activity embarrassed both the United States and its ally South Korea at a time when they are trying to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear weapons drive through six-party talks hosted by China.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team went to South Korea to carry out a probe last week and its findings will be discussed at a four-day board meeting of the nuclear watchdog starting Monday.
Asked whether the United States had been talking to South Korean on any activity beyond the uranium enrichment experiment, specifically involving plutonium, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "I think I'd just have to say in general terms we are in touch with the South Korean government."
He said Washington was aware of what the South Koreans had reported to the IAEA on nuclear experiments conducted in past years.
"We have confidence that the agency will pursue all these matters, including any questions that might arise from the declaration," Boucher told reporters.
"So at this point, as far as other possibilities and things, I withhold comment," he said.
On whether South Korea had indulged in illicit nuclear activity other than what it had already admitted, Boucher said: "Our understanding is that all these activities were in the past and some of them quite a while back in the past."
During the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s, Seoul launched a secret nuclear weapons program, but the United States reportedly persuaded it to abandon the plan.
Boucher reiterated that the United States was satisfied South Korea was reporting its nuclear activities to the IAEA.
But North Korea has stepped up criticism of its southern neighbor and accused the United States of practising "double standards."
"We view South Korea's uranium enrichment program as part of armament race in the Northeast Asian region," Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, told the Yonhap News Agency.
"It will be difficult to prevent the spread of armament race in the region due to the South's nuclear experiment.
Han said Pyongyang would take issue with the matter, casting doubt on multilateral talks aimed at resolving the impasse over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Yonhap said.
The fourth round of six-nation talks, involving China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States, aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions, are expected in Beijing this month.
Global environmental group Greenpeace has said that South Korea's illicit nuclear activity revelation was a "stark warning" about the nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula and the wider Northeast Asian region.
Japan currently has a plutonium stockpile of some five tonnes of plutonium, it says. North Korea is believed to have already acquired nuclear weapons.
China is the region's only "official nuclear power."
----
Debate Heats Up Over Seoul's Nuclear Admissions
By Ron Synovitz
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Thursday, 09 September 2004
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/09/75910d18-ac4e-4e92-bc2c-e35a6518c5bf.html
North Korea is accusing the United States of applying "double standards" in its role as one of the mediators in six-party nuclear nonproliferation talks on the Korean peninsula. The criticism by Pyongyang's envoy to the United Nations yesterday was the country's first official reaction to South Korea's recent admission that it had experimented with small amounts of uranium and plutonium. Plutonium and enriched uranium are two key ingredients of nuclear weapons. Conducting such tests without immediately informing the UN's nuclear watchdog -- the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- is a violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Both North and South Korea signed that treaty, but Pyongyang withdrew in January 2003.
Prague, 9 September 2004 (RFE/RL) -- South Korea is downplaying a warning from North Korea about an accelerated nuclear-arms race on the peninsula.
Seoul says its admissions about experiments with uranium and plutonium should not disrupt the international talks on Pyongyang's atomic-weapons programs.
South Korea admitted last week that its scientists had enriched a tiny amount of uranium in 2000 but had failed in its obligation to report the experiment to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Seoul also has revealed that its scientists extracted plutonium in 1982 without reporting it. The revelations came after the IAEA announced it had found evidence of the experiments during routine inspections.
"From the North Korean perspective, it all looks very much like double standards. Washington reacts very harshly to North Korea's much more developed programs, but then is much more negligent as far as the South Korean programs are concerned."
South Korean officials insist they have no interest in acquiring atomic bombs.
Patrick Koellner is a senior researcher at the Institute for Asian Affairs in Hamburg, Germany. He has been closely following developments on the Korean peninsula, including North Korea's reactions: "This is very much an expression of frustration on the part of North Korea relating to the fact that the United States has not substantially changed its negotiation position as far as North Korea's nuclear programs are concerned."
Koellner says Pyongyang's frustration is understandable: "From the North Korean perspective, it all looks very much like double standards. Washington reacts very harshly to North Korea's much more developed programs, but then is much more negligent as far as the South Korean programs are concerned."
Gary Samore, an expert on nonproliferation at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, says Pyongyang has an excuse to try to set back the international talks focused on its nuclear-weapons programs: "The North Koreans are not interested right now in making any progress in the six-party talks. So they are using the revelations about the experiment in South Korea as an excuse to slow down the process of discussions."
Samore says the South Korean experiments were of little technical significance. But from a political standpoint, he says the issue illustrates the need for governments to ensure their scientists don't conduct experiments contrary to legal commitments made under international treaties: "Under that [NPT] treaty, South Korea is allowed to conduct experiments with nuclear material. But all such experiments have to be reported to the IAEA so it can verify that none of the material involved is being used for military purposes. So the experiments themselves are not illegal. But carrying them out without declaring them to the appropriate international agency is [illegal]."
Samore says South Korea started the initial stages of a clandestine nuclear weapons program during the early 1980s, when the future of its security relationship with the United States was in doubt. That was after Washington announced possible plans to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea: "The United States learned of this [nuclear] activity and through political pressure and persuasion was able to end the program at a very early stage."
Patrick Koellner of the Institute for Asian Affairs agrees with Samore's description of the historical background of the dispute. But he says rather than bolstering North Korea's confidence in Washington as a neutral mediator, recent events have strengthened Pyongyang's perception of the United States as a "puppet master of South Korea" that was aware of the experiments but did not pressure South Korea to report them.
Samore concludes that the planned withdrawal of some 12,000 U.S. troops from South Korea by the end of 2005 will not lead Seoul to restart nuclear tests in the near future. But he says the long-term outlook is less certain: "In the longer term we have to be concerned that if North Korea's nuclear-weapons program continues without any constraint, and if there are further strains in the U.S.-South Korean security relationship, as there have been over the last few years, it is possible that the South Korean government could decide to revive its nuclear weapons-related activities."
-------- mideast
Libyan sincerity on arms in doubt
September 09, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040909-121930-9087r.htm
The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum).
Second of three excerpts
Musa Kusa, the head of Libya's spy agency, got the attention of Britain's Foreign Office and MI6 intelligence service when he contacted them in March 2003.
Kusa was a man with blood on his hands. He had been deputy chief of Libyan intelligence when two of its agents were dispatched to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.
When Kusa informed the British officials that he had an offer from Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, they heard him out.
Kusa said Libya would agree to rid itself of all nuclear and chemical weapons and materials, along with longer-range missile delivery systems. Gadhafi's condition: Britain and the United States must help remove the sanctions on his regime and normalize relations with Libya, an officially designated state sponsor of terrorism.
The CIA was skeptical.
"You're talking to the most suspicious organization in the world," said one intelligence official who was closely involved in the negotiations.
Still, a decision was made at the highest levels of both governments - by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair - to pursue the talks.
To Douglas Feith, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, Gadhafi's apparent decision to "open up" reflected a victory in Bush's global war on terrorism, which focused on the connections among terrorist organizations, weapons of mass destruction and state sponsors of terrorism.
For many years, Gadhafi tried to remain at that intersection while attempting to buy his way off the list of rogue states, Feith said.
"When President Bush made it clear that living at that intersection is really dangerous," Feith said, "Gadhafi decided he was going to come clean."
Over several months, CIA officers and British diplomatic and intelligence officials held secret meetings with Libyan representatives in London. In May 2003, Gadhafi himself met with U.S. and British officials in Tunisia. That fall, a CIA and MI6 team visited Libya.
Before a second planned visit to Libya could take place, another event exposed a clandestine network of nuclear suppliers headed by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program.
And that same month, October 2003, a U.S.-initiated diversion and search of a German-flagged ship bound for Libya from the United Arab Emirates also called into question Gadhafi's sincerity in negotiating Libya's nuclear and chemical disarmament.
Khan's key man
What one CIA official called a "breakthrough" in the secret arms talks with Libya was the result of electronic eavesdropping conducted by the supersecret U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Back in 2000, U.S. intelligence agencies had put Khan under clandestine electronic surveillance and soon confirmed long-held suspicions that he was a major figure in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Intercepts revealed that Khan's network of companies and contacts stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe.
The intercept that reached NSA headquarters in early October 2003 concerned Khan and key associate Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman. Tahir, having married a Malaysian in 1998, was a permanent resident of Malaysia.
U.S. officials said Tahir and his brother owned SMB Group, a company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Tahir did work with SCOMI Precision Engineering, known as SCOPE, a subsidiary of a petroleum-services company that produced centrifuge parts for Libya's growing nuclear-weapons program. SCOPE had a plant in Shah Alam, Malaysia, about 95 miles southeast of the capital of Kuala Lumpur, where it worked on centrifuge components for Gadhafi.
The evidence in the NSA intercept led investigators directly to Tahir, who would reveal the extent of his involvement with Khan and the reach of Khan's network. Investigators later concluded that Tahir's company served as a front for numerous black-market deals for nuclear technology; he was a key player in building Libya's program.
Tahir's first contact with A.Q. Khan occurred in 1985, when Tahir visited Pakistan and won a contract to supply air-conditioning equipment to the Khan Research Laboratory.
U.S. officials concluded that Tahir played a critical role in Khan's covert nuclear-weapons network, which would sell equipment - specifically centrifuge components - to Libya, Iran, North Korea and other rogue states. The network cleverly disguised transactions by also selling commercial equipment used in oil drilling, water treatment and other unrelated endeavors.
Libya's interest
Investigators reveal that in about 1995, Khan asked Tahir to send two containers of centrifuge parts from Dubai to Iran aboard an Iranian merchant ship.
Iran paid Tahir and Khan about $3 million. The cash was delivered in suitcases to a guesthouse in Dubai that Khan used during frequent visits to the Persian Gulf.
In 1997, Libyan intelligence agents reportedly contacted Khan and requested help in developing a uranium-enrichment system with centrifuges. Several meetings between Khan and the Libyans followed, including one in Istanbul. Among those present were Khan, Tahir and two Libyan arms-procurement officials, Mohamad Matuq Mohamad and a man identified only as Karim. The Libyans said they wanted to build a centrifuge and were willing to pay for it, whatever the cost.
Khan, Tahir and Mohamad met several times between 1998 and 2002 - at least once in Dubai and once in Casablanca, Morocco, Tahir later said.
In 2001, Khan notified Tahir that Pakistan had sent Libya a shipment of uranium hexafluoride, the gas necessary to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. By 2001 and 2002, Khan was sending centrifuge components for complete machines aboard Pakistani cargo flights to Libya.
Tahir told Malaysian investigators that he thought the centrifuge design had been copied from the P1 model, which Pakistan adapted from a centrifuge plan stolen from the European conglomerate Urenco.
The Libyans put the centrifuges in a nuclear facility code-named Project Machine Shop 1001. Tahir said Libya used middlemen to set up the facility and to obtain equipment, including a lathe to make centrifuge components and a furnace to temper them.
Nuclear agents
Tahir identified a key middleman as Peter Griffin, a British national who was retired and living in France. Griffin's son now headed his company, Gulf Technical Industries.
Tahir disclosed the names of other nuclear agents. One was the late Heinz Mebus, an engineer who helped Khan smuggle centrifuge designs to Iran in 1984 and 1985.
Another supplier was Gotthard Lerch, a German who lived in Switzerland and at one time worked for the German company Leybold Heraeus, producer of vacuum technology. Lerch tried to help the Libyans obtain specialty pipes for Machine Shop 1001 from South Africa, but was unable to conclude the deal even after Libya paid for the tubes in advance.
Tahir also fingered Gunas Jireh, a Turkish national whom Khan had hired to supply aluminum casting and a centrifuge dynamo for the Libyan nuclear program. Another Turk, engineer Selim Alguadis, supplied the Libyan nuclear program with electrical cabinets and voltage-regulator equipment.
Tahir said some of the most important contributors to the Libyan nuclear program came from a Swiss family, the Tinners.
Friedrich Tinner, a mechanical engineer, had worked covertly with Khan since the 1980s and was able to provide safety valves for centrifuges obtained from European manufacturers. Tinner arranged for the goods to be shipped to Libya by way of Dubai.
Tinner's son, Urs, worked for Tahir and helped set up SCOPE's factory in Malaysia in December 2001. Urs was also in charge of setting up Libya's machine shop. At one point, he coordinated with brother Marco, owner of Switzerland's Traco Co., to import key machines to Libya. Urs also procured machines from Britain, France and Taiwan.
In all, the Khan network helped Libya purchase more than a hundred machine tools for its plant. Libya's goal was to produce a cascade of 10,000 centrifuges to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
Stopping a ship
The Libyans made other efforts to hide their nuclear procurement. When purchasing raw materials for centrifuge components, they chose a grade of aluminum tubes that was not controlled for export and thus would not raise suspicions among intelligence agencies.
Libya purchased 300 metric tons of tubes from a Singapore-based company that was a subsidiary of the German company Bikar Metalle. Tahir then arranged for the tubes to be machined at the SCOPE plant in Malaysia.
Between December 2002 and August 2003, even while the Libyans were in disarmament talks with British and U.S. intelligence, Tahir sent the tubes to Libya in four shipments via a trading company in Dubai.
But Libya's ongoing nuclear advances were thwarted Oct. 4, 2003, seven months after its spy chief, Kusa, first reached out to the British.
That was the day the CIA alerted German and Italian authorities that the German-flagged ship BBC China was bound for Libya with parts for its nuclear program.
The vessel had set sail from Dubai. The U.S. government contacted the ship's owner, the German company BBC Chartering and Logistic GmbH, and asked for help in blocking the shipment. With that assistance and the presence of a U.S. warship, the vessel was diverted to a port in Italy.
This was considered the first action of what is now known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Bush administration's program for halting illegal-weapons sales.
When investigators boarded the BBC China and seized the cargo, they confirmed that five shipping containers contained parts that could have helped Gadhafi build nuclear bombs.
The containers were filled with wooden boxes bearing the SCOPE logo. All the goods were made of high-quality aluminum used to make high-speed centrifuges for enriching uranium. Also on board were the aluminum casting goods and dynamo that nuclear agent Gunas Jireh had procured for Libya.
U.S. intelligence agencies previously had not known the extent of Libya's nuclear-arms program.
Two weeks later, investigators discovered that Tahir had arranged to ship electrical components to Libya for its machine plant.
Gadhafi's lesson
Caught in the act, Libya was forced to publicly reveal it had worked secretly to build nuclear as well as chemical weapons.
Gadhafi, concerned about his legacy and an economy hit hard by sanctions, made a startling announcement two months later, in December 2003. The dictator said Libya would abandon its nuclear and chemical arms programs, limit the range of its missiles and comply with numerous international weapons treaties.
Libya ultimately admitted it had spent some $500 million since the late 1990s in developing nuclear weapons.
Gadhafi's announcement was widely hailed as a victory in the effort to stem the flow of nuclear-weapons technology to rogue states.
Feith, the U.S. undersecretary of defense, was more cautious. But he acknowledged that Libya's pledge to disarm could be an important step.
Feith suggested that Gadhafi adopted this approach after the sobering U.S.-led ousters of the Taliban from Afghanistan and Saddam from Iraq.
"At that point, Gadhafi, having tried for years to get off the 'bad list' [of rogue states] by means short of opening up, decided that he had to open up," Feith said. "Now, what does one infer from that? I suppose it seems as if he came to the conclusion that it was too risky being coy, it was too risky trying these lesser means to get off the bad list.
"And it became more urgent for him to get off the bad list when he saw the fate of the Taliban regime and the Saddam Hussein regime."
Still, the Libyans have continued to deny the existence of a biological-weapons program, even though numerous intelligence reports indicate they have such a program.
Sobering reminder
Feith and other U.S. officials were right to be cautious and skeptical about Gadhafi's disarmament pledge. In May, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) produced a report that confirmed their suspicions.
The confidential report praised the Libyan government for allowing inspectors to examine nuclear-weapons facilities, and it disclosed for the first time the exact locations of those sites. But on the whole, the report was a sobering reminder that much remained unknown about the Libyan nuclear-weapons program.
The report stated, for example, that Libya failed to provide documents confirming the program had been dismantled. And U.S. officials said the Libyans could not account for major portions of components and equipment.
The IAEA report stated that a container of centrifuge components "actually arrived in Libya in March 2004."
The report concluded that "nearly all of the technology involved in Libya's past nuclear activities was obtained from foreign sources, often through intermediaries."
The IAEA did not identify countries or persons, but those involved included at least one declared nuclear-weapons state, probably Russia or China; an Eastern European nation; a Western European company; a Far Eastern country; and a "supplier state" thought to be Pakistan.
"Libya has stated that centrifuge-related training had been provided by foreign experts at locations in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia," the report said.
The stark conclusion was that Libya, known to support international terrorism, received much assistance in building the most deadly weapons known to man.
Reason for doubt
The report's most alarming section related to whether the Libyans tried to make a nuclear warhead. Libyan government officials said that in January, they turned over to the United States all documents and drawings related to nuclear weapons design and manufacturing. They asserted that the data never had been transferred in electronic form.
"It is practically impossible for the agency to prove or disprove such statements," the IAEA reported, highlighting just how much remained unknown about the Libyan program - and the difficulty of weapons monitoring and verification in general.
Libya received design data for nuclear warheads in late 2001 or early 2002, but the Libyans said they did not act on the information or even check whether it was credible or practical. The IAEA doubted this.
"This is surprising," the IAEA report said, "given the substantial effort that was being devoted to uranium enrichment."
U.S. officials familiar with Libya's program said the design data originated in China and probably had been re-exported from Pakistan through Khan's network.
As it did in Iran, the IAEA discovered trace amounts of weapons-grade uranium on centrifuge components in Libya. The highly enriched uranium may have come from equipment sent from Pakistan or it could have been produced in Libya.
Whatever the case, the discovery raised serious questions about how far along the Libyan nuclear program was - and whether Libya's promises could be trusted.
-------- missile defense
Beyond the horizon
By Reuven Pedatzur
Thu., September 09, 2004
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/475592.html
There was no reason for the exaggerations, promises and groundless boasting spread by senior defense establishment officials about the Arrow missile's successful interception of the Scud in the United States. Neither was there any justification for the hue and cry and scary predictions after the failure to launch the Ofek-6 (horizon, in Hebrew) satellite and the Arrow's failure to intercept another ballistic missile a week earlier. It is not pleasant, of course, to fail twice out of three attempts to launch a satellite. But it's a far cry to go from this to establishing that "this was a hard blow for intelligence," "a blow to Israel's capability to obtain a warning of missiles," etc.
The statements by defense establishment spokespeople after the failure to get Ofek-6 into orbit could have created the impression that this was the end of Israel's capability of gathering full intelligence on Iran. They implied that we would no longer know what the Iranians are developing in their nuclear project, and we will not be able to know, and warn, of the Iranians launching missiles at us. The truth, as expected, is completely different.
There is, of course, an advantage in being able to photograph Iran from space, but this is not enough to ensure the exposure of its nuclear activities. The Ofek's advanced cameras have a high resolution, and it was supposed to send high-quality photographs, but they would not have solved the problem of gathering information about the Iranian nuclear program.
The Americans have been following the Iranians for a long time. They allocate quite a few advanced espionage satellites for this, but repeatedly fail to expose Iran's nuclear activities.
Despite the Americans' satellite capability, which is better than Israel's even if Ofek-6 had entered its orbit, they failed to expose Iran's activity in uranium enrichment facilities at Nantaz, the heavy water production plant at Arak, and the secret laboratory in Tehran's Nuclear Research Center. These were only exposed after exiled Iranians gave the United States information. Therefore, the claim that without Ofek-6 Israel would have no information on the Iranian nuclear program, and that the danger to our security has increased because of this, is groundless.
No less unfounded is the argument that Israel's independent ability to obtain early warning of a sudden ballistic missile attack would be greatly damaged. This ability would not have been achieved even if Ofek-6 had orbited the earth as planned. It would require a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit to detect missile launchings, that is, a satellite that circles the earth at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers. Such a satellite is always above a fixed point on earth, and can therefore spy continuously at missile launching sites and expose any launching immediately as it takes place. Such American satellites provided information in real time on the launching of Iraqi missiles in 1991.
Israel does not and probably will not have - for economic reasons - the capability to put satellites of this kind in space. Ofek satellites orbit the earth at an altitude of a just a few hundred kilometers, so they cannot maintain continuous intelligence gathering in one region - they pass over a specific region only once every few hours. Moreover, to locate a ballistic missile launching it is necessary to equip the satellite with sensors that detect the heat signature of the launched missile, which the Ofek satellites do not have.
In addition, for many years there has been an agreement between Israel and the United States whereby the U.S. provides Israel with information from its satellites about missile launchings. According to this agreement, if Israel is in danger of being attacked by missiles, the Americans will allocate geosynchronous satellites for continuous surveillance of the state threatening Israel, and transfer directly to Israel information of any missile being launched toward it. Thus the pretense to create an independent capability "to obtain early warning of ballistic missiles" has no standing.
Israel needs to continue developing and manufacturing satellites, which can improve intelligence ability and provide important information, and failures in such advanced development programs are expected and must not lead to their cancelation.
But just as the defense establishment should not delude the public by promising that it is well protected from a ballistic missile attack just because one experiment with the Arrow succeeded, so it must not tell the public that Ofek-6 satellites are the perfect solution for gathering information on everything that goes on in Iran, and that without them we are in existential danger.
We must remember that what is really important about the missile issue is the message inherent in Israel's capability to launch long-range missiles. According to foreign sources, the Shavit satellite launcher is based on the Jericho ballistic missile. A rocket capable of putting a satellite in a precise point in space is also capable of being used as a missile to hit a target on earth. This Israel's enemies understand full well, and Ofek-6's failure does not impair this deterrence.
-------- russia
Nuclear danger: `Potatoes were guarded better'
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service,
Thu, Sep. 09, 2004
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/9617768.htm
(KRT) - The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday, Sept. 8:
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the world got a peek behind the fearsome facade. One of the most frightening glimpses was of its nuclear arsenal. Far from being secure, experts said, it was highly vulnerable to theft, smuggling or simple negligence.
How bad was it? One Russian military prosecutor in a case involving the theft of bomb-grade uranium remarked that ``potatoes were guarded better'' than the bomb materials.
With the end of the Cold War, some Americans may have believed the nightmare of nuclear Armageddon had ended. After all, most of the world's nuclear weapons and nuclear material was - and is - concentrated in two countries: the United States and Russia.
But over the last decade, the nuclear threat has only metastasized. Now, instead of facing a single foe with a nuclear arsenal, the United States faces the possibility that nuclear arms, material or technology will leak out of Russia and into the hands of terrorists or rogue states.
In the early 1990s, the Russian system was in chaos. Thousands of nuclear scientists were out of work - and available to shop their resumes to the highest bidders. Russian officials had no precise accounting of the country's nuclear materials, and there were fears that materials and equipment would be stolen and sold on the black market. Some sensitive sites were guarded by little more than a chain-link fence and a night watchman.
Over the last decade, there have been a series of scary incidents.
Russian officials reported four cases of terrorist reconnaissance on Russian nuclear warheads from 2001 to 2002, according to a recent report by Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Russian officials declined to name the terrorist groups.
Russian authorities arrested four sailors at a nuclear submarine base on the Kamchatka Peninsula and found precious metals and radioactive material that the sailors had stolen from a safe in their sub, according to a 2001 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 1998, unnamed individuals at an Atomic Energy Ministry facility were caught trying to steal fissile material, the DOE report said.
It was revealed in 2003 that a Russian businessman had been offering $750,000 to buy stolen weapons-grade plutonium that he intended to deliver to an unnamed foreign client. Fortunately, he made contact only with scam artists who swindled him.
A series of recent terrorist attacks in Russia have not involved nuclear sites. The armed Chechen separatists who seized a Moscow theater in October 2002, however, first considered storming a nuclear research facility that held enough highly enriched uranium for dozens of nuclear weapons, a Russian newspaper reported. And there is growing evidence of links between al-Qaeda and some Chechen terrorist groups.
So, how exposed are Russia's nukes today?
The good news is that security at many of the most vulnerable Russian nuclear sites has been upgraded since U.S. efforts began in the early 1990s. Weapons systems are being deactivated or dismantled, and tons of weapons-grade uranium is being converted for use in civilian nuclear reactors, many in the United States. Every year, the Russians earn about $500 million by selling nuclear fuel - derived from dismantled bombs, the Russians say - that is used in U.S. nuclear reactors. About half the electricity from nuclear power in the United States is generated by burning that fuel.
But many challenges remain in securing and eliminating nuclear stockpiles. Experts who visit these sites continue to report broken intrusion detectors, lax systems to detect theft, and a ``security culture'' that allows senior managers to bypass security systems, the Harvard researchers note. They warn of security personnel switching off intruder detectors when they are annoyed by false alarms, of security gates propped open for convenience and of guards patrolling without ammunition in their guns, to prevent accidental discharges.
After a decade, the job of securing Russia's nuclear sites is far less than half finished. In some instances, it has barely begun.
There are many programs spread across several U.S. government departments dealing with Russia's nuclear vulnerabilities. One of the most effective is the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, known as Nunn-Lugar after Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, who sponsored the law.
Over more than a decade, Lugar recently reported, the United States has helped Russia to deactivate or destroy more than 6,300 nuclear warheads, retrain and employ 58,000 nuclear weapons scientists and remove all the nuclear weapons deployed in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Other weapons systems - including 537 Soviet ICBMs, 27 nuclear submarines, and 496 submarine-launched missiles - have met the same fate.
That's a laudable record, but there is still far more to do. Russia has to secure every site. Terrorists need to infiltrate only one.
The recent Belfer Center study asserted that the pace of securing material slowed in the two years after Sept. 11, compared to the two years before the terrorist attacks.
Last year, the program secured 35 tons of material. But that's only about 6 percent of the estimated 600 tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, aside from weapons, in the former Soviet Union, according to the study. At that rate, with less than a quarter of the material secured already, it will take another 13 years to finish the job the authors estimate.
Efforts to upgrade security and reduce the stockpiles have been slowed, and in some cases halted, by arguments over American access to critical sites, sludgelike bureaucracies on both sides and clashes over liability for potential accidents, among a complex welter of other issues.
At its core this is an issue of lingering mistrust between the former Cold War foes. The United States and Russia have not told each other how many nuclear weapons they have, nor how many tons of plutonium or highly enriched uranium they possess. Nor has either country allowed officials from the other to witness personally the dismantlement of a single warhead, according to Bunn.
There's good reason for some secrecy surrounding these issues of national security. But it's reasonable to expect America to make sure it is getting what it pays for in Russia. Many of these disputes have been allowed to drag on for unconscionable lengths of time.
For instance, roughly half the security equipment dispatched to Russia nearly four years ago, as a quick-fix solution for sites that store nuclear weapons, remains in warehouses because of disputes over access to sensitive sites, according to the Harvard study.
Failure to resolve these issues ``is simply not consistent with the urgency that the administration has attached to nuclear non-proliferation,'' Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in June. Domenici and others have suggested that much of that red tape could - and must - be cut by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He's right. Breaking the Russian logjam will take political leadership from both presidents.
Pushing the security agenda is also about money. Last February, Bush called on other industrialized countries to contribute more to the effort to secure nuclear stockpiles around the globe. The United States plans to spend $10 billion over the next decade, and seven other major economic powers have pledged to contribute the same.
For the United States, that's not much more than the Clinton administration was requesting in the late 1990s. And so far, the other countries have pledged but not ponied up their entire share.
In January 2001, a task force led by former Sen. Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler suggested accelerating and expanding Nunn-Lugar and other efforts, potentially tripling the overall budget to about $3 billion a year. That's what needs to be done. The price of failure is incalculable.
-------- terrorism
The radiological threat widens
By Andy Oppenheimer,
09 September 2004
Jane's Terrorism & Security Monitor
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jtsm/jtsm040909_1_n.shtml
Experts have reassessed the threat posed by radiological dispersal devices, or dirty bombs and they conclude that the threat is far greater than previously imagined. Poor international regulation makes it relatively easy for terrorists to acquire radioactive material.
Many experts now believe that the terrorist use of radiological dispersal devices (RDDs or 'dirty bombs') would not merely constitute a weapon of disruption capable of inflicting economic damage, but that some forms of radiological attack could also kill tens or hundreds of people and sicken hundreds or thousands. This is in marked contrast to earlier assessments that concluded that an RDD would be unlikely to cause death or injury beyond the area immediately destroyed by the high explosives.
RDDs are devices using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a large area, exposing people to both internal and external radiation doses. Costly clean-up is required and access to buildings and contaminated areas would be denied. The radioactive materials are readily available for medical or commercial use. They include, primarily, cobalt-60, strontium-90, cesium-137, iridium-192, radium-226, plutonium-238, americium-241, and californium-252. Uranium would not be much use in a RDD as, unlike cesium and cobalt isotopes, it has extremely low radioactivity and can only cause injury if ingested or inhaled. Nevertheless, people would probably still be unwilling to enter an area that had been contaminated with uranium or anything else connected with radioactivity.
Much depends on the amount and type of radioactive material used. Radioactive isotopes can also be spread widely with or without high explosives. Disruption will always be the result, but casualty levels and an increase in cancer risk are variable. The shorter the half-life - the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a given sample to decay - the more intense the radiation. Cesium-137, for example, has a half-life of 30 years...
----
Between Ossetia and Teheran
By BRENDA SHAFFER
Sep. 9, 2004
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1094700148400&p=1006953079865
Averting nuclear terror has yet to become an international priority, even after last week's massacre
The calculated targeting of a school and subsequent slaughter of the students and teachers by terrorists in southern Russia demonstrates that a new level of terrorism has become tolerable in the international system. The Chechen attack in North Ossetia was not a hostage-taking incident but a suicide mission aimed at children, as shown by the fact that the terrorists did not present answerable demands, the placement of their weapons, and their behavior toward the captives during the siege.
While this atrocity was condemned around the globe, it has yet to inspire either international action or policy formulation against this new level of terrorism. Far worse, however, may be coming: Assorted terrorist groups have already articulated their intent to "go nuclear." Despite both this warning and the expanding worldwide accessibility of fissile materials, averting nuclear terrorism is not a policy priority. Much of the potentially available fissile materials are close to home where the terrorists thrive - Russia, Pakistan, and Iran. Though often distracted from global security issues by more local threats, Israeli policy-makers should be working to mobilize concerned people and governments around the world to take action to prevent nuclear terrorism.
