NucNews - April 22, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
Navajo Nation bans uranium mining
Source: AP
Posted: 4/22/2005 8:17:00 AM
http://www.krqe.com/expanded.asp?ID=9646
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. -- The Navajo Nation Council has outlawed uranium mining and processing on the reservation that sprawls across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
The measure must be approved by tribal President Joe Shirley Jr.
Shirley's spokesman, George Hardeen, says the Navajo president strongly supports the measure. Shirley campaigned on the issue.
Several council delegates predict the legislation will be challenged in court.
Hardeen says that would be an interesting battle.
He says the Navajo Nation is sovereign, and that means it can pass its laws and live by them.
In his words: " It would be interesting to see an outside company, especially a uranium processing company, take the Navajo Nation to court over this."
----
House Passes Energy Bill!
Time to take action in Senate!
April 22, 2005
Dear Friends:
It is ironic that on Earth Day we note that the U.S. House of Representatives voted 249-183 yesterday to pass the Bush administration’s energy bill—a bill that gives some $12 Billion in taxpayer money to the polluting nuclear power and fossil fuel industries while doing almost nothing to improve energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. In addition, as Bush himself admitted, the bill will not help reduce high gasoline prices. By refusing to increase vehicle mileage standards, the House would actually ensure that prices will remain high and “energy independence” will never be achieved.
The real battleground always has been the Senate, and that is where we must all now turn our attention.
TAKE ACTION!
Even though an energy bill has yet to be introduced in the Senate (and when it is, it will be somewhat different from the House bill), we encourage you to start calling your Senate offices now (Capitol Switchboard: 1-800-839-5276 or 202-224-3121) and tell them you do not want an energy bill that gives more of your money to the nuclear power and fossil fuel industries. Any energy bill should support clean, sustainable forms of energy production and energy efficiency measures.
And we encourage you to begin the necessary organizing and groundwork to make the outreach efforts we will need when the Senate finally does consider the bill. Grassroots groups (and even individuals!) should begin setting up phone trees, holding community forums, educating your neighbors and colleagues and community groups about the energy bill.
Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers. You can “thank or spank” your Representative and encourage your Senators to vote to defeat this bill. We’ll need the involvement of everyone possible to stop the nuclear/fossil industries this year! Let us know how we can help your efforts.
Finally, if you haven’t already: don’t forget to sign the Petition for a Sustainable Energy Future at http://www.nirs.org/ and ask your friends and colleagues to sign it as well!
For a sustainable energy future,
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
202-328-0002
nirsnet@nirs.org
-------- accidents and safety
NRC Slaps FirstEnergy With Record Fine
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2005
Filed at 5:33 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Damage.html?pagewanted=print&position=
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a record $5.45 million fine against a nuclear plant operator where inspectors found the most extensive corrosion ever seen at a U.S. nuclear reactor.
The NRC said Thursday that FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. restarted the Davis-Besse plant in 2000 without completing a cleaning and inspection of the reactor vessel head, then misled the agency about what it had done.
Leaking boric acid was found two years later during a routine inspection. The acid ate nearly all the way through a 6-inch-thick steel cap.
''This substantial fine emphasizes the very high safety and regulatory significance of FirstEnergy's failure to comply with NRC requirements,'' said Luis Reyes, NRC executive director for operations.
The NRC also said it is banning one of the company's former engineers from working in the nuclear industry for five years. The agency said that Andrew Siemaszko was responsible for making sure the reactor vessel head was cleaned and inspected and that he deliberately provided false information.
The damage at the plant along the Lake Erie shore, 30 miles east of Toledo, ranks among the nation's worst nuclear problems since the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. It led to a review of 68 similar plants nationwide.
The Davis-Besse plant was closed for two years but returned to full power last April.
The fine more than doubles the previous record of $2.1 million handed down by the NRC in 1997 against the operators of the Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut for safety violations.
FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins said the company had no immediate comment. The plant operator and Siemaszko have 90 days to appeal.
A federal grand jury is investigating whether the company provided false statements to the NRC, and the utility said in December that it probably would face charges.
---
FirstEnergy Nuclear Hit With Record Fine for Reactor Damage
WASHINGTON, DC, April 22, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-22-04.asp
The largest single fine ever proposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was handed to FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company Thursday.
The $5.45 million fine was levied against the company in connection with reactor vessel head damage discovered in March 2002 at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant at Oak Harbor, Ohio, 21 miles southeast of Toledo.
The principal violation, assessed a $5 million fine, was that the utility restarted and operated the Davis-Besse plant in May 2000 without fully characterizing and eliminating leakage from the reactor vessel head which led to significant corrosion damage.
Additional violations, assessed a $450,000 fine, included providing incomplete and inaccurate information to the NRC on the extent of cleaning and inspecting the reactor vessel head in 2000.
“This substantial fine emphasizes the very high safety and regulatory significance of FirstEnergy’s failure to comply with NRC requirements and the company’s willful failure to provide the NRC with complete and accurate information,” said Luis Reyes, NRC executive director for operations.
The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant is located about 20 miles southeast of Toledo, Ohio. (Photo courtesy NRC)
The plant was started up on May 18, 2000, after a refueling and maintenance outage without a complete cleaning and inspection of the reactor vessel head, as required. During operation, leakage through tubes which penetrate the reactor head caused significant corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head, the NRC explained.
