NucNews - December 31, 2004 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Marines say site of August copter crash on Okinawa not hazardous By David Allen, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Friday, December 31, 2004 http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26315 CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — No high-risk levels of hazardous materials have been identified in the area where a Marine CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter crashed in August, according to Marine officials. “Soil, ground water and radioactivity surveys of the August 13 CH-53D helicopter accident site at Okinawa International University were completed by the Japan Chemical Analysis Center and Nansei Environmental Research Center,” Marine 2nd Lt. Eric Tausch stated in a press release Wednesday. “Radioactivity readings were within normal levels and consistent with other areas in Okinawa,” the release stated. “These levels are considered safe and do not pose a health concern.” The helicopter, assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 265 at adjacent Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, crashed after the tail rotor and a section of the tail rotor pylon detached from the aircraft. The rotor blades struck the university building and the helicopter crashed and burst into flames. No civilians were injured and the crewmembers survived the crash. A 1st Marine Air Wing accident assessment blamed a maintenance crew for failing to re-install a cotter pin on a bolt following a routine adjustment on the tail rudder flight control. The crash prompted protests calling for closure of Futenma, located in the middle of an urban area. The United States and Japan agreed to close the air station once a new base is constructed in the waters off Okinawa’s rural northeast shore, adjacent to Camp Schwab. However, construction, expected to take a decade or more to complete, has not yet begun at the site. Some Okinawan officials expressed concern that the crash site might have been contaminated by small quantities of low-level radioactive material, but the surveys uncovered no evidence of depleted uranium, according to the Marine news release. “Fluorine, lead, benzene, and boron were detected during the surveys,” Tausch stated. “Fluorine compounds, thought to be from natural sources, slightly exceeded the standards specified under Japanese Soil Law. Only low levels of lead, benzene, and boron were detected and each level was below Japanese Soil Law standards.” Tausch stated “high levels of petroleum products, primarily fuel and oil, were detected in areas adjacent to and within the crash site. The soil with petroleum contamination will be remediated.” The latest survey is consistent with independent surveys conducted by the Okinawa Prefectural Government and Okinawa International University, he said. “As a contributing member of the community, the Marine Corps is committed to protecting the environment and is pleased that initial environmental surveys were validated by this most recent survey,” Tausch stated in the release. “Environmental remediation discussions are ongoing between the Marine Corps, the Defense Facilities Administration Bureau and Okinawa International University.” -------- europe Shutdown procedure begins at Lithuanian nuclear plant Dec 31 2004 7:54PM (Interfax) http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=10737325 VILNIUS. Dec 31 - The shutdown procedure began at power generating unit No. 1 of Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant on Friday. "The load has been reduced from 1,100 megawatts as of Friday morning, down to less than 1,000 megawatts," the plant's general director Viktor Shevaldin told Interfax. When the load falls below 250 megawatts, the operator on duty will press the button initiating the shutdown signal. The unit will be shut down at around 8:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m., Moscow time). -------- missile defense Pentagon misses goal for missile defense system 31 Dec 2004 15:16:34 GMT Source: Reuters By Will Dunham http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30220713.htm WASHINGTON, Dec 31 (Reuters) - The Pentagon failed to meet its goal of declaring a missile defense system operational in 2004 and critics said failures in testing the ambitious system show it simply does not work. The latest test of the multibillion-dollar system ended in failure on Dec. 15 when one of the interceptors intended to destroy an incoming enemy ballistic missile failed to launch on cue from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. Four of the system's nine major tests have been failures, and the five successes have been achieved under tightly controlled conditions. Meanwhile, key components are absent, including a high-resolution, high-power, sea-based radar and two big satellite constellations. President George W. Bush said two years ago he wanted the system up and running by September 2004. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency later said the intention was to make it operational by the end of 2004. Now Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner says there is no firm timetable for activating it. Creation of a missile defense system has been a goal of many U.S. conservatives dating back to a space-based plan developed under President Ronald Reagan two decades ago. Bush touted his version during his re-election campaign. The current approach, to shield America and its allies from missile attack by nations like North Korea, is based on the concept of using one missile to shoot down another before it can reach its target. "What we have here is a developmental system that is well along," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a recent briefing. "And at some point soon, it will have a modest capability" and can be "perfected and improved" over time. Proponents argue even a rudimentary missile defense capability is better than none at all. But the latest failure presented another hurdle to the Pentagon's idea of deploying the system piece by piece rather than waiting for every element to be fully developed. "The system has no demonstrated capability to work under realistic conditions. And so unless they just want it to be a sham, I don't see how they can declare that they have real operational capability," said Philip Coyle, chief weapons tester for the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001. At the current testing pace, it could be decades before the system is ready, Coyle said. RUMSFELD SOUNDS UNDETERRED Rumsfeld sounded undeterred. "We had hoped that we would have some sort of a characterization that in 2004 we had a preliminary capability, an initial capability," he said. "I'm not announcing it, but if you, for example, said that ... there was some threat that was evolving and it would be desirable to go out of a test mode and see the extent to which you could be in an operational mode, my impression is it wouldn't take long to get there." The Dec. 15 test was the system's first in two years. The previous one, on Dec. 12, 2002, also was a failure, with the interceptor not separating from its booster rocket and missing its target by hundreds of miles (km). The next test could come in March or April, Lehner said, although the cause of the Dec. 15 failure remains unknown. The Pentagon plans to spend more than $50 billion over the next five years on missile defense and aims to weave in airborne, ship- and space-based assets. It has installed six interceptor missiles in silos at Fort Greely in Alaska and one at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Vandenberg is due to get a second in January, Lehner said, with 10 more in Alaska sometime in 2005. A Navy destroyer with long-range missile-tracking equipment began patrols in September in the Sea of Japan -- the system's first naval component. Among future capabilities, the Pentagon envisions missiles based on ships that could bring down enemy missiles as they are launched. It also sees an airborne laser defense to destroy enemy missiles. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the recent test showed even the most basic elements of the system do not work. "The system is not ready for prime time. The booster rockets do not work. The radar is limited in effectiveness. The kill vehicle (which zeroes in on an enemy warhead) has a spotty record. The computer system that coordinates all the elements still has serious kinks in it," Kimball said. Kimball said the money spent on the system might be better used to address pressing concerns like ensuring nuclear weapons in former Soviet states do not fall into the hands of terrorists and improving security at U.S. ports. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Long-awaited ceremony honors WWII vet By JOE ROBERTSON The Kansas City Star Fri, Dec. 31, 2004 http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/10533909.htm Bud Zeek wanted just a small favor in return for the mental and physical scars left by his service in the dropping and testing of atom bombs. As an officer in the forerunner of the CIA, Zeek barely was 20 years old when he walked amid the desolation of Nagasaki after the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. A year later, the Marine from Atchison, Kan., was helping with field studies for the test nuclear explosion in Bikini Atoll. Before that, he said, he had been part of intelligence-gathering squads for 10 invasions in the Pacific theater of World War II. For nearly six decades, he has carried the reminders — post-traumatic stress and a radiation-plagued body under constant medication. He's not wanting for awards. The medals have all trickled in by mail, with the requisite letters of commendation. All he wanted was for someone to actually present him an award, to pin it on his jacket. B.J. Patterson of Leawood, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, determined that Zeek deserved more. Patterson, whose son, Joe, is the husband of Zeek's niece, asked the Navy if he could arrange a full ceremony while Zeek, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., was in Kansas City visiting family. He led the presentation of some of Zeek's recent awards Thursday at the Naval Reserve Center in Kansas City. “I thought it was high time somebody did something,” B.J. Patterson said. “It was long overdue.” B.J. Patterson read the accolades, and Joe Patterson, a former first lieutenant in the Army Rangers airborne infantry, pinned the medals on Zeek's red jacket while a small gathering watched. The honors were his World War II Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Philippines Campaign Medal and his Naval Intelligence pin. “Not everyone is as fortunate as I am,” Zeek said, “to have someone like Lt. Col. Patterson do this for me.” Zeek, 79, enlisted in the Navy in 1943. After taking aptitude tests, he was sent to Marine boot camp, where he began the specialized training he would use in what he called “top-secret intelligence gathering” with the Office of Strategic Service. Officially, he was a tech sergeant in the Marines. Their commands were always oral, never written, he said. His unit patrolled several island flashpoints of the Pacific, trying to learn everything it could about the strength and placement of Japanese forces. At Nagasaki, he said, they went in days after the blast, looking for prisoners of war. “I'd never seen anything reduced to nothing before,” he said. “There was absolutely nothing, no defining landmarks, nothing. I did not see an alive person until the next day.” Historical accounts now estimate that nearly 75,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 inhabitants died in the explosion. The toll of people killed or diseased from radiation continues to this day. The plutonium bomb that hit Nagasaki was, according to Zeek, “a dirty bomb — high in radiation,” with more pernicious aftereffects than the first bomb on Hiroshima. All the service members who exposed themselves to radiation in the wake of such destructive forces did so at their peril. And Zeek has been recognized several times over for his service. It was nice for him, for once, to look into the faces of those who wanted to say “Thank you.” To reach Joe Robertson, call (816)234-7806 or send e-mail to jrobertson@kcstar.com. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- connecticut Top Stories of 2004: Connecticut By Julie Wernau Published on 12/31/2004 Waterford -- The year's top stories: 1) Tax Battle Begins: The tax battle between a town of 19,000 and the multinational corporation that has always paid for most of the town's education and services began this year in what is expected to be a $1 million legal cost to the town. Waterford and Dominion Nuclear Connecticut took each other to court this year to dispute a $200 million discrepancy between their valuations of the nuclear power plant, assembling teams of expert witnesses to defend each assessment of the plant's worth. In the first battle in the tax case, an additional $100 million in air pollution control credits Millstone says it is eligible for, is being disputed by the town. The next hearing on the matter is scheduled for Jan. 17 at New Britain Superior Court. .... 3) Dry Cask Storage OK'd: After nearly a year of hearings on the matter, the Connecticut Siting Council granted permission this spring for Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, Inc. to store 49 garage-sized nuclear waste modules in the town of Waterford, enough to store waste through 2025. Although the decision went against the town's orders to restrict fuel storage to 19 modules, which would bring the plant through the end of its 2015 license, the approved number of modules is significantly smaller than the 135 modules Dominion asked the council to approve in their application last August. The town has approved of the council's decision, said First Selectman Paul Eccard, because the numbers took into account that Dominion had applied to relicense the plants during the battle, and if relicensed, would need more storage. The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone has appealed the decision. Both Dominion and Waterford said they were frustrated by the federal government's failure to provide a permanent nuclear waste facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.... Honorable Mentions: Other stories that received honorable mentions include: Melodie Peters Leaves -- State Sen. Melodie Peters, D-20th will leave the state government this year after 12 years of service.... Former Lawmaker Defends New Role As Nuclear Power Consultant TheDay, CT - Jan 12, 2005 http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=26D8C981-B59C-47A0-BB93-DFD55541844C Waterford — Melodie Peters, a six-term state senator who is now an adviser to the owner of Millstone Power Station, defended her new role Tuesday at a public hearing.... -------- south carolina SAVANNAH RIVER SITE South Carolina's top 10 business stories of 2004 Fri, Dec. 31, 2004 The State http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/10535176.htm About 2,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs in less than two years at the nuclear weapons materials site near Aiken. The Dec. 16 announcement was the biggest layoff announced in 2004, and the losses could weaken one of the state’s strongest clusters of high-paying jobs. The Washington Group, which manages the site for the U.S. Department of Energy, announced it expected to cut 1,200 jobs by Sept. 30, 2004, and the rest by Sept. 30, 2005. Maintaining high-skilled, high-paying jobs near the site depends on new government work and a private company’s plans to build a plant south of Aiken, outside the gates of the sprawling complex. Flanders Corp. of St. Petersburg, Fla., said Dec. 8 that it would build a $60 million plant to make equipment that allows workers to handle nuclear materials. It expects to hire up to 800 workers within five years, but many of those jobs will depend on construction of a facility at SRS that would convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for generating electricity. Work was scheduled to begin in May, but delay is expected. