NucNews - December 27, 2004 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Fire Sets Off Ammunition At Progress Energy Nuclear Plant Monday December 27, 1:51 PM EST By Jon Kamp, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4129; jon.kamp@dowjones.com http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji§ion=news&news_id=dji-00030520041227&date=20041227&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--An early Monday fire in a weapons storage locker at a Progress Energy Inc. (PGN) nuclear power plant set off ammunition and brought out local firefighters, the company said in a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The fire in the administration building at the Robinson nuclear plant in South Carolina occurred in a "small arms locker," Progress told the NRC. Commercial nuclear power plants employ large, armed security forces. "Onsite security detected smoke and heard ammunition rounds discharging from a locked door small arms locker," the report said. The fire caused no injuries and didn't affect operations at the 710-megawatt facility, utility spokeswoman Dana Yeganian said. The administration building isn't connected to the reactor itself. The utility declared an "unusual event" with the NRC, because the local fire department responded to the fire and because the fire lasted "greater than 10 minutes," according to the report. The fire was extinguished by the time the fire department arrived. Progress said it's asked local police to send an arson investigator, but said there weren't immediate signs of foul play. "Security believes this to be an isolated event with no evidence of malevolent actions," the utility said in its report to the NRC. Progress owns and operates the Robinson plant, located near Hartsville in north-central South Carolina. -------- asia [How many nuclear power plants were hit by the Tsunami?] Nuclear scientist among Tsunami victims at Tamil Nadu: [India News]: Chennai, Dec 27, 2004 http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=50507 Nuclear scientist Dr A Selvaraj, who was attached to the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam, was among those killed in the Tsunami tidal waves which struck the coastline in the area. Atomic energy sources said the body of Selvaraj had been identified. When asked if any more employees of IGCAR had been affected, the sources told PTI over phone from Mumbai that due to disruption in telecommunication lines, details were not available. Meanwhile police sources said the toll in Kalpakkam area was nearly 60 with an unspecified number missing. PTI -------- Uzbek uranium producer arranges second Nukem credit 27.12.2004 08:06:00 GMT (Interfax) http://www.interfax.com/com?item=Uzb&pg=0&id=5781555&req= Tashkent. - Uzbekistan's Navoi Mining and Metals Combine expects during the first quarter of 2005 to sign a second credit deal, this time for $5 million, with the U.S. Nukem Inc. to buy new uranium mining equipment, a Navoi management source told Interfax. Nukem lent Navoi, which is Uzbekistan's uranium monopoly, $6 million at the end of 2003 to upgrade capacity to produce sulfuric acid, which is used to mine uranium by the in situ leach (ISL) method, and to retool other areas of uranium production. Nukem intends to lend Uzbekistan $26 million to develop its uranium industry in the years to come. Nukem has been the Navoi plant's exclusive uranium exporter since 1992. -------- britain Row looms over new nuclear stations DOUGLAS FRASER December 27 2004 UK Sunday Herald http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/30458-print.shtml SCOTLAND'S coalition parties are heading towards a clash in the next two years over the construction of new nuclear power stations. The stakes were raised yesterday by Allan Wilson, the Labour junior enterprise minister, making the case for replacement nuclear power stations to be considered. Brian Wilson, the former Labour energy minister, who supports that argument, said last night that a decision would be needed within two years if there was to be continuity of supply and skills are to be kept in Britain while other countries build new nuclear capacity. The Scottish Conservatives have also given the nuclear lobby their backing, with a warning that "there could be more black Christmases than white in the future" unless Scotland addresses the need for a more diverse range of electricity-generating options. While the Scottish National Party is opposed to replacements for nuclear power stations, the Liberal Democrats' position in the Holyrood governing coalition give them the ability to block such developments. Nora Radcliffe, the LibDem environment spokeswoman, agreed with Allan Wilson that there should be a mature debate, claiming she would relish one, but added that she did not expect to be convinced of the case for more nuclear power. The LibDems have said they are against new plants unless the problem of storing waste is resolved. The party also claims the proposal will founder because no private company is bidding to build. At present, there are four Scottish sites licensed for nuclear power. Torness in East Lothian has a licence to keep operating until 2023. Hunterston on the North Ayrshire coast has only six years left. Chapelcross in Dumfriesshire is being decommissioned while Dounreay in Caithness had two research reactors that are also being decommissioned. Allan Wilson, whose constituency includes Hunterston, has questioned the growing dependence on carbon-based generation, particularly as gas will have to be piped from unstable parts of the world. ----- Anger over support for nuclear power HAMISH MACDONELL SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR Mon 27 Dec 2004 The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1466682004 ALLAN Wilson, the Executive’s minister for renewable energy, sparked anger yesterday when he gave his support to the principle of building new nuclear power stations in Scotland. Mr Wilson said it was wrong to reject the idea of nuclear power stations at a time when there was a growing movement against gas power stations, because of the damage they do to the environment. The minister did not say he definitely wanted to see more nuclear plants in Scotland but suggested a proper debate had to take place and that an expansion of nuclear energy might be inevitable. Mr Wilson’s remarks were immediately condemned by the SNP. A spokesman said there was absolutely no justification for any expansion of nuclear energy because Scotland was "the Saudi Arabia of renewables", insisting there was so much potential in wind and wave power that nuclear plants were not necessary. No-one from the Scottish Liberal Democrats was available for comment yesterday, but the minister’s remarks will cause most unhappiness among that party in particular. The junior coalition partners do not want to see any more nuclear power stations in Scotland and they will be alarmed by the idea of a Scottish Executive minister appearing to lay the ground for such a development. Mr Wilson, in an article in a Sunday newspaper, said: "Does it make sense, at the very time when climate change and greenhouse gas reduction have shot up the political agenda, to be planning the total elimination of nuclear power? Many environmentalists have decided that it most definitely does not make sense to head in that direction." -------- india / pakistan Kalpakkam nuke plant work hit, reactor 'safe' D GOVARDAN AND NS RAMNATH ECONOMIC TIMES NEWS NETWORK MONDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2004 12:19:23 AM http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/971665.cms CHENNAI: The tidal waves that surged towards coastal Tamil Nadu in the aftermath of the massive earthquake near Indonesia affected the operations of nuclear power plant in Kalpakkam and the major ports in the state. The operating unit of Madras Atomic Power Station was shut down after tidal waves flooded its pump house this morning. AR Gore, senior executive director —operations, Nuclear Power Corporation of India said, “The reactor is kept in safe condition. All other installations in the plant are safe. There is no danger of radiation”. That came as a major comfort factor for the people in North Tamil Nadu, who are worried most by this danger. The unit had to be closed down because the pumphouse, which helps in keeping the system cool, was disabled. The tidal wave also affected the residential areas of Kalpakkam which housed all the technical staff. “Our focus now is to control the flood situation in residential areas,” Mr Gore said. The 215 MW power station will resume operations after the flood situation in the residential areas of Kalpakkam is contained. Further, an independent regulatory body will make an assessment of the plant before it can resume operations, he said. Meanwhile, other sources of heat reduction, such as fresh water, will be used to keep the systems cool. The unit is also ready to tackle any further flooding, he said. Three Kalpakkam employees (who were not in the premises at the time of flooding) are suspected to be dead. A number of unidentified bodies have also been washed down in that area. The surging tidal wave left its mark naturally on the ports too in Tamil Nadu, which boasts of three major ports - Chennai, Tuticorin and Ennore. However, except for Chennai port, which has estimated the damage to property at Rs 10 crore, the other two ports had minor or no impact. The Chennai port was the worst affected among the three. “There has been no loss of life. However, five employees, who were involved in operations at the port on Sunday morning, have been injured,” K Suresh, chairman, Chennai Port Trust said. Even though there has been no loss of life, properties worth Rs 10 crore were damaged by the surging tidal waves and the inundation of water into the port premises, he said. Damages have been caused to the wharf, breakwater structures and a crane amongst others, Mr Suresh said, while adding that the estimates include the damages caused as a result of one ship colliding with the other and sinking of a fishing trawler. Despite the tidal waves severely impacting the Sri Lankan coast, Tuticorin Port, in southern Tamil Nadu and which is located close to Sri Lankan region, did not report any major damage or any loss of life. “The port had ten ships, either berthed in the dock or on the outer anchorage. While the operations at the port has been completely stopped, the ships berthed in the dock too have been moved to the outer anchorage,” an official spokesman of the port said. Except for the damage to the compound wall of the administrative block, no other property damage has been reported at the port, he added. On the other hand, the Ennore Port, which is located about 25 km north of the Chennai Port, escaped without any noticeable damage. “Everything is peaceful at the port and only one ship is berthed at the port for unloading coal,” M Raman, chairman, Ennore Port Trust. “While work has not been stopped, it has been slowed down, since these tsunamis create a surge in the water level frequently and that affects the operations,” Mr Raman added. Meanwhile, ONGC’s oil drilling rig at Adiyakamangalam near Nagapattinam has been marooned by the surging sea water. “We have lost contact with our local office there. While the telecommunication network has been cut off, the sole bridge that connects Karaikal with our operational location has reportedly collapsed,” an official spokesman for ONGC in Chennai said. -------- japan IAEA inspectors to vet nuke transit standards The Asahi Shimbun (IHT/Asahi: December 27,2004) http://www.asahi.com/english/politics/TKY200412270121.html Keen to ensure safety standards are not lagging, Japan has asked the agency to start as soon as possible. The government has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect and assess safety precautions used when nuclear material is being shipped into and around Japan, sources said over the weekend. The inspection, which comes with a 30 million yen price tag, is slated for next fiscal year. It will also cover the transportation of fuel to be used in nuclear power plants, the sources said. Six countries, including Britain and France, have already undergone similar inspections. The sources said Japan was keen not to be out of step with other developed countries when it came to nuclear safety and hoped the review would get under way as soon as possible. The inspection will be carried out according to the IAEA's safety standards. If problems are found, the IAEA will make recommendations. The agency does not, however, have the authority to ensure those changes are carried out. The inspection will include safety measures for nuclear material transported by land and sea. It will also cover the transit of radioactive material used at research institutions, the sources said. The safe transportation of nuclear material is likely to become an even greater issue if a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, becomes operational. The Rokkasho plant will cater to some of the nation's nuclear power plants. There, plutonium will be extracted and sent to another facility where it will be mixed with uranium to produce nuclear fuel. -------- missile defense Japanese to develop ballistic-missile attack warning system By Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Monday, December 27, 2004 http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=25327&archive=true Japan’s government will develop a siren warning system to alert the nation in case of a ballistic missile attack, Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency announced Monday. Research on the system is to begin April 1, FDMA announced. The system will depend on information transmitted from a U.S. space-based sensor, according to an FDMA official. A ballistic missile entering Japanese territory