NucNews - December 29, 2004 -------- NUCLEAR The State of Weapons Proliferation 2004 (part 1 - Nuclear) By Amy Katz 29 December 2004 Voice of America http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-12-29-voa33.cfm During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign both President George Bush and his opponent, Senator John Kerry, said nuclear proliferation is the single greatest global threat. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- all possess nuclear weapons. India, Pakistan and Israel have them as well. Iran and North Korea have been making headlines recently with their efforts to produce them. Bomb dropped on Hiroshima , 1945 On August sixth, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima -- immediately killing an estimated 80,000 civilians. Twenty years later there were five declared nuclear weapons states and it was predicted the number could grow to 20 to 30. To prevent another Hiroshima, the United Nations resolved to ban the acquisition and transfer of nuclear weapons, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was born. The pact, which now has nearly 190 signatories, took effect in 1970. In 1995 it was extended indefinitely. But in the decades since its inception, the agreement's effectiveness has been questioned. Victoria Samson, of the Washington, D.C.Center for Defense Information, says not all countries feel the agreement is fair. "A big concern of many of the developing countries is that it keeps basically a 'have--have not' sort of circumstance, official; and it allows nuclear weapons states to go on in perpetuity with nuclear weapons and it prevents them (developing countries) from having nuclear programs." Under the current system, the United Nations holds periodic meetings to assess the status of the non-proliferation treaty. High on the agenda at the next review conference in New York City, in May of 2005, will be be the number of countries pursuing nuclear weapons and the added threat that poses. In the last year, Iran and North Korea have been accused of renewing their nuclear weapons programs. Libya apparently gave up its program. A black market that helped at least Libya was broken up, and al-Qaeda said it was still trying to get the bomb. Ms. Samson says, "Nuclear weapons are highly destabilizing and they are truly the only weapons of mass destruction that exist. They have the capability of wiping out millions of people in one fell swoop, so it's something you do not want everyone to have, especially countries that maybe do not have very strong control of their weapons systems." For some countries the pursuit of nuclear technology is driven by regional rivalries and the desire for self defense. India and Pakistan is one example. Another, the efforts to produce an "Islamic" bomb to counter Israel's weapons. In that climate, pleas for non-proliferation may fall on deaf ears. Michael Krepon Another big concern: nuclear material in the civilian sector. Michael Krepon is the founding president of the Henry L. Stimson Center -- a Washington, D.C. institution devoted to promoting international peace and security. Mr. Krepon says, "There's a lot of nuclear material in the world. The worst of it is related to bomb making, so highly enriched uranium and plutonium. If terrorists can get their hands on that, they could make a mushroom cloud." Mr. Krepon added, " But there's other kinds of nuclear material that exists in hospitals, for cancer patients, for research labs, and this material cannot make a mushroom cloud, but it can have a huge psychological impact if it is exploded in a city center, or in a subway, in a financial center. 'Dirty bomb' is what we call it. So we have to do a lot more, all of us, in every country, to lock down nuclear materials." Another problem is what are called "loose nukes" -- nuclear material used for weapons that is not properly secured. It is of particular concern in Russia and other former Soviet republics. Victoria Samson says progress has been made on that, but more money -- and more work -- are needed. "The Soviet Union had a vast, vast nuclear repository and they've been able to pull in most of the nuclear materials from the former Soviet states. But, even within Russia, you have situations where their facilities are guarded maybe by a lone security watchman with a flashlight. They may have a rusty chain link fence that would protect it. They just don't have the funding to do everything that they should." Michael Krepon agrees. He says, "Highly enriched uranium, which is the most amenable to manipulation and use by terrorist groups, some of it's not well-guarded still, over a decade after the Cold War ended. So, we have work to do here." materials, but that does not mean it will happen. "The problem of securing Russian nuclear material is not simply a matter of American priorities and the force feeding of American spending and programs, it's getting the Russians to open up and cooperate." During the Cold War, the ultimate deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons was mutually assured destruction -- the knowledge that a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union against the U.S. -- or vice versa -- would mean annihilation of both sides. Charles Pena Charles Pena, of the Washington, D.C. "think tank" the CATO Institute, says the U.S. nuclear arsenal is still a strong deterrent to anyone considering using nuclear weapons or selling them. "Our large strategic arsenal of nuclear weapons acts as a very powerful deterrent against these countries, even if they acquire nuclear weapons; first and foremost, from using them directly against the United States, but even maybe to the extent of the concern of passing them on to terrorists." But, if a terrorist group were to acquire nuclear weapons and attack the United States, how would the U.S. know where -- or against whom -- to retaliate? It is one of many vexing questions sure to be debated at the 2005 non-proliferation treaty review -- and for years to come. -------- accidents and safety Anti-nuclear activists dispute reactor safety during quake, tsunami By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer Wednesday, December 29, 20045 North County Times http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/12/30/news/coastal/21_58_4312_29_04.txt SAN ONOFRE ---- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the San Onofre nuclear power plant could survive a tsunami, but local anti-nuclear activists say they are not so sure. "This is one of the natural disasters the plant is designed to be able to withstand," Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the federal commission, said Wednesday. The plant has a safety assessment manual that predicts what would happen if a tsunami struck. However, Dricks declined to provide the section of the assessment because it contains "very specific information" on San Onofre's engineering. "After the 9/11 attacks, we took it out of the public document reading room," Dricks said, because such information could be used by terrorists. However, he agreed to share some information from the plant's safety assessment. "The highest predicted wave from a tsunami would be 6.2 feet," Dricks said, adding that the ensuing wave would not be big enough to top the plant's 30-foot seawall. Patricia Borchmann, an Escondido resident and longtime anti-nuclear activist, said she simply does not believe that the sea wall would adequately shield the plant from a tsunami. "I don't think a 30-foot wall designed in the '70s is anywhere near realistic to protect San Onofre," she said. Dricks said the calculation is based on sound science. He said the prediction calls for an underwater earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale lasting for 80 seconds and occurring along the Newport-Inglewood-Rose Canyon underwater fault line five miles offshore. The prediction is based on studies of the closest known active faults and their potential strength. "At high tide, the highest it would be is 15 feet, and that's not enough to get over the wall," Dricks said. By comparison, the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which generated waves up to 40 feet tall and killed more than 76,000 people, was caused by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Dricks said he would be equally unconcerned by a tsunami as large as the recent one in the Indian Ocean. He said that waves tall enough to top the plant's seawall would not damage the plant's twin reactors. "The containment buildings are air- and water-tight," Dricks said. "We don't consider it a possibility." But some people contend other structures at the plant, such as the concrete "dry cask" containers where highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored, are susceptible to a tsunami. Borchmann said she is concerned that the casks could be breached by a tsunami. "The dry casks were not designed to withstand a tsunami," she said. Both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the plant's owner, Southern California Edison, have long insisted that the casks are safe from natural disasters. Borchmann also questioned the science that determined just how large of an underwater earthquake could occur near San Onofre. She noted that the plant's safety assessment was performed when its two operating reactors were built in the 1970s. "I think more recent data and geologic findings call their findings into question," Borchmann said. Russell Hoffman, a Carlsbad computer programmer and outspoken San Onofre critic, fired off a lengthy e-mail Wednesday to local and national media organizations stating that the plant "could not have withstood Sunday's worst." Like Borchmann, Hoffman said he thinks it is possible for a much larger earthquake, or even a meteor impact, to cause a tsunami large enough to destroy San Onofre, based on his own independent studies of the plant. He too said dry casks and other storage and control buildings could cause problems if they were washed away. He pointed to the recent tsunami in Asia that threw a train off its tracks. "If it can throw a train off its tracks and then move the tracks, it could damage the dry cask buildings or the control room at San Onofre," Hoffman said. A nuclear power plant on the coast of India was struck by the Dec. 26 tsunami. News reports indicate that water seeped into the facility but did not cause any release of radiation or significant damage. There were no published reports of exactly how tall waves were when they struck the plant, which is more than 1,000 miles from the tsunami's point of origin. Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com . ---- San Onofre as Sitting Duck Tsunamis and Nuclear Power Plants By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN December 29, 2004 http://www.counterpunch.org/hoffman12292004.html More than 80,000 people are dead. Bodies wash ashore in a dozen countries. A train, loaded with a thousand passengers and their luggage, is swept away, engine, tracks, and all. Cars, trucks, buses, and boats are pushed more than a mile inland by the rushing water. Some of the waves were reported to be 40 feet high. The ocean in San Diego, 1/2 a world away, rose 10 inches. It IS a small world, after all. The "sea wall" at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station ("SONGS") in Southern California is 35 feet tall, and about 35 years old. It could not have withstood Sunday's worst. San Onofre's twin reactors were theoretically designed to withstand an earthquake up to 7.0, which is 100 times smaller than a 9.0 earthquake. Although a 9.0 earthquake is considered "unlikely" near San Onofre, it is hardly impossible. In addition, the size of the earthquake doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the ensuing tsunami. Landslides triggered by earthquakes, asteroid impacts, and volcanic eruptions can generate waves hundreds of feet tall. Why did we build nuclear power plants near the ocean, anyway, where they are susceptible to underwater and surface attacks by terrorists and other belligerents? Because nuclear power plants need enormous quantities of water for their cooling systems, and water -- especially in the western United States -- is usually difficult to find except along the shoreline. The outflow from a nuclear power plant is always slightly contaminated with radioactive particles, and sometimes severely so; people don't want to drink that. So they put the plants near the oceans whenever possible. Don't worry about tsunamis, they said -- we've built you this puny little wall. Don't worry about asteroid impacts -- they hardly ever happen. Don't worry about tornados or hurricanes. Don't worry about human error. So, society agreed to these poisonous cauldrons of bubbling radioactivity -- these behemoths of death-rays ready to burst -- these sitting ducks on our shorelines. Don't worry, we were told, because the chances are very low. It's always about "chance" to the nuclear promoters, and never about "worst case scenarios." We're all playing the odds. Why? Clean energy, which has zero catastrophic risk, abounds -- we just need to harness it. These tsunami waves would have had little or no effect on floating off-shore ocean wind energy farms (unless they were particularly close to shore), nor would they effect OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) power plants, or any other deep-sea energy solutions, because the tsunami waves are harmless in deep water. Even a 7.2 or a 7.3 earthquake -- perfectly reasonable to expect in the area around San Onofre, and possible anywhere -- would be more powerful than San Onofre is officially designed to withstand. Experience from the Northridge quake (17 January 1994) and others shows that structures sometimes fail to withstand earthquakes of magnitudes far less than their designed tolerances. The domes at San Onofre might not be able to withstand an earthquake or tsunami (or even a large jet crashing into them). The spent fuel pools, control room, emergency diesel generators, and dry storage casks are all outside the domes. Sitting ducks indeed. Maybe "unlikely" is good enough for some locations, who will bury their thousands of dead and rebuild after a natural disaster, but where nukes are located, "unlikely" is not good enough. Whatever damage a tsunami might cause to renewable energy systems would be minor -- even if it wiped them out and they had to be rebuilt completely -- compared to the devastation that would result from breaching the reactor vessel, emptying the spent fuel pool (or throwing heavy debris into it), or crushing the dry casks. Why are we risking such deadly disasters, when renewable energy is available for the taking? It's time to make the switch to renewable energy solutions. It's time to close San Onofre Nuclear WASTE Generating Station, Diablo Canyon, and all the other nuclear power plants. Ronald D. Hoffman, a computer programmer in Carlsbad, California, has written extensively about nuclear power. His essays have been translated into several different languages and published in more than a dozen countries. He can be reached at: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com ---- Tsunami a Reminder of Risks that Plague Coastal Nuke Plants Ranjit Devraj, Dec 29, 2004 (IPS) http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26845 Tsunamis and other natural disasters are posing a bigger challenge than pesky green activists to India's secretive nuclear power and research facilities on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu state. NEW DELHI - Tsunamis and other natural disasters are posing a bigger challenge than pesky green activists to India's secretive nuclear power and research facilities on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu state, which accounted for 5,000 of the more than 50,000 deaths from this week's quakes and killer waves in Asia. The worst casualties among the tens of thousands who died around the shores of countries around the Bay of Bengal have been in Sri Lanka, which is separated from Tamil Nadu by the narrow Palk Straits and where government sources now say as many as 25,000 people may have perished. Authorities at India's secretive Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have been quick to assert that the atomic facilities at Kalpakkam, 80 kilometres from Chennai, the state capital, were