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Targeting snipers December 31, 2004 Washington Times Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said recently that Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used effectively in Iraq to kill insurgent snipers and other terrorists. Dozens of Predator drones armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles were used against snipers in Fallujah during recent fighting, Gen. Jumper told reporters at a breakfast earlier this month. "We used a lot of the Hellfire missile capability off of our Predator UAVs to take out individual small targets like snipers and the like that were found by the ground forces," he said. "It's not a thing where I get a daily report on the weird episode of firing Hellfire off a Predator, no. It's routine." Gen. Jumper said he could not say whether the deadly missile shots had forced insurgents to change tactics. "But if I were one of the guys that were the targets of some of the events I saw, I would change my tactics," he said. Predators also are now outfitted with laser designators that can be used to direct precision-guided bombs to targets, he said. Another tactic being used is old-fashioned aerial gun strafing of targets, with an added high-technology twist. Gen. Jumper said a relatively new 20 mm round is being used in aircraft strafing missions in Iraq that has a 20 to 25 percent longer range and greater muzzle velocity. "And you don't walk [the stream of bullets] in there, you very precisely put these computer-controlled pippers [gunsight cursors] on targets and you let go with a one-second burst, which is about 100 or more rounds of stuff that you put into some of these soft-sided buildings and you've done quite a job," he said. -------- asia Disaster brings Indian, US navies together in Indian Ocean for first time NEW DELHI (AFP) Dec 31, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/041231085819.emmsr4tk.html Indian and American navies will cooperate in the Indian Ocean for the first time when they join forces to coordinate relief for the victims of tidal waves, a report said Friday. The two countries, estranged during the Cold War but whose ties have warmed in recent years, will join Australia and Japan in a "core group" being created by Washington to coordinate recovery efforts. US Secretary of State Colin Powell told AFP Thursday that the United Nations had chief responsibility for coordinating relief in the Asian tsunami disaster, but the core group would be "complementary" to the world body's efforts. He said the United States sought to combine its military capability in the region with Japan's financial resources and the assets of India and Australia to mount a rapid action to be expanded as other countries and groups joined in. The Indian Express newspaper Friday noted that during the Cold War, the Indian navy was effectively ranged against the armada of the United States, Japan and Australia. In the coming weeks the South Asian region's strongest naval force would be working with the US Navy, the world's most powerful, for the first time in the Indian Ocean, it said. During Operation Enduring Freedom to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, Indian ships had assisted the United States in providing security in the Malacca Straits, but that small operation had taken months to negotiate. By contrast, the tsunami relief coalition has taken just days to tie up through a flurry of phone calls between Indian and US officials, including between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The United States has sent military transporters to the worst-hit countries in the Indian Ocean while an aircraft carrier, helicopter carrier and military forces that could help in relief work are also on the way from bases in Asia. India's government, meanwhile, has said it would press on with plans to expand its facilities in the Andaman archipelago despite the Indian Air Force (IAF) base on Car Nicobar island being all but washed away in Sunday's tsunami. "Earlier the plan was to go in for expansion of the existing IAF facilities in the islands But now that the existing facilities have almost been wiped out, the plans will have to be redrafted," Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Indian Express. "But the expansion and augumentation of facilities will take place. The new runway, presently under construction, will also be built for taking heavier traffic." Car Nicobar island straddles access to the Malacca Straits, a key waterway through which much of the world's crude oil passes. -------- business Iraq contract fraud December 31, 2004 Washington Times Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm John A. Shaw, until recently the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, stated in a end-of-tour letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that senior Pentagon officials covered up contracting fraud related to a cellular telephone network project in Iraq. The fraud involved $30 million in bribes, $225 million in misappropriated funds and $210 million in missing funds, according to Mr. Shaw's Dec. 3 letter. Mr. Shaw stated that "the allegations involve [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy] Douglas Feith, his former law partner Mark Zell, Ahmed Chalabi and others." "For referring these preliminary findings on, a substantial smear campaign against me and my report was launched at the highest levels of the Pentagon and in the national news media," said Mr. Shaw, who lost his job a week after writing the letter in a Pentagon reorganization that eliminated his post. "So I am faced with a group of people who want to destroy me and quash serious criminal allegations, who are acting in your name," he stated. Mr. Shaw requested that he be allowed to continue in his post until he could produce a report and then said he would be willing to move on to another position. "A cancer has been growing on some of our [Coalition Provisional Authority] CPA activities for over a year and I can perform a final service for you in dealing with it," Mr. Shaw said. Raymond F. DuBois, director of the Pentagon's office of administration and management, replied in a Dec. 6 letter that Mr. Shaw's appointment would end Dec. 10. Mr. DuBois also notified the Pentagon inspector general of the charges made by Mr. Shaw. A Pentagon spokesman dismissed Mr. Shaw's charges as "absurd and without foundation." Two Pentagon officials working in Iraq for the CPA left under a cloud of suspicion after financial mismanagement was uncovered in Iraq's communications agency. The departures followed an April 13 memorandum from the audit firm Bearing Point stating that financial controls over $435 million in U.S. funds "are either weak or nonexistent" and that funding of communications projects "is open to fraud, kickbacks and misappropriation of funds." -------- chemical weapons An Easier, but Less Deadly, Recipe for Terror By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 31, 2004; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37519-2004Dec30?language=printer If you can get past the guards and fences, the ingredients for a chemical attack are available off the shelf at a crumbling military base called Shchuchye in south-central Russia. There, stacked like dusty wine bottles on wooden racks, is a collection of 1.9 million artillery shells filled with nerve agents such as VX, an oily yellow liquid so deadly that a single drop on the skin can kill. The smallest shells, each containing enough poison for at least 85,000 lethal doses, could be slipped easily into a backpack. But while U.S. officials fret about possible theft, Russia insists that the weapons are secure and that none are missing. Half a world away, the same kinds of weapons are obtainable in the U.S. chemical capital of Houston, for those savvy and brave enough to attempt the assembly. Last year, a Texas gun enthusiast named William J. Krar was able to legally purchase the materials to make a highly lethal gas called hydrogen cyanide, which he stored at home in a green metal box. Krar might have killed hundreds of people, but a botched package delivery exposed his plans and led to his arrest. As security officials contemplate the possibility of a chemical attack by terrorists, examples such as these are sources of both concern and comfort. The concern stems from what weapons experts describe as a widespread availability of raw materials for chemical terrorism. The materials include millions of military-grade chemical weapons scattered in at least a dozen countries. They also include vast quantities of hazardous industrial compounds, as well as chemical factories and transports that can be transformed through sabotage into deadly weapons. Because of the abundance of possibilities, many experts believe the odds for a chemical attack are relatively high, compared with biological or nuclear terrorism. Of the three, the chemical route is widely regarded as the easiest. "A crude chemical attack is within the reach of any reasonably professional terrorist group," said Jeffrey M. Bale, a senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. "With a sufficiently toxic substance, you will succeed in killing some people." But whether terrorists could manage a catastrophic attack is another matter, experts say. Somewhat comforting, they say, is the fact that assembling and dispersing deadly chemicals remain complicated and dangerous for amateurs. A review of foiled cases of chemical terrorism shows that the plotters often fall into police dragnets, bungle technical details, or expose themselves to death or injury. Even a successful release of chemicals, many experts believe, would probably kill relatively few people compared with a sophisticated biological or nuclear attack. The only deadly chemical attack by terrorists in the past decade -- the release of sarin gas on a Tokyo subway in 1995 -- killed a dozen people, not hundreds or thousands, as envisioned by the leaders of Japan's radical Aum Shinrikyo cult. Terrorist groups such as al Qaeda have professed a desire for chemical weapons, but for now they probably lack the expertise to use them in a catastrophic way, numerous U.S. officials and weapons experts say. As time passes, however, the odds increase that they will try -- and perhaps succeed. "Fortunately, this kind of thing is hard to do: It requires scientific knowledge, some sophisticated technology and skill," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The bad news is, it's not hard enough. And you don't know how well these groups have learned the lessons of past failures and improved on them." Poison Plots Of all the ingenious devices humans have developed for slaughtering one another over 10,000 years, only two have been deemed repugnant enough to merit an outright universal ban. Chemical weapons, together with biological weapons, appear to touch something deep within the human psyche, stirring up feelings of revulsion and fear. Even Gen. Berthold von Deimling, a German field officer who first ordered their use in World War I, found them "repulsive." Mustard gas, one of a group of 19th-century-vintage weapons known as blister agents, caused the bulk of the deaths and injuries from chemical warfare during the war. In the 1930s, German scientists searching for a better pesticide created the first nerve agents, a class of potent killers that attack the central nervous system. Over the next 50 years, deadly new weapons such sarin, tabun, soman and VX were stockpiled by great powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union and even smaller countries such as Iraq, South Korea and India. The deep revulsion felt by many toward chemical weapons only increases their appeal to groups such as al Qaeda that seek not to kill troops but to sow fear and panic, intelligence analysts say. After al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden advocated the use of unconventional weapons in 1998, the group built makeshift chemistry labs at its training camps in Afghanistan. An unclassified CIA report in November said al Qaeda had acquired "crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin and VX." Fortunately, al Qaeda appears to have made little progress. "There are few groups that have both the motivation and the capability to acquire and effectively use chemical weapons," said Jonathan B. Tucker, a senior researcher with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and author of a forthcoming history of chemical weapons. "Al Qaeda appears to have the motivation but not the capability -- not yet." U.S. and European intelligence agencies have amply documented the group's failed attempts to master the art of chemical weaponry. Captured training videos from Afghanistan suggest that al Qaeda's amateur chemists succeeded in making cyanide that was potent enough to kill a few dogs. But no traces of the more lethal mustard agent, sarin and VX were discovered in al Qaeda camps. Last year, British and French police uncovered a series of "poison plots" by al Qaeda-trained groups in Europe, only to find that the would-be attackers were lacking in poison. In France, a terrorist cell had struggled to manufacture small quantities of a toxin called ricin using kitchen appliances and castor beans. In Britain, Islamic radicals hatched a scheme to steal osmium tetroxide, an industrial compound that, while hazardous, has never been used as a weapon. The plan was foiled, and weapons experts are not convinced that the chemical would have killed anyone. Still, groups such as al Qaeda could conceivably obtain powerful chemical weapons -- ones with proven ability to inflict truly large numbers of casualties -- by buying or stealing them from military stockpiles. Thousands of tons of nearly pure mustard agent, sarin and VX exist in military depots in such countries as the United States, Russia and Libya. The use of such weapons has been banned since 1925, and the existence of chemical stockpiles was outlawed in 1997. Yet they have never gone away. Dangerous Stockpiles For Westerners who have been allowed to see them, Shchuchye's vast rows of wooden shelves lined with VX shells are an unforgettable sight. But the vast arsenal represents less than 10 percent of Russia's 44,000-ton chemical stockpile, and an even smaller fraction of the total quantity of military-grade chemical weapons believed to exist in at least 12 countries. Defense officials and weapon experts disagree sharply over whether the stockpiles at Shchuchye (pronounced SHOO-shya) and elsewhere are adequately protected. But as recently as the mid-1990s, Shchuchye's commanders could not produce an inventory for the weapons stored there. That frightens arms-control advocates such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who has visited Shchuchye. "The Russians claim that just one of the shells is potent enough to kill 85,000 people at a football game -- every single person," said Lugar, who for years has pressed Congress for funding to help the Russians destroy the weapons. "There are more than 1.9 million weapons at Shchuchye alone. Anyone who thinks this is not a problem needs to work through that arithmetic." As recently as this fall, Shchuchye commanders have welcomed delegations of Western visitors to the arsenal to show off the high-tech security system built in recent years with aid from the United States, Canada and Europe. Layers of fences, motion detectors and heavily armed guards control access to the storage barns, located east of the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk, 100 miles from Russia's border with Kazakhstan. The conditions are dramatically different from those encountered in the mid-1990s by Paul Walker, a