should trigger sirens installed in local communities, the agency said. The FDMA spokesman said that detailed plans were yet to be drawn for how people should react and where they can find shelters. “We will educate the public on how they should react to the sirens and where they should find shelters, such as solid buildings, but detailed plans will come later after the research and development on the system is done next year,” he said. The Japanese government Monday set aside $2 million in its fiscal 2005 budget for research expenses for the siren network, called Now Cast System. “Under the Law to Protect Civilians in the event of an armed attack, the FDMA is responsible to warn municipal governments,” read a statement the agency released Monday. “Meanwhile, local governments are required to alert residents of an attack through their community wireless system. Especially (when) warning against a ballistic missile attack, which requires instant response, it is necessary to develop a system to quickly transmit the information to the public. “We will begin to develop the system in the coming new fiscal year starting in April,” said Hiroshi Miyawaki, FDMA’s Public Protection Operation Room chief. “It will still be in an experimental stage but if it is proved to be successful, we will gradually introduce the system.” The Now Cast System lets the agency use a communications satellite to activate community wireless systems to set off local sirens, he said, while faxing the warning at the same time to prefectural governments. Community wireless systems are installed throughout the country at major cities, areas near U.S. military installations and other important facilities such as power plants. As of December, 66 percent of Japan’s approximately 3,100 municipal governments had the community wireless system, he said. According to the agency’s plan, information on firing of a ballistic missile targeted at Japan is to be detected by a U.S. space-based sensor and automatically transmitted to a land-based radar. It then is to be then sent to FDMA’s siren command center via the Self-Defense Agency, Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office. The information further will be relayed to a satellite “Super bird,” Miyawaki said, which instantaneously is to activate Interface, the automatic communication system that sounds the sirens. “The system is not necessary only for a missile attack,” he said. “To protect the nation from any imminent danger, warning must be given to the public as quickly as possible,” he said, adding that the siren warning system is designed to help the public evacuate to safety. He said that FDNA has been working on a similar warning system to alert the public of a major earthquake or tsunami. The route for information flow was slightly different but the system was similar, he said. “In the experiment of an earthquake, which we conducted in 2003 fiscal year, it took about 20 seconds before sirens went off,” he said. -------- terrorism When terrorists play 'dirty' By Lee H. Hamilton Mon, Dec. 27, 2004 Special to Knight Ridder/Tribune http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/10492049.htm?1c WASHINGTON - From time to time since Sept. 11, you may have heard experts and government officials utter words of warning about "dirty bombs," which are conventional explosives packed with radioactive materials. The explosion of a dirty bomb would be no different from a conventional explosion, whereas a nuclear explosion is thousands of times stronger. But the dirty bomb presents its own daunting threat: Once the conventional bomb explodes, the radioactive material spreads in the surrounding area. In the immediate aftermath, people in the area could be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and chaos could ensue as they panic and try to flee. In the long term, the exposed area would be contaminated, rendering it off limits for months (and even years), with people in close proximity vulnerable to cancer. If this took place in a major metropolitan area like lower Manhattan, the cost in disrupted business and cleanup could tally into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The psychological impact would be harrowing. What keeps security officials up at night is the concern that a dirty bomb is relatively easy to put together. There are hundreds of thousands of radioactive sources around the globe, ranging from weapons-grade plutonium or uranium used in nuclear bombs to more widely disseminated materials used in certain industries. Radioactive sources can be extracted from basic medical equipment or food irradiation machines. Most countries lack strict regulations or enforcement on the use of these materials. Meanwhile, we know al Qaeda has been trying to acquire these materials. So what can we do to protect ourselves? First, we must continue to work with Russia and other countries to locate and destroy dangerous materials from the former Soviet Union. Former Soviet republics are littered with a variety of radioactive sources, often poorly guarded or improperly stored. We should increase the resources and priority that we affix to this challenge, so we can get to these materials before the terrorists do. We also need to build a global coalition committed to stricter controls on the use and transfer of radioactive sources. We should insist that all countries meet a standard set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or be denied access to trade involving radioactive sources. For this to work, the United States and its allies should provide assistance to countries toughening standards for monitoring or disposing of these materials within their borders. We need tough measures to interdict illicit radioactive sources in transit. The Bush administration's Proliferation Security Initiative is a good start. We should work harder to tighten security at ports and develop screening technologies so that radioactive sources in shipping containers can be detected and legally intercepted. Russia's participation will be critical. At home, public education must be a priority. Local responders should know how to evacuate and seal off an area. Hospitals should know how to treat exposed patients. The Department of Homeland Security must continue to head up the grim task of preparing for any contingency. The good news is that we can take concrete steps to prevent a dirty bomb attack or reduce its effect: by securing the use and transport of dangerous materials, developing technologies to detect or replace radioactive sources and preparing ourselves at home. A dirty bomb may be one of the terrorists' preferred means of attack. A comprehensive strategy can make it one of the methods we are most prepared to prevent. Lee H. Hamilton is the vice chairman of the 9-11 Commission, the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the former chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. This essay was distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. -------- u.n. UN Report: World Leaders to Deal with Nuclear Proliferation Issues By André de Nesnera Washington 27 December 2004 Voice of America http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-12-27-voa21.cfm Foreign policy experts say the international community must increase its efforts to curtail the possible spread of nuclear weapons. A recent United Nations report on global security says the issue of nuclear proliferation is one of the major challenges facing world leaders today. The report paints a stark picture, saying the international community "is approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation". The report says as of this year, eight countries are known to have nuclear arsenals: the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel, although not all of them admit it. And, the U.N. document goes on to say almost 60 states currently operate or are constructing nuclear power or research reactors. And at least 40 possess the industrial and scientific infrastructure which would enable them, if they chose, to build nuclear weapons at relatively short notice. Foreign policy experts say in the months ahead, world leaders will have to deal effectively with two countries, Iran and North Korea, in an effort to curtail the possible spread of nuclear weapons. The United States and Europe believe Iran is seeking to develop nuclear arms. But Tehran says its nuclear program is aimed at producing fuel for peaceful purposes. In a recent agreement with three European countries, Britain, France and Germany, Iran decided to temporarily suspend its uranium enrichment program: a technology that could lead to producing nuclear weapons. Europeans and Iran will continue negotiations, talks the European Union hopes will make the suspension permanent in exchange for trade deals. Graham Allison, from Harvard University, has written extensively about nuclear proliferation issues. A former senior Defense Department official, he says the United States must play a greater role in discussions with Iran. "Given the current play, if the U.S. doesn't get involved in an active way, the likelihood that this agreement is holding this time next year, I would say is very, very low," he said. "The Iranians are not going to give up their enrichment effort, which they've been working on now for 18 years, by my count, simply for the benefits Europeans can provide them." Mr. Allison says if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it may inspire other countries in the region, such as Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, to do the same. On North Korea, the United States has been saying for several years that Pyongyang has a secret nuclear weapons program. Since then, North Korea has pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, expelled U.N. monitors and re-opened a nuclear facility it had promised to dismantle in 1994. Pyongyang has re-started its plutonium re-processing operations and experts say North Korea may now be able to produce at least six nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball, Executive-Director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington research firm, says the situation is critical. "So right now, North Korea has a very advanced, almost fully-functioning plutonium re-processing facility that can extract plutonium from what are called "spent fuel rods" from a reactor there. There are no inspectors in North Korea to monitor what is or isn't going on. The United States has, under the Bush administration, first decided not to speak with the North Koreans to try to improve the situation. Then the United States pursued the six-party talks involving the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and North Korea, but the third round of these six-party talks was in June of 2004. There is no sign that these talks are going to be reconvened any time soon and the fear right now is that North Korea could quietly and behind its closed borders be separating more plutonium for possibly more nuclear weapons," said Daryl Kimball. Mr. Kimball says the international community must be more aggressive diplomatically in its dealings with Pyongyang. Graham Allison, from Harvard, believes if North Korea declares itself a nuclear state, other countries will follow suit. "You're soon going to have Japan choosing a nuclear option and then South Korea very quickly thereafter, and Taiwan will be thinking about it. So you are going to see a set of dominoes there follow quickly," he said. Turning to a different region of the world, Daryl Kimball from the Arms Control Association says another potential nuclear flashpoint is in South Asia, where India and Pakistan have been engaged in an arms race. "What we see happening today is still the possibility of an armed conflict between the two countries, mainly over the disputed Kashmir territory. And now with both states armed with a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, there is the possibility the two countries could become engaged in a nuclear conflict. It was only two years ago in the summer of 2002 that there were some one million armed troops on the India-Pakistan border facing off against one another and there was a severe crisis and the United States helped intervene and quell the crisis. But that just shows how short the nuclear fuse is in that region." Foreign policy experts say another major proliferation issue is the one known as "loose nukes": the possibility that nuclear material from the former Soviet Union might make its way into terrorists' hands. Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay says it is difficult to know how much nuclear material is out there. "We unfortunately do not know how much is available. And in fact, I don't think the Russians know how much is available from the old Soviet program," said Mr. Kay. "The end of the Soviet Union was welcome but messy and controls just came off. And it turned out those controls weren't all that good to begin with. The Soviets depended on guns, gates and guards as opposed to scientific, technical accounting methods." Mr. Kay says the United States has been involved in several buyback and assistance programs to help the Russians install better controls over the old Soviet stockpile. And he says Washington has helped move and make more secure materials from former Soviet republics. Experts say nuclear issues will be discussed next year in New York, during the review of the Non-Proliferation treaty - the legal cornerstone of non-proliferation efforts. Under terms of the pact, non-nuclear states are bound not to acquire nuclear weapons while the five declared nuclear states (the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia) pledge to disarm. The four-week session in May will bring the 187 signatories together to debate whether the treaty needs to be revised and strengthened to meet the nuclear challenges in the years ahead. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- california Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Receives Order for Replacement Steam Generators For U.S. Nuclear Power Plant By Dale Hug, JCNN Dec 27, 2004 http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=9086 Tokyo (JCNN) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (TSE: 7011; "MHI") has received an order from Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the largest electric utilities in the U.S., to supply four Replacement Steam Generators (RSG) for use in nuclear power generation. The order calls for delivery of four RSGs to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), located approximately six kilometers southeast of San Clemente. Two RSGs will be put into service at Unit 2 and the other two at Unit 3. SONGS Units 2 and 3, respectively with electrical outputs of 1,070 and 1,080 MWe (megawatts of electricity), commenced operation in the early 1980's. The replacements are planned to boost operating reliability and economy. Mitsubishi has already received numerous orders for important components for nuclear power plants overseas. The latest order calls for four large-scale steam generators with each of them sized so as to be included on a list of the largest steam generators in the United States. It marks the second steam generator order from the U.S., following an order received in February 2003 for two RSGs for Omaha Public Power District's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station in Nebraska. The newly ordered RSGs will be manufactured at MHI's Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works and delivery is set for between 2008 and 2009. The contract does not include installation work. -------- tennessee Y-12 weapons plant trying to eliminate costly storage problems (AP) December 27, 2004 http://www.oakridger.com/stories/122704/new_20041227011.shtml The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant plans to clear out its Cold War clutter and rid itself of a costly storage problem. Old warhead parts and other items associated with their manufacture have stacked up for decades, and now the government's contractor vows to clean house as part of a modernization program at Y-12. "Some of the (old warhead parts) were here because we didn't know how to get rid of them," said Dennis Ruddy, president and general manager of BWXT, the plant's managing contractor. There was no legal place to dispose of some parts left over from the dismantlement of old weapons systems because of the combination of classified shapes and hazardous substances. It was often cheaper to store the scrap material than to dispose of it. There are five or six categories of junk parts at the Oak Ridge facility, according to Ruddy. BWXT has promised the government it will identify a "path to disposal" for them all by the end of fiscal 2005. "It's a big deal, clearing that stuff out of here. It's a lot of stuff," said Bill Brumley, who oversees Y-12 operations for the National Nuclear Security Administration. BWXT will not discuss the parts in detail because of the classification or reveal the size of the junk pile. But in 2004, the government's contractor shipped about 150 metric tons of "depleted uranium metal recovered from retired weapons program" to the Nevada Test Site, a spokesman said. Workers normally must remove or destroy a part's association with nuclear weapons to make it acceptable for disposal. In some cases that means grinding a part to change its classified shape, Ruddy said. It also could mean removing contamination that's linked to the weapon design, he said. The Y-12 plant has historically manufactured parts for every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal. It also is responsible for dismantling the same bomb parts after the weapons are taken out of deployment and retired from the arsenal. The plant specializes in so-called secondaries, the second stage of thermonuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear materials, such as highly enriched uranium, are salvaged, recycled and returned to the stockpile. Other, non-nuclear parts, or those made with depleted uranium, may be deemed obsolete or unusable, but they still require special attention because of their weapons application. "It's really hard to store classified shapes and classified parts," Ruddy said. "You can't just put them in a butler building and keep the weather off them, like you'd do if you're an aluminum company. In our case, and especially with the security rules changing with time, it becomes more and more expensive to have the infrastructure to store classified parts." BWXT has started getting rid of parts in order to reduce Y-12's operating costs, beginning with those that are the most expensive to store and guard. "If we have a classified part, we've got to store it in what we call a vault-type room. -- It requires surveillance and it requires special maintenance to make sure that nobody's digging their way underneath it," Ruddy said. The legacy of old parts is found throughout the nation's nuclear weapons complex, said Ruddy, who came to Oak Ridge from the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Pantex is the main assembly center for nuclear warheads. "There are many, many things stored at Pantex long-term, 20-25 years, that are in 55-gallon drums," he said. Some warhead parts have been stored at Y-12 for at least that long and possibly longer, he said. "There is off-fall from our manufacturing processes of 40 years ago that are still here - things, again, that don't have a known disposal (method)," Ruddy said. -------- MILITARY -------- asia Quake: Strength of a million A-bombs Thousands have been killed from Indonesia to Somalia Al Jazeera Monday 27 December 2004, 13:09 Makka Time, 10:09 GMT http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/88760F73-3D19-41A9-A762-D0118CC1B8CC.htm The reaction that sent waves, equal in power to a million atomic bombs, crashing into Indian Ocean coasts on Sunday started more than 10km beneath the sea floor close to Sumatra, Indonesia. Geologic plates pressing against each other slipped violently, creating a bulge on the bottom that could be as high as 10m and hundreds of kilometres long, one scientist said. "It's just like moving an enormous paddle at the bottom of the sea," said David Booth, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey. "A big column of water has moved, we're talking about billions of tons. This is an enormous disturbance." Moving at about 800kph the waves took more than two hours to reach Sri Lanka, where the human toll has been horrific, and longer to spread to India and the east coast of Africa. And because such tidal waves rarely occur in the Indian Ocean, there is no system in place to warn coastal communities they are about to be hit, such as exists in the Pacific, Booth said. "With 20-20 vision of hindsight, that will be reconsidered," he said. An Australian scientist had suggested in September that an Indian Ocean warning system be set up, but it takes a year to create one. Also, those living along the Indian Ocean's shores were less likely than Pacific coastal dwellers to know the warning signs of an impending tidal wave - water receding unusually fast and far from the shore, Booth said. Thousands were killed in countries from Indonesia to Somalia. The underwater quake, which the US Geological Survey put at magnitude 9, was the biggest since 1964, when a 9.2-magnitude tremor struck Alaska, also touching off tsunami waves. There were at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, one of magnitude 7.3. Million atomic bombs Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute, likened the quake's power to detonating one million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan during the second world war, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation. "All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, he told Italian state radio. Other scientists said it was too early to say whether the rotation was affected by the quake. The earthquake occurred at a spot where the Indian Ocean plate is gradually being forced underneath Sumatra, which is part of the Eurasian plate, at about the speed at which a human fingernail grows, Booth explained. "This slipping does not occur smoothly," he said. Rocks along the edge stick against one another and pent-up energy builds over hundreds of years. It is "almost like stretching an elastic band, and then when the strength of the rock is not sufficient to withstand the stress, then all along the fault line the rocks will move," he said. Ring of Fire Indonesia is well-known as a major quake centre, sitting along a series of fault lines dubbed the Ring of Fire. But scientists are unable to predict where and when quakes will strike with any precision. The force of the quake could be felt far and wide The force of Sunday's earthquake shook unusually far afield, causing buildings to sway hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre, from Singapore to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to Bangladesh. The quake probably occurred about 10km beneath the ocean floor, causing the huge, step-like protrusion on the sea bed and the resulting tidal waves. As the waves moved across deep areas of the ocean in the early morning, they may have been almost undetectable on the surface, with swells of about a metre or less. But when they approached land, the huge volumes of water were forced to the surface and the waves grew higher, swamping coastal communities and causing massive numbers of casualties. Agencies -------- business Defense Giants Vulnerable to Slower Spending By Jerry Knight Monday, December 27, 2004 Washington Post; Page E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28088-2004Dec26?language=printer Facing a record federal budget deficit, the White House and Congress are considering slowing the growth of defense spending, which could make it far less attractive to invest in the stocks of Washington's Pentagon contractors. The defense spending debate has yet to get specific, but analysts are already at odds over what it might mean. Wachovia Securities LLC recently warned clients that curbing Pentagon spending "would likely be interpreted by the market as a negative and supports our thesis that we are in the final stages of the defense authorization upcycle." But the investment bank Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc. counters that there is "more smoke than fire" in newspaper reports of an impending slowdown. "We continue to view the defense sector as an outperformer vis-a-vis the broader markets in 2005." The two big regional investment firms are not as far apart as they might appear at first because they are focused on two different parts of the defense industry. Wachovia's defense industry analysts are most cautious about the giant Pentagon suppliers -- fighter-plane-manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, tank- and submarine-maker General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church and Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles, which makes ships and other products for the military. FBR's analysts are most sanguine about the next tier of Pentagon players -- companies such as defense electronics-maker Argon ST Inc. of Fairfax, combat-vehicle-maker United Defense Industries Inc. of Arlington, information-tech company CACI International Inc. of Arlington and other smaller firms here and across the country. FBR, a regional firm based in Arlington, handles investment banking for several of the smaller local defense contractors and does not research the defense giants, which have a national following. The key differences in outlooks for the two segments of the defense sector are that Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman supply huge Pentagon "platforms" that are high-cost, high-visibility and sometimes highly controversial. The smaller players mostly provide specialized supplies and services -- computers, communications, even running prisoner of war camps, such as Abu Ghraib near Baghdad, which drew CACI into a prisoner-abuse scandal. When Congress starts looking for cuts, it's easy to target the new multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers, submarines and ships that would be built by General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, or Lockheed Martin's F/A-22 Raptor, which costs $258 million each, the most expensive jet fighter ever. Last week an F/A-22 crashed during flight testing in Nevada in the plane's first accident since combat-style testing began last spring. Full production of the F/A-22 would cost more than $20 billion over the next several years. Delaying that plane or one of the ships and subs on the Navy's drawing board could save billions of dollars a year, for which members of Congress could take credit. There's less money involved in the electronic intelligence systems and services supplied by Argon, with revenue of a couple hundred million dollars a year, or CACI, which projects sales next year to be about $1.5 billion. There's less publicity potential, too, because some of what CACI and Argon do is so secret that most members of Congress don't know the details. Services and supplies for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going to be cut from the Defense Department budget and spending on the war could increase, another reason there is less worry about the impact of budget cuts on many local firms. No one, in fact, is talking about cutting the Pentagon budget. Proposals are simply to slow the growth of defense spending, which is projected to top $500 billion this fiscal year, including new money for Iraq that Congress will consider next month. Learning from experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is