In the recent study "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," Harvard professor Graham Allison claims that if steps are not taken soon, nuclear terrorism is imminent. Despite this apocalyptic assessment, Allison says it is possible to prevent nuclear terrorism and offers three policy prescriptions: no loose nukes; no new nascent nukes (including new national capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium); and no new nuclear weapons states.
What can Israel do to prevent the horrific realization of nuclear terror?
One notion that needs to be set aside is that the Iranian nuclear program is only dangerous if it actually succeeds in building a nuclear weapon. Most Western attention is focused on the point when Iran develops an indigenous ability to produce substantial quantities of bomb-grade uranium or plutonium.
Discrepancies between Europe and the US over the Iranian nuclear program have centered on how close Teheran actually is to attaining nuclear weapons and its intentions to test and deploy nuclear weapons if it achieves the technology to do so. However, the US and Europe do agree on the existence of extensive Iranian facilities that are testing nuclear technologies and creating fissile materials. These all pose a danger of serving as a supply base to terrorists, regardless of whether Iran crosses the nuclear weapons threshold or not.
IN LIGHT of the consensus on the existence of these facilities and the recognition of the dangers they pose as a source for nuclear terrorism, European states could more easily be convinced to join the non-proliferation efforts that focus on this specific threat.
Next, plans should be implemented for securing nuclear materials and installations during periods of instability - even in unfriendly states. One can easily envision nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists if looting and lawlessness were to reign in Iran similar to that which followed the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Publics, even those under hostile regimes, often share concerns about nuclear facilities located within their communities and could become partners in influencing their governments - even if they are undemocratic - to safeguard these sites.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
CENSORED! NO. 10. NEW NUKE PLANTS: TAXPAYERS SUPPORT, INDUSTRY PROFITS
By Camille T. Taiara
09-09-04
Orlando Weekly
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/Story.asp?ID=4556
If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again: The Bush administration's energy bill - yet another product of Cheney's industry-stacked energy task force - provides taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes.
A secretly crafted provision of the bill, released late on a Saturday night in November, offers energy companies as much as $7.5 billion in tax credits to build six nuclear reactors. This is in addition to almost $4 billion set aside for other nuclear energy programs.
"Nuclear power already has had 50 years of subsidy totaling over $140 billion," Nuclear Information and Resource Service's Cindy Folkers reported.
The administration also removed terrorism protection provisions included in the House version of the bill and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium.
The press has been "woefully silent on the bill's nuclear provisions," Folkers and Michael Mariotte wrote in their update for Project Censored's new book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories. And while both Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the version of the bill NIRS warned about last fall, supporters - particularly Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. - are still trying to push those provisions through, in some cases as riders on other bills. Estimates on the amount of tax credits being considered have since risen to "as much as $15 or even $19 billion."
Sources: "Nuclear Energy Would Get $7.5 Billion in Tax Subsidies, U.S. Taxpayers Would Fund Nuclear Monitor Relapse if Energy Bill Passes," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Nov. 17, 2003. "U.S. Senate Passes Pro-Nuclear Energy Bill," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, Aug. 22, 2003.
-------- california
Radioactive tritium found in highest levels yet at lab
Thursday, September 09, 2004
By Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer,
Los Angeles Daily News
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2391466,00.html
SIMI VALLEY -- High levels of radioactive tritium were detected in two new test wells at the Santa Susana Field Lab, confirming the existence of a radioactive plume at the former nuclear research facility, officials said Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Energy drilled the test wells after discovering tritium earlier this year in the groundwater at the northern edge of the research site in the Simi Hills, where Rocketdyne operated a nuclear reactor. The DOE now plans to drill additional wells to determine the source of the plume, its size, and the speed and direction of its movement.
"The reactor was in operation 40 years ago and the plume still appears close to the source. It hasn't moved off site," said Majelle Lee, project manager with Boeing Co., which owns the lab.
The tainted groundwater is not used for drinking and does not pose a health risk to the public or neighbors, officials said.
Neighbors and critics of the laboratory are wary of the DOE's results and questioned whether the radioactive contamination is more extensive than the company suspects.
"The question is what got off the site and what else was released from the site," said Dan Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear-watchdog group.
The DOE is nearing the end of its 15-year-long cleanup of the former nuclear laboratory. The agency has been investigating a handful of sites where tritium may have been released, based on 40-year-old records detailing how radioactive materials were handled.
A groundwater sample taken in March from a test well drilled next to the site of an experimental reactor found tritium at 80,000 picocuries per liter -- or four times the drinking-water standard.
In August, consultants drilled two wells near the tritium hit and found tritium at 80,000 and 16,000 picocuries per liter, respectively.
Tritium has not yet been detected in a cluster of monitoring wells located downhill from the site. It has, however, been found at background levels in two wells drilled nearly 1,500 feet away at the Sodium Reactor Experiment site, where the largest and most famous reactor sustained a meltdown in 1959, officials said.
The DOE will conduct more groundwater testing this fall at both locations.
Tritium, a byproduct of a nuclear reaction, has been found at the lab before, but never at such high levels.
In 1991, it was detected at 5,400 picocuries per liter on nearby property owned by the Brandeis Bardin Institute, which runs a Jewish camp and educational facility.
And in 1993, tritium, strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium 238 were found in soil samples taken from the camp along the Rocketdyne property line. The readings were considered low enough not to pose a health threat, although Boeing purchased a patch of camp property closest to the lab.
DOE project manager Mike Lopez said the agency will probably conduct an environmental report next year and hold public hearings on what to do about the contaminated groundwater.
The federal government funded nuclear research at the lab, which was run by Rocketdyne, now a division of Boeing, from the 1950s through the 1980s. The Daily News first disclosed in 1989 that a DOE survey had found massive radioactive and chemical contamination at the site, triggering a cleanup.
The DOE is nearing the end of the site decontamination and last year announced its plan to remove about 1 percent of the tainted soil, prompting community outrage and a notice from the Natural Resources Defense Council that it would sue over the cleanup.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which provided some oversight of the cleanup until last year, said the plan could leave the former nuclear test site unsafe for even casual picnicking.
The DOE has come under fire for dropping out of the Santa Susana Field Lab Working Group, a multiagency and community group that reviews the cleanup in a forum of experts and concerned neighbors. Instead the DOE is holding its own public meetings.
"The community has totally lost faith not only in Rocketdyne but the Department of Energy because they have given us bad information in the past," said Barbara Johnson, a lab neighbor who's been following the cleanup for more than a decade.
Kerry Cavanaugh, (818) 713-3746 kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com
-------- colorado
Wireless at the Nuclear Cleanup
By Gerry Blackwell,
September 9, 2004
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/1781_3406001_2
Carefully cleaning and dismantling a contaminated nuclear weapons manufacturing facility and carting it away brick by brick is, to say the least, a sensitive and complex operation. The clean-up project at the infamous 6,000-acre Rocky Flats nuclear complex in Golden, Co., began in 1995 and will run for another few years yet.
That the company contracted to do the work, CH2M HILL, has used Wi-Fi in the past to provision vital voice and data services at the site and is now using pre-standard WiMax gear from Redline Communications is surely testimony to the fact that Wi-Fi and related technologies have come of age. Security and reliability are no longer the problems, perceived or real, that they once were.
CH2M HILL, a contractor specializing in major industrial and public works projects that involve safeguarding the environment, implemented the new network using Redline's 802.16-compliant AN-50 products earlier this year. It replaced a hybrid solution that included some fixed fiber and some 802.11b Wi-Fi. The company needed to increase wireless range and network capacity, and also wanted the non-line of sight (NLOS) capabilities of the Redline technology. Frequency management had also been a headache with the Wi-Fi network. Security, perhaps surprisingly, had not.
Kelly Guthner, CH2M HILL's chief technology officer at Rocky Flats, explains that because much of the data at the site, and about the site, is highly classified, all voice and data communications traveling over "public" media must be encrypted to FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 140 standard, and the network must be absolutely bullet proof. That was no problem for Redline -- but no problem for Wi-Fi either.
CH2M HILL set up the original network at a time when there was near panic in government and military circles about Wi-Fi's much publicized security vulnerabilities. When the Department of Energy, the owner of the Rocky Flats facility, conducted a data security audit soon after the Wi-Fi network was up and running, auditors assumed they would blast if full of holes.
They were wrong.
"They even knew the physical and logical architecture of the network and they still couldn't get in," Guthner recalls. "They said, 'Show us more.' So we did and they tried again, and they still could not get in. In the end, it received the highest security rating. At the time, these were supposedly very immature wireless and security products, yet we were able to architect the network in a way that satisfied very strict requirements."
The move to the Redline 802.16 gear came in part because the project is evolving to a new phase as it nears completion. Rocky Flats has had a long and decidedly scary history.
The facility began manufacturing nuclear bombs and missiles in 1951. It eventually included 400-plus buildings in a 385-acre industrial zone the size of a small city within the 6,000-acre tract. It operated through the 1960s and 70s, despite growing alarm and protests over suspected contamination. Finally, the FBI raided the facility in 1989 to investigate alleged environmental crimes.
It found an ecological disaster. The quantities of weapons-grade radioactive materials -- uranium, plutonium -- and contaminated waste at the site measured in the metric tonnes or tens of thousands of cubic meters. Another three years went by before the operation was completely shut down, and a crucial three years more, from 1992 to 1995, before the huge clean-up operation began. In that time, the contamination problems increased as the facility deteriorated, Guthner says.
The clean-up project, which currently employs over 4,000, involves disposing of the hazardous materials at safe burial sites, emptying the buildings and safely disposing of the contents, removing all remaining contamination by a variety of methods -- including even scraping concrete surfaces -- and then demolishing the now clean buildings and carting away the rubble. The final stage will be covering the entire site with three feet of clean dirt.
At some point in the clean-up process for each building, protocols require cutting all power and telecommunications services -- turning them "cold and dark" as Guthner puts it. Workers still need voice and data communications services, however, and CH2M HILL still needs to maintain emergency fire and contamination monitoring services.
The solution was to bring fiber on to the site and then go the last quarter mile with Wi-Fi links that were used to carry both voice (VoIP) and data. This worked, though there were problems, and Guthner eventually went looking for a new solution late last year.
As more of the buildings went cold and dark and were eventually demolished, CH2M HILL project staff and monitors from the Department of Energy and other agencies increasingly moved into huge mobile trailers that could be moved around the site. In some cases, Wi-Fi couldn't reach far enough to service the trailers in the locations where they were needed. Laying more fiber would be expensive. So longer-range wireless links, both point-to- point (PTP) and point-to-multipoint (PMP), became one requirement for the new network.
At the same time, new applications implemented by CH2M HILL and the various monitoring agencies involved in the project required more and more bandwidth. The data and VoIP requirements together were beginning to push the limits of Wi-Fi capacity. So higher bandwidth capacity was on the requirements list as well.
CH2M HILL was also encountering mysterious problems with Wi-Fi outages.
"All of a sudden we'd have a directional antenna go dark and we'd lose connectivity," Guthner explains. "We'd scratch our heads, but by the time we got out to the site to investigate, everything would be back up and normal. We were just going nuts."
Finally, they figured out what was happening. Huge cranes lumbering along the streets of Rocky Flats or stopped by a building were blocking line of sight between antenna sites.
"We saw it happen one day," Guthner says. So NLOS was also on the wish list.
Although CH2M HILL did consider other solutions, Redline appeared to deliver everything the project needed. Its flagship AN-50 product, designed for PTP and PMP broadband access and backhaul applications, works in the 5 GHz unlicensed bands and functions at up to 72 Mbps over the air. Range is up to 50 miles. It can function in NLOS mode -- though not at maximum range or throughput.
"In terms of specifications, flexibility and manageability, Redline stood out as a clear winner," Guthner says.
The Redline equipment is compliant with existing 802.16 and related standards. The company's vice president of marketing and product management, Keith Doucet, hastens to make clear that Redline is not claiming this is WiMax. Interoperability standards for WiMax remain to be finalized. Redline, which works closely with all the related standards body committees, is already building its own chipsets, though, and says it is the first with an 802.16 chip-level product.
CH2M HILL began installing the Redline gear in February and now has 27 AN-50 units in place. Ten are used as carrier units at hub points, 17 as subscriber units -- at the trailers where project staff work. Some units work in point-to-multipoint mode -- like the two on a central tower that provide 360-degree coverage of the site -- and some work in point-to-point mode to extend connectivity to remote trailers or back to the wired net.
The wireless network is only used for backhaul. Within the trailers, where anywhere from 12 to 90 people work, CH2M HILL runs copper to each workstation. "It's inexpensive," he points out. Plus, the company found when it tried to run Wi-Fi to the desktop, the additional overhead required for encryption over that last 10 meters slowed systems down too much.
Guthner had a good demonstration of the NLOS capabilities of the Redline equipment when a major snow storm shut the project site down earlier this year. At one point, the offsite network operations center received an alert that one of the wireless links was losing packets. IT staff remotely boosted radio power, which partly corrected the problem. After the storm passed and workers were allowed back on the site, they found that the Redline antenna had been blown right over and was pointing straight down into the ground -- yet it continued to provide a link, albeit degraded.
Redline and CH2M HILL are currently working on two new wireless projects at Rocky Flats, both of which will require true mobility. In one, the Redline wireless gear will extend the project network out to trucks moving around the larger 6,000-acre site doing soil samples to test for radioactive and other contamination. Redline will provide mobile wireless VoIP and data connectivity. In the other project, rail cars and truck trailers will be tagged with RFID transmitters to track their location and status.
CH2M HILL is also deploying the Redline gear in projects in the Middle East, including in Jordan and Iraq. The company works or has worked in over 80 countries and Guthner, who is also director of IT in its computer and information services group, says there will be plenty of other opportunities to use the Redline technology.
-------- new jersey
Interesting NJ Power Plant Facts
From: "Jim Hoerner" <jim_hoerner@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2004 10:30pm
See:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html and http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/new_jersey.pdf
My Synopsis:
250 plants total, but four nukes provide 50% of electrical energy.
From 1993 to 2002, total electrical generation increased 27%.
From 1993 to 2002, SO2 and NOx emissions _decreased_. How can that be?
Petroleum electrical generation roughly halved from 1993 to 2002 (about 1% of total generation), but then tripled from 2002 to 2003.
Coal production was up a dramatic 76% and natural gas increased 23% in the same time period (1993-2002).
Hydro's net decreased, and other renewables (like burning garbage) increased 41%, but still only accounted for 2% of total generation.
From 1993 to 2002, nuclear generation increased 24%.
-------- new york
TV REVIEW | 'INDIAN POINT'
Seeing a Mushroom Cloud in New York
September 9, 2004
New York Times
By ANITA GATES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/arts/television/09gate.html
Rory Kennedy has set a real challenge for herself this time. Her best-known documentaries have focused on an extended Appalachian family ("American Hollow") and a troubled Mississippi child and his psychologically destructive grandmother ("A Boy's Life"). Even "Pandemic: Facing AIDS" twisted heartstrings with the experience of one woman who is thrown out of the house after telling her father about her illness.
With "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," Ms. Kennedy doesn't have the automatic emotional appeal of individual lives to bring serious issues to light and to life.
This 42-minute film, which has its premiere tonight on HBO, is stuck instead with debates over pools of spent-fuel rods, self-sustaining zirconium fires, the details of safety studies and the nature of cesium-137.
To the credit of Ms. Kennedy and her crew, this blatantly, unashamedly political film convincingly makes its point: that this nuclear power plant 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan may still be a disaster waiting to happen and that at the very, very least, security must be improved. Now.
It helps to see Ms. Kennedy and her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hovering peacefully above the plant in a helicopter to illustrate that while there are no-fly zones over Disneyland, Disney World and the Super Bowl, there are none over nuclear power facilities. The narration asks a chilling question early on: what if, on Sept. 11, American Airlines Flight 11 had banked left instead of heading for the World Trade Center?
Computer-generated imagery (e.g., of a radioactive cloud blanketing Manhattan) is effective, although the cartoon of a noisy, horn-honking traffic jam to illustrate the inadequacy of current evacuation plans isn't the film's most sophisticated moment. Promotional films from the opposition, including the Nuclear Energy Institute are enlightening. ("Proven. Prepared. Protected.")
The film, not unexpectedly, offers comparisons to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine in 1986 and the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. (Maryann De Leo's Oscar-winning documentary on the effects of the Chernobyl accident on children, "Chernobyl Heart,'' will be shown after Ms. Kennedy's film.)
In general "Indian Point" resists the gruesome scare tactics of films of the bomb-shelter era, but Dr. Helen Caldicott of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute will certainly get viewers' attention with her descriptions of radiation sickness. (Symptoms include bleeding from every orifice.) And Ms. Kennedy does not seem determined to make her opponents look foolish. Edward McGaffigan Jr. of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in particular, makes dignified, not unreasonable on-camera arguments.
Some may question the wisdom of throwing in Al Franken with experts from the regulatory commission, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but it would have been a shame to miss his observations about Indian Point security. After Foster Zeh, a former security supervisor at the plant, discloses that research showed that some 20 to 25 percent of the guards there couldn't get up from the ground without assistance, Mr. Franken can't help commenting.
"Most of the Al Qaeda guys that I've seen in the training can get up from a prone position to a sitting position," he says. "I think bin Laden actually required that."
But Mr. Kennedy, who is legal counsel for Riverkeeper, an environmental protection group urging Indian Point's closing, has the most memorable line. Reflecting on the possible consequences of nuclear terrorism at a site with 20 million people living within a 50-mile radius, he mentions the destruction of the nation's cultural and economic capital and the collapse of the world banking system.
"Imagine a world without New York City," he suggests. "The terrorists already have."
INDIAN POINT
Imagining the Unimaginable
HBO, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time
Produced and directed by Rory Kennedy; Liz Garbus and Jack Youngelson, producers. For HBO Documentary Films: Nancy Abraham, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins, executive producer.
----
Rory Kennedy HBO Film on Indian Point De-Bunked
New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA)
Report Documents 20 Fundamental Errors and Omissions
Spokespersons Available to Challenge Kennedy
PRNewswire
Sept. 9
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040909/dcth040_1.html
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-09-2004/0002247328&EDATE=
NEW YORK -- The New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA) has issued a detailed report documenting 20 fundamental errors and omissions in the film by Rory Kennedy that will air tonight on HBO about the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Westchester County, New York.
The report is available at http://www.area-alliance.org.
"The film is not a documentary. It is an infomercial for anti-nuclear zealots who have enlisted the help of a 'family friend' to systematically exploit the tragedy of the anniversary of September 11th as part of a broader effort to try and resurrect their discredited cause," said Jerry Kremer, chairman to the advisory board of New York AREA.
Founded in November 2003, New York AREA is comprised of more than 45 business, labor, and community groups, as well as individual experts in energy and related fields. New York AREA's mission is to educate policy makers, the media, businesses, and the general public about why electricity and energy solutions for the future are imperative for economic growth and prosperity.
SOURCE New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance Web Site: http://www.area-alliance.org
--
The Facts About Indian Point
And Documentation of 20 Glaring Errors and Omissions in HBO's September 9 Broadcast
September 8, 2004
An Analysis From the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance http://www.area-alliance.org
John Basile Matthew C. Cordaro, Ph.D. John Kelly, CHP Letty Lutzker, M.D. Paul Steidler
About Indian Point
For more than 30 years, the Indian Point Energy Nuclear Center in Buchanan (Westchester County), New York has provided abundant, safe, low-cost, and clean power to New York.
In the three years since the awful attacks of September 11, Indian Point has understandably received unprecedented scrutiny from the federal and state authorities that are responsible for making sure that the facility's two power plants are operated in a safe and secure manner. The findings from these inspections and studies have been consistently positive and re-assuring.
Indian Point's owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, has been lauded for its cooperation with government agencies, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and New York State Office of Public Safety. The company has also retained Rudolph Giuliani and his firm so that the facility's security remains second to none in the country.
Indian Point generates massive amounts of power. Today, it provides 20 to 30 percent of all the electricity used in New York City, depending on time of year, usage levels, and other factors. Its 2,000 megawatts is roughly equal to what is produced by the Hoover Dam. Its power is equal to what would be produced from 50,000 barrels of oil a day. Today, downstate New York, and especially New York City need additional power. In January 2004, Mayor Bloomberg's Energy Task Force warned that the City's "margins necessary for reliability are extremely thin." It notes, "To ensure reliability, to promote economic growth, and to address environmental issues, the Task Force concludes that the City needs 2,600 megawatts of new electricity resources by 2008."
Indian Point also makes New York a cleaner place. If Indian Point's power could somehow be replaced by the mix of other power serving the state, greenhouse gases and other air pollutants would increase by more than 14 million tons annually. The New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Association (New York AREA) was formed in November 2003 to ensure that New York has the electricity it needs to keep the lights on, and prevent California-type supply shortage brownout problems. But Indian Point, and additional power, is also necessary so that New York has the electricity it needs to grow and prosper, and remain a world-class place to do business.
Our more than 45 members include a diverse group of business organizations, labor unions, and civic leaders. For additional information, visit our website at http://www.areaalliance.org . Overview of the HBO Broadcast
Nearly all of the preceding, basic information about Indian Point is ignored in Rory Kennedy's HBO film, Imagining the Unimaginable. The film does not address the issues related to Indian Point responsibly. Its lack of thoroughness, disdain for detail, and inattention to basic facts is alarming.
This is illustrated for example, when Ms. Kennedy herself makes wrong factual statements. Approximately 10 minutes into the show she says Entergy, "purchased Indian Point's power plant, completing the deal on September 9th of 2001. Two days later the terrorists struck."
Entergy actually bought Indian Point's two power plants in two separate transactions, obtaining Indian Point 3 in November 2000 and Indian Point 2 on September 6, 2001. Far more disconcerting is that Ms. Kennedy allows long standing, ideological opponents of the plant, with little or no scientific or security expertise to make glaring, alarmist, unchallenged pronouncements. At the same time, she ignores a wealth of data, pertaining to the plants' security, that is readily available in the public domain, some of which we provide here.
We believe the HBO broadcast does a disservice to New York, from the standpoints of both terrorist prevention and electricity reliability. It is fear mongering compiled from outdated as well as ideological and incomplete information. We document 20 examples of this in this report that fall into seven broad categories. Many more examples could surely be provided as well.
Closing Indian Point, as Rory Kennedy calls for in her HBO "documentary," is not only unnecessary. It would hand terrorists a victory, by disrupting New York's fragile economic recovery and rebuilding, that they would otherwise not be able to achieve.
20 Major Errors and Omissions in HBO Film
Area I: Lack of Informed, Balanced Expertise
o While the film relies on Ms. Kennedy's brother Bobby, and comedian Al Franken to claim that an attack at Indian Point would make New York uninhabitable, it fails to cite any government official and/or nuclear expert, or report, in this regard. The Kennedy and Franken comments are, respectively, approximately two minutes and eight minutes into the film.
o The film purports that terrorists regard Indian Point as "arguably the most attractive terrorist target in the world" and have put nuclear power plants at the "very top" of their attack list (comments from Bobby Kennedy and Congressman Markey, respectively, approximately two minutes and 18 minutes into the film respectively).
While anything can be argued, whether the preceding is true is quite questionable at best. One of terrorists' first rules of operation is that they must succeed in any attack and that the vast security at nuclear plants would deter an attack. Some comments that could have balanced the Kennedy and Markey assertions include the following.
"The NRC remains convinced that nuclear power plants are among the most heavily protected facilities in the United States." - Nils Diaz, Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 5/13/04
"If anything, the NRC could be faulted for overkill, as nuclear power plants have always been extremely secure." - America at Risk: A Homeland Security Report Card, Progressive Policy Institute, Democratic Leadership Council, July 2003
"The security plans for the nation's nuclear power plants are in excellent shape..." - Associated Press report of interview with Michael Brown, Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary, August 2003
o While Bobby Kennedy is interviewed extensively, the show fails to include any comments from citizens or public officials in Buchanan and surrounding areas who explicitly support the plant's operation and have scrutinized its operations for years, in some cases decades.
Area II: Wholly distorted and incomplete picture on the likelihood of a plane penetration
o Approximately 12 minutes into the film, it discusses a study by the Sandia National Laboratory that found that an F-4 phantom jet, traveling at 480 miles per hour, was only able to penetrate about two inches of concrete (Indian Point's steel reinforced concrete walls are 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet thick). A scientist is quoted challenging the study.
The film implies that the study is outdated. It fails to mention that the 19 scientists who support the conclusion that a plane could not penetrate Indian Point published a peer-reviewed, scholarly article for the journal Science, a prestigious publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in September 2002.
o Bobby Kennedy flies with Rory Kennedy near the plant (approximately 10 minutes into the film) and claims, "anyone can fly over Indian Point." This is wrong. In order to have flown as close as he did to Indian Point Mr. Kennedy would have had to file a flight plan with the Federal Aviation Administration, or be liable for criminal prosecution. Furthermore, under the FAA's "Notices to Airmen" (NOTAM) all pilots are advised to avoid the airspace above, or in proximity to, nuclear power plants, and to avoid circling or loitering near nuclear power plants. Also, U.S. Customs Black Hawk helicopters patrol the skies over New York City and adjoining regions.
o The broadcast fails to mention a 2002 study commissioned by the 380,000- member Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the world's largest civil aviation organization, that general aviation aircraft do not pose a serious threat to the nation's nuclear power plants nor would the crash of a general aviation aircraft cause a dangerous release of radiation. In addition, peer-reviewed analyses conducted by EPRI, a Palo Alto, California-based research firm, revealed that structures that house a nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel facilities would be protected against a release of radiation even if struck by a large commercial jetliner.'
o The broadcast fails to point out that the Department of Homeland Security and Nuclear Regulatory Commission have evaluated what would happen if a plane hit a nuclear facility and found the structures to be quite well fortified. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has addressed this issue head-on, stating in November 2002, "We have to deal with the possibility. But the notion that flying an airplane into a nuclear site would result in this massive nuclear disaster - I think it's pretty farfetched."
On June 10, 2004, Ms. Kennedy's film crew was present at a public meeting where Hub Miller, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regional Director responsible for overseeing Indian Point spoke about a recent drill at the plant. He stated that classified research conducted by federal agencies since 9/11 had demonstrated that an attack on Indian Point using a large aircraft would not cause a significant release of radiation.
On May 27, 2004, NRC Chairman Nils Diaz said, "So what I'm saying flat out is that there are no quick mechanisms for significant releases of radioactivity that we have identified. Does that mean that the probability is zero? No, I can't say that, but it is very low. It means we have analyzed every angle that is most probably, every structure, every system... And that includes not only nuclear power plants, it includes all the spent fuel pools, the independent spent fuel pools at facilities, in includes dry casks and it includes transportation of the spent fuel."
o Mr. Diaz comments would also have provided balance to assertions by David Lochbaum, approximately 30 minutes into the film concerning the spent fuel rods. It should also have been noted that the Indian Point facilities housing the used nuclear fuel have walls of steel-reinforced concrete 6-feet thick, with a steel liner. The facilities are mostly underground and shielded by nearby structures. Fuel rods are stored under 23 feet of water; multiple systems assure the fuel remains covered. Its protective metal cladding can withstand temperatures higher than those created by burning jet fuel.
Area III: Failure to acknowledge three years of rigorous tests and drills at the plants and the positive results
o The film denigrates the plant's para-military security force, primarily through an interview with a former security officer (approximately during minutes 20-26), while failing to mention that the force primarily consists of former well-trained military professionals.
o It fails to note during this interview, or anywhere during the broadcast, that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and local and state law enforcement work in cooperation with the plant's security force. In fact, the National Guard, New York State Police, and local public safety agencies are on site.
o It fails to note or discuss the vast number drills and inspections at the Indian Point Energy Center since September 2001 and the positive results from these many rigorous tests.
For example, in December 2001, James Kallstrom, director of the New York State Office of Public Safety who led a team of FBI and counter-terrorism agents in evaluating the plant said the following. "I am not here to represent nuclear power - good or bad. I don't care about that. What I care about is the security of this plant and the ability of a terrorist organization to take it over. I can tell you, it is robust enough - let them try. I don't think we have anything to worry about." For a list of drills and inspections, see Appendix A.
Area IV: Failure to discuss the plants' improvements under Entergy's ownership
o While citing problems that Indian Point had from prior ownership in 2000 (approximately seven minutes into the film) it does not mention that this Spring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave both Indian Point 2 and 3 its highest safety ratings.
o While noting that one plant was closed in 2000, it fails to point out that both plants have been operating almost continuous since just after the August 2003 blackout. Indian Point 3 has in fact been operating continuously since then while Indian Point 2 operated for 382 days, before shutting down September 1-3, 2004.
o It fails to note that since purchasing both Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 Entergy has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade both plants Area V: Cavalier dismissal of the importance of the power Indian Point provides
o The film dismisses the importance of Indian Point's 2,000 megawatts of power and fails to provide any context about how important this power is or offer any suggestions on how it could be possibly be replaced. For information about Indian Point's importance to the New York area, see the introduction, and Appendix B.
o It fails to point out the environmental damage that would occur from replacing Indian Point's power with mid-western coal plants, or fossil burning plans in the New York metropolitan area.
Area VI: Failing to properly address evacuation preparedness
o Approximately 36 minutes into the film, James Lee Witt is quoted as saying, "The plans that we reviewed at the time ... did not address a terrorist attack." However, the scenario tested in June 2004 envisioned a terrorist scenario, and was successful.
o The film, at approximately minute 35, suggests there will be widespread panic if there is an accident at Indian Point. Yet, it does not point out the calm and reasoned manner in which New Yorkers have responded to the September 11 attacks and the historic 2003 blackout.
Area VII: Miscellaneous
o While using an emotional appeal discussing the horrors of acute radiation sickness (approximately 31 minutes into the film) the film does not balance this by mentioning that radiation is all around us. It fails to point out that Westchester residents are exposed to radiation from things like cosmic rays, concrete, smoke detectors, medical exams, and other sources.
o And finally, here is a small but telling point. While the show points out that some parkland had to be destroyed in order for Indian Point to be built (approximately four minutes into the film), it does not put this into context. Indian Point operates on a compact 269 acres of land. Replacing it with a comparable amount of windgenerated power would require the loss of 300,000 acres. That's something an environmental organization like Riverkeeper, which is pushing for the plant's closure, should truly care about.
