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NUCLEAR
PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION ACCIDENT AT FRENCH NUCLEAR FACILITY
Chernobyl Children Have Normal Mental Function
Two Charged in S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case
Ireland: Cullen concerned over inadequate UK response to Sellafield
France's nuclear threat
EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND
Divisions remain between US and EU's Big Three on Iran's nuclear program
Japan nuclear accident will not affect fusion project bid: officials
South Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium
Rumsfeld surprised by secret South Korean nuclear research
South Korea nuclear case likely to go to U.N. Security Council
S. Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
6-Party Nuke Talks Not Likely in Sept.
Bush waives nuclear sanction on Libya
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
Eight-Year UN Disarmament Stalemate Continues
Rocky Flats whistleblower Brever talks Colorado U
Nevada Sues Again to Block Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository
Safety board adds new rep
Board disputes Hanford cleanup safety
MILITARY
U.S. Calls Killings In Sudan Genocide
Villagers flee troops, militia fighting near Nigerian oil city
Blocked arms sales
Halliburton Unit Gets a Positive Review From Pentagon
Northrop Gets $308 Million Military Deal
U.S. Warplanes Strike Two Iraq Cities
Iraqi civilians killed in US missile strike
Violence Will Intensify in Iraq as Elections Near, Rumsfeld Says
U.S. Troops Lay Seige to Iraqi City
American and Iraqi Forces Try to Regain Control of Sunni Strongholds
Six Palestinians Killed in New Fighting in Gaza, West Bank
Israeli Forces Attack in Gaza, Killing 7 Arabs
Costa Rica seeks removal from Iraq 'coalition'
Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed
'Ghost detainees' number up to 100
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Russian Leader Promises Open Inquiry Into Terror Attack
From Dismal Chechnya, Women Turn to Bombs
Witnesses Pull Out of Trial After Judges Refuse
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Keeps City on Notice Over Convention Protest Arrests
National Airport Tests Boarding Pass Screens
Secret Service Not Coddling Hecklers
U.S. to Pay Fliers $1.5 Million for Pilfering of Checked Bags
Rounding up all illegals 'not realistic'
POLITICS
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Reporters' Files Subpoenaed
'Uncovered' explores role of neocons in Iraq war
Al Qaeda Releases Tape Predicting U.S. Defeat
Row over CBS report questioning Bush military service
Democrats Step Up Attack on Bush Guard Record
Kerry Says Bush Assault Weapons Stance Aids Terrorists
Secretary Rumsfeld's Speech at the National Press Club
ENERGY
Californians Could Get $2.8 Billion in Energy Refunds
OTHER
Smelly Robot Eats Flies to Generate Its Own Power
DuPont Settles Water Contamination Lawsuit
Belgian Ship Spills 100 Tons of Oil Off Russian Far East
Hydroponic Forage Cultivation May Prevent Future Water Wars
Extinct species take others along, study finds
Genetically Modified Fish Used to Make Human Protein
FDA Urged Withholding Data on Antidepressants
Turmeric May Protect Against Leukemia - Scientist
US Report Sees Wide Health Effects of 9-11 Attacks
ACTIVISTS
Ellsberg Urges Insiders to Leak Iraq Info
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION ACCIDENT AT FRENCH NUCLEAR FACILITY
GREENPEACE DEMANDS HALT TO U.S SHIPMENT PLANS
2004 September 10th Paris...
http://greenpeace.datapps.com/stop-plutonium/en/20040910_en.php3
An accident at a plutonium fuel facility in France should lead to the cancellation of plans to ship weapons-grade plutonium from the United States next week, Greenpeace stated today. The accident occurred at the 'ATPu' plutonium fuel (MOX) manufacturing plant at the Cadarache nuclear complex in the South of France. Two workers were contaminated when a container of plutonium and uranium leaked the nuclear material into the room they were working in. CEA has admitted that the accident was due to a violation of procedures, and is trying to decontaminate the building as well as running urgent health checks on the two workers.
The facility is operated by AREVA/Cogema and the CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) and has had many problems over the years of operation. The accident at the ATPU facility comes immediately before a shipment of U.S. military plutonium that is due to leave the port of Charleston, South Carolina next week. Two British nuclear freighters are currently heading for the east coast port and are due to arrive around September 15 th . The AtPu will be used for three months to manufacture MOX fuel before shipping it back to the United States.
"This accident in addition to exposing the workers to danger, exposes risks of producing dangerous plutonium MOX fuel. There are many reasons why the United States should not send its plutonium to France next week - but this accident demands an immediate end to U.S. plans. It also requires full disclosure by French nuclear safety authorities and industry on what exactly happened," said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International/Yannick Rousselet Greenpeace France.
Greenpeace will request expertise from the nuclear consultancy WISE-Paris in France to analyse this accident, currently described as level 1 on the international accident scale (INES). WISE-Paris has researched ATPu many years warning of the poor safety standards and blurry application of licensing regulations
Greenpeace is working to oppose the shipment, and stop the production of MOX fuel
More:
US Mox "Lead Test Assembly" Controversy : Fabrication at Cadarache, France - PDF http://greenpeace.datapps.com/stop-plutonium/en/BriefLTA.pdf
U.S MOX "Lead Test Assembly" Controversy: Fabrication at Cadarache, France - If too dangerous for European fuel, why just right for U.S. weapons plutonium? Briefing for Greenpeace International. WISE-Paris, 30 July 2003, version 1 - File in PDF format (16 p., 325 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ourbriefings_pdf/030729BriefLTA.env1b.pdf
Plutonium Investigation , "Special Cadarache", no. 20, April-May 2001. http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ournewsletter/20/contents.html
ATPu (Plutonium Technology Facility) at Cadarache WISE-Paris, 21 August 2000, version 4 - File in PDF format (11 p., 72 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ourbriefings_pdf/000821BriefCAD1v4.pdf Annexes (only in French) : File in PDF format (12 p., 843 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/francais/nosbriefings_pdf/AnnexesBriefCAD1v3.pdf
----
Chernobyl Children Have Normal Mental Function
Story by Karla Gale
REUTERS USA:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27047/story.htm
NEW YORK - The low level of radiation that occurred after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 did not appear to affect the mental performance of exposed children, researchers in Israel have found.
However, they observed that mothers who were pregnant at the time of the accident have children with above-average rates of hyperactivity, regardless of the level of radiation they were exposed to. The investigators therefore suggest that the hyperactivity may reflect heightened anxiety in mothers that was transferred to their offspring.
Studies of Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs during World War II showed that fetal exposure to high doses of radiation increased the risk of mental retardation and small head size. It was feared that prenatal and early childhood irradiation after the Chernobyl accident would have similar consequences, Dr. Gad Rennert and his team explain in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Rennert, of the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues studied 1629 children who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The children were either unborn or up to 4 years old at the time of the accident.
A total of 667 came from the highly exposed Gomel region, while 408 came from Mogilev and Kiev, which were only mildly exposed. The remaining 554 were from the non-exposed cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There was no relation between exposure to radiation and measures of intelligence or of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the researchers found. However, children of mothers who were pregnant at the time of the accident scored higher for ADHD, regardless of the exposure level.
"If you look at the accumulation of all the data, the only significant finding with regard to Chernobyl that repeats itself is the increase in thyroid cancer," Rennert told Reuters Health. "Other than that, it seems as if there was no major influence of the accident" on people's health.
"One thing we did see was this extreme degree of anxiousness among women who were pregnant at the time of accident," he continued.
"It was similar in those who were only 50 km away from the site and in those who were hundreds of kilometers away. What we see is not any influence of the exposure itself but the influence of the trauma that people experienced," he said.
The research is ongoing, Rennert noted. "We are closely following a cohort of more than 1000 individuals who were on clean-up teams. These were individuals who were put at the highest degree of risk. If they don't show any consequences of that exposure to low-level radiation, nothing will ever be shown."
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, September 2004.
-------- africa
Two Charged in S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A20
Craig Timberg and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10136-2004Sep9.html
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 9 -- A German man and his colleague appeared in court Thursday on charges of violating South Africa's ban against nuclear proliferation, according to news reports.
Gerhard Wisser, 66, is accused of receiving more than $1 million to arrange for a South African firm to manufacture parts for a gas centrifuge used to enrich uranium, according to the reports. Prosecutors say the parts were intended for Libya's atomic weapons program. Wisser had been arrested in Germany in late August and released on bail pending investigation.
The nationality of the other man, identified as Daniel Geiges, 65, was not immediately known.
The men, who were arrested in South Africa on Wednesday, work for Krisch Engineering, a company in Randburg, near Johannesburg. Wisser is managing director of the company. Their lawyers say they have denied any wrongdoing.
Authorities confirmed that the charges are related to the international investigation into the nuclear arms network led by a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who helped Libya and other countries develop weapons programs.
A third man, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, 53, was arrested last week on similar allegations, but prosecutors dropped the charges against him as part of a deal in which he is expected to cooperate with the investigation, officials said Wednesday. Police seized 11 shipping containers from Meyer's company, Trade Fin Engineering, that allegedly contained components used in building gas centrifuges.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is leading an investigation into the Khan network. "We're getting very good cooperation from the South African authorities," said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the agency.
-------- britain
Ireland: Cullen concerned over inadequate UK response to Sellafield
Friday, September 10, 2004,
Warford News, Ireland
http://www.waterford-news.ie/news/story.asp?j=15596
MARTIN Cullen, Minister for the Environment, has welcomed the decision of the European Commission to refer the UK to the European Court of Justice over concerns at Sellafield. "When the Commission gave the UK Government a June 1 deadline to respond, it vindicated the Irish Government's approach to Sellafield. The announcement that the UK is being brought to court reinforces our determination to ensure the safe closure of Sellafield," he said.
The Minister was commenting on the European Commission's decision which followed the inadequate response by the UK to concerns over the storage of nuclear material at the B30 pond at the Sellafield facility.
"I am also disappointed that, yet again, the UK is resisting the bringing of openness to the operations at Sellafield. It shows the UK's reluctance to change without been subjected to determined legal, political and diplomatic action.
"This attitude only adds to the mistrust of all operations at Sellafield," Minister Cullen continued.
"It is unacceptable that the UK has not assuaged European Commission concerns regarding the plutonium held at Sellafield and I will be asking the Attorney General what action we can take to support the Commission's case in court.
"The issue of access to information at Sellafield has been central to Ireland's two legal challenges to the UN Court of Arbitration. The decision is further evidence that the UK Government is struggling to cope with the legacy of 50 years of nuclear power," he concluded.
-------- europe
France's nuclear threat
10 SEPTEMBER 2004
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=773&name=France's+nuclear+threat+
Millions of people in France unknowingly share the same fate as the TV cartoon family The Simpsons: they have a nuclear power plant in their back yard. Pat Brett reports on the history and the risks of France's civil nuclear industry. France has 58 nuclear reactors housed in 19 plants dotted around the country, making it the second largest producer of nuclear power in the world, second only to the United States.
In December 1999, two days of severe storms swelled the river Gironde near Bordeaux until it finally broke a dike protecting the nuclear plant at Blayais. The area housing the primary cooling system, a vital part of each reactor's security apparatus, became flooded. The four reactors in the plant had to be urgently shut down.
A subsequent report by the government body responsible for nuclear plant security noted poor compliance with emergency safety procedures. More worrying still, it concluded that similar accidents were possible at 15 out of France's total of 19 nuclear plants.
The combined French authorites controlling nuclear power activities recently set up a scale to describe the gravity of any accident ocurring at a nuclear power station, ranking incidents from a minor "level -1" to a major "level -7". There are so many of these banal bulletins issued each year that they mostly pass unnoticed.
Many of the incidents described are minimal, but there are some significant anomolies which put a lie to the nuclear industry's argument that a major accident in France is unthinkable - and every major city in France lies close to a nuclear power plant.
The French government is now debating the building of a second generation of nuclear reactors, which would replace the existing systems due to end active service by 2020, with the introduction of a prototype European nuclear reactor (EPR) model for testing within the next eight years.
While officially no decision has been taken to continue with nuclear power, Junior Industry Minister Nicole Fontaine has publicly stated that "another choice would hardly be responsible".
It was the 1973 oil crisis, involving rationing and high prices, which spurred French politicians, across party lines, to clamour for energy independence. Nuclear power was unanimously declared as the one and only way to achieve that goal. In the process, it became a symbol of France's industrial might.
Today nuclear power supplies 75-80 percent of the French electricity board's output and about 20 percent of nuclear power produced is exported, even across the Channel to Britain.
Unstoppable in the 1970s and early 80s, every aspect of the nuclear industry flourished in France, spawning Framatom (constructor of reactors), the Cogema (which handles the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining, to uranium enrichment, to waste reprocessing), and Andra, (responsible for resolving one of the thorniest issues to face the industry : disposal and storage of radioactive waste).
Tucked away in a remote tip of the Cotentin coastline, at La Hague, in Normandy, France boasts the world's largest spent nuclear fuel (never say waste) reprocessing plant. With an annual capacity of 1,700 tonnes, the plant treats waste shipped not just from around France but also from other countries such as Germany or even Japan.
Anti-nuclear activists have been vocal with their claims that La Hague has made France "the nuclear waste dump of the planet". The Cogema, which runs the plant, argues that 97 percent of the reprocessed fuel is returned to the country of origin. But environmentalists dismiss this, claiming that the remaining 3 percent has the highest concentration of plutonium, hence of long-term, high-level radiation.
The powerful influence of the French nuclear industry took its first major blow with the explosion, in 1986, of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. The French authorities deliberately failed to notify the public that the radiation-filled cloud had fallen over France. No warnings were given that the highly dangerous radioactive pollution was, literally, raining over east and south eastern France.
The staggering excuse given for the information black-out was the fear of mass panic. It was only years later that the true extent of the cover-up, hidden by the shadow of the powerful nuclear lobby, was revealed through a parliamentary enquiry.
Following 1986, environmentalists established independent watchdog laboratories and nuclear monitoring bureaux, questioning official measurements.
The French nuclear industry is currently being restructured, largely into a single company called TOPCO. Led by the all-powerful nuclear industry "godfather", the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, the industry is now redefining its strategy beyond the French market. EDF has recently moved investment into foreign energy distributors, witnessed by its controversial bid for capital of Montedison, in Italy.
Besides France's 58 reactors, there are several experimental reactors, radioactive mines, enrichment plants, storage areas, and CEA research facilities that have mushroomed across the French countryside.
Not forgetting the waste-laden truck and train convoys, often travelling under escort at night on a route kept secret until the last minute and which, to get back to The Simpsons, could be crossing near anyone's backyard - as you read this.
Updated November 2003
----
EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND
Whitehaven News (UK),
Friday, September 10th, 2004
http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/business/viewarticle.asp?id=133663
WILD WEATHER: Harrington Pier, the scene of the tragedy at Harrington on March 15 THE murky waters of a radioactive waste pond at Sellafield are the subject of a legal row with the European Commission.
They have accused BNFL of failing to draw up an adequate plan to enable inspection of the B30 nuclear fuel ponds.
The European Commission is expected to start legal action before the European Court of Justice, claiming that the UK failed to provide proper information about material stored in Sellafield and did not give EU inspectors adequate access to the site.
Under the Euratom treaty, the UK is supposed to allow inspection of its nuclear materials, including the hundreds of magnox spent fuel rods corroding in the B30 ponds.
BNFL referred questions on the issue to the Department of Trade and Industry.
Nick Turton from the DTi said: "We share the commission's wish to ensure that the process of retrieving waste material from B30 includes appropriate arrangements to ensure nuclear materials can be accounted for and verified by the Commissions Safety Inspectorate."
He declined to be drawn further on why BNFL had been unable to satisfy the requests for inspection of B30.
MEANWHILE anti-nuclear campaigners CORE were last week monitoring the departure of an armed BNFL ship leaving Barrow to sail to the USA.
CORE claims the ship will be used to ferry plutonium from the USA to France, where the ex-weapons plutonium will be used to make MOX nuclear fuel assemblies.
Sellafield's own MOX facility is still being commissioned.
French company Areva issued this statement on Friday: "The Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, two UK-registered ships dedicated to the transport of nuclear materials, are leaving Barrow today for Charleston (United States).
"Their journey is part of a program being implemented by the United States Department Of Energy (USDOE) for the disposition of former weapons plutonium, by using it in a nuclear reactor for generating electricity.
"The programme starts with the manufacturing of four nuclear fuel assemblies in France.
"In Charleston, the plutonium for these assemblies will be loaded on board, in casks specially designed for the safe and secure transport of plutonium oxide.
"The ships will then leave for France, where the plutonium will be fabricated into nuclear fuel at the COGEMA sites of Cadarache and Marcoule.
"The shipment, as with all operations in this program, complies with national and international regulations. The shipping company involved has safely transported nuclear material over 4 million nautical miles without a single incident involving the release of radioactivity.
"The cargo will be protected by armed guards throughout its journey and the ships are equipped with naval guns."
-------- iran
Divisions remain between US and EU's Big Three on Iran's nuclear program
GENEVA (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910183246.3e7h2zg2.html
The United States and three major European countries were unable Friday to agree on how to tackle Iran's nuclear activities, but will continue talking over the weekend and at a UN atomic agency meeting next week, a top American official said.
A "tactical gap" between Washington and the so-called Euro 3 of Britain, France and Germany, over Iran -- which the United States believes is secretly developing nuclear weapons -- was narrowing, said John Bolton, US Under Secretary of State for arms control and international security.
But "we have a ways to go," he told a news conference in Geneva, following a US-hosted meeting with his counterparts from the other Group of Eightindustrialised countries.
"The objective that the United States has been pursuing has been to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapons capability and that is an objective shared by all of the G-8 countries," Bolton said.
"There is no disagreement on our broad objective. What we have tried to do here today and yesterday was to close the tactical gap that has existed between the United States and ... Britain France and Germany," he said.
"We made progress in that regard here ... I think discussions will continue over the weekend and into next week and we will see what we are able to do."
The US envoy declined, however, to say exactly what advances had been made.
"I do not want to really get into the specifics because the questions of closing the tactical gap I think are best addressed in private consultations," he said, adding that emails and telephone calls would follow Friday's talks.
The United States and the Euro 3 are preparing resolutions for Monday's meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that highlight their different approaches to dealing with Iran.
The Euro 3, which stress constructive engagement, want to avoid setting a deadline for Tehran to fully suspend uranium enrichment activities while the United States takes a harder line as it seeks to bring Iran before the UN Security Council.
"If we close the tactical gap we increase the likelihood that we can achieve our overall objective, which is to preclude the Iranians from achieving nuclear status and that really is what we want to focus on," said Bolton.
Iran's controversial bid to generate nuclear power at its Bushehr plant is seen by arch-enemies Israel and the United States as a cover for nuclear weapons development, allegations that Iran denies.
Government officials from the G8 countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- as well as other nations met in Geneva on Thursday to discuss non-proliferation issues.
This was followed by a regular monthly gathering on Friday of G8 members, who form a self-titled Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, hosted by Bolton.
Bolton said he was due to travel to Israel on Saturday for talks with officials about the upcoming IAEA meeting before returning to Washington.
Asked why Israel was treated differently to Iran with regard to the question of nuclear weapons development, Bolton said cases were incomparable as the United States has put Iran a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"The case of Iran is very different to Israel," he said.
"It is discrimination when you treat two like things in a dissimilar fashion. It is also discrimination when you treat two unlike things in the same fashion," he said.
Most foreign experts believe Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, although it has stuck for the past 40 years to a policy of "strategic ambiguity" of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear arsenal.
-------- japan
Japan nuclear accident will not affect fusion project bid: officials
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040810075215.tbbfurwc.html
Japan's latest accident at a nuclear power plant will have no impact on its bid to host the world's first prototype nuclear fusion reactor, Japanese and French officials said Tuesday.
A science and technology ministry official said the non-radioactive accident, in which four workers were killed by escaping steam, was unrelated to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) bid.
"This is totally unrelated," Takashio Hayashi told AFP. "These are two completely separate things."
Seven workers were also injured, two critically, by super-heated steam when a pipe burst Monday in the turbine room of the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in central Japan.
Japan and the European Union are vying to host the 10 billion dollar experimental test-bed for what is being billed as a clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future, in a project that also includes China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The European bloc wants to host the project at the southern French town of Cadarache, near Marseille and has reportedly won support from China and Russia.
South Korea and the United States appear to prefer the Japanese site, in the northern village of Rokkasho-mura.
Dominique Ochem, the nuclear counsellor at the French embassy in Tokyo, also said the Mihama accident would have no bearing on the outcome of the competition to host ITER.
"I do not believe that this will prejudice the Japanese bid," he said.
The decision on the winner, which must be by consensus among the six partners, would be a "political decision, not scientific, and the partners are not ready to change their mind," Ochem said, referring to the deadlock in discussions.
The choice of the site must be made by consensus, and not by a simple majority, partly because all parties will be required to fund the reactor which will cost roughly five billion dollars to build and another five billion to run over 20 years.
-------- korea
South Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
Eastday
September 10, 2004
http://english.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper1/1388/class000100006/hwz211295.htm
Again astonishing the world, South Korean government admitted Thursday several scientists secretly extracted a minimal amount of plutonium during a research experiment in 1982.
The acknowledgment came one week after Seoul's announcement that few South Korean researchers conducted enriched uranium separation experiment four years ago.
The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology confirmed on Thursday afternoon that "several milligrams" of plutonium were extracted from about 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel rods at a 2-megawatt research reactor in the state-run (South) Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) between April and May in 1982.
The chief scientist of the experiment was already dead, other participants said they wanted to study "post-irradiation characteristics" of material and that the purely academic experiment had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
The ministry also said the amount of extracted plutonium was too little to be related to nuclear weapons. However, there was no record on the exact amount of the plutonium extracted by the scientists, according to the ministry.
However, the reactor located in Nonwon District of Seoul is in the final stage of dismantlement, said the ministry.
Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
After receiving reports from the South Korean government on the two experiments, the IAEA dispatched a seven-member inspection team to visit South Korea last week.
It investigated the plutonium case as well as the uranium enrichment experiment. Scientists who participated in the plutonium extraction were also questioned.
Although South Korean senior officials and related authorities underscored both of the two experiments are academic ones and had nothing to do with any nuclear weapon development program, international and local media still paid great attention to the two cases.
Media widely wondered why the two group of scientists could conducted such kind of experiments restricted by the IAEA without informing the Seoul government.
The two cases also aroused various speculation over Seoul's nuclear capability, although the South Korean government stressed either the uranium or the plutonium made in the experiments was much lower than the weapon grade.
Some media speculated that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program.
South Korea has categorically denied those speculations, saying as a member of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and IAEA Safeguard Agreement, South Korea will firmly stood by its non- proliferation commitment and maintained a high level of transparency in nuclear activity.
South Korea once had a clandestine nuclear weapon program in the 1970s, when the United States slashed the US Forces Korea from 60,000 to 40,000.
Then South Korean president Park Chung-hee instructed several scientists to secretly develop nuclear weapons thus to enhance South Korea's deterrent power against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
But South Korea stopped the program both due to US heavy pressure and the death of Park in 1979.
According to the ministry, the plutonium case is also likely to be reported to the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting scheduled for next week, along with the uranium case.
Local media also worried the exposure of the two experiments may cast a shadow on the six-party talks which aim to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
The DPRK's envoy to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, told the South Korean national news agency Yonhap that Pyongyang found the United States "worthless" as a dialogue partner because it was applying "double standards" to South Korea and the DPRK on the nuclear issue.
"We see South Korea's uranium enrichment experiment in the context of an arms race in Northeast Asia," Han was quoted as saying.
However, the South Korean government expressed confidence over the nuclear talks. "I don't think Han Song-ryol's remarks indicate that North Korea (DPRK) will not attend the fourth round of the six-way talks," Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said at a weekly press briefing earlier Thursday.
----
S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium
Acknowledgment of '82 Test Follows Disclosure on Uranium
By Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9761-2004Sep9?language=printer
SEOUL, Sept. 10 -- The South Korean government acknowledged Thursday that it extracted a small amount of plutonium during a 1982 research experiment, a declaration that came a week after the country acknowledged its scientists had secretly enriched uranium.
Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said the agency had begun to suspect that South Korea was conducting nuclear experiments more than six years ago and said South Korean officials had worked hard to hide the experiments from inspectors.
"They had a fairly elaborate plan involving denial and deception in order to evade detection by inspectors," said one diplomat who would discuss the agency's investigation only on condition of anonymity.
South Korean Foreign Ministry officials called those accusations "groundless and unsubstantiated" and said they had fully cooperated with inspectors and would continue to do so.
In Washington, U.S. officials said they gave a clear message to South Korea this week that they consider the charges to be serious and would apply the same standards to any country found to be violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
That message, which diplomats said would be repeated next week in Vienna at a board meeting of the IAEA, was meant to assuage concerns that the United States was applying a double standard by pushing for tough action against North Korea and Iran, which have also been accused of conducting clandestine nuclear work.
The IAEA believes that South Korea's work on plutonium and uranium -- the key ingredients for nuclear weapons -- seriously violated the treaty and that the matter could be referred to the U.N. Security Council in November, diplomats said.
One diplomat familiar with the IAEA's work said that despite South Korea's official denials, uranium was secretly enriched in 2000 to nearly bomb-grade levels and the other experiment was optimized to produce bomb-grade plutonium. On Friday, South Korean officials again disputed that their experiments had reached anywhere near bomb-grade levels.
South Korea, which derives 40 percent of its energy from nuclear power, contends that all the tests were one-time research efforts unrelated to weapons programs.
The IAEA announced last week that it had launched an intensive investigation after South Korea belatedly admitted to enriching a small amount of uranium during three experiments in January and February of 2000 -- tests that diplomats and experts said the South Korean government was required to report under terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
North Korea, which has been pressured by the United States about its nuclear program, reacted quickly to the report on South Korea. On Wednesday, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, said the Bush administration had a "double standard" on the Korean Peninsula and warned of a budding "nuclear arms race" in northeast Asia.
North Korea expelled international inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty about two years ago, and U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe the North Koreans have now amassed an arsenal of up to eight nuclear devices. After three rounds of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear program in Beijing, the Pyongyang government and the Bush administration have not significantly changed their negotiating positions. Analysts are concerned about progress in the talks, predicting they may be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election in November.
"This gives another reason for North Korea to raise the issue of fairness with the international community," said Jhe Sung Ho, professor of law at Joongang University in Seoul. "They are going to claim that Washington is pressing them while giving South Korea a break."
South Korea conducted nuclear weapons research during the 1970s but is believed to have abandoned it under U.S. pressure before the end of the decade. One South Korean official familiar with the government's report to the IAEA on the 1982 plutonium experiment said details of the test remained sketchy but insisted there was no indication it had been related to a weapons program.
"This experiment was conducted by a small group of scientists to analyze the chemical characteristics of plutonium," the Science and Technology Ministry said in a statement. "We have no written data left on the result of the experiment and the amount of plutonium extracted, but we estimate that a very minute amount in the range of milligrams was extracted." But one South Korean official familiar with the findings said if the experiment had taken place today, "the government would not have allowed it."
The first indication of a plutonium experiment came to light in 1998 after international inspectors detected traces of the substance at a government-run nuclear research center in Seoul, according to the South Korean science ministry. IAEA sources said the samples were inconclusive, and inspectors began additional testing in other areas of the country. The South Korean government said the IAEA made only a "casual inquiry" by fax in 1998 and submitted an official request about the incident in 2003.
During that work, the South Koreans allegedly dismantled a test site, moved equipment and failed to notify the IAEA about the experiments while they knew the agency was trying to determine whether such tests had been conducted, according to the diplomats. By 2003, inspectors had collected irrefutable evidence of plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, and they confronted the South Koreans with it last December.
The Seoul government submitted a report on the plutonium incident this March, but the report faced delays and problems, officials said, because the key researcher on the project had died. An official familiar with the case would not identify the researcher and could not cite the date of his death.
The IAEA has identified six violations by the South Koreans that could be reported to the Security Council.
The plutonium experiment took place during political turmoil in South Korea following the 1980 military coup by former president Chun Doo Hwan, who left office with the return to democracy in 1987. The South Koreans said they were unsure if the IAEA would declare the plutonium test in violation of international laws. They disclosed information about the plutonium experiment after the Associated Press quoted an unnamed senior Bush administration official in Washington, who gave details.