expected to reconsider its priorities next year. There is speculation that defense planners could shift away from a "platform-centric" approach that concentrates on capital-intensive ship and plane programs, toward spending for troops and modernized fighting, communications and electronic gear. That would make it less attractive to invest in big prime contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, whose stocks are already underperforming the smaller, faster-growing government contractors. So far this year, all the cautious talk has not caught up to the big boys. Lockheed Martin stock, which closed Thursday at $58.94 a share, has gained 16.7 percent this year and General Dynamics is up 19.7 percent to $106.64. Lockheed pays an annual dividend of $1 and General Dynamics pays an annual dividend of $1.44, which makes them more attractive to some investors than the smaller defense firms, none of which pays a dividend. Growth is the reason for buying stock in second-tier local firms. So far this year, the fastest growers, all traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, have been Argon up 154 percent to $35.49, Essex Corp., a Columbia electronics company catering to the intelligence community, up 90 percent to $17.85 and SI International Inc., a Reston specialist in computer networks, up 60 percent. SI International stock closed Thursday at $31.25 a share after hitting a 52-week high of $32.66 during the day. Also hitting a 52-week high for the year during Thursday's trading was CACI. Its shares traded as high as $68.97 and closed at $68.20, up 40 percent for the year. United Defense Industries, which makes the Bradley fighting vehicle and other guns and missile launchers, is up 51 percent for the year at $48.08. ---- Navy Re-Ups CACI's Support and Training Contract By William Welsh Special to the Washington Post Monday, December 27, 2004; Page E04 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28035-2004Dec26?language=printer CACI International Inc. of Arlington won a $16 million contract renewal from the Navy's Fleet and Industrial Supply Center to provide logistics support and training services to the Navy and Marine Corps. The one-year contract, with four one-year options, would be worth $85 million if all options are exercised. The renewal is the company's fifth contract over the past 17 years for services supporting the Navy's Fleet Assistance and Shipboard Training program. CACI is to provide logistics, inventory, training and financial management solutions to help improve supply operations and fleet readiness. The company will perform the work at dozens of Navy and Marine Corps facilities in the United States, overseas and on naval vessels. "We stay very close to this client. We stay so close we are on board ship with them," said Bill Fairl, CACI's acting chief operating officer for U.S. operations. "We understand on a daily basis what these folks need from us." More than 200 people from CACI and its subcontractors are working on the contract, he said. Fairl said a major part of the company's work on the previous contracts has been problem solving or troubleshooting for the Navy. CACI fielded more than 8,500 such requests in the past year. CACI also trained more than 3,000 people and responded to 2,500 requests for on-site training assistance. The latest renewal is mostly because of CACI's long-standing relationship with the Navy, Fairl said. Over the years, CACI has helped the Navy stay ahead of the technology curve by deploying mobile-computing solutions and making use of commercial software, Fairl said. CACI has 9,400 employees and had sales of $1.1 billion in fiscal 2004. Slightly more than 50 percent of the company's revenue comes from the Army and the Navy, which are CACI's two largest clients, Fairl said. The company also provides logistics support at home and abroad to the Army, he said. The award follows another major win for the company with the Navy. In November, CACI won a $15.7 million award from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center to support a communications system that allows Navy personnel to transmit battlefield-related data among aircraft, ships and shore installations. If all options are exercised, that contract has a potential value of $27 million over five years. William Welsh is a senior writer with Washington Technology. For more details on this and other technology contracts, go to www.washingtontechnology.com. -------- iraq Iraq 2004 Looks Like Vietnam 1966 Adjusting body counts for medical and military changes By Phillip Carter and Owen West for Slate Posted Monday, Dec. 27, 2004, at 3:34 PM PT http://slate.msn.com/id/2111432/ Soldiers have long been subjected to invidious generational comparison. It's a military rite of passage for new recruits to hear from old hands that everything from boot camp to combat was tougher before they arrived. The late '90s coronation of the "Greatest Generation"—which left many Korean War and Vietnam War veterans scratching their heads—is only the most visible cultural example. Generational contrasts are implicit today when casualties in Iraq are referred to as light, either on their own or in comparison to Vietnam. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, for example, last July downplayed the intensity of the Iraq war on this basis, arguing that "it would take over 73 years for U.S. forces to incur the level of combat deaths suffered in the Vietnam war." But a comparative analysis of U.S. casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966—and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of Hue City in 1968 and the battles for Fallujah in 2004, tell a similar tale: Today's grunts are patrolling a battlefield every bit as deadly as the crucible their fathers faced in Southeast Asia. Continue Article Economists like to quote statistics in "constant dollars," where they factor in historical inflation rates to produce statistics that allow for side-by-side comparison. Warfare is more complex than macroeconomics, but it is possible to produce a similar "apples to apples" comparison for casualties across conflicts. In a recent article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Atul Gawande (a former Slate contributor) concluded that improvements to military medicine since Vietnam have dramatically reduced the rate at which U.S. troops die of wounds sustained in combat. The argument follows a 2002 study that tied improvements in U.S. civilian trauma medicine to the nation's declining murder rate. While firearm assaults in the United States were rising, the murder rate was falling, largely because penetration wounds that proved fatal 30 years ago were now survivable. Thus, today's murder rate was artificially depressed in comparison to the 1960s. Gawande applied the same methodology to U.S. casualty statistics in previous wars, arriving at a "lethality of wounds" rate for each conflict. In World War II, 30 percent of wounds proved deadly. In Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War, this rate hovered between 24 percent and 25 percent. But due to better medical technology, doctrinal changes that push surgical teams closer to the front lines, and individual armor protection for soldiers, this rate has dropped to 10 percent for Operation Iraqi Freedom for all wounds. For serious wounds that keep a soldier away from duty for more than 72 hours, the mortality rate is now 16 percent. Simply, a soldier was nearly 1.5 times more likely to die from his wounds in Vietnam than in Iraq today. This disparity between the "lethal wound" rates has profound implications. Analogy is a powerful tool for perspective, and Vietnam still reverberates, but the numbers must reflect the actual risks. In 1966, for example, 5,008 U.S. servicemen were killed in action in Vietnam. Another 1,045 died of "non-hostile" wounds (17 percent of the total fatalities). Since Jan. 1, 2004, 754 U.S. servicemen and -women have been killed in action in Iraq, and 142 more soldiers died in "non-hostile" mishaps (16 percent of the fatalities, similar to Vietnam). Applying Vietnam's lethality rate (25 percent) to the total number of soldiers killed in action in Iraq this year, however, brings the 2004 KIA total to 1,131. The scale can be further balanced. In 1966, U.S. troops in Vietnam numbered 385,000. In 2004, the figure in Iraq has averaged roughly 142,000. Comparing the burden shouldered by individual soldiers in both conflicts raises the 2004 "constant casualty" figure in Iraq to 3,065 KIA. Further, casualties in Iraq fall more heavily on those performing infantry missions. Riflemen—as well as tankers and artillerymen who operate in provisional infantry units in Iraq—bear a much higher proportion of the risk than they did in Vietnam. In Vietnam, helicopter pilots and their crews accounted for nearly 5 percent of those killed in action. In Iraq in 2004, this figure was less than 3 percent. In Vietnam, jet pilots accounted for nearly 4 percent of U.S. KIAs. In 2004, the United States did not lose a single jet to enemy action in Iraq. When pilots and aircrews are removed from the equation, 4,602 ground-based soldiers died during 1966 in Vietnam, compared to 2,975 in Iraq during 2004. Perhaps a more significant change is the marriage of technology with doctrinal changes. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, attrition warfare dominated infantry operations. Today's commanders fight differently, first shaping the battlefield with air power and artillery, then committing ground troops to attack enemies weakened by these barrages or bypassing them altogether. But some situations defy the effects of technology and force infantrymen to fight much the way they did 30 years ago. In urban areas, most significantly, buildings hide Iraqi insurgents from aerial observation and protect them from incoming ordnance. Cities also make it easy for small bands of insurgents to hide among the civilians. In Fallujah, the Iraqi insurgents who burrowed into the city had to be pried out by American infantry—just as the Marines did when they fought to retake Hue City in 1968. The Hue comparison is illuminating. In Hue, three Marine battalions (roughly 3,000 men) plunged into a vicious house-to-house fight with 12,000 North Vietnamese, ultimately routing them after suffering harsh losses. In April 2004, three Marine battalions attacked several thousand terrorists in Fallujah and were days away from taking the city when the White House called off the attack. In November, three new Marine battalions joined two Army mechanized infantry battalions in a sweeping attack to retake the city. They succeeded, although outbreaks of fighting continue. While the North Vietnamese fought a coordinated defensive battle for Hue City until they were annihilated, the terrorists in Fallujah fought in small packs, hiding among the tens of thousands of structures in the "city of mosques." In the three-week battle for Hue, 147 Marines were killed and 857 wounded. In the twin battles for Fallujah, more than 104 soldiers and Marines have been killed and more than 1,100 wounded in a battle that will continue to take lives, like the three Marines who encountered yet another pocket of fighters last week. Hue and Fallujah provide one of the best generational comparisons of combat because both battles unfolded similarly. Without controlling for any of the advances in medical technology, medical evacuation, body armor, or military technology, U.S. losses in Fallujah almost equal those of Hue. If you factor in the improvements in medical technology alone, then the fight for Fallujah was just as costly (or maybe more so) as that for Hue, as measured by the number of mortal wounds sustained by U.S. troops. That today's fighting in Iraq, by these calculations, may actually be more lethal than the street fighting in Vietnam should not be taken lightly. Vietnam was marked by long periods of well-fought, sustained combat but little perceptible gain. Volunteers outnumbered conscripts by a 9-1 ratio in the units that saw combat during the war's early days in 1966, and at first they enjoyed the support of a country that believed in their cause. But as the burden widened and deepened, and conscripts did more of the fighting and dying, the country's faith evaporated. Today's burden is not wide, but it is deep. Communities such as Oceanside, Calif., home to Camp Pendleton and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, have suffered tremendous loss during this war—nearly one-quarter of U.S. combat dead in 2004 were stationed at Camp Pendleton. Military leaders should be mindful of this fact: To send infantrymen on their third rotations to Iraq this spring is akin to assigning a trooper three tours in Vietnam: harsh in 1966 and a total absurdity by 1968. Critics of the war may use this analysis as one more piece of ammunition to attack the effort; some supporters may continue to refer to casualties as "light," noting that typically tens of thousands of Americans must die in war before domestic support crumbles. Both miss the point. The casualty statistics make clear that our nation is involved in a war whose intensity on the ground matches that of previous American wars. Indeed, the proportional burden on the infantryman is at its highest level since World War I. With next year's budget soon to be drafted, it is time for Washington to finally address their needs accordingly. Phillip Carter is an attorney and former Army officer who writes on military and legal affairs from Los Angeles. Owen West, a trader for Goldman Sachs, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom with the Marines. -------- israel / palestine U.S. Boosts Aid for Bomb Removal in Laos 30 Years After End of Vietnam War, Unexploded Ordnance Maims and Kills By Frederic J. Frommer Associated