Appendix A: Partial List of Safety, Security and Emergency Planning Exercises
2004
June 8 - Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency planning exercise for Indian Point 3. FBI and White House representatives present. NRC inspection at Indian Point 3.
May 12 - Drill testing part of response organization at Indian Point 3.
May 10 - Quality assurance audit at Indian Point conducted by the Department of Energy and observed by the NRC.
February 4 - Drill testing part of response organization at Indian Point 2. 2003
October 29 - Off-year emergency planning exercise at Indian Point 3.
July 28 - NRC led force-on-force exercise at Indian Point
June 14 - NRC emergency planning exercise at Indian Point.
June 11 - Drill testing part of response organization at Indian Point 2.
May 19 - Quality assurance audit at Indian Point conducted by the Department of Energy and observed by NRC.
January 25 - NRC Interim Compensatory Measure Inspections
Appendix B: Partial List of Studies on Indian Point's Importance
New York Independent System Operator
Closing Indian Point would create "very serious reliability problems" for New York City's electricity supply.
The likelihood for blackouts would increase five-fold without Indian Point.
New York's energy future is "marginally adequate to dim."
"New York remains headed toward a very serious power shortage unless it acts immediately."
In the long term, New York needs to bring a "700-megawatt plant on-line every year to keep up with demand."
Available at: http://www.nyiso.com/topics/articles/news_releases/2003/pa3.pdf
National Economic Research Associates
"Increased costs to consumers of over $1 Billion a year"
"A substantial reduction in the reliability of the New York System."
"A significant increase in wholesale electricity prices."
"Significant increase in consumers' electricity bills."
Available at: http://www.nera.com/practice_area/_template.cfm?c=6122&o=3517
African American Environmental Association
"If Indian Point, a non-greenhouse gas, non-smog producing, emission free facility is shut down, it will represent an environmental injustice to area Black and Latino Communities."
"For asthmatics, the value of Indian Point is priceless."
Available at: http://groups.msn.com/AAEA/indianpoint.msnw
The Westchester Public Issues Institute/Westchester County Association Inc.
"With a capacity to generate nearly 2,000 MW of electricity, Indian Point is a major supplier of inexpensive power in a market that has little power to spare."
Available at: http://www.westchester.org
The Business Council of New York State, Inc.
"There is a growing and dangerous gap between the energy we have and what we need."
If Indian Point shut down, "our already-high energy costs would rise, with price spikes having the greatest impact on lower-income residents who can least afford them."
For additional information: http://www.bcnys.org
Independent Power Producers of New York State
"If such a large portion of the City's electric supply is removed, not only will costs increase dramatically, but air quality will suffer dramatic decreases. New York will need to call on every ancient, dirty, diesel generator in the City to run continuously to try to avoid blackouts."
Available at: http://www.ippny.org/index.cfm?c=10655&a=10656
TRC Environmental Corp.
Closing Indian Point would be a "significant setback in the area's efforts to meet progress goals toward ozone attainment status in the near future."
Air pollution would be increased by more than 14 million tons annually, causing:
o Respiratory illnesses, (bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma) difficulty breathing, lung tissue damage, vision problems, aggravate heart disease.
o Global warming and acid rain.
Available at: http://www.trcsolutions.com/
Energy Association of New York State
"Indian Point's location in Westchester County is critical to supplying up to 40% of the downstate region's daily electric demand."
"Indian Point employs over 1,500 highly skilled union and management workers and contributes over $350 million annually to the region's economy."
Indian Point's electricity, "Makes possible the daily functioning of New York City's vast underground mass transit system, commuter rail terminals, world-class health care facilities, stock exchanges, millions of homes, thousands of business, and hundreds of critical transportation, health, and municipal systems." Available at: http://www.energyny.org/index.cfm?c=10192&a=10224
Democratic Leadership Council: The Progressive Policy Institute
"Overall, the nuclear power industry has spent nearly $400 million on additional security since the [9/11] attacks. If anything, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could be faulted for overkill, as nuclear power plants have always been extremely secure."
Available at: http://www.nei.org/documents/Homeland_Security_Report_Card.pdf
The Area Development Council: Westchester County Chamber of Commerce Inc.
"The County Chamber of Commerce does recognize the economic value of the Indian Point Power Plant for Westchester County and our region."
"The Business community of Westchester needs this economical source of power."
Website: http://www.westchesterny.org
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New York Nuclear Plant Called Dangerous Terrorist Target
September 9, 2004
NEW YORK, New York, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-09-09.asp#anchor2
A terrorist attack on the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River 24 miles north of New York City would be catastrophic, according to a new research report commissioned by long-standing opponents of the nuclear generating station.
The report was commissioned by Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental group, which is now urging the government to "move immediately to impose stringent security measures for Indian Point and begin planning for the plant's early retirement."
"The study's findings confirm what Riverkeeper and hundreds of the region's elected officials have said all along: Indian Point poses an unacceptable risk to the 20 million people - including all New York City residents - who live and work in the New York metropolitan area," said Alex Matthiessen, Riverkeeper's executive director.
Dr. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, authored the report "Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson? The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant."
Using the same computer models and methodology used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Energy Department to analyze the health and economic impacts of radiological accidents, Lyman forecast that up to 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning could occur "in the unlikely event" of a complete evacuation of the 10 mile radius zone covered by current emergency plans.
This number could be even higher for more realistic evacuation scenarios, Lyman said. These deaths could occur among people living as far as 60 miles downwind of Indian Point.
Up to 518,000 people could eventually die from cancer within 50 miles of Indian Point as a result of radiation exposures received within seven days of the attack, Lyman reports.
Millions of survivors could be permanently displaced because of extensive radiological contamination of their property, Lyman forecasts, and hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of economic damages could befall the New York City metropolitan area.
The poorly protected spent fuel pools at Indian Point are another source of great risk to the New York area. "As alarming as the results of Dr. Lyman's study are," said Matthiessen, "they do not include the consequences of an attack that would damage the spent fuel pools as well as the reactors."
Lyman is urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take immediate action to evaluate and protect the area around Indian Point. "A thorough and honest evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of protective actions such as sheltering, evacuation and administration of potassium iodide is badly needed for individuals living far beyond the 10 mile emergency planning zone around Indian Point," he said.
A new television documentary on Indian Point airs tonight on HBO. Directed and narrated by Rory Kennedy, the documentary "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable" examines the potential for a nuclear disaster at the generating station.
The documentary features interviews with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, and Rory's brother.
The plant's owner, New Orleans based Entergy Corporation, maintains that Indian Point is "safe, secure and vital." Michael Kansler, president of Entergy Nuclear Northeast declined to be interviewed for the Kennedy documentary, which he says is "an irresponsible film that misleads, alarms, and shamelessly plays on people's fears."
Kansler says, "Indian Point 2 and 3 have been consistently receiving 'green' ratings from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This means the Indian Point units are now among the safest and most secure nuclear power plants in the country."
Indian Point Unit 2 is licensed to September 2013 and Unit 3's license does not expire until December 2015.
-------- washington
Nuclear watchdog blasts DOE
Thursday, September 9th, 2004
By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5527754p-5463118c.html
Heart of America Northwest criticized the Department of Energy on Wednesday for failing to have a plan for plutonium-contaminated waste buried before 1970 at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The watchdog group claims the waste holds enough plutonium for more than 50 nuclear weapons.
DOE is working on a project work plan for the waste that's legally required to be submitted to the Washington State Department of Ecology before the end of the year, responded DOE spokeswoman Colleen French in Richland.
DOE believes the amount of buried waste is far less than Heart of America claims. The waste was produced from 50 years of production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
At issue for Heart of America is waste buried at Hanford before 1970, when the Atomic Energy Commission ruled that waste contaminated with certain levels of plutonium, or transuranic waste, must be buried in a deep geological repository.
With no repository open, Hanford workers began temporarily burying any waste they thought might be transuranic in the 1970s. Work to dig up that waste began in 2003, four years after DOE opened its repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico.
Hanford workers have dug up enough post-1970 waste to fill about 6,000 55-gallon drums out of a total of about 75,000 drums full of waste. All the post-1970s waste is required to be removed from the ground by 2010. Heart of America at a Richland news conference said DOE plans to abandon and never clean up the pre-1970s waste, buried when DOE thought the waste would remain at Hanford permanently. Hanford has 18 times as much pre-1970s waste as post-1970s waste, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest. That amount also includes soil that has become contaminated with plutonium at liquid or solid waste dumps at Hanford.
The pre-1970s waste is enough to nearly fill WIPP with just Hanford waste, although DOE plans to send far more transuranic waste from other nuclear weapons plants to WIPP, Pollet said. He fears that pre-1970s waste will never leave Hanford.
All transuranic waste, including pre-1970s waste, will be dug up, processed and sent to WIPP, French countered.
DOE believes the amount of pre-1970s waste is far less than Heart of America Northwest claims, but work being done now will provide a better estimate of the volume, French said. Estimates of transuranic waste made across the DOE complex before WIPP was approved were conservative and there should be no problem finding room for all of Hanford's transuranic waste at WIPP, she said.
DOE knows where the waste burial grounds are at Hanford that could contain early transuranic waste and to a large extent knows what is in them, she said.
Heart of America says it is particularly concerned that the pre-1970s waste poses a greater hazard than the waste buried temporarily at Hanford. Old burial containers have had more time to corrode and leak, contaminating the ground with radioactive and chemical waste, Pollet said.
Heart of America has been a primary backer of Initiative 297, which would block nuclear waste from being sent to Hanford until waste generated at Hanford is cleaned up.
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-------- afghanistan
U.S. Envoy Urged to Ask Afghans to Drop Torture Case Against 3
September 9, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/asia/09trial.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 8 - Lawyers representing two of the three Americans accused of running a private jail and kidnapping and torturing prisoners said Wednesday that they had asked the United States ambassador here to request that the Afghan authorities drop the charges.
The lawyers, John Edwards Tiffany, who is representing the suspected ringleader, Jonathan K. Idema, and Robert Fogelnest, the lawyer for Edward Caraballo, said Afghan prosecutors had told them they would withdraw the charges if the ambassador requested.
A spokeswoman at the United States Embassy in Kabul confirmed that Zalmay Khalilzad, the ambassador and special envoy to Afghanistan, had received a letter from the lawyers and had forwarded it to the State Department in Washington for guidance on the issue. The third defendant, Brent Bennett, is not represented by an American lawyer, and has yet to be assigned an Afghan lawyer, but he would presumably also be included in such a deal.
The two lawyers argued that the Afghan legal system did not have the resources to handle the case, because it was in a process of reconstruction after war. They also said there had been problems with translations, and with finding a satisfactory lawyer for Mr. Bennett. They stressed, however, that the Afghan judges and prosecutors had been courteous and cooperative.
It is not clear if American authorities would try to prosecute the men if they were released from Afghan custody. The embassy spokeswoman, who asked not to be named, said this was a matter for the F.B.I. to decide.
Shortly before the men's arrest in Kabul on July 5, the United States Army in Afghanistan issued a statement saying that Mr. Idema was impersonating an American government or military official, and neither represented nor was employed by the American government. Mr. Idema has asserted that his actions were approved by American military and intelligence authorities.
The lawyers briefing journalists here on Wednesday in Kabul said they could easily rebut one of the lesser charges, that the three men entered the country illegally. They provided a videotape, shot by Mr. Caraballo, a cameraman who was following Mr. Idema to Afghanistan to make a documentary of the campaign against terror, that showed the men arriving at Kabul airport on April 15 or 16. They were greeted by Afghan officials, and filled in immigration forms and handed their passports to a uniformed border guard. "It shows without equivocation that they entered lawfully and were processed," Mr. Tiffany said. Among the officials were the chief of the airport, Haji Timor, and the police chief of Kabul, Gen. Baba Jan. The general said Wednesday he had been there to meet his son, who was on the same flight.
The lawyers declined to comment on the more serious charges of kidnapping and running a private jail and said they were reviewing the evidence before the trial's resumption, scheduled for Sunday.
They repeated previous complaints by Mr. Idema and another legal representative for Mr. Caraballo that the F.B.I. had removed evidence from the Afghan authorities and may have tampered with it. Mr. Tiffany said no inventory had been made of the material seized at the time of the men's arrest, and that their clients complained that some of the material, including documents, photographs and videotapes, as well as the passports of Mr. Idema and Mr. Bennett, were missing. The lawyers added that Mr. Idema said he had been tortured while in custody and that Mr. Caraballo had an injury that appeared to have been caused by beating the soles of his feet.
-------- africa
U.S. Drafts Resolution On Sudan Sanctions
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6642-2004Sep8.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 8 -- The United States distributed a draft U.N. resolution Wednesday that threatens consideration of sanctions on Sudan's oil industry if Khartoum fails to stem violence in the Darfur region of Sudan or blocks the deployment of thousands of African monitors.
The draft Security Council resolution, which the 15-nation council is to begin debating Thursday, also calls on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to establish a commission to investigate and prosecute human rights violators and determine whether their crimes amount to genocide.
The U.S. initiative is designed to ratchet up political pressure on Khartoum to accept a U.N. proposal to expand a small African Union observer mission by creating a force of more than 3,000 African peacekeepers. The mandate of the new force is the subject of Nigerian-sponsored talks between Sudan and Darfur rebels in Abuja, Nigeria.
Senior Security Council ambassadors said the resolution is likely to face intense resistance, particularly from the council's strongest opponents of sanctions, including China and Pakistan, both of which import oil from Sudan. But even European governments, including Britain, believe that the U.S. resolution will have to be watered down to gain broad support in the council, according to a European diplomat. "I think the U.S. approach is what I would call stick-based rather than carrot-based," one council diplomat said. "We feel now is not the time for sanctions."
U.S. officials and human rights advocates charge that Sudanese-sponsored Arab militias have killed tens of thousands of black African civilians in Darfur over the past 18 months and forced more than 1 million from their homes. The U.S. draft expresses "grave concern" over Sudan's failure to "fully comply" with the council's demand that it crack down on the Arab militias.
Although the three-page text credits Khartoum with achieving a "limited improvement" in access for humanitarian aid workers in Darfur, it presents a harsh assessment of the government's commitment to end the suffering in Sudan. And it calls on Annan to brief the council within 30 days on Khartoum's compliance with the council's demands.
In addition, the draft resolution contains a threat of unspecified future sanctions against the government in Khartoum or individual Sudanese officials responsible for backing the militias.
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Powell Declares Genocide in Sudan in Bid to Raise Pressure
September 9, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/africa/09CND-SUDA.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, seeking to raise pressure on Sudan to stop the atrocities in Darfur, declared today for the first time that the killings, rapes and destruction that have forced 1.5 million people from their homes amounted to genocide and should be treated as such by the United Nations.
In toughly worded testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Powell said he had concluded that genocide had occurred after studying the findings of experts sent to the area in July to interview victims of violence in western Sudan, much of it carried out by the government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed.
"When we reviewed the evidence compiled by our team," Mr. Powell said, "we concluded - I concluded - that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring."
Mr. Powell's declaration came one day after the United States circulated a draft Security Council resolution on Sudan threatening economic penalties if the government in Khartoum did not rein in its militias and permit a large force from the African Union to patrol the area and allow victims to return to their homes.
There was also a political dimension to the secretary's testimony, however, in that some critics of the Bush administration, including Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, have called on the United States to take a more aggressive role in ending the conflict in Sudan.
The Congress has passed a resolution declaring the Sudan situation genocide, and last week Mr. Kerry called on the administration to follow suit. But until now, Mr. Powell has said that he did not want to use the word without examining the facts, and further that using the word would by itself not accomplish very much.
Mr. Powell repeated the point today that using the word "genocide" would not lead automatically to any action. He said the United States and others would continue to put pressure on Sudan by threatening sanctions at the United Nations and encouraging a settlement of the rebellion in Darfur that prompted the Janjaweed to retaliate.
Talks to bring about such a solution, including the sending of at least 3,000 troops led by Nigeria, have been taking place in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
"Some seem to have been waiting for this determination of genocide to take action," Mr. Powell said. "In fact, however, no new dictation is dictated by this determination. We have been doing everything we can to get the Sudanese government to act responsibly. So let us not be too preoccupied with this designation."
A moment later, he added: "Call it civil war. Call it ethnic cleansing. Call it genocide. Call it `none of the above.' The reality is the same. There are people in Darfur who desperately need the help of the international community."
The term "genocide" has long been a sensitive and emotional one in international conflicts. The Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is defined by a treaty that went into effect in 1951, and it was used by the Clinton administration to describe atrocities in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The Bush administration has repeatedly condemned the actions of the Sudan government in the western region without using the word, in part because it was waiting for the State Department report to be completed, and in part because of concern that its use would merely enflame the situation and antagonize the Sudan government.
Mr. Powell has said several times that even threats of sanctions can backfire in certain situations, and he has instead tried to meet with Sudan's leaders and apply more low key pressure. He visited the affected area in June.
The administration is also concerned that threats and punishments against Sudan would antagonize the Arab world, where many leaders accuse the Bush administration of being overly eager to try to punish Arab countries. The conflict in Sudan is waged by an Arab-dominated government against Muslim but non-Arab people in the west.
The decision to use the word today brought praise from some who have called on the administration to do more.
Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration, said using the word was the correct thing to do. "Should he have done it earlier?" Mr. Holbrooke said in an interview. "Probably. But the important thing is to put maximum pressure on the government in Khartoum, and this is a significant step."
Mr. Holbrooke said, however, that the administration should take other steps, such as appointing a high-level envoy to the African Union and to the talks on Sudan, as it did earlier when it appointed former Senator John C. Danforth as a special envoy on the separate issue of the civil war between northern and southern forces in Sudan.
Mr. Danforth is now the United States ambassador to the United Nations, where he has been organizing the pressure on Sudan over Darfur.
--------
US calls Sudan atrocities genocide
AFP
Sep 9, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&ncid=723&e=2&u=/afp/20040909/wl_mideast_afp/us_sudan_darfur
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell called atrocities in Sudan's troubled Darfur region genocide and demanded a thorough UN probe into the crisis, hastening moves toward international sanctions on the Khartoum government.
Powell told a Senate hearing that evidence compiled by the United States "concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring."
The Sudanese government has been accused of arming and backing Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, that have rampaged through the country's western Darfur region.
An estimated 50,000 people have been killed and 1.4 million more uprooted in a campaign against black Africans that started out as an attempt to put down a rebel uprising launched in February 2003.
Powell said the United States had proposed a resolution to the UN Security Council, asking for a "full-blown and unfettered" investigation to confirm genocide had been committed and possibly consider oil sanctions on Sudan. He said "the threat of sanctions is still out there, over them, particularly on the sector that is of greatest concern to them."
Powell admitted that there was an "overall reluctance" by the international community to impose sanctions amid worry they might not have the desired effect but expressed optimism the European Union (news - web sites) would back the United States.
At the Security Council meeting Thursday, China and Algeria, the council's lone Arab member, came out very clearly against sanctions, diplomatic sources told AFP in New York.
In reaction to Powell's statement, Sudan denied there was genocide in Darfur and doubted moves to impose sanctions would succeed.
"This is just another sort of pressure brought against the government of Sudan by the United States and Western governments," Finance Minister Ahmed Hassan al-Zubeir told AFP on leaving an African Union summit in Burkina Faso.
In Nairobi, Sudan's deputy parliamentary speaker Angelo Beda said Western powers were "playing with the word genocide" as a pretext to "come in with occupying forces for the sake of oil."
Sudan produces around 250,000 barrels a day of oil, and the government recently announced considerable discoveries of the resource in Darfur.
But a spokesman for the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdelhafiz Mustafa Musa, called the US move "a welcome development," saying the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed "continued to kill innocent civilians."
The proposed US resolution would call Khartoum to cooperate fully with an expanded African Union (AU) force and for cessation of Sudanese military flights over the Darfur region.
The resolution also provides for international overflights to monitor Darfur.
Sudan is a contracting party to an international genocide convention and is obliged under the convention to prevent and punish acts of genocide.
"To us, at this time, it appears that Sudan has failed to do so," Powell said.
A key provision of the Genocide Convention provides that contracting parties "may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations (news - web sites)" to take action to prevent and suppress acts of genocide.
Powell said US evidence from interviews on refugees and other sources showed that the "Janjaweed and Sudanese military forces have committed large-scale acts of violence, including murders, rape and physical assaults on non-Arab individuals."
He said they had destroyed villages and foodstuffs and obstructed humanitarian aid from reaching affected populations, thereby leading to further deaths and suffering.
"Despite having been put on notice multiple times, Khartoum has failed to stop the violence," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The panel's chairman Dick Lugar introduced legislation that would provide an additional 300 million dollars in fiscal year 2005 aid to relieve the Sudan humanitarian crisis.
It would add to the nearly 600 million dollars already targeted for Sudan in during that period, Lugar said.
Powell said that the AU force was the "number one priority" for the United States, adding that 25 million dollars had been earmarked for an expanded force, the mandate of which was subject of Nigerian-sponsored talks between Sudan and Darfur rebels.
NATO (news - web sites) Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in Helsinki that the alliance could work together with the EU to provide logistical support to the AU, which has several hundred troops in Darfur monitoring a shaky ceasefire.
Powell stressed that global action was critical.
"Call it a civil war. Call it ethnic cleansing. Call it genocide. Call it none of the above. The reality is the same: there are people in Darfur who desperately need our help," he said.
-------- iraq
U.S. Planes Strike in Fallujah; Roadside Bombs Kill 2 Troops
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4830-2004Sep8.html
BAGHDAD, Sept. 8 -- U.S. planes bombed Sunni Muslim fighters in the volatile city of Fallujah on Wednesday, and separate roadside bombs killed two U.S. soldiers in continuing violence across Iraq, U.S. officials said.
The morning airstrike in Fallujah was aimed at a "command and control headquarters" where militants plotted attacks against U.S.-led forces, a military statement said. On Monday, seven Marines were killed by a car bomb outside Fallujah in the deadliest attack against American forces since April 29.
Initial assessments indicated that what the military called a "precision strike" resulted in no civilian casualties, but casualty figures for the fighters could not be confirmed immediately, the statement said. The statement said U.S. forces launched the airstrike after "multiple sources of intelligence were used to confirm the presence of the enemy forces."
An Iraqi Health Ministry spokesman, Saad Amili, said two people were killed and 23 wounded in the attack, although it was unclear whether those figures included combatants.
The bombing in Fallujah represented an escalation of tensions in the Sunni-dominated area. In April, U.S. officials turned over responsibility for protecting the city to Iraqi security forces as part of a negotiated settlement to end street fighting involving U.S. troops.
U.S. officials believe that Fallujah is the base of operations for Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian sought in Iraq for coordinating anti-American attacks. The city is effectively off-limits to foreign journalists and aid workers, who face the threat of kidnapping and death.
The roadside bomb attacks on U.S. forces took place before dawn, according to U.S. military officials. The first occurred about 1:45 a.m. in Balad, a town north of Baghdad, killing a soldier from the 13th Corps Support Command and injuring another. The second occurred about 5:30 a.m. in eastern Baghdad, killing one soldier and injuring two.
Also on Wednesday, a convoy carrying employees of DynCorp Inc., a Reston-based security firm, was ambushed north of Baghdad. Three Iraqi subcontractors were killed and three American employees wounded, according to Mike Dickerson, DynCorp's director of media relations. Dickerson said the Americans sustained relatively minor injuries.
On Aug. 29, six people were killed when a DynCorp office in the Afghan capital, Kabul, was bombed.
Security officials in Baghdad said five people were killed when a convoy with security personnel from another firm was attacked Wednesday afternoon in the capital.
Special correspondent Bassam Sebti and researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Forces Take Action in Areas Dominated by Iraqi Insurgents
September 9, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/middleeast/09CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 9 - American troops today entered the city of Samarra for the first time in months, marking what appears to be a small but significant step in their effort to regain control of the contested Sunni Triangle.
American commanders said their troops, accompanied by Iraqi police and national guard soldiers, drove into the city this morning after gaining assurances from local Iraqi leaders that they would not be fired on.
American soldiers and Iraqi police convened a meeting of the old American-backed council, which then chose a new mayor and police chief. After a few hours that passed without violence, the American soldiers and the Iraqi police left the way they came.
Once the Americans departed, witnesses said, the insurgents reappeared, conducting their own patrols on Samarra's streets.
The Americans' entrance into the city was their first since July, when they pulled out in the face of relentless insurgent attacks.
As part of the deal, the Americans agreed to open the main bridge that spans the Tigirs River, and whose closure has paralyzed the city. But they did not require the insurgents to give up their guns; only to disappear.
"Our expectation is that we are going to enter the city anytime we want and not be attacked," said Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman for the First Infantry Division, which is responsible for Samarra. "This is a good first step."
The agreement could serve as a model for how the American military might try to regain control over vast stretches of the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad. In the past five months, the Americans have relinquished control over much of Anbar and Salahadin provinces, including cities like Ramadi and Falluja, where the guerrilla insurgency churns on with unabated intensity. In all the areas ceded by the Americans, the insurgents have taken control, ousting and sometimes killing Iraqis who have served before them.
The American pullbacks have generated fears that large numbers of Iraqis living inside those cities might not be able to vote in the nationwide elections scheduled for January. That has raised concerns that the election might amount to a partial one, and hence might not be viewed as legitimate by many Iraqis.
American commanders and members of the Bush administration have said that they intend to regain control of the cities they have lost, by force if necessary. They have been placing their hopes on the emerging Iraqi security forces, whose presence, they believe, would receive a warmer reception by ordinary Iraqis.
The Americans' entrance into Samarra did not require the heavy fighting that both sides say they want to avoid. Still, the Americans never relinquished the threat of force in Samarra; and that, it seemed, helped them finally get back inside.
On Wednesday, in an interview with The Associated Press, Maj. General John R.S. Batiste, the commander of the First Infantry Division, said his men were planning to go into Samarra whether they had a deal or not.
"It'll be a quick fight and the enemy is going to die fast," General Batiste said from his headquarters in Tikrit. "The message for the people of Samarra is, peacefully or not, this is going to be solved."
Still, despite the tough talk, the agreement allows the insurgents to keep their guns and, possibly, fight another day. In that way, the agreement in Samarra resembles similar deals struck with the Shiite rebel Moktada al-Sadr, whose fighters, the Mahdi Army, have on several occasions been allowed to melt away with their guns intact, only to rise up again when conditions improve.
In Samarra, in addition to threatening force, the Americans also held out the prospect of rewarding Iraqis if they helped them control the insurgents. Major O'Brien said the Americans had $13 million in public works projects ready to start if the standoff could be settled.
It seemed clear that even if the Americans knew it or not, the insurgents played an important part in the negotiations. Ahmed Abdul Ghafour, a powerful cleric from Samarra, said that while the Americans did not negotiate with the insurgents, the city leaders did, and relayed their responses back to the Americans.
"The Iraqis talk with the Americans and then they talk to the resistance," Sheikh Ghafour said.
Sheikh Ghafour, a member of the Association of Sunni Clerics, said the insurgents in Samarra were divided into several different groups that often disagreed with one another. While some favored allowing the Iraqi police and government to reassert control, other rejected any sort of accommodation.
For that reason, he said, the city's leaders took a risk in defying some of the insurgents. But for the same reason, Sheikh Ghafour said it would be difficult for them to ensure that the Americans would not be attacked in the coming days.
"They tried to convince the resistance just to allow the Americans to come into the city," he said. "Some groups said yes, some said no."
Sheikh Ghafour said that while most of the people of Samarra supported the insurgency, many people were angry at the guerrillas for using civilian areas to hide from American fire. American retaliatory fire often killed civilians, he said, making both the Americans and the insurgents unpopular.
"The people of Samarra unanimously agree on the holy war," he said. "But they would like the fighting to go on outside the city."
In Samarra itself, Iraqis said they were encouraged by events but would wait to see whether the peace held, whether the reconstruction restarted and the Americans restrained what many regard as their aggressive and humiliating treatment of Iraqis. One of their main complaints: the bridge across the Tigris River remained closed this evening.
"Listen, my friend, when the Americans closed the bridge, they damaged the life of the whole city," said Mohammed al Samarri, 54, as he cooked a piece of falafel in his small restaurant. "They have promised us to open the bridge today, but nothing happened until now.
"But maybe the good will come," he said.
Khalid W. Hassan of The Times's Baghdad Bureau contributed reporting from Samarra for this article.
--------
Iraq Airstrike Killed Civilians, U.S. Military Acknowledges
September 9, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/middleeast/09CND-BATTLE.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, , Sept. 9 - After a long morning of fierce but one-sided combat near the northern city of Mosul today, American forces said they had killed 57 enemy fighters with great precision, and without a single American casualty.
But a local hospital said it received scores of civilian dead and wounded, including women and children, a reminder of the humanitarian and political costs of military victory in battlegrounds like this one, near the Syrian border and a hub of Sunni resistance.
Several civilians were also killed today in an American bombing raid on what was described as a terrorist location in the rebel stronghold of Falluja. An initial military report said that no civilians were at the site during "a precision strike," but this account was changed later when news reports and photographs indicated differently.
The battle near Mosul,along the highway connecting it with Syria took place in a town called Tal Afar. It began at 2 a.m. and was one of the deadliest in Iraq since the siege of Najaf, far to the south, last month.
The fight was described by an American spokesman as a step "to restore control of Tal Afar to legitimate Iraqi government officials" after repeated attacks on American forces "by a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces throughout the recent weeks."
Today's offensive in Tal Afar followed a failed attempt by Iraqi authorities to secure government control through talks with tribal and community leaders, American officials said.
Overwhelming firepower, pitting jets, helicopters and tanks against more lightly armed militants, won the day, but the region is far from secured, officials said. Reports about wider damage to the town and its inhabitants were in stark contradiction.
American and Iraqi government forces on the main highway around Tal Afar were "attacked by terrorists using the Al Huda Mosque and other buildings in town as cover," Lt. Col Paul Hastings, an army spokesman, wrote in an e-mailed statement.
American forces "responded to this attack with precise and accurate fire," he said. "Air power successfully attacked enemy strong points. The latest casualty figures report 57 enemy killed today."