"We haven't found out the accurate purpose of the experiment, because the head of the research project at that time has passed away," said one South Korean official familiar with the plutonium test.
But Shin Sung Tack, a nuclear expert at the government-run Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, said, "You need at least 10 kilograms of plutonium to make low- level weapons grade." That is far beyond what the South Koreans said their scientists produced. High-ranking South Korean officials insisted they did not know about the uranium enrichment experiments until lower-level government administrators informed them in February.
Linzer reported from Washington. Special correspondent Johee Cho contributed to this report.
----
Rumsfeld surprised by secret South Korean nuclear research
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910203210.ns88u1kr.html
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday he was surprised to learn that South Korea once had clandestine programs to enrich uranium and extract plutonium but said he doubted Seoul now had any secret nuclear capability.
The South Korean government revealed the secret nuclear research on key ingredients for nuclear weapons in a series of embarrassing public admissions over the past week.
The research, conducted as recently as 1982, is the subject of an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"I was surprised," Rumsfeld told an audience at the National Press Club here.
"It does not make any difference at all in terms of the security situation on the peninsula," he said.
"And I would certainly doubt that the current government has any clandestine nuclear capability in South Korea. We know that the North Koreans have announced that they do," he said.
A State Department spokesman earlier said the United States did not regard the South Korea research as nuclear weapons activities, only "laboratory experiments."
----
South Korea nuclear case likely to go to U.N. Security Council
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Carol Giacomo,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-10/s_27106.asp
WASHINGTON - South Korea is likely to be referred to the U.N. Security Council for conducting an unsanctioned uranium enrichment experiment four years ago, according to U.S. officials.
South Korea acknowledged last week that scientists from the state-run Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute enriched a trace amount of uranium in three laser tests conducted in January and February 2000.
Western diplomats in Vienna have said the level of enrichment accomplished was close to weapons-grade, but South Korea's top nuclear scientist said that was speculation.
Although Seoul's activities are still being investigated and the Bush administration has not made a final decision on possible action, "I don't see any way not to refer South Korea to the Security Council," said one senior official.
The goal is not to punish one of Washington's key allies but to ensure a consistent approach on nonproliferation, he and other officials said.
The United States has been urging the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to send Iran's case to the Security Council as a means of forcing Tehran to abandon its suspect nuclear activities. Washington charges Tehran uses its civilian atomic energy program as a front to develop the bomb, which Iran vehemently denies.
The IAEA board meets next week in Vienna, with Iran the main topic. South Korean officials are also expected to be present.
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for signatories who engage in impermissible activities to be declared in noncompliance by the IAEA and their cases referred to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
New Acknowledgment
On Thursday, the South Korean government acknowledged its scientists had extracted a small amount of plutonium in a one-time experiment in 1982. Plutonium is used to make nuclear weapons.
A senior State Department official, explaining the U.S. view, said, "Our understanding is that in the early 1980s the South Koreans did some experiments involving trace amounts of plutonium."
But officials and experts said the United States intervened at the time and the program was shut down.
Seoul has insisted it has no nuclear weapons program. But the revelation is awkward because the South has been a partner with the United States in six-party talks aimed at persuading rival North Korea to abandon nuclear programs that U.S. officials say may have produced material for eight nuclear weapons.
A North Korean envoy told the South's Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday Seoul's uranium experiment is a "dangerous movement" that could trigger a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia.
U.S. officials said once an IAEA investigation of South Korean activities is completed, the administration would make its final judgment.
"If there is no evidence that the experiment was associated with a weapons program, then (the IAEA) would report the violation (to the U.N. Security Council) for informational purposes, not for action," one official said.
Another U.S. official said this process "may result in a mild rebuke (of South Korea) by the president of the Security Council and a slap-on-the-wrist type of thing. That would be something we could live with as long as it's not anything punitive."
The Security Council took similar action with Libya this year and Romania in the 1990s after both countries admitted to nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty violations.
To treat South Korea differently "would be inconsistent because technically, they were in violation" of the treaty, one U.S. official said.
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters the U.S. "understanding is that all these activities were in the past," but it is important for the IAEA to "do a thorough job" in its probe and make "clear they have not occurred again and that they will not occur again."
----
S. Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
2004-09-10
Xinhuanet,
By Wang Mian
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/10/content_1964035.htm
SEOUL, Sept. 9 -- Again astonishing the world, South Korean government admitted Thursday several scientists secretly extracted a minimal amount of plutonium during a research experiment in 1982.
The acknowledgment came one week after Seoul's announcement that few South Korean researchers conducted enriched uranium separation experiment four years ago.
The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology confirmed on Thursday afternoon that "several milligrams" of plutonium were extracted from about 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel rods at a 2-megawatt research reactor in the state-run (South) Korean AtomicEnergy Research Institute (KAERI) between April and May in 1982.
The chief scientist of the experiment was already dead, other participants said they wanted to study "post-irradiation characteristics" of material and that the purely academic experiment had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
The ministry also said the amount of extracted plutonium was too little to be related to nuclear weapons. However, there was no record on the exact amount of the plutonium extracted by the scientists, according to the ministry.
However, the reactor located in Nonwon District of Seoul is in the final stage of dismantlement, said the ministry.
Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
After receiving reports from the South Korean government on thetwo experiments, the IAEA dispatched a seven-member inspection team to visit South Korea last week.
It investigated the plutonium case as well as the uranium enrichment experiment. Scientists who participated in the plutonium extraction were also questioned.
Although South Korean senior officials and related authorities underscored both of the two experiments are academic ones and had nothing to do with any nuclear weapon development program, international and local media still paid great attention to the two cases.
Media widely wondered why the two group of scientists could conducted such kind of experiments restricted by the IAEA without informing the Seoul government.
The two cases also aroused various speculation over Seoul's nuclear capability, although the South Korean government stressed either the uranium or the plutonium made in the experiments was much lower than the weapon grade.
Some media speculated that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program.
South Korea has categorically denied those speculations, sayingas a member of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and IAEA Safeguard Agreement, South Korea will firmly stood by its non-proliferation commitment and maintained a high level of transparency in nuclear activity.
South Korea once had a clandestine nuclear weapon program in the 1970s, when the United States slashed the US Forces Korea from60,000 to 40,000.
Then South Korean president Park Chung-hee instructed several scientists to secretly develop nuclear weapons thus to enhance South Korea's deterrent power against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
But South Korea stopped the program both due to US heavy pressure and the death of Park in 1979.
According to the ministry, the plutonium case is also likely tobe reported to the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting scheduled for next week, along with the uranium case.
Local media also worried the exposure of the two experiments may cast a shadow on the six-party talks which aim to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
The DPRK's envoy to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, told theSouth Korean national news agency Yonhap that Pyongyang found the United States "worthless" as a dialogue partner because it was applying "double standards" to South Korea and the DPRK on the nuclear issue.
"We see South Korea's uranium enrichment experiment in the context of an arms race in Northeast Asia," Han was quoted as saying.
However, the South Korean government expressed confidence over the nuclear talks. "I don't think Han Song-ryol's remarks indicatethat North Korea (DPRK) will not attend the fourth round of the six-way talks," Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said at a weekly press briefing earlier Thursday.
----
6-Party Nuke Talks Not Likely in Sept.
09-10-2004
By Yoon Won-sup
Korea Times Staff Reporter
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200409/kt2004091017021110510.htm
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the next round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuke crisis, slated for late this month, are looking more and more unlikely to take place this month as originally expected.
``Under the current situation, it is hard to be optimistic about whether the six-nation talks can be held in the near future,'' Ban said in a meeting with a group of political editors of major newspapers and broadcasters at the Press Center in central Seoul.
Ban's statement came amid the current strained relations between Pyongyang and Washington despite ongoing efforts to keep the multilateral talks afloat.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, Seoul's chief negotiator of the talks, met with his Japanese counterpart Mitoji Yabunaka and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to coordinate their position on the nuclear issue in Tokyo Sept. 9-10.
The preparatory meetings for the main six-party talks were originally planned for last month to work out details ahead of the fourth round of nuclear discussion but Pyongyang had refused to attend the working-level meeting.
At the last six-way talks in June, South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia agreed to meet again before the end of September to solve the North's nuclear weapons program.
However, doubts have grown recently over the outlook of the multilateral discussion as Pyongyang issued a series of statements accusing Washington of trying to use the dialogue as a means to overthrow its government. According to experts, Pyongyang is seeking to delay the nuclear negotiations until after the U.S. presidential race, hoping that President George W. Bush is voted out.
The foreign minister, however, urged North Korea to make its own decision on how to resolve the nuclear deadlock considering that the United States' stance over the communist regime will not drastically change regardless of who is elected in the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election.
Another stumbling block to the six-way talks emerged recently as Seoul admitted it had conducted secret nuclear experiments: plutonium-based nuclear experiments in 1982 and uranium enrichment tests in 2000.
North Korea accused the South of accelerating a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, indicating it may make use of the issue to delay or boycott the six-party talks. Han Song-ryol, the North's envoy to the U.N. in New York went further, saying, ``The U.S. is worthless as a dialogue partner as it has clearly applied double standards to the two Koreas.''
In response, Ban said, ``South Korea has never had a nuclear development programs and has never conducted research on nuclear weapons. We provided all the details involving the tests to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).''
South Korea's nuclear experiments have nothing to do with the North's nuclear weapons programs because the South, as a member state of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has been open to IAEA's inspection, Ban added.
The minister also objected to some foreign media's reports that Seoul's nuclear test should be reviewed by the U.N. Security Council, hoping the issue is dealt with by the IAEA as the international agency will hold a Board of Governors meeting Monday.
-------- mideast
Bush waives nuclear sanction on Libya
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910201942.d4fe2kdy.html
US President George W. Bush on Friday rewarded Tripoli for pledging to abandon its nuclear weapons quest by giving the green light to monies for promoting US exports to Libya.
In a memorandum for US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush acknowledged that Libya was in violation of a US law that would curtail such aid because Tripoli received technology meant to help it produce atomic weapons.
"I hereby determine and certify that the continued termination of assistance, as required by this section, would have a serious adverse effect on vital United States interests and that I have received reliable assurances that Libya will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons or assist other nations in doing so," the president wrote.
"It is in the national interest for the Export-Import Bank to guarantee, insure or extend credit or participate in the extension of credit in support of United States exports to Libya," he said in the statement, which the White House made public.
The United States hopes to wrap up, this month, ongoing talks that could effectively lead to declaring Libya free of weapons of mass destruction, a State Department official said September 1.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States hoped to tell Tripoli that it had a "reasonable degree of confidence" that Libya had met the commitment it made in December 2003 to dismantle its nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs.
Bush lifted most sanctions against Libya in April and there is now a permanent US diplomatic presence in Tripoli for the first time since the early 1980s.
In May, Libya drew warm US praise when it announced it had decided to renounce all arms trade with states accused of weapons of mass destruction proliferation.
However, US sanctions related to Libya's alleged support for terrorist groups remain in place as the country remains designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism."
-------- u.n.
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
September 10, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040909-115659-4549r.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).
Last of three excerpts
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister, delivered a memorable address to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Dec. 16, 2003.
Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, began his remarks by noting the historic capture, three days earlier, of Saddam Hussein. Then, after laying out a plan for Iraq to become a democracy, the foreign minister lowered the boom on the assembled diplomats.
"One year ago," Zebari said, "this Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wantedto hold him accountable. The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today, we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.
"The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again," he said. It was clear to whom Zebari was referring: France, Germany, Russia and China, among others in the world body, fought U.S.-led efforts to end Saddam's bloody dictatorship.
But the organization's failure was far more significant than failing the Iraqi people. The United Nations had failed in its founding purpose: to preserve peace and international security.
It appeased Saddam for years before the United States called for decisive action.
And Saddam's Iraq is just one of many rogue regimes that the United Nations has failed to keep in check. Again and again, dangerous states have built up their militaries and weapons programs right under the world body's nose, despite sanctions and anti-proliferation agreements.
Sleeping watchdog
Three times, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency missed the covert nuclear-arms programs of rogue regimes, allowing those states to build deadly weapons capability under the guise of generating nuclear power.
Disclosures of the nuclear progress of North Korea, Libya and Iran came in rapid succession, within the space of about a year. If the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not detect these programs, one must wonder what purpose the U.N. branch serves.
The United Nations established the IAEA in 1957 to help countries build nuclear facilities for generating electricity. Its initial program, Atoms for Peace, quickly became "Atoms for Bombs." And not much has changed in the past five decades, except the size of the program.
Today, the IAEA has about 2,200 staff members at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and at four regional offices in Geneva, New York, Toronto and Tokyo. Its budget for 2004 was $268.5 million.
The IAEA's statutory purpose is to assist in transferring expertise and equipment for the "peaceful" use of nuclear power. The international agency also is charged with making sure that nations do not divert equipment or material for nuclear-energy development into weapons programs.
Specifically, Section 5 of the empowering statute directs the IAEA to "establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities and information made available by the agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose."
But the IAEA has not administered appropriate safeguards. And as a result, it has been fooled again and again by states such as North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria and Iraq.
The centerpiece of the IAEA's work has been the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, which went into effect on March 5, 1970.
Korean threat
Rogue states generally sign international agreements only if doing so is expedient. Nothing better illustrates this point than North Korea.
The NPT provided cover for North Korea's secret nuclear-weapons programs, allowing Pyongyang to purchase equipment, train technicians and build reactors.
North Korea was one of the agreement's 188 signatories when, in the fall of 2002, the communist regime of Kim Jong-il revealed that it secretly had been developing nuclear weapons.
The IAEA failed to anticipate or uncover North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. The agency admitted as much last year, when it reported: "The agency has never had the complete picture regarding [North Korean] nuclear activities."
Pyongyang froze plutonium production as part of a 1994 pact with the United States known as the Agreed Framework. But the CIA noted in 1995, in a classified Special National Intelligence Estimate: "Based on North Korea's past behavior, the [intelligence] community agrees it would dismantle its known program [only] if it had covertly developed another source of fissile material."
Sure enough, North Korea's disclosure in October 2002 of its uranium-enrichment activity confirmed that Pyongyang was trying to build nuclear bombs. In essence, Kim and the North Koreans were announcing that membership in the NPT had been a ruse all along.
Still, the IAEA did not take a hard line with Kim. It responded to the disclosure by sending faxes requesting "clarification." The North Koreans ignored the request.
Saber-rattling
The IAEA adopted a resolution calling on Pyongyang to cooperate. The North Koreans responded with a letter saying that they rejected the U.N. agency's unfair and unilateral approach.
The director of North Korea's nuclear program, Ri Je-son, stated in a letter dated Dec. 4, 2002, that Pyongyang would resume nuclear work if the United States did not resume oil shipments to North Korea.
Then, on Jan. 10, 2003, North Korea unceremoniously abandoned its partners in the NPT. In a broadcast on Kim's state radio, government commentator Jong Pong-kil said the decision to pull out was a defensive measure:
"The United States trampled on the NPT and the [North Korean]-U.S. Agreed Framework and is trying to crush us by all means," Jong declared. "By even mobilizing the IAEA, the United States is compelling us to give up the right of self-defense. Under such conditions, it is clear to everyone that we cannot let the country's security and the nation's dignity be infringed upon by remaining in the NPT treaty."
Jong then added a threat: "If the U.S. imperialists and their following forces challenge our republic's withdrawal from the NPT with new pressure and sanctions, we will respond with a stronger self-defensive measure."
In other words, the North Koreans, who already had shown that their membership in the NPT was a ruse, were announcing that they would keep building nuclear arms. The IAEA's response to Jong's announcement was tantamount to appeasement. Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said North Korea must return to the NPT.
Then, during a meeting with U.S. senators, ElBaradei said: "If North Korea were to show good behavior, they need to get some assurance as to what to expect in return for good behavior, and I think that's very important in articulation of what to expect in case of compliance."
It did not matter that the North Koreans openly admitted defying the IAEA for years; ElBaradei sent the message that the international arms-control agency would impose no penalty.
The matter was sent to the U.N. Security Council, but that body did little more than express "deep concern" for the violations. The United States picked up its diplomatic approach, which produced no results. North Korea continues its drive for nuclear arms.
Iran and Libya
The United Nations also failed to confront the nuclear threat from Iran, which, like North Korea, used the NPT to acquire equipment and materials to make nuclear bombs.
When Iran's weapons work was discovered, showing that the Iranians knowingly ignored obligations to their treaty partners, the IAEA essentially ignored the violations. The agency sought only an additional "protocol" from Iran as a new safeguard.
"This is a good day for peace, multilateralism and nonproliferation," ElBaradei declared after Iran signed the protocol. "A good day for peace because the [IAEA] board decided to continue to make every effort to use verification and diplomacy to resolve questions about Iran's nuclear program."
But "verification and diplomacy" failed to stop Iran from developing nuclear arms in the first place. Despite pressure from security officials within the Bush administration, ElBaradei refused to cite Iran for breaking its obligations.
Moreover, the IAEA did not keep careful watch over Libya's nuclear-weapons program, which was further along than both U.S. intelligence or the U.N. agency had known.
When Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi publicly disclosed his weapons program in December 2003, the IAEA knew nothing about it. The agency said Libya should have reported its activities to the IAEA.
The IAEA was happy to report Tripoli's decision to eliminate "materials, equipment and programs which lead to the production of internationally proscribed weapons."
But the agency tried to minimize its failure to discover the program. It noted that a Libyan official characterized his nation's uranium-enrichment program as "at an early stage of development" and that "no industrial-scale facility had been built, nor any enriched uranium produced."
Algeria long since had launched its own nuclear-arms program in response to the military buildup by neighbor Libya, with which it had tense relations, reflecting how weapons proliferation only breeds further proliferation.
U.S. intelligence agencies in the spring of 1991 detected the first signs that Algeria was developing nuclear weapons with the assistance of China.
'New urgency'
The ultimate threat to peace is nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorists.
There is a real danger that terrorists could use nuclear materials in radiological attacks, or "dirty bombs." Worse, terrorists would use them in a nuclear blast that could kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
To his credit, the IAEA's ElBaradei has begun to worry about this threat.
"[Nuclear] source security has taken on a new urgency since 9/11," the U.N. arms agency's director general said in a speech last year. "There are millions of radiological sources used throughout the world. Most are very weak. What we are focusing on is preventing the theft or loss of control of the powerful radiological sources."
The fact is, al Qaeda and the world's other most lethal terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear arms.
The United Nations' record of failure to detect and halt nuclear threats posed by rogue states, however, casts doubt on its ability to grapple with such arms in the grip of shadowy terrorist groups.
----
Eight-Year UN Disarmament Stalemate Continues
by Gustavo Capdevila
Inter Press Service
September 10, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/capdevila.php?articleid=3540
GENEVA - The stalemate continues in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which for the eighth year in a row ended its annual sessions this week without reaching an agreement on a working program among its 66 member states.
The CD works by consensus, which means it cannot undertake new work without the agreement of all of the member states.
The deadlock in the multilateral negotiating body reflects the current imbalance in international relations, in which the United States enjoys immense political and military power.
In terms of military arsenals, a wide gap separates the United States from the rest of the countries in the world, which is reflected in the negotiations within the CD, said a Latin American diplomat who asked not to be named.
Patricia Lewis, director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said the continuing impasse in the CD has to do with the expectations surrounding the Nov. 2 presidential elections in the United States.
In May, at the third session of the preparatory committee for the 2005 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was held in New York, the Arab countries were reluctant to grant concessions to the United States "on the grounds that if they are changing government in November, why give anything now," said Lewis.
She also noted that the Democratic Party presidential candidate, John Kerry, has clearly indicated that if he wins, there will be a change in the U.S. attitude towards the negotiations in the CD. She added, however, that "there would have to be a change" in Congress, especially the Senate, to get any treaty ratified.
The United States holds the key to overcoming the stalemate in the CD, which is waiting for a decision by Washington to jump-start a process that came to a standstill in 1996, after the successful debate on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) - the last document agreed at the Conference.
Authorities in the United States must decide whether they support the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons (the Fissile Material Treaty or FMT), although they do not want a regime for verification of compliance.
The U.S. delegate, Jackie Sanders, confounded the CD when she announced on July 29 that her government had reached the conclusion that an effective FMT verification regime was not feasible.
Since then, the U.S. delegates have not explained to the CD just how they envision an FMT without a verification regime - the point that continues to paralyze talks on the rest of the issues.
When the Cold War came to an end, the United States vigorously pushed for the FMT, because like other nations, it shared the concern over where the stocks of fissile materials in the arsenals and laboratories of the countries of the former Soviet Union, which fell apart in 1991, would end up.
But after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the United States modified its arms control policy and began to downplay the importance of verification regimes for international treaties.
The Moscow Treaty, which in 2002 required Russia and the United States to reduce their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by 2012, has no verification regime.
The same is true of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, because the United States blocked agreement on a verification regime in November 2001.
Lewis pointed out to IPS that the United States was "not interested in the verification of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" - a reference to the March 2003 invasion of that country led by Washington, based on the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found.
The head of UNIDIR also believes the United States is no longer even interested in the FMT, which is currently bogging down progress in the CD.
"Another thing that is quite clear from the U.S. approach is that they - this particular administration - are not interested in treaties," she argued.
Adoption of the FMT would primarily affect countries with nuclear arsenals: the five nuclear powers - China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia - as well as India, Israel and Pakistan. The rest of the world's countries are controlled by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
If the FMT or a similar accord goes into effect, the five nuclear powers would be allowed to keep their weapons, but on the condition that they cut off production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, on which there is already basically a de facto moratorium among the five, Lewis pointed out.
But India and Pakistan "are still producing fissile material for weapons," she added. "So the question is how long it will take for them to build their stocks."
Israel, meanwhile, is a different case, because "as far as we know it is not producing weapons," she added. But if the FMT were to enter into effect, the verification regime would require it to open up its records on its decades-long nuclear program
That "would be very dangerous for Israel. I think this may be one of the key points that people are concerned about," said Lewis.
"Israel is very sensitive on this issue because India and Pakistan have declared themselves to have nuclear weapons. Israel has never done that," she noted.
The FMT is holding up progress in the CD on an issue that is very costly for China and Russia: the prevention of an arms race in outer space.
Nor has there been progress on the most pressing issues for the non-aligned countries, like nuclear disarmament and security guarantees for non-nuclear-weapon states.
The inertia of the negotiations has hurt the prestige and credibility of the CD, which does not strictly belong to the UN system, but uses the services of the world body's secretariat in its Geneva headquarters.
Critics say the CD acts like "an exclusive golf club, or like a gentlemen's club in London or New York," said Lewis.
In his closing message to the period of sessions Tuesday, the rotating president of the CD, Burmese delegate U Mya Than, said he believed that it is "the best club in the city" because it has "the best brains" representing the most refined traditions of multilateral diplomacy.
But Chilean delegate Juan Martabit acknowledged that an eight-year impasse has hurt the reputation of the CD, and that "legitimate questions about its future" have been raised.
He also stated that security and peace are not achieved by building up nuclear arsenals.
The real threats to peace, said Martabit, are the developing world's lack of funds to confront poverty and hunger.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Rocky Flats whistleblower Brever talks Colorado U
By RICHARD VALENTY
Colorado Daily Staff Writer
September 10, 2004
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2004/09/03/news/news02.txt
The former Rocky Flats plutonium trigger production site could be open for human recreation as a National Wildlife Refuge in the near future, and while many government officials say the site will be safe for visitors or employees, one former Flats employee says the site should be closed forever.
Jacque Brever began working at Rocky Flats in 1982, and on Thursday visited CU-Boulder as a guest speaker before CU instructor Adrienne Anderson's "Environmental Ethics: Race, Class and Pollution Politics" class.
On June 6, 1989, Brever was working at the Flats when FBI agents raided the facility in search of information about alleged plutonium-related environmental crimes.
"It was mass chaos," said Brever, adding that she and many other employees didn't know why the FBI paid its early-morning visit.
Brever said she learned that one reason for the raid was to investigate alleged illegal plutonium waste incineration at Building 771, and became concerned that she might be in legal trouble because she took part in the burning as an employee.
According to Brever, she asked Flats management for documented records of her activities, and the managers took her into an office and asked her which documents she needed.
"Inadvertently, I was giving them an idea of which documents they needed to destroy," said Brever.
Brever cooperated with FBI agents on site, leading some Flats employees to believe she be responsible for the plant's closure and cost them their jobs. Brever said somebody within the plant sabotaged her "glovebox," exposing her to radiation. Her phone was tapped, she said, and people threw rocks at her windows.
A special grand jury Flats investigation ended in 1992, and Rockwell International, the plant operator at the time, was fined $18 million, a sum that Brever described as equal to the bonus money Rockwell received from the federal government while the plant was under investigation.
Brever said she then had "resignation papers shoved in my face," and went into hiding shortly thereafter.
In 2001, Brever said she got a phone call from attorney Caron Balkany, who was trying to get Brever to talk about the Flats. Brever said she didn't want to do it, but Balkany told her there were plans to turn the Flats into a refuge, which made Brever decide to become active in opposing the project.
Balkany and grand jury foreman Wes McKinley wrote a book called "The Ambushed Grand Jury," released in 2004, with Brever's story featured prominently.
Today, Brever is trying to raise awareness about the possibility Flats visitors could still be exposed to radiation after a DOE / Kaiser-Hill Company site cleanup is completed.
Brever said she believes there are at least two areas on the Flats site that DOE has excluded from the cleanup. She said she and other employees used to dump "four-liter bottles" of contaminated water into an area called the 771 "Duck Pond" because employees called the activity "feeding the ducks."
A Sept. 1 DOE release said the Duck Pond is the same pond referred to as "Bowman's Pond," which DOE says is being "remediated." Brever does not believe the two ponds are the same.
Brever submitted a 2004 document to DOE about possible contaminated areas, and a Sept. 1 response from DOE project director Joseph Legare said, "no new information about ... environmental contamination at the site is contained in your paper."
Brever disagrees, and suggested to Anderson's students that they should study the issue and oppose opening the refuge to humans.
"If we accept one inch, we accept it all. I think we should shut it down now," said Brever.
-------- nevada
Nevada Sues Again to Block Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository
September 10, 2004
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-10-03.asp
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval filed a new lawsuit Wednesday in another bid to derail the federal government's plan to build a massive nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The suit directly challenges the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) transportation plan for nuclear waste shipments to the proposed repository.
The suit contends the plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act, the Interstate Commerce Act, and regulations set forth by the Council on Environmental Quality, the Surface Transportation Board and the Energy Department itself.
The plan, announced by the DOE in April, would bring nuclear waste mostly by train from 127 sites across the nation to the repository in Yucca Mountain.
The facility, some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the intended destination for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from Defense Department sites and spent nuclear fuel from the 103 operating nuclear reactors across the United States.
In order to connect the Yucca Mountain site with an existing rail line, the plan will require the construction of a rail spur at Caliente, Nevada and a 319-mile rail line between the two sites.
Caliente is located 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas in the eastern portion of Nevada near the state's border with Utah.
The DOE has no right to take the lead in the new rail project, according to the suit.
The department did not even contact the federal Surface Transportation Board "before plunging ahead with the largest rail project in decades," Sandoval said. "Given DOE's track record at building anything, the Board is a far better agency than DOE to run a project of this magnitude. It is also far less biased."
In addition, the suit challenges DOE's evaluation of the environmental impacts and land use conflicts within the one-mile swath of the 318-mile Caliente Route.
"No landowners were contacted or given any notice that DOE was about to appropriate their land," said Sandoval, who added that the DOE has already applied to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to have set aside 308,600 specifically itemized acres for the new track.
"DOE stood the mandatory review process on its head," according to the Nevada Attorney General. "First, DOE unilaterally proclaimed a new route, then it applied to withdraw the land, and only now has it announced it will begin to evaluate environmental impacts along that route. The whole point of environmental review is to study the impacts before you make the decision, not after."
The suit also contends the plan wrongly relies on transporting the waste in lightweight truck casks.
"It is uncanny how the DOE manages to do precisely the wrong thing," Sandoval said. "With no public input whatsoever, the DOE chose a new transport mode that the DOE itself had rejected for study because it is the most expensive by a billion dollars, the most impractical, and has the highest health and safety risks."