Press Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A07 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28099-2004Dec26?language=printer Three decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States is increasing aid to help remove unexploded ordnance that continues to kill people in the former war zone, especially in Laos, where 2 million tons of bombs were dropped. The United States bombed Laos relentlessly for a decade to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines. Although the war ended 30 years ago, the carnage from those bombings continues. Nearly one-third of the bombs failed to explode, lying in wait as "de facto anti-personnel mines," according to a Human Rights Watch report. The bombs have killed about 6,000 Laotians since the end of fighting. "Every time I go to Laos, I meet fresh bomb victims who have lost an eye or a leg or two," said Jim Harris, a retired Wisconsin school principal who helps educate people about the experience of Laotian refugees in his state. From 1964 to 1973, U.S. pilots dropped on Laos double the amount of bombs that planes dropped on Germany in World War II. The United States has agreed to nearly double the amount of aid it provides to help remove those bombs, known as unexploded ordnance, or UXO. Congress approved $2.5 million for bomb removal in Laos next year, up from $1.4 million, as part of a move to normalize trade relations with the impoverished Southeast Asian country. But the improvement in trade relations and even the increased funding for bomb removal were opposed by some critics, who said Laos continues to persecute its Hmong minority, who fought alongside the CIA during the Vietnam War. "Why should the U.S. taxpayer pay to remove land mines and unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War, when the Lao government and military are involved in military operations against the Hmong people?" asked Philip Smith, the Washington director of Lao Veterans of America. But Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) said the United States "has a moral obligation to partner with the people of Laos to help eliminate the ordnance and put the land back into productive use for this impoverished nation." Many of the Hmong people who fled Laos settled in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Although the Laotian government is in charge of bomb removal, it relies on help from other countries and outside groups to help pay for it. The Laotian bomb removal agency, UXO Lao, hit a crisis point a couple of years ago. "Money wasn't coming in in sufficient numbers, and UXO Lao had to let go of half of its employees," said Douglas Hartwick, the U.S. ambassador to Laos from 2001 until last July. "So there was a big push on the part of donors, and the Lao government, to put together a long-term coherent strategy to clean up the unexploded bombs." The agency's annual budget is about $4 million, according to its Web site. Officials with UXO Lao did not respond to e-mails seeking comment. Hartwick said the explosives removal process, using metal detectors, is painstakingly slow. "You're getting constant hits with a metal detector," he said. "You've got shrapnel like you wouldn't believe, plus bullets, mortars and grenades." The Mines Advisory Group, a nongovernmental organization in Britain that helps destroy land mines and unexploded ordnance worldwide, is one of several private groups that receive U.S. money for work in Laos. Sean Sutton, the group's spokesman, said, "It's welcome news that the United States is doing more to help." During a visit to Laos in October, he said, seven people were killed when a man hit a bomb while chopping wood. Just a few days later, he said, two boys were killed when playing with tennis-ball-size cluster bomblets. He said many of the injuries and fatalities occur when poor Laotians are attracted to the explosives in search of scrap metal. They can get $1 for seven pounds of steel or about two pounds of aluminum. "For a typical family making $400 a year farming, a dollar is worth an awful lot," Sutton said. ---- Israel releases 159 Palestinian prisoners 12/27/2004 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-27-israel-prisoners_x.htm BEITUNIA CHECKPOINT, West Bank — Israel released 159 Palestinian prisoners Monday as a gesture to the new Palestinian leadership. A Palestinian holds a Palestinian flag after being released by Israeli authorities at the Betuniya checkpoint. By Oded Balilty, AP Interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the front-runner in Jan. 9 presidential elections, welcomed the release but said Israel must free those sentenced to lengthy terms. Israel is holding some 7,000 Palestinians on security-related charges, and Abbas is under intense pressure to win their freedom. The prisoners released Tuesday had no more than two years left in their sentences, and none were imprisoned for attacking Israelis. Dozens had been held for staying in Israel without entry permits. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would seek final Cabinet approval to his Gaza Strip withdrawal plan by February, months ahead of schedule, officials said. Lawmakers also quoted Sharon as saying Israel will use harsh force if Palestinian militants try to disrupt the pullout. In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian fugitive, while a Hamas member died in Gaza in an accidental explosion. Dozens of prisoners arrived Monday morning at drop-off points in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, some waving Palestinian flags and flashing victory signs. The release was part of a deal with Egypt. On Dec. 5, Egypt freed Israeli Azzam Azzam after jailing him for eight years on spy charges. In exchange, Israel returned six Egyptian students accused of planning attacks on Israel and agreed to release Palestinian prisoners. Israel has said Monday's release also was meant as a gesture to the new Palestinian leadership, but it refuses to free Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis. In a weekend campaign speech, Abbas demanded that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti, a promising uprising leader. "In principle we work for every prisoner to be released, but what we are looking for is the release of those who have spent many long years in jail," Abbas said shortly after the prisoners were freed. Seventeen prisoners left a bus at the Beitunia checkpoint near Ramallah. One prisoner waved a Palestinian flag as the group rushed to hug, kiss and shake hands with waiting relatives. Abdullah Hussein, 43, spent 11 months in the Ketziot military prison in southern Israel. He had five months left on his sentence for assisting the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militant group linked to the mainstream Fatah movement. "We are not satisfied with this deal. My brothers gave me a message for Abu Mazen: that he should make the prisoners a top priority," Hussein said. Abbas is widely known as Abu Mazen. In Gaza, Ahmad Shaqoura, 24, said he had only 23 days left on a two-year term. "It means nothing," Shaqoura, a Fatah member, said of his early release. An adviser to Sharon, Zalman Shoval, said the release indicated Israel's warming relations with Egypt and the countries' desire to coordinate a planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. On Monday, Sharon told parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee he will ask his Cabinet for final approval to the Gaza plan in February, months ahead of an original June deadline, a senior official said on condition of anonymity. Officials in Sharon's office have said the early vote will not speed up the actual pullout but will allow for legal challenges and other preparations. The pullout is to begin in July and be completed within three months. Meeting participants quoted Sharon as saying he was ready to use overwhelming force if militants tried to disrupt the withdrawal. "As soon as there is fire, there will be severe retaliation," committee member Shaul Yahalom said. The pullout from Gaza and four West Bank settlements received a boost Sunday when residents of one small Gaza community, Peat Sadeh, agreed to leave their homes voluntarily in March and move to a nearby Israeli community. Also Monday, Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan met with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, pledging $9 million in assistance. Tang called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state "as soon as possible." Tang, the most senior Chinese official to visit in nearly five years, is to meet with Israeli officials, including Sharon, in the coming days. In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops shot and killed an Al Aqsa fugitive, Wael Riyahi, as he tried to escape by car, the army said. In Gaza, a Hamas member died when explosives he was handling detonated prematurely, Palestinian security officials said. Hamas said on its Web site that 22-year-old Mohammed Edwan was killed while "fulfilling a holy mission." -------- prisoners of war Presumption of innocence December 27, 2004 Washington Times By Nat Hentoff http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041226-095825-8390r.htm Like the town meetings of yore, newspapers' letter pages include criticisms of higher officials — and their responses. I welcome the chance to answer the charge by Bryan G. Whitman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, in a Dec. 9 letter in The Washington Times, that I have been egregiously unfair in claiming that the Defense Department has defied a Supreme Court decision requiring due process for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. At issue is a June 24 Supreme Court decision, Rasul v. Bush, which directly concerns the Defense Department's Combat StatusReviewTribunals (CSRTs), bodies that are deciding whether detainees, some held for more than two years, are actually enemy combatants. Mr. Whitman oddly fails to mention this particular ruling, in which Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for a 6-3 majority, pointed out that these prisoners are on "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control." Accordingly, Justice Stevens continued, "aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to involve the federal courts' authority." And, in contesting the legality of their detention as enemy combatants, the detainees have the right to due process, the basic fairness central to our constitutional rule of law. For the Defense Department, Mr. Whitman charges that I have confused these CSRTs with the separate military commission at Guantanamo trying detainees for war crimes. Actually, I made clear in my first paragraph that there were two separate proceedings underway, and I focused on the very procedures Mr. Whitman writes about. In responding to my point that these detainees do not have lawyers but instead are provided military officers without legal training as their "personal representatives" Mr. Whitman says that, after all, these CSRTs are "not legal proceedings." But, since he also says that the Defense Department is indeed givingthemdue process, how is due process possible if they don't have a lawyer? Moreover, if they are found to be enemy combatants, they can be permanently imprisoned. They are even denied most of the crucial, purported evidence against them because it is classified. And what isn't classified is often hearsay alleged information. Crucially, the prisoners are not presumed innocent, a basic starting point of due process under our Constitution. Instead, at these hearings, they have to prove they are not enemy combatants. Not surprisingly, in 207 decisions on prisoners who have gone before these Combatant Status Review Tribunals, only two have been released. All in all, the Defense Department's definition of basic fairness sounds more like Chinese or Cuban due process. Moreover, Tom Wilner, an attorney representing 12 Kuwaiti detainees, has pointed out in a National Public Radio report (Dec. 2) that the Defense Department has yet to provide at Guantanamo "a standardized method to determine who is beingheldand why." Mr. Wilmer emphasizes that, in fairness, there has to be "some process to really find out who really fought against the United States, who really was dangerous. And not just taking the government's word on some amorphous standard of who they want to hold." Mr. Whitman, speaking for Mr. Rumsfeld, says: "By ignoring facts, Mr. Hentoff does a disservice to his readers; he certainly is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to ignore clear facts." However, the facts are that the CRSTs have turned due process on its head. As ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer wrote, after witnessing these hearings at Guantanamo: "They are proceedings designed not to provide fair process, but rather to rubber-stamp essentially political decisions." At one of the proceedings, as Jackie Northam reported for National Public Radio on Nov. 9, a 27-year-old Yemeni man, his hands and leg shackled and without a lawyer, "often smiled in disbelief as he was asked to explain questions included in the evidence that was unclassified...The detainee repeatedly asked for proof of his guilt. He also requested documentation (about what he was accused of) evidence which the panel said was classified." This Defense Department "due process" recalls what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said (in a Sept. 15, 2002, Newsday article): "Anything that comes up in the United States tends to be looked at as a law enforcement matter ... 