chemical-weapons expert with the advocacy group Global Green. In 1994, security consisted of a six-foot barbed-wire fence, bicycle padlocks and an 18-year-old Russian guard who said he had not been paid in months. "The windows of the storage buildings were broken, and there were holes in the roof," Walker recalled in an interview. "There was obviously no reliable inventory system, because the weapons were spaced haphazardly, with many of the racks only partially filled. When I asked the commander how he kept inventory, he said: 'We keep the doors locked.' " Even today, Western-style security upgrades are in place in only two of the seven arsenals in Russia where weapons or bulk chemicals are kept. Meanwhile, beyond Russia, far less is known about the security of weapons stocks in countries such as Iran, which used chemical weapons in its war with Iraq in the 1980s and is alleged by U.S. intelligence officials to still possess them. Nonproliferation experts draw some encouragement from the fact that no stolen chemical weapons are known to have been used in a terrorist attack. Within a few years, the threat will diminish dramatically as Russia and the United States destroy their stockpiles, as required under the international Chemical Weapons Convention. But deadlines for destruction have been pushed back seven years, to 2012, because of financing problems and environmental concerns. For Lugar, the delay is seven years too long. "Fortunately, once the weapons are gone, they're gone," he said. "But until that time there's always a danger that something might happen." Mail-Order Chemistry Four years ago, a Houston chemistry professor and defense consultant named James Tour set out to prove a point. In April 2000, after arguing in a journal article that terrorists could obtain dangerous chemicals, he had received a stinging rebuke from the Defense Department. "You are so wrong," an agency weapons expert told Tour, according to his account of the conversation. "We monitor every teaspoon." So Tour went shopping. He first looked up the formula for the nerve gas sarin and then ordered all the ingredients -- on one form, from a single well-known supply company. If assembled, Tour knew, the chemicals would produce about 11 ounces of pure sarin -- enough, in theory, to kill hundreds of people. The chemicals arrived by express mail the next day. Afterward, Tour's critics were skeptical, suggesting that his purchase had escaped scrutiny because he is a well-known professor and frequent customer. So a writer for Scientific American persuaded Tour to coach him in repeating the same order, from the same company, only this time in the writer's name. The chemicals were delivered the next day. "You can easily get to the point where you're just one step away," said Tour, a professor at Rice University's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. "You buy the chemicals, you mix them, and you have sarin." The second order was placed in November 2001, at a time when police and security officials were on heightened alert after the Sept. 11 attacks. Government and chemistry industry say safeguards have been significantly strengthened since then. Tour, however, is not so certain. "If I tried it today, maybe it would take three different forms and three different companies, instead of just one. But I have no doubt that I could bypass the system," he said. "And that's if I use domestic suppliers." An amateur who acquired ingredients for sarin would still face a daunting challenge in attempting to combine the chemicals in the proper sequence without killing himself. But, as the more recent case of Krar illustrates, it is possible to make a powerful poison using readily available chemicals that can be handled safely. Police describe Krar, 63, as a member of the militia movement, a loose coalition of groups that espouse pro-gun, anti-government and white-supremacist views. Three years ago, after moving to Tyler, Tex., from New Hampshire, Krar began acquiring a large arsenal that included machine guns, dozens of pipe bombs, grenades and a homemade land mine. But his most unusual weapon was discovered inside a green ammunition box in his home. Inside the box, according to court records, police found nearly two pounds of sodium cyanide and a pair of vials containing hydrochloric acid. Krar would only have to break the vials to combine the chemicals and create highly lethal hydrogen cyanide gas. If released in a crowded room, the gas could potentially kill scores or even hundreds of people, weapons experts say. Krar was arrested in April and charged with possessing an illegal chemical weapon. He later pleaded guilty. When asked about the origin of the chemicals, he had no reason to lie. He bought them legally, he told FBI agents, from a gold-plating supply store. Worst-Case Scenarios The deadliest kind of chemical attack requires no stolen weapons and no mixing of dangerous chemicals. To kill large numbers of people, weapons experts say, terrorists could target any of the hundreds of chemical factories, storage bins, tanker cars or trucks around the country that contain large amounts of lethal gases. Just as occurred in the 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, a deadly plume of chemicals could travel for miles on the wind and then settle over communities like a suffocating blanket. Government studies show that casualties from such an event could climb into the tens of thousands or even higher, depending on weather conditions and the chemical involved. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the chemical industry has taken voluntary steps to prevent such an attack. Large chemical plants have been studied for vulnerabilities, gates have been fortified, and transport routes have been altered. The American Chemistry Council, which represents more than 2,000 businesses involved in the chemical trade, says its members spent $800 million last year alone to harden facilities against attack. "Following September 11, and without waiting for government direction, ACC members imposed on themselves a mandatory comprehensive security program," ACC President Tom Reilly said in a statement. Despite the improvements, security experts who have studied the problem continue to list deadly chemical sabotage as a grave threat. Citing EPA "worst case" estimates of casualties from such an attack, a report by the Government Accountability Office in February listed 123 chemical facilities nationwide where a toxic release could affect more than 1 million people. Still, neither Congress nor the White House has enacted measures to require all chemical plants to assess their security and meet minimum antiterrorism standards, the report states. The failure has no doubt been noted by groups that seek to damage America's economy and demoralize its people. Tucker, the senior researcher with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said a conventional attack aimed at a U.S. chemical facility would surely appeal to al Qaeda. "It would be consistent with the modus operandi of al Qaeda, which has always sought to use our Western technology against us," he said. "Like September 11, such an attack would not be high-tech. But it could be very effective." -------- china China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence THE GREAT DIVIDE | TALKING BACK TO POWER By JOSEPH KAHN December 31, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/international/asia/31china.html ANZHOU, China, Dec. 24 - The encounter, at first, seemed purely pedestrian. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a sidewalk. The man's bag brushed the woman's pants leg, leaving a trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued. Easily forgettable, except that one of the men, Yu Jikui, was a lowly porter. The other, Hu Quanzong, boasted that he was a ranking government official. Mr. Hu beat Mr. Yu using the porter's own carrying stick, then threatened to have him killed. For Wanzhou, a Yangtze River port city, the script was incendiary. Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall. Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected. "People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have enough to eat," said Mr. Yu, reflecting on the uprising that made him an instant proletarian hero - and later forced him into seclusion. "Our society has a short fuse, just waiting for a spark." Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control. China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity labor movement. Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, local expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration, unpaid wages or police killings. Yet several mass protests, like the one in Wanzhou, show how people with different causes can seize an opportunity to press their grievances together. The police recently arrested several advocates of peasant rights suspected of helping to coordinate protest activities nationally. Those are worrying signs for the one-party state, reflexively wary of even the hint of organized opposition. Wang Jian, a researcher at the Communist Party's training academy in Changchun, in northeast China, said the number and scale of protests had been rising because of "frictions and even violent conflicts between different interest groups" in China's quasi market economy. "These mass incidents have seriously harmed the country's social order and weakened government authority, with destructive consequences domestically and abroad," Mr. Wang wrote in a recent study. China's top leaders said after their annual planning session in September that the "life and death of the party" rests on "improving governance," which they define as making party officials less corrupt and more responsive to public concerns. But the only accessible outlet for farmers and workers to complain is the network of petition and appeals offices, a legacy of imperial rule. A new survey by Yu Jianrong, a leading sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, found that petitions to the central government had increased 46 percent in 2003 from the year before, but that only two-hundredths of 1 percent of those who used the system said it worked. Last month, as many as 100,000 farmers in Sichuan Province, frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that claimed their land, took matters into their own hands. They seized Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the dam site for days. It took 10,000 paramilitary troops to quell the unrest. Also in November, in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, in central China, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers attacked a police station after a traffic dispute. Days later, in Guangdong Province, in the far south, riots erupted and a toll booth was burned down after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use a bridge. In mid-December, a village filled with migrant workers in Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after the police caught a 15-year-old migrant stealing a bicycle and beat him to death. Up to 50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported. Wanzhou officials initially treated their riot in October as a fluke. They ordered Mr. Hu to declare on television that he is a fruit vendor, not a public official, and that his confrontation with Mr. Yu was a mistake. The police arrested a dozen people and declared social order restored. But the uprising alarmed Beijing, which told local officials they would be sacked if they failed to prevent recurrences, according to Chinese journalists briefed on the matter. Luo Gan, the member of the Politburo Standing Committee who is in charge of law and order, issued national guidelines warning that "sudden mass incidents" were increasing and calling for tighter police measures. More than a dozen people interviewed in Wanzhou, part of Chongqing Municipality, described the city as tense. All said that they still believed that Mr. Hu was indeed an official and that the government concocted a cover story to calm things down. They say the anger excited by the riot awaits only a new affront. The Chance Encounter Like many farmers in the steeply graded hills along the Yangtze, Mr. Yu, 57, supplements his income hauling loads up and down city roads - grain, fertilizer, air conditioners, anything that he can balance on a bamboo pole and hoist on his slender shoulder. Sweaty and dirty, porters put their low-paying profession on parade. They are often referred to simply as bian dan, or pole men. Mr. Yu's lot is better than some others. He has another sideline collecting hair cuttings off the floors of beauty salons and barber shops, packing them in big burlap bags and selling them to wig-makers down south. On Oct. 18, he spent several hours collecting hair from upscale salons along Baiyan Road, a busy shopping street that runs near the government square downtown. His load was light - two bags of loose locks - and he scurried down the sidewalk to lunch. "Hey, pole man, you got dirt all over my pants!" he heard a woman shout. When he turned to face her, the man by her side, Mr. Hu, was glaring at him. "What are you looking at, bumpkin?" Mr. Yu recalls Mr. Hu saying. Mr. Yu is mild mannered, with a slightly raffish grin stained yellow from chain smoking. Mr. Hu, wearing a coat and tie and leather shoes, looked like he might be important. Mr. Yu said he should have let the moment pass. He did not. "I work like this so that my daughter and son can dress better than I do, so don't look down on me," he recalled saying. Then he added, "I sell my strength just as a prostitute sells her body." Mr. Yu said he was drawing a general comparison. Mr. Hu and his young wife, Zeng Qingrong, apparently thought he had insinuated something else. She jerked his shirt collar and slapped his ear. Mr. Hu picked up Mr. Yu's fallen pole and struck him in the legs and back repeatedly. Perhaps for the benefit of the crowd, Mr. Hu shouted that it was Mr. Yu, sprawled on the pavement, who was in big trouble. "I'm a public official," Mr. Hu said, according to Mr. Yu and other eyewitnesses. "If this guy causes me more problems, I'll pay 20,000 kuai" - about $2,500 - "and have him knocked off." Those words never appeared in the state-controlled media. But is difficult to find anyone in Wanzhou today who has not heard some version of Mr. Hu's bluster: The putative official - he has been identified in the rumor mill as the deputy chief of the local land bureau - had boasted that he could have a porter killed for $2,500. It was a call to arms. Mr. Hu's threat, spread by mobile phones, text messages and the swelling crowd, encapsulated a thousand bitter grievances. "I heard him say those exact words," said Wen Jiabao, another porter who says he witnessed the confrontation. "It proves that it's better to be rich than poor, but that being an official is even better than being rich." Xiang Lin, a 18-year-old auto mechanic, had seen China's rising wealth when he worked near Shanghai. But when he returned home to Wanzhou, he felt frustrated that his plan to open a repair shop foundered. He was drawn downtown by the excitement. "Don't officials realize that we would not have any economic development in Wanzhou without the porters?" Mr. Xiang asked. Cai Shizhong, a taxi driver, was angered when the authorities created a company to control taxi licenses, which he says cost him thousands of dollars but brought no benefits. The police also fine taxi drivers left and right, he said. "If you drive a private car, they leave you alone because you might be important," Mr. Cai said. "If you drive a taxi, they find any excuse to take your money." Peng Daosheng's home was flooded by the rising reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam. He was supposed to receive $4,000 in compensation as well as a new home. But his new apartment is smaller and less well located, and the cash never arrived. "The officials take all the money for