The DOE declined to comment on the new lawsuit, which is another potential blow to a project that has been mired in controversy since its inception and looks unlikely to met its 2010 deadline.
Federal officials have raised an array of concerns about the project, including a finding that the manufactured storage containers in which the government plans to store nuclear waste at the facility will probably leak.
The site is also on a fault line and sits above a freshwater aquifer that provides drinking water to residents of Nevada and California.
In July the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the repository, but ruled the federal government's 10,000-year federal safety requirement for the highly radioactive waste is illegal because it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.
Nevada has also asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reject the DOE's application for a license to open the facility.
Last month the NRC said the Energy Department must make more documents available to the public before it can apply for the license.
The Commission said the DOE's certification that it made available to the public all of its documentary material on the proposed Yucca Mountain repository failed to meet NRC regulations.
The debate over Yucca Mountain has also seeped into the Presidential campaign.
President George W. Bush is anxious to see the project progress - Democratic challenger John Kerry is opposed.
Kerry says the safe storage of the waste has not been scientifically proven and the safety, security and economic risks of sending nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain site are too great for the plan to proceed.
The Democratic nominee recommends creating a National Academies advisory panel to determine how best to deal with the nation's nuclear waste.
That problem is growing in scope and expense.
As of 2003, nuclear reactors in the United States had generated some 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and by the year 2035, the United States will have produced more than twice that amount.
Sustained delay to or failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project would force state governments to deal with the waste.
In several court cases judges have ruled that the federal government is liable for the costs of storing the nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.
The industry says that total bill could be some $56 billion - the first of several cases that could determine that figure began last month.
Last month, Exelon Corporation, which operates 17 nuclear reactors in the United States and provides some 20 percent of the nation's nuclear power, said it had agreed to settle its case with the DOE.
Under the settlement, Exelon will immediately receive $80 million in reimbursements for costs incurred for storing spent nuclear reactor fuel.
That figure will total some $300 million if a national repository opens by 2010 and the DOE begins accepting spent nuclear fuel.
View an interactive map of highway, rail and barge routes for transport of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain at: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/maps2002/roadrail/index.htm
-------- new mexico
Safety board adds new rep
Los Alamos Monitor
Friday, September 10, 2004
by ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Assistant Editor
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/08/31/headline_news/news02.txt
Even before the current suspension of operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory began, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board saw a need to step up its oversight activities here.
DNFSB is an independent federal agency charged with overseeing health and safety in the nuclear weapons complex. The board has had a full-time representative, Charles Keilers, at LANL for three years.
In June, the board announced that Thomas D. Burns Jr., at that time site representative at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. would join Keilers. Burns began work on Aug. 23.
In an interview Monday, he said he was still on a learning curve, focused on getting checked out and getting the lay of the land locally.
"The state of resumption makes that more difficult," Burns said, who talked about his background and the general principles behind the board's safety work.
Burns went to college and graduate school at the University of Virginia, eventually receiving his PhD in nuclear engineering and applied mathematics. He was also a star linebacker for the Virginia Cavaliers football team.
In 1993, he was the third winner of the Draddy Awards given by the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.
The award, including a $25,000 scholarship, recognizes the top scholar athlete in the nation. Professional quarterbacks Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts and Chad Pennington of the New York Jets are among other college football players who have won the prize.
During graduate work, Burns had a tour of duty at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, where he worked in nuclear medicine. Research at UVA included dynamic analysis of accelerator-driven sub-critical nuclear systems.
He joined the safety board in 1997 with responsibilities for staff activities related to plutonium pit management, tritium processing and storage, critical safety and general safety analysis issues - all of which have local relevance.
"The goal is to get work done safely," Burns said. He described his approach as "constructive interaction, not trying to embarrass anybody, but to facilitate things" and "to be firm and unwavering in the demand for safety."
"Never underestimate the power of rebuttal. There may be something you've missed. Don't jump to conclusions," he added.
He said the "conduct of engineering issues," at Los Alamos had caught the attention of the board, leading to his appointment as a second site representative.
"Two representatives will cover more waterfront," he said, and will "add bandwidth" in reporting capability.
Last week, the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington public interest organization leaked an e-mail from Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration to LANL Director G. Peter Nanos and others, suggesting that the DNFSB was concerned about a drawn-out suspension of activities at the laboratory.
POGO and others interpreted the message as suggesting that the board might not object if safety were compromised in the interest of speed and convenience in the current circumstances.
Burns said he was not yet prepared to discuss the fine points of the resumption activities, but that anyone doubting the board's commitment to safety or its willingness to stand up to DOE, need only look at its record over the last decade.
Burns expects to close on a house and be living on the Hill shortly with his wife Robin and daughter Grace.
SIDEBAR
As the laboratory endeavors to restart all operations by the end of September, safety talk is food for thought.
Here are a few observations by Tom Burns, the new site representative for the Defense Nuclear Facility
"Safety should not be stovepiped. It's a part of good engineering and science itself.
"You are responsible for your community, yourself and your environment. It requires an internal commitment to do the right thing. That means thinking about what can reasonably go wrong and how you can prevent it.
"The first cut is thinking safely. Trying to beat safety in from the back end is difficult. The board's goal is to inspire DOE to design safety into every process."
-------- washington
Board disputes Hanford cleanup safety
This story was published
Friday, September 10th, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5531438p-5466558c.html
A board that has independent oversight of the Hanford nuclear reservation is questioning whether environmental cleanup contractors at the site are adequately following a rigorous safety program at the tank farms.
It also has raised concerns about safety problems at the $5.7 billion vitrification plant under construction at the site.
Both programs have been plagued with safety problems in the past year, John Conway, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, wrote in a letter to the Department of Energy.
"The number of serious events at the tank farms is not to be expected at a project with a mature and effective ISM (integrated safety management) system," Conway wrote.
"While compensatory and corrective actions taken by the Department of Energy and its contractor have yielded temporary successes or addressed specific issues, lasting success in implementing an effective ISM System at the tank farms has not been apparent," he wrote.
The Wednesday letter was addressed to Paul Golan, acting assistant secretary for environmental management at DOE.
Work is hazardous at Hanford's tank farms, where about 53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes are stored in underground tanks. The wastes remain from 50 years of producing plutonium for the nation's weapons program.
The safety system used calls for each work project to be defined and any hazards considered and controls established before work begins. After work is completed, feedback is required on any difficulties to prevent a reoccurrence in future work.
The system was initiated by the safety board, which cited examples of it not being used as rigorously as it should at Hanford.
In one incident this spring, work was done on the wrong set of pipes in a system used to transfer radioactive wastes because blueprints were wrong. The blueprints were known to be inaccurate before the work started, according to DOE. A hole was drilled into a pipe thought to be idle, and radioactive liquid spilled when it was later pumped through the pipe.
The next step of the process, assessing and avoiding hazards, is supposed to be done in a pre-work meeting.
But the safety board report says, "These sessions often are little more than informal discussions among the planner, supervisor and work crew about how the work steps are to be worded and organized. During the sessions, an actual hazard analysis is seldom performed, and the words 'what if' are seldom spoken."
Inadequate hazard analysis has been responsible for some accidents at the tank farm in the past year.
In one case, workers' clothes were contaminated when a highly contaminated pump was wrapped in a single layer of plastic when it was moved. In another, a worker's finger was contaminated with levels of radiation above established limits when workers moved equipment that was later found to be more contaminated than expected.
The board also criticized tank farm operators for not providing feedback on completed activities, thus not passing on lessons learned to others.
Safety drills also are generally inadequate, using obvious and simple scenarios, the board said.
Safety problems at the tank farms this year recently caused DOE's Office of River Protection to dock $300,000 from the fee paid to CH2M Hill Hanford Group, which operates the waste site cleanup.
"It's evident the organization is not learning at the pace we want it to," said John Swailes, DOE's assistant manager for tank farm projects.
DOE generally agrees with the safety board on the problems at the tank farms, "but we may disagree on the extent of the weakness," said Robert Barr, director of environmental safety and quality at the Office of River Protection.
Weaknesses need to be corrected before more serious incidents occur, he said.
CH2M Hill responded with a prepared statement that said the safety board's letter reinforces the company's commitment to improve and ensure that concerns are immediately addressed.
The safety board's letter also cited an increase this year in safety problems at the vitrification plant construction site.
A key part of the plant's safety system is a checklist to identify potential hazards. But the safety board warned that when a checklist is used, workers may have a tendency to quickly check off boxes rather than seriously consider hazards. The board recommended use of the lists be reviewed.
Bechtel Hanford, the contractor in charge of the vitrification plant construction, stopped work for a day this summer to address safety concerns and has brought in a motivational speaker.
Problems were mostly near misses, such as dropping heavy pieces of metal. Since the day to refocus on safety, a tractor and flatbed trailer carrying a crane overturned and five counterweights weighing a total of 16,000 pounds landed up to 30 feet away.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. Calls Killings In Sudan Genocide
Khartoum and Arab Militias Are Responsible, Powell Says
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8364-2004Sep9.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said for the first time yesterday that genocide has taken place in Sudan and that the government in Khartoum and government-sponsored Arab militias known as Janjaweed "bear responsibility" for rapes, killings and other abuses that have left 1.2 million black Africans homeless.
Powell's long-awaited declaration -- the result of months of investigation and discussion within the State Department -- is intended to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region. But refugee organizations and aid groups said it also will make it much harder for the Bush administration to step away from the problem if its diplomatic efforts are unsuccessful.
Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 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 genocide may still be occurring."
Powell's statement came as the United States began negotiations at the United Nations on a Security Council resolution that threatens to consider new sanctions against Sudan if it fails to crack down on the militias, and calls for the establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry to determine whether Sudan and the militia are responsible for genocide. A finding of genocide does not impose obligations on the United States, but as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the United States is committed to preventing and punishing genocide.
Sudanese officials reacted angrily to Powell's announcement, saying it will only make it more difficult to resolve what they describe as an internal problem. At the United Nations, officials from a number of Security Council member nations expressed concern that Powell's statement would complicate efforts to win broad support for a new resolution. Both the African Union and the Arab League have said there is no genocide. The European Union said it does not have enough information.
Powell cited a report released by the State Department yesterday that found a "consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers." The report, based on 1,136 interviews with refugees this summer, said 61 percent had witnessed the killing of a family member and 16 percent had been raped or had heard about a rape victim. About one-third had heard racial epithets while they were being attacked, the report said.
For the moment, a declaration of genocide by the United States has little practical effect. But coming in the midst of continuing attacks, it puts the imprimatur of the world's most powerful nation on a serious and grave charge against Sudan, possibly setting in motion an inquiry that ultimately could result in war crimes tribunals. Other recent instances of genocide, such as in Rwanda and Cambodia, were recognized only long after the crimes.
When Powell visited Darfur in June, he resisted questions about whether the abuses amounted to genocide, saying "what we are seeing is a disaster, a catastrophe, and we can find the right label for it later." The U.S. Congress has since passed a resolution urging the administration to label the Darfur situation a genocide, and the Sudanese government has failed to comply with a U.N. resolution passed July 30 calling on it to end the suffering.
State Department officials familiar with Powell's deliberations said he decided last week he needed to make a clear statement at the Senate hearing. Over the weekend, he took home the State Department report and concluded that Khartoum was complicit in genocide because he had put the government on notice two months ago, laying out what officials needed to do to end the violence, and they had not acted.
Another factor in Powell's decision was that Sudan is a signatory to the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as a calculated effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. The convention calls on signatories to prevent and punish genocide.
"The acts are clearly genocidal," said one senior U.S. official familiar with the debate. "The question was the intent" of the government.
Security Council members Britain, Spain and Germany back U.S. efforts to establish a commission of inquiry. But some European diplomats expressed concern that Powell's statement would complicate efforts to win broader support. China warned that it may veto the resolution, noting that it does not believe genocide has occurred. "There are problems in Darfur, but we don't see it as that category," said Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations. The council should "come up with constructive ideas to help solve the problem, not to make the problem more complicated."
Pakistan's ambassador, Munir Akram, said Powell's statement has weakened Washington's case for the commission because it prejudged the outcome. "If you already brand it as genocide even before an inquiry, I think that might be more difficult."
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
--------
Villagers flee troops, militia fighting near Nigerian oil city
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Dulue Mbachu,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-10/s_27112.asp
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Nigerian troops battled militia forces Thursday in the creeks and mangrove swamps of Africa's leading oil region, the Niger Delta, pressing an offensive that has forced thousands of villagers to flee their homes for this petroleum hub.
Burned houses and twisted corrugated iron roofs, strewn flat over an area of a football field, bore witness Thursday to the savagery of militia attacks on one slum district in Port Harcourt, a city of 3 million and Nigeria's most important oil center.
A few refugees made their way through the streets, carrying bundles of belongings. Most of the people killed here had no known tie to any militia faction, said Daniel Wogu, a resident.
The crackdown, with soldiers sealing off river approaches to Port Harcourt and helicopter gunships patrolling overhead, is the latest in yearlong clashes between Nigeria's military and criminal gangs and ethnic militias for control of oil wealth from the Niger Delta.
Violence in the Niger Delta over the past year has killed more than 1,000 people and at times shut down up to 40 percent of oil production in Nigeria, the world's No. 7 oil-producing country. One U.S. oil company alone, ChevronTexaco, is estimated to have lost at least $1.75 billion in production losses and sabotaged equipment since March 2003.
The army and navy launched their latest offensive last week in response to deadly militia raids in August into Port Harcourt. Militia leaders and Nigeria's military said fighting continued Thursday outside the city.
The military is aiming to keep the waterways around Port Harcourt safe and open and to "stop the fighters from coming into the city," said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities have given no casualty figures in the current military offensive.
Asari Dokubo, a militia leader whose movement is the main target of the crackdown in the districts outside Port Harcourt, said he expected civilian casualties to be light since many villagers in targeted areas already have fled.
Thousands of villagers have abandoned their homes since last week, streaming into Port Harcourt to take shelter with relatives and friends.
"I fled from Tombia two days ago when the army began bombing the place again and killed two people," one refugee, Dagogo Harry, said Thursday. Harry said he was among the last to leave his town of more than 5,000. Most others fled after the first army raids in April.
President Olusegun Obasanjo's government accuses Dokubo's group, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, in a series of attacks on Port Harcourt in the past month that have killed at least 50 people.
The attacks were aimed at members of a rival militia group that Dokubo says is supported by the government. The government denies the charge.
Dokubo, who claims to have 2,000 armed fighters, also admits illegally tapping and selling crude oil from pipelines.
Troops have been called in to maintain a 24-hour patrol in the Port Harcourt, a base for international oil companies, which pump Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels of normal daily exports.
About 5 percent of production is now off-line because of the violence. About 40 percent was off-line in March 2003.
-------- arms
Blocked arms sales
September 10, 2004
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
The Bush administration is bowing to pressure from China to curb arms sales to Taiwan at a time when the Pentagon is urgently trying to get the island's government to buy U.S. defensive arms.
According to U.S. officials, Taiwan's government has sent the administration formal letters stating that it plans to buy eight diesel submarines, 12 P-3 aircraft and six new Patriot anti-missile batteries and associated PAC-3 interceptor missiles.
"All three items were approved by the U.S. government several years ago and Taiwan's legislature is currently considering a special budget of $18 billion to fund the programs," one official tells us.
The Pentagon has done the needed paperwork to put the sales in motion, but the White House has decided to put it off by delaying formal notification of Congress. The move was ordered by the National Security Council staff, where pro-China official Dennis Wilder recently took charge of the China portfolio.
The NSC told the State Department and Pentagon to delay congressional notification until after Taiwan passes the special budget, which may not happen until October.
Putting off the notification follows National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's recent trip to Beijing, where Chinese leaders urged her not to sell arms to Taiwan.
Officials tell us the notification delay appears related to the Chinese appeals.
The White House is claiming the notification is being put off until after Taiwan's legislature approves a special budget of $18 billion to fund the arms, something that has not been done for other U.S. allies.
The delay will prevent defense contractors from getting to work on arms that the Pentagon says Taiwan urgently needs to meet the growing military imbalance, namely China's 650 short-range missiles and new warships.
Officials said the Taiwanese legislature is unlikely to pass its budget until October and that means the window for notifying Congress will close. Congressional notification then could be pushed back until March.
One official said the Pentagon has warned for years that "the threat to Taiwan will become critical in the 2005-2008 time frame" and is a major reason the administration has been pressuring Taiwan to invest in missile defense and anti-submarine warfare.
"There is literally no time to lose in providing these badly needed deterrents," the official said.
Politically, pro-China officials are suspected of putting off the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan until after the election, when a possible administration of John Kerry likely would cancel the arms sale package altogether.
President Bush stated in April 2001 that the United States would do "whatever it takes" to help Taiwan defend itself. But since then pro-China officials have blocked all significant U.S. arms transfers.
-------- business
Halliburton Unit Gets a Positive Review From Pentagon
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9654-2004Sep9.html
After months of criticism from Democrats in Congress and government auditors for allegedly misspending and overcharging, Halliburton Co. got some good news yesterday.
The giant oil services company announced that a Pentagon review found that its purchasing-system practices "are effective and efficient and provide adequate protection of the Government's interest."
The news came in a letter from the Defense Contract Management Agency to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., which has received about $4.5 billion for providing fuel, housing and other troop support in Iraq and Kuwait. "KBR has repeatedly said that its purchasing system provide the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to meet the needs of its customers in a war zone," the company's statement said.
"While expected, this is clearly good news," Andrew R. Lane, president and chief executive officer of KBR, said in a news release.
The letter in effect gives KBR wider latitude, under federal acquisition regulations, to award subcontracts without prior approval of a contracting officer. But it has no effect on other pending investigations and audits of the company's work.
Still pending, for example, is the decision whether the Army will withhold 15 percent of future payments to KBR because auditors concluded that the company has not provided basic data supporting at least $1.8 billion in bills.
Also not addressed in the new letter are questions about overcharging that have been raised by Pentagon auditors. In July a report by the staff of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said Halliburton charged the government $167 million more than necessary to import gasoline into Iraq.
Halliburton contends that it is being picked on for political reasons -- because Dick Cheney was the company's chief executive before being elected U.S. vice president in 2000.
"We will continue to work with all Government agencies to establish that our contracts are not only good for the United States, but also the company is the best and most qualified contractor to perform these difficult and dangerous tasks," the company statement said.
--------
Northrop Gets $308 Million Military Deal
September 10, 2004
(AP)
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/N/NORTHROP_GRUMMAN_AIR_FORCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Northrop Grumman Corp. said Friday it had been awarded a $308 million contract to develop an airborne command and control system for large military aircraft.
The company, which won the contract after a 15-month bidding process, will develop a system that has the ability to track cruise missiles and ground targets, and then relay their coordinates to strike units by air or ground.
"This is a key win for Northrop Grumman, one that reaffirms our position as a premier battle-management...system supplier and puts us in a good position to offer similar technology for future platforms," said chief executive Ronald D. Sugar.
Shares of Northrop Grumman closed down 25 cents at $50.22 on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- iraq
U.S. Warplanes Strike Two Iraq Cities
43 Killed in Bid to Retake Fallujah and Northern City From Insurgents
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7667-2004Sep9.html
BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 -- After a week of violence that killed 19 Americans and challenged the authority of Iraq's interim government in vast areas of the country, U.S. commanders launched airstrikes Thursday on two cities controlled by insurgents and sent troops into a third to reinstall a deposed local government.
The Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 43 people were killed and 111 wounded during air attacks on Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and Tall Afar, a northern city near the Syrian border. U.S. troops massed outside Tall Afar, in apparent preparation to move in and restore the local government there.
In Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers accompanied deposed city council members across a bridge into the city and stood guard while they elected an interim mayor. The transition was peaceful and conducted under an agreement with community leaders, but insurgents were not required to disarm, according to Army Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman for the Army's 1st Infantry Division.
O'Brien said U.S. troops, who have stayed out of Samarra in the nearly three months since insurgents used bombs, kidnappings and other methods of coercion to wrest control from U.S.-installed officials, would continue to help maintain order.
The simultaneous operations in three provinces signaled an aggressive effort to reassert control after the recent spasm of violence. During the past week, a suicide car bomb killed seven U.S. Marines outside Fallujah, heavy gunfire sounded for a day in a Baghdad slum, roadside bombs exploded and two female Italian aid workers were kidnapped in daylight in the capital.
The violence pushed the death toll for Defense Department personnel in Iraq past 1,000 since the conflict began 18 months ago.
U.S. officials and leaders of the interim government contend that re-establishing authority over regions controlled by Sunni and Shiite insurgents is critical to a plan to hold nationwide elections in January.
The Fallujah airstrikes targeted a building occupied by three associates of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda, at a time when no other people were in the area, the U.S. military said in a statement.
"The clear and compelling intelligence leading to this mission was derived from multiple Iraqi sources," the statement said. "Terrorists of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network have been responsible for multiple acts of terror including the killing of innocent Iraqi citizens, Iraqi Police and Iraqi security forces as well as Multinational forces."
One doctor, Rafi Hayad, said four of those killed were children and two were women, according to the Reuters news agency. U.S. officials offered no information on casualties.
U.S. troops have stayed on the city's periphery since an April agreement was reached after three weeks of fighting. The U.S. military has said it suspects that Zarqawi uses Fallujah as a base to launch attacks against Americans. The car bomb that killed the seven Marines outside the city was the deadliest attack on Americans since April 29.
In Tall Afar, U.S. military officials said the operation was aimed at ridding the city of a "terrorist threat" that had led to "dozens of the attacks" in recent weeks.
The U.S. military denied reports that its forces were stopping ambulances from reaching the city. The ambulances were allowed to enter and exit after being searched, the military said. "This precaution is necessary because terrorists in Tall Afar have used ambulances to move about the city," a statement said.
In a statement Thursday night, the military said the operation was continuing after insurgents took cover in a mosque. The regional government's television station reported military operations would continue "until the city is liberated from outsiders and saboteurs so that peace can be restored," the Associated Press reported.
But Samarra had a peaceful turnover. Members of the city council gathered Thursday morning at a bridge leading across the Tigris River into the city. According to O'Brien, they were met by Col. Randel Dragon, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat team of the 1st Infantry Division, and Lt. Col. Eric Schacht, commander of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, and accompanied by U.S. troops.
The city council members then "escorted us into the city," O'Brien said. There was no violence.
Once in Samarra, the council elected an interim mayor who would be replaced after the January elections. U.S. troops and members of the reconstituted 202nd Iraqi National Guard battalion, which effectively dissolved after many of its troops deserted or declined to take part in battle last April, then assessed the condition of eight local police stations, some of which had been bombed by insurgents.
The U.S. troops will stay in Samarra "until the job is done and Iraqi security forces are in position to have control of the entire security situation," O'Brien said. "This is just the first step."
The 1st Infantry Division, which maintained a base on the periphery of the city, treated Samarra as essentially off-limits because of the danger. U.S. officials said the security situation changed after about 50 insurgents were killed in battles with U.S. forces during fighting last month.
O'Brien said local officials and religious leaders then opened negotiations with U.S. commanders. He said the local leaders also held separate meetings among themselves to reach a deal by which the former government would be brought back.
----
Iraqi civilians killed in US missile strike
Sunday 12 September 2004,
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B13F5DC7-E9A9-4D86-8C05-235CBF641973.htm
At least 10 Iraqis have been killed and 35 others injured after US helicopters fired missiles at a crowd in a central Baghdad street on a day marked by attacks across the country.
The missile attack, which also killed a Palestinian journalist, followed fierce clashes which began when US military vehicles, firing stun grenades, entered Haifa street in the centre of the capital at about 2am (1100 GMT) on Sunday, an Iraqi journalist told Aljazeera.
A US armoured vehicle was set ablaze and as a group of Iraqi men gathered around the burning vehicle, US helicopters swooped in and fired machine guns and missiles at the crowd, killing up to 10 Iraqis and injuring 35 others.
Twenty-eight year old Palestinian television journalist, Mazin al-Tumaisi, was also killed and two photographers wounded, when the US missiles struck.
Al-Tumaisi, who worked for Saudi television Akhbariya and as a fixer for the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya, was killed covering the fighting in Haifa Street, said Al-Arabiya reporter Ahmad Salih.
Journalists killed
An Iraqi cameraman working for Reuters and an Iraqi photographer working for Getty Images were also wounded slightly by flying shrapnel, said a source at the London-based news agency.
Several vehicles were also set ablaze and the sound of heavy machine gun fire reverberated for three hours from the vicinity.
US forces withdrew from the area at around 7.30am.
All the casualties were civilians, the journalist said, adding that bodies were left in the street for more than half an hour before an ambulance was able to remove them.
A number of residential buildings were also damaged and US helicopters have continued to hover over the area, opening fire repeatedly, the journalist added.
Policemen targeted
Meanwhile, more than a dozen explosions shook central Baghdad at dawn on Sunday and thick plumes of smoke rose above the Green Zone compound housing Iraq's interim government, the US embassy and other consulates.
In other unrest, at least two Iraqi Civil Guard officers were killed when armed assailants attacked a convoy bringing foreigners from Baghdad airport to the city centre.
Several vehicles in the convoy caught fire during the attack which occurred on a highway overpass in the Yarmuk neighbourhood.
Three other members of the guard were killed and seven others injured in Jibla city north of Hilla in central Iraq when an explosive device targeting their patrol detonated on Sunday, Aljazeera has learnt.
Abu Ghraib blast
Outside Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a car bomb exploded on Sunday morning, wounding at least three people, the Iraqi Health Ministry said.
According to reports, an internet statement, reportedly signed by the "military branch of the Tauhid wal Jihad" group claimed responsibility for the attacks on the prison and the Green Zone. The group is linked to al-Qaida linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In central Ramadi city, west of Baghdad, seven Iraqis were injured during clashes between US forces and unknown armed men on Sunday morning, Aljazeera has learnt.
The clashes coincided with a mortar bomb attack targeting a US military base west of the city.
Meanwhile, three Iraqi policemen were killed and four others injured after the driver of a vehicle the policemen were pursuing blew himself up.
The explosion took place on a road near the main highway in Amiriya, west of Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist told Aljazeera Iraqi police explained that as the patrol approached the vehicle, the driver blew himself up.
Elsewhere in the Iraqi city of Falluja, armed fighters claimed to have shot down an unmanned US Marines reconnaisance aircraft.
Unmanned aircraft - also called drones or Remote Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) - are used by the US army to relay video surveillance of enemy positions to commanders.
----
Violence Will Intensify in Iraq as Elections Near, Rumsfeld Says
September 10, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10CND-CAPI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that violence would intensify in Iraq as elections scheduled for January approached, but he and another senior adviser to President Bush said that the United States was determined to insure that voting takes place as planned.
"There's no question but between now and the end of the year, the terrorists are determined to try to prevent the elections from taking place, and from taking place on time," Mr. Rumsfeld said in response to questions after a luncheon speech at the National Press Club. "They're going to be going after coalition countries; they're going to be looking for weak spots; they're going to be going after people who are running for office."
Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in an interview, asserted that Iraqi and American forces would regain control of several important parts of central Iraq, like Fallujah and Ramadi, now held by militants. But neither offered specific details or timing.
"We know what will take place in Fallujah, and that is that it will be restored as a - something under the control of the Iraqi government eventually," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "What we don't know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen."
The comments by two of Mr. Bush's senior advisers on national security, in a week where the number of American military deaths in Iraq passed 1,000, seemed intended to try to quell growing concern among some lawmakers here and commanders in Iraq that the United States was ceding safe havens to militants until Iraqi security forces were sufficiently trained and equipped, or until after the American elections on Nov. 2.
"Nobody has ceded any area," said a senior administration official, who said the strategy in Iraq for the next few months is, "straight ahead, keep the political process on track, keep the insurgents at bay. We've been doing a lot of damage to the safe houses of the terrorists and will do more."
--------
U.S. Troops Lay Seige to Iraqi City
September 10, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. troops handed over medical supplies to Iraqi relief workers Friday amid a siege of a northeastern ethnic Turkish city where Iraqi and American forces are trying to root out hundreds of militants.