safe. On Tuesday, they allowed a group of journalists to inspect the installations to dispel widespread fears of radiation leakage. On Monday night, the plant's director S K Jain said the plant had been shut down following flooding of the pump house that controls the flow of sea water used to cool the power plant. He added that a perimetre wall around a controversial Fast Breeder Reactor (FRB) being built at the site had collapsed. Although the Kalpakkam facility escaped major damage, the fact that 30 inmates of the plant's residential complex nearby died and that several of them were technical personnel or atomic scientists was proof enough that planners never seriously considered the possibility of a tsunami striking the Tamil Nadu coast. The residential complex has now been evacuated of its 1,500 families. No one is venturing to say when the 440-megawatt atomic power plant will be functional again or when work can resume on the controversial fast breeder reactor. A bigger Russian-aided nuclear power complex that uses sea water for cooling is coming up fast at Koodankulam, 900 km south of Chennai and close to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the Indian peninsula that was severely devastated by the tsunami that in some places reached 10 metres high. Long before the tsunami struck, the secret workings of the Kalpakkam and Koodankulam facilities have been the subject of protests by local citizens and groups opposed to nuclear power -- most notably the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy and South Asians Against Nukes (SAAN), an informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about the nuclearisation of South Asia. The DAE has justified the allegations of the green activists by extending secrecy to serious radiation leaks that have endangered public safety in the recent past. In March 1999 when there was a leak of heavy water at Kalpakkam, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), another wing of Indian nukedom, dismissed the incident by saying that ”the release to the environment is maintained well within the limits specified by the AERB.” Another leak that affected workers at the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant in January 2003 was met with complete silence, but after persistent media reports and pressure from eminent scientists and public persons the DAE acknowledged the accident six months after the event. Some of the installations at Kalpakkam are outside the reach of even the AERB or indeed any authority because they carry a strategic tag. These include the controversial fast breeder reactor (FBR) which involves the handling of large amounts of plutonium which can be used in nuclear warheads. ''The DAE must adopt an enlightened policy of keeping the public informed at all times about safety aspects of its installations,'' said M R Sreenivasan, one of India's leading nuclear scientists and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, commenting on the Kalpakkam leaks and attempts to hide them. The PMANE has mounted protests and seminars - including at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai in January 2004 - against fast breeder reactors which according to its convenor S P Udayakumar is ''being promoted in this country by a dangerous combination of career-minded scientists and facilitated by secrecy laws that shroud the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)”. FBRs have been built and operated in the United States, France and Japan but were phased out for a variety of reasons, but most especially because of accidents, such as the one at Monju in Japan in 1995 and the European reactor Super Phenix in France in 1987. Germany built an experimental FBR reactor at Kalkar in 1991, but never put it into operation because of safety concerns. FBRs use liquid sodium coolant, but the metal reacts explosively when it comes into touch with water, as what happened at Monju. Risky as the FBR project is, the PMANE and other anti-nuclear groups have been concentrating their energies on the bigger coastal project at Koodankulam, which is being built at a cost of five billion U.S. dollars although the area is known to seismically active. ''We have been trying to assert our right to know the impacts of this anti-people project on us and our children's health, safety and the environment but even elected civil and political societies are being kept in the dark by the DAE,'' said Udayakumar. The DAE is intent on producing 4,000 megawatts of power at Koodankulam using four Russian reactors. Two of these have already been supplied under an agreement signed in 1988, while the Soviet Union was still in existence and despite opposition from the U.S. government and from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) - also called the London Group because it first met in London in 1975 as a reaction to India exploding a nuclear device in the previous year. Since 2002, the Russians have developed cold feet over the project, the actual site of which was shifted by the DAE without consulting them. Earlier, possibly under pressure from the NSG, Moscow announced its inability to supply two more reactors that were to make a complement of four reactors at the Koodankulam atomic energy plant. Meanwhile, local bodies and religious groups have been regularly recording protests against the Koodankulam project. The latest of these was on Oct. 30, when Amritajnana Tapaswini, the head of the well-regarded Santhigiri Ashram that maintains an ayurvedic and spiritual centre, nearby insisted on leading a delegation into the high-security site to meet S K Agrawal, the project director, and warn him of possible dangers. ''You may be building this project at great cost in the name of humanity and using high technology, but it is well to remember that there are far higher forces in the world that you do not understand,'' she warned Agrawal. Her remarks are now being seen as a premonition of the Dec. 26 tsunami that Indian scientists had been convinced would never strike the coasts of Tamil Nadu. -------- europe Lithuania starts closing its Chernobyl-type nuclear plant VILNIUS (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229031207.87xrxg0g.html Lithuania shuts down unit one of its Chernobyl-style Ignalina nuclear power plant on new year's eve, as it moves to honour a promise to the European Union to close the facility in the coming years. "Everything is ready for the process. We shall start it at about 2:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) and according to our estimates the unit will stop at about 9.00 p.m. (1900 GMT)," Viktor Shevaldin, the plant's general manager told AFP. Under the agreement which secured the former Soviet republic its membership earlier this year of the EU bloc, Lithuania closes the first unit on Friday and is scheduled to close the remaining unit in 2009. The EU has been worried about safety at the Ignalina plant, as it operates the same kind of reactors as in Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant, which exploded in 1986 in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster. The EU has promised to finance the closure of the plant, estimated at 2-3 billion euros (2.5-3.75 billion dollars) over 30 years and has already allocated more than 200 million euros to prepare decomissioning of the first unit. The Ignalina plant, which supplies about 70 percent of all energy consumed in the Baltic states, operates two Chernobyl-type RBMK reactors with 1300 Megawatt capacity each. The first unit started to operate on December 31, 1983, the second was launched in August 1987. However, the complete decommissioning of the plant is a lengthy, complicated process which will take decades. "Nuclear fuel will remain in the first reactor after it is halted and it will take some five years to reload it. Then it should be stored, so the process will be long," Shevaldin said. Rymantas Juozaitis, the head of state-owned energy company Lietuvos Energija, said the one remaining unit was capable of meeting Lithuania's energy needs on its own. But he said that when energy needs are greatest, in winter, it would have to draw on the energy capacities of other power stations. "But this will be necessary only in winter time when demand for energy in Lithuania reaches up to 1,800-1,900 Megawatts," he said. However, he said the closure was not without risk for energy supplies. "We are losing the capacities we have now and if something happens in Ignalina during the winter, we could experience an energy shortage," he said. "But we are preparing for this and have preliminary agreements to import energy if required," Juozaitis said. Lithuania will also lose profits from exporting energy, he said. Last year Ignalina sold 14.25 billion kilowatthours of energy, almost half of which to neighbouring markets. The plant earned 15.7 million litas (4.5 million euros) net profit last year, and projects 17.2 million litas profit for 2004. The closure of Ignalina, which currently employs some 3,500 people, also has a social cost, with job losses expected over the years. "Next year some 200 people will be notified that their work is to be terminated. The same number is to be fired over the next few years," Shevaldin said. However, Lithuania still holds ambitions to produce nuclear energy, even after Ignalina closes, with the Vilnius government having said in its programme that it aims for "Lithuania to remain a country with nuclear energy". "The government should try to attract private investment, because Lithuania alone will never afford the 1.5-2 billion euros to build a new nuclear reactor," Shevaldin said. Juozaitis of the state owned energy company also believes that building of new nuclear reactor must be considered, to supply all three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. "All three Baltic states are isolated in the EU in terms of the energy market. We are like an island. Nuclear energy would ensure energy stability and security," Juozaitis said. -------- india / pakistan Nuclear all-clear, but doubts linger Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Calcutta Telegraph http://www.telegraphindia.com/1041229/asp/nation/story_4187640.asp# New Delhi, Dec. 28: The government has ruled out the threat of radiation from the Kalpakkam nuclear power plant near Chennai after Sunday’s killer waves ripped through the area. National security adviser J.N. Dixit assured the nation that the nuclear station was “safe” after a review meeting called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this morning. Reports of possible radiation leaks had been circulating ever since it was known that water had entered the power station on Sunday morning. Residents had claimed that 10 scientists died within the Kalpakkam complex, leading to fears of radiation. The Prime Minister himself was worried and called this morning’s meeting. “The basic facilities of the reactor are safe and unaffected in any manner,” Dixit said. “Both units are safe and there is no danger of any radiation.” He added that the plant was now in “safe shutdown mode”. There was general relief that the tsunamis had not triggered a nuclear disaster to add to the country’s woes. Singh, however, was not taking any chances and asked for a daily briefing on the situation in Kalpakkam. He also instructed Anil Kakodkar, the Atomic Energy Commission chairman who inspected the plant yesterday, to stay on to monitor the situation. Members of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board would reach Kalpakkam tomorrow to oversee the restarting of operations, Dixit said. The plant, he added, had to be shut down because of flooding to allow for draining and cleaning. The assurance given by the highest authorities in the government notwithstanding, there are doubts among the residents in Tamil Nadu. S.P. Udaykumar of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, an anti-nuclear group, said Kalpakkam authorities should come clean. Kalpakkam scientists had claimed on Sunday that they switched off the reactors in time, in fact moments after they heard about the massive earthquake off the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. “If that is the case, why did they not alert any other agency. They could have saved some lives if what they claim is true,” Udaykumar said, when contacted by telephone. -------- No radiation threat: PM gets first report on Kalpakkam SHISHIR GUPTA Wednesday, December 29, 2004 http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=61707 NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 28: Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar today reported to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) that there was no radiation leak from any facility at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam even though a team from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) would certify the safety of the nuclear power plant before it recommences operations. Kakodkar, who is at the Kalpakkam complex, 80 km from Chennai, told a concerned government that only the construction site of the 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor had been inundated by the tsunami waters and a body was recovered from its foundation pit. Five members (three officers and two staff) of the Department of Atomic Energy, 25 relatives of the employees and another 29 others had died after a tsunami hit the complex on December 26. Two churches, one hospital, a housing complex and a number of people got swept away with the tidal waves. Around 2,290 employees, including 930 engineers and scientists, work at the Kalpakkam complex. It is understood that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got concerned about Kalpakkam on Monday evening and Nuclear Power Corporation Limited Chairman S K Jain rushed to the capital this morning to give a situation report to the PMO. The meeting was also attended by National Security Advisor J N Dixit, Special Advisor M K Narayanan, Principal Secretary T K A Kutty Nair. The Kalpakkam facility is sensitive as it is not under international full-scope guards but AERB safeguards and contains a reprocessing plant to extract plutonium as well as a tritium extraction plant. The concern was legitimate as on March 26, 1999, there was reportedly a heavy water spillage at the Unit II. Jain flew back to Mumbai in the afternoon and is expected to be in Kalpakkam tomorrow with health and sanitation teams. Kakodkar is also expected to camp at the atomic complex for the next couple of days with the Prime Minister wanting a daily brief on the situation. After the meeting, Dixit told reporters: ‘‘Both units of Madras Atomic Power Station (2X170 MW) are safe and there is no danger of any radiation.’’ Kakodkar’s report confirmed that water in Sea Water Pump House at the MAPS, that uses Pressurised Heavy Water Technology, rose due to the tsunami as a result of which the pumps were flooded. Unit II of the plant that was operational was stopped around 9.10 am on December 26 and was brought to ‘‘safe shut down status.’’ Unit I of the plant was shut down some six months ago for ‘‘long-term rehabilitation activities.’’ The 15 MW Fast Breeder Test Reactor at the complex was not hit by the tsunami as it is far from the coastline. However, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor site, that was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on October 23, was hit by the tsunami. According to the Department of Atomic Energy, construction work at this 500 MW project had just commenced and ‘‘concreting of raft at the bottom of the excavated pit was in progress.’’ It is this pit that got flooded by tidal waters but construction work is expected to restart ‘‘after dewatering and other investigations as necessary.’’ -------- russia RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR POWER AGENCY TO CONCENTRATE ON MODERNIZING EQUIPMENT AND INCREASING SAFETY AT POWER PLANTS IN 2005 2004-12-29 15:36, December 29 (RIA Novosti) http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5265160&startrow=1&date=2004-12-29&do_alert=0 MOSCOW - Russia's state-run concern for electricity generation at nuclear power plants, known as Rosenergoatom, intends to pay greater attention to modernizing equipment and increasing safety at nuclear power plants, RIA Novosti was told at the concern's press center. The tasks for Rosenergoatom's general inspectorate for the next year were formulated at the inspectorate's meeting, which was attended also by experts from the Federal Nuclear Power Agency and the Moscow Center of the World Nuclear Association. According to a decision taken by the general inspectorate, in 2005 special attention will be devoted to the quality of modernizing systems and equipment, to investigating violations in the work of nuclear power plants, to the effectiveness of work with the personnel and to the quality of repairs performed by contracting agencies. "To attain these goals in full measure the general inspectorate, in cooperation with national research institutes and foreign electric companies - EDF (France) and British Energy - and using IAEA recommendations, is formulating improved documents for inspection and monitoring activities," the press service of the inspectorate says in a report. Preliminary results of the operation of nuclear power plants in 2004 were summed up at the meeting. The experts of the Moscow Center of the World Association assessed the level of using Russian nuclear power plants in comparison with foreign ones, and experts of the general inspectorate expressed their view about the safety level at nuclear power plants according to the results of inspection and monitoring. However, the assessments made by the experts are not cited in the press release. The final results of the work of nuclear power plants in 2004 will be summarized late in January or in early February 2005. -------- terrorism Nuclear Capabilities May Elude Terrorists, Experts Say By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32285-2004Dec28?language=printer Of all the clues that Osama bin Laden is after a nuclear weapon, perhaps the most significant came in intelligence reports indicating that he received fresh approval last year from a Saudi cleric for the use of a doomsday bomb against the United States. For bin Laden, the religious ruling was a milestone in a long quest for an atomic weapon. For U.S. officials and others, it was a frightening reminder of what many consider the ultimate mass-casualty threat posed by modern terrorists. Even a small nuclear weapon detonated in a major American population center would be among history's most lethal acts of war, potentially rivaling the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite the obvious gravity of the threat, however, counterterrorism and nuclear experts in and out of government say they consider the danger more distant than immediate. They point to enormous technical and logistical obstacles confronting would-be nuclear terrorists, and to the fact that neither al Qaeda nor any other group has come close to demonstrating the means to overcome them. So difficult are the challenges that senior officials on President Bush's national security team believe al Qaeda has shifted its attention to other efforts, at least for now. "I would say that from the perspective of terrorism, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence we have is that their efforts are focused on biological and chemical" weapons, said John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. "Not to say there aren't any dealings with radiological materials, but the technology for bio and chem is comparatively so much easier that that's where their efforts are concentrating." Still, the sheer magnitude of the danger posed by a nuclear weapon in terrorist hands -- and classified intelligence assessments that deem such a scenario plausible -- has spurred intelligence and military operations to combat a threat once dismissed as all but nonexistent. The effort includes billions of dollars spent on attempts to secure borders, retrain weapons scientists in other countries and lock up dangerous materials and stockpiles. "The thing to keep in mind is that while it is extremely difficult, we have highly motivated and intelligent people who would like to do it," said Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council staff member and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Each type of weapon of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical -- presents special challenges for the groups seeking to acquire them, but also opportunities that can be exploited by people determined to unleash their awesome destructive powers. This is the first of three articles aimed at exploring those risks and challenges. Difficult Course Without sophisticated laboratories, expensive technology and years of scientific experience, al Qaeda has two primary options for getting a bomb, experts say, both of which rely on theft -- either of an existing weapon or one of its key ingredients, plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Nuclear scientists tend to believe the most plausible route for terrorists would be to build a crude device using stolen uranium from the former Soviet Union. Counterterrorism officials think bin Laden would prefer to buy a ready-made weapon stolen in Russia or Pakistan, and to obtain inside help in detonating it. Last month, Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA's bin Laden unit, first disclosed in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" that bin Laden's nuclear efforts had been blessed by the Saudi cleric in May 2003, a statement other sources later corroborated. As early as 1998, bin Laden had publicly labeled acquisition of nuclear or chemical weapons a "religious duty," and U.S. officials had reports around that time that al Qaeda leaders were discussing attacks they likened to the one on Hiroshima. A week after his CBS appearance, Scheuer said at breakfast with reporters in Washington that he believed al Qaeda would probably seek to buy a nuclear device from Russian gangsters, rather than build its own. There were as many as a dozen types of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, but Russian officials have said that several kinds have since been destroyed and that the country has secured the remainder of its arsenal. The nature and scope of nuclear caches are among the most tightly held national security secrets in Russia and Pakistan. It is unclear how quickly either country could detect a theft, but experts said it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to work a Russian or Pakistani bomb. Newer Russian weapons, for example, are equipped with heat- and time-sensitive locking systems, known as permissive action links, that experts say would be extremely difficult to defeat without help from insiders. "You'd have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired," said Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "You don't get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off." The strategy would require help from facility guards, employees with knowledge of the security and arming features of the weapons, not to mention access to a launching system. Older Russian nuclear weapons have simpler protection mechanisms and could be easier to obtain on the black market. But nuclear experts said even the simplest device has some security features that would have to be defeated before it could be used. "There is a whole generation of weapons designed for artillery shells, manufactured in the 1950s, that aren't going to have sophisticated locking devices," said Laura Holgate, who ran nonproliferation programs at the Pentagon and the Energy Department from 1995 to 2001. "But it is a tougher task to take a weapon created by a country, even the 1950s version, a tougher job for a group of even highly qualified Chechen terrorists to make it go boom." Transporting a weapon out of Russia would provide another formidable obstacle for terrorists. Most of the ready-made bombs that could be stolen would be those made with plutonium, which emits far higher levels of radiation and is therefore more easily detected by passive sensors at ports than is highly enriched uranium, or HEU. "I wouldn't rule out plutonium altogether, but if one were a terrorist bent upon demonstrating a nuclear explosion, the HEU route is technically much easier," said William C. Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. Building a Bomb Such difficulties have led some nuclear experts to believe bin Laden would be more likely to try to build an improvised nuclear weapon using a combination of uranium and conventional explosives. That design, known as a gun-type device, was used in the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. While the technology is relatively simple and has been described in dozens of published scientific studies and policy journals, the path to development is filled with technological and logistical challenges -- the most significant of which is obtaining at least 50 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium. That amount would yield a slightly smaller device than "Little Boy," the code name for the Hiroshima bomb, but would be enough to obliterate any life or structure within a half-mile radius of the blast zone. "If they got less material than that, it would be really dicey that they could build such a bomb," said Ferguson, at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to a database maintained by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, there have been 10 known incidents of HEU theft in the past 10 years, each involving a few grams or less. Added up, the stolen goods total less than eight kilograms and could not be easily combined because of varying levels of enrichment. Most important, the thieves -- none of whom was connected to al Qaeda -- had no buyers lined up, and nearly all were caught while trying to peddle their acquisitions. "Making the connection between buyer and seller has proved to be one of the most substantial hurdles for terrorists," said Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom. Of the few known attempts by al Qaeda to obtain HEU, each allegedly stumbled because there was either no seller or the material on offer was fake. "Each time they tried, they got scammed," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Rand Corporation who has tracked al Qaeda for years. A September report on terrorism by the Congressional Research Service warned that terrorists could "obtain HEU from the more than 130 research reactors worldwide that use HEU as fuel." The report noted that the nations of "greatest concern as potential sources of weapons or fissile material are widely thought to be Russia and Pakistan." The largest stocks outside the United States are in Russia and around the former Soviet Union, some in facilities with notoriously weak security and safety procedures. "Once you have the fissile material, it's a matter of basic chemistry, basic machinery and a truck," said Holgate, now a vice president at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. "You have to have some technical capability, but once you have those skills, it's certainly within the grasp of the kind of sophisticated, planning-capable terror organizations out there." Even so, there are a great many steps between obtaining the material and setting off an explosion. That may account for why such an attack has not materialized, despite intelligence warnings. The uranium would have to be smuggled out of the facility and then transferred, possibly across several borders, seaports and airports, to a location where the device could be assembled. As described in unclassified literature, the gun-type bomb works when one mass of uranium is shot into another inside a tube. Such a device would be small enough to hide in a corner of a shipping container, but that would mean getting it to a port, onto a container and probably bribing a shipper or cargo crew to transport it. An oil shipment would be optimal for a ready-made device, according to the congressional report, because the "size of the supertanker and thickness of the steel, especially with the use of double hulls," renders some detection equipment unusable. But HEU emits low levels of radioactivity anyway, and that could be masked with lead shielding. A primitive device could be assembled in a small garage using machine tools readily available at an auto shop and concealed in a lead-plated delivery truck about the size of a delivery van, experts said. It is also unclear how a terrorist group would know if its weapons development effort was on the right track. Nations with nuclear bombs conduct tests, including explosions that can be detected by scientists and governments. Bunn, who has published two studies on nuclear terrorism, said terrorists would not necessarily need to conduct such tests, but doing without them would increase chances that human error would foil plans or delay progress. The most elaborate known effort by a terrorist group to develop a nuclear program was undertaken by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which instead of stealing enriched uranium planned to mine and enrich the material itself. Members of Aum Shinrikyo, intent on world destruction when it began its 1993 quest for a nuclear weapon, had all the means to pull it off, on paper at least: money, expertise, a remote haven in which to work, and most important, a private uranium mine. But the group made dozens of mistakes in judgment, planning and execution. It shifted course, launching its chemical attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. "There are valuable lessons in Aum's experience, and there are false lessons," said Benjamin, co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror." "The valuable lesson is that WMD terrorism is hard to do," he said. "But given that they didn't try what would be the most efficient way to put together a nuclear bomb, we shouldn't overrate their example as a reason why it's not going to happen." Al Qaeda has been on the run since the United States deprived it of a haven in Afghanistan, making it more difficult for the group to operate on such an ambitious scale. "At this moment, they are less capable of carrying out an operation like this because it would require so many different experts and operatives," Benjamin said. "But even a depleted group could do it if they got the right breaks." ---- Attack With Dirty Bomb More Likely, Officials Say By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32310-2004Dec28?language=printer Often called a weapon of mass disruption, not destruction, a dirty bomb -- which uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material -- causes far fewer casualties than a nuclear explosion. But because such devices are easier to assemble and the ingredients are readily available, government officials and terrorism experts consider a dirty-bomb attack more likely than a terrorist nuclear strike. "You would need a stick of dynamite and the kind of radioactive source you find in a common smoke detector," said Charles D. Ferguson, co-author of "The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism." There have been several alleged attempts to carry out a dirty-bomb attack. In June 2002, U.S. authorities arrested Jose Padilla, a former gang member from Brooklyn, on charges of plotting a dirty-bomb strike in the United States on behalf of al Qaeda. Last December, the Department of Energy dispatched scores of nuclear scientists with sophisticated detection equipment to scour several major cities for radiological bombs. In September, British police arrested four men suspected of plotting to set off a dirty bomb in London. "Any person who could build a car bomb or suicide bomb, like the ones we've seen in Iraq or other places, could couple that to radioactive materials and that is it," Ferguson said. Such an attack can be carried out by detonating a small conventional bomb that spews the radioactive material and radiation across a small area. John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, said in an interview that the availability of radiological sources presents a significant risk, and that both the United States and the rest of the world "have not paid enough attention to this question. Everybody needs to do more work on that." Americium, which is found in smoke detectors, is one of eight types of radioactive sources suitable for bombs. Four sources cause external injuries to skin and eyes, and three others, plus americium, can cause extensive internal damage, as well. Terrorists would need less than a gram of any one of the sources to build a dirty bomb, but the trace amounts found in everyday products are so minuscule that plotters would need more than 1 million smoke detectors to get enough americium for a weapon. Even if a terrorist was able to assemble, plant and detonate a dirty bomb, officials and experts agree the damage would be more psychological than lethal. "The real effects would be economic shutdown due to contamination, as well as the social and psychological fear created," Ferguson said. -------- Al-Qaida's nuclear ambitions said unattainable UPI Dec 29, 2004, 23:24 http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/article_002030.shtml Washington, DC: Although Osama bin Laden has received the blessing of a Saudi cleric to acquire nuclear weapons, it will be difficult for al-Qaida to put together a useable device, says an article published in The Washington Post Wednesday. The article - first of a three-part series, quotes former CIA agent and now author Michael Scheuer as saying that in May 2003 an unidentified Saudi cleric authorized bin Laden to use a nuclear bomb against the United States. "For bin Laden, the religious ruling was a milestone in a long quest for an atomic weapon. For U.S. officials and others, it was a frightening reminder of what many consider the ultimate mass-casualty threat posed by modern terrorists," says the article. Even a small nuclear weapon, according to the article, detonated in a major American city could have devastating consequences, "potentially rivaling the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." But senior U.S. officials The Post interviewed for the article said they considered the danger "more distant than immediate." U.S. officials and nuclear experts told the newspaper that neither al-Qaida nor any other terrorist group appears to have the capability to overcome the "enormous technical and logistical obstacles" involved in making a nuclear bomb. "I would say that from the perspective of terrorism, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence we have is that their efforts are focused on biological and chemical" weapons, John R. Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, told The Post. But other experts, such as Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council staff member and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, warned that groups like al-Qaida do have "highly motivated and intelligent" people willing to overcome the difficulties involved. Experts interviewed by The Post named two countries from where terrorists may want to acquire a nuclear weapon or materials for making one: Russia and Pakistan. "Al-Qaida would probably seek to buy a nuclear device from Russian gangsters, rather than build its own," said the article although it also acknowledged that "the nature and scope of nuclear caches are among the most tightly held national security secrets in Russia and Pakistan." Besides, the article points out, it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to work a Russian or Pakistani bomb. Newer Russian weapons, according to the article, are equipped with heat- and time-sensitive locking systems that are extremely difficult to break without help from insiders. "You don't get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off," says Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Older Russian nuclear weapons, however, have simpler protection mechanism and could be easier to obtain on the black market, experts say. "But even the simplest device has some security features that would have to be defeated before it could be used," the article says. The Post also points out that most of the ready-made bombs that could be stolen are made with plutonium, which emits a very high level of radiation. That's why experts told the newspaper that terrorists would prefer to obtain highly enriched uranium rather than a ready-made bomb and then use it for making a gun-type device used in the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima. But not all the experts who spoke to The Post were convinced that terrorists could actually make a bomb even if they were to somehow acquire uranium. They say that terrorists would need at least 50 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium even for making a bomb smaller than the one dropped over Hiroshima. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, in the past 10 years, there have been 10 known incidents of HEU theft, and the stolen goods total less than eight kilograms. Even this material could not be easily combined because of varying levels of enrichment, says the report. Besides, the thieves failed to find a buyer and were all arrested while trying to sell their goods. None of them was connected to al-Qaida. Although such enormous difficulties make it unlikely for al-Qaida to make a nuclear bomb, the Congressional Research Service recently warned that terrorists could obtain HEU from the more than 130 research reactors worldwide. "Greatest concern as potential sources of weapons or fissile material are widely thought to be Russia and Pakistan," the congressional report said. The Post says that the terror group that came close to making a nuclear bomb was the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, which launched a clandestine plan in 1993 to mine and enrich uranium for making a nuclear bomb. The group, according to the article, had all the means to achieve its target: "money, expertise, a remote haven in which to work and, most important, a private uranium mine." Yet it failed. The Post concludes that al-Qaida has been on the run since December 2001, when the United States defeated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and is not in a position to undertake such an ambitious plan. "But even a depleted group could do it if they got the right breaks," warns Benjamin. -------- treaties U.S. seeks to defang NPT Friday, December 31, 2004 at 17:43 JST Japan Today http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=323656 WASHINGTON — The United States plans to suggest that a 2005 international conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should invalidate a document adopted at a 2000 meeting in which five nuclear powers committed to an "unequivocal undertaking" to a nuclear-free world, according to U.S. government and congressional sources. A U.S. government official described the final accord adopted during the 2000 NPT review conference as a "simply historical document" and pointed out the need to adopt a new document reflecting drastic changes in international security conditions, including the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Such an attempt could be interpreted by nonnuclear powers as reduced commitment by the United States to nuclear disarmament and could jeopardize the nonproliferation regime under the 1968 treaty by possibly prompting countries such as North Korea and Iran to accelerate their nuclear weapons development, critics say. In the 2000 review conference, 187 signatories to the NPT adopted the document, which includes 13 steps to nuclear disarmament to be implemented by the five powers — the United States, Britain, China, Russia and France — as well as nonnuclear powers. "We think the international situation with regard to nonproliferation has changed so radically that the review conference should not be looking backward at the past final document," said the U.S. official in reference to the conference scheduled for May in New York. The official said the administration of President George W. Bush "no longer supports all of the 13 steps" because some aspects of those steps are outdated. For example, the 2000 accord called for strengthening the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty, which barred the United States and Russia from deploying full-scale national missile defense systems. However, the ABM treaty was terminated in 2002 with the U.S. withdrawal. "There is no such thing as implementing the 13 steps," the official said, adding the administration does not see the final accord as "being a road map or binding guideline or anything like that." "We need to be pursuing a new document that reflects what has happened over the last five years," the official said. A congressional source also pointed out that an article in the NPT which requires nuclear powers to make a serious commitment to disarmament was created against the backdrop of a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The source said that Washington does not intend to make the 13 steps a precondition for negotiations at the 2005 review conference and that those measures will not become a real issue at the meeting. Thomas Graham, former special representative of the U.S. president for arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament, said he believes the U.S. delegation at the review conference "would be under very firm instructions not to agree to" the point of an "unequivocal undertaking" to total elimination of nuclear weapons. "If the U.S. is not going to observe its commitment, then the treaty becomes politically unbalanced," said Graham, who served under all U.S. administrations from President Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton. He expressed concern about possible nuclear proliferation, saying nonnuclear powers could start developing nuclear weapons. They could follow in the footsteps of India and Pakistan, non-parties to the NPT that conducted nuclear tests in 1998, Graham said. (Kyodo News) -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- colorado Newly elected state lawmaker pursues fight against Rocky Flats Dan Viens 12/29/2004 Associated Press http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=205461ee-0abe-421a-0143-dc8cb7cdc296&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=205461ee-0abe-421a-0143-dc8cb7cdc296&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf DENVER (AP) - A newly elected state representative who was foreman of the Rocky Flats grand jury is vowing to continue his fight against the former nuclear weapons plant. Wes McKinley is a Democrat and rancher from southeastern Colorado who won election in the Lamar area last month. Grand jury proceedings are usually kept secret, but McKinley and a lawyer wrote about the panel's findings. They claimed jurors found evidence the government was covering up plutonium-contaminated waste at the site. McKinley plans an announcement next week to discuss the contamination and unveil new legislation. A federal government official who's stepping down from office will join him. A former federal prosecutor and Rocky Flats' former operator have dismissed McKinley's allegations. -------- pennsylvania Nuclear plant could be up soon Activists hope officials delay restarting the Hope Creek reactor, shut since a steam leak in October. Associated Press Wed, Dec. 29, 2004 http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/10517517.htm?1c The owner of the Hope Creek nuclear power plant in Salem County, which has been shut down since an Oct. 10 steam leak, is prepared to restart the reactor after meeting with federal regulators Jan. 5. While Public Service Energy Group has been working for more than two months to fix the problems that caused the leak, activists hope federal officials will keep the plant from restarting immediately because of a second problem. PSEG, based in Newark, N.J., does not need formal permission, but it agreed after the October mishap not to restart the plant until it had met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Next week in Bridgeport, N.J., commission officials are expected to present their findings from an investigation of the leak, which caused no injuries. They are also working on a report on the second problem, a bowed rod in a reactor circulation pump. At certain pump speeds, the bowed rod creates a noise that employees have compared to the sound of a freight train. PSEG officials have said the pump is safe enough that it will not need to be changed until the next regular plant shutdown for refueling and maintenance, scheduled for mid-2006. Kymn Harvin, a PSEG whistle-blower who once worked at Hope Creek, has urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to force PSEG to replace the part before restarting. "We are facing a showdown - profits first or safety first," Harvin wrote in an e-mail yesterday to the Associated Press. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he wrote, must decide which wins. PSEG is merging with Chicago-based Exelon. Officials with that energy company have said they back the decision to wait to replace the pump. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said yesterday that if the report on the pump was completed in time, it would be discussed at next week's meeting. Otherwise, it would be the subject of another public meeting. PSEG is poised to restart the plant after Jan. 5, company spokesman Skip Sindoni said. -------- Four Guatemalans detained after shooting video of nuclear plant The Associated Press December 29, 2004 1:29 AM http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-12292004-423812.html LIMERICK, Pa. - Four Guatemalan men who attracted attention by operating a video camera near a nuclear power plant were not involved in terrorism, authorities said, but three were turned over to immigration officials. FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams said Tuesday that it appears the four men from Guatemala were making a "tourist video," highlighting portions of the area that happened to include footage of the Limerick Generating Station. "It was just a coincidence, a bad choice of photos," Williams said. "We found no evidence of any criminal terroristic activity on the tapes." But authorities determined that three of the men were in the country illegally and turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The fourth man was released. The men, whose names were not released, were spotted making the video Monday afternoon by a delivery driver who called police. -------- tennessee Nuclear scrap hauling may increase to 125 trucks over next three years December 29, 2004 Associated Press http://www.whnt19.com/global/story.asp?s=2740608&ClientType=Printable OAK RIDGE, Tenn. An accelerated cleanup of the K-25 uranium enrichment plant could mean 125 daily truckloads of radioactive scrap going into the government's nuclear landfill at Oak Ridge. The pace could continue over three years. John Owsley is the state's environmental oversight director in Oak Ridge. He says the traffic volume would be about one truck every five minutes. The landfill was opened a couple of years ago to take in a broad range of rubbish from the Energy Department's cleanup operations at Oak Ridge. A special haul road is being constructed so that trucks can go directly from K-25 to the landfill several miles away without clogging public highways. The trash ranges from old cars to motor wiring. Some of it has been at the plant since the 1950's, but most came in the 1960s and '70s when the uranium-enrichment facilities were upgraded. -------- MILITARY -------- afghanistan Afghan defense minister to push ahead with disarming militias KABUL (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229092339.ulzhgzxv.html Afghanistan's new defense minister pledged to speed up the disarmament of the country's private militias and strengthen the national army as he outlined his policies for the next five years Wednesday. "We have lots of work ahead. We will intensify the building of the national army," Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was sworn in to President Hamid Karzai's new cabinet last week, told reporters in Kabul. He said the national force would enable the central government to extend its authority into the provinces where warlords with their own militias still hold sway. Afghanistan is struggling to build an army to replace the thousands of mujahedin loyal to the regional commanders who helped the US oust the hardline Islamic Taliban in 2001. The force, recruited from Afghanistan's different ethnic groups, has so far reached some 20,000 troops, far from its final goal of 70,000. "The ministry of defense will put all of its efforts to intensify the building of the national army. We hope that it will be completed in December 2006," said Wardak, who replaced powerful Northern Alliance general Mohammed Qasim Fahim in the cabinet. Wardak said that he would prefer to continue a "strategic partnership" with the US-led coalition and NATO peacekeeping forces for the long-term fight against terrorism. He added that his ministry and its international partners would continue to fight Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants remaining in the country. "We will root out international terrorism in Afghanistan for ever," he said. -------- africa Nigeria navy buys 15 patrol boats to fight oil smuggling LAGOS (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229102056.luefo4d7.html The Nigerian navy has bought 15 new patrol boats from the United States to fight piracy and the smuggling of stolen crude from the oil-rich west African country, a spokesman said Wednesday. Captain Sinefi Hungiapuko told AFP four of the boats "are already on their way to the country and will be received by the second week of January." He said the remaining 11 boats are expected to be delivered by their American manufacturer before the end of 2005. "The boats will be deployed to the high seas and the Niger Delta to curb piracy and illegal thefts of crude oil and other petroleum products," he said. Hungiapuko said the boats were bought by the Nigerian government. Each is equipped with modern communications and weapons and is capable of speeding at 50 nautical miles per hour. "The boats are specifically made to track down vessels used for illegal bunkering. They can go to the high seas and all routes used for these nefarious activities," he added. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, exporting 2.5 million barrels of crude per day, but the industry is prey to organised gangs of heavily-armed criminals who tap pipelines and siphon off tonnes of crude. Smugglers sell an estimated 100,000 barrels per day to unscrupulous foreign refineries. The multi-million dollar profits from the trade have fed an arms race among the pirate gangs and ethnic militias who ply the waterways of the Niger Delta. -------- asia Aceh: A Victim of Tsunami & Occupation; Will the Indonesian Army Use the Tsunami As A Cover to Continue Its Slaughter of the People of Aceh? Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/29/161219 The disaster is killing thousands in Aceh but the Indonesian military has been doing that for years. Now activists fear the Indonesian military will use the disaster as a cover to further the killing of the Acehnese and that the Pentagon may use the disaster as an excuse to restore aid to the Indonesian military which was blocked after the military's massacre in East Timor in 1999. [includes rush transcript] * Suraiya I. T. , Chairperson of the International Forum for Aceh * Allan Nairn, Journalist and Activist For more information and to make donations for the grassroots relief effort: * East Timor Action Network * Tapol, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Today, we are joined in our studio by Suraiya I.T. She heads up the International Forum on Aceh. She is Acehnese herself. We are also joined by Allan Nairn, activist and journalist, who has just recently come from Indonesia and has spent a good deal of time in Aceh. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Suraiya I.T., let's begin with you, how is your family in Aceh now? SURAIYA I.T.: My family is fine because my mother lives in east of Aceh, because east of Aceh is okay. AMY GOODMAN: What are you hearing about Banda Aceh and the areas hardest hit. SURAIYA I.T.: I just heard from the NGO coalition from Aceh. The situation is getting worse because of the victims are increasing, and the supply of medical aid is very limited, and the supply of what's limited also. AMY GOODMAN: What are the numbers that you're hearing in terms of the numbers of people dead? SURAIYA I.T.: Just in Banda Aceh is sad. The number until now is more than 30,000 people were dead. Not yet from west of Aceh, Meulaboh because of the communication problems, because of transportation problems, so, we cannot exactly [know] how many people. Maybe it's according to the people in the ground, almost 60,000 people were killed in the whole Aceh. AMY GOODMAN: 60,000 alone. SURAIYA I.T.: 60,000. AMY GOODMAN: Which are higher than the figures that we are hearing at this point. SURAIYA I.T.: Yes, yes, yes. AMY GOODMAN: Is medical aid getting to the people? SURAIYA I.T.: According to the people on the ground, because they just called me three -- three in the morning this morning. I asked them, how about the medical aid? According to them, actually, it is -- the aid -- so many aids came from outside the country, but the problem is stuck in the Halim airport now. So the medical assistance, the medical aids cannot enter to Aceh, first because of the military operation in the first, and secondly, totally no medical system in Aceh. And about the scene yesterday, the government officially announced that journalists and foreigners can enter Aceh. However, because of transportation, because of the situation getting worse, they cannot just come into Aceh, because of the transportation, the aid starts in Halim airport and in Medan, so -- AMY GOODMAN: So, can medical people, can relief freely make their way into Aceh? SURAIYA I.T.: Seems yesterday, yes. However, like I told you, because of transportation, because of the system, they cannot enter directly to Aceh right now, because flight is very limited, because of the transportation from Medan to Banda Aceh is very limited also. AMY GOODMAN: Is the Indonesian military there? SURAIYA I.T.: Yes. The problem is, according to my perspective, the coordination is very bad because of government, not good coordination to concentrate about the transportation problem. I think it's very, very bad because of the coordination is very bad in Aceh. AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by Allan Nairn, journalist and activist, just recently returned from Indonesia, has spent a good deal of time in Aceh. Allan, what are you hearing? ALLAN NAIRN: As Suraiya said, the military, until about 24 hours ago was impeding international aid agencies from coming in. There was a team from -- a medical team from Japan that flew in, and turned around in frustration because the military wasn't letting them enter. This is undoubtedly caused thousands of extra deaths. The reason the military won't let them in is that Aceh has been under semi-totalitarian de facto occupation by the Indonesian military. On TV, people may have seen footage of the Grand Mosque of Banda Aceh, one of the few big structures left standing, and in the yard in front of the mosque, it's litters with bloated bodies and dead animals, and debris and the building itself is cracked. It's now a scene of devastation. But just five years ago, the yard in front of that mosque was filled with anywhere from 400,000 to a million Acehnese who were carrying out a peaceful demonstration calling for referendum. A vote -- a free vote in which they could choose whether they wanted to become independent of Indonesia. In proportional terms, Aceh has a population -- before this disaster, had a population of about four million. This means that anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of the entire population of Aceh, turned up on the lawn of the mosque that day, to call for freedom. It's -- proportionally, it's one of the largest political demonstrations in recent world history. If a similar thing happened in the US, you’d be talking anywhere from 30 to 60 million people here to give an idea of the enormity. Faced with that kind of civilian movement, the Indonesian military moved to crush them, assassinating, disappearing leaders, raping female activists. Jafar Siddiq Hamsa, who was a leading international spokesman for the Acehnese -- he was becoming to Aceh what Jose Ramos Horta was to East Timor. Jafar lived in the US for a few years. When he went back to Aceh in 2000, he was abducted, his body turned up wrapped in barbed wire, multiple stab wounds in his chest, his face sliced off. The military wants to crush the civilian movement in Aceh because they know they can’t win a political fight. They prefer the military fight. There is an armed rebel group in Aceh, the GAM, the Aceh Independence movement. The military occasionally sells them weapons. They wants this war to continue. It enables them to make a political point. They say to people and the rest of Indonesia, see, there is danger and chaos. You need us, the army, to protect you. Who else can you turn to? And secondarily, the fighting in Aceh gives the Indonesian military and police a gold mine of corruption. The -- there is a system of police and army extortion of the poor and small businesspeople. Every week, you have to turn over 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 rupia, the equivalent of a couple of dollars. You cannot drive on the road without being shaken down. And people are not free to move within Aceh. It's one of the worst situations of repression in the world, and the Indonesian military wants it to continue that way. AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we'll talk about what this occupation and the tsunamis mean together at this point with Aceh, ground zero of the global calamity that is currently unfolding, now hearing up to 70,000 people killed, estimates that it will be over 100,000 people killed. Our guests, journalist Allan Nairn, and Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum on Aceh. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about ground zero right now, about Aceh, Indonesia, the site of two catastrophes, one the natural calamity, and the other the military occupation that has gone on for years. Our guests, Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum for Aceh as well as journalist and activist, Allan Nairn, who has just come out of Indonesia and has spent a good amount of time in Aceh. Allan, as you talk about the political situation in Aceh, the military now looking like the people who will help those in Aceh, whoever has survived. ALLAN NAIRN: Well, the military just announced they're sending in 15,000 additional troops into Aceh. They undoubtedly will use the new situation where people -- Acehnese will be coming home, many of whom are in exile will try to come home to search for the dead, bury the dead, see what remains of their houses. It's likely that Indonesian military intelligence will be using that to target people. Just two days before the quake, the military announced that they were sending 4-500 additional military intelligence people into Aceh. The Indonesian military intelligence is now funded by the American CIA Under the guise of anti-terrorism, even though by an objective definition of terrorism, killing civilians, more than 95% of the terrorist acts in Indonesia have been carried out by the military. When the quake hit, buildings collapsed, prisons collapsed. The woman's prison, down near the water in Banda, Aceh collapsed. Many of the victims were political prisoners. People who were in there only for the crime of expressing hatred against the government, which is actually prohibited. They were jailed without evidence. The thousands, many thousands of Aceh, even before the quake and tsunami were driven off the land by the military, and many were put into reeducation camps, where they were indoctrinated and sorted by the military. Now people are being dumped into mass graves. This has actually been going on for years in Aceh, except prior, the mass graves came from military bullets. AMY GOODMAN: Now, Aceh, this area, is the largest gas fields run by Exxon Mobile? ALLAN NAIRN: There's a huge natural gas operation centered near the town of Lhoksumawe. It supplies much of the natural gas for Japan and South Korea. There's no good reason why Aceh should be poor. Even though most of the people living along the coast, who lost their homes and their belongings, and their farm animals, were living a very poor life. This massive natural gas operation, the revenues accrue to Exxon Mobil and the central government in Jakarta, and almost none finds its way back to the people of Aceh. AMY GOODMAN: I remember reading several years ago a Business Week expose called, "What Mobil Knew." There was a picture of a man holding a skull. It was about allegations that Mobil had given excavating equipment to the Indonesian military to dig mass graves in Aceh. Suraiya I.T., what do you know about this? I was shocked yesterday hearing a journalist from CNN in Aceh saying, “We are seeing mass graves.” I thought he was talking about those uncovered from the occupation. Of course, he was talking about the newly dug graves where thousands of bodies are being piled in, bull-dozed over, piled in because of the natural catastrophe that has taken place. SURAIYA I.T.: After the suffering from military occupation, now Aceh has been struck by a natural disaster. Today in the United States and yesterday -- yesterday in Aceh, the people bury mass graves in what they call blangbintang -- the government provided big area for thousands and thousands of mass graves there. For the Acehnese people, this is like hell for Acehnese -- after suffering from mass graves from the oppression, now they suffer from a natural disaster. We lost so many people. The brave people are journalists because more than 200 local journalists are gone and missing -- the most brave and dedicated activists are also gone, including Mohammad Ibrahim. He is the director of Walhi -- the executive of the Indonesian for whom – for the environment, and like Allan said, many women prisoners and political prisoners, woman activists are gone in the Lhok Nga Prison. And [inaudible], he is a political prisoner, he is [inaudible] inside the prison in Lhok Nga with the 39 women activists, [inaudible] is associate with the GAM member in Aceh. This situation is for the Acehnese people, particularly in Banda, Aceh, such a very, very sad thing because military operations, natural disaster, and this is -- how to say -- it's difficult to explain the situation. I call -- I called my family. My sister told me, everywhere the bodies are on the streets. It's very difficult to identify who belongs to whom family this body. Many of the Acehnese either in the United States, either in Jakarta -- why think about the news about their family. Such is the Acehnese in Washington DC. There is bad news now in Aceh, because not just his family gone, but his village is gone also with the -- AMY GOODMAN: The whole village. SURAIYA I.T.: The whole village is gone. This is like a deep sorrow for the Acehnese, not just inside Aceh but outside Aceh also. Also, Acehnese in Pennsylvania, the Khalid family for example. He is in deep sorrow also right now because of his sister and five children in Banda, Aceh. So, the situation for the Acehnese now is not just support by what we called aid, but we need support for moral and aid support, particularly for this situation. AMY GOODMAN: Do many Acehnese live in the United States? SURAIYA I.T.: Many Acehnese live in the United States. More than 200 Acehnese live in the United States now. AMY GOODMAN: 200? SURAIYA I.T.: More than 200 Acehnese live in the United States. AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, the issue of what this means for the future for Aceh. People now, who run from the military, who are afraid of the military in Aceh, do they turn to the military for support, for finding family members? ALLAN NAIRN: That's a good question. Lots of people will have to go to the military for food handouts, to get clean water. In some ways, it will be a situation somewhat comparable to Iraq during the sanctions, when Saddam's regime was able to control the welfare food handouts. I mean, there's already a tremendous amount of control, but this can consolidate it even more. On the other hand though, many of the communities are so shattered, the older people, traditional leaders dead, local officials dead, much of the population dead, that to a certain extent, society will have to be rebuilt in many Acehnese towns and that may offer some opportunities. That may offer some opportunities for people to put things back together in a better way than before, but that can only happen if the military pulls back and is not allowed to continue their extortion and their terror. We should put this in perspective. Now the world is looking at Aceh for the first time ever and will probably never again look at Aceh with this intensity, but as dramatic, as awesome as this act of nature is, let's say it kills 50,000, 60,000 in Aceh, that’s still far less than the death toll over just a couple of years due to hunger and poor nutrition, diarrhea, deaths mainly among children who live in poverty in Aceh. It's also dwarfed by the military massacres carried out by the Indonesian military in various places. They killed 200,000 in Timor. They killed anywhere from 400,000 to a million in Indonesia itself when they consolidated power in 1965 to 1967. So, the concern that the world has now for this disaster is appropriate, but we should have that concern all the time. When people are dying, not just from natural tsunamis, but from military or police bullets, often paid for by the United States, or dying from preventable hunger. 