themselves," said Mr. Peng, who spent eight hours protesting that night. "I guess that's why that guy had $2,500 to kill someone." It took the police more than four hours to remove Mr. Hu and Mr. Yu from the scene. The crowd surrounded police cars and refused to budge, afraid the police would cover up the beating, and even punish Mr. Yu. "People knew the matter would never be resolved fairly behind closed doors," Mr. Yu said. Even after the police formed a cordon around two cars - one for Mr. Hu and his wife, another for Mr. Yu - the crowd smashed the windows of the car carrying the couple. It was nearly 5 p.m. before the vehicles crawled through the assembled masses. A Loss of Control The police may have hoped that removing the main actors from the scene would defuse the tension. Instead, the crowd rampaged. At 6 p.m., a police van was surrounded and the policeman inside was beaten with bricks. Seven or eight people tipped the car over, stuffed toilet paper into the gas tank and set it ablaze, according to witnesses and a police report. When a fire truck arrived, the fire fighters were forced out and their truck commandeered. A driver smashed it into brick wall, then backed up and repeated the move to render the truck immobile. "They lost control at once," recalled Mr. Cai, the taxi driver, who wandered through the crowd that day. "Suddenly the police were nobody and the people were in charge." The local government never published an estimate of how many people took part in the protest. But unofficial estimates by Chinese journalists on the scene ranged from 30,000 to 70,000, enough to stop all traffic downtown and fill the government square. By 8 p.m., the rally focused on the 20-story headquarters of the Wanzhou District Government, with its blue-tinted windows and imposing terrace facing the square. The crowd chanted, "Hand over the assassin!" Riot-police officers in full protective gear - but carrying no guns - held the terrace. Officials with loudspeakers urged the crowd to disperse, promising that the incident would be handed according to law. But the mob now followed its own law. An assembly line formed from a nearby construction site. Concrete building slabs were ferried along the line, then shattered with sledgehammers to make projectiles. Front-line rioters hurled the rocks at the police - tentatively at first, then in volleys. Under the barrage, the police retreated. Protesters charged the terrace, shattered the windows and doors of government headquarters and surged inside. Official documents were scattered. Protesters dumped computers and office furniture off the terrace. Soon, a raging fire illuminated the square with its flickering orange glow. Li Jian, 22, took part in the plunder. A young peasant, he had found a city job as a short-order cook. But he longed to study computers, said his father, Li Wanfa. The family bought an old computer keyboard so the young man could learn typing. "He wanted to go to high school but the school said his cultural level was not high enough," Mr. Li said. "They said a country boy like him should be a cook." The police arrested young Mr. Li scurrying through the melee with a Legend-brand computer that belonged to the government, according to an arrest notice. Yet even at the height of the incident, rioters set limits. They did not attack any of the restaurants or department stores along the government square, focusing their wrath on symbols of official power. By midnight, the crowd dwindled on its own. When paramilitary troops finally arrived on the scene after 3 a.m., there were only a few thousand hard-core protesters left. "Most people went home," said Mr. Peng, the man whose home had been flooded by the dam. "But the armed police were fierce. They beat you even if you kneeled down before them." The Tensions Persist The local government praised its own handling of the riot. An assessment published three days afterward in The Three Gorges City News, the daily paper of the Wanzhou Communist Party, also declared the uprising had no lasting ramifications. "The district government displayed its strong governing ability at a crucial moment," the report said. "This incident was caused by a handful of agitators with ulterior motives who whipped up a street-side dispute into a mass riot." The uprising did dissipate as quickly as it emerged. Baiyan Road now bustles with afternoon shoppers. After work, dancers bundled against the damp chill use government square as an outdoor ballroom, a synthesized two-step beat filling the night air. Yet the underlying tensions did not disappear. When the Wan Min Cotton Textile Factory declared bankruptcy in mid-December, scores of policemen occupied the factory grounds to prevent a riot. The next day, a handful of workers from the factor went to city hall to protest. Several hundred uniformed police surrounded them. Mr. Xiang, the auto mechanic, was arrested for throwing stones and taken into custody. One day, returning from the cold showers inmates were required to take in the unheated jail, guards told him to kneel. One elbowed him in the back and several others kicked him in the gut. As he lay prostrate, a prison supervisor said: "Nothing happened to you here, did it? You're a smart kid." He could not eat for two days. "We were all brothers inside," he said of his fellow detainees. "The officials despise the ordinary people and are not afraid to bully them." Then there's Mr. Yu. He missed the riot that occurred in his name, but has been under pressure ever since. The government kept him isolated in a hospital for nearly two weeks, even though bruises on his legs and the stitches he needed above his eye had healed. His daughter and son were told to take a vacation, paid by the government, to avoid contact with the news media. "They told us not to talk or it would hurt the city," Mr. Yu said in his first interview. Yet he said what really shook him was the reaction to the statement he made to Wanzhou television on Oct. 20, two days after the riot. The government told him to appear - he was still under guard - and had prepared questions in advance. "They told me to emphasize the importance of law and order," he said. "I was told just to answer the questions and not to say anything else." What he said on the evening news sounded innocuous enough. "Let this be handled by law," Mr. Yu told viewers. "Everyone should stay at home." So he was unprepared for the backlash. Relatives of those arrested criticized him for propagandizing for the government, saying their kin felt betrayed. Neighbors warned him not to plant rice this year because his enemies would just rip it out. His wife says she wants to move because she has heard too many threats. Mr. Yu is understandably confused. "First an official tries to break my legs because I am a dirty porter," he said. "Now the common people want to break my legs because I spoke for the government." Chris Buckley contributed reporting for this article. -------- russia / chechnya Chechnya invasion called 'a mistake' Reuters Friday 31 December 2004 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C920FE56-3CA1-469F-98A7-8DBC0FCBBC55.htm Russia's decision to send troops into separatist Chechnya 10 years ago was a mistake, according to the region's Moscow-backed leader. Alu Alkhanov, elected president of the southern province in August, said on Friday that foreign spies aiming to weaken Russia had sucked the Kremlin into the attack, which only served to strengthen anti-Moscow rebels. Russian forces poured into Chechnya in early December 1994, but did not meet tough resistance until they entered the capital Grozny on New Year's Eve. Lightly armed rebels destroyed tank columns and killed scores of soldiers. Alkhanov said Chechnya's separatist government led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was elected amid the Soviet collapse, had been weak but the attack united Chechens behind him. 'Uniting figure' "This December military operation was a mistake. Thanks to it Dudayev once again became a uniting figure for the Chechens," he said in an interview with the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily coinciding with the war's 10-year anniversary. Although Russian forces killed Dudayev in 1996, Chechen rebels have kept fighting under successor Aslan Maskhadov. Rebels in turn denounce Alkhanov as a Kremlin stooge, and pledge to keep fighting until Russia concedes defeat. Their regular offers of peace talks are rejected by the Kremlin. Alkhanov said foreign fighters who had come to Chechnya had driven out the workers needed to rebuild the region. "Instead of oil workers, farm directors and builders came Arab mercenaries, explosive specialists and foreign spies. And with their help, we have totally destroyed our scientific, industrial and cultural base." Kremlin spared These spies were to blame for the war in the first place, Alkhanov said, refusing to point the finger at Kremlin officials who analysts see as having blundered into the war without realising its consequences. "The same forces that destroyed the Soviet Union did all they could to ensure there wouldn't be sanity on Chechen soil as well ... . Our opponents didn't need a strong Russia, like they didn't need a strong Soviet Union," he said. Russia's military in Chechnya said on Friday it had strengthened security to protect New Year celebrations. Rebels have in the past marked the war's anniversaries with attacks, and one serviceman was injured by a bomb on Friday, Interfax news agency reported. -------- space Space-Based Laser Research Researchers are developing a reliable and versatile high-powered, space-based laser for missile defense systems December 2004 AFRL's Directed Energy Directorate, Laser Division, High Power Gas and Chemical Lasers Branch, Kirtland AFB NM http://www.cndyorks.gn.apc.org/yspace/articles/bmd/sbl_lives.htm This is an article from the Air Force Research Laboratory's in house publication. It proves that MDA continues to research Space Based Lasers, despite the fact that the formal program was killed in 2000. It is interesting that funding seems to be hidden in the Small Business Innovation pot. In the last 25 years, the Directed Energy Directorate provided the enabling laser technology for the Airborne Laser program with the invention and development of the chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL).1,2,3 More recently, the directorate established research programs aimed at improving, inventing, and developing technologies relevant to space-based laser applications. Although Congress cut the Department of Defense's Space-Based Laser (SBL) acquisition program in 2000, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) maintains an active interest in developing the technology necessary for space-based missile defense, and work within the directorate continues at the basic and applied research levels. SBLs present unique challenges for laser developers. The requirements of autonomous operation, minimal logistics, low weight, and radiation-hardened materials are very significant basic research and engineering issues. To date, only chemical lasers appear to have the potential to generate the requisite power levels and beam qualities to meet mission requirements. Furthermore, researchers have been able to scale only the COIL and hydrogen fluoride (HF) chemical lasers to very-high-energy systems. Unfortunately, both devices have properties that make them less than ideal for space-based applications. Researchers demonstrated the fundamental HF laser (baseline technology of the SBL program) at very high powers. The fundamental HF laser operates at 2.6 to 3.0 µm and is well suited for targets in space. The utility of the HF laser for applications that require long path lengths through the atmosphere is slightly diminished by atmospheric water absorption at approximately 2.7 µm. This problem is partially mitigated by the overlap between a strong line and a transmission window at approximately 2.9 µm that allows a fraction of the HF laser radiation to pass through the atmosphere without complete absorption. In addition, researchers expect the large optics required to direct the beam across the very long path lengths to be extremely heavy and difficult to manufacture.COIL, on the other hand, operates at very high energies and at an atmospherically friendly wavelength of 1.3 µm. Unfortunately, contemporary COIL devices use a two-phase chemical mechanism that is ill suited for the zero gravity environment in space. Furthermore, the key COIL ingredient of basic hydrogen peroxide is difficult to store for extended periods of time. Although the concept of generating electronically excited oxygen via electric discharge originated in the 1950s,4 advances in plasma generation techniques fueled an increased interest in recent years in the development of electrical discharge sources of electronically excited oxygen for COIL applications.5,6,7,8 The goal of this work is to generate sufficient quantities of the energy carrier at high density and at conditions suitable for a laser device. Researchers have examined a variety of discharge techniques over the last 10 to 15 years with limited success. In general, the most difficult aspect of this work is to engineer and build a discharge that operates at both the proper electro- and thermo-dynamic conditions. If successful, this work could revolutionize the utility of oxygen iodine lasers by significantly reducing the logistics trail and simultaneously improving the maintainability and supportability of the laser device. In fact, if researchers can eliminate the chemical plant used to fuel a traditional COIL device, a space-based COIL may be viable. The directorate is leading this effort through collaborative efforts with international partners, as well as domestic experts, by leveraging funding provided by the MDA's Small Business Innovation Research program. In addition to this advanced COIL work, the HF overtone and all gas-phase iodine lasers (AGIL) are two concepts the directorate is developing that address key space-based laser issues. The HF overtone laser uses the same chemistry as the fundamental HF laser, but it operates on 1.3 µm vibrational overtone transitions rather than 2.7 µm fundamental vibrational transitions. Even though quantum mechanical constraints make overtone transitions 50 to 100 times weaker than fundamental transitions, extensive work by the US Army,9,10,11 TRW,12 and the University of Illinois13 shows that 50 to 90% of the power available in an HF fundamental laser can be extracted on the overtone. Unfortunately, HF overtone devices typically have small signal gains. As a result, all known HF overtone research devices use stable resonators to extract the energy. Large aperture, stable resonator-based laser systems have large divergences and are not well suited for long-range propagation applications. Improving the small signal gain is the focus of the directorate's work. Using state-of-theart diagnostics, researchers are characterizing HF laser devices and optimizing the overtone gain. Most recently, the directorate's team used a small-scale, discharge-driven device and measured peak gains14,15,16 in the range of 1.0 to 1.7 × 10-3 cm-1. The highest previously reported value was 8.5 × 10-4 cm-1 in 1993.13 Future work will utilize a combustion-driven supersonic HF device that should produce even higher gain values. In addition to the development of an overtone small signal gain probe, researchers are working on other important diagnostic devices for HF lasers including a fundamental small signal gain probe and advanced flow visualization tools. The directorate is also pioneering the development of new chemical lasers that have the potential for use in space. In 2000, researchers in the directorate's High Power Gas and Chemical Lasers Branch, demonstrated the first new chemical laser in nearly 25 years.17 The AGIL is a laser technology exclusive to AFRL. Because AGIL operates on the same