Despite criticism from Turkey and Shiite leaders, U.S. commanders insisted they will the maintain their blockade of Tal Afar for as long as it takes to subdue what they said were foreign fighters holed up there. The campaign was part of a recently launched American effort to restore government authority to lawless areas of the country -- either through negotiation or by force.
``We are going to apply the necessary pressure to make sure that we are able to root out the enemy,'' said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, spokesman for the Army's Task Force Olympia. ``How long it takes is really dependent on them.''
But the siege of Tal Afar, which the Americans describe as a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms from Syria, was criticized from within and outside Iraq.
A leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the Americans' use of heavy force in the city caused ``catastrophes'' that could have been avoided if Iraqis were in charge of security. The Americans have said they were fighting ``a large terrorist organization.''
``Since the first day after (Saddam Hussein's) regime collapsed, Tal Afar had terrorist groups, and this is not new,'' al-Hakim told The Associated Press on Friday. ``The new thing is that the military operations are huge.''
Al-Hakim leads the biggest Shiite political party in Iraq and is close to Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Turkey also said the United States should end its military operations in Tal Afar quickly, saying the attacks have caused casualties among the mostly ethnic Turks living there.
Turkey has asked U.S. officials ``not to harm the civilian population and avoid using excessive and non-selective force,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said, according to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency.
In Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City slum, meanwhile, fighting resumed between U.S. forces and militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, wounding seven Iraqis, hospital officials said.
Al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and bullets at U.S. patrols, which immediately returned fire, said Capt. Brian O'Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. There were no American casualties, he said.
Elsewhere, about 1,000 protesters marched through Najaf's old quarter demanding that the cleric and his aides leave the devastated holy city, raising tensions a day after a 60-member Iraqi force raided his offices.
The demonstrators -- who chanted, ``Muqtada, the trash, is a leader of looters!'' -- walked past buildings wrecked by weeks of fighting that ended with last month's peace deal, insisting that al-Sadr's office be shut down. Iraqi soldiers kept the protesters from marching to his offices.
Ever defiant, an al-Sadr lieutenant condemned the raid in a Friday sermon delivered to 2,000 followers at the nearby Kufa mosque, saying it mirrored the brutal tactics used by Saddam Hussein to intimidate Iraqis.
``Those who break into our houses steal money and other things .... so what is the difference between them and the former regime?'' said al-Sadr aide Hashim Abu Regheef.
He also sought to rally the crowd amid signs of dwindling support for the cleric and his strident opposition to U.S. forces and the interim Iraqi authorities since the al-Mahdi Army lost control of Najaf in late August after weeks of devastating fighting with U.S. Marines.
``We have to sacrifice our lives for his sake,'' Regheef told the crowd.
In another development that could inflame tensions in Najaf, a little-known militant group threatened in footage broadcast Friday to kill four kidnapped policemen they accused of harassing al-Sadr.
The group, calling itself ``The Joint Forces to Get Rid of Spies,'' said the officers would die within 72 hours if authorities did not issue a statement ordering a halt to activities against al-Sadr and his followers. It did not specify those activities.
The pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera aired footage showing the hostages sitting on the floor as four masked armed men stood behind them.
Late Friday, key al-Sadr deputy Ahmed al-Shibani told Al-Jazeera that the cleric's movement had nothing to do with the kidnapping, and he called for the hostages' release.
``The police are not a part from the occupation so they have to be released,'' al-Shibani said.
The latest violence in Najaf lasted for three weeks and ended only when al-Sistani brokered a peace deal. The clashes ruined many of Najaf's streets, markets and buildings, damaging the city's economy.
Outside Tal Afar, American soldiers stopped and searched vehicles trying to enter the city, allowing entry to ambulances and other vehicles carrying medicine and food to residents.
A series of airstrikes on the city Thursday killed at least 67 insurgents, Hastings said. The provincial health director, Dr. Rabie Yassin, said 27 civilians were killed and 70 wounded.
Also Friday, an American warplane fired missiles into the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the fourth day of attacks targeting a city that also is outside government control, the military said. The target was earthmoving equipment used to build trenches and other fortifications, the military said.
One man was killed in the attack, said Dr. Ahmed Thaer of the Fallujah General Hospital.
--------
THE OCCUPATION
American and Iraqi Forces Try to Regain Control of Sunni Strongholds
September 10, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/international/middleeast/10iraq.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 9 - American forces entered the city of Samarra for the first time in months on Thursday, taking what appeared to be a small but significant step in their effort to regain control of contested Sunni areas north and west of the capital.
American commanders said their forces, accompanied by members of the Iraqi police and by national guard soldiers, drove into the city Thursday morning after gaining assurances from local Iraqi leaders that they would not be fired on. The local leaders said they sensed divisions within the insurgents' ranks between those who favored some accommodation with the Americans and those who rejected it, and felt secure enough to issue the temporary guarantee.
American soldiers and the Iraqi police then convened a meeting of the American-backed council, which chose a new mayor and police chief. After a few uneventful hours, the American soldiers and the Iraqi police left the way they came.
Once the Americans left, witnesses said, the insurgents reappeared, conducting their own patrols on Samarra's streets. There were no immediate reports of reprisals against the newly installed officials.
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, they agreed to open the main bridge that spans the Tigris River, the closing of which has paralyzed the city for several weeks. 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, if it holds, could serve as a model for how the American military might try to regain control over vast stretches of the area known as the Sunni Triangle.
In the past five months, the Americans have relinquished control over much of Anbar and Salahaddin, provinces that include 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 had been working with the occupation forces.
The American pullbacks have raised concerns that large numbers of Iraqis living inside those cities might not be able to vote in the nationwide elections scheduled for January, which might render the balloting illegitimate in the eyes of many Iraqis.
American commanders and members of the Bush administration have said that they intend to regain control of the cities, by force if necessary. They have been placing their hopes on the emerging Iraqi security forces, whose presence, they believe, will receive a warmer reception by ordinary Iraqis. But those forces have yet to prove themselves against sustained and spirited opposition.
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. Gen. 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 rebel Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, whose guerrillas 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 the Iraqis if they helped 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.
Although it appeared that the Americans dealt only with local political leaders, the insurgents seemed to play an important behind-the-scenes role 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," Sheik Ghafour said.
Sheik 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, others rejected any accommodation.
For that reason, he said, the city's leaders took a risk in defying some of the insurgents. But for the same reason, Sheik Ghafour said it would be difficult for them to ensure that 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."
Sheik 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 whether 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 Thursday evening.
"Listen, my friend, when the Americans closed the bridge, they damaged the life of the whole city," said Muhammad 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.
-------- israel / palestine
Six Palestinians Killed in New Fighting in Gaza, West Bank
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8936-2004Sep9.html
JERUSALEM, Sept. 9 -- Six Palestinians died in renewed violence across the Gaza Strip and West Bank on Thursday, according to Palestinian officials, as a private group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians who met secretly in Greece offered a proposal for defusing the conflict.
Israeli troops launched a second day of incursions into the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and the large Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Four Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed and at least two dozen people wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said. The Israeli military reported no casualties among its soldiers.
Twelve-year-old Munir Dekes was shot in the head outside of his grandfather's home in the Jabalya camp, the hospital officials said. An Israeli military spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, said he had no information on such an incident.
Throughout Thursday, Palestinian militants fired guns, mortars and grenades at Israeli armored vehicles and troops from a number of places, according to Dallal.
Palestinian witnesses said tanks and Apache helicopters fired randomly between houses and into empty farms and fields. Dallal said the Israeli forces were trying to stop Palestinians from firing crudely made Qassam rockets into Israeli communities just outside the Gaza Strip.
Israeli soldiers also shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian man Thursday morning near the Israeli settlement of Gush Katif in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Dallal, who said the man was about five yards from a fence in a zone where Palestinians were not allowed.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, a 19-year-old Palestinian was killed after being run over by an Israel army jeep that was trying to escape a mob pelting army vehicles with stones, the Associated Press reported.
The new round of violence, the worst in months, began when two Palestinian suicide bombers blew up two commuter buses last week in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing 16 people in addition to themselves. Early Tuesday, the Israeli military launched missile strikes on a Gaza soccer field where the militant group Hamas, known formally as the Islamic Resistance Movement, was training fighters. Fourteen militants were killed.
Israel also issued a new warning to Yasser Arafat. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Thursday that the day "is closer than ever" when his government "will remove" the Palestinian leader.
The clashes came as a group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians warned that immediate action was needed to implement Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli troops and Jewish settlers from Gaza. In a soon-to-be-issued report, they said collapse of the plan could "lead to a catastrophic series of events that will doom progress for a generation" in efforts to establish peace.
The 10-page report, a copy of which was given to The Washington Post, was crafted in July at a secret meeting in Greece. Seven Israelis attended, including former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh of the Labor Party and David Kimche, a former top official in the Mossad intelligence agency and the Foreign Ministry. There were five Palestinians there, including Mohammed Rashid, one of Arafat's most trusted advisers, and Iyad Sarraj, a leading Gaza human rights activist.
Sneh said that the group wanted to "prepare a plan to turn the disengagement in Gaza into a springboard to continue with a more comprehensive peace process."
In addition to the withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza, the group proposes that Israel disengage from the West Bank between the towns of Nablus and Jenin, an area that contains about 16 Jewish settlements and covers the northernmost quarter of the West Bank. Under the proposal, Israel would also restrict the growth of settlements, remove unauthorized settlement outposts, lift transportation restrictions in the West Bank and reopen a safe passageway between Gaza and the West Bank.
The Palestinians would be required to reform their security forces, disarm all militant groups and confiscate their weapons, cease all hostilities against Israel and end the manufacturing and smuggling of weapons and ammunition.
If those tasks were accomplished, the report said, Israel should end the targeted killing of Palestinian radicals and stop military incursions into Gaza and the West Bank.
--------
Israeli Forces Attack in Gaza, Killing 7 Arabs
September 10, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/international/middleeast/10mideast.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Sept. 9 - Israeli forces continued a major operation in Gaza on Thursday with tanks and armored vehicles to suppress rocket fire into Israel, and in the process killed seven Palestinians. Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Israeli officials again warned that they were considering exiling the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, who is already confined to his headquarters in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom echoed warnings last week by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, saying, "The day of Arafat's expulsion is closer than ever." Mr. Shalom was speaking to Likud Party members.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved a new route for the barrier Israel is building to deter suicide bombers, a route much closer to the Green Line, the armistice line of 1949. The new route does include large Israeli settlements in the West Bank, like Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion. But Mr. Sharon appeared to be responding to rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court and some pressure from Washington.
His chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, is in Washington for meetings with American officials about Israel's settlement policies and plans for disengagement from Gaza. A group of 185 Israelis published a petition in a religious newspaper on Thursday calling the Gaza plan a "crime against humanity" and urging security forces to refuse to carry it out.
In the Gaza operation, 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 Beit Lahia, witnesses told Reuters.
The boy, Munir el-Deqqes, was shot in the chest while playing outside his grandfather's house, the witnesses said. Two other Palestinians died in that incident. An Israeli Army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, emphasized that armed Palestinians had surrounded the tank.
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 short-range Qassam rockets, Captain Dallal said.
-------- latin america
Costa Rica seeks removal from Iraq 'coalition'
September 10, 2004
By Marianela Jimenez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040909-095934-1120r.htm
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Costa Rica's highest court ruled that the United States cannot name this pacifist Central American country as one of its coalition partners in Iraq, and the government was preparing a letter yesterday asking Washington to remove it from the list.
The White House Web site still had the country listed yesterday.
Tom Casey, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said Costa Rica's membership in the coalition was an expression of the country's opposition to terrorism, but agreed that Costa Rica provided neither troops nor economic assistance for Iraq's reconstruction.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "We're pleased by the strong international support for the ongoing efforts to help the Iraqi people build a free and peaceful future." But, he added, "If that's what they want, then I'm sure we will do that."
The court ruling, announced late Wednesday, was cheered by a country that widely rejected the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"I think it's great," said Rosario Camacho, a 23-year-old student. "I was opposed to Costa Rica being on the list because it couldn't support the war. It is a sovereign country and supporter of peace."
Costa Rica has a pacifist history. The country has no army, and Oscar Arias, who served as Costa Rica's president from 1986 to 1990, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his work bringing peace to Central America.
The court's ruling came on a motion by Attorney General Farid Beirute, who argued the constitution bars support for military action that is not authorized by the United Nations.
President Abel Pacheco said yesterday he agreed only to join countries that were against terrorism, and he said he would comply with the court's order and ask to have Costa Rica removed from the so-called "coalition of the willing" list.
"I was just supporting a friend in the fight against terrorism," he said.
Costa Rica received $5 million in U.S. aid in 2002.
The issue erupted when local newspapers noted that the White House had listed Costa Rica as a member of the coalition "that has already begun military operations to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."
The White House page in question, www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030327-10.html, reads: "Forty-nine countries are publicly committed to the Coalition, including ... Costa Rica."
Dated Feb. 4 this year, the Web page continues: "Contributions from Coalition member nations range from: direct military participation, logistical and intelligence support, specialized chemical/biological response teams, over-flight rights, humanitarian and reconstruction aid, to political support."
The Costa Rican action comes amid growing fears of terrorist activity in the region.
International terrorists have posted Web sites threatening to attack El Salvador for its continuing military support in Iraq. El Salvador is the only country in the region with troops in Iraq. Honduras pulled out its soldiers earlier this year.
-------- prisoners of war
PRISON SCANDAL
Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed
September 10, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10abuse.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - Army jailers in Iraq, acting at the Central Intelligence Agency's request, kept dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities off official rosters to hide them from Red Cross inspectors, two senior Army generals said Thursday. The total is far more than had been previously reported.
An Army inquiry completed last month found eight documented cases of so-called ghost detainees, but two of the investigating generals said in testimony before two Congressional committees and in interviews on Thursday that depositions from military personnel who served at the prison indicated that the real total was many times higher.
"The number is in the dozens, to perhaps up to 100," Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who oversaw the Army inquiry, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Another investigator, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, put the figure at "two dozen or so," but both officers said they could not give a precise number because no records were kept on most of the C.I.A. detainees.
Under the Geneva Conventions, the temporary failure to disclose the identities of prisoners to the Red Cross is permitted under an exemption for military necessity. But the Army generals said they were certain that the practice used by the C.I.A. in Iraq went far beyond that.
The disclosure added to questions about the C.I.A.'s practices in Iraq, including why the agency took custody of certain Iraqi prisoners, what interrogation techniques it used and what became of the ghost detainees, including whether they were ever returned to military custody. To date, two cases have been made public in which prisoners in C.I.A. custody were removed from Iraq for a period of several months and held in detention centers outside the country.
Another question left unanswered on Thursday was why Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer who oversaw interrogations at the prison, agreed to let C.I.A. officers use the prison to hide ghost detainees. The Army report said that when Colonel Pappas raised questions about the practice, a top military intelligence officer in Baghdad at the time, Col. Steven Boltz, encouraged him to cooperate with the C.I.A. because "everyone was all one team."
Still, General Kern said Colonel Pappas should have challenged the practice. "If I was instructed to hold a C.I.A. detainee in a U.S. Army facility that I owned, I would make sure that he abided by our rules, not someone else's rules," General Kern told the House Armed Services Committee. "If that didn't happen, I would have asked for a very clear explanation."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that in one case, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, he ordered military officials in Iraq in November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at Camp Cropper, a high-level detention center, but not to register him. That prisoner, sometimes called Triple-X, had initially been held at a secret site outside Iraq by the C.I.A., intelligence officials said, but was returned to the country after government lawyers concluded that as an Iraqi, he should be held inside the country.
For several months, Triple-X was later left unaccounted for within the military detention system inside Iraq, the Pentagon has acknowledged. At least one other prisoner in Iraq, a Syrian, was initially removed from the country and held on a Navy ship before being returned to Abu Ghraib last fall, military official have said. Intelligence officials have not said whether all of the prisoners held in Iraq by the C.I.A. were later handed over to military custody.
In his testimony on Thursday, General Fay said C.I.A. officials in Baghdad and at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., refused his request for information several times, eventually telling him they were doing their own inquiry of the matter.
A C.I.A. spokesman, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on the number of unregistered detainees. He did not dispute General Fay's statement, but said the agency was cooperating with military criminal investigators.
Military officials have said the C.I.A.'s practice of using Army-run prisons in Iraq to hide prisoners held for questioning violated military regulations and international law, and led to "a loss of accountability at the prison." Although C.I.A. interrogators were obliged to honor Army rules at the prison, they did not permit soldiers to sit in on their questioning and did not share the results of their interrogations with the most senior commanders in Iraq. The inspectors general of the Defense Department and C.I.A. are investigating the matter.
The new disclosures about unregistered prisoners drew angry criticism from Democrats and Republicans, and a promise from Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and the committee chairman, to hold a separate hearing.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said, "The situation with C.I.A. and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie."
On a day when both the House and Senate Armed Services committees held hearings on the scandal and the findings of the Army inquiry and an independent panel, lawmakers directed the military investigators to review their results to determine whether senior officers, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq at the time, and his senior aides, should be punished, not just singled out for criticism.
Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, singled out the top lawyer in General Sanchez's command, Col. Marc Warren, for knowing about prisoner abuses witnessed by Red Cross inspectors and failing to report them to his boss for more than a month because he said he did not believe them.
"Why would all these people not follow Army regulations, not report violations to the Geneva Convention, wait months to inform commanders of vital information?" Senator Reed asked.
In testimony before the House panel, two former defense secretaries said that failures on the part of two of Mr. Rumsfeld's top deputies to properly oversee the development of interrogation policies for Iraq had contributed to the abuses.
The former secretaries, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, both offered praise for Mr. Rumsfeld, saying he had conducted himself responsibly and strongly reiterating past statements that he should not resign over the affair.
But both were more specific than in the past in identifying two under secretaries of defense, Douglas J. Feith and David S. C. Chu, and the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes, as having fallen short.
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."
And while not calling for resignations, Mr. Brown, in his testimony before the House committee, said judgments about the administration's conduct in Iraq, on Abu Ghraib and other matters, were now up to voters to make. "When it comes to overall performance, there's another way of dealing with it, and that's called an election," Mr. Brown said.
The House hearing was its first in four months on Abu Ghraib, and it showed that partisan tensions were still running high on the issue.
For the most part, Republicans, including Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the panel chairman, sought to minimize the significance of the abuses, saying they reflected misconduct by a tiny minority of American soldiers.
By contrast, the Democrats, including Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the panel, said that the Bush administration had been wrong, after the abuses became public in April, to portray them this way.
"We must not continue to call this the work of just a few bad apples," he said at the hearing.
But even some Republicans were scathing in their comments. "We had a gigantic failure of leadership - one that a year ago, I would have said was impossible to have in the United States Army," said Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, who is a retired Marine colonel.
--------
'Ghost detainees' number up to 100
September 10, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040909-111014-3639r.htm
A U.S. Army general who headed one of the investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal said yesterday that as many as 100 "ghost detainees" may have been kept concealed from Red Cross observers in Iraq, a far higher number than previously reported.
The Pentagon last month released two reports on the Abu Ghraib scandal, one from an independent panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and another Army intelligence probe led by Army Gen. Paul J. Kern.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Gen. Kern, who is commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, said he lacked documentation to give a precise figure of "ghost detainees."
"We believe," he said, "the number is in the dozens ... perhaps up to 100."
Maj. Gen. George Fay, the deputy commander at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, said officials who conducted the Abu Ghraib investigations "were not able to get documentation from the Central Intelligence Agency to answer those types of questions."
"We really don't know the volume," Gen. Fay said.
Senators responded with frustration. Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the issue "needs to be cleared up really badly," and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called it "totally unacceptable" that documents requested from the CIA have not been forthcoming.
Holding "ghost detainees" violates the Geneva Conventions, which require that at least some information about prisoners of war be turned over to impartial observers monitoring their treatment such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In another development yesterday, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who months ago headed the first probe into prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, acknowledged that a shortage of troops posted at the prison when the abuses occurred resulted from a lack of planning.
The acknowledgement came after Sen. Mark Dayton, Minnesota Democrat, asked about discrepancies between the Schlesinger and Kern reports regarding the number of prisoners who were housed at Abu Ghraib at the time of the abuses.
"The prisoner-to-guard ratio, by this count [in the Kern report] would be about 20-to-1. In the Schlesinger report it would be 78-to-1," Mr. Dayton said. "I checked with the U.S. Department of Corrections, and nationwide, of all the prisons in the United States, state and federal, all levels of security, the average prisoner-to-guard ratio is 5.5-to-1."
Gen. Taguba said there were multiple reasons for the shortfall. "One was an inability to adjust their planning factors when they assumed the mission at Abu Ghraib," he said. "Secondly was the matter of requesting for additional forces within the command."
The Pentagon's reports on Abu Ghraib have identified both military police and military-intelligence personnel, who were involved in the Abu Ghraib abuses ranging from beatings, to sexual abuse, to what one report called "sadistic" behavior by some enlisted personnel. They also have pointed blame at higher-level commanders outside the prison who failed to supervise detention operations under their command at the prison, about 30 miles west of Baghdad.
--------
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Senators Told CIA May Have Avoided Registering Up to 100
Washington Post
September 10, 2004
By Bradley Graham and Josh White
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8946-2004Sep9?language=printer
A senior U.S. Army general who investigated the abusive treatment of prisoners in Iraq said yesterday that the CIA may have avoided registering up to 100 detainees in U.S. military facilities, a number far higher than the eight cases that Army officials had previously cited.
The disclosure by Gen. Paul J. Kern at a Senate hearing stunned lawmakers, who grew more aggravated as they heard Kern and another general involved in the probe describe their own unsuccessful efforts to obtain documents from the CIA about the unregistered prisoners, known as "ghost detainees." The Geneva Conventions generally require countries to register prisoners so their treatment can be monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"It's totally unacceptable that documents that are requested from the CIA have not been forthcoming," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "This needs to be cleared up really badly."
The CIA's handling of detainees emerged as a concern in two reports released last month -- the Army's investigation of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, and a broader independent review of Pentagon detention operations led by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. Both reports urged further review of CIA activities, with Army investigators concluding that CIA actions contributed to an atmosphere of "confusion and uncertainty" at Abu Ghraib over the treatment of prisoners.
The CIA has said it is conducting its own probe of the agency's detention and interrogation practices in Iraq, citing this as the reason it declined to share information with Army authorities. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said yesterday that the agency has asked the Pentagon to provide it with any allegations of CIA abuse.
One intelligence official with knowledge of the investigation said CIA headquarters approved the hiding of only several detainees. The official said field operatives then, evidently acting on their own, began to delay registering other prisoners. Record-keeping on these individuals was virtually nonexistent.
"There were lax procedures for them, and we just don't know much about them," the official said.
Another intelligence official said one reason for not registering some detainees would be to keep their capture secret from other prisoners, thereby impeding the coordination of cover stories that hampers interrogations.
The unresolved question of CIA accountability was one of a number of concerns singled out yesterday by lawmakers in the House as well as the Senate at hearings examining who was to blame for the prison abuse scandal. Republican and Democratic members expressed frustration over the missing pieces to the puzzle of how the mistreatment was allowed to happen on the wider scale now documented.
"Why would all these people not follow Army regulations, not report violations to the Geneva Conventions, wait months to inform commanders of vital information?" Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked the Army generals. "I don't think you've reached that, to me, basic question of what went on out there."
So far, only lower-ranking service members have been charged in the abuses. Both the Army and Schlesinger panel reports implicated military and civilian authorities up the chain of command for failure to ensure sufficient numbers of troops, issue clear policies or otherwise exercise proper leadership. But both reports also sought to spare higher-level authorities from prosecution, arguing that they were not directly responsible for the abuses.
Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said he is concerned about a "disparity" that would cause senior officers who knew about or condoned abuses to avoid criminal trials.
"Much responsibility for misconduct ultimately lies with senior civilian Pentagon leaders who created a postwar operational environment that facilitated these abuses," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), ranking minority member on the House Armed Services Committee. "Congress must now demand accountability."
Kern, whose team found no one above the rank of brigade commander culpable, agreed under Senate questioning to reassess those findings and look at whether Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then senior U.S. commander in Iraq, and some of his staff should face prosecution.
Kern called the ghost detainee issue "one of the more troubling pieces of" the Army's probe. Asked to estimate the total number of cases, Kern said it could be "in the dozens to perhaps up to 100."
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, a lead investigator who appeared with Kern, put the number "somewhere in the area of maybe two dozen or so, maybe more." But both men said the lack of documentation from the CIA makes any estimate difficult.
Fay said his initial requests to the CIA for information went unanswered. After meeting in Washington earlier this summer with the CIA's inspector general, Fay was told that the agency was doing its own investigation.
Kern said that the CIA had obtained permission to bring detainees to the Abu Ghraib facility from then-Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, the senior U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq. But she expected that CIA operatives would abide by U.S. military rules -- something that did not happen, Kern acknowledged.
The Army's investigation determined that no memorandums of understanding existed between the CIA and Sanchez's staff over the handling of detainees.
Levin urged that the Senate committee make its own "direct request" to the CIA for details about the ghost detainees. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, said he has been talking with the head of the Select Committee on Intelligence about how to proceed. He held open the possibility that the Armed Services Committee would hold its own hearing on the subject.
Schlesinger told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that his panel also received little cooperation from the CIA. When pressed, Schlesinger said that relations between the CIA and the Pentagon demand "better definition." He suggested that lawmakers turn their questions to the intelligence community.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged his own involvement in one ghost detainee case. He disclosed in June that he had agreed last November to a CIA request to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a detention center in Baghdad without registering him. Levin said one question he would like to explore is whether this decision contributed to the hiding of other prisoners.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Leader Promises Open Inquiry Into Terror Attack
September 10, 2004
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/international/europe/10CND-RUSS.html?hp
MOSCOW, Sept. 10 - In an unusual retreat under public pressure, President Vladimir V. Putin today promised an open inquiry into the recent slaughter of hostages in a school house, although the forum he chose left critics doubtful of his intentions.
After insisting that only a closed internal inquiry would be held, Mr. Putin said today that the upper house of Parliament would begin an inquiry Sept. 20 to provide "a full and objective picture of all the tragic events linked with the hostage-taking."
His brief announcement on television came as public anguish continued and questions multiplied about the events in which more than 300 people died, nearly half of them children.
But the relatively tame Russian press has maintained a hot emotional tone. One newspaper, Vechernaya Moskva, printed the portrait of a forlorn-looking child in the center of a black front page, accompanied only by the words, "Who is guilty?"
"Putin looks unusually weak and helpless," said Andrei Mironov, a human rights campaigner. "Never before have I heard people talking about him this way."
Like several other analysts, though, Mr. Mironov said he did not expect a full and genuine inquiry. The president's announcement came as members of the slightly less tractable lower house of Parliament said they might open their own investigation.
"I think he has been pushed into a compromise, an attempt to make an investigation that is not so critical," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the most outspoken members of the lower house, or Duma.
Nevertheless, he said it was a significant concession. "Never before has Parliament participated in this kind of investigation."
The crisis for Mr. Putin is that he has based his presidency on an image of toughness and strength, Mr. Ryzhkov said.
"Now he has to explain to the Russian public how it is possible that so strong a hand, such a tough guy, a man who has all the power and lots of money including oil money - how it is possible to be so inefficient and so weak."
He noted that more than 2,000 people had died in terrorist acts since Mr. Putin became president four and a half years ago.
He and others reeled off more than a dozen questions about the events last week, as well as crucial questions that remain unanswered from past attacks that were not publicly investigated.
--------
From Dismal Chechnya, Women Turn to Bombs
September 10, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/international/europe/10chechnya.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GROZNY, Russia, Sept. 8 - Mariyam Taburova and three of her roommates left the cramped, dismal apartment they shared here in Chechnya on Aug. 22. She has not been seen or heard from since. The others, however, have been.
Amanat Nagayeva and Satsita Dzhbirkhanova checked in two days later for two flights leaving Domodedovo Airport near Moscow and, according to Russian officials, detonated explosives that brought down both airliners, killing 90 people. A week after those bombings, a woman believed to be Ms. Nagayeva's younger sister, Roza, blew herself up outside a Moscow subway, killing at least 10 people.