50 million, that's what the U.S. is giving. You compare it to Bush's inauguration, there are also thousands of American individuals who could sit down right now and write a check for $50 million. They could save tens of thousands of lives, but there's no social pressure on them to do that, because we live in a world where it's assumed that it's okay to let people starve while the dollar that can save them sits idly in your pocket. AMY GOODMAN: In terms of aid right now, where can people help? How can people help the people of Aceh? ALLAN NAIRN: There are grassroots groups on the ground in Aceh, and we didn't know until last night that the activists were still alive to carry on, but now we have learned they are, groups like the People's Crisis Center, which for years have been working with refugees driven off the land, people sent into reeducation camps, trying to give some education to the children, trying to feed. They are now accepting relief, donations. So, people can channel them through either ETAN, the East Timor Action Network in the U.S. The website is www.etan.org; or TAPOL, a human rights organization based in Britain. TAPOL - they're at www.tapol.gn.apc.org. This money will find its way to grassroots Acehnese activists who are also working for human rights, and will try to save people and build something better in the long run for Aceh. AMY GOODMAN: Final comment, Suraiya I.T., as we wrap up this discussion to leave with the people who are listening to and watching this broadcast about your people, the people of Aceh. SURAIYA I.T.: I think that to help the Acehnese people right now, we need support from international community, particularly to encourage Indonesian governments, to open more space for international aid and international journalists. Even right now, the government is opened in the international aid and international organizations, however, there are still regulations and rules, and besides that, we need financial aid from international communities, particularly from the United Nations, from the international community everywhere. They can give support to the mosques, to the churches. We establish the -- what we call a Fund Relief for Aceh. They can contact us, either to us or through the International Fund for Aceh. AMY GOODMAN: We'll put the contact information on our Web site at democracynow.org. Again, one of those contacts, etan.org. The easiest to remember, etan.org. I want to thank you both for being with us. Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum for Aceh, and journalist and activist, Allan Nairn, who has just come from Indonesia. -------- business Pentagon to Delay Lockheed Payments Fees Tied to Joint Strike Fighter Goals By Ellen McCarthy Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page E05 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32474-2004Dec28?language=printer The Pentagon will delay $283 million in potential payments to Lockheed Martin Corp. on the Joint Strike Fighter to push the company to meet goals on the program. The new schedule established by the Pentagon in early December calls for 20 percent of the award fees, or bonus payments, previously scheduled to be paid to Lockheed between 2004 and 2007, to be paid instead between 2008 and 2013. Award fees are incentives for the contractor to meet or exceed goals and typically account for a majority of a company's profits. The $244 billion Joint Strike Fighter program, the largest in Pentagon history, has faced delays and cost increases as Bethesda-based Lockheed worked to lower the weight of the aircraft and the military changed some of the requirements. "We wanted to put the best possible plane out there," said Cheryl Limrick, assistant public affairs officer for the Joint Strike Fighter program at the Pentagon. "By shifting it, it keeps the incentive going for the contractor . . . for them to keep performing throughout the entire period." The contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin in October 2001 and is potentially worth $19.4 billion. By June 30 of this year, $6.5 billion had been paid to the contractor, according to the Pentagon. The schedule shift, which extends the life of the contract through 2013 rather than 2012, does not change the value of the deal. The payment delay was reported by Bloomberg News on Monday. Of the total contract, $2.7 billion would be paid in award fees. The company received 69.9 percent of its potential fee for the period ended April 20, 2004, but bounced back to earn 84.6 percent for the period ended Oct. 31. From the start of the program through the end of October, Lockheed Martin has collected $493.8 million of a possible $613 million in award fees, according to a Pentagon official. Thomas C. Greer, a Lockheed Martin spokesman, confirmed that the shift had been made, but he declined to comment on the decision. "However, we continue to make good strong progress on the Joint Strike Fighter, as the aircraft is in development stages and is making its key performance parameters, and we expect to make continued progress in 2005," Greer said. -------- china Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin to resign from state military post BEIJING (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229085235.ujab32fo.html Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin has asked to resign from his chairmanship of the state Central Military Commission, Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday. The upcoming parliamentary session of the National People's Congress in March "will discuss and decide on" a request from Jiang to resign and will also elect his successor, the report said. Xinhua also reported Wednesday that Jiang had signed a document to approve the People's Liberation Army's archive regulations -- apparently indicating that the retired leader intends to remain in the political limelight. Jiang retired from his chairmanship of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission in September but retains the chairmanship of the state Central Military Commission, which is seen as a mainly symbolic position. The composition of the state and Communist Party military commissions are very similar in practice and it is expected that President Hu Jintao, who succeeded to Jiang's party post, will also succeed his state position. State media reported Tuesday that 78-year-old Jiang, China's communist party leader for 13 years between 1989 and 2002 and the head of state from 1993 to 2003, had signed a document on the modernisation of the military. Jiang is likely to be showing that he remains influential by announcing the signature of these directives shortly after the publication of a white paper on Chinese national defence policy, analysts said. ---- India invites China for joint anti-terrorism exercises BEIJING (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229064423.d5jclsdp.html Indian Defense Minister N. C. Vij has invited China to participate in joint anti-terrorism exercises in a further sign of growing military links between the two countries, China's state press said Wednesday. "We invite China to join our military exercise in non-traditional security," Vij was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as telling Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan in talks Tuesday. "We should expand the ongoing frequent personnel exchanges to officers at all levels, including junior ones. 'Non-traditional security issues' is a term frequently used by Chinese officials to denote terrorism. The two militaries, which clashed in a brief but bloody border war in 1962, held their first-ever joint search and rescue exercises off the coast of China last year as part of efforts to cement military ties. Vij's ongoing visit, which began on December 22, is the highest level Indian military visit to China since 1994. "China would like to step up its cooperation with India in the defense and security sector and advance bilateral military ties to a higher level," Cao was quoted as saying. Sino-Indian military ties play an important part in overall bilateral relations, said Cao, who also serves as vice head of the powerful Central Military Commission. In recent years, China and India have sought to improve ties and have worked to resolve a longstanding border dispute in the controversial Kashmir region where China also has territorial claims along with India and Pakistan. India's 1998 nuclear tests have been seen as prompting Beijing to improve relations with its huge neighbor despite China's traditionally friendly ties with its other nuclear-armed South Asian neighbor, Pakistan. -------- iraq An army's morale on the downswing William Pfaff International Herald Tribune Wednesday, December 29, 2004 http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/28/news/edpfaff.html PARIS When George W. Bush was first elected president, civil-military relations in the United States were worse than they had ever been before. They are no better today, for more serious reasons. The decline had begun with the Vietnam War. The less perspicacious part of the officer corps chose to blame civilian interference for the loss in that war. What the military would have done in Vietnam without civilian interference remains unclear; they never offered the government a coherent alternative plan to the one provided by Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This was undoubtedly because there wasn't one - the war was unwinnable, short of the Dresden option (an option retested in November at Falluja in Iraq). With the Vietnam defeat, the years of the "hollow army" began, with an angry and alienated military leadership, unsympathetic politicians and an amnesiac public. A non-conscript professional army was built up. The result of professionalization was to create an officer corps politically on the right. This concerned academic observers and civilians sympathetic to the military, as well as thoughtful officers themselves, aware of the importance of defending the American tradition of an apolitical military. The professional military's alienation from its civilian leadership increased with the Clinton administration's arrival - a draft-dodger president, with a feminist first lady and a liberal agenda. As one military historian has written, first there was the disastrous don't-ask, don't-tell clash over homosexuals in the service (where, as anyone who has been in the military knows, there has always been an underground homosexual culture, for self-evident reasons - where else can you meet so many guys?). Then came Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo - and the Tailhook uproar - plus stalemate over national security policy. Colin Powell, as chairman of the joint chiefs, actually presented the civilian government with specific terms on which the military would agree to go to war. (These terms - clear objective, overwhelming force, exit strategy - were completely ignored, bizarrely enough, in going to war in Iraq, with the fearful consequences we now see). The new President Bush, in 2001, was another draft-dodger, in fact if not form, but he walked and talked in a way the military liked. However, his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was not such a likable fellow, and he set out to reform the Pentagon and re-establish civilian authority. He has in considerable measure imposed himself on the uniformed military, but in a way they now hate. Following his ideas about a small, light and "agile" force, he has made one bad tactical and organizational choice after another, with particularly devastating consequences for the army, its reserve forces, the national guard, and the marines. Their manpower resources are being exploited and wasted in a manner that could leave the services damaged and their officers alienated for a generation. This has been the result of the Bush government's total misjudgment of the Iraq situation; its refusal to enlarge the regular army; its reliance on mobilized reserve forces on extended service in what amounts to the draft of specialist veterans from civilian life; and, since the Iraq occupation turned very unpleasant, "stop-loss" refusal to let people go at the end of their contracts. Recruiting for the reserves and the guard is now badly off, as are regular army re-enlistments and quality recruits. A 20-year-old man, a regular in the army, on his way back for a second tour in Iraq, says, "What everybody is starting to know now is that this is what's going on for the foreseeable future." This probably is true, since nobody in the Bush administration seems capable of changing course, and it is increasingly evident that American policy for the so-called greater Middle East will fail. If the failure is a traumatic one, the result is likely to resemble the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Vietnam destroyed the American citizen army: product of a 200-year tradition that rejected standing armies and held temporary and egalitarian military service to be a duty and experience of citizenship. In Vietnam, the conscript army eventually staged a mute mutiny against the folly of its government. However, you must not abuse even a professional army. It too can rebel, and as in the citizen army, disaffection starts at the bottom, where the most pain is felt. Iraq is now destroying the professional army the United States recruited to take the place of its citizen army. The new army was intended to serve as the unquestioning instrument of the policies of the elected administration. This administration's refusal to supply the manpower and means necessary for its vast military and political ambitions is now having its effect on that army. Its politically inspired fear of conscription, the merciless combat rotation policy and systematic use of involuntary extensions of duty its policies impose, are devastating to troops. The incoherence of its policy in the Middle East, and lack of clearly defined objectives, is deeply disquieting to the military leadership. America's military leaders once again find themselves victims of the policies of appointed ideologues and elected amateurs. As in Vietnam, they have no alternative to propose, except Dresden. -------- israel / palestine Sharon orders army chiefs to show zero tolerance to Gaza pullout refuseniks JERUSALEM (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041229101742.10hm78ag.html Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his top brass Wednesday to show zero tolerance towards any soldiers who refuse orders to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, official sources said. In a meeting with the army's most senior officers, Sharon emphasised that the army "must make no concessions and demonstrate a firm resolve" in the face of growing calls by opponents of the pullout for soldiers to disobey any commands to implement what they regard as "a forcible transfer of Jews." "The army is there to carry out the orders it is given," added Sharon at the meeting which was also attended by Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon. Sharon however also urged the military to show "sensitivity" during the 12-week evacuation of the 8,000 Gaza settlers which is due to be wrapped up by next September. Four other small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank are also due to be dismantled under the premier's so-called disengagement plan. "We must show sensitivity and