electronically excited iodine transitions as COIL, there are no atmospheric absorption issues. Furthermore, instead of COIL's twophase chemistry, AGIL produces electronically excited nitrogen chloride molecules by all gas-phase reactions. While the initial demonstrations achieved only 180 mw of output power, researchers produced an output power in excess of 30 W in more recent experiments with a larger, improved AGIL device.18 In addition to scaling the power, the AGIL Team increased the small signal gain from 2.5 × 10-4 to 4.2 × 10-4 cm-1. The next-generation AGIL will incorporate HF laser technology to demonstrate an AGIL that uses fully scalable technology. Instead of using non-scalable and density-limited discharge tubes to produce fluoride atoms, researchers will integrate an HFlaser- like chemical combustor into the design. The directorate hopes the combination of new diagnostics and laser device options will pave the way for more reliable, versatile, and technologically mature laser devices for future SBL missile defense systems. Dr. Gerald C. Manke II, of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, wrote this article. For more information contact TECH CONNECT at (800) 203-6451 or place a request at http://www.afrl.af.mil/techconn/index.htm. Reference document DE-03-02. -------- spies CIA goes public in classified ads ASSOCIATED PRESS December 31, 2004 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041230-111257-2346r.htm Wanted: Good doctors to analyze the health of terrorists and foreign leaders. Must pass polygraph and other "security procedures." To apply, call the CIA. That's the classified ad running in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, right between an ad calling for an internist in Chicago and another promising "exciting opportunities in geriatric primary care." "As an intelligence officer working with a team of physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists, you will assess the physical health of foreign leaders and terrorists, and study global health issues," the advertisement reads. "Your consultation with all levels of government will help to provide accurate, informed and balanced analysis, ensuring a healthy America." Advertising for medical intelligence analysts and an array of other experts is nothing new for the secretive agency, but the CIA is now looking more publicly than it has in years past. Similar jobs are advertised on the agency's Web site. "The CIA routinely places ads in publications for people with specific skills," said CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. The medical analysts, like agency predecessors for decades, are hired to analyze the health of world leaders, both friendly and unfriendly, for intelligence and negotiating purposes. The winning candidates also would produce reports on the national security implications of health crises, such as the tsunami in Asia that has killed about 114,000 people, Mr. Crispell said. No salary information was included in the ad. -------- us Iraq War Dead Friday, December 31, 2004 Washington Post; Page A26 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37950-2004Dec30?language=printer Iraq War Dead Number of total U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war as announced by the Pentagon yesterday: 1,328 Fatalities In hostile actions: 1,042 In non-hostile actions: 286 Staff Sgt. Nathaniel J. Nyren, 31, of Reston; 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex. Killed Dec. 28 in Baghdad when a civilian vehicle hit his military vehicle. Navy Seaman Pablito Pena Briones Jr., 22, of Anaheim, Calif.; 1st Marine Division Detachment, based at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Died Dec. 28 in Fallujah of a non-hostile gunshot wound. Total fatalities include three civilian employees of the Defense Department. A full list of casualties is available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation SOURCE: Defense Department's http://www.defenselink.mil/news ---- Post-9/11 conflicts send 1 million to battle zones Published December 31, 2004 ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041230-111258-1607r Nearly 1 million members of the U.S. armed forces have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other danger zones since the September 11 terror attacks, and almost a third of them have been sent more than once, figures released by the Pentagon show. That figure has implications both for the military and society at large, analysts on the military say. For the first time in 30 years, a significant portion of society will have seen the misery and violence of war for an extended period. "The only silver lining you can find in these numbers is that, for a generation to come, America will have many, many adults who understand the reality of what war is all about," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. "Today, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors are seeing war up close. They will carry that knowledge into the future as they return to the United States." But not everyone. During Vietnam, more Americans knew someone who served, and someone who died. The post-September 11 wars are far less a part of the mainstream American experience, said Charles C. Moskos, a Northwestern University professor who is an observer on the military and society. "It's not a generational experience," he said. More than 3.4 million people served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, including draftees. More than 58,000 died. About 700,000 Americans served in the Persian Gulf during the 1991 war with Iraq, but many came home quickly after the liberation of Kuwait. Of those, 382 died. Since September 11, 2001, military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are close to 1,500. Today's military is billed as an all-volunteer, professional force, though tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves are serving in Iraq. "The reality is you will have had a group of Americans who bore almost all of the burden of citizenship," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "For most Americans, it is being fought by other families' sons and daughters, who are both out of sight and often out of mind." He described the situation as "a society which pays a fraction of its population to take all the real risks of citizenship." The press can tell only so much of the soldiers' story to the rest of the country. "I don't think you have much information as to what it means to spend six months in a combat zone. You can't easily communicate what it means to come back with serious and debilitating wounds and have to live with the aftermath," Mr. Cordesman said. More than 10,000 U.S. service members have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The demographics of the soldiers have changed since earlier wars. More women are going to war. More young men and women are leaving spouses and children at home. "Going overseas [for a married soldier] is going to be more traumatic than it would be for a single soldier," Mr. Moskos said. Still, he said, "the social background of the troops is basically the same. These are solid, working-class men and women. They are not in any sense the bottom of the barrel, but they are not the children of the privileged, either." Another difference: The troops overseas are not interacting with the indigenous cultures the way they have in the past. Americans saw most of the world during World War II; GIs walked around Saigon during the Vietnam War; most of Baghdad today is too dangerous. Even allied countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan minimize any U.S. presence for fear of angering the public. "It's going to be the first major war we've fought where there are not going to be GI war brides" in any numbers, Mr. Moskos said. According to figures provided by the Pentagon as of Sept. 30, more than 955,000 members of the armed forces had been deployed to danger zones since September 11. The majority served in Iraq and nearby countries, with a smaller number serving in Afghanistan. Troops who have gone to countries like the Philippines, which has received U.S. assistance in fighting an Islamic insurgency, are included in the count. The pace of deployments to that country make it likely that the 1 million figure will be reached soon, if it hasn't already. The number will continue to grow along with the length of the U.S. stay in Iraq. So far, more than 303,000 have been sent more than once, the figures show -- evidence of the strain on a military that some say is too small for all the missions it is assigned. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argues otherwise, saying its reorganization of the force will ease the burden. "What the Pentagon statistics reflect is a military that is fully committed, in fact overcommitted, worldwide," Mr. Thompson said. ---- Illness taking grim toll at nation's boot camps Seattle Times staff reporter Friday, December 31, 2004 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002136521_bootcamp31m.html Army recruit Dale Patterson lost consciousness less than a mile into a required run and collapsed on a dusty road at Fort Sill, Okla. When he came to, he was cradled in the arms of another recruit. "I don't know what's wrong with me," Patterson managed to whisper. Then he stopped breathing. Within an hour, Patterson, 25, a former college runner in his third week of boot camp, was declared dead. "He had just entered boot camp," said Patterson's widow, Stacey, of Tucson, Ariz. "I thought it would be the safest place on earth." Army investigators found no explanation for the November 2003 tragedy. They promptly closed the case, terming it a natural death, "cause unknown" — even though the base was plagued by a respiratory virus and Patterson recently had sought treatment for flulike symptoms. Patterson's death and its swift closure is an example of broad, deep-rooted health-care problems inside the nation's boot camps, a Seattle Times investigation found. About the virus Adenovirus is a common virus that attacks the respiratory system, causing labored breathing, sore throat and fever. Most people experience at least one attack by age 10 and recover in a few days. Spread by cough or touch, the germ can be fatal, particularly to children or those with weak immune systems. At a time when the Iraq war puts each recruit in high demand, at least 1 in 9 are treated for acute pneumonia, adenovirus or other respiratory diseases during their short but intense training stints, according to a Times analysis of military records. Infection rates at boot camps have risen each of the past five years — often to epidemic levels, military medical-surveillance records show. Today, military boot-camp barracks dwarf nursing homes, dormitories and all other close-quarter institutional settings for the number and ferocity of such outbreaks. Up to 3,000 recruits each month are treated for acute respiratory illnesses, which flourish in overcrowded barracks where beds are stacked head-to-toe with stressed and fatigued troops. Even so, the military often does not effectively treat recruits or inform them about these hazards, interviews and records show. Many times the sick recruits received superficial examinations and were sent back to barracks with over-the-counter medications and told to monitor their own conditions, records show. Defense officials said the boot-camp health-care system provides superior, prompt care and successfully treats tens of thousands of recruits each year. But the military has not revealed the full extent of these problems to the public or the victims' families. In Spanaway, Pierce County, for instance, the grandparents of 18-year-old Army National Guard recruit Matthew Nish struggle for answers after being told their grandson died in July of heat exhaustion at Fort Jackson, S.C. Guardians of Nish, they do not believe that explanation and have received few details other than a $7,100 bill for his medical treatment. Patterson's family also believes the Army has given it an incomplete account. What family members weren't told was that, four days before Dale Patterson collapsed, another Fort Sill recruit was hospitalized with nearly identical symptoms — coughing, sore throat and difficulty breathing, records show. At the moment that Fort Sill commanders were telling Stacey Patterson that they had no clues to her husband's death, 18-year-old Pfc. Sean Fitzgerald clung to life. Then he died, too. While Patterson's military autopsy was inconclusive, Fitzgerald's autopsy, overseen by civilian doctors because he died at a hospital off-base, identified what killed him: adenovirus. At the time, adenovirus, which mimics the flu, was raging at the Oklahoma boot camp. Most people affected by the virus are under age 10 and recover on their own within days. For some, particularly those with stressed or weakened immune systems, the virus is devastating. In rare cases, it is fatal. For a quarter of a century, the Pentagon controlled the virus by inoculating each service member with a vaccine it developed and owned. But the Defense Department, seeing the disease under control, abandoned the vaccine in 1996 as too expensive, The Times reported in October. The military now admits its blunder and is racing to create a new vaccine, possibly by 2006. The Pentagon cannot simply resurrect the 1972 vaccine because its manufacturing process is slightly different and clinical trials are required for safety. At least six recruits have died from the virus since 2000. At Fort Sill, adenovirus gripped the base in late 2002 and early 2003, and spiked again during the month Patterson and Fitzgerald died. Fort Sill commanders never told either family about the outbreak. Stacey Patterson said she grew suspicious during her husband's memorial service at the base. "There were dozens of recruits," she said. "Everyone was coughing." "Sick as all hell" "I'm sick as all hell." On the morning of his death, Nov. 4, 2003, Dale Patterson woke at 5 a.m., as required, and prepared for the morning run. He notified a drill sergeant that he wasn't feeling well. A former competitive runner at the University of Arizona, Patterson was a muscular 175 pounds with six-pack abs, his wife says. In boot camp, he usually ran in Group A, the fastest runners. This day he asked to run with Group D, the slowest. A week earlier, he sought care at a base medical clinic. After a cursory exam, he returned to his barracks under the Army's "self-care program" with a small bottle of over-the-counter cough syrup and Tylenol, according to medical records. Afterward, he wrote to his wife, Stacey, "I went to sick call because I was near death." In a letter a few days later, he wrote, "I'm sick as all hell." He remained silent as his symptoms worsened, toughing it out in a culture that instills a fierce pride to endure and overcome. But such stoicism also makes it difficult for commanders to tell the malingerers from the truly ill, Army investigative documents show. Not long after the run began, 17 recruits doubled over in pain. In the jaundiced eyes of drill sergeants, all of them looked at first like slackers. One of the 17 was Patterson. More than 100,000 recruits will pass through the gates of the nation's eight largest training centers this year. On average, 10 recruits die each year from disease or accident. There have been at least 305 training deaths since 1979, a Times analysis of defense and public records shows. Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, acknowledged the infection problems in training facilities. He said he is trying to increase hygiene at boot camps, where scores of recruits may share a single sink and are given no time to even wash their hands during their regimented days. Winkenwerder is also exploring the alternative use of antibiotics while waiting for the new vaccine. A recent study indicates death rates are lower in boot camps than in comparable civilian age groups, a defense official said. The big outbreaks get attention, such as the 2002 pneumonia epidemic at Camp Pendleton in San Diego that hospitalized at least 323 Marines and killed one recruit, Pvt. Miguel Zavala. The isolated, individual cases often go unnoticed. Marine Pfc. Bret Moran, 18, was found dead in his sleeping bag Nov. 18 at Parris Island, S.C. In his 10th week of training, he was in the last stage of a 54-hour endurance exercise called the Crucible. A recruit told The Times that Moran had been sick but tried to tough it out. Army officials said recruits are encouraged to immediately seek medical care. Recruits are not stigmatized, nor are their records blemished for reporting illness, the officials said. Matthew Nish of Spanaway entered the Army at age 17, intending to use it to bootstrap himself into college. On July 14, he collapsed about 10:30 p.m. during a 72-hour field-training exercise called Victory Forge, a rite of passage at Fort Jackson, S.C. That night, as the temperature hovered at 85 degrees, Nish died. It was only four days after his 18th birthday. Nish's grandfather, Alvin Whipple Sr., a retired Air Force officer, doesn't believe his grandson dropped from heat exhaustion. Nish had been hospitalized with a respiratory infection a week earlier. Whipple said the Army has not provided more details. Infection-tracking records obtained by The Times show Nish died as the respiratory-infection rate spiked to epidemic levels at Fort Jackson. Nish described his illness in a June 19 letter: Stacey Patterson received a flag and her deceased husband's military beret from the Army. "I have found my way to a hospital bed. I have been fighting off a fever for three days because I couldn't miss training and by the time we had a few days of non-mandatory training I had 102.1 degrees, fever, bad diarea [sic] and severe dehydration. It has taken me 24 hours of sleep and drugs to get to the point of feeling well enough to write." A month ago, the Whipples received a medical bill for $7,100 for their grandson. "I couldn't believe it," Joan Whipple said. She prayed that the Army would take responsibility. The Army told The Times that the bill had been sent in error by a subcontractor and that Nish's grandparents owed nothing. The Army apologized to them. An Army training manual summarizes, "As week three begins, the recruits must rely on sheer determination to meet the mounting physical and mental challenges of the simulated combat scenarios." Acting incoherently Dale Patterson was about three-quarters of a mile into the 2-mile run when he dropped to the back of the D group, jogging at a slow 11-minute-mile pace. He told Spc. Kristopher Rodgers that he felt lightheaded. "He asked me to stay with him if he fell out," Rodgers told Army investigators. "This was my first major clue that he had a problem, because he was one of the hardest-working soldiers in 2nd platoon. He never slacked no matter what we were doing." Head down, chest heaving, Patterson began to walk. Sixteen stragglers also stopped running, but they were corralled, berated and ushered back to the pack, military interview records show. Senior Drill Sgt. Clinton Chandler encouraged Patterson to keep running. Patterson staggered 50 feet and fell. "I then encouraged Spc. Patterson to get back on his feet," Chandler told investigators. "Approximately 10 seconds later he sat down on the railing and I again encouraged him to keep running. "Spc. Patterson began walking again. Two or three steps later Spc. Patterson fell to the ground and rolled off the road and under a guard railing. Patterson was acting incoherently. He was moving his arms and not responding to commands. His eyes rolled back. Short choppy breaths." As he promised, Rodgers did try to stay with Patterson when he first fell. Rodgers held his friend, softly calling his name, his statement said. After about 30 seconds, Patterson opened his eyes and whispered repeatedly that he didn't know what was wrong with him. Then a drill sergeant stopped and told Rodgers he had fallen too far behind the pack. He was ordered to leave and continue running, records show. "That was the last time I saw and spoke to Spc. Patterson," Rodgers wrote. By all accounts, Patterson was promptly transported to the medical clinic, where emergency procedures failed. He was pronounced dead. "Some of the medics were shaken because this was their first death experience," reported Maj. Bruce Lovins, a base doctor. Pfc. Ryan Johnson, a fellow recruit, explained to investigators why Patterson tried to tough it out. "He didn't want to be stigmatized by drill sergeants and he didn't feel he received good treatment" from the medical clinic. Stacey Patterson, 26, opened a cardboard box and spread records of her husband's life onto the living-room floor at her Tucson, Ariz., apartment: love letters, a posthumous recognition from college, snapshots of family and the memorial service, the American flag that draped his coffin. Her mother and stepfather, Sue and Tom LaVoie, contacted The Times after reading an Oct. 13 article that detailed, for the first time, the fatal swath of adenovirus in boot camps. They believe the virus killed Dale, too. Midway through an interview, Tom LaVoie got so emotional he left the room, saying, "How can one little girl lose the two most significant men in her life?" Stacey Patterson's father died in 1981 in a fighter-jet crash near Las Vegas, her mother explained. Joan and Alvin Whipple Sr. of Spanaway mistakenly were billed $7,100 for medical care for their grandson Matthew Nish, 18, after he died in a boot camp in South Carolina. They do not believe he died of heat exhaustion, as the Army explained. "She's watched me my whole life and that's what has given her hope now," Sue LaVoie said. Stacey Patterson wants to move on, too. But she also wants to shine a spotlight on those who volunteered to serve but never made it to the battlefield. "I'm hoping that public awareness of the infection problem can help save just one other life," she said. After her husband's memorial service, base commanders allowed her to retrace his final day — the road where he fell, his barracks and bunk. In his locker she found a note to her on a ruled yellow tablet, apparently written the night before he died. "Another end to a boring day. Tomorrow is a running day. An injury could cost so much. 44 days left, baby. Until tomorrow, I love you." Michael J. Berens: 206-464-2288 or mberens@seattletimes.com ---- Army Officer Explains How Armor Adds Costs Fri Dec 31, 1:30 PM ET By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041231/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_vehicle_armor WASHINGTON - Bolting extra armor on Humvee utility vehicles undoubtedly saves soldiers' lives, but it also adds indirectly to operating costs, a senior Army officer said Thursday. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, an acquisition official, was not suggesting that adding armor is not worth the expense. He was explaining to reporters the circumstances in which the Army has responded to insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that have killed and maimed hundreds of soldiers in Iraq. The extra 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of weight on each Humvee causes the vehicle's suspension system to wear out three or four times faster than normal, Sorenson said. The extra weight also adds to fuel consumption, he said. The vast majority of Humvees were not armored initially because they were not intended for use in a high-threat environment and the Army had never seen an IED threat like it faces in Iraq. Humvees that come off the assembly line with armor already installed — known as "up-armored" Humvees — have a reinforced chassis that is designed to handle the extra weight. Because the Army has not been able to obtain those quickly enough, it has been forced to bolt armor onto ordinary Humvees. Sorenson said the Army expects to meet its goal of having 8,105 armored Humvees in Iraq by March 2005. It is near 80 percent of that goal. Sorenson said that when the initial phase of the war ended May 1, 2003, after the Saddam Hussein regime had been ousted from Baghdad, the U.S. military had no idea it would face an extensive IED threat. The military has responded not only by armoring its Humvees and trucks but by equipping each soldier with improved body armor and pursuing means of defeating IEDs before they explode. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence Spate of lasers in cockpits raises terrorism concerns December 31, 2004 By William Glanz THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041230-111258-1377r.htm Laser light has pierced the cockpits of six commercial airplanes in the past four days, and federal investigators are trying to determine whether terrorists are targeting aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration has reported several hundred incidents of laser lights beamed into cockpits in recent years, but a sudden increase has raised alarm. The cockpit of a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 was illuminated by green light as it approached Cleveland at about 8 p.m. Monday, as the plane was flying at an altitude of 8,500 feet to 10,000 feet, about 15 miles from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The laser light appeared to have come from Warrensville Heights, a suburb. The FBI said the laser did not affect the pilot's ability to land the plane. FBI spokesman William Carter said investigators are trying to determine whether people are playing with lasers or whether the incidents are deliberate attempts by terrorists to disrupt pilots' ability to maneuver aircraft. He said there is no evidence of terrorist activity or of intent to use lasers as weapons, but that terror groups have discussed such methods. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent an intelligence bulletin to law-enforcement agencies last month to alert them that terrorist groups have discussed using laser beams to disrupt pilots and cause plane crashes. Five similar incidents have been reported in the past four days. Investigators are looking into reports that lasers were flashed into the cockpits of two flights in Colorado Springs and three other unidentified flights. It is a federal felony to interfere with flight crews. "Our concern is about damage to the eyes of the flight crew," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. Laser light never has caused a plane to crash, but "the potential for an aviation accident definitely exists," the FAA's Civil Aerospace Medical Institute reported in June. The cockpit of a fast-moving plane is not an easy target, said Pete Janhunen, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, the union representing pilots. "It would be difficult" to strike a cockpit with a laser, he said, "but it's a threat we need to study." Even low levels of laser light can impair a pilot's vision, the medical institute's report said. The pilot of a Skywest Airlines flight suffered multiple burns to his right cornea while approaching Los Angeles International Airport in November 1996. On the final approach, the pilot relinquished control of the plane to the co-pilot. In 1995, the first officer of a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to San Antonio was temporarily blinded by laser light, and the incident persuaded the FAA to ban the outdoor use of lasers in Las Vegas. In September, a Delta Air Lines pilot reported damage to his retina from a laser beam. The pilot was guiding a Boeing 737 into Salt Lake City International Airport. The flight landed safely, but the plane's first officer later felt stinging in one eye and was diagnosed with a burned retina. "We continue to treat that like an anomaly," Mr. Janhunen said. "But who knows?" Low-level laser light can temporarily blur a pilot's vision and make it difficult to land an aircraft, the FAA report concluded, but a strong laser could blind a crew member and make it virtually impossible to land a plane. Pilots are most vulnerable to the effects of laser light during approach, landing, departure maneuvers and takeoff, the 2004 report concluded. "Aviators conducting low-level flight operations at night are particularly vulnerable to accidental or malicious laser illumination," the report said. -------- torture FOIA Eyes Only The latest torture documents show the government still isn't coming clean. By Eric Umansky slate.msn.com Friday, Dec. 31, 2004, at 9:13 AM PT http://slate.msn.com/id/2111638/fr/rss/ Over the past month, the biggest scoops in the news business have come from ... an organization that's not in the news business. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered thousands of government documents detailing torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. One FBI memo about Gitmo cited "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations." It also repeatedly referred to a "cover-up." The White House has long insisted that detainee abuses, first detailed at Abu Ghraib, were isolated, unrelated to interrogations, and certainly not happening at Gitmo. While the documents don't prove that torture was official policy, they do, as an acerbic Washington Post editorial put it, "establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false." Wondering how it was that our nation's top news organizations were beaten to the punch, I contacted reporters and editors at four top papers—the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal—and asked if they had filed similar FOIA requests. I assumed that the journalists would cop to not having thought to do so, and, perhaps reluctantly, tip their hats to the ACLU. There was some of that. Indeed, of the four papers, only the Post filed detainee-related FOIAs. "I wish we had," said New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Philip Taubman, adding that his bureau has recently talked about "making more frequent and better use of FOIA." But other reporters weren't so quick to beat themselves up and placed at least some of the blame elsewhere, namely with the government itself. The Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin—who first raised questions about interrogation methods in 2002 and who earlier this year uncovered administration memos building the legal framework for torture—said he thought of filing FOIAs but didn't, mainly because of opportunity costs. FOIAs often take years, especially on national security matters; requests languish in bureaucratic blackholes, with the only recourse eventually being a time-consuming lawsuit, a prospect publishers don't relish. The whole process, reporters and others say, has become even less fruitful under the current administration. Coming from reporters who just got scooped, the complaints have more than a whiff of defensive hooey. They are also accurate. Consider the Washington Post's experience. After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in the spring, the paper filed a series of wide-ranging FOIAs. Things seemed to go well at first. In August, the Army told the Post that it was ready to release documents. Then came word from the Pentagon that it had set up a "special committee" to "review" and "consolidate" detainee-related FOIAs. "We are still eagerly awaiting the results," said investigative reporter James Grimaldi, who adds, "I have never heard of such a committee before. A skeptical person might say that this was just a move to put off the day they have to release the papers." Even the ACLU didn't hold out much hope for its FOIA request, made in October 2003. "There was disagreement about whether to even file," says Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer. "Some people thought we wouldn't be able to get a significant amount of information through FOIA and that it would be more effort than it was worth." Ultimately, he explained, they went ahead on the assumption that at best the government would release page after page of mostly blacked-out memos, which the ACLU could then turn into a nice press release. The pessimism about the Bush administration's FOIA habits traces back to a 2001 memo in which Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed government policy and told federal agencies the default stance should be to withhold documents. That's the opposite of the Clinton administration's policy, which the Post's Grimaldi summarized as, "When in doubt, let it out." In truth, the federal government has never been great on transparency. And there don't seem to be any studies quantifying the potential chilling effect of the Ashcroft memo. But this administration does have a much-noted fondness for secrecy, and reporters and others have flagged plenty of examples of what seems to be its resulting three-pronged strategy for FOIAs: Delay, deny, and redact. The ACLU faced that treatment. After the organization made its initial request, the Pentagon and other agencies dilly-dallied for months, denying ACLU requests to expedite the process. (Here's a timeline.) In the end, the government only coughed up papers after the ACLU took it to court, and won. But even that has been just a partial victory. The Pentagon has held onto many documents—"There are far more documents that haven't been released than have," says the ACLU's Jaffer—and the CIA insists that it doesn't even need to confirm whether the requested documents exist, let alone release them. Even in the memos and e-mails that have been let loose, there's a generous use of whiteout. One series of e-mails from the Defense Department has the subject header, "re: potential torture involving Iraqi detainees." The whole thread adds up to four pages, and with the exception of the subject headers, all are now blank. Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@hotmail.com. ---- Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition Earlier Policy Drew Criticism By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, December 31, 2004; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37687-2004Dec30?language=printer The Justice Department published a revised and expansive definition late yesterday of acts that constitute torture under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating one of the most criticized policy memorandums drafted during President Bush's first term. In a statement published on the department's Web site, the head of its Office of Legal Counsel declares that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms" and goes on to reject a previous statement that only "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" constitute torture punishable by law. That earlier definition of torture figured prominently in complaints by Democrats and human rights groups about White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who oversaw its creation and is Bush's nominee to become attorney general for the second term. The new memo's public release came one week before the start of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Gonzales's nomination. Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin said in the new memo that torture may consist of acts that fall short of provoking excruciating and agonizing pain and thus may include mere physical suffering or lasting mental anguish. His opinion is meant, according to its language, to undermine any notion that those who conduct harmful interrogations may be exempt from prosecution. This second effort by the Bush administration to parse the legal meaning of the word "torture" was provoked by the damaging political fallout from the disclosure this summer of the first memo, drafted in August 2002 and criticized by human rights lawyers and experts around the globe. Many of the critics charged that the first memo -- which they said laid out a very narrow view of what behavior might constitute torture and was crafted to help interrogators at the CIA evade prosecution -- created the context for a record of persistent ill treatment by that agency and the U.S. military of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and undisclosed locations. "Clearly the release of this now is backfilling for Gonzales's confirmation hearing," said I. Michael Greenberger, a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who now heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "These memos have been a tremendous source of embarrassment to both Gonzales and the administration." Greenberger said that recent accounts of widespread abuse at U.S. detention facilities -- including disclosures that military interrogation practices were sharply criticized over the past two years by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel in the field -- have given ammunition to those within the administration who favor adherence to international norms against torture. "It could be that this is not just a cynical ploy but a real sign of change," Greenberger said. One of the most controversial provisions of the earlier memorandum, signed by Levin's predecessor, Jay S. Bybee, was an assertion that the president's executive powers were sufficient to permit tolerance of torturous acts in extraordinary circumstances. The International Committee of the Red Cross had declared in response that the prohibition on torture, embodied in a global convention signed by the United States, has no exceptions. But advocates of strict adherence to the convention previously lost interagency battles to hard-liners in the Defense Department, the Justice Department and the White House, who maintained that the president has expansive powers during the war on terrorism. The new memo pointedly sidesteps this issue, stating that the "consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture." The memo, which states that it "supersedes the August 2002 memorandum in its entirety," also drops an attempt in the earlier version to rule that harmful acts not specifically intended to cause severe pain and suffering might be legal, and to define "specific intent." Instead, it deliberately left the notion of "specific intent" undefined to avoid, Levin wrote, any notion that conduct amounting to torture might under some circumstances be considered legal. The memo also explicitly states that "a defendant's motive (to protect national security, for example) is not relevant to the question" of his or her intent under the law. Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, which has been critical of the Bush administration's legal opinions regarding the treatment of detainees, gave the memo a generally positive review and said its "definition of torture is not as tortured as it was." But John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who helped draft the first memo while working in the legal counsel's office, said the new version "makes it harder to figure out how the torture statute applies to specific interrogation methods. It muddies the water. Our effort . . . was to interpret the statute clearly." ---- Justice issues rewritten memo on torture 12/31/2004 5:03 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-12-30-justice-memo_x.htm WASHINGTON — A prisoner doesn't have to undergo excruciating pain to be considered a victim of torture, the Justice Department now says. But it's not clear whether this revised, broader definition of torture will change the treatment of foreign detainees. The White House says the new Justice Department memo defining torture doesn't reflect a change in policy because the administration has always abided by international laws that prohibit the mistreatment of detainees. (Memo: Legal Standards On Torture) And critics of the administration, while welcoming the memo, dated Thursday, say policies that seemed to condone abuse of prisoners in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have already done their damage. "They've been down there for three years and they've squeezed everything out of these people, despite saying that they were treating them humanely," Mary Cheh, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, said of those detained in Cuba. The memo's biggest impact could be on next week's Senate confirmation hearings for chief White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who was nominated by President Bush to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general. Gonzales and other administration lawyers wrote memos that said the president's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties. Human rights advocates say those memos effectively condoned abuse and set the stage for the mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. The Justice Department in June specifically disavowed an August 2002 memo to Gonzales that said cruel, inhumane and degrading acts may not be considered torture if they don't produce intense pain and suffering. That memo was replaced by the Dec. 30 memo from Daniel Levin, acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel. It opens by bluntly stating: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international law." The 17-page memo does not address two of the most controversial assertions in the first memo: that Bush, as commander in chief in wartime, had authority superseding anti-torture laws and that U.S. personnel had legal defenses against criminal liability in such cases. Levin said those issues need not be considered because they "would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture." But the new document contradicts the previous version, saying torture need not be limited to pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Instead, the memo concludes that anti-torture laws passed by Congress equate torture with physical suffering "even if it does not involve severe physical pain" but still must be more than "mild and transitory." That can include mental suffering under certain circumstances, but it would not have to last for months or years, as the previous document said. The White House said Friday that the United States has operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment. "It has been U.S. policy from the start to treat detainees humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions or under the spirit of the conventions where they do not apply," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. Walter Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, praised the memo's candor. "It expressly corrects what were seen as some of the sloppiest legal analyses of the earlier opinion," he said. He predicted the opinion "will certainly induce significant caution in the use of interrogation techniques." Douglas Kmiec, a former legal counsel to President Reagan and the first President Bush, said the new memo "removes any doubt that the president meant what he said" in rejecting torture. He praised Gonzales for having "the courage — even in the face of national embarrassment — to admit error, and correct it" without undermining the president's authority. But Michael Ratner of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some detainees, said the repudiation of the earlier memos makes it clear that Gonzales' nomination should be withdrawn. "That first memo took us back to the Middle Ages and so it first makes you say, what are we doing putting this guy in as attorney general of the United States," he said. The American Civil Liberties Union also called for a rigorous review to determine Gonzales' role in the earlier memos and his positions on the use of torture. "The new memo raises more questions about Mr. Gonzales than it answers," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU's executive director. ---- Justice Department Broadens Definition of Torture By NEIL A. LEWIS December 31, 2004 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/politics/31cnd-torture.html?ei=5094&en=2a4851cad9bdc5c8&hp=&ex=1104555600&oref=login&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position= WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The Justice Department has broadened its definition of torture, significantly retreating from an August 2002 memorandum that defined torture extremely narrowly and said President Bush could ignore domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security. The new definition was contained in a memorandum posted on the department's Web site late Thursday with no public announcement. It comes one week before the Senate Judiciary Committee is to question Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and nominee for attorney general, about his role in formulating legal policies that critics have said led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new memorandum, reported earlier today by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, largely dismisses the August 2002 definition, especially the part that asserted that mistreatment rose to the level of torture only if it produced severe pain equivalent to that associated with organ failure or death. "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," said the new memorandum written by Daniel Levin, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, which had produced the earlier definition. Mr. Gonzales, who will go before the Senate committee for confirmation hearings, served as a supervisor and coordinator inside the administration as lawyers drafted new approaches on the limits of coercive techniques in interrogations and the scope of the president's authority in fighting a post 9/11-war against terror groups. A January 2002 memorandum to President Bush that he signed sided with the Justice Department in asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not bind the United States in its treatment of detainees captured in the fighting in Afghanistan. The August 2002 Justice Department memorandum and a later memorandum from an administration legal task force with similar conclusions were widely denounced in Congress and by human rights groups that viewed them as cornerstones in the approach to detainees that led to abuses. The political effect of the new memorandum on Mr. Gonzales's appearance before the committee is unclear. He has been expected to assert, as he has before, that neither he nor President Bush condones torture. But the change could underline what had been the undisputed policy of the administration at least until this June, when officials said it was no longer applicable and would be rewritten. That position came just after the August 2002 memorandum was disclosed in published reports. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that has sued the administration over its interrogation policies, said today that the redefinition "makes it clear that the earlier one was not just some intellectual theorizing by some lawyers about what was possible." He added: "It means it must have been implemented in some way. It puts the burden on the administration to say what practices were actually put in place under those auspices." The International Committee of the Red Cross has said in private messages to the United States government that its personnel have engaged in torture of detainees, both in Iraq and Guantánamo. The 2002 memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who was then the head of the Department's legal counsel office. Now a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, he has consistently declined to comment on the issue. The bulk of the memorandum is devoted to the Convention Against Torture and legislation enacted by Congress that gives it the force of law. "We conclude that torture as defined in and proscribed by" the statute and treaty, the memo says, covers only extreme acts and severe pain. It goes on to say that "when the pain is physical, it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure," adding, "Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm." In revising that view, the current memorandum parses the language and the treaty differently, saying, for example, that torture could include "severe physical suffering" as well as "severe physical pain." The Bybee memorandum tried to limit torture to severe physical pain. But the new memorandum also noted that physical suffering is difficult to define. One clear distinction is that the new memorandum rejects the earlier memorandum's assertion that torture may only be said to occur if the interrogator meant to cause the harm that resulted. David Scheffer, a senior State Department human rights official in the Clinton administration, who teaches law at George Washington University, said today that while the Justice Department's change was commendable, it might still provide too flexible a definition of torture. He said that by not providing strict-enough definitions, too many judgments were left in the hands of the interrogators. The new memorandum dealt with the issue of the earlier opinion's granting to President Bush the power to authorize torture by saying that the department does not have to consider that matter any longer as "such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture." ---- Justice revises torture definition ASSOCIATED PRESS January 01, 2005 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041231-112351-8960r.htm The Justice Department backed off its narrow definition of torture as "excruciating and agonizing pain" by releasing a legal memo rewritten since the Iraqi prison-abuse scandal. The 17-page memo omitted two of the most controversial assertions made in now-disavowed 2002 Justice Department documents: President Bush, as commander in chief in wartime, had authority superseding U.S. anti-torture laws; and U.S. personnel had several legal defenses against criminal liability in such cases. The new document says torture violates U.S. and international law. "Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture," said the memo from Daniel Levin, acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, to Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Critics in Congress and many legal experts say the original documents set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After the Iraqi prison abuses came to light, the Justice Department in June disavowed its previous legal reasoning and set to work on the replacement document. The White House insisted yesterday that the United States has operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment. "It has been U.S. policy from the start to treat detainees humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions or under the spirit of the Conventions where they do not apply," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. The Justice Department memo, dated Thursday, was released less than a week before the Senate Judiciary Committee was to consider Mr. Bush's nomination of his chief White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general. Democrats have said they would question Mr. Gonzales closely on memos he wrote that were similar to the now-disavowed Justice Department documents that critics said appeared to justify torture. The release also coincided with continuing revelations of potential detainee abuse, most recently a series of memos from FBI agents uncovered in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit charging instances of Defense Department wrongdoing during a variety of interrogations. The new Justice Department memo sets a far different tone, beginning with this sentence: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms." The document, again directly contradicting the previous version, says torture need not be limited to pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Instead, the memo concludes that anti-torture laws passed by Congress equate torture with physical suffering "even if it does not involve severe physical pain" but still must be more than "mild and transitory." That can include mental suffering under certain circumstances, but it would not have to last for months or years, as the previous document said. "This damage need not be permanent, but it must continue for a prolonged period of time," according to the memo. In addition, the memo clearly states that U.S. personnel involved in interrogations cannot contend that their actions were motivated by national security needs or other reasons. And, it says, the interrogator cannot justify torture after telling the victim that he could avoid it if only he would cooperate. "Presumably, that has frequently been the case with torture, but that fact does not make the practice of torture any less abhorrent or unlawful," the Justice Department memo says. Most of the original memos were signed by then-assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, who was writing in the shadow of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks as government officials scrambled to confront a new terrorist foe. Mr. Bybee is now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. The Pentagon, Justice Department and CIA have opened numerous investigations into charges of prisoner abuse and some detainee deaths stemming from the war on terror and in Iraq. Several U.S. soldiers have also been subjected to court-martial proceedings for their roles in the reputed abuse, some of which was documented in photographs from Abu Ghraib circulated worldwide early in 2004. --- Iraq Torture Investigators Reveal Scores of New Cases A legal team looking for evidence of involvement by US corporations in the torture, abuse, rape in US-run prisons in Iraq continue to uncover indications that the mistreatment is profound and systemic. by Lisa Ashkenaz Croke Dec 31, 2004 New Standard http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1359 An American legal team interviewing men and women formerly held in US-run prisons throughout Iraq says new cases of abuse and torture have continued to stream in since an initial fact-finding mission to the country in August. Michigan-based attorney Shereef Akeel told The NewStandard that he has not had time to count up each separate allegation of abuse since returning from a December trip to Amman, Jordan, where he met with released detainees, but said there were "absolutely" now at least 100 cases. He said he expected to compile as many as 300 after sorting out survivors' statements and coordinating them with witnesses' accounts. The newer cases also appear to substantiate earlier evidence gathered implicating a widespread policy of insult and assault committed against Iraqis charged of no crimes, as well as the systematic targeting of prisoners with particularly strong religious convictions. The team had already recorded testimony from over 50 former detainees, detailing severe abuse, rape, torture, humiliation, and religious degradation allegedly committed throughout the network of US-run detention centers and prisons in Iraq. In August, Akeel and his investigative partner, Mohammed Alomari, also revealed what appears to be the systematic targeting of religious inmates, as well as the rape of a 15-year-old boy by his captors as late as July 2004. After two more rounds of interviews with former detainees, one in October and another earlier this month, the team has at least doubled the number of abuse cases their office is officially handling. The growing chaos in Iraq kept Akeel’s team out of the country, so Iraqis were bussed into Jordan and put up in a hotel, giving them a brief respite from the war even as they were asked to show their prison-issued documentation, including release papers, and to tell their horrific stories. "We’re only speaking with people who have been released. They were released without charges. They were held without charges," stressed Akeel. "One day you get a form -- your time is up and you’re served with a blanket release." The newer cases also appear to substantiate earlier evidence gathered implicating a widespread policy of insult and assault committed against Iraqis charged of no crimes, as well as the systematic targeting of prisoners with particularly strong religious convictions. Clerics and other community leaders apparently comprise a significant number of the team’s documented cases. Akeel said he was surprised by how many Iraqi professionals and clergy were among the detainees interviewed in building the case. "The stature of these people -- lawyers, doctors, pharmacists -- all they're trying to do is help Iraq," said Akeel, who is particularly concerned with the number and nature of abuse claims brought by imams and tribal leaders. "When you're torturing imams, making naked women serve them food... what do you think they're going to tell their followers about Americans?" Akeel said. Akeel cited one instance in which a man engaging in a religious fast during the day said he was denied food throughout the night, only to have it served minutes before he was required to resume his fast. Akeel said this treatment went on "for days." One of the team’s most unexpected initial discoveries in reviewing the release papers was that former detainees were alleging illegal activities in as many as two dozen different US-run prisons in Iraq, challenging the US government’s official position that the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was limited to a single facility. Akeel says they have now documented cases from "over 25 prisons." "The more people we meet, the more detention centers we find out about," said Alomari, Akeel's partner. The vast majority of claimants in the case are men. Aside from one lost client who killed herself upon discovering she was pregnant, Akeel said only about ten women have come forward, though suspicion of sexual and other abuses committed against Iraqi women by American captors is widespread. "It's very, very difficult for them," said Akeel, explaining that while a man may be ostracized following sexual abuse, a woman could very well face death at the hands of her family or at the very least, be shunned and never allowed to marry. Akeel charges that interrogators "took advantage of the culture," knowing the women would be unlikely to talk. He described one case where captors reportedly raped a female detainee from behind in a cell directly across from a male prisoner. Investigators learned of the crime from the witness, who stated that the woman stared at him during the ordeal "with dead eyes," said Akeel, describing the man as "livid" and in tears as he gave his account of the incident. Private Contractors Escape the Spotlight Currently before a San Diego judge, Akeel and fellow lawyers who represent a growing pool of Iraqi plaintiffs have motioned to bring a class action suit that could involve hundreds of disclosed cases of prison assault in Iraq. Coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the suit accuses the publicly traded corporations CACI International and Titan of using brutal techniques to bring forth an increasing number of confessions in order to demonstrate their effectiveness in the controversial new practice of using private interrogators and interpreters. Four years ago, Assistant Army Secretary Patrick Henry addressed the inherent danger of making military intelligence gathering a for-profit enterprise. In a December 26, 2000 memorandum, Henry requested that Army military intelligence be exempt from anticipated privatization efforts favored by the incoming Bush Administration. Henry explained that the transfer of intelligence-gathering functions to the private sector was a "risk to [US] national security." When accusations against CACI and Titan first appeared in a US military review of abuses committed at Abu Ghraib, US Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) immediately called on the president to suspend all contracts with private firms involved in Iraqi prisons. CACI and Titan have both denied having had anything to do with instances of torture and abuse, and they have labeled the lawsuit against them spurious. Akeel and other lawyers on the case admit they have yet to uncover a smoking gun connecting the private contractors to torture, in addition to military or government personnel, though they believe that when they connect witnesses’ testimony to information uncovered during a discovery phase, links will become clearer. Schakowsky has been an opponent of private military contractors since 2001, when employees of a mercenary company contracted by the CIA were found to have been involved in the shooting down of a plane in Peru carrying American missionaries that April. Her proposed legislation to end the use of private military personnel in the Andean region failed, but Schakowsky has refocused her effort. Calling the Iraq abuses "sadistic" and citing "serious questions about the accountability of US hired military contractors," Schakowsky stated in a May letter to President Bush that the use of private contractors costs "the American people untold amounts, in terms of dollars, US lives and is damaging our reputation with the international community." Schakowsky's chief of staff, Nadeam Elshami, told TNS that the representative has called for thorough investigations and plans to address the issue in more detail after the 109th Congress convenes in January. Both Henry and Schakowsky have been largely ignored. Despite the accusations against the security firms, the US government has since awarded additional contracts to both companies worth hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. -------- us politics Price of Bush Inauguration Party Is Too Rich for Some By GLEN JUSTICE December 31, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/politics/31money.html?pagewanted=print&position= ASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - Planners for President Bush's inauguration next month have scheduled a full lineup of exclusive parties and receptions for top Republican fund-raisers. But some of those V.I.P.'s say the perks come with a price tag they cannot afford. Attending the entire slate of events during the three days of inauguration festivities could easily top $10,000 in tickets and other expenses for a fund-raiser bringing a spouse or guest. Some who helped bankroll the president's campaign, particularly young fund-raisers or those participating for the first time, are looking for ways to economize or are just planning to skip official events entirely. "I still don't know what to do for the inauguration because of costs," said Bradley D. Wine, a 34-year-old Washington lawyer and first-time fund-raiser who brought in at least $100,000 for the Bush campaign. "I'll either get together with folks who are celebrating independent of the official events or observe from the sidelines." The inauguration package being offered to top Bush and Republican Party fund-raisers asks for up to $2,500 per person, though both the fee and the events vary depending on how much people raised, according to a Web page run by LogiCom Project Management, the company handling the events and travel arrangements. The money covers admission to the Jan. 20 swearing-in, the parade, a black-tie ball and special events in Washington landmarks like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Willard InterContinental Hotel and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Another $2,500 per person is required for admission to one of three candlelight dinners at which the president and vice president will appear the evening before the inauguration. And, of course, there are airfare, hotel and other travel expenses. That will be no problem for many of Mr. Bush's wealthier fund-raisers. But the number of Republicans who raised six figures for the president doubled in this year's campaign, to about 550, in part because the campaign actively courted young professionals. Roughly 90 people under age 40 each raised at least $50,000 for Mr. Bush. Though they were effective fund-raisers, some say they cannot afford to spend endless amounts on politics. "I worked hard on this and I want to celebrate like everyone else, but at a certain point you have to draw the line," Mr. Wine said. "I don't know that that's w