The women - known to their neighbors here as decent people making what they could of life in a place marred by appalling destitution - are suspected of involvement in one of the deadliest waves of terror ever in Russia. With Ms. Taburova's whereabouts still unknown, the terror may not yet be over.
They are not the first women linked to the terrorism spawned by the war in Chechnya, nor were they the last. At least two women, perhaps four, were among the attackers in the brutal siege of Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, to the west, in North Ossetia, though they have not been identified.
In Russia, such women are known as shakhidki, the feminine Russian variant for the Arabic word meaning holy warriors who sacrifice their lives. In the media, they are known more luridly as black widows, prepared to kill and to die to avenge the deaths of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons in Chechnya. But the circumstances that bring women to suicidal attacks are not so simple.
Their participation - despite Chechnya's deeply patriarchal society, or perhaps because of it - reflects the radicalization of a war that began as a separatist struggle but has turned increasingly nihilistic.
It has also exposed the deep schisms that are tearing apart Chechnya, where few people interviewed here spoke warmly of Russia or the Kremlin, but where all expressed horror at the bombings, the school siege and other attacks carried out for the sake of Chechnya's independence. "We were so shocked," one woman who worked beside Ms. Dzhbirkhanova in Grozny's central market said, speaking only if she were identified by her first name, Yana. Her eyes reddened with tears. "How could she?"
Chechens themselves have not embraced a cult of religious martyrdom, as have, for example, many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, insurgents in Iraq or militant groups like Al Qaeda.
Here in Grozny, there are neither posters nor graffiti celebrating shakhidki. Chechnya's imams, leaders of a moderate Islam in an outwardly secular society, do not preach fiery sermons revering them. And those who knew the four women said they simply could not believe they were involved in any way.
Instead, rumors swirl. Some other fate has befallen them, their neighbors said: kidnapping, arrest, death perhaps - anything but suicide.
"It is not normal," said Khozh-Akhmed Israilov, a security guard in Grozny's market who knew Ms. Dzhbirkhanova, echoing many others interviewed here. "How could someone do this to themselves? Only God can take life. She knew very well that to take her life was a sin."
Unheard of when war ravaged Chechnya the first time, from 1994 to 1996, female suicide bombers have taken part in at least 15 attacks since the war erupted again, in 1999. Among those were the hostage siege of a Moscow theater in October 2002, where 19 of 41 captors were women. The women apparently involved in the plane bombings were not, technically, black widows. Ms. Dzhbirkhanova, said to be in her early 40's, was divorced. So were the Nagayeva sisters, 26 and 24. All three divorced, neighbors said, because they could not have children, something deeply stigmatized in Chechen life.
The Nagayeva sisters did lose a brother, Uvays Nagayev. On April 27, 2001, he and a friend were badly beaten by Russian soldiers, according to a report compiled by Memorial, a human rights organization. He escaped, but on May 2, he was arrested at the family's home by soldiers in a Russian armored vehicle. He has not been heard from since.
A neighbor of the sisters, who said she feared the kind of retribution that is all too common in Chechnya and would only speak on condition of anonymity, said she discounted that loss as a possible source for revenge.
"Amanat would not seek revenge after three years," she said of the older Nagayeva sister, who in other accounts has been called Aminat, Amnat and Amanta. "Such things are never delayed.''
Whatever their motivation, it was clear that all four women, like virtually everyone else here, led lives mired in squalor and devastation.
More than a year ago, three neighbors here said, the four women moved into an apartment on the fourth floor of a building on Ulitsa Mira, which means Street of Peace. They shared the apartment with at least two other women, Ms. Taburova's mother and her aunt, dividing the rent of $30 a month.
They lived in two bedrooms, sleeping on beds, some of which were simply matting or blankets on top of boxes. The windows are covered with plastic film; few panes have been replaced in the building, or anywhere else in Grozny for that matter. The fifth floor is open to the sky, its wall and roof punched out by one of the shells that pounded the city as Russian forces returned in 1999.
Their apartment faces a cratered courtyard that is fetid, strewn with trash and muddied by a constantly running pipe, the only source of water for the entire block.
All four worked in the central market, selling clothes, shoes and other goods they shuttled in from Azerbaijan. A stall costs 30 cents a day to rent.
Some people here say a decade of war and destruction, including atrocities by Russian forces, have driven women to desperate acts.
"The war has created the favorable soil for such extremists," Natalya K. Estemirova, director of Memorial, the rights organization, said in an interview in her office here. "That's why, with each step, it gets harder and harder.
"When traditional links have been destroyed, when society is destroyed, when so many people have been thrown apart, when morally it is impossible to understand such conditions, it is difficult to establish the forces of social unity" - forces, she said, that once held Chechen society together.
Officials in Russia have called the women's role evidence of the growing influence of Islamic extremists, suggesting the women had been coerced, brainwashed and even drugged by Chechen terrorists in order to carry out the attacks.
Support for such theories came from one of the bombers, Zarema Muzhikhoyeva. In July 2003, she botched - deliberately, she later told investigators - an attempt to blow herself up at a cafe in Moscow. She was arrested, but an explosives expert died trying to defuse the bomb.
In February, the newspaper Izvestia published an interview with her in which she claimed she had been recruited to terrorism out of shame and debt. Her handlers gave her orange juice that made her dizzy and dispatched her to bomb the cafe, she said. But she lost her will to die. She cooperated with investigators, leading them to a cache of "suicide belts" buried outside Moscow.
In April, a court convicted her and handed down a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, despite her cooperation. According to Russian news accounts, she lashed out when the sentence was read, shouting, "Now I know why everyone hates Russians!'' She said she would "come back and blow you all up.''
That anger simmers in Grozny today. It remains a ruin, but a ruin where thousands must survive, with few jobs outside of the government, the security forces and the black market. One of the few buildings newly renovated, an incongruously pink House of Culture, was burned when rebels staged a raid the night before the four women left Grozny.
"Every day we feel some injustice," said the neighbor who insisted on anonymity.
Alone among those interviewed, she expressed support for some of the suicide attacks attributed to women, though she said she condemned terrorism against civilians.
She cited one of the first known suicide bombings during the second round of war: In November 2001, Elza Gazuyeva killed herself and a Russian commander, Geidar Gadzhiyev, the man she believed ordered the death of her husband. "They are understood here," the woman said of suicide bombers like Ms. Gazuyeva. "They are adored. She was, is and will remain a heroine for us."
She and the other neighbors and co-workers in the market said they did not believe that the women could be involved in the latest attacks because they did not openly express any more feelings of anger or bitterness than anyone else. They were described as religious, but not deeply so. They wore head scarves, but not veils, which are rare in Chechnya. They dressed in clothes that would be unacceptable in any stricter Muslim society. "They talked about war, about life, about cosmetics, like all normal women," the neighbor said.
They also did not disappear for long periods, as did others who have later showed up in suicide attacks. "The girls who seek revenge go to the mountains," the neighbor said. "They do not trade in the market."
The four women left together on that Sunday, telling their neighbors they were headed to Azerbaijan. A woman who worked beside Ms. Dzhbirkhanova said she had told her she needed to replenish her supplies of children's clothes, shoes and accessories before the new school year began on Sept. 1. Another neighbor said Ms. Taburova's sister was planning to be married on Aug. 29 and, as is customary here, Ms. Taburova wanted to buy linens and other clothes for her wedding present.
Officials cited in Russian news reports have offered conflicting accounts of the women's route after leaving Grozny. Some have said they boarded a bus in Khasavyurt, a border town in neighboring Dagestan, or flew from its capital, Makhachkala. Still another version had them flying to Moscow from the Azeri capital, Baku, hours before Amanat Nagayeva and Ms. Dzhbirkhanova boarded the doomed flights at Domodedovo.
Officials at the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General's office declined to discuss the investigation into the attacks.
Ms. Dzhbirkhanova told those who worked beside her that during a previous trip in the spring someone stole her goods, as well as her passport. That was evidence enough for those who knew her that it was someone else who blew up the plane, though the neighbor said the pictures of the women broadcast on state television appeared to be theirs.
Mr. Israilov believes the four women might yet turn up, unharmed and uninvolved. "If her name was announced on television, how could she come back?" Mr. Israilov said of Ms. Dzhbirkhanova. "She might be afraid."
-------- war crimes
Witnesses Pull Out of Trial After Judges Refuse to Let Milosevic Act as His Own Lawyer
September 10, 2004
By MARLISE SIMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/international/europe/10hague.html?pagewanted=all
THE HAGUE, Sept. 9 - Just days after judges assigned two British lawyers to defend Slobodan Milosevic, his war crimes trial ran into new difficulties on Thursday as scheduled witnesses pulled out in protest.
Twelve high-ranking witnesses expected to appear this month to defend Mr. Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, have sent notice that they will not come to the tribunal here, according to Mr. Milosevic's aides. As a result, the session on Monday has been postponed.
Zdenko Tomanovic, one of the aides, denied that Mr. Milosevic was trying to discourage the witnesses from attending - the first two appeared earlier this week - but said that the witnesses themselves had objected to the proceedings after the court ruled Mr. Milosevic could not serve as his own lawyer.
Over strenuous protests from Mr. Milosevic, the judges in charge of the case appointed two lawyers to represent him after cardiologists had concurred that he was not fit enough to bear the strain of acting as his own lawyer. The trial, involving multiple war crimes charges, has been postponed more than a dozen times due to Mr. Milosevic's heart problems.
In recent days, he told his three judges several times that he wanted his right to act as his own lawyer restored and would appeal. Now, the court-appointed lawyers have taken the first step to appeal, following Mr. Milosevic's wishes, according to a document released by the court on Thursday. This puts the new defense team in the peculiar position of appealing against its own presence.
The lawyers, Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins, have cordial relations with Mr. Milosevic's aides, both sides agree. They have come to know each other well because Mr. Kay and Ms. Higgins have long attended the trial as "friends of the court" to ensure the fairness of the proceedings.
In court on Thursday, Mr. Kay begged witnesses chosen by Mr. Milosevic to testify in his support. "We welcome all Milosevic's witnesses to give evidence and indeed to cooperate," he said.
Refusals so far have come from four German, two Russian and five French witnesses, most of them former high-ranking politicians and military officers, according to Mr. Tomanovic, the aide to Mr. Milosevic. He also showed a letter addressed to Mr. Milosevic dated Sept. 8 from George Kenney, a former State Department official. It said: "Your defense, the defense for which I had consulted with you in The Hague, does not now exist. Consequently, I cannot in good conscience act as a 'defense witness' under the tribunal's current rules." If the tribunal reversed its decision, he said, he would appear.
Judge Patrick Robinson urged Mr. Milosevic on Thursday to cooperate, warning that he would be responsible if important evidence was not presented. He said, "The trial will nonetheless proceed and no one can say there was injustice."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Judge Keeps City on Notice Over Convention Protest Arrests
September 10, 2004
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/nyregion/10detain.html
A state court judge in Manhattan, unmoved by irate objections from lawyers for New York City, declined yesterday to dismiss contempt proceedings against the city for holding protesters too long during the Republican National Convention.
The judge, John Cataldo of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, found the city in contempt of court last week for failing to heed his order to release protesters still in custody without being arraigned after 24 hours. He set a fine of $1,000 for each person who was still in city custody at 6 p.m. on Sept. 2.
At a hearing yesterday, Michael A. Cardozo, the city's chief lawyer, urged the judge to drop the contempt citation now that all of the protesters covered by the judge's order were free. Alternatively, the city has argued that it should be given three weeks to prepare its case.
"Why are we doing this under this kind of breakneck speed?" Mr. Cardozo asked.
Justice Cataldo set aside his original contempt ruling, but set a new hearing for Monday morning to determine whether he would reinstate it permanently. He appeared to indicate, however, how he was leaning, saying the city's delay in complying with his release order was "willful and intentional."
He also ordered the city to produce by 4 p.m. today a list of about 600 people detained during the convention and released on his orders on Sept. 2, in the hours after he held the city in contempt.
Lawyers representing protesters have accused the city of holding them intentionally until after the convention was over and President Bush had left New York. City officials deny they had any strategy to hold demonstrators, and say their processing was overwhelmed when about 1,200 people were arrested during the night of Aug. 31.
Mr. Cardozo criticized Justice Cataldo for making what Mr. Cardozo said were several errors in the judge's contempt ruling and said the city would appeal it. He said the judge was infringing on the city's rights by denying him sufficient time to gather information and a court hearing to explain the processing delays.
"Your honor deprived me of my opportunity to present witnesses," Mr. Cardozo said, to show the city did "the absolute best we could" in processing the detainees.
He said there were not enough computers at the holding facility the city set up at Pier 57 on the West Side, so most information about the people detained had to be "done by hand." He said there had been delays to check fingerprints with authorities in Albany to see if those arrested had criminal records.
Mr. Cardozo said he was not certain that the city would be able to produce all the documents the judge requested by today's deadline.
Lawyers for the protesters said the city was trying to stall. Numerous protesters said the police dragged their feet during the legal processing of detainees. Some protesters said they were held for as long as 66 hours.
At one point Mr. Cardozo and Norman Siegel, a veteran civil liberties lawyer, jumped up from their courtroom seats and started pointing and shouting at each other.
"This seems like legal mumbo jumbo to me," said Daniel Alterman of the National Lawyers Guild and another lawyer for the protesters. But he and Mr. Siegel acknowledged that they needed a few more days to consult with their clients about whether to press for criminal contempt charges, as Justice Cataldo offered, or civil charges that might yield higher damage payments, or some combination of both.
Mr. Cardozo said he would continue to press for a full-scale trial on the matter. "I'm not stalling," he said. "I want the rule of law to be applied to the City of New York, and at the moment I don't think it is."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
National Airport Tests Boarding Pass Screens
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9650-2004Sep9.html
Passengers identified for additional security screening at Reagan National Airport will now have their boarding passes checked for explosives using document-scanning machines installed yesterday at one of the airport's checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration said National is the first of four airports to begin testing the machines over the next 30 days. The machines can detect whether a passenger has recently handled explosive materials by analyzing residue passed from the hands onto the boarding pass.
The document-scanning effort is the latest in a series of pilot projects involving explosive-detection systems that the TSA has undertaken this summer. The moves have come in response to the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and criticism from members of Congress that U.S. airports have been slow to provide defenses against a suicide bombing attack.
Explosive residue was found at the crash sites of two Russian planes that went down nearly simultaneously last month, although officials have not determined how the explosives got on board. TSA spokeswoman Amy Von Walter said the tests were not being conducted in response to the crashes, but that the agency is looking more aggressively for new technologies to prevent such attacks. The agency uses explosive-detection machines to scan checked luggage but does not regularly check passengers or carry-on luggage for explosives at security checkpoints, as the 9/11 panel recommended.
"The TSA's attention has always been to leverage new and existing technologies across all modes of transportation," Von Walter said.
This summer, the TSA began testing walk-through portals at five airports that can detect explosive residue on clothes by puffing air at them and "sniffing" for the residue. The program will be expanded to 10 additional airports next year. Also, at six airports, the agency began a test program to screen cargo for explosives.
The document scanners, sold by Smiths Detection, a unit of Smiths Group PLC of London, are stationed beyond the metal detectors at National's southern security gates serving American and Alaska airlines. If passengers set off the metal detector or if they have been preselected for additional scrutiny, a security screener will rub both sides of the passenger's boarding pass across a small piece of cotton gauze attached to the machine.
The screener then pushes a button and the gauze slides into the machine to be analyzed. Within seconds, a small color screen displays whether the material contains traces of explosives. The machines cost $40,000 to $50,000 each, according to a Smiths Detection spokesman.
In a demonstration yesterday, National's security director, Patrick D. Hynes, said if a passenger had been handling explosives and touched a boarding pass, the machine would pick up "even the most minute particle of explosive material."
"We are privileged at Ronald Reagan National Airport to be the first airport to have this technology," Hynes said.
--------
Secret Service Not Coddling Hecklers
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9703-2004Sep9.html
COLMAR, Pa., Sept. 9 -- Secret Service agents are famous for their willingness to take a bullet for the president. Less famous is their willingness to take out a heckler for the president.
Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room -- some by their hair, one by her bra straps -- and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.
After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.
The Bush campaign has made unprecedented efforts to control access to its events. Sometimes, people are required to sign oaths of support before attending events with Bush or Vice President Cheney. At times, buses of demonstrators are diverted by police to idle in parking lots while supporters are waved in. And the Secret Service has played an unusual role; one agent cooperated with a plan by the Bush campaign last month to prevent former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), a Kerry ally, from handing a letter to the agent outside Bush's Texas ranch.
The seven activists, with the AIDS group Act Up Philadelphia, signed up as volunteers and came to the event site, a warehouse here in suburban Philadelphia, the night before to set up with the other volunteers. The activists were admitted Thursday to the Bush speech, which they quickly disrupted with chants of "Bush lies, people die," and signs saying, "Bush: Global AIDS Liar."
Bush forced a smile as the seven interrupted his speech in waves. As the crowd drowned them out with chants of "Four More Years," the demonstrators were led roughly from the room by event ushers as a few attendees shouted "traitors." Outside, plainclothes Secret Service agents, joined by Blake Gottesman, Bush's personal aide, circled the demonstrators.
One uniformed Secret Service agent complained to a colleague that "the press is having a field day" with the disruption -- and the agents quickly clamped down. Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site -- even though their colleagues were free to come and go. An agent, who did not give his name, told one journalist who was blocked from returning to the speech that this was punishment for approaching the demonstrators and that there was a "different set of rules" for reporters who did not seek out the activists.
In the confusion, even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) had to cool his heels for 10 minutes before the Secret Service would let him leave the building.
The seven hecklers were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, then kept out of sight until Bush departed. They were left with instructions to call for a court appearance. One of them, Jen Cohn, said Secret Service agents interrogated the demonstrators and stood by as a police officer handled the arrests.
Tom Mazur, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, said dealing with hecklers is the job of "the host committee and local enforcement" officers. "The Secret Service normally doesn't get involved." Mazur referred questions about the event to the Philadelphia field office, where Agent in Charge James Borasi was not available for comment.
A White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, said Bush's personal aide did keep a reporter away from the demonstrators but was not involved in the activists' detention.
--------
U.S. to Pay Fliers $1.5 Million for Pilfering of Checked Bags
September 10, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10baggage.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - The Transportation Security Administration will pay more than $1.5 million to some 15,000 airline passengers who claim that items in their checked baggage were stolen or damaged in the last 18 months, the agency plans to announce next week.
Since airport security was tightened after the Sept. 11 attacks, checked baggage has been handled by federal inspectors as well as airline employees. As a result, fliers reporting items stolen or damaged have found themselves in a kind of no man's land in which both the government and the airlines have refused to take responsibility for compensating them.
Long negotiations between the two sides failed to resolve the impasse, because of differences in how the airlines and the government handle such claims. But on Thursday a spokesman for the security agency, Mark O. Hatfield, said in an interview, "Passengers have been caught in the middle long enough, and the T.S.A. decided it's time to settle these claims, even in the absence of a long-term agreement with the airlines'' involving claims processing and the sharing of costs.
The government settled some claims in the period before the negotiations began 18 months ago, but has paid few since; settlements have totaled only 1,800 in the last 22 months, in addition to the 15,000 the agency has now agreed to.
The airlines have historically had problems with pilferage by their baggage handlers. But since June, more than 20 baggage screeners for the security agency have also been charged with stealing from checked bags.
Since the agency's personnel began baggage inspections, which often take place in secluded, windowless rooms at the airports, passengers have complained about the loss of items as diverse as golf umbrellas, silk underwear, laptop computers and prescription painkillers, and about damage to cameras and other sensitive equipment.
By passengers' accounts, airline customer service agents tell them that the problem is security screeners, while security agency personnel blame airline baggage handlers.
"The proverbial 'chain of custody' has been broken,'' one airline executive said on condition that his company not be identified. "The airline has possession of your bags when you check them in. But from that point to the point where it's delivered on the baggage carousel, it could be intercepted by the T.S.A. or a baggage handler.''
Several stumbling blocks impeded an agreement in which the government and the airlines might have shared the cost of claims. Some airlines say they wanted a system in which they would have processed the claims, using their adjusters and historical databases, which can help track passenger fraud. They also wanted to know whom the government would be paying, so that customers could not try to collect twice.
But government officials said that letting the airlines know who was receiving payments could violate federal privacy laws. And the government has stricter standards for paying damage claims than do private businesses, which often try to accommodate their best customers.
In addition, airline executives say, the agency was trying to put a cap on its share of the payments.
Jack Evans, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, an industry group, said, "We're disappointed that we haven't been able to reach agreement with the T.S.A. on this, and we continue to encourage them to work expeditiously to reach settlements with our customers.''
The security agency, its officials say, has finished processing 18,000 of a total of 26,000 claims. Not all those 18,000 will result in payments. Mr. Hatfield, the agency spokesman, said the government would pay the entire claim in 38 percent of the cases, half the claim in 33 percent, and less than half the claim in 12 percent. In the remaining 17 percent, the claims will be denied because the items reported missing were prohibited in the first place, like butane lighters or other hazardous materials, or because the missing item did not belong to the claimant. The agency is also denying claims for damage to locks, and damage caused by X-rays, mostly to photographic film.
In cases where a payment is made, the average will be about $110, Mr. Hatfield said.
A spokeswoman, Yolanda Clark, said the security agency was trying to make it easier to file a claim, by setting aside some specialists in its call center. Ms. Clark said the agency also hoped to have a Web page by the end of the year where passengers can enter their case numbers and see the status of their claims.
One passenger with a claim, Dr. Thomas H. Crook III, a psychologist in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said of the $110 average payment, "That's not much.''
This summer Dr. Crook filed a claim for a BlackBerry, a digital camera and European currency he said was stolen from a bag on a flight home from Phoenix in June. He said his loss was about $1,200, plus some items of sentimental value, including photographs. He said he was encouraged, however, that he recently had a phone call from a representative of the security agency asking him to send receipts for the missing items.
--------
Rounding up all illegals 'not realistic'
September 10, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040909-115715-9178r.htm
The nation's border czar yesterday said it is "not realistic" to think that law-enforcement authorities can arrest or deport the millions of illegal aliens now in the United States and does not think the American public has the "will ... to uproot" those aliens.
Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson also said taxpayers "might be afraid" to learn how much it would take in manpower and resources to control the nation's borders and described as "probably accurate" a statement that no law-enforcement officials are looking for the vast majority of the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens thought to be in the country.
"It's not realistic to say we're going to reduce that number," Mr. Hutchinson said during a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "We don't set goals like that. Our goal is to enforce the law as we see violations of the law.
"But I don't think America has the will," he added. "I think they have too much compassion to tell our law-enforcement people to go out there and uproot those 8 million here - some of whom might have been here 8 or 12 years, who got kids here that are American citizens - and to send them out of the country."Mr. Hutchinson, who leads the nation's border and transportation security agencies, said although securing the nation's borders against terrorists, illegal aliens, smugglers and others who pose a threat is his top priority, the department is attempting to do so by laying "a foundation" for a strategy that can be "reasonably considered."
He said there is widespread disagreement within the country on what to do about immigration enforcement and on how to handle the millions of illegal aliens, mostly Mexican nationals, in the United States.
"I don't know that we've arrived at a consensus and, sure, that makes a difference," he said. "You can define that as political will. You also can describe it in terms of whether we've debated it sufficiently and drawn our thoughts together."
Mr. Hutchinson, who said he did not know how many illegal aliens entered the country annually, said the goal of his department is to gain operational control of the border, which includes monitoring the ports of entry and the land areas between and responding in an effective manner.
"It doesn't mean we build an Israel-type of fence. I don't think we're going to do that. I don't think you want to have a strategy of a Border Patrol agent every 50 yards," he said. "There's a lot of compassion out there. You don't send out a paddy wagon to round them up."
Most Americans adamantly oppose increasing the amount of legal immigration to the United States and legalizing those immigrants here illegally. On no other foreign-policy issue do average Americans disagree more with government and business leaders and other "elites" than on immigration.
But Mr. Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, said although there is "strong support" nationwide for the enforcement of immigration laws and the public expects it to be accomplished, "they expect us to do it in a way consistent with our values."
"Immigration has provided vitality to the growth of the country," he said. "We ought to recognize that, and that's an important principle in the development of our immigration policy. We have to be able to assimilate or integrate immigrants into our society where they can become Americans.
"That is what America historically has done very well, and we don't want to lose that capacity," he said.
Mr. Hutchinson said President Bush's proposal for a temporary guest-worker program, outlined in January, was an attempt by the administration to address immigration enforcement and to "bring 8 million aliens out of the shadow and give them legal status."
The Bush plan, which has not been offered as legislation, would allow illegal aliens in the country to remain if they have jobs and apply as guest workers. The aliens could stay for an undetermined number of renewable three-year periods, after which they could seek permanent legal status.
The proposal has been met with criticism from law-enforcement authorities and has been challenged by both Republicans and Democrats. Some have called the plan an amnesty program that invites aliens in this country illegally to gain perpetual legal status. Others said it was unpractical and could become a scheme to identify illegal aliens and deport them.
Last month, Mr. Hutchinson outlined a number of incentives to encourage aliens to support the plan, including provisions freeing them from arrest and deportation, giving them access to tax-deferred savings accounts and Social Security credits and allowing them unrestricted travel to and from their home countries.
Yesterday, Mr. Hutchinson said the incentives were designed to encourage the aliens to return to their home countries eventually, although he said he doubted that the matter would be brought before Congress before the November presidential elections.
Mr. Hutchinson also confirmed that a newly trained 12-member Border Patrol team based in Temecula, Calif., known as the Mobile Patrol Group, had been reassigned to enforce areas around highway checkpoints near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The team had been criticized by Democrats and immigrant rights advocates for racial profiling after it arrested 450 illegal aliens during a 19-day period in California's inland areas, all less than 100 miles from the border. At the time, Mr. Hutchinson told lawmakers that the team had failed to consider the "sensitivities" of those detained.
Yesterday, he said the responsibility for interior enforcement belonged not to the Border Patrol, a part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), both agencies that he oversees.
"Whenever you're in a war and whenever you've got troops on the ground, the troops have to act not in a way they think is a good idea, they have to work in a way that's in accordance with strategy," he said.
ICE officials have acknowledged that they have neither the manpower nor the resources to carry out an extensive interior-enforcement program. It has committed the 2,300 agents it has to hunt down illegal aliens to finding 80,000 criminal aliens and 320,000 "absconders," those who fled after being ordered deported.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Senators Told CIA May Have Avoided Registering Up to 100
By Bradley Graham and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8946-2004Sep9.html
A senior U.S. Army general who investigated the abusive treatment of prisoners in Iraq said yesterday that the CIA may have avoided registering up to 100 detainees in U.S. military facilities, a number far higher than the eight cases that Army officials had previously cited.
The disclosure by Gen. Paul J. Kern at a Senate hearing stunned lawmakers, who grew more aggravated as they heard Kern and another general involved in the probe describe their own unsuccessful efforts to obtain documents from the CIA about the unregistered prisoners, known as "ghost detainees." The Geneva Conventions generally require countries to register prisoners so their treatment can be monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"It's totally unacceptable that documents that are requested from the CIA have not been forthcoming," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "This needs to be cleared up really badly."
The CIA's handling of detainees emerged as a concern in two reports released last month -- the Army's investigation of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, and a broader independent review of Pentagon detention operations led by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. Both reports urged further review of CIA activities, with Army investigators concluding that CIA actions contributed to an atmosphere of "confusion and uncertainty" at Abu Ghraib over the treatment of prisoners.
The CIA has said it is conducting its own probe of the agency's detention and interrogation practices in Iraq, citing this as the reason it declined to share information with Army authorities. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said yesterday that the agency has asked the Pentagon to provide it with any allegations of CIA abuse.
One intelligence official with knowledge of the investigation said CIA headquarters approved the hiding of only several detainees. The official said field operatives then, evidently acting on their own, began to delay registering other prisoners. Record-keeping on these individuals was virtually nonexistent.
"There were lax procedures for them, and we just don't know much about them," the official said.
Another intelligence official said one reason for not registering some detainees would be to keep their capture secret from other prisoners, thereby impeding the coordination of cover stories that hampers interrogations.