Local residents do not deny that the town is infiltrated with militants but they describe a far less tidy battle.
"There is bombing everywhere and my cousin was killed by a rocket when he was trying to get his family out of the city," said Bashir Abboosh, a 41-year-old sheep farmer, as he fled Tal Afar in terror this afternoon.
"The city is weeping, it is empty of people," he said. For long periods, witnesses said, the fighting prevented ambulances from collecting the wounded and the dead.
The director of the Tal Afar hospital, a Dr. Fawzi Ahmed, said this afternoon that his hospital had seen 45 dead and more than 80 wounded, most of them civilians.
A third day of American air attacks on suspected militant bases in Falluja, to the west of Baghdad, was also clouded by contrasting claims of damage and civilian deaths.
This morning, citing what it said was compelling evidence from multiple sources, the American military announced that at 2:21 a.m. it had conducted "a precision strike on a confirmed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi operating location in northern Falluja." Three associates of Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamic militant with ties to Al Qaeda, "were reported to be in the area," the statement said, and "no other individuals were present at the time of the strike."
As the day progressed, news accounts and photographs of dead women and children along, with credible eyewitness reports, told a different story. At least 8 people died including 4 children and 2 women, a local doctor told the Associated Press, and another 16 people including 8 children were wounded.
In the rubble of a demolished house, workers found only one survivor, a 10-month-old infant, said Ahmad Jabir, a member of the rescue team.
Whether militants were mixed among families or the wrong houses were hit is unclear, and Mr. Zarqawi's group has admitted that some holy warriors have been "martyred" this week in Falluja.
This evening, an American spokesman revised the morning description of events in Falluja.
"In spite of the great care taken to spare the lives of noncombatants, an unknown number of Iraqi civilians were unfortunately among those killed and wounded in the strike," Maj. Jay Antonelli said in an e-mailed statement.
"The foreign fighters who hide among the people of Falluja place them at significant risk," Major Antonelli said. He added: "Foreign fighters will not enjoy safe haven anywhere in the city."
Iraqi staff members contributed reporting from Mosul and Falluja.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon's 'Gaza Problem': It May Be Israelis, Not Arabs
September 9, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/middleeast/09gaza.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Sept. 8 - Shimon Peres, a former prime minister of Israel, once said there are no real negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, only among Israelis themselves about what to concede.
This helps explain why Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, as simple as it sounds, is running into so many problems.
In fact, Mr. Sharon's effort to remove the Israeli settlers and military from Gaza and hand it over to the Palestinians is running into so many obstacles, ranging from party politics and internal security to economics and international relations, that some - even close aides - wonder whether it may run into the sand.
Mr. Sharon, whose nickname is Bulldozer, is intent on making it happen. He plans to begin the removal of Gaza's settlers by February.
Following the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the 1990's, the aim of the current plan is threefold. It is, first of all, to create a more easily defensible Israel and leave Gaza, poor and difficult, to the Palestinians. Second, it seems likely to keep much of the West Bank in Israeli hands. Finally, it is advertised by Mr. Sharon and his aides as an opportunity for the Palestinians.
"It could shake the Palestinian system and might yet produce a responsible reaction," a senior Sharon aide said.
A senior Israeli military officer agreed, saying: "With obligation could come responsibility. Who knows?"
Moderate Palestinians say they are eager to show that they can run Gaza efficiently. But the prospect of an Israeli withdrawal has set off a struggle among Palestinians for control, both within Yasir Arafat's secular Fatah movement, the largest, and between Fatah and the more radical and Islamic factions, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"All factions are smuggling in weapons through tunnels from Egypt," a senior Israeli intelligence officer said, describing the land under the Rafah crossing with Egypt as "an ant farm."
Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction and contemptuous of Mr. Arafat and Fatah, has agreed to take part in local elections for the first time but is also preparing for the battles to come. Before dawn on Tuesday, Israeli helicopter gunships rocketed a Hamas training camp in a soccer stadium, killing 15 uniformed Hamas fighters and wounding more than 20.
While Palestinians and leftwing Israelis criticize the Gaza plan as a way for Mr. Sharon to consolidate Israel's hold on large areas of the West Bank, some nonetheless view it as a model for a workable arrangement.
The plan, which under American pressure also includes the dismantling of four small settlements in the West Bank, could also serve as a way to "re-engage" and build confidence for a final understanding that would produce significant Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, some Israeli leftists and moderate Palestinians say.
A group of prominent Israelis, including Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister from the Labor Party, and Palestinians including Abed Alloun, a former senior security official in Gaza, and Mohammed Rashid, a Palestinian businessman, have pulled together a proposal to use Gaza as a confidence-building measure for further Israeli-Palestinian accommodations. But their vision of continued close cooperation between Gaza and Israel, especially on the economy, is precisely what Mr. Sharon is seeking to end.
All such planning presumes that the withdrawal will unfold as Mr. Sharon describes it. And prime among its problems are the political difficulties of Mr. Sharon himself, who may have to call early elections to find a government that will carry out the withdrawal.
Mr. Sharon and his plan have the support of some 70 percent of Israelis in opinion polls, as well as majority support in Parliament. "But a very solid majority in his own Likud Party is against the plan," a Sharon adviser said, in part because Mr. Sharon has mishandled his party, which is more ideological than he and reluctant to give away part of what many consider the biblical and historic land of Israel.
Mr. Sharon has lost his effective majority in Parliament, and further angered his party by trying to bring Mr. Peres and the Labor Party into the government; now, he appears instead to be trying to broaden his coalition by adding another small religious party, the United Torah movement, which has 5 seats in Parliament.
But as he moves ahead with disengagement, and inevitable confrontations with a minority of passionate settlers, the remaining members of the National Religious Party may quit the government, and as many as 15 Likud members of Parliament could vote against him - on a key budget vote, for instance, where Labor would not support him - and thus bring down the government.
Likud's central committee might choose to dump Mr. Sharon in favor of Benjamin Netanyahu, or put together a list of parliamentary candidates that would hamper Mr. Sharon more than now. Mr. Sharon's advisers have talked of splitting Likud and trying to fashion a new, centrist party with Labor and the secular Shinui that would try to translate the will of the majority into a parliamentary majority, but that could backfire, too.
There are other problems. A law would have to be passed to evacuate the 21 settlements in Gaza, while dismantling military posts around them, which altogether represent about 20 percent of the land in Gaza. That law will face numerous challenges in the Israeli Supreme Court. Unless perfectly drafted, court challenges could badly disrupt Mr. Sharon's timetable.
While the Gaza plan is supposed to enhance Israeli security, it will not happen soon. Israeli officials say security will deteriorate as disengagement nears, with Hamas in particular promising to increase the violence, to prove that Israel is withdrawing from Gaza in defeat.
Unless Egypt succeeds in convincing the Palestinians to honor a mutual cease-fire while the Israelis withdraw - about which Israeli official are pessimistic - the Israelis may have to "go in hard" and "retake lots of land" to build a security buffer for the withdrawal, as some officials put it. That action itself could be enough to disrupt the plan and offend moderate Arab states.
Egypt, which is already getting cold feet because of Mr. Sharon's political difficulties, said the Israeli attack on Hamas on Tuesday, which Egyptian officials called "a massacre," would make it difficult for Cairo to "intervene in the Palestinian issue with the required weight and depth," said the presidential spokesman, Maged Abdel Fattah.
Israel intends to keep control over Gaza's borders, coastline and airspace. But Israel would like to pull its military back from the dangerous Philadelphia road, the 7.5-mile border between Egypt and Gaza, which cuts the large city of Rafah in half.
But Israeli officials say they still have no confidence that Egypt will crack down sufficiently on the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. So Israel is likely to want to preserve its border controls, and the right of its military to go into Gaza.
Israel has been working hard with donor countries and the World Bank, which issued a detailed report in June, to coordinate a program for economic growth and donor assistance in Gaza after Israeli withdrawal. The Israeli government has praised the report as professional and fair. But even the World Bank proposals are based on a degree of cooperation, including the large-scale entry of Palestinian labor from Gaza into Israel, that seems overly optimistic on security grounds, said Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar Ilan University.
There will be a meeting of foreign ministers in New York on Sept. 23 to discuss the bank's proposals, to which Israel and the Palestinians are invited. The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, is again threatening to quit because he fears the agenda of the meeting will be an Israeli one, and devote most foreign aid to Gaza in the near future and not the West Bank. Mr. Arafat, however, has promised Cairo that the Palestinians will attend.
"We want them on board," a senior Israeli official said. "But the Palestinians don't want to participate in anything that looks like support for a unilateral Israeli action, even one to their benefit."
--------
Israeli Military Continues Major Push Into Gaza
September 9, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/middleeast/09CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Sept. 9 - Israeli forces continued a major operation in Gaza today with tanks and armored vehicles to suppress rocket fire into Israel, and in the process killed seven Palestinians. In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed another Palestinian. Israeli officials continued to warn that they were considering exiling the Palestinian president, Yasir Arafat, already confined to his headquarters in Ramallah. The Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, echoed the warnings of the defense minister that "the day of Arafat's expulsion is closer than ever." He was speaking to a group of his Likud Party members.
The prime minister, Ariel Sharon, approved a new route for the barrier Israel is building to counter easy entrance for suicide bombers that is much closer to the armistice line of 1949, known as the green line. The new route includes large Israeli settlements in the West Bank, like Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion. Mr. Sharon appears to be responding to rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court and pressure from Washington. Mr. Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, is in Washington for meetings with American officials about Israel's settlement policies and plans for disengagement from Gaza.
Today, 185 Israelis published a petition in a religious newspaper calling the Gaza plan a "crime against humanity" and urging security forces to refuse to carry it out.
In Gaza, more than 30 people were wounded, hospital officials said. Among the dead was a 9-year-old boy, who was killed when a tank fired its heavy machine gun toward a group of gunmen, stone throwers and bystanders in the town of Beit Lahia, witnesses told the Reuters news agency.
The boy, Munir el-Deqqes, was shot in the chest while playing outside his grandfather's house, witnesses told Reuters. "Munir was a victim of blind Israeli retaliation," his uncle said. Two other Palestinians died in that incident.
An Israeli army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, said the army was investigating, but emphasized that armed Palestinians were surrounding the tank.
"It's an ongoing operation, and there is fighting, with sporadic exchanges of gunfire," Captain Dallal said. He said the army had fired at "three different groups of armed gunmen, one with an antitank missile," and that the army had also uncovered and detonated a missile and a roadside bomb.
Near the Jabalya refugee camp, Israeli helicopters fired at least two missiles, killing one gunman and wounding three others, while finding and dismantling two welding shops used to make the Qassams, Captain Dallal said.
The operation began on Wednesday after Palestinians fired at least eight of the inaccurate Qassam rockets toward Sderot, a nearby Israeli town; only two reached Sderot but no one was hurt. Another Qassam was fired this morning, the army said. The rockets appeared to be retaliation for Israel's attack early Tuesday morning on a Hamas training camp in Gaza, killing 15 uniformed Hamas fighters training with weapons and explosives.
Earlier this summer, Israeli troops had spent weeks around the Gazan town of Beit Hanun, trying to destroy the orchards and houses being used by Palestinian militants to fire the short-range Qassam missiles.
Troops also entered the West Bank town of Jericho, exchanging fire with three Palestinians. One gunman was killed and two were wounded, the army said. At the funeral of the Jericho gunman in a refugee camp near Ramallah, thousands marched in the streets, including hundreds of armed men.
After the funeral, a crowd of about 200 people surrounded army jeeps and threw stones. The jeeps accelerated away, running over and killing a 17-year-old boy, witnesses said. The army confirmed that a jeep hit someone.
A seventh Palestinian was killed near the Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Katif; the unarmed man had walked into a "no-go zone" near the settlements and soldiers shot him.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Jets Attack Suspected Militants
September 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Al-Qaida.html?pagewanted=all
WANA, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani warplanes pummeled a suspected al-Qaida training facility near the border with Afghanistan on Thursday, flattening a vast mud-brick compound and killing at least 50 fighters, the military said.
The assault was among the fiercest in months of fighting in the dusty border region, considered a possible hideout for Osama bin Laden and his deputy, who are still on the run nearly three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press that at least 50 people were killed, mostly Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens. He said the camp was believed to be linked to bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
``The foreign elements operating in these tribal areas have links with al-Qaida,'' Sultan said. He said he had no information on whether any high-value al-Qaida targets were present at the site.
Sultan said the military made that assessment based on intelligence of who was there and surveillance of the area, which had been watched for some time. It said the bodies retrieved confirmed the initial intelligence on the ethnicity of those killed in the operation.
Pakistan frequently has overstated the scope of its military operations, claiming to have captured or killed foreigners that turn out to be local tribesmen or to have zeroed in on top al-Qaida men who never materialize. Villagers also have complained of heavy civilian casualties.
Sultan said the camp near the village of Dila Khula was destroyed in the assault and all the people inside were believed killed. He described the site as being composed of two mud-brick buildings, with an explosives training facility in the middle.
``I don't think they put up a fight. They were taken by surprise,'' he said.
Military officials said ground troops moved in after the air assault; no military casualties were reported.
Alam Khan, a resident of Ladha, a village near Khunkhela, told AP by phone that three other nearby villages were also hit in the operation. He said he saw at least two jets and about 10 army helicopters flying over the scene during the fighting, which lasted about two hours.
Dust and smoke could be seen rising from houses in the villages, Khan said.
Sultan said the men had been involved in terrorist acts inside Pakistan but gave no details. He said they were not connected to suspected Chechen and Arab militants who took hundreds hostage at a school in southern Russia last week. At least 326 people -- many of them children -- died in the end to that siege.
``We came to know about this camp after investigations into recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan,'' Sultan said.
A large number of Central Asian and Arab militants are believed to be living in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Many never left after coming to the area to fight alongside U.S.-backed Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The area's tribes are fiercely autonomous and deeply resentful of the army's presence, making it an ideal hideout. Sultan said the training facility had been under surveillance for some time but would not say how long it was believed to have been there.
He denied any U.S. involvement in the raid, although Pakistan has in the past acknowledged receiving technical and logistical support from Washington.
Pakistan's army has launched frequent attacks in North and South Waziristan to flush out Islamic militants. Hundreds of people, including civilians, have died in the attacks.
Pakistan, an ally in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, has deployed tens of thousands of troops along the Afghan border to fight al-Qaida and Taliban fighters operating there.
In June, 17 soldiers and 55 militants died in several days of fighting in South Waziristan. That same month, an airstrike killed Nek Mohammed, a renegade tribal leader accused of sheltering al-Qaida fighters in the region.
Associated Press reporters Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad, and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
-------- prisoners of war
C.I.A. Hid More Prisoners Than It Has Disclosed, Generals Say
September 9, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/10ABUSE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - The Central Intelligence Agency kept dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq off official rosters to hide them from Red Cross inspections, far more than has been previously reported, two senior Army generals said today.
An inquiry by three generals issued last month found eight documented cases of so-called "ghost detainees," but two of the officers said in congressional testimony and interviews later that depositions with military personnel at the prison suggested the number was far higher.
"The number is in the dozens , and perhaps up to 100," Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who oversaw the inquiry into the role of military intelligence personnel in the prisoner-abuse scandal, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He added that a precise number would never be known because there were no records kept on most of the C.I.A. detainees.
Another senior Army investigator, Gen. George R. Fay, described for the first time in detail how C.I.A. officials in Baghdad and at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., three times refused his request for information, finally explaining they were doing their own investigation into the matter.
Military officials have said the C.I.A.'s practice of using the military's prisons in Iraq to hide prisoners they are interrogating violated military regulations and international law. The inspectors general of the Defense Department and C.I.A. are now investigating the matter.
The new disclosures on the "ghost detainees" highlighted a day that two congressional committees dedicated to the Abu Ghraib matter. Lawmakers scrutinizing the Army report and the findings of an independent panel into prisoner abuse also questioned whether either inquiry sufficiently held top civilians and generals accountable for the scandal.
Two former defense secretaries said that failures on the part of top deputies to Donald H. Rumsfeld to properly oversee the development of interrogation policies for Iraq had contributed to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The former secretaries, Mr. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, both offered praise for Mr. Rumsfeld himself, saying that he had conducted himself responsibly and strongly reiterating past statements that he should not resign over the affair.
But both former secretaries were more specific than in the past in criticizing some of Mr. Rumsfeld's deputies, identifying two undersecretaries of defense and the Pentagon's general counsel as having fallen short in their conduct.
Mr. Brown, who served under President Jimmy Carter, also pointed a finger of blame beyond Mr. Rumsfeld to the "very top" of the Bush administration for what he called "the responsibility for failing to plan for what actually happened after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."
--------
ABUSE
Pentagon Hurrying to Correct Conditions in Iraqi Prisons
September 9, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/09abuse.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - In response to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the military has adopted dozens of the nearly 400 recommendations made by military and independent inquiries into the mistreatment, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
In Iraq, a new chief warden for all American prisons has relieved the chaotic overcrowding at Abu Ghraib, which investigators said had contributed to the abuses. The Army has begun churning out specially trained prison-detention units, and giving extra training to military police and military intelligence personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military's Joint Staff has embarked on a crash program to write a new doctrine for handling detainees.
The military also disclosed Wednesday that 45 soldiers and 12 marines had been referred to court-martial proceedings, and at least 54 others have received lesser disciplinary action in connection with the abuse. The Army has discharged 13 soldiers for their offenses.
But perhaps no change better illustrates the Pentagon's efforts to correct the damage than its decision this summer to set up a new 20-person office of detainee affairs, and to hire Matthew C. Waxman, a former National Security Council official and clerk to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, to run it.
As such, Mr. Waxman is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's chief adviser on detainee issues and the point man for dealing with foreign governments on the matter. He leads a newly formed Pentagon committee of lawyers, intelligence officers and policy analysts who oversee interrogation techniques and operations, and is responsible for a new policy to speed Red Cross inspection reports from Army prisons to Mr. Rumsfeld's desk.
"I wrestle with extremely difficult issues every day," Mr. Waxman, 32, a Bronx-born, Yale-trained lawyer, said Wednesday in his first interview since taking the job.
On the eve of the first major Congressional hearings into the Abu Ghraib scandal since earlier this summer, many human rights and legal advocacy groups say they are giving Mr. Waxman the benefit of the doubt for good intentions. But they say there is still a long way to go to erase the stains from America's image abroad.
"Ultimately, it's up to Rumsfeld to send a signal to cooperate with these guys," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "Otherwise it's just window dressing."
A spokeswoman in Washington for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amanda Williamson, said the formation of Mr. Waxman's office was a positive development, adding, "It is, however, too early to measure in terms of concrete results.''
The Red Cross took issue on Wednesday with some of the findings of an independent panel, appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld and headed by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary. In response to the panel's criticism that the Red Cross "adapt itself to the new realities of conflict," the organization said it was supporting the principles of humanitarian law enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. "A decision to deviate unilaterally from these universally established standards should not be taken lightly," the Red Cross said in a rebuttal posted on its Web site.
Even as Pentagon officials sought to show the steps they had taken in response to the abuse, eight retired generals and admirals called on President Bush for an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate the mistreatment. The group included a former commander of American forces in the Middle East, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, and the Navy's former top uniformed lawyer, Rear Adm. John D. Hutson. Mr. Rumsfeld has said such a panel is unnecessary , pointing to the 11 inquiries completed or pending.
Mr. Waxman and other officials say some changes, like adding military police, were under way even before senior officials learned in January of the abuse.
But most of the recommendations have come since then, and extend to all levels and aspects of the military, from the Central Command in the Middle East to Army training operations to civilian policy makers inside the Pentagon.
The Army has borne the brunt, because most of the troops implicated so far are soldiers. Army officials said Wednesday they had culled 150 recommendations from a list of 392 and counting - sending many to other military organizations - and from those, identified 200 tasks to be completed, including revamped training and better coordination between military police and intelligence personnel.
"We've always done detention operations, but never with the complexity soldiers face today," Brig. Gen. Leo A. Brooks Jr., vice director of the Army staff, said in an interview. He noted that in Iraq, for instance, criminals, combatants, foreign fighters and important former government officials were often intermingled in the prisons.
American officials said Abu Ghraib had undergone major changes since the worst abuses occurred there late last year. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commandant at Guantánamo, Cuba, was dispatched to oversee all detention and interrogation operations in Iraq. He told reporters earlier this week that interrogators were gleaning much more "high value" intelligence from detainees using an approach that encourages the establishment of a "rapport'' between interrogator and prisoner.
In addition to establishing Mr. Waxman's office, the Joint Staff has also expanded its detainee affairs division, to six people from a one-man shop, and is coordinating more closely with the military commands worldwide.
Still, plenty of contentious issues remain, including whether to standardize interrogation procedures at American detention facilities, as some inquiries have recommended, or continue to allow some harsher techniques to be used against "unlawful combatants" at Guantánamo. "We're continuing to work through those issues," Mr. Waxman said.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Says Siege Leader Brutally Killed 3 Followers
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6704-2004Sep8?language=printer
MOSCOW, Sept. 8 -- The main commander of the guerrillas who seized a school in southern Russia last week shot one of his own men for balking at taking children hostage and later blew up two women in his band with the flip of an electronic control, Russia's chief prosecutor said Wednesday.
Offering the government's first detailed account of the hostage crisis, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov depicted a harsh discipline within the group of attackers and confirmed that they were aided by a local police officer. The large bomb that blew up inside the school and triggered the deadly climax of the siege, he said, went off by accident when the hostage takers were trying to rearrange their explosives.
Ustinov disclosed these details in a briefing to President Vladimir Putin that was aired on national television. It came as officials backtracked on their claim that the hostage takers included 10 Arabs, but the Kremlin insisted that a "multinational group" of extremists was involved, and Russia's highest military officer threatened preemptive strikes against terrorist bases in other countries.
Russia's foreign minister strongly criticized the United States for suggesting this week that U.S. officials might still meet with Chechen separatist figures.
The full scale of the carnage in the southern town of Beslan remained unclear. The government put the official death toll so far at 328 children and adults. Ustinov's math suggested that the count could climb to nearly 500. He noted that more than 1,200 hostages were held and 727 received medical treatment. Virtually every survivor was taken to a hospital.
Relatives in Beslan continued to call at hospitals and morgues looking for missing loved ones. Officials in the regional center of Vladikavkaz reported that 233 of the bodies had been identified, leaving 95 undetermined. Others were likely incinerated or blown apart in the explosions that destroyed the school gym.
Officials said 32 guerrillas took part in the raid on School No. 1, all but one of whom were dead after the day-long battle that ended the impasse last Friday. Of 30 bodies found, 12 have been identified and one was torn to pieces. One attacker was taken alive, officials said.
The government, which has admitted that it initially lied about the number of hostages taken during the 52-hour standoff, rejected suspicions voiced in Beslan and Moscow that it was still covering up crucial information. Instead, it said it was simply sorting through a confusing set of facts.
"It's so terrible, we need lots and lots of time to put all of the pieces of the mosaic together," Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said in an interview.
Ustinov's briefing to Putin at the Kremlin provided the first detailed look at the prosecutors' theory of the event. Citing interviews with hostages and the lone captured guerrilla, Ustinov said the group gathered in a forest, boarded a GAZ-66 military truck and two other vehicles, then headed for Beslan. Along the way, they picked up a police officer, he said. Ustinov did not say whether the officer was a willing accomplice.
After overtaking the school, the guerrillas began unloading guns and explosives, but some appeared to have second thoughts, Ustinov said. "They asked, 'Why are we seizing a school?' " the prosecutor said.
The captured guerrilla, identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, told interrogators that one of the group's leaders, known as "the Colonel," "killed one of his people to intimidate the others and said he would do it to everyone if they disobeyed," Ustinov said. The same day, he added, the Colonel used a remote control to trigger the explosives belts worn by the two women in the group to enforce obedience.
A Kremlin official has said surveillance indicated that the hostage takers were arguing in the moments before the final confrontation began. But Ustinov's account suggested that the dispute did not bring about the triggering of the big explosion on Friday. Instead, he said, when "they started to rearrange the bombing system . . . for their own considerations, an explosion occurred."
The explosion set off panic, and hostages began fleeing the building.
One of the government's negotiators, Ruslan Aushev, provided new details about the chaotic moments that followed, saying the confrontation was actually precipitated by armed Beslan civilians. After the bomb in the gym went off, Russian troops held their fire, but civilian gunmen who had moved close to the school began shooting, Aushev told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Russian officials called the guerrillas inside and declared that they were not attacking, but the guerrillas insisted that they were and began returning fire. Unable to control the civilians, the Russian troops had to launch their own operation, Aushev said. "Everything went down the drain when these civilians opened fire," he said.
The civilians ended up shooting some of Russia's elite special forces troops, according to Russian officials. Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a top aide to Putin, said in an interview this week that 20 members of the Alpha and Vympel special forces squads were killed, many by friendly fire. Peskov said Wednesday that the number killed was actually 10.
Peskov also said he could not confirm that 10 Arabs were among the hostage takers, as Russian officials earlier reported. "The first information was just preliminary and it needs to be checked," he said. "The only thing we can say for sure is it was a multinational group."
But Aushev's account confirmed that the hostage takers were focused on Chechnya. They gave him a letter to take to Putin, he said, in which they demanded that Russian troops be withdrawn from Chechnya and that the separatist region be turned over to the control of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose organization of most former Soviet republics.
The government on Wednesday put a $10 million bounty on the heads of Chechen rebel commanders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, whom they blamed for sponsoring the attack. Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the armed forces chief of staff, asserted the right to launch preemptive attacks on what he termed "terrorist bases" outside Russia. "We will take steps to eliminate terrorist bases in any region of the world," he told journalists.
Russia made such statements in 2002 in threatening its neighbor Georgia, where Chechen guerrillas had taken shelter. More recently, Russian agents were convicted of assassinating a former Chechen leader in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Baluyevsky's statement appeared to be more threat than foreshadowing, because the Russian government is not known to have identified any such targets.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also had tough words Wednesday, faulting U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher for saying Tuesday that Washington officials may still meet with Chechen opposition figures that Moscow calls terrorists. "We deem such statements to be out of place," Lavrov said in a statement.
In the North Ossetian town of Vladikavkaz, thousands of protesters took to the streets Wednesday, demanding the resignation of President Aleksandr Dzasokhov and his government for their handling of the siege. Dzasokhov said the government would leave office in two days, but he did not offer his own resignation.
Correspondent Peter Finn in Beslan contributed to this report.
--------
Russia's Antiterror Tactics: Reward and a First Strike
September 9, 2004
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/europe/09russia.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW, Sept. 8 - The Russian government offered a $10 million reward Wednesday for the killing or capture of two Chechen rebel leaders, and a top general said Moscow reserved the right to make pre-emptive strikes against terrorists abroad.
In an emerging government reaction that echoed statements in Washington after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, several lawmakers also proposed steps to tighten domestic security in response to last week's horrific schoolhouse hostage siege in North Ossetia, in which more than 300 children, parents, teachers and attackers were killed.
In a new official account of the attack, Russia's chief law enforcement official portrayed a band of cutthroat kidnappers who argued among themselves and whose leader enforced discipline by executing three of his crew.
In a televised meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, the official, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, reported that not all the attackers realized that their mission was to seize a school and that one of them was shot when he objected to kidnapping children.
Two women in the gang were killed, as a gesture of intimidation, when the bombs strapped to their bodies were detonated by remote control, Mr. Ustinov said.
"He did it himself?" Mr. Putin asked, referring to the gang leader, who went by the nickname Colonel and who was described as a short man with a red beard and freckles.
"Yes, himself," Mr. Ustinov replied, almost in a whisper.
Although the broad outlines of the assault are believed to be known, many details remain uncertain. Parts of Mr. Ustinov's account on Wednesday, which apparently relied to some extent on information from the sole hostage taker captured alive, differed from the recollections of witnesses in minor ways.
Mr. Ustinov said 326 hostages were killed, although only 210 bodies have been identified because many were badly mutilated. This total was lower than the earlier official toll of 338. He said another 727 people had been wounded, leaving only a very few hostages unhurt from a total of 1,200 he said had been held.
The attack on the school in Beslan, in southern Russia, was the latest and most disturbing of a series of terror attacks that are apparently linked to the decadelong separatist war in Chechnya.
Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the military's general staff, said Russia did not feel bound by national borders in pursuing rebels.
"As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases, we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," he said, though he called that an "extreme measure."
In fact, the post-Soviet military has lost much of its ability to project force beyond its borders. Its concern is with rebels from Chechnya and the North Caucasus crossing into neighboring Georgia, where Russia has two bases and has carried out military operations.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Mr. Putin's chief adviser on Chechnya, said he hoped the large reward would lead to the capture of the two most prominent rebel figures, Aslan Maskhadov, a former president of Chechnya, and Shamil Basayev, a warlord. The government has blamed them for the hostage taking, although Mr. Basayev has denied involvement.
Mr. Ustinov's deputy, Sergei Fridinsky, said the bodies of 12 attackers, out of approximately 30, had been identified. He said some had taken part in an attack in June in Ingushetia, a neighboring republic, where scores of people were killed.
Russian lawmakers and officials have raised questions about how rebels seem to be able to move freely around the country. Some officials have proposed measures to restrict living permits and travel conditions and to allow airport security officers to deny boarding to any passenger about whom they have doubts.
The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has suggested that Chechens should be restricted in their access to the capital. When asked in a telephone interview why the rebel leaders had not been captured in the past, Mr. Aslakhanov told what he said was an American anecdote about a "Cowboy Joe'' who was never captured because no one had ever really tried to catch him.
"For a long time, no one tried to catch Basayev," he said, even though he has long had a price on his head. "We knew he was driving with a certain driver, we knew he was stopping in one place or another. He traveled to Turkey for surgery."
Corruption among law enforcement agencies is a major problem that was cited by Mr. Putin in a speech following the hostage taking.
Mr. Aslakhanov said the most important step that could be taken would be for the United States to help close channels of financing for Chechen rebels. "America is the strongest country in the world and all countries listen to it," he said.
These remarks came on a day when the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, objected testily to a statement by the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, that Washington reserved the right to maintain contacts with moderate Chechen leaders.
"We do have a policy that says we will meet with political officials, leaders who have different points of view," Mr. Boucher said. "We've done that in the past; we may or may not do that in the future, depending on who these individuals might be."