understand the pain of the settlers who are good citizens of Israel," he added. The ultra-nationalist Rempart movement launched a campaign recently to persuade 10,000 soldiers to sign up to a petition pledging to refuse any orders to implement the pullout. Rabbis representing the settler movement also issued a religious decree in June forbidding the army and police from carrying out the evacuation. -------- prisoners of war Most Guantanamo captives remain far from release 12/29/2004 8:24 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-12-29-gitmo_x.htm WASHINGTON — Recent legal cases have penetrated the secrecy of the Bush administration's treatment of terrorism detainees, revealing that foreigners who aided al-Qaeda can be held indefinitely even if that help was unintentional or evidence of it was produced by torture. But new legal opportunities for the 550 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to seek freedom probably won't produce many releases soon. Only two detainees have been released by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals the Pentagon set up in response to one of two June decisions on detainees by the Supreme Court. One of the rulings opened the door for foreigners detained as enemy combatants to challenge their imprisonment at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. With more than 525 hearings completed, the military panels have repeatedly ordered continued detention. "So far, it's a disaster" for detainees seeking release, said Eugene Fidell, a Washington attorney who specializes in military law. "The due process has been illusory." Defense lawyers contend the Pentagon has interpreted the ruling too narrowly. Current and former administration officials maintain that the policies in place comply with high court decisions while protecting Americans from terrorists. Georgetown law professor Viet Dinh, former policy chief of the Bush Justice Department, predicted the courts will uphold the current Pentagon procedures. In the lawsuits, detainees want federal judges to order the Pentagon to let them have lawyers at the tribunal hearings, see secret evidence against them, and exclude evidence gained by torture or to have civilian U.S. courts hear their cases. "I'm not surprised that having gotten the double, the detainees would like the home run, but I don't think they'll get it," Dinh said. Nonetheless, the high court ruling and subsequent proceedings have produced some results in the second half of 2004: • The Pentagon established the new military reviews of detainees. • More than six dozen current or former detainees have filed 21 lawsuits seeking either release, millions of dollars in damages for mistreatment, or expanded procedural rights in military trials. All are in preliminary stages, and more lawsuits are expected. • Military review hearings and lawsuits have disclosed new details about how the government is dealing with detainees at Guantanamo, the government's evidence against them and the first reports of what detainees have said in their defense. • _Appeals over procedural rights have halted military trials that were getting under way for the only four detainees who have been charged with crimes. Some detainees used the lawsuits and hearings to claim they were victims of torture. Others claimed the only evidence against them was gathered by torture. Though denying there has been torture at Guantanamo, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged the military panels would consider evidence gathered by torture in foreign countries even though such statements have been barred from U.S. courts for 70 years because of unreliability. Once described by the government as "the worst of the worst" of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, the detainees turn out also to include drivers, cooks, religion teachers and others. Some claim they were coerced into helping the Taliban or were involved in charity work unconnected to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Some were picked up in Europe and Africa. Government attorneys warn that al-Qaeda gives its trainees innocent cover stories to use if captured. But Boyle acknowledged that the U.S. military's worldwide effort to seize al-Qaeda supporters hypothetically could detain a "little old lady in Switzerland" who donated money to a charity that she didn't know was an al-Qaeda front group. Defending the tribunals' tiny number of releases, Boyle said 200 detainees were released before the Supreme Court ruling, leaving at Guantanamo those the government suspected most. But Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said, "The government seems to have construed the Supreme Court decisions as a license to give away ice in the winter time." Rather than giving the courts a role and structuring "meaningful review," the government "is trying to structure a system that is the same as they had before, reading those June rulings extremely narrowly," he said. In the other Supreme Court ruling in June — involving a U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan and held without charges — Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested it might be enough for the government to give U.S. citizens detained as enemy combatants a chance to contest their jailing before "an appropriately authorized and properly constituted military tribunal." Dinh, the ex-Justice policy chief, said if the military panels are judged to meet O'Connor's test for U.S. citizens, certainly "they would be sufficient to protect the rights of foreigners at Guantanamo." The government has asked two federal judges to throw out the detainee lawsuits without hearing evidence. Decisions are expected soon, but appeals are probable. If the government wins dismissal, the newly disclosed information will be of little use to defense lawyers. "It's a pyrrhic victory to have information that you can't do anything with," Fidell said. -------- russia / chechnya Jailed Russian Oil Tycoon Accuses Kremlin of Stealing His Empire By Vladimir Isachenkov Associated Press Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A16 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32425-2004Dec28?language=printer MOSCOW, Dec. 28 -- Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia's richest man, accused the Kremlin in a letter published Tuesday of stealing his Yukos oil empire by manipulating the law. Khodorkovsky, who has been in jail for more than a year on fraud and tax evasion charges, also assailed efforts by President Vladimir Putin to strengthen the control of the central government. He predicted that the Kremlin's moves to end the popular election of regional governors and limit economic competition and free speech would ruin the nation. The letter was published about a week after Yukos's most important production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, was bought at auction for $9.3 billion by a front company apparently operating on behalf of Rosneft, a state-owned oil firm. Within days of the auction, Rosneft bought the previously unknown firm, effectively nationalizing the prolific Siberian oil fields. Foreign auditors said the unit was worth about twice the purchase price. In an apparent reference to the sale of the Yukos subsidiary, Khodorkovsky said in his letter that this "was the most senseless and destructive event in the economic sphere since President Vladimir Putin has taken helm." His letter was published in Vedomosti, a leading Russian business daily, and also on Khodorkovsky's Web site. Khodorkovsky accused the state of shamelessly trampling on legal norms to wrest Yukos from its owners. He called the government's claim that Yukos owed $28 billion in back taxes a "bad joke," saying the amount exceeded the company's earnings. The Russian government has said it ordered the sale of the Yukos unit to raise the money to pay the tax debt. Putin has portrayed the prosecutions of Yukos and Khodorkovsky as a crackdown on corruption. But there is strong sentiment in Moscow that the government's investigation of Yukos and Khodorkovsky is a Kremlin power play aimed at neutralizing a political opponent and reclaiming control in the crucial oil sector. Yuganskneftegaz produces about 11 percent of Russia's oil, or about 1 percent of world output. Its sale was the most disputed corporate auction in Russia's history, and it left what was once the nation's most transparent company in ruins. Khodorkovsky, who with an estimated fortune of $15 billion had been ranked 16th on Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people, said his personal wealth would "soon come to zero," but he added that losing his money wasn't "unbearably painful." His letter contrasted sharply with others Khodorkovsky published from prison this year before the sale of the Yukos subsidiary. In those, he apologized for his actions and praised Putin. -------- spies C.I.A. Deputy for Analysis Is Being Removed By DOUGLAS JEHL December 29, 2004 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/national/29intel.html?ei=5094&en=5664d6df08a6e136&hp=&ex=1104382800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position= WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The head of the Central Intelligence Agency's analytical branch is being forced to step down, former intelligence officials say, opening a major new chapter in a shakeup under Porter J. Goss, the agency's chief. The official, Jami Miscik, the agency's deputy director for intelligence, told her subordinates on Tuesday afternoon of her plan to step down on Feb. 4. A former intelligence official said that Ms. Miscik was told before Christmas that Mr. Goss wanted to make a change and that "the decision to depart was not hers." Ms. Miscik has headed analysis at the agency since 2002, a period in which prewar assessments of Iraq and its illicit weapons, which drew heavily on C.I.A. analysis, proved to be mistaken. Even before taking charge of the C.I.A., Mr. Goss, who was a congressman, and his closest associates had been openly critical of the directorate of intelligence, saying it suffered from poor leadership and was devoting too much effort to monitoring day-to-day developments rather than broad trends. Ms. Miscik's departure is the latest in a series of high-level ousters that have prompted unease within the C.I.A. since Mr. Goss took over as director of central intelligence in September. Of the officials who worked as top deputies to Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, at least a half-dozen have been fired or have retired abruptly, including the agency's No. 2 and No. 3 officials. Much of the top tier of the agency's clandestine service is also gone. The departure of Ms. Miscik will be the first major change within the directorate of intelligence, which is responsible for making important judgments about events around the world and whose products include the President's Daily Brief, the highly classified document prepared for the president each morning. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the move, and Ms. Miscik did not reply to written questions provided to her on Monday evening. But in her message to subordinates, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Miscik described her departure as part of a "natural evolution," saying every intelligence chief "has a desire to have his own team in place to implement his vision and to offer him counsel." Current and former intelligence officials said the move seemed to signal that Mr. Goss's overhaul, which has focused on human spying operations, would be widened to include the analytical unit. The former intelligence officials who agreed to discuss Ms. Miscik's plans did so on condition of anonymity. They defended her performance, saying that in 2003 she was quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of the agency's work on Iraq and adopted new safeguards intended to prevent future breakdowns. The changes at the C.I.A. come as the agency is bracing for a wider reorganization endorsed by Congress and the White House that will strip it of its leading status among the country's intelligence agencies. Under legislation signed into law this month, the chief of the C.I.A. will no longer oversee all 15 of the country's intelligence organizations, which include operations in the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. Instead, that power will be transferred to the new post of director of national intelligence, for which the White House has yet to choose a nominee. Administration officials say aides to President Bush are trying to narrow their search, with a decision expected in early January. It is not clear whether Mr. Goss, whose early personnel moves have been sharply criticized inside and outside the C.I.A., will be a candidate for the new job. Under the new law, the post of director of central intelligence will no longer exist. Among the questions not yet resolved, according to Congressional officials, is whether Senate confirmation would be required for the C.I.A. director. Ms. Miscik, an economist who rose through the ranks of the intelligence directorate over a 21-year career at the agency, suggested to associates as early as November that she did not expect to stay at the agency under Mr. Goss. But a former intelligence official who worked closely with her said she would have been happy to stay, despite the intensity of the criticism voiced by Mr. Goss and his top aides. Mr. Goss has not spoken publicly since he took over at the C.I.A., and the agency has announced only a few of his personnel moves. In November, he told the agency's employees to expect more changes in the days and weeks ahead. Several top jobs remain vacant, including the agency's No. 2 post, deputy director of central intelligence, from which John E. McLaughlin resigned early this month. There was no indication on Tuesday of whom Mr. Goss might name to succeed Ms. Miscik. One of her top deputies, Scott White, left the C.I.A. in November for another government job, leaving Ben Bonk, an associate deputy director of intelligence, as Ms. Miscik's most senior subordinate. Among those who have criticized the C.I.A.'s analytical unit for its mistakes on Iraq and that country's supposed unconventional weapons, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a scathing report last summer, and a C.I.A. panel, the Iraq W.M.D. Review Group, completed a 10-month internal review last May. That review, never made public but described in an internal document issued in August, concluded that the assertion that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been reasonable based on the information available at the time. But the August document also showed that the review found a pattern of "imprecise language," "insufficient follow-up" and "sourcing problems," including "numerous cases" in which analysts "misrepresented the meaning" of intelligence reports about Iraq's weapons. The August report described the analytical branch as having "never been more junior or more inexperienced" and said that some of the "systemic problems" uncovered might reflect more widespread "tradecraft weaknesses." But in an interview in September Ms. Miscik said she had acknowledged many of the problems in a speech in February 2004 and had put in place new measures requiring that intelligence judgments be subjected to more rigorous review. The sharpest criticisms of the analytical unit that Mr. Goss and his associates are known to have endorsed were spelled out last spring in a report by the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Goss, then a Republican congressman from Florida, was the chairman of the panel; the report's principal authors were Republican staff members who are now working as senior advisers to Mr. Goss at the C.I.A. The report did not mention Ms. Miscik by name, but it criticized the intelligence directorate's leadership and senior managers, among other things, for devoting too much time and attention to providing updates for policy makers, thus "squandering scarce analytic resources that could be put to better use." -------- us Marines will stay close to home for urban training Unit to use downtown Toledo By DALE EMCH TOLEDO BLADE STAFF WRITER Wednesday, December 29, 2004 http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041229/NEWS16/412290352/0/NEWS17 The Marines will take over parts