The unresolved question of CIA accountability was one of a number of concerns singled out yesterday by lawmakers in the House as well as the Senate at hearings examining who was to blame for the prison abuse scandal. Republican and Democratic members expressed frustration over the missing pieces to the puzzle of how the mistreatment was allowed to happen on the wider scale now documented.
"Why would all these people not follow Army regulations, not report violations to the Geneva Conventions, wait months to inform commanders of vital information?" Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked the Army generals. "I don't think you've reached that, to me, basic question of what went on out there."
So far, only lower-ranking service members have been charged in the abuses. Both the Army and Schlesinger panel reports implicated military and civilian authorities up the chain of command for failure to ensure sufficient numbers of troops, issue clear policies or otherwise exercise proper leadership. But both reports also sought to spare higher-level authorities from prosecution, arguing that they were not directly responsible for the abuses.
Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said he is concerned about a "disparity" that would cause senior officers who knew about or condoned abuses to avoid criminal trials.
"Much responsibility for misconduct ultimately lies with senior civilian Pentagon leaders who created a postwar operational environment that facilitated these abuses," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), ranking minority member on the House Armed Services Committee. "Congress must now demand accountability."
Kern, whose team found no one above the rank of brigade commander culpable, agreed under Senate questioning to reassess those findings and look at whether Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then senior U.S. commander in Iraq, and some of his staff should face prosecution.
Kern called the ghost detainee issue "one of the more troubling pieces of" the Army's probe. Asked to estimate the total number of cases, Kern said it could be "in the dozens to perhaps up to 100."
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, a lead investigator who appeared with Kern, put the number "somewhere in the area of maybe two dozen or so, maybe more." But both men said the lack of documentation from the CIA makes any estimate difficult.
Fay said his initial requests to the CIA for information went unanswered. After meeting in Washington earlier this summer with the CIA's inspector general, Fay was told that the agency was doing its own investigation.
Kern said that the CIA had obtained permission to bring detainees to the Abu Ghraib facility from then-Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, the senior U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq. But she expected that CIA operatives would abide by U.S. military rules -- something that did not happen, Kern acknowledged.
The Army's investigation determined that no memorandums of understanding existed between the CIA and Sanchez's staff over the handling of detainees.
Levin urged that the Senate committee make its own "direct request" to the CIA for details about the ghost detainees. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, said he has been talking with the head of the Select Committee on Intelligence about how to proceed. He held open the possibility that the Armed Services Committee would hold its own hearing on the subject.
Schlesinger told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that his panel also received little cooperation from the CIA. When pressed, Schlesinger said that relations between the CIA and the Pentagon demand "better definition." He suggested that lawmakers turn their questions to the intelligence community.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged his own involvement in one ghost detainee case. He disclosed in June that he had agreed last November to a CIA request to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a detention center in Baghdad without registering him. Levin said one question he would like to explore is whether this decision contributed to the hiding of other prisoners.
Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.
--------
Reporters' Files Subpoenaed
New Leak Probe Concerns 2001 Raid on Islamic Charity
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9890-2004Sep9?language=printer
The federal prosecutor who has served at least four reporters with grand jury subpoenas in his investigation into the disclosure of an undercover CIA officer's identity is now pursuing a second leak case in which he has obtained a subpoena for New York Times reporters' telephone records.
Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is also acting as a special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe, informed the Times by letter last week that his office has subpoenaed telephone company records. The move is part of an effort to determine whether anyone in the government told Times reporters of planned federal asset seizures in December 2001 at the offices of an Islamic charity suspected of providing funding to al Qaeda, according to several sources familiar with the case.
The FBI believes that a call from a reporter to a representative of the charity, the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, may have led to the destruction of documents there the night before the government's raid, according to findings by the Sept. 11 commission.
The subpoena seeks the phone records of two Times reporters, Philip Shenon and Judith Miller, according to the sources. Officials at the Times and in Fitzgerald's office refused to comment.
In the CIA leak case, the Times, The Washington Post and other news organizations have been skirmishing with Fitzgerald as he pursues reporters and their confidential sources in search of who may have leaked the name of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak.
News organizations have confronted the reality that the law generally offers reporters limited protection from grand jury subpoenas issued by a prosecutor with a reputation for toughness who appears unusually willing to take on journalists.
Fitzgerald this summer subpoenaed reporters at the Times, The Post, Time magazine and NBC News in his investigation into whether an administration official illegally disclosed Plame's identity and her employment as a covert CIA officer. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it can be illegal for someone with authorized access to knowingly disclose the name of a covert agency employee.
Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, was sent by the CIA in 2002 to check out claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in the African country of Niger. He has sharply disputed the claims and has suggested that his wife's name was leaked in retaliation.
Fitzgerald has also asked questions in the Plame case about the disclosure of other classified material that appeared in news reports about the Niger uranium issue, according to one lawyer with knowledge of Fitzgerald's probe.
Floyd Abrams, the attorney for the Times, declined to answer most questions about Fitzgerald's interest in reporters' calls to Global Relief. "We have had an exchange of letters," he said. "We are still discussing the matter with him." He said that he did not know whether Fitzgerald has obtained the records and whether he can be persuaded "not to look at them."
Federal grand jury subpoenas seeking documents or testimony from reporters in criminal investigations are rare. The Justice Department's internal guidelines require that prosecutors take "all reasonable alternative investigative steps" before subpoenaing reporters' phone records.
Fitzgerald's subpoenas to the four reporters in the CIA leak probe did not have to be approved by the Justice Department because, in that matter, he is acting in his capacity as a special counsel. Deputy Attorney General James Comey appointed Fitzgerald to take over the investigation last December to avoid any appearance of or actual conflict of interest in having the administration investigate itself.
"The reporters' privilege is under attack, and this could be a significant loss for the newsgathering process," said Pete Weitzel, who is working with the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press in mobilizing public support from 40 media organizations for the subpoenaed reporters.
Weitzel said the groups are concerned not only about reporters being sent to jail for refusing to disclose confidential sources, but also "that we'll get some kind of bad law out of this that will work against reporters in many, many other cases."
Fitzgerald's leak investigation in the Global Relief matter began shortly after NATO troops and U.S. personnel, acting at the direction of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), raided several of the charity's overseas offices on Dec. 14, 2001. At the time, the Chicago U.S. attorney's office was conducting a criminal investigation of the Illinois offices of Benevolence International Foundation and Global Relief Foundation.
An examination of those investigations by the Sept. 11 commission said that Fitzgerald's "original plan did not call for searches or takedowns of the GRF or BIF offices in Illinois." Instead, the commission found, the FBI had planned to listen via wiretap to the charities' reaction to the overseas searches.
But, the commission said in findings released after its main report, "this plan went awry when word of the impending action apparently leaked to GRF. FBI personnel learned that some of the targets of the investigations may be destroying documents." Agents then "hastily assembled" a search, the commission reported.
The commission's findings added that "press leaks plagued almost every OFAC blocking action that took place in the United States."
Roger Simmons, an attorney for Global Relief, said documents "weren't being destroyed, but I understand why they thought so." He said the charity's public relations director received a call the evening of Dec. 13, 2001, from a Times reporter. "He said Phil Shenon of the New York Times said one of his colleagues had been told GRF would be frozen the next day," Simmons said. He added: "I think the Times reporter was looking for the first reaction even before the story had broken."
Times reporters and editors declined to comment, referring all questions to Abrams.
Simmons said he advised GRF officials not to destroy anything and was present for the raid the next morning, during which he told FBI agents that GRF had had advance word of the raid. At the time, GRF had sued the Times and other news organizations over reports that the government was scrutinizing its finances for ties to terrorism.
Fitzgerald brought half a dozen GRF officials and other witnesses before a grand jury in 2002 in an effort to learn the identity of the Times's source, according to Simmons. Fitzgerald subsequently sought a subpoena for the Times reporters' phone records last year but was turned down by political appointees at Justice Department headquarters, according to current and former government officials. It is unclear what other investigative steps he has taken since then.
In the CIA leak probe, Fitzgerald obtained depositions from three reporters: Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, Tim Russert of NBC News and Glenn Kessler of The Post. Kessler worked out an agreement with the prosecutor before a subpoena was issued. Russert failed to quash a subpoena and agreed to be questioned. Cooper was briefly held in contempt of court and threatened with jail before Time's lawyers agreed to allow his deposition.
In refusing to grant requests to quash the subpoenas to Cooper and Russert, U.S. Chief District Judge Thomas F. Hogan wrote that a 1972 Supreme Court ruling found that the First Amendment does not exempt reporters from having to respond to grand jury subpoenas.
In all three instances, the reporters said they did not disclose confidential source information to the prosecutor and agreed to be interviewed only because the subject of the prosecutor's questions -- White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- signed a waiver freeing reporters to answer questions about the Plame investigation.
Two other reporters subpoenaed in the CIA leak probe, Walter Pincus of The Post and Miller of the Times, have filed motions to quash the subpoenas.
On July 14, 2003, Novak wrote in his syndicated column that two senior administration officials told him that it was Plame's recommendation that led the CIA to send Wilson.
Lawyers and witnesses in the probe said Fitzgerald is interested in a story co-written by Pincus that appeared in The Post on Oct. 12, 2003. That story said that on July 12, 2003, two days before Novak's column was published, an administration official told a Post reporter that Wilson's wife had recommended him for the trip to Niger. The official said she was a CIA employee but did not disclose her name. An attorney for The Post declined to comment.
Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to comment on any aspect of the case, including whether prosecutors have sought his testimony.
-------- propaganda wars
'Uncovered' explores role of neocons in Iraq war
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com
The Seattle Times Movie review
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2002031148_uncovered10.html
"Uncovered: The War on Iraq" is like a trial lawyer's summation during a lengthy case in which allegations are familiar but their full context is not. A documentary partly financed (as a shorter version available on DVD) by MoveOn.org, the pro-Democratic group originally created by Howard Dean supporters, "Uncovered" is one of several 2004 political critiques by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, including the recent "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism."
"Uncovered" overlaps "Fahrenheit 9/11's" criticism of the American press and Congress for unquestioning support of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. But while it eschews Michael Moore's more red-meat accusations, the film also ignores commonplace complaints about occupation chaos. Instead, Greenwald narrowly focuses on an argument that the Bush administration hyped evidence of Iraq's weapons capabilities to justify a predetermined invasion.
"Uncovered: The War on Iraq," a documentary with Patrick Lang, Ray McGovern, David Kay. Directed by Robert Greenwald. 83 minutes. Not rated; suitable for mature audiences. Egyptian.
Greenwald enlists scores of CIA analysts and operatives, Foreign Service diplomats, weapons inspectors, counterterrorism experts and others to outline charges that the Iraq war was conceived before 9/11 by radical neo-conservatives who believe the U.S. has a superpower's right to reshape the Middle East.
"Uncovered's" thesis - stitched together from observations by the likes of Patrick Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer; Ray McGovern, longtime CIA analyst and presidential briefer; and Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of defense - is that removing Saddam from power was always a priority for neocons. Al-Qaida's terrorism, the argument goes, provided an invasion rationale despite no apparent Saddam-Osama link. It goes on to say Bush officials championed self-serving Iraqi exiles, and cooked scant intelligence about Saddam's nuclear and chemical weapons to force a war.
There's little new here, but in rehashing the weapons-of-mass-destruction debate, "Uncovered" focuses on interviewees whose résumés give weight to their views. An extensive talk with David Kay, the CIA appointee who led a costly, post-war WMD search and concluded there were none, is Greenwald's editorial coup. Kay's comment that Bush's team became "so fearful of admitting error they defended untruthful things" is devastating.
Which is not to say that Greenwald is objective. Selected images stoke anti-Bush fervor, and no effort is made to explore inevitable ambiguities in perception. Did Bush inflate facts or stumble on faulty intelligence? Should an unpopular case for a regime change been held up by a weak case for finding weapons? "Uncovered" would be stronger if someone made a contrary case.
----
Al Qaeda Releases Tape Predicting U.S. Defeat
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10420-2004Sep9.html
Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, said U.S. defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan "has become just a question of time," in a videotape broadcast yesterday on the approach of the third anniversary of the terrorist network's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"The Americans in both countries are between two fires; if they continue, they will bleed until death, and if they withdraw, they will lose everything," the al Qaeda leader said in a tape shown over the al-Jazeera television network, according to a translation by a U.S. government agency.
Yesterday marked the third year that Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization has released a tape around Sept. 11. In the first two videotapes, bin Laden took part with Zawahiri; this time only Zawahiri appeared, wearing a white turban.
While U.S. intelligence analysts are reviewing the tape, there was little doubt yesterday about its authenticity, said a senior administration official. Other specialists are studying the possible reasons for bin Laden's failure to appear in either the video or audio portions, the official said, adding that making a tape may have been too risky since it "would raise his profile, even temporarily."
Bin Laden has not appeared in a video whose taping date could be accurately established since one broadcast on Dec. 27, 2001, the official said. In yesterday's tape, references by Zawahiri to the Iraqi interim government in Baghdad and the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan indicate it was done fairly recently, officials said.
In 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the attacks, an audiotape included bin Laden praising the terrorists who took part in the attacks. Last year, the videotape showed bin Laden and Zawahiri walking in a mountainous area in undated footage. Meanwhile, on the audio track that accompanied the video, bin Laden again praised those who carried out the 2001 attacks while Zawahiri called on "our brother mujaheddin in Iraq" to continue attacking U.S.-led forces there.
Although much of what Zawahiri said in yesterday's tape involved Afghanistan, he said that in Iraq, the mujaheddin "have turned America's plan upside down after the interim government's weakness became clear."
As for Afghanistan, where scheduled elections in October may be in doubt because of fighting, Zawahiri said areas in the east and south "have now fully become an open arena for the mujaheddin." He said the Kabul government supporters "have been confined to the province's capitals" and that the Americans "are staying now in their trenches and refuse to come out to meet with the mujaheddin."
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, Maj. Matthew McLaughlin, said by e-mail that his organization, which directs forces in Afghanistan, "is not going to engage in a battle of press releases/statements with terrorists. Centcom remains committed to its mission in Afghanistan."
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Row over CBS report questioning Bush military service
NEW YORK (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910164519.fpgdfe56.html
The CBS television network moved Friday to counter allegations that a report it ran, questioning President George W. Bush's Vietnam War-era service record, was based in part on forged documents. "I know that this story is true," said veteran CBS anchorman Dan Rather, who presented the report Wednesday evening on the network's flagship "60 Minutes" programme.
"I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been," Rather told reporters.
The "60 Minutes" report showed typewritten memos, apparently from Bush's unit commander in the Texas Air National Guard, that suggested the future president had failed to fulfill his service requirements.
Lieutenant colonel Jerry Killian, who died in 1984, also wrote of resisting political pressure to "sugar-coat" Bush's annual review.
Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, challenged the authenticity of the memos, telling ABC radio that her late husband did not type and was an admirer of the young Bush, considering him to be "an excellent aviator."
And experts consulted by media organisations pointed to possible anomalies in the memos' typeface -- suggesting the documents were created by a modern word-processor, rather than a 1970s-era typewriter.
In a statement, CBS News said the memos had been "thoroughly examined" before the broadcast "and their authenticity vouched for by independent experts."
"60 Minutes" also interviewed close associates of Killian who "confirm that the documents reflect his opinions and actions at the time," the statement said.
Rather stressed that the possibility of a CBS retraction was "not even discussed."
The service records of Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry more than 30 years ago have become a volatile issue ahead of November's presidential election, with both candidates seeking to portray themselves as more qualified to lead the country in the war on terror.
The White House said Friday it did not know if the Killian memos were fabricated or not, but slammed what it called an orchestrated smear campaign by Democrats.
"The Democrats are focused on tearing down the president with the same old recycled attacks, because they're falling behind (in the polls)," said spokesman Scott McLellan.
"(They) are determined to throw the kitchen sink at us, and I suspect this is just the beginning," he said.
Republicans have responded to the attacks on Bush's National Guard record by citing his honourable discharge as evidence that he fulfilled all his obligations.
-------- us politics
Democrats Step Up Attack on Bush Guard Record
By Jim VandeHei and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9972-2004Sep9.html
Democrats unleashed a multi-front attack yesterday on President Bush's National Guard service, as the two political parties escalated a deeply personal fight over the Vietnam War-era activities of both presidential candidates.
The Democratic National Committee -- with the support of John F. Kerry's top campaign advisers -- joined several liberal groups in asserting that Bush lied about fulfilling his National Guard duties and exploited family ties to dodge combat during the Vietnam War. The DNC is lining up veterans to condemn Bush's action, while a group called Texans for Truth will air a new ad Monday alleging that Bush failed to show up for guard duty. "The president lied when he said he did not receive preferential treatment and when he said he fulfilled his duty," the DNC's Howard Wolfson said.
Republicans are planning to fire back with a more intense attack on Kerry's antiwar protests during the early 1970s, when he conveyed stories of atrocities by U.S. troops to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and tossed war ribbons at the White House lawn.
The anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is spending nearly $700,000 on a new ad that asks, "How can the man who renounced his country's symbols now be trusted?" House Republicans are stepping up the criticism of Kerry after four lawmakers viewed a new documentary by POWs that blames Kerry's words for years of emotional and physical torture. "It's pretty powerful," said Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) after viewing the film.
The effort is spreading to the States. Pollster Frank Luntz recently told an audience of Ohio GOP activists that the allegation that Kerry "betrayed" his country has moved undecided voters to Bush. Using the word "betrayal" will sway voters, he told them.
This comes as controversy erupted over the authenticity of the documents unearthed by CBS News. The papers raise doubts about whether Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard.
With a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showing Bush opening a nine-percentage-point lead after months of negative attacks on Kerry, each side is calculating it can damage its political opponent by rehashing 30-year-old controversies to sully his service, character and honesty. Strategists for Kerry and Bush privately say that a key to winning is raising serious questions about the trustworthiness of their opponent as a way of discrediting his policies, promises and capacity to govern at a time of terrorist threats.
In many ways, the campaigns and political parties are focusing more attention on long-ago events than on the mounting death toll in Iraq, the rising deficits and the persistent unemployment back home. Kerry's drop in the polls, which both sides attribute to attacks on his Vietnam service and protests afterward, has only served to encourage Republicans and Democrats alike to go negative, they say.
Bush officials say that most voters hold firm views about the president and that nothing about the distant past will change their minds.
But GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said Bush could be damaged if he is caught -- or perceived to be caught -- in a lie. Fabrizio's polling found that the anti-Kerry ads in August did considerable harm to the Democratic nominee. "If Democrats can create the same doubt about Bush in the eyes of voters, it will hurt Bush," he said.
Kerry is trying to keep a safe public distance from the attacks, aides say, although in a midnight speech in Ohio minutes after Bush concluded his convention speech a week ago, Kerry went after Bush for his National Guard service and Vice President Cheney for not serving at all.
Many Democrats say Kerry should leave the discussion of Bush's guard record to party officials, including DNC Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, who said at news conference yesterday: "George W. Bush's cover story on his National Guard service is rapidly unraveling."
Texans for Truth, which helped ignite the renewed controversy over Bush's service in the Air National Guard, is run by Democratic consultant Glenn W. Smith. The anti-Bush group MoveOn.org has helped finance his effort.
In a pattern similar to the initially modest expenditure of $500,000 by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Smith's Texans for Truth has received free television coverage across the country after investing just $110,000 in ads in five cities. The ads are not even scheduled to run until Monday.
Smith, 50, a former political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post, worked for a number of Democratic candidates over the past decade. In this election cycle, he has worked with MoveOn.org. With a grant from MoveOn, Smith set up DriveDemocracy.org, which initially fought GOP efforts to draw new lines for Texas congressional districts. Smith has raised money for Texans for Truth using both DriveDemocracy's donor lists and MoveOn.org's lists of Texas contributors.
Smith said that, as of yesterday, he had raised $400,000 from 5,800 donors, all small contributions except for one $100,000 gift from Hollywood producer-writer Dan O'Keefe. The group's ad consists entirely of former Air National Guardsman Bob Mintz -- who was in the same unit Bush was assigned to in Alabama -- talking on camera. Mintz says on camera that he sought out Bush but could never find him in the relatively small unit.
Smith said he found Mintz by reading an alternative weekly, the Memphis Flyer, which ran a long article on Mintz's inability to find Bush during his service. Mintz is now a pilot for Federal Express and, on a layover in Austin, Smith interviewed him on camera.
The seeds of the GOP campaign were planted last week in New York, where former president George H.W. Bush, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and several other prominent Republicans said Kerry's protest activities are fair game. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has raised nearly $4 million, is zeroing in on Kerry's tossing of his war ribbons, officials will the group say. The ad will air on national cable television.
Buyer, who viewed the documentary made by POWs with a group of 17 veterans who spent as many as seven years in captivity, said House Republicans are going to turn up the heat after watching the film. Luntz, who conducted focus groups in several battleground states for MSNBC, found this line of attack could prove effective. Fabrizio disagreed. "The Swift boat stuff has kind of run its course," he said.
Staff writers Paul Farhi, Lois Romano and Dale Russakoff contributed to this report.
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Kerry Says Bush Assault Weapons Stance Aids Terrorists
September 10, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/campaign/10CND-CAMP.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - President Bush campaigned today in sections of Appalachia, where he said that his economic and tax policies were turning things around. In St. Louis, Senator John Kerry said the president was helping terrorists by letting a ban on assault weapons expire next week.
Mr. Bush spoke at a rally in Huntington, W.Va., where he promised the crowd that if the American people returned him to office, he would keep the country safe from dangers from abroad and protect the people at home through prudent taxes, better schools and a health-care plan that is responsive to senior citizens.
"Many people change jobs and careers several times over the course of a lifetime," Mr. Bush said, "yet many of the fundamental systems - the tax code, health coverage, pension plans, worker training - were created for the world of yesterday, not tomorrow. So for the next four years we'll transform these systems to help our citizens."
As he has before, Mr. Bush described the campaign in Iraq as part of a wider assault on terrorism generally, even though no link has been found between the former Baghdad regime and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "When it comes to Iraq, my opponent has more different positions than all his colleagues in the Senate combined," Mr. Bush said. "If he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to the security and to the world."
But Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush had weakened the United States' position by not speaking out forcefully about the coming expiration of the ban on assault weapons. Congress enacted a ban on several types of assault weapons in 1994; the ban is due to expire on Monday, with no surge of support for it either on Capitol Hill or in the White House in this election season.
"Four years ago," Mr. Kerry said in St. Louis, "George Bush said he'd stand with and protect America's police officers by extending the assault-weapons ban, which keeps the most dangerous assault weapons off our streets, the same weapons that America's police officers want off our streets, not just to fight ordinary crime but to take on terrorists.
"In fact," the Democratic presidential candidate went on, "an Al Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan included a chapter urging terrorists to get assault weapons in the United States. Why is George Bush making the job of the terrorists easier and making the job for America's police officers harder?"
Mr. Kerry answered his question by asserting that the National Rifle Association had "put the squeeze on George Bush, and they're spending tens of millions of dollars to support his campaign."
"So now," Mr. Kerry continued, "the president is saying with a wink and a smile that he'll extend the assault weapons ban if Congress sends it to him. And Congress says they'll send it to him if he asks for it."
"I support the Second Amendment," Mr. Kerry added. "I've been a hunter all my life."
But the Bush campaign countered with a statement that Mr. Kerry, in his two decades in the Senate, had consistently backed gun-control legislation. And, the campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt told The Associated Press, "His implication that the president is helping terrorists is just another example of a candidate who is behind in the polls and lashing out with flailing personal attacks."
The fact that Mr. Kerry felt it necessary to point out that he does not detest firearms was indicative of the sensitivity of the issue of gun control, particularly in regions where hunting is popular.
The issue has been particularly tricky for Democrats who must try to please an urban liberal base that is often uneasy with guns yet keep from alienating gun owners and hunters who might otherwise support the ticket.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton said the assault weapons ban might have cost the Democrats 20 seats in an election that gave Republicans control of the House. And some believe that Vice President Al Gore lost crucial states, including his own Tennessee, in 2000 because he came out too strongly for gun control.
Mr. Bush carried Missouri over Al Gore in 2000, taking 50 percent of the vote, to 47 for Mr. Gore and 3 percent for Ralph Nader and other fringe candidates.
As for West Virginia, it went for Mr. Bush in 2000, to the surprise of many political analysts. In the post-mortems, some analysts said Mr. Bush had skillfully promoted clean-coal technology (a subject he mentioned again today) and raised fears that the Democrats wanted to take away hunters' guns.
After West Virginia, Mr. Bush was headed today to an economically hard-hit section of southern Ohio. The state has lost many manufacturing jobs in recent years, and Mr. Bush has aggressively promoted his economic policies in his frequent visits to the state, which he carried in 2000, but not by so much as to let him take it for granted this year.
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Secretary Rumsfeld's Speech at the National Press Club
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld,
Friday, September 10, 2004
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040910-secdef1286.html
MR. DONNELLY: Good afternoon, and welcome to the National Press Club. My name is John Donnelly. I'm a reporter with Congressional Quarterly and I'm chairman of the Press Club Board of Governors.
I'd like to welcome club members and their guests in the audience today, as well as those of you watching on C-SPAN or listening to this program on National Public Radio. Please hold your applause during the speech so that we have time for as many questions as possible.
For our broadcast audience I'd like to explain that if you hear applause, it may be from the guests and members of the general public who attend our luncheons, and not necessarily from the working press. (Laughter.)
The video archive of today's luncheon is provided by ConnectLive and is available to members only through the National Press Club website at www.press.org. For more information about joining the Press Club, contact us at 202-662-7511. Press Club members also may access transcripts of our luncheons at our website. Non-members may purchase transcripts, audio and video tapes by calling 1-888-343-1940.
Before introducing our head table, I'd like to remind our members of future speakers.
On Monday, September 20th, Secretary John Snow, U.S. Department of the Treasury. Tuesday, September 21st, Hector V. Barreto, administrator, Small Business Administration. Friday, September 24th, President Obasanjo of Nigeria will be our guest at a special evening newsmaker event.
And tomorrow, September 11th, the Press Club will host its seventh annual 5K run and silent auction to benefit the Ellen Persina Scholarship for aspiring journalists of color. Silent auction items are on display and available for bidding now at the front desk. For more information about the 5K, check out our website at www.press.org.
If you have any questions for our speaker, please write them on the cards provided at your table and pass them up to me. I will ask as many as time permits.
I'd now like to introduce our head table guests and ask each to stand briefly when their names are called. Please hold your applause until all head table guests are introduced.
From your right, Bernd Debusmann, editor, political and general news for the Americas, for Reuters; Ivan Scott, Pentagon correspondent, WTOP Radio; Marc Heller, Washington correspondent, Watertown Daily News -- Daily Times -- forgive me; Robert T. Hartmann, former Washington bureau chief, Los Angeles Times, and former counselor to President Gerald Ford; Samantha Young, Washington Correspondent, Stephens Media Group; Eric Rosenberg, national correspondent, Hearst Newspapers; Askiya Mohammed (ph), White House correspondent, National Scene News Bureau; Clayton Boyce, a freelance journalist, former president of the National Press Club and vice chairman of the club's Speakers Committee. And skipping over our speaker: Katherine M. Skiba, Washington correspondent, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Speakers Committee member who arranged today's luncheon. Thank you, Katherine. Tammy Lytle, Washington bureau chief, the Orlando Sentinel, and former president of the National Press Club; Jack Cushman, editor, Washington Bureau, New York Times, and also a former president of the club; Carly Weeks, an intern with the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, and the Globe and Mail; and finally, Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA Today. (Applause.)
On the eve of the third anniversary of the September 11th, 2001, terror attacks against the United States, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the National Press Club, where he was the guest of honor at a newsmaker luncheon precisely one year ago.
Secretary Rumsfeld has the distinction of serving as both the youngest and oldest Defense secretary in the history of the United States. (Laughter.)
RUMSFELD: That's a distinction? (Laughter.)
DONNELLY: (Laughs.) When Gerald Ford picked Donald Rumsfeld to be the 13th secretary of Defense in 1975, Rumsfeld was 43 years old. And when he became the 21st Defense secretary, under George W. Bush, in January 2001, he was 69.
Now, 1977 was a long time ago, and for that matter, January 2001 now seems like a long time ago as well. Donald Rumsfeld has led the U.S. armed forces into two wars in the aftermath of September 11th. His name forever will be associated with managing the Department of Defense during some of the most perilous times this nation has faced.
Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born in Evanston, Illinois 72 years ago to successful realtor George Rumsfeld and his wife, Jeanette. The young Rumsfeld was an Eagle Scout and energetic, said to have held 20- odd jobs in his youth, from gardening to delivering newspapers. It's also said that his interest in politics and the world around him may be traced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when the 9-year-old Rumsfeld watched his father put aside his career to join the Navy.
Rumsfeld attended Princeton University on academic and Naval ROTC scholarships. He captained the wrestling and football teams there in the early 1950s. After Princeton, Rumsfeld, like his father, served in the Navy. He was an aviator and flight instructor in the wake of the Korean War.
After his years in active duty, Rumsfeld worked as an aide on Capitol Hill and later as an investment broker. In 1962, at the age of 30, he won a seat in Congress from a Chicago district, and he retained that seat in three subsequent elections. Early on he was one the capital's up and comers.
In 1969 he resigned his House seat to work in Richard Nixon's White House, first as director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and ultimately at U.S. ambassador to NATO. Next he chaired President Gerald R. Ford's transition team and became his chief of staff; a staff, by the way, that included a gentleman named Dick Cheney.
Then, as I mentioned, President Ford appointed Rumsfeld secretary of Defense, where he served for 14 months ending in 1977. He made a name for himself by building up the military and opposing the SALT II strategic arms reduction treaty.
Secretary Rumsfeld has been called many things: charming, charismatic, iron-jawed, savvy, no-nonsense, and maybe a few others. His colleagues from his first tenure as Defense secretary characterize him as a highly organized and highly political person. Henry Kissinger, then-secretary of State, said in his memoir that Rumsfeld was, quote, "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled, full-time politician bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fused seamlessly."
In the presidential election of 1976, when Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, Donald Rumsfeld the public servant became a captain of industry. From 1977 to '85 he worked as CEO, president and chairman of the global pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle and Company and later the General Instrument Corporation. The stocks of both those firms soared under his stewardship.
But he was never far from the political scene. He flirted with a presidential run in 1988, he chaired the bipartisan Missile Threat Commission in 1998, and more.
With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Rumsfeld was picked again to run the Pentagon. He launched an effort to create a leaner, more mobile military, able to meet threats that often, he said presciently, cannot be precisely predicted.
He met with a little resistance, it's fair to say, from the Defense establishment, as he still is. By the summer of 2001, the sniping from the resisters was such that some predicted Rumsfeld will be the first Bush II Cabinet secretary to step down.
Then came September 11th. The secretary of Defense became a secretary of War. The transformation began with his decision to help people in the rubble of the Pentagon that bright, clear day. It continued as he led military operations against the Taliban, beginning in late 2001, and then, starting last year, in the ongoing struggle in Iraq.
At the fall of Baghdad last year, Secretary Rumsfeld exulted that Hussein had taken his right place in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators and predicted that the Iraqi people were well on their way to freedom.
But since then, Donald Rumsfeld has heard his share of criticism. The two leading reasons given by the administration for toppling Saddam Hussein -- the gathering threat from his weapons of mass destruction and his connections to terrorism -- have proven to be almost entirely untrue. This past week, U.S. military deaths since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq climbed past 1,000, and injuries reached near 7,000. Several parts of Iraq are run by insurgents, not coalition forces.
Two and a half weeks ago, a high-level panel led by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger told the press about its investigation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses in Iraq. Schlesinger said that senior Pentagon officials sowed confusion about what kinds of interrogation techniques would be permitted and delayed for months dispatching reinforcements to help U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib. Furthermore, the panel said, Secretary Rumsfeld and his aides had failed in not anticipating and responding swiftly to the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq.
But Schlesinger answered no, resoundingly, when asked whether Secretary Rumsfeld or other high-ranking Pentagon officials should resign. Schlesinger said such a decision would be, quote, "a boon for all of America's enemies."
Here to discuss these and other issues, and to give a progress report on the global war on terror, I am delighted to present to you Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. (Applause.)
RUMSFELD: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
John, those at the head table, my friend Bob Hartmann from the Ford administration days -- good to see you -- ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It's good to be here again.
I always worry about correcting an introduction. (Laughter.) But I shall do so. The biggest worry is that if you correct one part of it, you seem to be endorsing the rest of it. And I want to point out that I am going to correct only one thing, and it does not mean an endorsement of the rest. (Light laughter.)
John indicated that I was captain of the wrestling team in Princeton -- (laughter) -- and captain of the football team. It turns out I was captain of the wrestling team, and I was also captain of a football team, but it was not the varsity team. It was the 150-pound football team. (Laughter.) And I wouldn't want anyone here to go away thinking I was big enough to play with the big boys.
Q: (Off mike.)
RUMSFELD: (Chuckles.)
Tomorrow we will commemorate the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks against our country on September 11th, 2001. But today I want to talk about a different anniversary and take a moment to consider what was happening, where we were, what many folks thought about our world, not on the 11th, but on the 10th of September three years ago.
There are those who might be tempted to think that if we would only pull back, if our country would only withdraw from this global struggle against extremists and let events abroad run their course, let those folks go about their business, that somehow the combat, the conflict, the ugliness on our TV screens and newspapers would go away, and that we could return to that more comforting time that preceded the September 11th attacks.
But if you think about it, that's not the way the world really was before September 11th. Consider the world of September 10th and before. Two Americans and six others stood on trial by the Taliban in Afghanistan for the crime of preaching their religion. The leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Massoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein -- by Osama bin Laden, Taliban's co- conspirator. An Iraqi newspaper put out by Saddam Hussein's son Uday called on European corporations to pressure their governments to break with the United States and Britain, so that the sanctions would be lifted.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis were bragging about having shot down a U.S. drone in late August. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz vowed that Iraq would inflict losses on the U.S. and Britain -- that were flying in the southern and northern no-fly zones. Our planes were being shot at every week. Libya's undeclared nuclear weapons program proceeded apace, with technologies and materials being supplied in part, at least, by a network -- a secret network headed by the rogue, A.Q. Khan, a man who also aided the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran and possibly others. All of this was before September 11th.
Closer to home, a man named Hani Hanjour and his associates checked into a Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia, about 20 miles from here, and they would board the American Airlines Flight No. 77 at Dulles the next morning. And in New Jersey, a young Todd Beamer postponed until the following morning a business trip to California because he and his wife Lisa had just returned from Europe and he wanted to spend an extra day with his children.
September 10th, 2001, was not the last day of world innocence. It was, however, the last day of America's lack of understanding of a worldwide extremist movement determined to terrorize, to defeat, to destroy civilized people everywhere.
Consider the world as it stands three years later. The Taliban regime is gone. Those still not killed or captured are on the run. Despite a campaign of violence and intimidation, over 10 million Afghans have registered to vote, including 4 million women, despite the intimidation. And they've registered to vote in what will be the first free election in that country's history.
Saddam Hussein's regime is finished. His sons are dead. He's in a prison cell, where he awaits the justice of the Iraqi people, which he will soon face. Libya has said now that it is renouncing its illicit weapons programs, and it says it will cooperate with the efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and that it's seeking to reenter the community of civilized nations. Time will tell, but so far, so good. A.Q. Khan's arms network has been shut down. The Pakistan government is a staunch and courageous ally against extremism and terrorism. And a few short years after Osama bin Laden ridiculed the American soldier as a paper tiger, saying that after a few blows, they run in defeat, the names of Todd Beamer and Pat Tillman and so many other brave Americans live as symbols of our country's courage and determination.
In the last three years, under the leadership of President Bush and the 85 or 90 countries in the coalition, probably the largest coalition in the history of mankind, we've changed strategies, assumptions, and our view of the world.
While some may still find false comfort in the pre-September 11th thinking, our enemies have been living in the September 11th world for a very long time. Al Qaeda, if you think about it, first attacked the World Trade Center not in 2001, but in 1993. Later, attacks against the Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the U.S. sailors aboard the USS Cole, and the attacks continue. Since September 11th, extremists using knapsacks, passenger cars, trains, letter openers have killed hundreds more in places like Spain, Turkey, Kenya, Indonesia, and other countries.
We've witnessed the horror of terrorists taking Russian children hostages on their first day of school, resulting in the death of hundreds of children. I don't suppose there's a mother or father in America or anywhere in the world who dropped a child off for the first day of school who did not wonder could that happen to them. The answer is it could, which is why it is so important that in the global war on terror we recognize that we have to fight this battle where the terrorists are rather than waiting for them to force us to fight, God forbid, in our own schools.
And if these enemies of civilized society gain chemical or biological or nuclear weapons -- which they seek, let there be no doubt about it -- it's not inconceivable that an attack on a city here or elsewhere in the world could cause not the 3,000 dead from September 11th -- innocent men, women and children of all faiths -- but of 30,000 or even 300,000.
For the past three-and-a-half years, the Department of Defense has been undertaking efforts to reform and improve the way that our forces -- your forces -- are organized, equipped and positioned to meet the security needs of the 21st century. We're reshaping and modernizing our global force posture away from Cold War obsolescence.
The world has changed markedly since the conflicts of the last century ended, when the Soviet tanks were poised to roll across the North German plain and when South Korea was an impoverished nation devastated by war. But our military arrangements, while having been reduced somewhat, have not changed dramatically. Our forces must be where they're wanted, they have to be where they're needed, and they have to be where they can be deployed quickly, and they have to be deployed without burdensome restriction, legal, political or otherwise.
We're restructuring and transforming our military.
The Army is now led by a forward-looking chief of staff, General Pete Schoomaker. It's significantly increasing the number of agile, more self-sufficient combat brigades available for rapid deployment from 33 up to 43, and possibly to 48. He's rebalancing specialties between the active component and the reserve components, which is so needed, so that National Guard and reservist soldiers will not be called up so often.
We're developing, testing and beginning to deploy limited defenses against ballistic missiles to deter rogue states from attempting to think that they can blackmail America or our friends and allies. And we're updating our existing alliances and building new relationships based on security realities of this new century, and not the last century. Countries like Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Pakistan, India -- to cite but a few examples -- are now partners in the fight against extremism in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
These reforms and initiatives are so urgent because of the ruthlessness of the enemies we face. Their tactics vary, but their objectives are consistent. The terrorists and the extremists hope to intimidate and to demoralize the American people and our allies with their threats and with their attacks.
I mentioned the schools in Russia and the hundreds of children. But the chopping off of heads on television, on video, so people can see it; taking pliers and pulling tongues out, and cutting them off; chopping off hands; attacking indiscriminately, or maybe I should say discriminately, the most innocent and the most vulnerable for the purpose of terrorizing -- terrorizing to alter behavior on the rest of the people in this world.
They seek to drive our coalition out of the newly liberated countries of Afghanistan and Iraq and to re-impose dictatorial regimes. They will fail; let there be no doubt. And they're conducting a reign of terror against those who represent hope and freedom -- the mayors, the city councilmen, the women who register to vote in Afghanistan, and the volunteers who sign up to join the Iraqi army or the National Guard or the Iraqi police force.
I'm sure you all read about the bus that was stopped by some Taliban near the Pakistan border, and they went through the women's possessions to see if they had registered to vote, and the ones that had registered to vote were killed.
No one should underestimate the powerful impact of human freedom. Today Iraqis are among those in our globe who are allowed to say what they want and go where they want and write and watch and listen to whatever they want when they want to do it, and to criticize their own government. Governments and people throughout the Middle East are taking notice of that. The assassins and the terrorists we are fighting know that the rise of a free, self-governing Afghanistan and a free, self-governing Iraq will give powerful momentum to reformers throughout the region and it will discredit their extremist ideology.
Free people battled their kind before in struggles against dictators, fascists, communists of the last century. Freedom has always required sacrifice. And, regrettably, it has always cost lives. The attack on Pearl Harbor alone claimed the lives of some 2,400 Americans on one day. Roughly 400,000 more American troops would be killed before they overcame repeated defeats in those early years of World War II and demoralizing setbacks to eventually achieve victory years later.
I mention this because we've now lost over 1,100 Americans in the global war on terror -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, elsewhere on the globe. The reality is that as advanced as our capabilities are, the truth is that war is ugly and it takes lives.
It's important to keep in mind that the civilized world passed the 1,000th casualty mark at the hands of extremists long ago; I mean, 3,000 on September 11th alone; in a series of attacks that included the bombing of our embassies and military barracks. It was the murder of so many and the destruction of so much in one morning on our soil three years ago that brought home what we're up against in this ongoing struggle.
As long as we continue our mission, as long as we work to change terrorists' way of life before they succeed in changing our way of life, as long as we avoid a return to the false comfort of September 10th, 2001, victory will come, just as it has in conflicts in the past.
For all of the enemy's ruthlessness -- and it is total, there is nothing they will not do, indeed there is nothing they have not done -- we have an enormous advantage. I say "we." I don't mean the people of the United States; I mean the people in the 85 or 90 nations across the globe that are cooperating in this effort, in this war against -- this struggle against extremism. And the advantage is that the great sweep of human history is for freedom. And that is on our side.
I'll be happy to respond to some questions. (Applause.)
DONNELLY: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
We do have a few questions, and I've grouped them first of all into questions about Iraq. The first is, when will the U.S. military attack the insurgents and others in the enclaves such as Fallujah? Won't delaying this house cleaning obstruct the January elections in Iraq?
RUMSFELD: The Iraqi government and certainly the coalition military understand fully that you cannot over a sustained period of time allow portions of that country to be under the control of people who are using it to kill Iraqis, which they are killing a great number of -- the extremists, the former regime elements, the terrorists -- or to kill coalition forces or to try to kill and damage the new Iraqi government. The Iraqi government understands that. The coalition understands that.
The process they're engaged in is one where they are attempting different approaches. And in Najaf they had a choice. They could have gone in and taken over the town; had the military power to do it, let there be no doubt. Indeed, they were very close to having to do that, to believing they had to do that. And they had Iraqi forces ready to take care of the shrines in Najaf so that the coalition forces would not have to do it, but the coalition forces would be right behind them and that they would have successfully retaken the city. It turned out they didn't have to. The fact that it was clear to Sadr and his crowd, the militia, that they did have the ability to do that is what without question led Sadr to encourage his militia to get out of town and turn in their weapons, and as a result Najaf has been taken back peacefully.
There are other places that will be taken by force, and it's really going to be a choice between the people in those towns -- and I don't mean the innocent Iraqi people, the overwhelming majority of which support the government and don't want to see their towns ruined, taken over by terrorists and militias. What will take place in Fallujah is -- correction, we know what will take place in Fallujah, and that is that it will be restored as a -- something under the control of the Iraqi government eventually. What we don't know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen.
DONNELLY: How confident are you, Mr. Secretary, that general elections will be held in Iraq in January?
RUMSFELD: Well, I'm one of those people who has been around long enough to not make hard predictions or dates -- set dates or numbers of costs, and those types of things, because every time I watch people do it, turns out they're wrong. So I'll be very careful.
The Iraqi government is determined to have the elections take place on time. The United States government is determined to have those elections take place on time. The elections are being administered by the United Nations. There's no question but between now and the end of the year, the terrorists are determined to try to prevent the elections from taking place, and from taking place on time. And they will, without a doubt in my mind, increase the level of violence between now and then, and they'll attempt to attack coalition countries to see if they can get other coalition countries to pull out.
Some countries have elections taking place and there's a big tug of war over whether or not they should stay or whether they should have been there. And the terrorists know that. They're not stupid; they're smart. And they've got brains, and they think, and they watch, and they saw what Spain did. And they thought, my goodness, if we can affect that, maybe we can do something. So they're going to be going after coalition countries; they're going to be looking for weak spots; they're going to be going after people who are running for office. There are going to be Iraqi people who are engaged in that process, and they're going to do their best to try to stop it.
Do I think it will go forward? Yes, I do. I think it will go forward because if you look at any measure -- by any measurement, the Iraqi people want elections. They want to vote. They're determined to vote.
Now, will it be perfect election? Probably not. Will there be places that are -- where the violence is being targeted that will probably prevent people from voting? No, it won't be perfect. But I've never seen an election anywhere that's perfect. There's always a little -- (interrupted by laughter) -- I didn't mean just the outcome. (Laughter.) I meant the process. So I think it will be -- I think it will happen.
DONNELLY: The Financial Times today editorializes that it is, quote, "time to consider Iraq withdrawal," close quote, noting the protracted war is not winnable and it's creating more terrorists than enemies of the West. What is your response, this questioner asks.
RUMSFELD: Who put that question in? He ought to get a life. If he's got time to read that kind of stuff -- (laughter) -- he ought to get a life. (Scattered applause.)
They've been saying things like that for months, and there have always been critics. There have always been people who say it's not worth it. And indeed, if you watch in any conflict in our history, there have always been people who said, "Why? Why should we do that? Another loss of life. Another person wounded. Another limb off." And -- you can't go to the hospitals at Bethesda or Walter Reed and see those folks and not have your heart break for them and the fact that their lives are going to be lived differently; or tomorrow, when we go to Arlington and recall all those who died on September 11th and lives not lived.
But it is worth it. It is worth it. And those who suggest to the contrary are not only wrong, but they will be proved wrong.
The -- Germany and Italy were fascist states -- and Japan -- during World War II. And throughout the entire Cold War those countries stood with us against the Soviet Union. How does that happen? How did they go from being fascist states to being democracies and to helping to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding across Europe?
South Korea -- same people in the north, same people in the south. South of the DMZ: robust economy, vibrant democracy. Up north: darkness, starvation, concentration camps. They had to lower the height for getting in the military in North Korea to four feet, 10 inches for adults, because of starvation.
Now think of those people. Think if we'd said, "Oh! It's not worth it."
The extremists are determined to destroy states. They are determined to destroy free systems. They are determined to take their violence and spread it across this globe, and we can't let them do it. And The Financial Times is wrong. (Applause.)
DONNELLY: This questioner writes, "Aren't you ashamed of your policy forbidding the flag-draped coffins of our dead soldiers to be shown returning home, when their families have clearly said that they do want their loved ones to be honored and recognized in this way?"
RUMSFELD: No. And I would just simply repeat that this is a procedure that was adopted by the Department of Defense many years ago, back in the last administration. I do not believe that the person asking the question is correct in saying that the -- clearly the families want it one way. The families, I believe, support the position of the Department of Defense when, back in the last administration, the policy was instituted. And I think that it's probably correct.
The families have every opportunity to handle the burial of their loved ones in any way they want, public or private, and they do that. And it seems to me it's not the government's right or position to make that decision for them.
DONNELLY: How will we know that the mission in Iraq is accomplished and our forces can leave? Can that ever happen if our troops remain under attack?
RUMSFELD: The answer is yes, it can happen and it will happen. We -- the United States of America does not put forces into a country to leave them there; we put them in there to help that country get on its feet and then leave.
What we're doing is important. We are training Iraqis in the police, in the army, in the national guard, in the border patrol, so that they can assume the responsibility for their own security. We have no desire to stay there and provide security in that country or in any other country.
And we have gone from zero to 95,000 Iraqis that are fully trained, fully equipped, providing their own security. They'll be up to about 145,000 Iraqis by the end of this year, fully trained, fully equipped. There are some another 50,000 of them that are not fully trained or fully equipped yet but that have been recruited and are capable of doing some things, relatively modest things, but not fully providing security.
The amount of time it will take, it seems to me, is a reasonable amount of time. We have wonderful people working on the training. NATO has now agreed to assist in the training. And I think that what we'll find is that already the Iraqi forces outnumber the U.S. and coalition forces. And if you look at the trained and equipped, we've got about 135,000, 136,00 people there, and the Iraqis are now up to 95,000 fully trained and fully equipped, they're going to walk past us in the next month or two in terms of total numbers, and then pass the entire coalition before the end of the year by a substantial amount.
So I'm optimistic. I think that we have -- we don't want to be there. What we want to do is to help that country get on its feet, and to contribute to their development of their own security capabilities so that they can have a country, as the president said, that's a single country that's at peace with its neighbors, that is not engaged in weapons programs that threaten other people, that's not engaged in terrorism, and that is respectful of the various religious and ethnic diversity that exists in that country. And that's what will happen.
DONNELLY: When do you anticipate Saddam Hussein will go on trial?
RUMSFELD: It's up to the Iraqis. And they're working on it right now. There are people over there that are talking about in the coming weeks. I know there are people accumulating the kinds of information. Other countries want to participate, like Kuwait and Iran and other countries that have been the recipient of Saddam Hussein's viciousness over time. When it will actually happen is up to the Iraqi people, but there's no doubt but that they want to get it done.
DONNELLY: Has the cost of the Iraq war, not just in terms of dollars and lives, but also the extended deployments and resulting impact on civilian careers of guardsmen and reservists, and the hardships on military families, exceeded what the administration had expected and told the nation to expect?
RUMSFELD: Every person serving in the Guard and Reserve and the active force is a volunteer. There's no one who was conscripted. There's no one who was forced to do anything. Every single one of those wonderful young men and women put their hands up and volunteered to serve our country. And we are so fortunate as a country that there is a steady stream of talented, professional, dedicated, courageous young people who are willing to do that.
The stress on the force, if you will, the numbers of people that have been called up in the Guard and Reserve, has been obviously greater during this period of Afghanistan and Iraq since September 11th, 2001, than it had been in previous periods. And we are doing everything humanly possible to reduce the stress on the force by rebalancing the active and the reserve components, by seeing that we've got the right skill sets on active duty so that we don't have to call reservists up excessively.
The statement about the -- what the administration told the American people, it needs to be answered, it seems to me, because it seemed to have a little barb in it. (Laughter.) I can't climb into the questioner's mind, but I sense that.
You know, when September 11th came and 3,000 Americans were killed, we went to war. There were people who thought that terrorism was a law enforcement problem, and what you do is you sit around with your finger in your ear and you wait till you get hit, and then like when somebody steals a car you run out and find the person, throw them in the jug and punish them for it. Well, this is not about that. This is about something entirely different, terrorism is. And it isn't a matter of throwing someone in the jug for stealing a car and punishing them; the task here is so fundamentally not law enforcement. It is trying to get the information so that we can go and find and stop the terrorist networks from killing another 3,000 people. That's what this is about. And I understand it's hard for some people to get their heads turned around on that.
So what does the -- any administration tell the American people? Well, the prior administration said we'd be out of Bosnia by Christmas. We're still there. I have not said when we'll be out of Iraq -- (chuckles) -- because I don't know, and I know I don't know. What we have said is there's been criticism of the cost, there's been criticism of the length of time, and it's not knowable precisely.
This task we have is to do everything humanly possible to try to protect the American people. And this government has done a lot to make this world safer and the coalition has done a lot to make this world safer.
And what we tell the American people is what we know. And what we know is we're putting pressure on them through this 90-nation coalition all across the globe. It's harder for them to travel between countries. It's harder for them to communicate with each other. It's harder for them to raise money. It's harder for them to transfer money. It's harder for them to buy weapons. It's harder for them to do everything!
Saddam Hussein (sic), if he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001. Now he's got to be busy. Why is he busy? It's because of the pressure that's being put on him.
And it seems to me that that is what one ought to expect. One ought to expect that their government will do everything humanly possible -- we can't make people safe, because the terrorists can attack at any time, any place, using any technique. It's not possible to defend in every place in the world at every moment of the day or night against every conceivable technique. It can't be done.
The only way to do this is what's being done. And that's to put together a large coalition, to put pressure on them all across the world, to bring every element of national power to bear, and to continue that until we have reasonable confidence.
And it's -- this is much more like the Cold War, in terms of the amount of time it's going to take, than it is about World War II. The president said it the other day. You're not going to see a signing ceremony on the USS Missouri at the end of this war. This is more like the Cold War. This is something that's going to take time. It's going to take perseverance.
People are going to have to be steadfast. They're going to have to reject the kind of counsel that The Financial Times gave this morning. I didn't read this, so I assume you're reasonably right in your quotation, whoever asked the question. We're going to have to say to people, "Don't be faint-hearted. Don't think you can make a separate peace. Don't think you can make a private deal, as a person or a country." You can't. We're in it together. (Applause.)
DONNELLY: Mr. Secretary, you said earlier that Saddam Hussein hasn't done a video for a while. You meant Osama bin Laden, right?
RUMSFELD: I did. I meant that we haven't seen Osama bin Laden. Thank you.
And I made one other mistake, I'm told. This says that the flag- draped policy was established not in the last administration but in the one before that, which would have been Bush 41. And for that I hasten to correct myself. I want to thank whoever sent the note up. (Laughter.)
DONNELLY: We have a couple questions about the Abu Ghraib prison situation. You've come in for some criticism by people who say that by virtue of a memo you wrote, and the Schlesinger report also documented this, that you may have contributed to a climate, it is said, that allowed some of these abuses to happen. And a couple questioners would like you to address that.
RUMSFELD: The memo I wrote involved Guantanamo Bay and had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq at all. It was a memorandum that I wrote in response to a request from the combatant commander right after September 11th, people -- correction, after Afghanistan, when some people were picked up in Afghanistan, brought to Guantanamo Bay, and they were being interrogated. And he wrote a memorandum requesting that he be authorized to do certain things. And I authorized some of the things, did not authorize some of the other things.
And this was -- I forget the month, but for the sake of argument, I think it was maybe December, but it doesn't matter when it was. Within a matter of weeks, I was told that some of the people in Guantanamo were concerned about the possibility of using some of those techniques, and so I immediately rescinded it and asked a -- called together a group of general counsels and judge advocate generals and asked them to review the entire thing and make sure that whatever we're doing is the correct thing.
In the intervening period of a few weeks, the procedures that I had authorized and had to approve were approved for the use on one or two people. One of them was one of the people deemed to be one of the other September 11th hijack conspirators. And the procedures were not torture. And so the suggestion to the contrary, it seems to me, would be inaccurate.
At the end of that period, after the review by the lawyers, we looked at it and I issued a new set of instructions, which have been in existence, I believe, ever since. And that's the sum total of it.
The -- I think there's two things to keep in mind. One is that the people who were captured in Afghanistan had been in al Qaeda training camps. Al Qaeda had just killed 3,000 Americans. Understandably, the task was not to put them in jail and have trials of them and then send them to jail because they were bad; it was to find out what in the world did they know. Who were they going to hit next? Where was bin Laden? Where were the other senior al Qaeda people? And that's why the president made the judgment that the -- those detainees would be kept in Guantanamo Bay and the Department of Defense would be responsible, along with an interagency group, of conducting interrogations for them. There's a blurring of memory into all of this, and if you think about it, the pictures that one saw of Abu Ghraib were terrible. And they represented abuses of people in our custody. And that's wrong. And that should not have happened. And there isn't anyone connected with the Department of Defense who doesn't understand that, doesn't know it.
What have we done about it? I guess, if you think about it, how a country responds to a problem like that tells a little bit about the country. We've had 11 investigations. Eight reports are completed. Three more are due. Over 13,000 pages of reports have been received thus far. Over 950 interviews have been conducted. Forty-three congressional briefings and hearings have been conducted.
There have been 45 people referred for court martial. Some have pled guilty and have already been sentenced, I believe. Forty-two have been referred for what the military calls an Article 15 non- judicial punishment. Twelve general officer letters of reprimand have been issued. Twenty-three soldiers have been administratively separated.
The Army has taken -- Army is the executive agent for detainees. They have taken a whole series of administrative steps. They've established a provost marshal general as Army executive agent for detainees. They are planning for general officer-level military police command in the Army future force. They've developed detainee operation integration plan -- prioritized plan addressing policy, doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership. They've synchronized Army with joint policy and doctrine, and they've established a detainee operations oversight council.
So the people who've done something wrong are being prosecuted. The investigations are still under way and more may be happen, because a number of these matters have been referred to the Army inspector general and the Defense Department inspector general. And corrective steps have been taken.
Has it been harmful to our country? Yes. Is it something that has to be corrected? Yes. Is it something that shouldn't have happened in the first place? Yes. Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No.
RUMSFELD: It doesn't. Was it done as a matter of policy? No.
I think that -- I think that the Department of Defense has addressed it in a serious way that reflects the responsibility the department has to treat people properly who are in the custody of the Department of Defense. And in this case that did not happen. It was wrong. We should have treated those properly and they were not treated properly.