While emphasizing that "the United States does not meet with terrorists," Mr. Boucher called for a political solution in Chechnya, saying, "Our view of some of these political figures has been different than the Russians'."
Mr. Aslakhanov responded to this approach by saying, "There is no point in having talks, especially with the leaders of a nonexistent country."
In North Ossetia, burials continued on Wednesday as mourning competed with anger.
After a number of calls for his resignation, the president of North Ossetia, Aleksandr Dzasokhov, addressed a crowd of about 1,000 people and said that rather than stepping down, he would fire all the people who work for him.
-------- spies
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy on the CIA's road to Abu Ghraib
Tom Dispatch
September 9, 2004
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1795
Around the world -- and in the United States -- Abu Ghraib has become a byword for our disastrous war in Iraq. The photos of torture, abuses, and humiliations of every sort that e-seeped out of that prison shocked Iraqis, the world, and many Americans. But as is so often the case, images can't be fully interpreted without context. Below, Alfred McCoy, who in the Vietnam era wrote The Politics of Heroin, a now-classic exposé of Central Intelligence Agency tactics in Southeast Asia, and has been on the Agency's case every since, offers the necessary -- and shocking -- historical context. He fills us in on a truly shameful story most of us remember, if at all, only in bits and pieces (those Agency experiments with LSD, for instance): A taxpayer-funded CIA, using up to a billion dollars a year for its research, plunged into a universe of torture way back in the 1950s and emerged with a new set of "no-touch" torture techniques which were then codified in manuals, used in Vietnam, and for over two decades taught to allied police forces and militaries around the Third World. It turns out that many of these techniques, some over half-a-century old, have just been paraded before our eyes in the Abu Ghraib snapshots. In other words, the now infamous photos were evidence, for those who could interpret them, of CIA-influence in Abu Ghraib (as the recent report by Major General George R. Fay has confirmed).
In 2001, these CIA torture techniques were let loose again by a Bush administration intent on creating an offshore mini-gulag of "information extraction" in its zeal to pursue its "war on terror." Overlapping CIA and Pentagon detention systems were set up worldwide where, beyond the oversight of anyone, the "arts of interrogation" could be practiced (and in which they could spread like some malign virus). Unfortunately, what we now call "Abu Ghraib" is but the tip of the iceberg and has largely proved a tale of Bush administration damage control. There have been or are now underway eight investigations of Abu Ghraib (and sometimes of detention practices in Afghanistan as well). All are Pentagon appointed and almost all are military staffed.
Now imagine that we let Enron investigate itself; that Scott Peterson conducted his own trial; that Halliburton could write its own Pentagon contracts (oh, sorry, that more or less happened). Imagine, to offer up an absurd example, that one official Pentagon investigator looking into abuses in Afghanistan actually commanded U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan during the period he was to investigate when the military was holding "ghost detainees" and in his "extensive review" didn't even mention the matter. Oh gosh, that actually happened in the case of Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, now the Army's Inspector General. According to Elise Ackerman of Knight Ridder, "He commanded ground forces in Afghanistan at the time the policy was adopted, but didn't mention the policy when he told the Senate Armed Service Committee in July that his review had found no evidence of ghost detainees."
The result of such investigations is clear: Responsibility for these horrors has largely been confined to the lowest ranks and kept close to Abu Ghraib itself. Bush administration accountability is next to nil. The bizarre, pretzeled justifications its best legal minds created, meant to narrow the definition of torture almost to the vanishing point, have been left in the dust. But perhaps most important of all, the attention to and focus on Abu Ghraib and the military has taken almost all attention away from the mini-gulag of prisons the CIA set up in Afghanistan, on aircraft carriers, in remote places like the Indian Ocean Island of Diego Garcia, and in the prisons of torture-friendly allies. This, as McCoy makes clear below, is where it all began and yet no public investigation of the CIA, its torture techniques, or its torture centers is underway.
Much of this, as McCoy demonstrates, was not beyond our power to know. I laid out a good deal of information about what I called "our Bermuda Triangle of injustice" last April with nothing more than a search engine at my command (Into the Shadows). Various human rights organizations have done the same far more authoritatively, as did Human Rights First back in June (U.S. Holding Prisoners in More Than Two Dozen Secret Detention Facilities Worldwide, New Report Says). Now, in a letter to the President, eight retired generals and admirals have most honorably called for a 9/11 Commission-style investigatory body to look into not just Abu Ghraib but "other U.S.-operated detention facilities"; while Human Rights First has just released a new report on all the Abu Ghraib investigations and their limitations. But first read McCoy; then look at those photos again and think about what you're actually seeing. Tom
The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America's Road to Abu Ghraib By Alfred W. McCoy
From ancient Rome's red-hot irons and lacerating hooks to medieval Europe's thumbscrews, rack, and wheel, for over 2,000 years anyone interrogated in a court of law could expect to suffer unspeakable tortures. For the last 200 years, humanist intellectuals from Voltaire to members of Amnesty International have led a sustained campaign against the horrors of state-sponsored cruelty, culminating in the United Nation's 1985 Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Clinton administration in 1994.
Then came 9/11. When the Twin Towers collapsed killing thousands, influential "pro-pain pundits" promptly repudiated those Enlightenment ideals and began publicly discussing whether torture might be an appropriate, even necessary weapon in George Bush's war on terror. The most persuasive among them, Harvard academic Alan M. Dershowitz, advocated giving courts the right to issue "torture warrants," ensuring that needed information could be prized from unwilling Arab subjects with steel needles.
Despite torture's appeal as a "lesser evil," a necessary expedient in dangerous times, those who favor it ignore its recent, problematic history in America. They also seem ignorant of a perverse pathology that allows the practice of torture, once begun, to spread uncontrollably in crisis situations, destroying the legitimacy of the perpetrator nation. As past perpetrators could have told today's pundits, torture plumbs the recesses of human consciousness, unleashing an unfathomable capacity for cruelty as well as seductive illusions of potency. Even as pundits and professors fantasized about "limited, surgical torture," the Bush administration, following the President's orders to "kick some ass," was testing and disproving their theories by secretly sanctioning brutal interrogation that spread quickly from use against a few "high target value" Al Qaeda suspects to scores of ordinary Afghans and then hundreds of innocent Iraqis.
As we learned from France's battle for Algiers in the 1950s, Argentina's dirty war in the 1970s, and Britain's Northern Ireland conflict in the 1970s, a nation that harbors torture in defiance of its democratic principles pays a terrible price. Its officials must spin an ever more complex web of lies that, in the end, weakens the bonds of trust that are the sine qua non of any modern society. Most surprisingly, our own pro-pain pundits seemed, in those heady early days of the war on terror, unaware of a fifty-year history of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), nor were they aware that their enthusiastic proposals gave cover to those in the Bush Administration intent on reactivating a ruthless apparatus.
Torture's Perverse Pathology
In April 2004, the American public was stunned by televised photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked, posed in contorted positions, and visibly suffering humiliating abuse while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As the scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quickly assured Congress that the abuses were "perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military," whom New York Times columnist William Safire soon branded "creeps."
These photos, however, are snapshots not of simple brutality or even evidence of a breakdown in "military discipline." What they record are CIA torture techniques that have metastasized like an undetected cancer inside the U.S. intelligence community over the past half century. A survey of this history shows that the CIA was, in fact, the lead agency at Abu Ghraib, enlisting Army intelligence to support its mission. These photographs from Iraq also illustrate standard interrogation procedures inside the gulag of secret CIA prisons that have operated globally, on executive authority, since the start of the President's war on terror.
Looked at historically, the Abu Ghraib scandal is the product of a deeply contradictory U.S. policy toward torture since the start of the Cold War. At the UN and other international forums, Washington has long officially opposed torture and advocated a universal standard for human rights. Simultaneously, the CIA has propagated ingenious new torture techniques in contravention of these same international conventions, a number of which the U.S has ratified. In battling communism, the United States adopted some of its most objectionable practices -- subversion abroad, repression at home, and most significantly torture itself.
From 1950 to 1962, the CIA conducted massive, secret research into coercion and the malleability of human consciousness which, by the late fifties, was costing a billion dollars a year. Many Americans have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects. While these CIA drug experiments led nowhere and the testing of electric shock as a technique led only to lawsuits, research into sensory deprivation proved fruitful indeed. In fact, this research produced a new psychological rather than physical method of torture, perhaps best described as "no-touch" torture.
The Agency's discovery was a counterintuitive breakthrough, the first real revolution in this cruel science since the seventeenth century -- and thanks to recent revelations from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we are now all too familiar with these methods, even if many Americans still have no idea of their history. Upon careful examination, those photographs of nude bodies expose the CIA's most basic torture techniques -- stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation.
For over 2,000 years, from ancient Athens through the Inquisition, interrogators found that the infliction of physical pain often produced heightened resistance or unreliable information -- the strong defied pain while the weak blurted out whatever was necessary to stop it. By contrast, the CIA's psychological torture paradigm used two new methods, sensory disorientation and "self-inflicted pain," both of which were aimed at causing victims to feel responsible for their own suffering and so to capitulate more readily to their torturers. A week after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, General Geoffrey Miller, U.S. prison commander in Iraq (and formerly in Guantanamo), offered an unwitting summary of this two-phase torture. "We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees," the general said. "We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will no longer use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations."
Under field conditions since the start of the Afghan War, Agency and allied interrogators have often added to their no-touch repertoire physical methods reminiscent of the Inquisition's trademark tortures -- strappado, question de l'eau, "crippling stork," and "masks of mockery." At the CIA's center near Kabul in 2002, for instance, American interrogators forced prisoners "to stand with their hands chained to the ceiling and their feet shackled," an effect similar to the strappado. Instead of the Inquisition's iron-framed "crippling stork" to contort the victim's body, CIA interrogators made their victims assume similar "stress positions" without any external mechanism, aiming again for the psychological effect of self-induced pain
Although seemingly less brutal than physical methods, the CIA's "no touch" torture actually leaves deep, searing psychological scars on both victims and -- something seldom noted -- their interrogators. Victims often need long treatment to recover from a trauma many experts consider more crippling than physical pain. Perpetrators can suffer a dangerous expansion of ego, leading to escalating acts of cruelty and lasting emotional disorders. When applied in actual operations, the CIA's psychological procedures have frequently led to unimaginable cruelties, physical and sexual, by individual perpetrators whose improvisations are often horrific and only occasionally effective.
Just as interrogators are often seduced by a dark, empowering sense of dominance over victims, so their superiors, even at the highest level, can succumb to fantasies of torture as an all-powerful weapon. Our contemporary view of torture as aberrant and its perpetrators as abhorrent ignores both its pervasiveness as a Western practice for two millennia and its perverse appeal. Once torture begins, its perpetrators, plunging into uncharted recesses of consciousness, are often swept away by dark reveries, by frenzies of power and potency, mastery and control -- particularly in times of crisis. "When feelings of insecurity develop within those holding power," reads one CIA analysis of the Soviet state applicable to post-9/11 America, "they become increasingly suspicious and put great pressures on the secret police to obtain arrests and confessions. At such times police officials are inclined to condone anything which produces a speedy 'confession' and brutality may become widespread."
Enraptured by this illusory power, modern states that sanction torture usually allow it to spread uncontrollably. By 1967, just four years after compiling a torture manual for use against a few top Soviet targets, the CIA was operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam as part of its Phoenix Program that killed over 20,000 Viet Cong suspects. In the centers themselves, countless thousands were tortured for information that led to these assassinations. Similarly, just a few months after CIA interrogators first tortured top Al Qaeda suspects at Kabul in 2002, its agents were involved in the brutal interrogation of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners. As its most troubling legacy, the CIA's psychological method, with its legitimating scientific patina and its avoidance of obvious physical brutality, has provided a pretext for the preservation of torture as an acceptable practice within the U.S. intelligence community.
Once adopted, torture offers such a powerful illusion of efficient information extraction that its perpetrators, high and low, remain wedded to its use. They regularly refuse to recognize its limited utility and high political cost. At least twice during the Cold War, the CIA's torture training contributed to the destabilization of two key American allies, Iran's Shah and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos. Yet even after their spectacular falls, the Agency remained blind to the way its torture training was destroying the allies it was designed to defend.
CIA Torture Research
The CIA's torture experimentation of the 1950s and early 1960s was codified in 1963 in a succinct, secret instructional booklet on torture -- the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual, which would become the basis for a new method of torture disseminated globally over the next three decades. These techniques were first spread through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program to train police forces in Asia and Latin America as the front line of defense against communists and other revolutionaries. After an angry Congress abolished the Public Safety program in 1975, the CIA worked through U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams to instruct military interrogators, mainly in Central America.
At the Cold War's end, Washington resumed its advocacy of universal principles, denouncing regimes for torture, participating in the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna in 1993 and, a year later, ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture. On the surface, the United States had resolved the tension between its anti-torture principles and its torture practices. Yet even when Congress finally ratified this UN convention it did so with intricately-constructed reservations that cleverly exempted the CIA's psychological torture method. While other covert agencies synonymous with Cold War repression such as Romania's Securitate, East Germany's Stasi, and the Soviet Union's KGB have disappeared, the CIA survives -- its archives sealed, its officers decorated, and its Cold War crimes forgotten. By failing to repudiate the Agency's propagation of torture, while adopting a UN convention that condemned its practice, the United States left this contradiction buried like a political land mine ready to detonate with such phenomenal force in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Memory and Forgetting
Today the American public has only a vague understanding of these CIA excesses and the scale of its massive mind-control project. Yet almost every adult American carries fragmentary memories of this past -- of LSD experiments, the CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam, the murder of a kidnapped American police adviser in Montevideo who was teaching CIA techniques to the Uruguayan police, and of course the Abu Ghraib photographs. But few are able to fit these fragments together and so grasp the larger picture. There is, in sum, an ignorance, a studied avoidance of a deeply troubling topic, akin to that which shrouds this subject in post-authoritarian societies.
With the controversy over Abu Ghraib, incidents that once seemed but fragments should now be coming together to form a mosaic of a clandestine agency manipulating its government and deceiving its citizens to probe the cruel underside of human consciousness, and then propagating its discoveries throughout the Third World.
Strong democracies have difficulty dealing with torture. In the months following the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, the United States moved quickly through the same stages (as defined by author John Conroy) that the United Kingdom experienced after revelations of British army torture in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s -- first, minimizing the torture with euphemisms such as "interrogation in depth"; next, justifying it on grounds that it was necessary or effective; and finally, attempting to bury the issue by blaming "a few bad apples."
Indeed, since last April, the Bush administration and much of the media have studiously avoided the word "torture" and instead blamed our own bad apples, those seven Military Police. In July, the Army's Inspector General Paul T. Mikolashek delivered his report blaming 94 incidents of "abuse" on "an individual failure to uphold Army Values." Although the New York Times called his conclusions "comical," the general's views seem to resonate with an emerging conservative consensus. "Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class," said Republican Senator Trent Lott. "You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes." In June, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 35% of Americans felt torture was acceptable in some circumstances.
In August, Major General George R. Fay released his report on the role of Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib. Its stunning revelations about the reasons for this torture were, however, obscured in opaque military prose. After interviewing 170 personnel and reviewing 9,000 documents, the general intimated that this abuse was the product of an interrogation policy shaped, in both design and application, by the CIA.
Significantly, General Fay blamed not the "seven bad apples," but the Abu Ghraib interrogation procedures themselves. Of the 44 verifiable incidents of abuse, one-third occurred during actual interrogation. Moreover, these "routine" interrogation procedures "contributed to an escalating 'de-humanization' of the detainees and set the stage for additional and severe abuses to occur."
After finding standard Army interrogation doctrine sound, General Fay was forced to confront a single, central, uncomfortable question: what was the source of the aberrant, "non-doctrinal" practices that led to torture during interrogation at Abu Ghraib? Scattered throughout his report are the dots, politely unconnected, that lead from the White House to the Iraqi prison cell block: President Bush gave his defense secretary broad powers over prisoners in November 2001; Secretary Rumsfeld authorized harsh "Counter-Resistance Techniques" for Afghanistan and Guantanamo in December 2002; hardened Military Intelligence units brought these methods to Iraq in July 2003; and General Ricardo Sanchez in Baghdad authorized these extreme measures for Abu Ghraib in September 2003.
In its short answer to this uncomfortable question, General Fay's report, when read closely, traced the source of these harsh "non-doctrinal methods" at Abu Ghraib to the CIA. He charged that a flouting of military procedures by CIA interrogators "eroded the necessity in the minds of soldiers and civilians for them to follow Army rules." Specifically, the Army "allowed CIA to house 'Ghost Detainees' who were unidentified and unaccounted for in Abu Ghraib," thus encouraging violations of "reporting requirements under the Geneva Conventions." Moreover, the interrogation of CIA detainees "occurred under different practices and procedures which were absent any DoD visibility, control, or oversight and created a perception that OGA [CIA] techniques and practices were suitable and authorized for DoD operations." With their exemption from military regulations, CIA interrogators moved about Abu Ghraib with a corrupting "mystique" and extreme methods that "fascinated" some Army interrogators. In sum, General Fay seems to say that the CIA has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the U.S. military.
Had he gone further, General Fay might have mentioned that the 519th Military Intelligence, the Army unit that set interrogation guidelines for Abu Ghraib, had just come from Kabul where it worked closely with the CIA, learning torture techniques that left at least one Afghani prisoner dead. Had he gone further still, the general could have added that the sensory deprivation techniques, stress positions, and cultural shock of dogs and nudity that we saw in those photos from Abu Ghraib were plucked from the pages of past CIA torture manuals.
American Prestige
This is not, of course, the first American debate over torture in recent memory. From 1970 to 1988, the Congress tried unsuccessfully, in four major investigations, to expose elements of this CIA torture paradigm. But on each occasion the public showed little concern, and the practice, never fully acknowledged, persisted inside the intelligence community.
Now, in these photographs from Abu Ghraib, ordinary Americans have seen the reality and the results of interrogation techniques the CIA has propagated and practiced for nearly half a century. The American public can join the international community in repudiating a practice that, more than any other, represents a denial of democracy; or in its desperate search for security, the United States can continue its clandestine torture of terror suspects in the hope of gaining good intelligence without negative publicity.
In the likely event that Washington adopts the latter strategy, it will be a decision posited on two false assumptions: that torturers can be controlled and that news of their work can be contained. Once torture begins, its use seems to spread uncontrollably in a downward spiral of fear and empowerment. With the proliferation of digital imaging we can anticipate, in five or ten years, yet more chilling images and devastating blows to America's international standing. Next time, however, the American public's moral concern and Washington's apologies will ring even more hollowly, producing even greater damage to U.S. prestige.
Alfred W. McCoy is professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, an examination of the CIA's alliances with drug lords, and Closer Than Brothers, a study of the impact of the CIA's psychological torture method upon the Philippine military. He will publish a fuller version of this essay in The New England Journal of Public Policy (Volume 19, No. 2, 2004).
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Analysis U.S. Troops' Death Rate Rising in Iraq
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6756-2004Sep8.html
With the latest spike in violence in Baghdad, more U.S. troops have died since the turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June than were killed during the U.S.-led invasion of the country in the spring of 2003.
A total of 148 U.S. military personnel have been killed since the partial transfer of sovereignty on June 28, compared with 138 who died in March and April of 2003, Pentagon figures show.
That trend is a grim indication that, 18 months after the invasion, the fighting appears to be intensifying rather than waning. While attention has been focused largely on standoffs in Najaf and other well-publicized hotspots, an analysis of the figures shows the U.S. military has taken more casualties elsewhere, including the deaths of about 44 troops in the western province of Anbar and 10 others in the city of Samarra.
The wide geographic dispersion of the violence reflects the strength of a resurgent opposition and also frames the challenge U.S. commanders face in the coming months as the United States seeks to hold an election to establish a new Iraqi government, said military officers and defense analysts.
"The 'peace' has been bloodier than the war," said Capt. Russell Burgos, an Army reservist who recently returned from a tour of duty with an aviation regiment in Balad, Iraq. In his view, the U.S. experience in Iraq is coming to resemble Israel's painful 18-year occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.
Before the war, predictions by even the most skeptical Bush administration critics did not include scenarios of escalating violence this long after the invasion, or of the U.S. military issuing a news release such as the one it sent out Tuesday morning, headlined "Fighting Continues in Eastern Baghdad." In addition, several cities near Baghdad have slipped from U.S. control in recent months and have become "no-go zones" for U.S. troops.
"No one that I know of, to include the most pessimistic experts, predicted a full-scale insurgency would break out within a couple of months of the overthrow of the old regime," said Steven Metz, a guerrilla warfare expert at the Army War College.
Now, Metz said, "the current situation may be sustained for a very long time."
On Tuesday, as the U.S. military crossed the symbolic 1,000-death mark in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld delivered a similarly somber assessment. "It's a tough, difficult business," he said at a Pentagon news conference, predicting more violence in coming months. But he also expressed confidence in the outcome, saying that "the offense [is] being effectively waged."
The recent surge in violence has been especially surprising because in the weeks after the transfer of power there was a phase that, for Iraq, felt to some almost like a lull.
"July was significantly slower" than the violence of the spring, said Maj. Richard Gullick, an Army neurosurgeon in Baghdad. Then August roared back with 65 deaths and more than 1,000 U.S. troops wounded. The pace has worsened this month, with 25 fatalities so far.
The nature of the fighting also has changed. In July, most of the combat losses with identifiable causes were inflicted by planted explosives -- roadside bombs and land mines. But in August, deaths by gunfire and by suicide bombings also became a major cause, indicating that there were more direct confrontations with enemy fighters. "On a gut level, I'd probably agree that IEDs have played less of a role lately with respect to U.S. casualties," Gullick said, referring to improvised explosive devices, or bombs planted along roads.
More than a third of U.S. military deaths last month were in Anbar province, in Iraq's western desert, where the Marine Corps is posted. Underscoring the intensity of the engagements there, the Marines lost more people last month -- 32 -- than the Army did, only the second time that has occurred since the spring 2003 invasion. The nature of the Marine deaths is harder to analyze because the Marines generally do not release information about the specific causes.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday summarized the fighting by noting that there has been a "spike in the casualties" not only of U.S. and Iraqi government forces but also of the insurgents, even as their opposition becomes more sophisticated. "The more aggressive the tactics of the insurgency, the greater their loss of human life," he said. Rumsfeld elaborated on that point, estimating that as many as 2,500 insurgents and criminals were killed in August.
Rumsfeld also said this week that casualties among Iraqi security forces allied with the United States are even heavier than the United States has suffered. "They've lost more Iraqi security people, killed or wounded, in the last two months than the coalition has lost people," Rumsfeld said in an interview with WDAY-AM radio in Fargo, N.D., according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
Military experts said the latest round of combat is a sign that the U.S. military is engaged in what promises to be a protracted war. But they drew sharply different conclusions about what it means.
"Sadly, the 1,000th military death is but a bookmark on a longer and more painful road," said retired Army Lt. Col. Carlo D'Este, a historian specializing in World War II. As in the Vietnam War, he said, "there is no visible light at the end of the tunnel, nor has the Bush administration articulated a viable exit strategy, without which the war will continue indefinitely -- that is, years."
But retired Army Brig. Gen. David Grange drew a different conclusion. "We are fighting a counter-insurgency," he said, in which there is "no short-term fix." So, he said, the key to victory will be "maintaining the will of the American people."
Spec. Joseph Roche, a 1st Armored Division soldier who recently returned from more than a year in Baghdad, said that the U.S. military's morale in Iraq is high and that troops are performing well. His main worry is whether the American people will stick by the mission as they see more casualties. "My concern, honestly, is the impact this is having on the American people and our ability to be strong in this war."
Researchers Madonna Lebling and Rob Thomason contributed to this report.
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For 1,000 Troops, There Is No Going Home
September 9, 2004
By MONICA DAVEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/national/09deaths.html
Dixie Codner had a question for the marines who came down her gravel road, past the rows of corn and alfalfa, to tell her that her 19-year-old son, Kyle, had been killed in Iraq. Should she bring them the dress blues, still pressed and hanging neatly in his closet, for his funeral?
No need, she recalled them answering. They had dress uniforms from all the services, all sizes, waiting back at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of American service members come home.
"What does that say?" Ms. Codner asked, as she sat at her kitchen table in Shelton, Neb., on a recent morning, fingering a thick stack of photographs that her son had sent from the desert. "How many more are they expecting? All I know is that there are 1,000 families that feel just like we do. We go to bed at night, and we don't have our children."
Like Lance Cpl. Kyle W. Codner, each of the more than 1,000 marines and soldiers, sailors and airmen killed since the United States sent troops to invade Iraq leaves behind a grieving family, a story, a unique memory of duty and sacrifice in what has become the deadliest war for Americans since Vietnam.
But along with so much personal loss, the roster of the dead tells a larger story, a portrait of a society and a military in transition, with ever-widening roles and costs for the country's part-time soldiers, women and Hispanics.
As has often been true in the United States' wars, small towns like Shelton and other rural areas suffered a disproportionate share of deaths compared with the nation's big cities. More than 100 service members who died were from California, the most for any state, but the smaller, less-populated states, many in the nation's middle - the Dakotas, Wyoming and Nebraska - recorded some of the biggest per capita losses.
In these mostly Republican-leaning states, people have begun to take painful note of the toll in Iraq. Many of the families of the dead there said they remained supportive of the war, the troops and the president. Still, with the death toll reaching 1,000 just two months before the presidential election, the somber milestone captured a central spot in the national political debate this week.
More than 70 percent of the dead were soldiers in the Army, and more than 20 percent were marines. More than half were in the lowest-paid enlisted ranks. About 12 percent were officers. Three-quarters of the troops died in hostile incidents: most often, homemade-bomb explosions, small-arms fire, rocket attacks. A quarter died in illnesses or accidents: truck and helicopter crashes and gun discharges.
On average, the service members who died were about 26. The youngest was 18; the oldest, 59. About half were married, according to the death roll, which does not include a handful yet to be identified by the Defense Department and three civilians who worked for the military.
Part-time soldiers, the guardsmen and reservists who once expected to tend to floods and hurricanes, were called to Iraq on a scale not seen through five decades of war. Increasingly, Iraq is becoming their conflict, and in growing numbers this spring and early summer, these part-time soldiers died there. Ten times as many of them died from April to July of this year as had in the war's first two months.
American women, too, have quietly drawn closer to combat than they had in half a century. At least 24 female service members died in Iraq, more than in any American conflict since World War II, a stark sign of a barrier broken.
Many Hispanics, once underrepresented in the armed forces, have fought and died in striking numbers. At least 122 Hispanics have died in Iraq, meaning that they died at a rate disproportionately high for their representation in the active forces and among the deployed troops. Among the dead were 39 service members who were not American citizens, significantly more than had died in Vietnam or Afghanistan, according to Defense Department records.
Most of the troops - 85 percent - died after President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003. Nearly 15 percent died after the United States turned over sovereignty to Iraq's new leaders this June. The deadliest month was this April, as insurgents stepped up their attacks. Nearly as many American troops died that month as had in the initial invasion.
The Pentagon says it does not track or release estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the war began, although some independent groups have offered widely varying estimates. (A group called Iraq Body Count said Iraqi civilian deaths exceeded 11,000.)
Among Americans, especially the relatives of service members who have died, the meaning of the toll is already a matter of feverish, sometimes bitter, debate.
Some say they view the number of deaths - and the injuries to more than 7,000 other Americans - as a tragic but unavoidable price of war, and one that seems modest beside the death toll from Vietnam, which was 58,000. About 380 troops died in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and some 97 in Afghanistan. Any questions about the mounting numbers in Iraq, these relatives said, served as a rejection of the troops' mission, an insult to their lost soldier's work.
"The loss is there, of course, but we also know the honor and the pride," said Kelby McCrae, himself a captain in the National Guard and the son of a veteran soldier. His younger brother, Erik, was killed in June. "We're just so honored at the sacrifice he gave."
But others said they worried that their soldier's sacrifice in Iraq might be forgotten as more months pass and people grow inured to news of so many deaths, one after the next in this war.
The Guard and the Reserves: 'Weekend Warriors' Go Full Time
Eric S. McKinley was a baker and a part-time soldier. He dyed his hair strange colors and pierced his body in places his mother sometimes wished he had not. His six-year stint in the Oregon National Guard was supposed to end in April, but it was extended, and Specialist McKinley died June 13 when a bomb blew up near his Humvee near Baghdad. Specialist McKinley's father, Tom, said he was left with a haunting conviction: that guardsmen and reservists are now being asked in record numbers to fight the same lethal wars as full-time soldiers, but without the same level of training, equipment or respect. Dozens of parents and spouses of guardsmen - some who died and others still serving in Iraq - said they shared Mr. McKinley's worries as they wrestled with what the role of the nation's 1.2 million part-time service members once was and what it was becoming.
"They are not prepared for this, not emotionally and not with their gear and equipment," said Mr. McKinley, of Salem, Ore. "There's this opinion that these guys are just 'weekend warriors,' and we'll have them do all the things the regular army doesn't have time to do. But these guys are being asked to put their lives on the line just as much as everyone else. These guys are yanked from their lives, and yet they aren't treated the same."
During special training at a base in Texas before he left for Iraq, Specialist McKinley told his father that his Guard unit was getting only two meals a day, while regular units ate three. And in Iraq, on the day of his death, Specialist McKinley's fellow guardsmen said he was in a Humvee reinforced with plywood and sandbags, not real armor.
Cecil Green, a spokesman at Fort Hood where Specialist McKinley's unit trained before it left for Iraq, said all soldiers - regular and part time - were fed equally. But Col. Mike Caldwell, deputy director of the Oregon National Guard, said his troops had complained about unequal conditions during training there in months past. "There were a lot of problems in their treatment," Colonel Caldwell said. "It was deplorable. They were treated like slaves in some respects."
Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, acknowledged in a telephone interview last week that since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the nation's reserve components had been called in numbers unknown since perhaps World War II. But those part-timers sent to Iraq are trained and equipped to the same level as any active-duty troops, Mr. Hall said.
"It's no longer your father or your grandfather's Guard and Reserves," Mr. Hall said. "A lot of this is a leftover vestige from a time in which we didn't perhaps equip and train our Guard and Reserve as we need to."