'decide whether or not he's guilty or innocent and give him due process.' Of course if you're worried ... that you've got the risk of terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction or killing thousands or tens of thousands of people, you're not terribly interested in whether or not the person is potentially a subject for law enforcement." So, at Guantanamo, you can do away with the presumption of innocence, exclude lawyers for the imprisoned, and falsely claim that that you're complying with the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush. Mr. Whitman, Mr. Rumsfeld, would you describe that as due process to a high school civics class? -------- us Invisible Soldiers: Iraq War Veterans Go Homeless Months After Returning From War Democracy Now! Monday, December 27th, 2004 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/27/1516231 Democracy Now! continues its discussion with Iraq war veterans Herold Noel and Nicole Goodwin who faced an unexpected battle when they returned from Iraq - finding a place to live. [includes rush transcript] An article written by John Tarleton in the new issue of The Indypendent, the newspaper of the NYC Indymedia Center, begins: Four nights before Christmas, former Army specialist Herold Noel huddled for warmth in front of a fire he built for himself in Brooklyn's Prospect Park as temperatures slid toward the single digits. Plagued by nightmares and unable to hold a steady job or get the assistance he needed, he was on the verge of losing his wife and three young children. It wasn't the homecoming he'd expected after serving in Iraq last year. According to the Pentagon, 955,000 U.S. troops have already served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The experiences of Noel and others like him have many observers worried that the country will be inundated by a wave of returning veterans with no place to go and reeling from psychological trauma, as happened toward the end of the Vietnam War. According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, up to 17 percent of troops returning from Iraq "met the screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Herold Noel, who is still looking for a place to live, joins us today along with another former homeless veteran, Nicole Goodwin for the second part of a discussion on homelessness and Iraq war veterans. * Herold Noel, former Army specialist who recently returned from Iraq. He is now without a home. Nicole Goodwin, former homeless veteran who returned from Iraq earlier this year. She now works with Operation Truth and lobbies on behalf of other Iraq war veterans. Related Links: The Indypendent: "Invisible Soldier: A Perilous Journey from Flatbush to Falluja And Back Leaves Herold Noel Out in the Cold" RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Herold Noel, a former army specialist who recently returned from Iraq, now without a home and Nicole Goodwin, a former homeless veteran who returned from Iraq, had a profile written about her in the New York Times, and ultimately found a home for her and her young daughter. She now works with “Operation Truth” and lobbies on behalf of other Iraqi war veterans. In part two of this conversation I asked Herold Noel if he could talk about what he saw in Iraq. HEROLD NOEL: What I saw, there would be a lot of people that didn't join the military that we will see in a million years. You understand? You seen people dying in so many different ways, it's disgusting. You see bodies oozing from Iraqi tanks, oozing out of a hole, a hole the size of a quarter. You see ooze, skeleton pieces oozing out of the tanks, and you see inflated bodies and children -- children's body parts like a little leg hanging from one side of the street. You will see children being -- dead children being put in back of trucks, and a whole bunch of nastiness, you understand? And I'm -- and they're over here crying, in the native language, I'm guessing, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? You understand? And me, as being a father myself, looking into another father's eyes, asking why, you understand? You understand? I had no questions -- I mean, I had no answers to why this is going on. Cause I don’t know myself, I'm there to do a job. You understand? And I'm not saying I love my job, but the job I was doing is just -- I was forced to do it. You understand? And if I didn't do it, you understand, that's my family, you understand? I'm in guilt -- locked up -- I have seen children fight other children for food, for MRE's. You understand? I seen a little girl getting stomped. Her head was getting crushed to the pavement for a bag of MRE's. And this is -- AMY GOODMAN: This is for ready made meals of the military. HEROLD NOEL: Yes, the military food. They tell us not to throw it out there, you understand, for the kids. But some soldiers, they -- some soldiers have a heart. You understand? They see the kids walking around with no clothes on, so we just throw -- throw them a little candy or something, just so they can eat, and -- JUAN GONZALEZ: At night, when you -- when you talked with your other -- with your fellow soldiers about what was going on, what was the conversation? What were you -- HEROLD NOEL: The conversation -- we tried to look on the -- you know, the better side of things, you understand? We said, you know what? We are going to do this and we're going to come back as heroes. We are going to come back and everybody is going to look up to us. We are in the history books now. This is how we tried to look at it. We try not to think about the death. You understand? We have -- there's times we have to sleep around the dead bodies, and stay in our trucks. The stench is -- that's a smell that you cannot get out -- you always smell it. You always get a taste of that smell cause I still smell it sometimes walking the streets of New York. You understand? It's -- so, we just try to look on the better side of things, to see, you understand, to get us by. Cause if we think about it, think about it, you understand, we are just going to end up turning on each other. NICOLE GOODWIN: You won't function. HEROLD NOEL: You won't function. So, we try not to think about it. AMY GOODMAN: So, what happened when you came home? You have a family, a wife, three children? How were you able to integrate. In fact, back into civilian life. Is it true that you came back not having a home because the military had cut off your pay somehow? HEROLD NOEL: Yes. When I was in Iraq, they had me AWOL. They had my AWOL. It was a mistake. They said they were supposed to put somebody else at AWOL, that was back at the red, back in the States. And they made a mistake and put my name in the mix of it. The next thing you know, I wasn't getting paid. AMY GOODMAN: Did you know that in Iraq? HEROLD NOEL: I didn't know. I didn't know, it was my wife was saying – cause my wife had to pay the rent and stuff like that. And she writes letters saying, you haven't been getting paid. I don't know why. And we'll get little LES's, the pay stubs in Iraq. They are printed out somehow and they will send it to us. My check would say zero and they said they try to get somebody back in the red to fix it, and know what's going on. They had me AWOL for a while. And so we lost our house. JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you say for a while, how long did they have you AWOL. HEROLD NOEL: They had me AWOL for about the time I was there, six months. JUAN GONZALEZ: The whole six. HEROLD NOEL: Six, seven months, yes. They said it takes a while to fix that. NICOLE GOODWIN: It is easier to start and to stop. HEROLD NOEL: Yes, it is easier to stop, yes. AMY GOODMAN: Your wife wasn't getting money? HEROLD NOEL: No, she wasn't getting money. Cause my wife as going to school at the time. She went to finish her college courses and whatever. My wife had dreams. You understand? So, I told her, you know, you go to school. I'll do the work. I'm fighting for a reason. You go to school. You do what you got to do, I'll work. She wasn't getting paid. I wasn't getting paid, and we lost our house. We were forced to move on-post housing, on-post housing, you can live for free. You understand, or whatever, but they changed that now. For active duty, if you are living on-post, you still have to pay rent. NICOLE GOODWIN: Are you serious? I didn't know that. HEROLD NOEL: Yeah, they changed that. You still have to pay rent, but they are just going to take tout of your check. For me I wasn't getting a check, -- I have to pay back pay of the rent on the on-post housing. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now did you ever get the pay situation straightened out? HEROLD NOEL: Yeah. After I got out. But I didn't get everything. So, I just left that alone. I didn't want nothing to do with the military. AMY GOODMAN: What was it like coming home to your wife and kids? HEROLD NOEL: I thought I would have been happy, you understand? I was happy to see my family. My family is what kept me alive. I was kept a picture of my kids, a picture of my wife and they kept me alive. That's all I wanted to go back to, but when I got back, I see the conditions that my family was living in, and it was horrible for a soldier to go through that. The house that I lived in wasn't the same. You understand? Then they were talking about me leaving because they extended me six months and I had to get out. I had to prepare myself to get out of the on-post housing and we move into a trailer off-post, and everything was downhill from there. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, you were saying earlier when we talked before we came on -- before we came on the show, that when you were in the military, they treated you one way, but as soon as you get out everything changes. HEROLD NOEL: Yeah. JUAN GONZALEZ: Can you talk about that? HEROLD NOEL: When you are in the military, like I was saying before, when you are in the military, they treat you good. You understand? They make sure that your family is taken care of. You understand? But that's only if you are in the military. You understand? The military is painting a pretty picture and tell you that you are going to have this and that. But that's only if you are in the military. The military makes you think that the military is the only thing that you can do. They put that in your mind that the military is the only thing that -- being in the real world is hard. They are not going to give you nothing. So the military is the only way you can go. Because they're going to give you a nice house. They're going to give you enough -- you understand, to hang yourself, basically. You understand? They are going to make yourself feel comfortable with the military. So, you can stay in. But you are not going to see your family, because the whole time I was in the military, I only seen my family for about six months. I was deployed all the time. JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you came out and you attempted now to reintegrate into civilian life and get a job, what happened, what assistance did you get? HEROLD NOEL: I didn't get no assistance. It was not about me going out there and finding a job. Cause my uncle was in Vietnam, he didn't make it too good. Cause he came back homeless himself. He had to go to -- he turned into drugs and stuff like that. It was hard on him, you understand? He always taught me to keep my head up, and there are benefits out there that would help me, but I didn't see it yet. You understand? I signed a whole bunch of papers to get things but I didn't receive nothing. My family -- when I got back, I was hoping to do, you know me being back, I better help my family, but it's like -- they -- the only advice people give me at the VA is, go to a shelter. You understand? That's like -- NICOLE GOODWIN: Same with me. HEROLD NOEL: Exactly. So, I go to the shelter, you understand, because I have never been to a shelter before. My kids are grown. They see things. I got five-year-old twins. When they see me walking into a shelter, they know where they are going. They understand. They leave a house, a nice house with a back yard to go to a shelter. And when I went into the shelter, I thought it was disgusting. It was a whole bunch of people. I don't know what they're going through, but that's not what I fought for, you understand? That's not -- why I see my friends lose their limbs, and my -- some of my battle buddies die for, you understand, not to live like this, you understand? I just felt like my home, homeland that I fought for spit in my face and tell this is what you are worth for your hard struggles. JUAN GONZALEZ: Nicole, I see you nodding your head NICOLE GOODWIN: His story is very similar to mine, except a little addition here and there, but I would like to go back to what he said about the shelters system for a minute. I went into the EAU, the emergency assistance unit, under the Department of Homeless Services. I'd like to speak out about that. JUAN GONZALEZ: Where, the one in the Bronx? NICOLE GOODWIN: Yes, here in New York, located in the Bronx. JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. Notorious. NICOLE GOODWIN: It is literally notorious, because I have seen better conditions in Iraq. HEROLD NOEL: Yes. NICOLE GOODWIN: It is literally the most disgusting place I have ever visited. My daughter was one-and-a-half when we went -- no, -- yes, one-and-a-half. She just turned one and for a child to see that, you are living in a house and you're coming there, they do know. They do register something is wrong. Children are not ignorant to the problems. They cannot grasp it as a whole as adults do, but yet my daughter did see that there was a problem, that something was wrong. Mommy couldn't -- we're not staying with the same people and seeing the same faces anymore. And I think that the biggest problem with the system is that I'm sure his case was ignored. I have my DD-214. I could not vouch for two years in the city was I was abroad for two years. You know, they say that they're going to give a background check on your status, and it was absolutely false. They didn't check anything in my background. The