DONNELLY: The probes you refer to are, if I'm not mistaken, all Defense Department probes. And they're numerous and serious, but a lot of people have asked and -- asked the question: Do we need to have an independent commission like the September 11th commission to look at this, somebody who is more independent?
RUMSFELD: Well, I guess 11 isn't enough for that person. We want to have more.
It seems to me that the Schlesinger panel -- Jim Schlesinger was a Cabinet officer for presidents of both political parties. Harold Brown was a secretary of Defense for a Democratic president. Tillie Fowler was a former congresswoman from Florida. Chuck Horner, General Horner was a combatant commander. Those four people are independent. They were given complete access to every single thing going on in the department. They have said that publicly. They have had every opportunity to review and to discuss and to analyze. And I would call that an independent, and I think anyone who suggests that those four people are not independent doesn't know them.
Come on, John. You've got another one.
DONNELLY: Oh, I've got a -- (laughter) -- I have so many that the task is whittling them down in the next five minutes.
Do you think that the war on terror cannot be won, as the president said? Forget for a moment that he is your boss. (Laughter.)
RUMSFELD: You got to be kidding. (Laughter.) Look, what he was talking about was what I mentioned earlier, that, you know, it isn't a kind of a war that ends with a signing ceremony on the Missouri. This is something that -- it's like -- it's like -- there are some things that you have to keep working on continuously.
We've got a bunch of people sending money to schools that put these young people in there and teach them how to go out and kill innocent men, women and children, and lie to them and tell them that they're going to go to heaven if they do that, that that's a good thing for them to do. Now will there maybe always be people trying to pollute young minds and make them believe that? Maybe there will be, in which case we're going to have to keep working the problem.
We can't -- this is not a problem that can be handled militarily. Does the military play a role? Certainly. But does the Department of Treasury, with watching the finances? Yes. Does the Department of Homeland Security in terms of defense right here? Yes. This is a problem that the world is going to have to struggle with, because there are a small percentage of people of that religion that are trying to hijack that religion and train more and more people so that they can reestablish their extreme views as the dominant view in this world, not just in their religion, but in this world.
And -- so will the war be over? Sure it will be over, in the sense that we will have done such a good job over a sustained period of time that there won't be a signing ceremony. But then can you turn around and relax and think that there aren't going to be people in the world who are going to want to do some perfectly terrible things, like going into a school in Russia and killing hundreds of young kids? No.
There are always going to be people, I'm afraid, who are going to engage in various types of violence, and we're going to have to live in a world like that. And we're going to have to live in a world like that at a time when the lethality of weapons is increasing, and when the availability of those weapons is increasing, and where people will be able to buy things off the shelf that they never could have in a million years developed, manufactured or produced. But they can buy them off the shelf, and they can use that same technology against the people that do develop and think of and manufacture and produce those technologies.
DONNELLY: Here's another boss-related question. Vice President Cheney said this week that voters should make the, quote, "right" decision on election day or risk being, quote, "hit again" by terrorists. Do you agree?
RUMSFELD: I think that the vice president, shortly after he said that, someone asked him if he meant what might have been taken from that, and he said, no, he did not mean that. So why would someone ask me that question? (Scattered applause.)
DONNELLY: Recently South Korea admitted once having a clandestine uranium enrichment program as well as a previous plutonium development program in the '80s. Were you surprised by these revelations? And what's their impact on the security situation on the peninsula? Do you think South Korea maintains an intention to develop nuclear capabilities?
RUMSFELD: I was surprised. It does not make any difference at all in terms of the security situation on the peninsula. And I would certainly doubt that the current government has any clandestine nuclear capability in South Korea. We know that the North Koreans have announced that they do.
DONNELLY: Is there any connection between the Chechen terrorists in Beslan and al Qaeda? And is Putin taking the right stance with regard to the Chechen situation?
RUMSFELD: If we could take, first of all, the school incident, my answer is, I don't know. I've talked to Minister of Defense Ivanov, and they are investigating the people who they have access to who conducted that ghastly terrorist attack.
We'll know what their linkages were. Some of the people they've identified already, I'm told, have been identified as Chechens. So we'll stop on the subject of the school.
The second subject: Is there a relationship between Chechen terrorists and al Qaeda? And the answer is absolutely. I mean, they've been trained in the same training camps in Afghanistan. The interaction between them and the IMU and the Ansar al-Islam and various other groups -- they have various linkages. Some have common funding sources. Some have common training facilities. Some cooperate on activities together.
And -- but -- so there's no question but that there's a linkage between the Chechen terrorists and al Qaeda. But I can't say that about this event, because the investigation's just in its early stages.
DONNELLY: Before I ask you the last question, Mr. Secretary, I'd like to present you with a certificate of appreciation from the Press Club and -- you already have one of these, but a second National Press Club mug for the beverage of your choice.
RUMSFELD: Thank you, John. (Applause.) Thank you very much.
DONNELLY: One more for you.
RUMSFELD: One more?!
DONNELLY: One more. I said, "Before I ask the last question."
After November -- (laughter) -- after November, will you fade away, or will we have Don Rumsfeld to kick around for another four years? (Laughter.)
RUMSFELD: I'm old enough to have heard that fellow say that. (Laughter.) And I don't intend to say it. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
DONNELLY: I'd like to ask everyone to remain in their seats while the secretary leaves. Thank you. Please remain in your seats.
And I'd like to thank you all for coming today. I'd also like to thank National Press Club staff members Melinda Cooke, Pat Nelson, Jo Anne Booz, Melanie Abdow and Howard Rothman for organizing today's lunch. Also, thanks to the NPC library for their research. Thank you all very much. Have a good day.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Californians Could Get $2.8 Billion in Energy Refunds
September 10, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, California, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-10-09.asp#anchor1
California energy consumers are entitled to as much as $2.8 billion in refunds for overcharges during the energy crisis of 2000-2001, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.
In a case brought by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the three judge panel concluded that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) "abused its administrative discretion by declining to order refunds for violations of its reporting requirements."
The court sent the case back to FERC for refund proceedings.
Judge Sidney Thomas wrote on behalf of the panel, "The power to order retroactive refunds when a company's non-compliance has been so egregious that it eviscerates the tariff is inherent in FERC's authority to approve a market-based tariff in the first instance. FERC may elect not to exercise its remedial discretion by requiring refunds, but it unquestionably has the power to do so."
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday, "I think the 9th Circuit Court's decision is a fantastic one. Californians deserve refunds to fairly compensate them for the excessively high prices they paid during the energy crisis."
"The Court's action today gives clear direction to FERC that they should issue significant refunds to California ratepayers who were overcharged," the governor said.
Lockyer called the ruling, "a huge victory for California ratepayers, and vindication for state officials who have been struggling for years to wrench justice out of FERC. The ruling puts back on the table $2.8 billion in refunds that FERC had denied ratepayers.
"And the court echoed points we have been making throughout this long legal battle," said Lockyer, "the watchdog was sleeping during the robbery, it failed to enforce its own rules, and it unduly restricted remedies for consumers with artificial chains."
The FERC market-based system had three components: FERC must determine sellers cannot exercise market power; if it makes that determination, it grants sellers market-based rate authority; and sellers given that authority must file quarterly reports with FERC detailing their market transactions. The ruling hinged on the last prong.
Sellers routinely failed to file the quarterly reports with the transaction specific information.
The court noted that FERC itself called the reports crucial to proper implementation of the market-based system, and acknowledged rampant violations of the rule during the energy crisis.
Nevertheless, FERC determined it had no authority to order retroactive refunds for the reporting failures, calling them a mere technical compliance issue.
Power companies have been convicted of manifpulating energy markets to artificially drive up California electricity prices during the 2000-2001 time period. The manipulation drove California's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric to file a voluntary bankruptcy petition.
In January of 2001, then Governor Gray Davis declared a state of emergency. In light of rolling blackouts, Davis directed the state Department of Water Resources to purchase wholesale power on the spot market. By October of 2001, state agencies had spent approximately $10 billion buying energy on the spot market.
Lockyer advised that the ruling could pave the way for reconsideration of another FERC decision to deny billions of dollars in refunds to the California Department of Water Resources. Additionally, federal court rulings denying damages to California in antitrust lawsuits against energy companies could be revisited.
-------- OTHER
Smelly Robot Eats Flies to Generate Its Own Power
REUTERS UK:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27051/story.htm
LONDON - British scientists are developing a robot that will generate its own power by eating flies.
The idea is to produce electricity by catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells that will break down sugar in the insects' skeletons and release electrons that will drive an electric current.
"Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make "release and forget" robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations," New Scientist magazine said this week.
Chris Melhuish and his team, who are developing the robot, have to manually feed the flies to EcoBot II because they are still designing some type of pump to suck the insects into it.
"One of the great things about flies is that you can get them to come to you," he said.
Hence the downside of the fully autonomous robot: it will have to use sewage or excrement to attract the flies and is bound to smell appalling.
-------- environment
DuPont Settles Water Contamination Lawsuit
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8916-2004Sep9.html
DuPont Co. agreed yesterday to pay as much as $343 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the chemical company of contaminating drinking water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia with a processing agent used to make Teflon.
The agreement, which still must be approved by a circuit court judge, stems from a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 on behalf of roughly 50,000 residents. The suit charged that residents suffered adverse health effects as a result of the chemical known as C-8, or perfluorooctanoate, getting into drinking water near the company's Parkersburg, W.Va., plant.
As part of the settlement, DuPont agreed to pay $85 million directly to the residents, mostly in cash, as well as $22.6 million in attorneys' fees. The company also agreed to set up an independent scientific panel to study possible links between exposure to C-8 and any health problems, including birth defects.
In the 1980s, DuPont's supplier, 3M, conducted an animal study that linked C-8 to birth defects in animals, and other animal studies suggested the chemical could cause cancer. As a result, DuPont transferred female line workers to other positions, but it later concluded that the study was invalid and brought female employees back to the processing area.
If the scientific study, which is expected to cost $5 million, concludes that there is a probable link between C-8 and human disease, DuPont will fund a medical monitoring program for up to $235 million to test local residents.
Under the settlement, the company is also providing six water districts in the two states with water-treatment systems to reduce the level of C-8 contamination.
In a statement, DuPont general counsel Stacey J. Mobley said the settlement did not imply the company was admitting any liability.
"After two years of discussions, we are pleased to reach an agreement that places our combined priorities where they belong -- on the community and not on lengthy and contentious legal proceedings," Mobley said.
DuPont spokesman Clif Webb said the company settled the case despite its confidence it could win on scientific grounds.
Members of the class-action suit said they were pleased that DuPont was taking immediate steps to clean up the area's water.
"On the face of it, it's good news, since what we've wanted all along was to have water without C-8," said Bob Griffin, general manager of Ohio's Little Hocking Water Association.
The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking millions in fines from DuPont on the grounds that the company failed for two decades to report possible health and environmental problems linked to C-8. DuPont is fighting the charges through an administrative process, arguing it reported everything that was required.
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Belgian Ship Spills 100 Tons of Oil Off Russian Far East
September 9, 2004
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-09-01.asp
About 100 metric tons of heavy fuel oil spilled into the ocean off Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East after a dredging vessel lost power and ran aground during heavy typhoon winds late Wednesday night.
The vessel TSHD Cristoforo Colombo, owned by European Dredging Company (EDC), had about 200 tons of fuel oil and diesel aboard. The Belgian flagged ship was chartered by Saipem, which is working under contract with Sakhalin Energy in the construction of a seabed pipeline.
Twenty-nine crew members remain on board for safety reasons. All crew are well and in no danger, Sakhalin Energy said in a statement.
The 388 foot long vessel is stranded between Kholmsk Fishing Port and Kholmsk Commercial Marine Port. Some of the spilled fuel has reached the public beach area in Kholmsk, according to Sakhalin Energy.
Kholmsk on the Sakhalin coast (Photo courtesy Port State Control of Russia Far East)
Oil spill response experts Ecoshelf have arrived on the scene and have mobilized an oil spill response team in Kholmsk.
Ecoshelf specialists are now surveying the site and preparing to begin cleanup operations. A helicopter is being deployed for visual spill assessment.
Expert salvage companies have been contacted, and are studying the technical aspects of the vessel, a trailing suction hopper dredger, and the potential salvage options. Sakhalin Energy has the vessel Smit Sakhalin on standby to assist as required.
Sakhalin Energy said that the company is working closely with EDC and the Regional Emercom. All the relevant authorities have been notified, and Sakhalin Energy will start an investigation "as soon as practicable."
Map of the Western Pacific Rim showing Sakhalin Island. (Map courtesy WWF) The TSHD Cristoforo Colombo is caught in Typhoon Songda, which caused the deaths of at least 32 people as it swept northwards Tuesday and Wednesday across Japan, Sakhalin's neighbor to the south. More than 700 others have been injured in typhoon related incidents.
More than 1.5 million people in Japan were left without power by the storm. Dozens of homes were destroyed and tens of thousands of buildings were flooded.
Songda is the third typhoon to hit Japan in three weeks and follows Typhoon Chaba, which killed at least 13 people and Typhoon Megi which killed at least 10.
Sakhalin Energy is a consortium with three partners - Shell Sakhalin Holdings B.V., which has a 55 percent share in the project, Mitsui Sakhalin Holdings B.V., which has a 25 percent share and Diamond Gas Sakhalin, a Mitsubishi company, with a 20 percent share.
The consortium was formed in 1994 to develop the Piltun Astokhskoye oil field and the Lunskoye gas field in the Sea of Okhotsk, offshore Sakhalin Island.
Concern for the impact of this oil development on a critically endangered population of Western gray whales, which number less than 100 individuals, prompted Sakhalin Energy in August to commission the IUCN-World Conservation Union to undertake research into their welfare. The IUCN has established an independent panel to conduct the study.
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Hydroponic Forage Cultivation May Prevent Future Water Wars
September 10, 2004
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-10-09.asp#anchor8
Growing livestock forage hydroponically instead of on large, water intensive tracts of land appears to hold promise for saving enough water to avert future water wars, federal government scientists have found.
Scientists from Sandia National Laboratory are growing alfalfa for livestock feed in experimental hydroponic greenhouses just north of the U.S.-Mexico border in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, a few miles west of El Paso, Texas.
The researchers say their methods could reduce the current 800,000 acre-feet of water to 11,000 acre-feet to produce an equivalent amount of livestock forage, and they can do this on less than 1,000 acres instead of 260,000 acres - the current amount used for New Mexico production of alfalfa.
Using roughly one one-hundredth the fresh water customarily needed to grow forage for livestock, the method could leave much more water available for human consumption, as well as for residential and industrial uses. As a byproduct, it also may add formerly untapped solar energy to the electrical grid.
Sandia is interested because, says lab researcher Ron Pate, "Disputes over water are possible, if not likely, causes for war in the 21st century."
Sandia's director for Geoscience and Environment Peter Davies says, "A large proportion of freshwater usage around the world is agricultural. The ability to reduce the amount of water needed for it and thus lessen the possibility of international conflict is extremely important to the security of the United States and the world."
Eighty percent of New Mexico's water use is agricultural, and more than half of that water goes to grow forage, mostly alfalfa.
Conventional farming methods in arid regions lose huge amounts of water through evaporation and over-absorption by soil. Over time, this can also result in soil salination and loss of agricultural productivity.
But hydroponic greenhouses do not require high-quality arable land to function. The plants grow directly in a watery soup of nutrients.
Sandia has installed 42 wireless sensors to ensure the experimental alfalfa plants are receiving all the nutrition they need.
The array of sensors in the 26 by 59 foot greenhouse will monitor light, temperature, relative humidity, and air pressure. The data, collected every few minutes, will be sent by phone line to a remote computer for analysis.
Whenever a humidity sensor or a timer trips a control circuit, water sprays from quarter-inch nozzles for 20 seconds into plants growing in a series of plastic trays stacked on metal racks.
To lessen labor and protect against mold, the researchers are exploring the development and use of trays that themselves would be edible by livestock, making washing and sanitizing trays unnecessary. Such tray material could also add nutrition content to the overall forage product, making it a more balanced ration for the livestock. Consumption of water, seed, and labor are also being monitored.
"We want to be aware of microclimate variances," says Pate. "We want to know how feed grows from changes in temperature and location and time of watering. That will help us modify the design and operation of the greenhouses."
In addition to these wireless sensors, researchers are designing what Gene Giacomelli of the University of Arizona (UA) calls a "speaking plant" approach, where very small, lightweight, inexpensive sensors are put directly on each plant to monitor the plant's water status, temperature, and growth rate.
"We envision these sensors linked together [via wireless communications], possibly on every plant, so the plant tells the control system directly what it needs, instead of merely monitoring air around the plant."
"This will be the highest tech going," says Giacomelli, who serves as director of the Controlled Environment Agricultural Program in UA's Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department.
The nutritional quality of the hydroponically grown plants will be determined by Clint Loest, a professor of animal nutrition at New Mexico State University, whose lab will compare results of feed testing with the animals' actual requirements.
"This is definitely unique in the animal forage area," he said. "If we can get the animals to perform just as well on greenhouse forage, that would be an incredible advance. It would be such a breakthrough that we might even give up a little performance if it's going to save so much water."
----
Extinct species take others along, study finds
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-10/s_27105.asp
WASHINGTON - More than 6,000 species of butterflies and other insects as well as mites, fungi, and assorted unloved but important species will also be wiped out when listed endangered species go extinct, scientists said Thursday.
"We estimate that 6,300 affiliate species are 'coendangered' with host species currently listed as endangered," an international team of researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
"Up to 50 percent of species are predicted to be lost in the next 50 years," they added. "Current extinction estimates need to be recalibrated by taking species coextinctions into account."
The team, led by Lian Pin Koh and Navjot Sodhi of the National University of Singapore, compiled a list of 12,200 plants and animals currently listed as threatened or endangered. They then looked at insects, mites, fungi, and other organisms that are uniquely adapted to some of the species.
"What we found is that with the extinction of a bird or a mammal or a plant, you aren't just necessarily wiping out just one, single species," said Heather Proctor from the University of Alberta in Canada, who also worked on the study. "We're also allowing all these unsung dependent species to be wiped out as well."
For example, a vine that became locally extinct in Singapore took along with it a species of butterfly, Parantica aspasia, that was dependent on the vine for survival.
"When we lose this vine, this beautiful butterfly dies off with it, and we'll never see it again except in photographs at museums," said Proctor.
"While coextinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an insidious one," the researchers added.
-------- genetics
Genetically Modified Fish Used to Make Human Protein
REUTERS UK:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27052/story.htm
LONDON - Genetically modified fish may one day be used to produce human proteins to treat illnesses such as lung disease, liver problems and even some cancers.
Scientists in Britain and Florida have already produced from fish a human blood-clotting factor that is used to treat accident victims and people suffering from hemophilia.
They have a list of 20 other human proteins that might also be produced in fish.
"There is still a long way to go before any product reaches the market, but if the fish project is a commercial success, many other proteins might be made this way," New Scientist magazine said Wednesday.
Norman Maclean, of the University of Southampton in southern England, is working on the project with AquaGene, of Alachua, Florida. They made human blood-clotting Factor VII using transgenic tilapia fish.
Factor VII can be purified directly from human blood but there is a risk that diseases can be transmitted through it.
The scientists added a genetic switch from the fish to the human gene to make sure it is turned on in the liver of the transgenic fish and that the protein is secreted in the blood.
"The researchers have already tested it on samples of blood taken from patients with hemophilia, but more studies have to be done," the magazine added.
Tilapia breed quickly so the researchers are confident they can produce enough Factor VII to meet demand.
"The next step will be to convince regulators that the fish-derived protein is the same as the human form, and that it is safe," New Scientist added.
-------- health
FDA Urged Withholding Data on Antidepressants
Makers Were Dissuaded From Labeling Drugs as Ineffective in Children
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9802-2004Sep9?language=printer
The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly urged antidepressant manufacturers not to disclose to physicians and the public that some clinical trials of the medications in children found the drugs were no better than sugar pills, according to documents and testimony released at a congressional hearing yesterday.
Regulators suppressed the negative information on the grounds that it might scare families and physicians away from the drugs, according to testimony by drug company executives. For at least three medications, they said, the FDA blocked the companies' plans to reveal the negative studies in drug labels, and in one case the agency reversed a manufacturer's decision to amend its drug label to say that the drug was associated in studies with increased hostility and suicidal thinking among children.
"Why would FDA require a company to remove stronger labeling?" demanded an incredulous Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) yesterday, at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations. "FDA should want to encourage a company to do that kind of thing."
Janet Woodcock, FDA's deputy commissioner for operations, responded that regulators believe the jury is still out on the drugs. The negative trials, she said, did not mean the medications were ineffective.
Several representatives noted that the study results were obtained at tremendous cost to the American public because Congress granted companies profitable patent extensions as an incentive to conduct the trials.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a member of the subcommittee, said it was absurd to give companies profitable patent extensions on their drugs to encourage the trials and then limit dissemination of the results. He said his staff had estimated that a patent extension given to Pfizer Inc. was worth $1 billion dollars. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, he said, made $500 million.
The hearing was prompted by widespread complaints that crucial information about the safety and effectiveness of antidepressant medications had not been communicated to physicians and the public. More than two-thirds of all studies of antidepressant use among depressed children have failed to show the drugs are effective.
Prozac is the only medicine to be specifically approved to treat children's depression, but a number of other drugs are widely prescribed.
Most physicians have not had access to the negative data and are prescribing the drugs to millions of American children largely because the drugs have proved effective among adults. Two internal FDA analyses recently concluded that the class of medications is associated with an increased risk of suicidal behavior among children.
At the hearing, Pfizer Vice President Cathryn M. Clary testified that FDA had told the company that existing language in the label for Zoloft, which suggested "that efficacy has not been established" for depressed children, was sufficient. Pfizer had planned to add that two studies of Zoloft found the medication was no better than sugar pills.
"We do not feel it would be useful to describe these negative trials in labeling," FDA officials wrote in a letter to the company, "since these may be misinterpreted as evidence that Zoloft does not work."
FDA's Woodcock said agency officials had told Wyeth to scale back a label change that warned that the drug Effexor had been linked to suicidal thoughts, hostility and self-harm.
"It was not very understandable," Woodcock said in an interview when asked why the FDA had found the Wyeth label objectionable.
Wyeth and other companies were instead asked to insert a general caution that physicians should carefully monitor the risk of suicide among all patients with depression. Agency officials said at the time that the caution was a reiteration of good clinical practice.
Joseph S. Camardo, senior vice president at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, said company scientists had disagreed with the FDA on how to interpret the data in its labeling.
"We thought our proposal was reasonable, so it was a bit of a surprise," he said of the FDA ruling that substituted a less pointed warning.
In the agency's most recent internal review of the antidepressant studies, FDA scientist Tarek Hammad concluded in August that children taking Effexor had 8.84 times the risk of suicidal behavior or thinking compared with children taking sugar pills.
British authorities warned physicians last year not to prescribe a range of antidepressants to children. The FDA has called for a more cautious interpretation of the data, which an agency advisory committee is expected to discuss at a meeting next week. Yesterday's hearings, which included testimony from officials from seven pharmaceutical companies, grappled with ways to make negative study results about drugs more accessible to the public. Recent proposals by manufacturers, medical journal editors and members of Congress have called for various schemes for publicly registering all drug trials and, in some cases, disclosing the results.
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Turmeric May Protect Against Leukemia - Scientist
REUTERS UK:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27062/story.htm
LONDON - Turmeric, a spice used extensively in Asia as a key ingredient of curry, may be protecting children against leukemia, a scientist said.
Rates of the blood cancer have been rising steadily for the past 50 years but its incidence in Asia is much lower than in the West.
Professor Moolky Nagabhushan, of the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, told a conference that factor could be due, at least partly, to turmeric.
"Some of the known risk factors that contribute to the high incidence of childhood leukemia are the interaction of many lifestyle and environmental factors," he said.
Scientists suspect some children are born with a predisposition to the illness, which occurs most often in children aged 1-4, but that they do not develop the disease unless it is triggered by environmental factors.
Infections, viruses, radiation, pesticides and chemicals are among the suspected culprits.
"Our studies show that turmeric - and its coloring ... curcumin - in the diet mitigate the effects of some of these risk factors," Nagabhushan added.
He and his colleagues showed that the spice irreversibly inhibits the multiplication of leukemia cells in laboratory studies and seems to protect against damage caused by cigarette smoke and eating certain processed foods.
Dr Marilyn Kwan, of the University of California, Berkeley, presented separate results of a study of more than 300 children which showed the benefits of eating healthy foods.
"We found that regular consumption of oranges and/or bananas during the first two years of life was associated with a reduced risk of childhood leukemia," Kwan said.
"These findings are consistent with the protective role of fruits and vegetables observed in adult cancers," she added.
Oranges are rich in vitamin C and bananas have high levels of potassium, both of which are thought to protect against cancer.
The week-long childhood leukemia conference is organized by the British charity Children with Leukemia.
----
US Report Sees Wide Health Effects of 9-11 Attacks
Story by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
REUTERS USA:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27043/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Most of the health problems reported after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have involved respiratory difficulties and mental distress, according to a U.S. government report published.
Firefighters and other emergency workers showed long-term respiratory problems, including a syndrome called "WTC cough."
A separate study published this week also showed subtle but significant effects on pregnant women and their babies.
The hijacked plane attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center created infernos that enveloped much of New York in a pall of smoke and dust loaded with toxic chemicals. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks and a similar one on the Pentagon in Washington.
"The primary health effects include various injuries, respiratory conditions, and mental health effects," the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a report summarizing the health problems.
"In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the primary injuries were inhalation and musculoskeletal injuries," said the report, published on the Web at www.gao.gov.
"A range of respiratory conditions have also been reported, including wheezing, shortness of breath, sinusitis, asthma, and a new syndrome called WTC cough, which consists of persistent cough accompanied by severe respiratory symptoms," it said.
'Almost all the firefighters who responded to the attack experienced respiratory effects, and hundreds had to end their firefighting careers due to WTC-related respiratory illness."
The GAO said six separate registries had been set up to monitor reports of health problems following the attacks.
"Some long-term health effects, such as lung cancer, may not appear until several decades after a person has been exposed to a harmful agent," it said.
"The most commonly reported mental health effects include symptoms associated with depression, stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder...."
In a separate study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers found that pregnant women who were close to the twin towers at the time of the attack were more likely to give birth to lighter babies.
The Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health surveyed 300 nonsmoking women who delivered babies at three hospitals in lower Manhattan.
Babies born to the women living within two-miles of the site weighed on average 149 grams or 5.2 ounces less at birth compared to infants born to the other pregnant women.
"This study indicates that fetal growth and length of gestation were significantly reduced as a result of exposure to pollutants or stress, or both, from the destruction of the World Trade Center, and shortened gestation means smaller, less mature babies," said Dr. Sally Ann Lederman, who led the study.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Ellsberg Urges Insiders to Leak Iraq Info
Thu Sep 9, 2004
By KATA KERTESZ,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=693&e=7&u=/ap/20040909/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/ellsberg
WASHINGTON - Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war, is urging government insiders to provide similar classified documents about the invasion of Iraq.
Joined by other whistle-blowers and former government employees, Ellsberg said at a news conference Thursday that claims of government deception and lies have "little credibility" unless supported by documentary evidence, which often is available only in classified materials.
In a memo to current government employees, Ellsberg and other former government officials said federal insiders owe a "higher allegiance" to the Constitution, the public and American soldiers in Iraq than to their government bosses.
"A hundred forty-thousand Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose," the memo said. "Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now."
The memo acknowledged that whistle-blowers risk personal setbacks, such as losing their jobs, but urged them to act nonetheless. "You may save many Americans from being lied to death," it said.
Sibel Edmonds, who was fired by the FBI after she alleged security lapses in the agency's translator program, said the government frequently over-classifies documents, including the investigation into her own case.
Among the documents claimed to be wrongly classified are sections of reports from Army investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting material for then-Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's February 2003 estimate that several hundred thousand troops would have to stay in Iraq after the war.
Ellsberg was a special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense during the Vietnam War. He released the 7,000 page classified study to the Senate and 19 newspapers in 1971 and now leads the Truth Telling Project.
On the Net:
Truth Telling Project: www.truthtellingproject.org
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