of downtown Toledo as sounds of gunfire will echo off buildings when training exercises are conducted next weekend. A Marine Corps unit based in Perrysburg will stage the exercises from 9 p.m. Jan. 7 to about noon Jan. 9, Maj. Gregory Cramer said. Major Cramer said most of the 130-member unit - Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines - will take part in the exercises. "We're looking for an urban environment to do our training," he said. "Urban training is one of the proficiencies we're required to maintain." Major Cramer said Marines will be dressed in green and will be carrying rifles through the streets, but the exercises should have a minimal impact on the downtown area. He said the Marines will be firing blanks and conducting operations throughout the area. "The only request we would have of folks, if they happen to be near where an exercise is taking place, is to stay away as much as possible," Major Cramer said. The exercise area roughly will be north of Monroe Street, west of the Maumee River, south and west of Cherry Street, south of Woodruff Ave., and east of Collingwood Boulevard. Toledo Police Chief Mike Navarre said military exercises have been conducted before in the downtown area with a minimal impact on city residents. He said city and police officials have been working with the Marines to help the exercises go smoothly. "Training is extremely important, not just in our profession, but in the military too," Chief Navarre said. "We're not going to place any obstacles in their way." Jean Atkin, administrator for the Lucas County Common Pleas Court, said the unit was granted permission to use the courthouse grounds. The unit, though, won't use the interior of the courthouse. "We used to do this when we were kids - you know, running around the woods," Ms. Atkin said. "They're just going to use the downtown." ---- US steers aircraft carrier and planes to quake region WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 29, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041228231318.4e7qjqfw.html The US military said Tuesday it had diverted an aircraft carrier, other ships, at least 20 aircraft and thousands of sailors and marines to Asian countries struck by devastating tsunami waves. The men and materiel were dispatched by US Pacific Command, with many of the aircraft heading for Thailand and Sri Lanka, two of the worst hit countries. Logistical problems hampered a massive humanitarian relief operation Tuesday along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a huge earthquake and deadly tidal waves surged past 55,000. "We have diverted the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier and its five ships. They left Hong Kong yesterday and they are en route to the Golf of Thailand," said Major Guillermo Canedo, a Pacific Command spokesman in Hawaii. "We are dispatching assessment teams to several of the nations that were affected. They will be working with the local government, the US embassies and the NGOs to determine how the US military can best assist," Canedo said. He said the command had dispatched six Hercules C-130 cargo aircraft loaded with food and water. The planes were loaded in Okinawa, Japan, and are headed to Utaphao in Thailand. Nine P3 aircraft have also been assigned to fly to Utaphao to help in the relief effort. Five KC-135 stratotanker aircraft, also filled with aid cargoes, are en route to Thailand and Sri Lanka, he said. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said earlier that 12 C-130 transport planes with relief supplies were heading for the stricken Asian nations. Aside from the USS Abraham Lincoln and its five ships, the USS Bonhomme Richard with six ships are steaming to the Bay of Bengal. Canedo said it would take about six to seven days for that navy group to arrive. The USS Bonhomme Richard is carrying a "significant number of helicopters that can be used for search and rescue," he said. "The sailors and marines aboard these ships, roughly 15,000," he said. The quake Sunday, the biggest in 40 years, rocked the seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves across the Indian Ocean. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India were among the countries worst hit by the natural disaster. -------- war crimes Former US Attorney General Clark to Defend Saddam Hussein Washington, Dec 29, 2004 (Prensa Latina) http://www.periodico26.cu/english_new/world/usattorney291204.htm Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark said he has decided to join the defense team for ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after watching the "inhumane images" of his arrest on December 2003. Clark made the announcement in Amman where said the jury that Washington has set up lacks basic elements like independence, confidence and impartiality. "There can be no confidence without those qualities." Clark assured he has informed President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of the gross breaches of the Geneva Convention committed with the abuse of war prisoners. Washington charged the Iraqi leader of fomenting a program of weapons of mass destruction that was also the pretext for the March 2003 invasion of the Middle East country. The ex Federal official criticized the double standards applied by the latest Republican Administrations and the Pentagon for they breached the prohibition to use, produce, transport and test ammunition charged with depleted uranium in both wars on Iraq. The ex attorney general urged the Bush Administration to clean the contaminated Iraqi areas and provide adequate medical assistance to the victims of radiation. Clark became the latest prominent attorney to join Hussein"s 30-member strong defense team along with French ex Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, and Aisha Ghadafi, daughter of Libyan leader Muammar El Ghadafi. ---- US attorney-general joins Saddam From correspondents in Amman December 29, 2004 29 December 2004 AFP http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11807864%255E1702,00.html FORMER US attorney general Ramsey Clark is to join the defence team of Saddam Hussein, a spokesman for the toppled Iraqi president's lawyers said today. Mr Clark, who held the office of attorney general under US president Lyndon B. Johnson, "is one of the members of the defence team of president Saddam Hussein," Ziad Khassawneh said. "This honours and inspires us." The former top US justice official who arrived in Jordan where the defence team is based, has become known as a left-wing lawyer and firm critic of US foreign policy since leaving office. He visited Saddam in Baghdad in February 2003 just before the US-lead invasion and has also been involved with the defence of former Yugoslav leader Solbodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes at a UN court in The Hague. Mr Clark told reporters in the Jordanian capital that his principle concern was protecting the rights of Saddam, who saw a lawyer for the first time this month, a year after his capture. "In international law, anyone accused of crime has the right to be tried by a confident, independent and impartial court, and there can be no fair trail without those qualities," he said. "The special court in Iraq was created by the Iraqi governing council, which is nothing more than a creation of the US military occupation and has no authority in law as a criminal court." The Iraq Special Tribunal was established by the US-led coalition last December to try members of the former regime of Saddam. Mr Clark also said the US itself must be tried for the November assault on Fallujah, destruction of houses, torture in prisons and its role in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in the war. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- courts / tribunals -------- homeland security / national intelligence Report Criticizes Use Of Port Security Grants By Sam Hananel Associated Press Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A17 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32314-2004Dec28?language=printer The Department of Homeland Security has allowed federal grants for improving security at U.S. ports to be spent on low-priority problems rather than on the most serious vulnerabilities, the agency's outgoing watchdog says. In a draft report to be released next month, Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin says port security spending should be governed by the most pressing priorities rather than by local politics. Decrying inadequate staffing and poor coordination, Ervin said the department's port security grant program needs better oversight to ensure projects that get money meet security goals. "The DHS does not have a strong grant evaluation process in place by which to address post-award administration issues, including measuring progress in accomplishing DHS' grant objectives," he said in a recent summary of the report. The summary was included in another report from Ervin's office, "Major Management Challenges Facing the Department of Homeland Security," which was posted on the DHS Web site. The grant program has been criticized in the past for being too cumbersome and for awarding money to projects of questionable use. To make his point, Ervin cited the report of the Sept. 11 commission, which said that homeland security spending should not be used as a "pork barrel" for politicians to send money to their home districts. White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy rebuffed the criticism, saying the department is doing an "exceptional job protecting the American people." But he acknowledged that some coordination problems remain unsolved. "Obviously, there are organizational challenges when you undertake the biggest government reform since the Pentagon was created, and we're working on that," Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is staying. The report is one of the last submitted by Ervin, who earned a reputation as a blunt critic of the department before announcing his departure from the job earlier this month. He won a recess appointment to the position in December 2003, but the Senate failed to confirm him and the White House appears unlikely to nominate him again. DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to comment until the full report is completed, but he said the department had streamlined its grant processes earlier this year. "We have made progress in integrating all of the previous disparate grant programs from the agencies that created DHS into one office in the department that is ensuring all grant dollars are maximized and spent according [to] a strategy outlining the greatest needs," he said. The department manages several grant programs, totaling about $10 billion last year, that provide money for disaster preparedness, prevention, response and recovery. The agency has distributed about $560 million for port security over the past few years. Despite the consolidation of the grant program offices, Ervin said "much work remains to be done." He noted that department officials plan to increase staff to allow for more site visits and for improved oversight of grant-funded projects. Ervin was not available to comment on the report. Robert L. Ashbaugh, spokesman for acting Inspector General Richard L. Skinner, said the report has been circulated to officials in the agency for comments. "They will have an opportunity to provide a response and state whether they agree to take corrective action," Ashbaugh said. Ervin has issued several reports critical of department programs. A report in October criticized the Transportation Security Administration for an employee awards ceremony that cost nearly $500,000. Another report filed that same month said TSA screeners were not properly trained to handle deadly weapons and were not tested on passengers' rights. ---- Fingerprint database impeded by agency infighting 12/29/2004 11:53 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-12-29-fingerprint-database_x.htm WASHINGTON — More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has failed to create a unified U.S. fingerprint database because of agency infighting, meaning most visitors to the country still aren't fully screened for terrorist or criminal ties, the Justice Department's watchdog warned Wednesday. The continued bureaucratic clashing — the very behavior the Bush administration pledged to end after the attacks — is causing serious delays in solving the problem. In his fourth report about the situation, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said the situation "creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected." Despite some improvement, the Justice, State and Homeland Security departments are at an impasse over such basic issues as whether two or 10 fingers should be printed at U.S. borders and which law enforcement agencies should have access to immigration information. "Progress toward the longer-term goal of making all biometric fingerprint systems fully interoperable has stalled," Fine's report concluded. Without an integrated system, the review found that watch lists used to check certain visitors at the borders contain only a small portion of the 47 million records in FBI fingerprint files — the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS — and that these incomplete lists are prone to error. Current Homeland Security plans call for fingerprint checking against FBI files of fewer than 1% of the estimated 118,000 daily U.S. visitors whose prints should be checked, or fewer than 1,180. Yet by the end of 2005, the officials expect to check only about 800 people a day against the FBI database. "The likelihood of missing a criminal alien or terrorist is increased" without expanded use of the FBI files, Fine said. Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said creation of a single system should be "counterterrorism 101." "What more will it take for these bureaucracies to realize that integration of these databases is not only necessary but essential to the war on terror?" said Grassley, R-Iowa. Since the 2001 attacks, Congress has repeatedly pushed the agencies to devise a single, quick fingerprint identification system that could be used by all law enforcement agencies as well as immigration and intelligence officials. The agencies' inability to reach common ground runs counter to the repeated pledges of cooperation that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The agencies "have different sets of mission objectives, and each one has been a forceful advocate for its respective position," said Justice Department top administrative official Paul Corts. One key unresolved question is how many fingers should be printed and how. The Justice Department sides with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has recommended taking 10 "flat" fingerprints along with a digital photograph of the individual. These "flat" prints, NIST says, are almost as accurate as the "rolled" fingerprints favored by the FBI and should take only 10 to 15 seconds longer than taking just two finger prints. The Homeland Security and State departments, which now take only two finger prints, disagree with NIST. In a letter to Fine, Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson cited "inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions" in the review, including estimated costs, time delays and workload increases of moving to a 10-print system. The system "is not designed for booking criminals," Hutchinson said, but is intended as a "lookout" for suspect individuals. Janice L. Jacobs, the State Department's top visa services official, said a test program in Monterrey, Mexico, found that it took up to a minute longer to take 10 prints. "Adding one minute of processing time to 7 million visa applications annually has significant workload implications," Jacobs wrote to Fine. Homeland Security officials also have resisted giving the FBI and other law enforcement agencies access to its visitor records, partly to ensure the privacy of those individuals. In addition, the problem of inaccuracies in various watch lists has occurred repeatedly since Sept. 11, and some groups have complained loudly that they are unfairly singled out for scrutiny. One such incident occurred earlier this week when about 40 American Muslims were held for questioning and fingerp