first official that once you put my social security card number into any system, anywhere in the United States, it shows that I am a veteran. It shows that I'm in the military. And it shows where I have been for the last two years. It has to. Because that goes on your permanent record. It goes with your social security. The biggest problem was that they -- you know, the system, as I like to call it, because it a system, is a machine. And there's just -- you know, it ignored the problem. And the problem is that the Veterans Affairs is roped right into that. It just all -- all the gears pointed one way and point a way out and my situation, I stayed for three weeks. Cause I literally went everywhere I could. I went to housing, and I applied and my application was lost. When you're homeless, it's three to six months wait. That's the maximum between three and six months. Yet my application was lost. That system ignored me. So, I went to a private sector. I went to Coalition for the Homeless. Finally, somebody pointed in that direction just to advocate my problem. And they helped me. JUAN GONZALEZ: You were also lucky that at some point, The New York Times did a big profile on you. NICOLE GOODWIN: That's exactly how my profile was done, because I went to the Coalition for the Homeless. I was at my rope's end, excuse me, with that situation, and I wanted the American public to know that we are not degenerates coming back to a handout. Most of the people see that the Vietnam veterans are begging because that's their last resort because the VA has turned them down, because I don't know if DHS was there. But systems like that they have totally ignored the problem, and drugs become a resort. Alcohol and you just become a degenerate and you fight for someone's freedom and you are literally ignored. AMY GOODMAN: So, once you had that piece done in The New York Times, what happened? How did things turn around. NICOLE GOODWIN: A lot of people responded. And I was very grateful to see that somebody, even a stranger cared. Like I was telling Herold, it takes a lot to come out and tell your story. Because we're doing -- we're breaking the taboo, so to speak. But also I got a of backlash, because there was rumors going around that the VA was putting lockdown, not having other solders do what I did, to come out and speak out against, you know, the ignorance in the system, and that's the big problem, because silence and ignorance is worse than any weapon of mass destruction I have ever seen. It kills people. People die slowly. You know, some people -- I read the newspapers, and I see a lot of people saying, oh, pray for the dead. You know, because they're passed on. I say, no, pray for the living, because we can't read the suffering of the dead on our shoulders. We are the ones who were there, who seen the body parts and the suffering of these children, and me being a mother, and you have to make compromises. There are children carrying weapons who are taught to kill you. And you are literally -- you're at a standstill, do you kill a child to go back home to your children? Or do you leave your children parentless? And a lot of soldiers have been getting a lot of serious backlashing because of that, but what would you do if a 12-year-old had an AK-47 in your face. HEROLD NOEL: Exactly. NICOLE GOODWIN: I have seen it. HEROLD NOEL: Exactly. NICOLE GOODWIN: I have seen it. It's a dangerous situation. It's only getting worse. Home and abroad. AMY GOODMAN: So, Herold, you came home, and here you were with your wife and your children. You had a lot of rage and horror inside at what you had experienced in Iraq. How did your relationship with your wife and your kids change? HEROLD NOEL: It changed dramatically, you understand, and it traumatizing for my wife and my children, because me -- my children see me and my wife arguing a lot. AMY GOODMAN: Did you argue a lot before you went to Iraq? HEROLD NOEL: No. We didn't argue. You know, I was a good person to talk to. I was a giving person. You understand? My wife loved to be around me, you understand? I never had this anger problem. I never went out of hand, you understand. I was just a calm person. Anger would be the last thing that I will do. I will talk you to, and I -- everything was easy, but right now, my wife, we argue a lot. You understand? Because of the situation that I am going through because my wife don't think it's fair that, what I'm going through. She says, well, you almost gave your life and this is how they're treating you. And she sometimes thinks I'm doing something wrong, but I tell her, I'm not. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. To get help, but they -- they just turning me back to the shelter. When I took my wife to the shelter, you understand, she looked at me and was like, you expect me to stay here with my children. You understand. I'm not going to do this. This is where they guided me to. AMY GOODMAN: Is the VA helping you psychologically. Have they talked about the issue of post-traumatic stress? HEROLD NOEL: Yes, I am seeing a Dr. Lieberman. He has been helping me out. He's trying everything that he can through the VA but they said he needs -- he needs the help, you understand? It's like the VA needs help to help us. AMY GOODMAN: Help us? HEROLD NOEL: You understand? They say they're not getting that. They got limited funds or limited ways they can go, you understand? They don't have a lot to work with, so it's just like we're left on the street. AMY GOODMAN: Herold Noel and Nicole Goodwin. Herold Noel, former army specialist, recently returned from Iraq, now without a home. Nicole Goodwin, formerly homeless, now has a home. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence Attention focuses on cargo containers BY PETER DUJARDIN Hampton Roads, VA Daily Press 247-4749 December 27 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-29536sy0dec27,0,2854349.story?coll=dp-headlines-topnews Second of three parts NORFOLK -- It was in December of 2002 that Norfolk International Terminals, the region's largest cargo handling station, installed its first radiation detection machines. Ever since, all trucks carrying shipping containers out of the docks must drive slowly through the 15-foot high portals before they head for local roads. The machines sound an alarm if they detect radioactive material. With fears after Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists could try to sneak nuclear or radioactive weapons into the country on the truck-sized boxes, the machines at NIT are seen as an important part of local port security. Other state-owned cargo stations, in Newport News and Portsmouth, added the portals months later. That was followed by similar machines to test departing trains, too. But two years after Norfolk got its first radiation detectors, Hampton Roads is still the only seaport in the country testing nearly all imported containers for radioactivity. While most ports inspect about 6 percent of such boxes for radiation, in Hampton Roads the figure is 93 percent. Only barge traffic - containers that arrive from abroad via ship and go to other U.S. ports by barge - doesn't automatically go through the detectors. Many shipping experts believe that the widespread use of shipping containers, which now carry about 90 percent of all non-bulk cargo, has helped create the world trade boom of recent decades. Because of their uniform size - typically 40 feet long, 8 feet high and 8 feet wide - few workers are needed to move them quickly between ships, trucks and trains. More than 8.2 million imported containers poured into the country in 2003, including about 460,000 in Hampton Roads. But their widespread use also has a stubborn downside: For $3,000 or less, someone in a factory or warehouse almost anywhere in the world can load a container and ship it off to the United States. John Frittelli, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, a research arm of Congress, pointed out in a December 2003 report that the boxes are often loaded in remote locations. "Unlike other cargo ships, whose loading process occurs at the port and whose cargo is often owned by a single company, container ships carry cargo from hundreds of companies," Frittelli wrote. "The containers are loaded away from the port at individual company warehouses." THAT AFFORDS TERRORISTS UNIMPEDED ACCESS TO PLACE A BOMB OR WEAPON INSIDE. ALONG THE WAY, EXPORTERS, IMPORTERS, FREIGHT FORWARDERS, CUSTOMS BROKERS, CUSTOMS INSPECTORS, TRUCKERS, PORT OPERATORS AND OCEAN CARRIERS HAVE ACCESS TO THE BOX. NOT PERFECT Radiation detection machines aren't a perfect solution, either. For starters, the machines are designed to detect radioactive material only, and are ineffective with materials like C-4, the plastic explosive used in the attack on the USS Cole. They are useless with such things as guns, gunpowder and stinger missiles. Other machines - particularly density readers like gamma ray machines - are counted on to catch that kind of material. The radiation portals also screen containers after they've been offloaded from a vessel. A prior approach to radiation detection - with the systems built into the cranes themselves as they offloaded the ships - was technologically faulty, experts say. In some cases, experts caution, lead wrapped around the radioactive material can block the detector's effectiveness, rendering the machine unable to notice hardly any radiation at all. And false alarms do happen. Still, given the potentially catastrophic results if terrorists imported nuclear or radioactive materials into the country, security experts believe the radiation detection machines are an important piece of the national security mix. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, agrees. GOAL: 100 PERCENT Its stated goal is to screen "100 percent of all incoming goods, people and conveyances for radiation." Bill Anthony, a spokesman with the bureau, wouldn't say how many of the machines - out of about 400 that the agency bought a year ago - are up so far, but said they're going up as fast as possible. The goal is to have them all in place by early 2006. But Bob Merhige, the now-retired deputy executive director at the Virginia Port Authority who pushed for the machines to be set up in Hampton Roads in late 2002 and early 2003, often contended that federal officials were dragging their feet on getting the machines installed nationally. He said he continuously asked customs officials to test the machines by trying to send something radioactive through. But the agency didn't do so, he said. In early 2004, a different customs service spokesman declined to confirm Merhige's statement that Hampton Roads was the first seaport in the country to have the radiation detection portals. The official said he didn't know if Hampton Roads was the first, then said whether or not it was the first was irrelevant. That didn't sit well with Merhige. "We are the first, and for them to say they don't know that - and that it doesn't matter - speaks volumes," he said at the time. "It's proven technology. It works. Why is it taking them so long?" Anthony said Customs and Border Protection was concentrating on having the machines set up to test the riskiest containers at each seaport first. Only then, he said, would they follow Hampton Roads' lead and inspect the majority of containers leaving a terminal. "It is impossible to will them into existence," Anthony said. "They have to be manufactured. You have to work with the port authorities to figure out how and where to put them up. You can't just wave a wand." He acknowledged Hampton Roads is still the only port to test all outbound container truck and train traffic for radiation. TARGETING CONTAINERS Nationwide, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection targets containers for inspection using computer programs. New rules require a shipper to submit detailed information about a shipment 24 hours before it's loaded onto a vessel at a foreign port. In years past, that was often done after a ship arrived on American shores. The computer program crunches that data, which includes such things as country of origin, shipper, shipping line, and the type of cargo, and classifies some containers as high risk. The targeting system earmarks about 492,000 imported containers - or about 6 percent of the 8.2 million loaded boxes that come into the country annually - for closer examination. Though some argue that's still a small amount, it's triple the boxes targeted before Sept. 11, 2001. The risky boxes then go through gamma ray machines - which operate like giant X-ray machines. If inspectors find anything that looks suspicious, they open up the box, too. IMAGE SCAN With the gamma ray machine, if a non-radioactive threat like banned guns, missile or plastic explosive were hidden in a container along with legal items, they would theoretically show up in the image. "If there was something much darker or much lighter than this image, that would tell us, 'Hey, if this is supposed to be textiles, why is this one area showing up denser?" explains Vic Kintanar, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection's supervisor at Norfolk International Terminals, pointing to the image on a computer screen that looks like an x-ray image of a container. One recent day, for example, a Customs and Border Protection inspector thought he might have noticed something out of the ordinary in a legitimate shipment of bullet rounds from Italy. Inspectors popped open the box, and one of them climbed deep into the container. But he soon gave the all clear that everything was OK. Hampton Roads is far ahead in radiation detection usage, with all containers - except those that leave by barge - going through the machines before they leave port. But like in other ports, only a small percentage of imported containers in Hampton Roads go through the gamma ray machines. The exact percentage is not disclosed here, but Mark Laria, the local port director for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said it "meets or exceeds" the 6 percent national level. If that figure holds, it would amount to at least 28,000 boxes in Hampton Roads going through the image scanners annually. Is that enough? Laria says yes. He contends that computer-targeting system allows inspectors to focus their searches. Drastically raising the percentage of containers inspected, he said, could severely slow down trade. "People should move away from worrying about a percentage," Laria said. "It doesn't matter what the percentage is. What matters is that we're screening all containers (with the computer targeting program), and inspecting every single container that falls into our high risk category." Plus, he added, experienced inspectors familiar with local operations often decide to open a container merely on a hunch that something is amiss. And he said the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is working to get radiation machines for all barge traffic in Hampton Roads, too. Other federal efforts to shore up container security are heating up, including stationing inspectors at nearly 30 major foreign ports around the world to inspect the very riskiest containers before they're loaded onto U.S.