Any shortages of equipment - of armored Humvees or protective gear - have been faced by all types of troops, not just guardsmen, he said. And Mr. Hall insisted that no one, not even him, could distinguish between part--s and others when it came to Iraq. "They look the same. Their standards are the same. Their training is the same," he said.
Recently home from Iraq with an injury, Specialist Andrew Cross, a member of the North Carolina National Guard, said the only difference he discerned was a little taunting. "Sure, they say stuff about you not being full time,'' Specialist Cross said, "but who cares what they say."
Specialist Cross's best friend, Specialist Daniel A. Desens, who listened to Bob Marley and Dave Matthews with him as they rolled along in their Bradleys in Iraq, was one of at least 179 guardsmen and reservists killed there, the records of those identified as of yesterday show.
Their deaths make up less than a fifth of those killed, but the timing of their deaths underscores the changing makeup of American forces in Iraq. In the first weeks of war, only a small group of reserve forces was sent to Iraq, and only a few died. The numbers grew swiftly this year, and reserves and guards now amount to about 40 percent of the forces deployed to Iraq, and maybe still more soon.
Back in Oregon, Colonel Caldwell said leaders were busy arranging more deployments for some of the state's 8,400 Army and Air National Guard troops in the coming weeks, even as gloom lingered over the headquarters. Four Oregon guardsmen, including Specialist McKinley, died in a 10-day stretch.
Nationally, Mr. Hall said, recruiters may fall 1 percent short of their goals for new Guard members when the annual count is taken at the end of September. In Oregon, Colonel Caldwell predicted direr shortfalls: 10 percent to 15 percent.
"I think it's pretty obvious what's happening," he said. "People have realized: you join the Guard in Oregon, you're going to be mobilized."
The Women: Dying, in a Role Quietly Redefined
Before she left her home in Richmond, Va., Leslie D. Jackson's Junior R.O.T.C. instructor warned her that although women might not officially be on the very front line of a ground war, they were edging ever closer - and the line itself, if ever there was one in Iraq, had grown dangerously blurry.
"I told her that even combat support roles could still take you places that maybe you should not be," said Master Sgt. Earl G. Winston Jr., who taught Private Jackson at George Wythe High School. "But she said she was ready to accept the challenge. She said she did not want her fellow soldiers, most of them men, to think that she wasn't every bit as good as them."
Private Jackson, who had talked her reluctant mother into letting her sign up for the Army when she was 17, died on May 20 in Baghdad. The truck she was transporting supplies in hit a roadside bomb. She had finished basic training eight months before, and had turned 18, making her the youngest of 24 women who have died in Iraq.
Not long before, she had sent an e-mail message to her former principal, Earl Pappy, to say that she was spending long hours driving trucks and had been unnerved at seeing a soldier killed for the first time right before her: " 'I left home as Mommy's little girl,' '' Mr. Pappy said she wrote, " 'and I'm coming back as a strong woman.'
"She told me she wouldn't be in combat, and I don't think women should be," said Viola Jackson, Private Jackson's mother. "But then again, they joined the Army, and I guess you've got to do whatever the other people are doing. I don't know. What I know is she was a sweet child."
Women make up some 10 percent of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they account for less than 3 percent of the 1,000 deaths in Iraq. Still, more women have died there than in any conflict since hundreds died in World War II - a certain if somber sign of how women's roles in the military have grown in the last decade.
More surprising, though, to advocates on both sides of a long-simmering debate over what women should and should not do in times of war has been the public's reaction to the loss of 24 women. Mostly, there has been silence.
"What it means is that our view of women has changed," said Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington and a retired 25-year veteran of the Navy.
"Within our minds, women are doing a lot of athletic things. They're SWAT team members and firefighters now. This is worldwide. So people see this as less horrible. The horror of death is equal now."
But others, like Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy group in Livonia, Mich., said Americans were largely oblivious to the role women were playing in Iraq and would be disturbed if they knew. Female soldiers who die receive little attention, she said, except in small hometown newspapers; the same is true of the 207 women who have been injured in Iraq.
Shortly after the war began, there were hints of the nation's discomfort when three female soldiers, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Specialist Shoshana Johnson, were taken hostage, and one of them, Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, was killed, Ms. Donnelly said. In images broadcast around the world, Specialist Johnson looked terrified, her eyes darting.
"The risk of capture is why we oppose women in combat," said Ms. Donnelly, who wants the Pentagon to reconsider the jobs close to combat that women now hold. "We're a civilized nation. Violence against women is wrong. I hope that we don't become that kind of a nation that doesn't care about this sort of thing."
Eight women died in Vietnam. Sixteen died in the first Persian Gulf war. Three died in Afghanistan. And through most of that time, people have argued over what place women should take in war.
Women have served in the American military since 1901, and others quietly did unofficial military work as early as the Revolutionary War. But in 1948, Congress adopted the Armed Forces Integration Act, which capped women at 2 percent of the services and barred them from serving on combat planes and combat ships.
After Vietnam, and the end of the draft, the restrictions on women began to fade, one by one. By 1994, women were allowed to fly combat aircraft, to serve on fighter ships but not submarines, and to fill ground jobs except those most directly on the front lines: special forces, infantry, armor, artillery. But in Iraq, the jobs that women could fill - as drivers in convoys bringing supplies to troops and as members of military police units - came under attack from homemade bombs and mortar fire, too, and the notion of a front line seemed no longer to fit the conflict.
Nearly all of the women killed were full-time soldiers in the Army. And two-thirds of them died in hostile situations, not in accidents or because of illness.
Even Ms. Manning, who supports bigger roles for women in the military, said she was surprised at the degree to which women had been included in critical operations, including patrolling checkpoints. In part, their role may have been a necessary outgrowth of cultural differences in Iraq. Female soldiers were needed when Iraqi women were searched or questioned.
Still, Ms. Donnelly and other critics say, the scars from so much change are being ignored: What will come of the children, they asked, who lose their mothers to war?
Sgt. Tatjana Reed, a single mother, was killed on July 22 when a bomb exploded near her convoy vehicle. She had signed papers leaving her 10-year-old daughter, Genevieve, in the care of relatives near her base in Germany, expecting the arrangement to be temporary.
Sergeant Reed "always said, 'What a man can do, I can do,' '' recalled her mother, Brigitte Dykty, who lives in Clarksville, Tenn. "Sometimes I wish she hadn't thought that."
The Hispanics: Underrepresented, Except on Death Rolls
Five years ago, the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanics, released a scathing study of Hispanics in the United States military. The central finding was that the military was not employing as many Hispanics as it should.
In 1996, the study said, Hispanics 18 to 44 made up more than 11 percent of the civilian work force but accounted for less than 7 percent of the military's active forces.
The military took notice, and the Marines, in particular, began a serious recruiting effort aimed at Spanish-speaking markets, said Lisa Navarrete, vice president of the advocacy group.
"They took it very, very seriously," Ms. Navarrete said.
By 2004, Latinos accounted for 9.2 percent of all active-duty forces and about 10 percent of those forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
That news came with a distinctly bittersweet edge. Of the 1,000 killed in Iraq, at least 122, or more than 12 percent, were Hispanic, according to the Defense Department, which says ethnicity was not tracked by the same measures in previous wars.
"It seems that in a time of peace, we're underrepresented," Ms. Navarrete said quietly. "In a time of war, the situation is completely changed."
One reason for the high rate of Hispanic deaths in Iraq is that Hispanics account for a particularly large segment - more than 13 percent - of the Marines, the ground troops who suffered significant losses early in the war, as well as in the uprisings of recent weeks.
Some of those who died fighting for the United States were not even citizens. At least 39 noncitizens - many, though not all, of Hispanic heritage - were among the dead. Legal residents of this country have long served in the armed forces, but records of their deaths in war are hard to find. The official Defense Department records show that one noncitizen died in military duty in Vietnam and three in Afghanistan.
In 2002, Mr. Bush issued an order shortening the waiting periods for service members and their families seeking citizenship, and Congress made those changes permanent with a law that takes effect in October. Some anti-immigration advocates said that military service alone was not a qualification for citizenship, while others worried that the changes might induce some immigrants to enlist in hopes of speedy citizenship.
"But the bottom line, whatever the casualties, is that people are going to continue to join because they have to," said Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge. "They want to live better. They want to get money. They want to better themselves."
Rey David Cuervo was born in Tampico, Mexico, but his mother, Rosalba Kuhn, took him to Texas when he was 6. She was a maid in Port Isabel. He was an only boy among three sisters, the quiet one with just a handful of friends.
At age 8, she said, he went to her carrying a picture of the American flag and explained that he planned to join the American Army. "He said that this is all he wanted," she recalled not long ago. "He said if they wouldn't take him in the Army here, then he'd go back to Mexico and sign up there."
In 1999, he left for basic training.
"I was so proud," Ms. Kuhn said. "When I came here, my dreams were that I would see my kids here, see them learn the language, see them get a better life for themselves. Part of that was wanting to see my son in an American uniform."
Ms. Kuhn said she thinks of her son every day when she wakes up. She lights candles for him. She holds a hat of his under her nose and breathes it in. In the sadness, though, Ms. Kuhn said she had no anger. Her son wanted to go into the Army. He wanted to go to Iraq. He chose his future.
Private Cuervo, who once told his mother that he planned to retire from the military after 20 years and then buy a big house, died on Dec. 28, 2003, when a bomb exploded. He was 24, one of 32,000 noncitizens in the armed forces. The government granted him citizenship after he died.
The Small Towns: When the Population Is Reduced by One
There are no sidewalks along the quiet streets of Shelton, Neb., but there is red-white-and-blue bunting, a little faded now, and tattered black ribbon tied to the street posts. Not that anyone here needs to be reminded about Kyle Codner.
The nation's small towns experienced more than their share of death in Iraq, a clear reflection of their representation in the nation's military services. Not only did death arrive in disproportionate numbers in these towns, but each death seemed to echo louder and longer than it might have in a big city.
One resident here compared Corporal Codner's death on May 26 to a tornado whipping up in the Midwest and zeroing in on this town of 1,100 people.
"The word 'shock' is overused, generally," said Lynn McBride, the chairman of Shelton's village trustees and a schoolteacher. "But it understates the feelings about this. We're all in it together here, and there was a feeling that this couldn't be true."
To Shelton, Corporal Codner was the son of Dixie and Wain Codner. He was one of 19 graduates of Shelton High in 2003, and one of two to go off to the military. He was the basketball player with the blond girlfriend, each of them usually on the king and queen court. He was the clerk at J. R.'s Mini Mart. He was the kid who got his photograph taken in front of the old military tank that sits at the town's entrance, and the student named in the yearbook as "Most Likely to Kick Some Terrorist Butt."
Nebraska and a long list of states in the country's middle and South had some of the highest death rates per capita. Many of these states are considered Republican strongholds. Vermont, a Democratic-leaning state in the presidential race, had the most deaths per capita. Among swing states in the presidential race, Oregon, Maine and Iowa had heavy losses.
No one can be sure what role the deaths in Iraq will play in this election season. Nebraska has been more reliably Republican through five decades of presidential races than any other state. Still, Democrats in Nebraska say the war and the death toll of 14 is stirring political discussion.
"The Republican voting bloc is persuadable here, especially when you're talking about sending your sons and daughters to war," said Barry R. Rubin, executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party. "One thing about Nebraska is we are very independent-minded people, and people are seriously questioning the merits of this war."
But along the streets of Shelton last weekend, most people said they backed the war, and would probably vote for Mr. Bush. Among them was Corporal Codner's best friend from childhood, Matthew S. Walter, 19 and preparing to vote in his first presidential election. "I don't think I like what John Kerry has to say,'' Mr. Walter said.
Most people interviewed said they did not see Corporal Codner's death through the prism of politics.
"I sense no bitterness or contrition whatsoever about Kyle,'' Mr. McBride said. "I've never heard any of that. I think the overall feeling is that we're grateful he died the way he did - serving his country."
About eight miles away, back at Ms. Codner's kitchen table, the Codners said they would vote against President Bush, one of the many people Ms. Codner describes as "someone without skin in the game."
She and her husband go to sleep thinking of the boy in the circle of class pictures on their living room wall, she said, and then they wake up thinking of him. In the moments when other thoughts crowd out those memories, Ms. Codner said, something always brings him back. On Friday, it was the mail. Four packages that had been sent to her son in Iraq were returned to her, unopened. A yellow form on the front of the boxes gave a curt explanation in the form of a checked box: "Deceased."
The Codners tried to discourage their son from joining the Marines during his senior year in high school, but when he complained that they were not being supportive, they tried to go along.
Wain Codner said the town's embrace helped his family the first weeks after his son's death. "The support was incredible," he said. "But then, people go on with their lives."
A few days before Corporal Codner died, he sent home a roll of film. His family developed it, then waited, hoping he would call, so he could tell them exactly what they were seeing.
The mysterious stack of pictures still sits on the kitchen table. One shows Corporal Codner, with a wide smile, beside an Iraqi child. In another, a thick automatic weapon dangles around his neck, seeming to dwarf his slim frame. Another shows just a sleeping bag and pad, arranged carefully on a concrete block. This is probably where he slept, his parents surmise, but they will never be sure.
Tom Torok and the research staff of The New York Times contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Bush Plan Draws on Advice of 9/11 Panel
New Proposal Gives Intelligence Chief More Budget Power
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5295-2004Sep8.html
President Bush yesterday proposed giving a new national intelligence director broad powers to plan intelligence agencies' spending priorities and clandestine activities, making a concession to lawmakers moving to implement the more sweeping proposals of the Sept. 11 commission.
The legislation Bush proposed would give the director control over more than two-thirds of the overall intelligence budget, which is estimated at $40 billion a year for the nation's 15 intelligence agencies. The White House said the proposed changes would help solve the lack of coordination among agencies blamed for intelligence failures in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"We believe that there ought to be a national intelligence director who has full budgetary authority," Bush said as he sat down for a brief meeting at the White House with congressional leaders. He said he wanted "to get a bill to my desk as quickly as possible."
In several aspects, Bush's proposal still stops short of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. The commission concluded that the intelligence director should be in the executive office of the president and needed authority over the full budget to assure deployment resources to meet rapidly shifting threats and demands.
Bush's plan would not place the intelligence chief in the office of the president, and would give the chief full authority over only the 70 percent of the intelligence budget that is not related solely to military operations. The White House would leave intelligence gathering organizations such as the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office under the Pentagon's authority.
The White House would limit the director's budgetary control to the National Foreign Intelligence Program -- the official name for all foreign intelligence not related to tactical military operations. The White House said its plan would avoid "the disruption of the war effort that a more far-reaching restructuring could create."
"Full budget authority" is a technical term meaning the new director would have the power to decide how funds should be apportioned among agencies, including those at the Pentagon, that carry out foreign intelligence. The director's choices would require the approval of the president and Congress. The director could also propose a shifting, or "reprogramming," of funds between these agencies to adjust to changing needs.
The administration had not explicitly rejected giving the intelligence director authority over the budget, but officials were dismissive of the notion on Aug. 2, when Bush first outlined his response to the recommendations of the commission that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said then that the intelligence director should "be able to make recommendations in the budget process, but I do not think that this person should replace the budget director for the United States." Since then, however, the administration has come under strong pressure from members of the 9/11 commission, lawmakers and others to give the director broad authority.
The president's proposed legislation -- more comprehensive than what he outlined a month ago -- came as the debate over intelligence reform intensified on Capitol Hill. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced legislation that would implement the proposals of the commission, and lawmakers said they expect some version of the legislation to be approved before the election, though the most far-reaching elements could wait until next year.
The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry dismissed Bush's latest proposal as insufficient. "If George W. Bush were serious about intelligence reform, he'd stop taking half-measures and wholeheartedly endorse the 9/11 Commission recommendations and work for their immediate passage by Congress," Kerry national security adviser Rand Beers said in a statement.
Bush's plan calls for a national intelligence director, confirmed by the Senate, who would serve as the president's "principal adviser" on intelligence matters "relating to the national security." The director would set priorities for intelligence gathering and analysis, and resolve conflicts among intelligence agencies. The White House said the director would not be in the Cabinet.
The White House outlined a directorship that would replace the director of central intelligence as head of the intelligence community, coordinating activities of the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and Homeland Security. The director would oversee the National Counterterrorism Center, created by Bush last month to improve coordination of intelligence, and other centers, such as one to counter weapons of mass destruction. The plan also creates a Cabinet-level Joint Intelligence Community Council to set requirements for the intelligence community and evaluate its performance.
At a meeting Tuesday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), withdrew the panel's proposal that the new intelligence chief be part of the executive office of the president because of opposition from the White House and Congress. Hamilton also noted to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that giving the intelligence director more authority over the budget of military intelligence functions would be more difficult than he had realized.
At a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee meeting yesterday, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin recommended making the funds controlled by the new national intelligence director a separate appropriation and declassifying the figure. Intelligence spending remains shrouded in secrecy in part because much of it is buried within the Pentagon budget.
Hamilton and the 9/11 commission chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R), said at the hearing that they hoped some action would be taken on a "framework" for reorganization during the current legislative session.
Another commission member at the hearing, former Navy secretary John F. Lehman (R), said he hoped that Congress would take steps to improve oversight of the intelligence agencies. Without that, intelligence reform "would be like one hand clapping," Lehman said.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a member of the intelligence panel, asked whether the complex reform could be carried out in two stages, the first in the coming months and the rest by the new Congress. Hamilton answered that he would be "surprised if it all was done in one sweep."
--------
Shooting Of Iraqi Called 'Humane'
By David Rising
Associated Press
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6958-2004Sep8.html
HANAU, Germany, Sept. 8 -- An Army officer charged with murdering a driver for militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in Iraq told a fellow officer that the man was so badly wounded he shot him out of compassion, a U.S. military court heard Wednesday.
At a hearing to determine whether Capt. Rogelio Maynulet should be court-martialed, 1st Lt. Colin Cremin testified that after the May 21 shooting near Kufa, south of Baghdad, he asked Maynulet what happened.
Maynulet said he had been leading a 1st Armored Division patrol when it came across a BMW sedan believed to be carrying militiamen loyal to Sadr and a chase ensued. U.S. soldiers fired at the vehicle, wounding both the driver and the passenger.
Maynulet said that when a medic pulled the driver out of the car, it was clear the man had suffered critical injuries, with part of his skull blown away, the prosecutor, Capt. Daniel Sennott said, reading a statement Cremin made in August.
The medic "said nothing could be done for him," Sennott said, addressing Cremin. "At that point, Captain Maynulet told you he stepped back and shot him in the base of the neck or back of the head."
Cremin confirmed making that statement and added that Maynulet told him there had been no alternative. "It was something he didn't want to do, but it was the compassionate response," Cremin testified. "It was definitely the humane response."
Cremin, who was helping coordinate the mission from company headquarters, said there had also been no chance of sending a helicopter to rescue the driver. "It would have compromised the lives of the soldiers involved in that mission," he testified.
Evidence was presented at the Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury session, so that an Army investigator could decide whether to court-martial Maynulet on charges of murder and dereliction of duty. He has denied both charges.
Maynulet's wife, Brooke, an Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot, sat behind her husband during the hearing.
Prosecutors suggested that Maynulet, 29, habitually broke the military's rules of engagement in Iraq when it suited him. They questioned several witnesses about a nonregulation weapon he carried and an incident in which he was reprimanded for breaking into an Iraqi police station to retrieve a civilian contractor's identification card he believed had been inappropriately confiscated.
However, most of the eight witnesses who testified Wednesday described Maynulet, a Chicago native, as an outstanding officer who was cool under fire and maintained close ties to the Iraqi community.
A battalion intelligence officer, Capt. Jeremy Dovos, testified that Maynulet was able to use the trust he had fostered among Iraqis to gather information leading to an operation that netted "1,000 fedayeen," as members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's militia were known.
Cremin described as "quite consistent with his character" an incident in which Maynulet risked his life under fire to rescue an injured Iraqi woman from a car and bring her to safety.
The driver Maynulet is accused of killing was identified by relatives as Karim Hassan, 36.
A military drone aircraft taped the killing, and that recording was introduced into evidence Wednesday. However, reporters were told to leave the courtroom as it was viewed because the hearing officer, Maj. Michael J. Fadden, said it might reveal the capabilities of U.S. technology in Iraq.
Maynulet's command of his tank company was suspended May 25, but he remains with his unit, serving on the division's planning staff.
--------
U.S. border agents track militant
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
September 9, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040908-104417-5157r
U.S. border agents and inspectors have ramped up efforts to locate a suspected al Qaeda terrorist cell leader believed to be seeking entry into the United States along alien-smuggling routes on the U.S.-Mexican border, authorities said yesterday.
Authorities said Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a Saudi Arabian national for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a "dirty bomb," a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material, and could be carrying passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad or Canada.
They confirmed yesterday that increased enforcement efforts were under way along the U.S.-Mexican border in the wake of a rise of arrests of border jumpers from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
U.S. intelligence officials said El Shukrijumah is believed to have been spotted in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July, having crossed the border illegally from Nicaragua after a stay in Panama. They said al Qaeda operatives have been in Tegucigalpa planning attacks against British, Spanish and U.S. embassies.
El Shukrijumah was named in a March 2003 material witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia. U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said the suspected al Qaeda terrorist is being sought in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States.
El Shukrijumah, 29, a former South Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was the subject of an FBI alert last month, which described him as "armed and dangerous" and a major threat to homeland security.
Last year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 900,000 illegal aliens trying to sneak across the U.S.-Mexican border. Some federal law-enforcement officials have estimated that for every alien caught, as many as four make it into the United States and disappear.
El Shukrijumah was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft who were believed to be involved in ongoing plans to strike new targets in the United States. Saying they "posed a clear and present danger to America," Mr. Ashcroft cited "credible intelligence from multiple sources" that the al Qaeda terrorists intended to "hit the United States hard."
Mr. Ashcroft identified the other suspected al Qaeda operatives as:
•Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also lived in Maryland, identified by the FBI as an al Qaeda "fixer," someone knowledgeable of U.S. procedures and fluent in English.
•Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Republic named as al Qaeda's leader in eastern Africa, who was indicted in this country in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.
• Ahmed Khalfan Ghailiani, a Tanzanian also under U.S. indictment in the embassy attacks.
• Amer El-Maati, a Kuwaiti and Canadian citizen wanted by the FBI for questioning about ties to al Qaeda.
•Abderraouf Jdey, a Tunisian and Canadian citizen, who left a suicide message on videotapes recovered in Afghanistan at the home of bin Laden's military chief, Mohammed Atef.
•Adam Yahihyi Gadahn, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert who attended al Qaeda training camps and has served as a translator for the network.
A report this year by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Canada said al Qaeda had more than 18,000 potential attackers worldwide, was working on plans for major strikes on the United States and Europe, and might be seeking weapons of mass destruction. The report said the United States was al Qaeda's prime target.
The FBI has said al Qaeda terrorists and associates operate through "sleeper cells" scattered throughout the United States, are continuing to recruit new members, have assisted in the acquisition of safe houses and equipment, and have conducted pre-attack surveillance.
-----
Ridge: U.S. Should Be on Guard for Attack
WASHINGTON (AP)
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
Sep 9, 2004
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040909/D850DUDG1.html
The election-year terrorist threat will extend until after January's presidential inauguration, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Thursday.
And he said President Bush has pointedly asked his national security team to re-evaluate hostage crisis tactics in light of the recent Russian school attack.
"The president said to all of us: just make sure you know what you are going to do, who is going to be doing it, where we are going to be doing it, what resources we are going to apply" if an attack like the Russian terrorist incident occurs, Ridge said in an interview with Associated Press reporters and editors.
In recent morning briefings, Ridge said Bush had asked his top advisers - including homeland security, FBI and justice officials - to review their strategies for dealing with hostage situations to make sure they are prepared to respond.
Ridge said the U.S. government was still trying to find out key details of how last week's attack in Russia was planned and carried out. He indicated the U.S. government was still relying on press reports and is hoping to learn more from Russian officials.
At the same time, Ridge was somewhat critical of the Russians, saying it appeared that authorities there may have had a disjointed response to the hostage crisis blamed on Chechen rebels. More than 300 people died.
"Preliminary reports suggest there wasn't the kind of coordination and leadership and direction and somebody being in charge," Ridge said.
As the three-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks nears, recent attention has focused on a pre-election threat. However, echoing a remark made at an April speech in Nevada, Ridge extended the amount of time the United States should be extra vigilant against a possible al-Qaida attack designed to disrupt the democratic process - from the Nov. 2 Election Day to the presidential inauguration scheduled for Jan. 20.
Ridge also acknowledged that U.S. authorities have "a couple different sources" believed to be sharing credible information about the threat.
"You can translate that into anytime between now and the election, now and the inaugural - or any time we conduct business as a democratic society," Ridge said. "Most people think in terms of either the election or the inaugural."
"We don't really focus so much on the date," he added. "Their intention is well known."
Ridge said he views the war on terror as a series of victories both large and small.
"Every day I count as a victory," he said. "Every 24 hours when something doesn't happen, you have more time to prepare, more time to secure, more time to get information, to share information."
However, Ridge conceded, he doubts the country will return to its pre-Sept. 11 innocence.
(AP) Homeland Security Secretary Tom Rdige is interviewed by the Associated Press in Washington,... Full Image
"I think it's virtually impossible for the country to ever go back, to ever be comforted by the notion that may have existed on Sept. 10 that we are immune from the kind of attacks that we had witnessed in other parts of the world," he said. "Sept. 11, I believe, fundamentally and for the foreseeable future changed how we view our own potential vulnerability."
On other issues, Ridge said:
- In looking at the Middle East, Ridge said one country can't be singled out for supporting al-Qaida and similar organizations.
"There is no doubt in my mind that several countries over there have provided safe haven for people moving in and out of Iraq, safe havens for people involved in al-Qaida in plotting," he said.
- When asked if he agreed with Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comments suggesting a vote for Democrat John Kerry would increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack, Ridge stressed that he is trying to avoid getting involved in the political campaign, but said, "Well, you know who I'm going to vote for."
Pressed on whether that meant he agreed with Cheney, Ridge said: "I'm going to let the voters determine" which campaign can best fight terror.
- A National Research Council report released Thursday concluded that openly sharing data on dangerous germs to aid research on vaccines and treatments outweighs the danger that terrorists may exploit it. Ridge said he wants to see the entire report, but the country must decide whether to put the recipe for a weapon of mass destruction on the Internet. "Personally, I don't think that's a very good idea," he said.
-----
Ridge Says Bush Wants School Siege Plan
ap
September 9, 2004
WASHINGTON - The government is reviewing hostage-crisis tactics in light of the Russian school attack and will extend its heightened election-year vigilance against terrorism past the January presidential inauguration, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Thursday.
President Bush ordered the re-evaluation of hostage-taking responses to make sure the nation is prepared if an attack like the one in Russia happens here, Ridge said in an interview with Associated Press reporters and editors.
"The president said to all of us: Just make sure you know what you are going to do, who is going to be doing it, where we are going to be doing it, what resources we are going to apply," he said.
In recent morning briefings, Ridge said Bush had asked his top advisers - including homeland security, FBI and justice officials - to review their strategies for dealing with hostage situations.
Ridge said the U.S. government was still trying to find out key details of how last week's attack in Russia was planned and carried out. He indicated the U.S. government was still relying on press reports and is hoping to learn more from Russian officials.
At the same time, Ridge was somewhat critical of the Russians, saying it appeared that authorities there may have had a disjointed response to the hostage crisis blamed on Chechen rebels. More than 300 people died.
"Preliminary reports suggest there wasn't the kind of coordination and leadership and direction and somebody being in charge," Ridge said.
Later, Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the FBI and other agencies "are constantly training and refining their techniques based on current threats. They always have and they always will."
As the three-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks nears, recent attention has focused on a pre-election threat. However, echoing a remark made at an April speech in Nevada, Ridge extended the amount of time the United States should be extra vigilant against a possible al-Qaida attack designed to disrupt the democratic process - from the Nov. 2 Election Day to the presidential inauguration scheduled for Jan. 20.
Ridge also acknowledged that U.S. authorities have "a couple different sources" believed to be sharing credible information about the threat.
"You can translate that into anytime between now and the election, now and the inaugural - or any time we conduct business as a democratic society," Ridge said. "Most people think in terms of either the election or the inaugural."
"We don't really focus so much on the date," he added. "Their intention is well known."
Ridge said he views the war on terror as a series of victories both large and small.
"Every day I count as a victory," he said. "Every 24 hours when something doesn't happen, you have more time to prepare, more time to secure, more time to get information, to share information."
However, Ridge conceded, he doubts the country will return to its pre-Sept. 11 innocence.
"I think it's virtually impossible for the country to ever go back, to ever be comforted by the notion that may have existed on Sept. 10 that we are immune from the kind of attacks that we had witnessed in other parts of the world," he said. "Sept. 11, I believe, fundamentally and for the foreseeable future changed how we view our own potential vulnerability."
On other issues, Ridge said:
- In looking at the Middle East, Ridge said one country can't be singled out for supporting al-Qaida and similar organizations.
"There is no doubt in my mind that several countries over there have provided safe haven for people moving in and out of Iraq, safe havens for people involved in al-Qaida in plotting," he said.
- When asked if he agreed with Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comments suggesting a vote for Democrat John Kerry would increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack, Ridge stressed that he is trying to avoid getting involved in the political campaign, but said, "Well, you know who I'm going to vote for."
Pressed on whether that meant he agreed with Cheney, Ridge said: "I'm going to let the voters determine" which campaign can best fight terror.
- A National Research Council report released Thursday concluded that openly sharing data on dangerous germs to aid research on vaccines and treatments outweighs the danger that terrorists may exploit it. Ridge said he wants to see the entire report, but the country must decide whether to put the recipe for a weapon of mass destruction on the Internet. "Personally, I don't think that's a very good idea," he said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Suspect Is Freed From Guantanamo Release Is First Under Tribunals
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6698-2004Sep8.html
A longtime captive at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be sent home to his native country after a military tribunal there determined that he is not an enemy combatant, Navy Secretary Gordon R. England announced yesterday.
The decision ends nearly three years of incarceration for the man, who was picked up on the battlefields of Afghanistan.
England declined to provide details of the detainee's case, including his name and nationality, referring to an agreement with foreign countries not to release such information until a transfer home is completed. Pentagon officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the detainee, who is not an Afghan national, was captured in January 2002 and held in a detention facility in Afghanistan for a few months before he was transferred to Cuba, where he has been incarcerated ever since.
Human rights advocates sharply criticized the government for the length of the detainee's incarceration.
"It should not take more than two years for the U.S. military to determine that we were holding someone who is apparently not an enemy combatant," American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero said in a statement yesterday. "While this announcement is welcome, hundreds of so-called enemy combatants still languish in legal limbo at Guantanamo Bay. The government's assertion that it is entitled to lock people up indefinitely without any access to the courts violates our most basic notions of fundamental fairness."
The detainee is one of 55 inmates who have received a complete review under a program begun recently by the military to determine whether detainees should continue to be considered enemy combatants, England said. A Navy admiral who must approve the tribunal decisions has decided 30 cases so far -- ruling that 29 detainees are enemy combatants and that this one is not. More than 200 such tribunal cases are in various stages, England said.
The government has described the tribunals, which the Defense Department launched in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that detainees are entitled to contest their incarcerations in federal courts, as a way of providing detainees a chance to present their cases for release. The detainees are not entitled to attorneys but can call witnesses and offer evidence.
"There is such a thing as better late than never, but I'd imagine that's cold comfort to this person," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice. "It's good that this error has been noticed and this determination has been made, but it's one that should have been made literally years ago." Pentagon officials have worried that releasing detainees without thorough review could prove deadly to U.S. forces in the future, noting that former detainees have been seen back in combat.
About 150 detainees were released before the start of the tribunal process, a couple dozen of whom were determined not to be enemy combatants, England said.
The combatant review system includes the initial combat status review tribunals and annual reviews for those determined to be enemy combatants. Lawyers for some detainees have begun demanding to interview them to make preparations for hearings in federal court in Washington, D.C.
"These are very complex issues," England said at a Pentagon news conference yesterday morning, calling the decisions difficult. "The information, many times it's ambiguous, it's conflicting. It's not always black and white."
Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Bush Now Backs Budget Powers in New Spy Post
September 9, 2004
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/09panel.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush said on Wednesday that he wanted to give a new national intelligence director "full budgetary authority,'' a sharp shift from an earlier position and an acquiescence to a major recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Bush was acting after weeks of intense election-year pressure from Democrats and members of his own party, who have repeatedly told the White House that an intelligence director without budget authority would be powerless to push through significant reform. Mr. Bush also said he would submit his own proposal to Congress to overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies.
After a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House with members of Congress from both parties, participants said that Mr. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told them that the administration wanted the new intelligence director to have authority over the budget of the national program for collecting and sharing foreign intelligence. Effectively, that would give the new director control over as much as 75 percent of the estimated $40 billion that the government spends each year on intelligence, while the Pentagon would control the remaining 25 percent. Now, the Pentagon controls about 80 percent of the money.
"We believe that there ought to be a national intelligence director who has full budgetary authority,'' Mr. Bush told reporters summoned to the Cabinet Room before the meeting began. "We'll talk to members of Congress about how to implement that.''
Mr. Bush first endorsed the idea of a national intelligence director five weeks ago. At the time he left vague the authority the director would wield over personnel and spending, saying that the new director would "coordinate" the budgets for the nation's 15 major intelligence agencies.
White House officials indicated then that their intention was to allow operational control of the money to remain with the departments and agencies that conduct intelligence activities, principally the Pentagon. And they made clear that the new director would have to shape the budget within the administration's existing budget process rather than having the freedom to develop independent spending requests.
Democrats greeted the president's shift with tempered enthusiasm and also skepticism.
"What the president told us today was a very significant turning point on the road to reform,'' said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is offering a bill to enact virtually all of the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, including a strong national intelligence director. "We still have details to work out, but I think he's crossed a bridge here.''
Other Democrats were more cautious, particularly in the face of Mr. Bush's promise to submit his own plan to Congress for reforming the nation's intelligence network. For now, Capitol Hill is behind Mr. Lieberman's sweeping legislation, which he is offering with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Bipartisan sponsors have said they will introduce an identical bill in the House.
"The Big Mo is behind the McCain-Lieberman bill, and the next steps by the White House are still murky,'' said Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who attended the White House meeting. "This is either Day 1 of a hands-on White House role in developing a consensus bill, or Day 1 of a White House going in a different direction.''
Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign criticized the president's shift in position and said that Mr. Bush should move quickly to adopt all of the 9/11 commission's recommendations. Rand Beers, Mr. Kerry's national security adviser, said in an interview that Mr. Bush was swaying in the political winds much as he did when he opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, then endorsed it when it became a political inevitability.
"The pattern is pretty clear that the president stakes out positions and holds them as long as it is politically tenable,'' Mr. Beers said. "And when it becomes politically untenable, he puts forward partial measures in order to appear to be a proponent and to co-opt the issue. And then he slow-rolls to avoid doing anything serious to follow up.''
On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties urged quick action on the McCain-Lieberman legislation, but Republican officials also appeared to be laying the groundwork for a proposal that did not incorporate all of the Sept. 11 panel's recommendations.
Notably, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, pointed out that Ms. Rice told members of Congress in the White House meeting that the administration had already addressed 36 of 41 recommendations made by the Sept. 11 panel. Dr. Frist added that lawmakers would review the administration's work to see if further legislation was necessary on all the points.
"There has been incredible progress in rebuilding a devastated intelligence operation and we've had many successes over the last three years," said the House Republican leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas. "Sure there are things we need to do. The 9/11 commission pointed those out. We're taking their framework, we're looking at it."
Democrats in both the House and Senate and some Republicans have said the final bill must respond to each of the commission's recommendations. One top Democrat also said the legislation should reflect the bipartisan cooperation that produced the 9/11 report itself.
"If Congress does not act with that same openly nonpartisan manner, Americans will think that the reforms are no more than a political Band-Aid to make the majority party well on Election Day," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill to debate the Congressional response to the Sept. 11 commission, John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence, said he believed that a national intelligence director would need broad powers over the budgets and personnel of the government's spy agencies.
"My sole interest is in ensuring that this person, this individual, can succeed, and I think this will require new authorities and structures," said Mr. McLaughlin, who initially opposed the idea of a national intelligence director when it was proposed by the Sept. 11 commission this summer. "I think a national intelligence director would need the authority to move money and people quickly."
Mr. McLaughlin testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which has been charged by Senate leaders with central responsibility for drafting legislation to respond to the Sept. 11 committee.
The committee's Republican chairwoman, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, predicted on Wednesday that whatever else was in the legislation, it would definitely create a post of a powerful national intelligence director. "We are headed towards a NID," Ms. Collins told Mr. McLaughlin, using what may be soon be a common acronym in Washington. "We want to make sure there is sufficient authority for the new NID so that he or she can be truly effective."
Participants in the meeting with the president said that Mr. Bush was there for about half of an hourlong session, and that he excused himself early to travel to Florida to assess damage from Hurricane Frances. Participants said that Mr. Bush opened the meeting, invited 8 to 10 members of Congress to speak, then left much of the explaining to Ms. Rice. When Mr. Bush left, participants said, he turned the rest of the meeting over to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The creation of a national intelligence director was one of the most important recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, which investigated the causes and government response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. The director would oversee the 15 major spy agencies that make up the United States intelligence network and serve as unifying force to a complex, overlapping web.
A powerful director would undercut some of the authority of the director of central intelligence. But last month, as an interim measure until a director is named, Mr. Bush issued an executive order enhancing the powers of the central intelligence director.
Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
-------- corruption
Records Say Bush Balked at Order
National Guard Commander Suspended Him From Flying, Papers Show
By Michael Dobbs and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6693-2004Sep8?language=printer
President Bush failed to carry out a direct order from his superior in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1972 to undertake a medical examination that was necessary for him to remain a qualified pilot, according to documents made public yesterday.
Documents obtained by the CBS News program "60 Minutes" shed new light on one of the most controversial episodes in Bush's military service, when he abruptly stopped flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to work on a political campaign. The documents include a memo from Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, ordering Bush "to be suspended from flight status for failure to perform" to U.S. Air Force and National Guard standards and failure to take his annual physical "as ordered."
The new documents surfaced as the Bush administration released for the first time the president's personal flight logs, which have been the focus of repeated archival searches and Freedom of Information Act requests dating to the 2000 presidential campaign. The logs show that Bush stopped flying in April 1972 after accumulating more than 570 hours of flight time between 1969 and 1972, much of it on an F-102 interceptor jet.
White House officials have said there was no reason for Bush to take the annual physical required of fighter pilots because there were no suitable planes for him to fly in Alabama, where he applied for "substitute training" to replace his required service with the Texas National Guard. But the new documents suggest that Bush's transfer to non-flight duties in Alabama was the subject of arguments among his National Guard superiors.
Release of the documents came as Democrats and some veterans stepped up their criticism of Bush for allegedly failing to meet his sworn obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. A new advocacy group called Texans for Truth, which has links to anti-Bush groups such as MoveOn.org, yesterday unveiled a TV ad to be screened in swing states asserting that Bush failed to show up for Guard duty in Alabama.
White House officials dismissed the latest criticism of Bush's service as partisan attacks in the midst of a heated campaign. In an interview with "60 Minutes," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said "partisan Democrats" were "recycling the very same charges we hear every time President Bush runs for reelection" and added: "It is dirty politics." But he did not contest the authenticity of the documents, which could not be verified independently by The Washington Post.
A spokeswoman for "60 Minutes," Kelli Edwards, declined to say exactly how the new documents were obtained other than that CBS News understood they had been taken from Killian's "personal office file." In addition to the order to Bush to report for a physical, the documents include various memos from Killian describing his conversations with Bush and other National Guard officers about Bush's attempts to secure a transfer to Alabama. Killian died in 1984.
"Phone call from Bush," Killian recorded in a "memo to file" dated May 19, 1972. "Discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November."
According to "60 Minutes," Killian's personal files show that he ordered Bush "suspended from flight status" on Aug. 1, 1972. National Guard documents already released by the White House and the Pentagon show that Bush was suspended from flight status on that day for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination" but do not mention his alleged failure to comply with National Guard and Air Force standards.
In another "memo to file," dated Aug. 18, 1973, Killian complained that he was under pressure from his superior, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, to "sugar coat" Bush's officer evaluations. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote in a memo titled "CYA." "I will not rate."
Staudt has insisted that he was not influenced by Bush's status as the son of George H.W. Bush (R), a Texas congressman in 1968 and later head of the CIA. He has also rejected the assertion by former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes (D) that Barnes intervened with the head of the Texas Air National Guard to secure a position for Bush there at the request of a Bush family friend. Barnes, who has raised money for Democrat John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, repeated the assertion last night on "60 Minutes."
In releasing Bush's flight records, White House spokesmen yesterday expressed frustration over what they depicted as the Pentagon's failure to produce a full and complete record of the president's military service.
"It's clear that DOD [the Department of Defense] did not undertake as comprehensive a search as had been directed by the president," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, just days after assuring The Post that Bush's full personnel file had already been released. "We have again asked that they ensure that any and all documents [relating to Bush's military service] are identified and released."
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, said Bush's flight logs were found at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans' records. She said the logs were found among a batch of records sent to St. Louis from Norton Air Force Base in 1993, which were originally thought to contain records of active-duty officers rather than of National Guardsmen such as Bush.
The Bush administration has issued government-wide instructions centralizing the release of information relating to the president's service with the Texas Air National Guard between 1968 and 1973. Officers responsible for implementing the Freedom of Information Act for the National Guard and the Pentagon declined to respond to queries from The Post last week on the completeness of the president's records, referring a reporter instead to Krenke and the White House press office.
The new commercial by Texans for Truth, to be aired on $110,000 worth of television time in battleground-state cities such as Harrisburg, Pa., and Columbus, Ohio, shows Bob Mintz, who served as a lieutenant in the Alabama Air National Guard at the same time Bush was supposed to be serving, speaking to the camera:
"I heard George W. Bush get up there and say, 'I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama.' I said, 'Really? That was my unit. And I don't remember seeing you there.' "
Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, charged that Texans for Truth "is a front group for MoveOn.org that has spent tens of millions of dollars attacking the president. . . . This is a smear group launching baseless attacks on behalf of John Kerry's campaign that will be rejected by the American people."
Glenn Smith, the head of Texans for Truth, is a former political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post and has been a Democratic consultant, working on campaigns in Texas and other states. He ran Tony Sanchez's unsuccessful bid for Texas governor in 2002.
Smith said he was angry over ads created by another advocacy group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacking Kerry's service in the Vietnam War.
In a conference call with reporters, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said "relentless negative attacks" on Kerry "made the president's service, or lack thereof, completely fair game."
Republican National Committee communications director Jim Dyke countered that "McAuliffe has a long history of false and reckless statements."
Staff writers James Grimaldi and Howard Kurtz and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
--------
Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard
September 9, 2004
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/09guard.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as newfound documents emerged from his squadron commander's file that suggested favorable treatment.
At the same time, a once powerful Texas Democrat came forward to say that he had "abused my position of power" by helping Mr. Bush and others join the Guard.
Democrats also worked to stoke the issue with a new advertisement by a Texas group that featured a former lieutenant colonel, Bob Mintz, who said he never saw Mr. Bush in the period he transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Air National Guard.
The documents, obtained by the "60 Minutes" program at CBS News from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Mr. Bush's squadron commander in Texas, suggest that Lieutenant Bush did not meet his performance standards and received favorable treatment.
One document, a "memo to file" dated May 1972 , refers to a conversation between Colonel Killian and Lieutenant Bush when they "discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November," because the lieutenant "may not have time."
The memo said the commander had worked to come up with options, "but I think he's also talking to someone upstairs."
Colonel Killian wrote in another report, dated Aug. 1, 1972, that he ordered Lieutenant Bush "suspended from flight status" because he failed to perform to standards of the Air Force and Texas Air National Guard and "failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."
Colonel Killian also wrote in a memo that his superiors were forcing him to give Lieutenant Bush a favorable review, but that he refused.
"I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote.
CBS, which reported on the memos on "The CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes," declined to say how it obtained the documents.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in an interview with CBS, the full transcript of which the White House released on Wednesday night, that Mr. Bush had fulfilled his service and received an honorable discharge. Mr. Bartlett did not dispute the authenticity of the memos but said, "When you are talking about a memo to somebody's self - this is a memo to his own file - people are trying to read the mind of somebody who is no longer with us."
He called the release of the files politically motivated.
"Every time President Bush gets near another election, all the innuendo and rumors about President Bush's service in the National Guard come to the forefront," he said.
Separately, former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes of Texas voiced regret for what he said was helping the privileged escape service in Vietnam.
"I'm not particularly proud of what I did," said Mr. Barnes, who in the 1960's was speaker of the Texas House at 26 and lieutenant governor at 30. "While I understand why parents wanted to shield their sons from danger, I abused my position of power by helping only those who knew me or had access to me."
Mr. Barnes, 66, an adviser to Senator John Kerry's campaign and an influential lobbyist with offices in Austin and Washington, said in a interview with The New York Times that he had intervened to get Mr. Bush, as well as other well-connected young men, into the Guard in 1968. He made similar comments on "60 Minutes" on Wednesday.
Mr. Barnes maintained, as he has since 1999, that he had contacted his friend who headed the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose, not at the behest of anyone in the Bush family, but rather a Houston businessman, Sidney A. Adger, a friend of the Bushes who has died.
"Yes, I called Rose to get George Bush into the Guard, I've said that," Mr. Barnes said in his office last week in Austin. "I called Rose for other sons of prominent families, and I'm not proud of it now."
Anticipating his remarks, Republicans worked to discredit Mr. Barnes as a partisan Democrat and large contributor to Mr. Kerry. The events created a new round of scrutiny for Mr. Bush, after a month in which Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service dominated the campaign because of veterans with longstanding anger at how Mr. Kerry, who was a decorated veteran, came home and turned against the war. With advertisements, through a book and on talk shows, the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, leveled largely unsubstantiated accusations about Mr. Kerry's record and told how his antiwar statements had demoralized veterans.
Democrats were unabashed in turning the spotlight on Mr. Bush. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic chairman, said in a conference call with reporters the party would keep Mr. Bush's record before the public.
The events unfolded a day after the Pentagon, prompted by a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press, released a series of records on Mr. Bush's service, even though the White House had said this year that it had released all the records.
Mr. Bartlett said that the documents "demonstrate that he served his country, he logged hundreds and hundreds of hours as a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard."
Mr. Bartlett rejected the suggestion based on Colonel Killian's files that Mr. Bush did not meet the performance standards. He said Mr. Bush did not have a physical examination because he was not going to be flying planes anymore, because his unit no longer flew the planes that Mr. Bush was trained on.
"Every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirements, granted permission to meet his requirements," Mr. Bartlett said.
A new commercial, produced by a group of Democrats, Texans for Truth, is to begin on Monday in five swing states that have lost high numbers of soldiers in Iraq. It features a former lieutenant colonel in the Alabama Guard, Bob Mintz, who lives in Tennessee. He told a columnist for The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof, for a column published on Wednesday, that he was actively looking for Lieutenant Bush at the Alabama base in the 1970's, because he had heard that Lieutenant Bush was a fellow bachelor who might like to party with him and other pilots. In the spot, Mr. Mintz said neither he nor his friends ever saw Mr. Bush.
"It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size," he says.
The unit had 20 to 30 pilots.
In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Mintz was pressed about his recollections and whether he might have missed seeing Mr. Bush, possibly because Mr. Bush was no longer flying at that point and was working in an office position. Mr. Mintz said repeatedly he never saw Lieutenant Bush.
Asked for friends' names who could vouch that they never saw Lieutenant Bush, Mr. Mintz declined, saying he did not have their permission to make their names public.
Glenn Smith, the main figure in Texans for Truth, said he wanted to make the spot because he was angry over the Swift Boat veterans.
Steve Schmidt of the Bush campaign said that Texans for Truth was linked to the Kerry campaign in potential violation of campaign finance laws, saying the group was "made possible by contributions" from Moveon.org, another advocacy group that opposes Mr. Bush.
Mr. Smith said that Moveon.org had financed another group that he had founded, Drivedemocracy.org, but that neither had given money to the Texans, though he said that Moveon.org had a link on its Web site to the Texans and sent e-mail messages to its Texas members urging them to give to the Texans.
Mr. Smith said the Texans raised more than $300,000 in 24 hours, with one contribution for $100,000 and most of the rest in $25 donations.
Adding to the picture of Mr. Bush's service, The Boston Globe reported on Wednesday that he fell short of meeting his military requirements and was not disciplined despite irregular attendance at required drills.
The paper said Mr. Bush signed documents in July 1973, before he left Houston for the Harvard Business School, promising to meet his training commitments or be punished by being called up to active duty.
Mr. Bartlett said on Wednesday that Mr. Bush was given permission to attend Harvard. He said that if there were any requirements Mr. Bush was not meeting, "the National Guard at the federal level, the state level and the local level, they all knew where he was."
Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Washingtonfor this article, and Ralph Blumenthal from Houston. Raymond Bonner contributed reporting from Houston.
-------- investigations
Senators Criticize C.I.A. in Inquiry on Iraqi Prison Abuse
September 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Prison-Abuse.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Army generals said Thursday at least two dozen unregistered ``ghost detainees'' may have been held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but they don't know the number for certain because the CIA did not cooperate with their investigation into abuses.
Senators said the CIA's lack of cooperation was unacceptable and that they would press the agency to provide the Army with the documents it needs.
``The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie,'' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to comment on the number of cases. He noted the agency's inspector general is reviewing the CIA's involvement in detention and interrogations in Iraq. ``We take these matters very seriously and are determined to examine thoroughly any allegations of abuse,'' he said.
The presence of ``ghost detainees'' -- prisoners held by the CIA outside of the military's usual system of registration and care -- was a key finding of the Army generals' investigation, completed last month.
The generals and the authors of another report on prison abuses discussed their investigations in a series of hearings Thursday by the Senate and House armed services panels.
Army investigators had previously said they had information on eight ``ghost detainees'' at Abu Ghraib, but that there may have been more.
Responding to a question, Gen. Paul Kern, who oversaw the Army investigation of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, told the Senate panel that the number of ghost detainees was ``in the dozens, perhaps up to 100.''
But Kern said he couldn't be precise because he didn't have documentation and referred to fellow panelist Maj. Gen. George Fay, who investigated military intelligence officers at the prison.
Fay said he doubts the figure is as high as 100, ``but I think it's somewhere in the area of maybe two dozen or so -- maybe more.''
Kern said that when the military permitted the CIA to bring detainees to Abu Ghraib, there was an expectation ``the agency would abide by our rules in our facilities, not create another set.''
``But somehow that didn't happen?'' McCain said.
``That's correct, senator,'' Kern said.
Fay said the Army made several requests to the CIA station chief in Iraq for information about the detainees. After not receiving a response, Fay met with the CIA inspector general and explained what information he needed and why he needed it.
``At that point I was informed that CIA was doing its own investigation,'' Fay said. ``And they said that they would not provide me with the information that I requested.''
The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said, ``It's totally unacceptable that documents that are requested from the CIA have not been forthcoming'' and urged the committee to ``weigh in on the issue.'' McCain said President Bush's nominee to head the CIA, Republican Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, should be asked about the matter.
Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said the Senate committee may hold a hearing on the ``ghost detainee'' issue.
The generals' report, and a separate investigation led by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, found that abuses of prisoners went beyond the cases depicted in photographs that created a worldwide scandal. They identified some 300 allegations of detainee deaths, torture or other mistreatment. But they found no evidence that the abuse resulted from military policies, though they criticized Pentagon leadership and oversight.
Kern said that conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved since the scandal broke. Fay said intelligence reports coming from interrogations, after declining when the scandal broke, ``have risen back up to approximately the same number they were before these abuses came to light.''
Republicans stressed that the abuses reflected a tiny percentage of U.S. forces. But Democrats say the scope of the problem went beyond what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials acknowledged.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., questioned if it is ``fair to conclude that Secretary Rumsfeld and his aides misled this committee, and in turn misled the American people, when they claimed that only a few low-level soldiers were responsible for the abuses?''
Harold Brown, a former defense secretary and a member of the Schlesinger commission, told the House committee that the entire Bush administration bears some responsibility for the abuses, including for failing to send enough troops to handle the large prison population and sowing confusion over whether the Geneva Convention applied to prisoners in the war on terror.
``Clearly, responsibility for failing to plan for what actually happened after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein extends all the way to the top -- obviously (to) the office of the secretary of defense,'' Brown said. ``But it goes beyond that. It's true of the whole administration.''
-------- propaganda wars
POLITICAL MEMO
When an Explosive Charge Is Not Handled With Care
September 9, 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/campaign/09memo.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the nation was more likely to "get hit again" by terrorists if John Kerry was elected was one of the toughest attacks launched in a presidential election in 40 years.
But Mr. Cheney's latest assault on Mr. Kerry, which startled Democrats and Republicans alike, raised a central question even in this notably ferocious presidential campaign: Is it possible for a candidate to go too far, and alienate the very voters he is trying to court?
In one sign that the answer to that question may be yes, Mr. Cheney's aides were quick to say that he had not meant to be quite so direct in his remarks in Des Moines on Tuesday when he said: "The danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating." A review of the videotape of his appearance in Des Moines suggests that his remark was spontaneous and unscripted. There was some, though not much, cringing in Republican circles at the image of Mr. Cheney on television, characteristically unsmiling, describing a Kerry presidency in such apocalyptic terms.
But what Mr. Cheney said was, if a bit stark, in line with the not-so-subliminal message of Mr. Bush's nominating convention, and what Mr. Cheney has said more delicately before: that the nation would be safer from a terrorist attack if it returned Mr. Bush to office. If Mr. Cheney's aides were walking back his remark in the hours after he made it, they were only walking so far.
"It's a central argument of this election: the policies of Bush-Cheney will keep us safer," said Nicolle Devenish, the communications director for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. "Take away the fascination with the way he said what he said. It's a discussion about pre-emption."
As they did in New York, when they staged a convention that featured the symbols and sadness of the terrorist attacks there, the Republicans seem to be walking a tricky line in this campaign, which the White House has always wanted fought on the issue of terrorism.
In New York, the Republicans sought to identify Mr. Bush's re-election with the tragedy that has defined his presidency, without appearing to exploit a day on which almost 3,000 Americans died. In this case, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush have sought to make the case that the nation would be far safer if Mr. Bush was returned to the White House.
Still, Mr. Cheney's harsh presentation of that argument in Des Moines may well have crossed that line, analysts said, and created potential perils for the White House.
"It's a risky strategy," said Stephen D. Ansolabehere, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If they feel they have to bring some independent voters into their camp, this is a fine line to walk."
Indeed, polls suggest that independent voters, whom both parties are courting assiduously, are put off by what they might see as crass or exceedingly negative political campaigning. What is more, Republicans have worried that Mr. Cheney's campaign visage is already a little too stern, and that the image of him issuing an alarming warning about a Kerry presidency would hardly help.
And, of course, the attacks of Sept. 11 did occur when Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were inoffice, and thus Mr. Cheney's remarks would seem to have presented an opening to Democrats who might want to remind voters of the criticism from two commissions of the White House's actions before the attacks.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said one factor ascribed to Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980 was his remark that that Ronald Reagan's election could mean that "Americans might be separated, blacks from whites, Jews from Christians, North from South, rural from urban.''
Ms. Devenish said Mr. Cheney was trying in his remarks to draw what she said was a significant difference between the two candidates, asserting that Mr. Kerry did not embrace Mr. Bush's position of acting pre-emptively against nations that he sees as a threat. "We have a very, very, very different philosophy on dealing with the threat of a global terrorist market."
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker, hailed what he said was Mr. Cheney's directness, saying, "Dick Cheney has understated the difference in danger to the United States between a Bush and a Kerry presidency."
But not incidentally, Mr. Cheney's remarks were close in tone to many of the attacks that were aimed at Mr. Kerry at the Republican convention - notably, in a speech Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia.
The remarks were among the more dire offered in a presidential campaign since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson broadcast a television advertisement, with a mushroom cloud, warning that the election of Barry Goldwater would lead to nuclear war. It was hard to find anyone in Mr. Kerry's headquarters who thought that Mr. Cheney's remark was not deliberate.
"A sitting vice president does not make a comment like that without knowing the implications of it," said Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry's communications director.
There was no shortage of speculation among Democrats about why Mr. Cheney was being so harsh. Could post-convention White House polls now be finding that the 11-point Bush lead reported by Time and Newsweek had indeed been exaggerated, leaving Mr. Bush without the upper hand he had hoped for? Could the White House be trying to shift attention away from new reports this week about Mr. Bush's absences in the National Guard?
Perhaps. But it seems safe to say that even if Mr. Cheney did not mean to say it the way he did, this was precisely the message he intended to convey. It is one that voters will be hearing again and again before Election Day.
Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Censored Stories, Your Ass
And now, a dissenting opinion
By EMIL FRANZI
SEPTEMBER 9, 2004
Tucson Weekly
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid:60299
For the first time that I've seen, this year's "Censored Stories" come with a caveat. Seems they weren't really censored after all--just "under reported." Well, as Emily used to say on Saturday Night Live, "never mind."
This takes much of the fun out of debunking the debunkers, because last year's crop of "censored" stories was considerably wackier than this batch. Several claimed that the mainstream media weren't reporting all those neo-conservative plots to take over the world. Newsweek, The Washington Post and The New York Times were apparently all in on them.
One of three things must have happened: Last year's neocon plots were all thwarted, or they were successful. Either way, that would be a big story everybody missed.
I'll take the third option--those who write this stuff finally got some reality therapy.
I said "some." Some of the stories that Project Censored claims are "under reported" are constantly harped upon in many places. Any halfway-observant reader has heard that income distribution has become wider; many scientists disagree with the Bush administration's policies regarding everything from forests to global warming; depleted uranium use in weaponry leaves an untidy battlefield; there are real problems with electronic voting machines; Cheney's energy task force met in secret; and we may be building some new nuclear power plants. Some of these stories promote a thesis I agree with, but there's been plenty of reporting on them.
The others range from, "Yeah, so?" to whacked. The Alien Tort Claims item is interesting, but hardly a blockbuster. For off the wall, the Federalist Society picking judges is a classic piece of leftist irrationality, while the RICO suit story is genuine la-la land.
Follow the logic: The Federalist Society has all sorts of heavyweights on its letterhead. Therefore, the Federalist Society must have had something to do with them becoming heavyweights. Classic example of the "wet pavement causes rain" syndrome.
The RICO suit story is the kind of pathetic crap that still plays in various intellectual swamplands. This one didn't get covered, because it was too shaky for Weekly World News.
Americans have the LEAST real censorship in the world--the old-fashioned kind you get when cops break down doors, smash presses and cameras, and haul folks away for trying to use them. That's what happens in most countries that vote at the United Nations. You can get busted in relatively free places for doing things we take for granted. Try publishing a critique of the queen in England, printing something derogatory about gays or Muslims in France, or broadcasting Fox News in Canada--you've broken the law and have no First Amendment right to use in appeal.
There are many stories not covered by the mainstream media--and the alternative media. For example:
1. Naval deployments in the Far East
We have 12 carrier battle groups. One is in the Persian Gulf; seven were last seen near Taiwan. Why?
2. The great asbestos hoax
Yeah, it's bad for you. Don't put it on your cereal. But a combination of gullible enviros and greedy contractors has squandered billions over-reacting to the problem.
3. Corruption in public financing of elections
In New Jersey, the "right" candidates get their money early, and the others are endlessly hassled. Time to check if that happens elsewhere and stop believing that election bureaucrats come from a different gene pool than the politicians who appoint them.
4. Mass starvation in Zimbabwe
A corrupt and psychotic dictator has taken a country that was once a leading food exporter to the brink of mass starvation. Anybody care?
There's more. Unfortunately, they don't fit the lazy little leftist box most of the alternative press has built around itself.