-bound vessels. The Department of Homeland Security is also working on the process for sealing containers with devices such as an electronic alert if a container is opened or tampered with. But not everyone agrees container security is where it should be. MANIFEST QUESTIONS The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has raised serious questions. Its biggest complaint is that the computer targeting system uses the cargo manifest, an itemized list of a ship's cargo, as one of its main sources of data. But such information, the GAO report contends, is only as trustworthy as the person providing it. If a terrorist masks his true motives - buying an established shipping firm, for example, and intentionally marking his dangerous cargo as a typical shipment the firm sends - he may be able to get around the rules, the GAO says. Carl Bensel, the former general counsel at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and now working as a consultant with the Washington-based DCI Group, agreed: "The material that you're relying on (to target the containers) is coming from the party who's shipping it," he said. "So all you need to overcome the computer program is to be a good, effective liar who knows how to utilize the process effectively." Laria disputed Bensel's assessment. "If I'm a terrorist overseas and I'm going to send in cannons but I lie and say it's fruit juice, because of the history of the information we have in our system, something will jump out to us as a discrepancy," he said. "It is not easy to lie to the point where you overcome all the rules in the rule sets." Not that there haven't been cases where containers have made it through that should have been caught. In 2002, ABC News put 15-pounds of depleted uranium in wooden horse carts and terra cotta vases, found a local shipper and sent it from Istanbul, Turkey, a terrorist hotbed, to New York City without getting stopped. In 2003, ABC placed depleted uranium inside a lead pipe and put it in a suitcase. Then it sent the suitcase on a container from Jakarta, Indonesia, another terrorist hotbed, to Los Angeles. That container went to a firm that had never before received shipments from overseas. Federal officials pointed out that the depleted uranium was no danger to the public, and that in both cases the containers were targeted for the more intense screening process. But neither time did customs inspectors open up the shipment and examine it to determine what it was, something ABC said was necessary to determine if the level of radiation was a threat. MYSTERIOUS MARIJUANA Drugs and other contraband do make it through, too, proving that the targeting system isn't perfect. On Oct. 14, a mysterious pallet that police believe came into the country via a shipping container showed up on a street corner in front of a warehouse on Fawn Street in Norfolk. A man who came to get the pallets from the warehouse fled when asked for documentation. The warehouse manager later opened the package and discovered 400 pounds of marijuana inside. Chris Amos, a spokesman with the Norfolk Police Department, said police didn't know where the pallet came from. "We're still working on that case to try to put a time line on that pallet, where it came from, how it got here, who delivered it," he said. LAST CHANCE For the boxes that get around the computer system and the gamma ray machines, radiation detection portals testing all inbound containers represents a last chance to stop at least the most dangerous weapons before they come into the country and cause catastrophic damage. Bensel says more money is needed to get them installed around the country to test all containers leaving the ports. While the government is spending $8 billion on anti-ballistic missile defense, he said, it's putting less than $100 million in for radiation detection research. Anthony, the Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said the service spent $110 million in the last two years on purchasing 400 new machines, each costing about $275,000. The new machines are continuously getting better, said Joseph Bouchard, the former commanding officer of Naval Station Norfolk who's now working with Zel Technologies to improve the Virginia Port Authority's port security. He said that because of the state's experience with radiation portals, Customs and Border Protection is now considering Virginia for the test phase of an even better radiation portal system than it has now. "The Virginia Port Authority's system is the best in the country right now," Bouchard said. "But even the best equipment has limitations. So the Department of Homeland Security is looking for even better technology." -------- OTHER -------- health 'Ecstasy' Use Studied to Ease Fear in Terminally Ill By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A11 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27716-2004Dec26?language=printer For some, the diagnosis comes out of the blue. For others, it arrives after a long battle. Either way, the news that death is just a few months away poses a daunting challenge for both doctor and patient. Drugs can ease pain and reduce anxiety, but what about the more profound issues that come with impending death? The wish to resolve lingering conflicts with family members. The longing to know, before it's too late, what it means to love, or what it meant to live. There is no medicine to address such dis-ease. Or is there? This month, in a little-noted administrative decision, the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to a Harvard proposal to test the benefits of the illegal street drug known as "ecstasy" in patients diagnosed with severe anxiety related to advanced cancer. The drug, also known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, has been referred to by psychiatrists as an "empathogen," a drug especially good at putting people in touch with their emotions. Some believe it could help patients come to terms with the biggest emotional challenge of all: the end of life. The FDA's approval puts the study on track to become the first test of a psychedelic substance since 1963 at Harvard, where drug guru Timothy Leary lost his teaching privileges after using students in experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens. It also marks a milestone for a small but increasingly effective movement favoring a more open-minded attitude toward the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, virtually all of which have been criminalized and disparaged for decades as medically useless. Already, MDMA is being tested for its ability to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And two U.S. studies are looking at the usefulness of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- in terminally ill cancer patients and in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In the coming year, advocates also hope to submit to the FDA an application to test psilocybin and LSD as treatments for a debilitating syndrome known as cluster headaches. That would be a fitting birthday present for Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered both compounds while working for the Swiss drug company Sandoz and who turns 99 in January, said Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The Sarasota-based nonprofit has organized and funded much of the new research. Hofmann, who has expressed support for clinical studies such as the one being planned at Harvard, has referred to LSD as his "problem child" -- a reference to his belief that despite its widespread abuse, the mind-altering drug has the potential to help some people. Although they vary in their chemical structures and specific effects, many psychedelic drugs work on the parts of the brain that regulate serotonin -- the same brain chemical that is the target of many FDA-approved antidepressants. That does not indicate that the drugs are necessarily safe; indeed, they all carry some medical and psychiatric risk. Yet even scientists who have been vocal about those risks have expressed at least guarded support for the idea that, in the company of a therapist and with proper medical monitoring, moderate doses might benefit some people. "When taken under adverse circumstances by ill-prepared individuals, there are substantial psychological risks," said Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. "But when taken in the context of carefully structured and approved research protocols and facilitated by individuals with expertise, adverse effects can be contained to a minimum." Grob is leading an FDA-approved study in which terminally ill cancer patients are being given psilocybin to see whether it can help them sort through emotional and spiritual issues. He said the patients take a "modest" dose of synthetic psilocybin, equivalent to two or three illicit mushrooms. They spend the next six hours or so in a comfortable setting with a psychiatrist -- talking, thinking and sometimes listening to music with headphones. "So far they have had very impressive results in terms of amelioration of anxiety, improvement of mood, improved rapport with close family and friends and, interestingly, significant and lasting reductions in pain," Grob said of the first few patients to enroll. "These are extraordinary compounds that seem to have an uncanny ability to reliably induce spiritual or religious experiences when taken in the right conditions." Promising results have also been reported at the University of Arizona from a 10-person study of psilocybin for obsessive-compulsive disorder, which locks people into repetitive thoughts and actions. And Charleston, S.C., psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer has seen no complications in any of the five patients who have enrolled in his 20-person study of MDMA for victims of violence struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. With the FDA's Dec. 17 approval of the Harvard MDMA protocol -- and permission in hand from ethics review boards at Harvard and the nearby Lahey Clinic, where patients will be recruited -- the only remaining hurdle is getting a special license from the Drug Enforcement Administration. A dozen subjects with less than 12 months to live will get either low or moderate doses of MDMA during two sessions a few weeks apart, along with counseling and a variety of psychological tests before and after treatment. The approach has its doubters. "Even in antiquity, some groups thought it was especially important to take whatever their local psychedelic was -- including alcohol -- when confronting mortality, whether it's to see into the hereafter, improve spiritual growth or just numb yourself to the reality," said Joanne Lynn, president of the Washington-based Americans for Better Care of the Dying and director of RAND Health, a science and policy research center. But drugs can be disorienting, she said. "It's sometimes poetic, sometimes majestic, but often mundane work to wrap up one's life," Lynn said. "I think it's unlikely there's a pill that will make that go away." John Halpern, associate director of substance abuse research in the biological psychiatry lab at Harvard's McLean Hospital, who will lead the MDMA study there, agreed that it is not for everyone. But creating a sense of connection with something greater than oneself "may be helpful" for many facing death, he said. Halpern emphasized the differences between his study and the freewheeling experiments conducted by Leary in the 1960s. "This is not about hippy dippy Halpern trying to turn on the world. I'm not looking at this as a magic bullet," he said. "But for a lot of people, the anxiety about death is so tremendous that there is no way to get their arms around the problems that were ongoing in their family. This could be a substantial contribution to the range of palliative care strategies we're trying to develop for people facing their death." Laura Huxley, widow of the author and metaphysical pioneer Aldous Huxley, said her husband asked for -- and she provided -- a dose of LSD as he lay dying in 1963. "He wanted to be aware," the 93-year-old supporter of the new research said last week. "It's a very important moment." Leary took a wide array of psychedelics in the weeks leading up to his death from cancer in 1996. Some suspect the drugs clouded rather than sharpened his perceptions, but he died with a positive attitude. "It's kind of interesting really," he said of dying, talking to a friend in his final days. "You should try it sometime."