-------- us politics
Kerry Acts to Refocus Iraq Debate
Democrat Says Bush Squandered Billions
By Paul Farhi and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4645-2004Sep8.html
CINCINNATI, Sept. 8 -- John F. Kerry journeyed Wednesday to the spot where President Bush made his case for the Iraq war two years ago to accuse Bush of making "catastrophic choices" that have cost the nation $200 billion and shortchanged education, health care and job creation.
As part of a new, two-front strategy to refocus the debate over Iraq, Kerry offered his sharpest criticism yet of the mounting economic costs of invading, occupying and stabilizing the country with little assistance from other nations. "George W. Bush's wrong choices have led America in the wrong direction in Iraq and left America without the resources we need here at home," Kerry said.
The Democratic nominee blamed Bush's "miscalculations" before and after the war for leaving children with fewer after-school programs, older veterans with inadequate health care, neighborhoods with fewer police officers to keep the peace and workers with fewer jobs. "When I'm president, America will once again stand up to our enemies without destroying or denying our best hopes here at home," Kerry said.
Aides said Kerry is planning a speech soon in which he will offer a detailed plan to end, or greatly curtail, the U.S. military operation in Iraq by January 2009 and reduce the cost to U.S. taxpayers in the interim. The twin offensive is designed to help Kerry regain his political footing on Iraq as the number of U.S. personnel killed there topped 1,000. Recent national polls show a majority of voters trust Bush more than Kerry on Iraq.
Kerry has been under relentless attack by Bush and the GOP for what they say are his vague and inconsistent positions on Iraq, and his advisers said the Democrat must clearly state his policy so he can shift the focus of his campaign -- and the election -- to economic issues. "You cannot ignore the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room -- we are involved in a quagmire in Iraq," said Joe Lockhart, senior adviser to Kerry. Wednesday's speech represented an attempt to blend Iraq and domestic issues. "This allows us to talk about domestic priorities and the mess in Iraq," Lockhart said.
A problem for Kerry has been that every time he talks about Iraq, Republicans say that he is trying to have it both ways: supporting the war and criticizing it. Kerry hammered Bush in the speech for failing to properly equip the troops, although Bush and Vice President Cheney criticize the Massachusetts senator almost daily for voting against an $87 billion bill that included money for military personnel in Iraq.
"I would not have made the wrong choices that are forcing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war -- $200 billion," Kerry said. But Bush's campaign noted shortly after the speech that Kerry argued one year ago that the government should increase spending in Iraq "by whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win."
Asked if Kerry would have attacked Iraq if he had been in Bush's position, Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said, "We don't answer hypothetical questions."
Kerry, seeking to differentiate himself from Bush and gain the initiative, sought to tie the war's conduct and costs, both in human terms and in dollars, to a failure of leadership by the president. Kerry repeated his previous assertions that Bush failed to build an adequate coalition before the war, rushed into military action before United Nations weapons inspectors had finished their work, and mismanaged prosecution of the war.
A "glance at the front pages or a look at the nightly news shows the hard reality," he said. "Rising instability. Spreading violence. Growing extremism. Havens for terrorists that weren't there before."
The setting for Kerry's speech was striking for its symbolism. He spoke in the soaring art deco hall of Union Terminal, a restored train station-turned-museum complex where Bush appeared in October 2002 to give a nationally televised address justifying a U.S. attack on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Some of the claims in that speech have been undermined, such as Bush's contention that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism."
The Kerry campaign has clearly decided the cost of the war is a subject that will resonate with the public. It was the dominant theme of his speech -- he mentioned the $200 billion price tag 14 times -- and it dovetailed with an ad the campaign released Wednesday. The new ad, called "Wrong Choices," juxtaposes the $200 billion expenditure for Iraq with "lost jobs and rising health care costs" in America. It is slated to air in eight swing states this week.
Kerry said here that the war's price tag was driving up record federal deficits and sapping government of the ability to fund education, health care, homeland security, Social Security and job-creation programs. "Nearly two years after George W. Bush spoke to the nation from this very place," Kerry said, "we know how wrong his choices were."
The Kerry campaign's $200 billion figure is based on $144.4 billion already spent on the conflict, plus $60 billion Kerry believes the administration will ask Congress for in a supplemental request after the Nov. 2 election. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June that the war could cost from $180 billion to almost $400 billion over the next 10 years, under various scenarios.
As part of Kerry's new offensive, there are discussions of a speech that would explain Kerry's Vietnam experience, including his leadership role in the antiwar protests in the early 1970s and efforts to fight for veterans in the decades that followed, aides said. The anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has pulled its ads for a few days, is planning to hit Kerry again soon on his protests after Vietnam.
Kerry has not completely found his post-Labor Day stride. On Tuesday, after learning that the American death toll in Iraq had topped 1,000, Kerry said U.S soldiers had given their lives "on behalf of freedom in the war on terrorism." Kerry, who frequently criticizes Bush for linking Iraq and the war on terrorism, backpedaled through a spokesman, who said Kerry "was referring to U.S. soldiers fighting in parts of Iraq that have now become a breeding ground for terrorists."
Despite the increasing intensity of the Iraq debate, neither candidate has offered many specifics on how he would bring the war to a conclusion.
Kerry dedicated only a small section of the speech to clarify how he would handle Iraq differently than Bush in the future.
Kerry said he would enlist more allies, spread the costs among other nations and train a larger number of Iraqi forces. But it is not clear that other nations are interested in contributing more troops or money to the mission. Moreover, the Bush administration is training Iraqi forces, albeit not as quickly and effectively as Kerry would like. Bush has been silent on any timetable for withdrawal and plans to end the war.
VandeHei reported from Washington.
--------
Kerry Rips Cheney Statement
Edwards Urges Bush to Disavow Remark on Terror Risk
By Spencer S. Hsu and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6629-2004Sep8.html
Democrat John F. Kerry yesterday denounced as "outrageous and shameful" Vice President Cheney's statement that Americans risk another terrorist attack if President Bush is not reelected, as congressional Democrats assailed the credibility of a leading administration voice on national security.
Kerry, interviewed in Minnesota by a local television station, said Cheney's statement made it clear that the president and the vice president "will say anything and do anything in order to get elected."
"It is outrageous and shameful to make the war on terror an instrument of their politics," Kerry said. "I defended this country when I was a young man, and they chose not to. And I will defend this country as president of the United States."
Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, meanwhile, called on Bush to repudiate Cheney's statement, saying it was "calculated to divide us on the issues of safety and security for the American people."
Bush did not respond to reporters' queries about the subject at the White House. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan later stood by Cheney's warning without repeating it. "There are differences in how the two candidates approach the war on terrorism, and that's what the vice president was talking about in his remarks," McClellan said.
Cheney, in Des Moines on Tuesday, delivered the campaign's message that the United States would be safer in Bush's hands with cutting-torch directness, saying, "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, that we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again."
He continued, "That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war."
The comments underscore a pattern in which the vice president has acted as the leading edge of the Bush-Cheney communications machine on controversial security issues such as the Iraq war, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction and the fight against al Qaeda, issues in which Cheney has often gone further in making the administration's case than the president. Republicans say Cheney's role capitalizes on the vice president's expertise and authority, as well as his ability to deliver the toughest, most volatile charges in a credible, low-key manner.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said he did not know the context of the remarks but he believed that Cheney spoke from "a very strong feeling" that Bush would be stronger as commander in chief than Kerry, saying the president "will not compromise when it comes to terrorism, and it is crystal clear where he stands."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Cheney's comments crossed the line of acceptable rhetoric and urged Bush to dissociate himself from them.
"It is completely inappropriate, and dangerous, for the vice president to in effect threaten the American people, to be part of instilling fear into our country," Pelosi said. "If the United States is attacked by terrorists before the next president is inaugurated, it will be because this president was so focused on Iraq that he was distracted from getting the job done in dealing with the clear and present danger that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden pose to our country."
In a change that highlighted the sensitivity of Cheney's statement, the White House yesterday released a revised version of the transcript of his remarks. The official transcript, posted on the White House Web site Tuesday afternoon and e-mailed to reporters, said: "(I)t's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again."
In a version released Tuesday to reporters traveling with Cheney, however, the period at the end of "hit again" was removed and replaced with a comma, which linked his blunter statement to his standard stump language expressing concern that future attacks would be treated as "just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war."
Yesterday, the transcript on the White House Web site was altered to make Cheney's remarks one sentence. Cheney's White House spokesman, Kevin Kellems, issued a statement saying that the first official transcript "contained a typographical error" and was an "interim draft." "These types of corrections are not uncommon in the transcription of verbal statements," Kellems said. "The final transcript accurately reflects the statement as delivered, which is clear when watching video of the event."
Staff writers Vanessa Williams in Clarksburg, W.Va., and Charles Babington in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
House GOP Seeks Own Response to 9/11
DeLay, Hastert Stress Chamber's Expertise Rather Than Panel's Recommendations
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6783-2004Sep8.html
While top Democrats and some prominent Republicans are calling on Congress to approve all 41 recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, House GOP leaders are taking a notably different tack. Saying they will craft their own bill and rely heavily on their own expertise, they sometimes scoff at those who simply want to write the commission's proposals into law.
Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) told reporters yesterday: "I think it was highly inappropriate to call for immediate passage of the 9/11 commission recommendations" dealing with intelligence-gathering and anti-terrorism efforts. His comment was aimed mainly at Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and top congressional Democrats. But it effectively encompassed numerous Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who also advocate enacting all the commission's recommendations.
DeLay said it was "pretty laughable" for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to offer a bill that she says was drawn directly from the 41 recommendations. Asked how many of the recommendations the House might adopt, he replied: "Who knows? . . . Whatever is the right thing to do." DeLay said the House will rely largely on its own expertise and insights, adding that "we have plenty of experts on our committees."
DeLay's comments, which were echoed by aides to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), entail some political risk in a climate in which commission members and many relatives of victims of the attacks are calling for the prompt adoption of virtually all the recommendations. Kerry and congressional Democrats have accused President Bush and GOP lawmakers of dawdling, and yesterday, they ramped up the pressure on Republicans.
Soon after the commission issued its report in July, the GOP-led Congress "took six weeks of vacation," according to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez (N.J.). "The problem is that terrorists did not take six weeks of vacation from their plotting, from their planning," Menendez said at a news conference in the Capitol.
On Tuesday, the commission's two leaders -- Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton -- joined four senators at a news conference that extolled a bipartisan bill embracing essentially all of the commission's recommendations. Kean, a Republican, called the legislation "our dream."
DeLay, asked yesterday if he would accept the Senate bill, replied: "No."
Some House Republicans support Hastert and DeLay's plan to assemble a bill in about two weeks based on several committees' input, but they say that it is politically risky. "This is an opportunity to do some other things that need to be done" and are not included in the 41 recommendations, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee. "But if, God forbid, there was an intervening [terrorist] event while Congress was futzing around, the politics of that would be horrendous."
While DeLay and Hastert were stressing their independence from the Senate and the Sept. 11 commission yesterday, Bush for the first time embraced the commission's recommendation to give the proposed new national intelligence director full budgetary authority over the government's various intelligence-gathering agencies. DeLay was noncommittal after meeting with Bush and other top lawmakers at the White House. "We need to take his proposal and look at it," he told reporters.
The 41 recommendations range from the often-discussed intelligence director with far-reaching budgetary powers to the lesser-known call for new technologies to scan travelers' fingerprints, retinas or other "biometric signatures." The panel's report calls for tighter standards for issuing birth certificates, drivers' licenses and similar documents.
Six House committees have jurisdiction over various aspects of the recommendations, and Hastert is treating them equally in soliciting ideas. Senate leaders, by contrast, have asked the Government Affairs Committee to consider all the proposals and to send a bill to the full Senate this month. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) told reporters yesterday it was unclear which proposal will emerge as the "base bill" for drafting the legislation.
Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who attended the White House meeting, later said that there are "conflicting views about the urgency" of addressing the 41 recommendations but that he sensed Bush has lined up on the side of urgency.
House sources said some of the biggest objections to the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations come from lawmakers with close ties to the Pentagon, which receives 80 percent of the budget for intelligence activities. At an Aug. 17 hearing, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that sweeping reforms could hamper U.S. military operations. "If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great," he said.
In telephone interviews yesterday, Kean and Hamilton expressed little concern about the House leaders' talk of deviating from the report's recommendations. "We don't think we're Moses come down with the Ten Commandments," Kean said. As long as Congress adopts the main proposals, including a strong national director of intelligence, commission members will be satisfied, he said.
Staff writer Helen Dewar and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Biodiesel Boom Extends to New Colorado Terminal
September 9, 2004
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-09-09.asp#anchor4
Blue Sun Biodiesel and Alta Fuels today announced that a high volume commercial biodiesel terminal will be opened and operational in southern Colorado this fall.
Located in Alamosa, the blending facility will serve fuel distributors with Blue Sun B20, made of 20 percent renewable fuel produced from virgin vegetable oil biodiesel, and 80 percent petroleum diesel together with proprietary fuel additives.
The B20 blend offers advantages over petroleum diesel by increasing cetane, horsepower, and fuel mileage, while reducing emissions of particulates, greenhouse gases, carcinogens, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.
B20 has superior lubricating properties, reduces engine wear and maintenance costs, and can be used in existing diesel engines without modification.
Several biodiesel terminals have opened across the United States this year in Council Bluffs, Iowa, McFarland, Wisconsin and Peru, Indiana, and the largest, an 18 million gallon per year plant in Lakeland, Florida.
Biodiesel is a cleaner burning alternative to petroleum-based diesel, made from renewable resources like soybeans, grown in the United States. It can be used in its pure form (B100), or blended with petroleum diesel at any level, most commonly 20 percent (B20).
Blue Sun President and CEO Jeff Probst said, "This infrastructure development is essential to achieving our near-term objectives. We want to provide high quality and cost competitive fuel to our customers and consumers across the region that would otherwise be excluded or required to pay higher costs due to their geographic location."
Probst estimates the regional B20 biodiesel market will grow to 150 million gallons of B20 annually by 2015.
Blue Sun Biodiesel is an agriculture energy company in Colorado, founded in 2001 to develop the market for America's clean renewable fuel. The company is engaged in all phases of biodiesel production, from agricultural research and development, to fuel processing, distribution, and value-added customer service.
According to Dan Mortensen, President of Alta Fuels, "The growing market for Blue Sun B20 will have a positive effect on our regional and local economy, our health, and the environment. It will also reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
The National Biodiesel Board says that more than 400 major fleets use biodiesel commercially nationwide. About 300 retail filling stations make biodiesel available to the public, and more than 1,000 petroleum distributors carry it nationwide.
The U.S. Energy Department says biodiesel is the fastest growing alternative fuel in the country. Biodiesel is experiencing even greater growth in Europe and is starting to emerge as an important alternative fuel source everywhere around the world where oilseed crops are plentiful.
-------- energy
Energy dependence on Mideast, Russia to grow, says study
Reuters
By Chris Baltimore,
September 09, 2004
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-09/s_27023.asp
WASHINGTON - Despite vaunted crude oil finds in Africa and Latin America, widespread pumping decreases will make global markets more dependent on the Middle East and Russia over the decade, a study released on Wednesday found.
Stout demand growth has whittled spare global oil capacity to its lowest point in 30 years, mostly due to China's thirst for fuel.
But despite crude prices that flirted with $50 a barrel last month, non-OPEC nations now pump as much as 8 billion barrels of oil more than they discover annually, Washington-based energy consultant PFC Energy said.
There is no imminent danger of exhausting world oil supplies, PFC said. But reserve depletion could cut into supplies if countries cannot find ways to replace production from tapped out fields, PFC warned.
Notable discoveries in African nations like Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea are unlikely to stem the decline, PFC said.
"We're producing more than we find by a considerable amount," Mike Rodgers, a senior director at PFC, said at a presentation for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We don't really see this changing very much between now and the end of the decade."
Non-OPEC nations brought major projects on-line in the 1980s, which are starting to either peak out or decline, PFC said.
Countries like Mexico, Malaysia,, and China have hit production plateaus that will be hard to maintain, it said.
The notable exceptions are OPEC nations and former Soviet states, which will be the world's swing suppliers in coming years along with West African nations, PFC said.
And OPEC, which has long sat on spare capacity, could find itself unable to keep pace with demand by 2020 assuming global demand growth of 1.8 percent a year, PFC said.
OPEC cartel members produce about 8 billion barrels per year more than they discover, PFC said.
"There are reasons to worry about OPEC's ability to fill that growing differential between non-OPEC production and global demand under current growth scenarios," Rodgers said.
Saudi Arabia, the only OPEC nation with any real spare capacity, is unlikely to see production above 14 million barrels, PFC said. The kingdom in August produced 9.5 million bpd versus its capacity of 10 million bpd, according to U.S. government data.
Former Soviet nations like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are counting on a raft of new pipelines to bring their oil to market. Total FSU production could rise by 2 million bpd to peak at 14 million bpd by 2010, PFC said.
These factors will make the United States increasingly dependent on Latin American and West African crude, PFC said.
In the past the Middle East has been the swing supplier for the United States. But as Europe and Asia draw more OPEC oil, West African nations like Angola will supply more U.S. oil, PFC said.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Environment takes unusual prominence in Colorado Senate race
Associated Press
By Judith Kohler
September 09, 2004
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-09/s_27016.asp
DENVER - The campaign for Colorado's open Senate seat has quickly turned ugly since last month's primary, with TV attack ads focusing on an unusual issue for both Republican Peter Coors and Democrat Ken Salazar: the environment.
A Virginia pro-business group fired one of the first shots in the tight race that will help decide control of the Senate. Its ad said Salazar, the state's former natural resources chief and current attorney general, settled for less than $30 million from the owner of a mine that unleashed one of Colorado's worst environmental disasters. The spot said the disaster will cost an estimated $240 million to clean up.
Salazar denounced the claims as "straight-out lies," Colorado newspapers editorialized against it, and the League of Conservation Voters aired its own spot defending him.
Americans for Job Security President Mike Dubke said his group's ad was meant to show that Salazar "fleeced the taxpayers."
"A lot of folks thought it was an environmental ad. From my point of view, it's all about taxes," Dubke said of the ad that cost about $900,000 to run statewide. "It's a litmus test for what people project onto it."
Coors, on leave as chief executive of the Coors Brewing Co. his family founded, has no connection to the ad. He and Salazar have both criticized outside groups' involvement in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
Floyd Ciruli, an independent political consultant in Denver, said he expects more campaigning from outside interests because of the race's national importance.
While the war in Iraq, health care, and experience emerged as issues even before the primaries, the ads have given the environment an unusually prominent role in the campaign. Coors could face questions about the brewery's environmental record, Ciruli said.
Indeed, the League of Conservation Voters will spend the fall discussing Coors Brewing's environmental issues, said Andy Schultheiss, the group's regional director.
"It will be mostly door to door, but you may see some TV ads later," Schultheiss said Wednesday.
The Golden-based brewer agreed in 2001 to build a wetland to settle a lawsuit by the state for an accidental discharge of beer that killed more than 50,000 fish in a creek. It also paid a $117,280 fine. A similar accident killed about 13,000 fish a decade earlier.
Coors campaign spokeswoman Cinamon Watson said Coors, a national past president of Ducks Unlimited, has an excellent record on conservation and is looking forward to discussing it.
On the mine pollution issue, Salazar's ad counters that he took over the natural resources job in 1990, well after problems at the gold mine erupted. And the ad from the League of Conservation Voters praised Salazar for crafting one of the largest environmental settlements in the state's history and creating an environmental crimes unit in the attorney general's office.
-------- ACTIVISTS
International War
Whistleblowers Tell Why They Exposed Their Governments
Thursday, September 9th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/09/1358238
In a Democracy Now! U.S. exclusive, two former intelligence officials from Britain and Denmark discuss why they blew the whistle on their governments in relation to the war in Iraq. Katharine Gun is a former British employee who leaked details of a secret U.S. spy operation on UN Security Council members in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Major Frank Grevil is a former military intelligence officer from Denmark who was fired for leaking classified reports that showed no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. He currently faces charges for breaching the country's official information law. [includes rush transcript] In the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the British newspaper The Observer exposed a highly secret and aggressive surveillance operation directed at United Nations Security Council members by the U.S. ahead of the vote on Iraq.
The Observer obtained a top-secret NSA memorandum that outlined a surveillance operation involves intercepting home and office telephone calls and emails of UN delegates focusing "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."
The target of the surveillance were the so-called "Middle Six" delegations, including Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan, who could swing a Security Council vote on Iraq.
In a story that has received almost no media coverage in the U.S., the former British intelligence employee who leaked the memo, Katharine Gun, faced up to two years in prison for violating the Official Secrets Act before charges were lifted.
In her first appearance in the United States, Katharine Gunn joins us from Washington DC today where she is attending a gathering of whistleblowers organized by perhaps the country's best whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg.
In 1971, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post. The 7,000 page document exposed the true story behind U.S. decision making in the Vietnam War. He was charged with 12 felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years. The charges were dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him.
Also attending the whistleblowers gathering is Major Frank Grevil, a former military intelligence officer from Denmark who was fired for leaking classified reports that showed no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. He currently faces charges for breaching the country"s official information law. He also joins us from Washington DC.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: In her first appearance in the United States, Katharine Gun joins us from Washington, D.C., where she's attending a gathering of whistleblowers organized by perhaps the country's best known whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. In 1971, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Washington Post. The 7,000-page document exposed the true story behind the U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. He was charged with 12 felony counts, posing a possible sentence of 115 years. The charges were dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. Also attending the whistleblowers gathering is Major Frank Grevil, a former military intelligence officer from Denmark who was fired for leaking classified reports that showed no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. He currently faces charges for breaching the country's official information law. He also joins us from Washington D.C. today. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Katharine Gun. If you could briefly tell us, though we have covered this story, unlike most of the U.S. press, about what you did, about where you were working, how you got the information about what the U.S. and Britain were doing around spying on U.N. Security Council members.
KATHARINE GUN: Hi, Amy. Well, first, can I just say that I am still covered by the Official Secrets Act, and I will be until my deathbed. So, I'm not about to jeopardize myself again. But, I was working for Government Communication Headquarters in the U.K., which is the equivalent to N.S.A. here in the U.S., and I was a Chinese linguist at the time, and this email crossed my desk in my in-box in January of 2003. At that time, as we all know, it was a crucial time for the U.N. in its decision-making process as to whether or not a resolution was needed with regard to Iraq and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. So, when I saw this email asking GCHQ's help to bug the six swing nations to gather a vote for war with Iraq, I was very angry at first and very saddened that it had come to this, and that despite all of the talk from both Tony Blair and George Bush about how important it was to get the U.N. on board and to legitimize any kind of aggression, that they were actually going around it in such a low-handed manner. I decided that the risk to my career was minute compared to the upcoming war in Iraq and the best thing to do for me was to leak this information to the press so that everybody else could have the information, and hopefully it could avert this disastrous course of events that have occurred.
AMY GOODMAN: And ultimately, you faced trial. What exactly was the sentence you faced, and what did you think before you did this about the penalty?
KATHARINE GUN: Well, the maximum sentence is two years. I don't think anybody has actually served more than six months for the breach of Official Secrets Act, but they didn't in fact charge me straight away. I was arrested on suspicion of breach of Official Secrets Act in March 2003, but they didn't charge me until November. Now, the in-between months, I was bailed and re-bailed, and my life was on standstill. I was in limbo. It was a difficult time for me and my family, because we just did not know what the future held for us. As it turned out in November they decided to charge me, and we were all pretty astounded by that decision, because we knew that so many people supported my action, and the result of their charging me in November was that in February of this year, they were forced to drop it, because my defense team requested the full legal advice from Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith and they refused to hand this over, so they either had something to hide or they felt that they were on a losing battle.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn now to Major Frank Grevil, a Danish case. The Danish prime minister telling parliament that government intelligence suggested Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that this justified Danish involvement in the war. Then two Danish journalists ran a story in one of Denmark's largest newspapers that there had in fact been no credible evidence that Iraq had possessed such weapons. The journalists' source turned out to be a Danish military intelligence officer, Major Frank Grevil, who said he had written some of the intelligence assessments himself. He was fired for passing secret documents to the media, and the prime minister denied misleading the parliament. Frank Grevil now joins us as well in the Washington studio. Can you tell us your story, how you assessed that there were no wmds, and why you decided to pass this information on?
MAJOR FRANK GREVIL: Hi, Amy. Well, to make it short, it all started back in August of 2002 when we were prompted to provide reports and we did so continuously afterwards. Reports on Iraq. And at that time we realized -- I mean, I was a member of a small group dealing with wmd. We realized that we had virtually no sources of our own so that we had to rely entirely on U.S. and U.K. information, and that would be final reports, intelligence estimates issued and then handed to us, so that what we did then was virtually [inaudible]. It continued all the way until the Danish parliament passed the law on the 19th of March 2003 to join the so-called Coalition of the Willing, and the parliament in my opinion at that time didn't receive the information it needed to make a sound decision. I waited to react until about one year later, that was in January or February of this year when I saw that there was an ongoing debate in the Danish parliament where the opposition was in vain trying all the time to get hold on at least some of the documents that the government had that were not at that time presented to the parliament, and I couldn't as a democratic citizen live with the fact that the government was withholding crucial documents. So, finally, I decided to make contact to these journalists who wanted to see some hard facts, hard evidence, before they would run a story on it. I only had had a few days to decide whether I would hand out the documents or not, and finally, I did.
AMY GOODMAN: And Major Frank Grevil, what do you face right now? You are going to trial?
MAJOR FRANK GREVIL: Yes. My trial is scheduled to start next month. The verdict is expected on November 2. Actually, I face up to two years imprisonment. I don't expect it to get such a harsh treatment. Actually, there's a loophole stating that if the information leaked is vital to the interest of the public, I could actually go scott free. So, I'm not quite certain what will happen, but the good thing is that this is only the first court hearing. There is still the possibility of making an appeal to the next level court, and in my case, I will also see it as a possibility to go to the Supreme Court.
AMY GOODMAN: You are now in Washington, along with Katharine Gun. Do you have a message for government employees perhaps, people in Washington, around the issue of whistleblowing in the U.S. government?
MAJOR FRANK GREVIL: Well, as a non-U.S. citizen, I cannot make an appeal directly to U.S. government employees to reveal whatever information they have, but I can only say that I'm going to do that at home, and I strongly support the U.S. movement, the U.S. network of former whistleblowers or former employees in their efforts to convince present employees to give away whatever they have.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Gun, we just have 15 seconds. I ask you the same question about a message you have to government employees, perhaps, or others in this country?
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, well, like Frank, as a non-U.S. citizen, I cannot advocate or pressure people to do anything. All I can say is that you have to live with your conscience at the end of your life, and it's the only thing that you have that belongs to yourself and nobody else. So, I would just say always follow conscience.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Gun and Major Frank Grevil, I want to thank you for being with us.
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Documentary by Kennedy kin envisages terror strike on nuclear plant
Thu Sep 9, 2004
(AFP)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040909/lf_afp/us_attacks_television_040909171302
NEW YORK - The son of the late Bobby Kennedy asks Americans to "imagine a world without New York City" in a new documentary probing the possibility of a terrorist strike on the nearby Indian Point nuclear power plant.
The film, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," which premiers Thursday night on the HBO cable network, is produced and directed by Kennedy's daughter, Rory Kennedy, and prominently features her brother, the environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Described as convincing but "unashamedly political" by the New York Times, it raises serious questions over security at the plant, which sits just 35 miles north of Manhattan.
It also employs chilling computer-generated images to explore the possible scenario if one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 had instead targetted Indian Point.
To illustrate the vulnerability of the plant to terrorist attack, the film shows Rory Kennedy and a helicopter pilot hovering around Indian Point for 25 minutes with no security challenge to their presence.
Kennedy also notes that the plant is not protected by the same "no fly" zone accorded to Disneyland.
Press previews have been mixed, with some critics suggesting that the film's doomsday scenario is aimed less at improving security at Indian Point and more at backing the argument of environmentalists who want the plant shut down entirely.
Robert Kennedy Jr. appears in his role as chief attorney of Riverkeeper, a Hudson River Valley environmental group that has long opposed the plant.
"Imagine a world without New York City," he says at one point. "The terrorists already have."
Nuclear regulatory officials and supporters of Indian Point say the film's central thesis is flawed, pointing out that the chance of terrorists hitting spent-fuel pools and causing a meltdown would be minute.
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Indian Point advocates criticize film about reactors
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
September 9, 2004
http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/090904/b0109nukerebut.html
Supporters of Indian Point yesterday excoriated an upcoming HBO documentary on the nuclear plant as a biased effort that uses "junk science" to raise unnecessary fears about a safe, well-protected energy source.
Members of New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, a coalition of business groups and other boosters, further contended in a telephone news conference that it would be virtually impossible for radiation to escape from the twin Buchanan reactors after a terrorist attack.
"The chances of 1,000 people being simultaneously struck by lightning are greater than the chances of any massive release of radiation from Indian Point," asserted Letty Lutzker, a Dobbs Ferry resident and doctor of nuclear medicine who frequently speaks on behalf of the nuclear industry.
If any radiation did escape the plant after a terrorist attack, Lutzker said, it would remain "in a small area around Indian Point itself, and the public would not be exposed to more than the background radiation we are exposed to every day."
Lutzker acknowledged that she has no data to back up her assertion, but said, "I'm making a point that the chances are so vanishingly small there is no point in worrying about it. It is so unlikely as to be close to impossible."
Lutzker's conviction differs from studies by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which state that the release of radiation from either the reactor or the spent fuel pools could cause thousands of deaths hundreds of miles away.
The 45-minute film, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," deals with the possibly catastrophic aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on the Buchanan reactors. The documentary was made by Rory Kennedy, sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senior attorney at Riverkeeper, the environmental group in the forefront of efforts to close the plant. It airs at 8 p.m. tonight as part of HBO's "America Undercover" series.
Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the industry, said on substance, the movie is "garbage" and represents little more than "a wonderful, collaborative project by a brother and sister."
John Basile, a former manager at Indian Point, said if the plant were closed, the region "would cave in needlessly to terrorist fears, and our economy would take a major blow."
He said the plant provides 2,000 megawatts of clean power and replacing it with power from fossil fuel plants means "air pollution would be increased by 14 million tons annually. It would devastate our economy and our environment."
Send e-mail to Roger Witherspoon mailto:rwithers@thejournalnews.com
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