In 2001 the NRC directed Davis-Besse and other plants to inspect by December 3, 2001, the tubes which penetrate the reactor vessel head for possible leakage.
FirstEnergy requested that it be permitted to operate an additional three months before shutting down for the inspection, and the NRC staff, based on information submitted by FirstEnergy, permitted the plant to operate until February 16, 2002.
“FirstEnergy supported its request with inaccurate and incomplete information about the cleaning and inspection of the reactor vessel head in 2000,” said Reyes. “Had the NRC known that the plant was being operated with leakage through the reactor vessel head, the agency would have taken immediate action to shut down the plant.”
The corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head was discovered about three weeks after the plant shut down. The plant remained closed for more than two years for replacement of the reactor vessel head and improvements to other safety systems. Significant changes were also made in the plant’s management.
After extensive inspections by the NRC of improvements to safety systems and the utility’s efforts to raise safety consciousness in the plant’s management and staff, the NRC determined that Davis-Besse could restart and operate safely. The NRC also required that the utility undertake annual independent assessments of important plant activities for five years.
Corrosion on the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant (Photo courtesy NIRS)
“Since the plant’s restart in March 2004, it has operated safely and continues to operate safely,” Reyes said. “Davis-Besse’s performance has been closely monitored by a dedicated NRC oversight panel and the inspection staff, including three NRC resident inspectors that are assigned to that site.”
In addition to the fine proposed for the utility, the NRC has issued an order to Andrew Siemaszko, who was a system engineer at Davis-Besse, which prohibits his involvement in activities regulated by the NRC for a five year period.
Siemaszko was responsible for ensuring that the reactor vessel head was cleaned and inspected during the 2000 outage.
Records prepared by Siemaszko indicated that the reactor vessel head was cleaned and that no damage to the head was found. The agency found that he had deliberately provided incomplete and inaccurate information in plant documents, which are required by the NRC. Siemaszko no longer works at Davis-Besse.
Enforcement action may be taken against additional individuals in the near future, the NRC said.
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) said it is "reviewing" the notice of violation and the proposed $5.45 million fine. FirstEnergy Nuclear is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp, based in Akron, Ohio.
The company says, "The corrosion problem on the plant’s reactor head was discovered during a comprehensive inspection and reported to regulators in March 2002. Subsequently, FENOC investigated the causes of the problem, replaced the reactor head, and made numerous staff changes, as well as enhancements to plant programs and equipment. Davis-Besse has operated safely and reliably after it was successfully restarted in March 2004."
The utility and Siemaszko are required to respond to the enforcement actions within 90 days. They may request an extension of the response date. In addition to these actions, the NRC has previously referred Davis-Besse issues to the Department of Justice.
In its letter to the company, the NRC said that this action does not reflect the current performance of Davis-Besse and no further civil enforcement action is expected, unless there is new information from the Department of Justice.
Quote of Note
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
-- Aldo Leopold, American environmentalist and author
Questions or Comments: editor@ens-news.com
----
Ex-Official Faults Hazmat Rail Safety
Federal Agencies Oppose D.C. Law
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8005-2005Apr21?language=printer
The former deputy administrator of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that the government lacked adequate plans to secure rail shipments of hazardous cargo in Washington and across the country during his tenure.
Stephen J. McHale, the agency's second-ranking official from 2002 to August 2004, offered his assessment during a panel discussion at the Center for American Progress in Washington. He expressed "disappointment at the pace and the amount of resources" directed by the United States to secure hundreds of containers of chemicals, explosives and other dangerous materials crisscrossing the country daily.
McHale, now a lawyer with Patton Boggs LLP, spoke while the U.S. District Court of Appeals in the District is considering a challenge brought by rail giant CSX Transportation Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., against the D.C. government, which recently banned hazardous rail shipments. Yesterday, the U.S. departments of Justice, Transportation and Homeland Security filed briefs in support of CSX.
On Monday, a lower court upheld the District ban of rail shipments of toxic materials such as chlorine within two miles of the U.S. Capitol, citing in part the federal government's failure to show that it had taken comprehensive steps to address the risk of a terrorist attack. On Tuesday, the appeals court stopped the law from taking effect while it weighs the case.
McHale said U.S. security officials lacked sufficient money, inspectors and arrangements with privately owned railroads to appropriately protect the public. He said the problem stemmed from a lack of attention from Congress and the White House and a "diffusion of responsibility" among federal agencies. The Bush administration, he said, views railroad security as largely the responsibility of the private sector.
"Basically, there is not enough money. There is no comprehensive, national plan. . . . We can do better, but it is going to be difficult, given the scope and organization of the system," McHale said. Referring to the 42-mile Washington rail corridor, McHale said he opposed the District ban, but he added, "You can do things to secure the system, but enough has not been done to date."
In response to McHale's comments, TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield Jr. released a written statement. "We're the first to acknowledge there is room for security improvements in rail," he said. "Much has been accomplished and the partnership TSA has forged with industry and local governments paves the way for significant continued gains."
McHale's comments followed inspector general reports criticizing TSA management during his tenure for lavish spending on amenities at headquarters, contracting problems that have ballooned in cost by hundreds of millions of dollars and lapses in the screening of air passengers.
Several independent commissions and former officials also have warned the public about the lack of progress in securing ground transportation systems and chemical stockpiles. For instance, the United States is spending $4.6 billion for aviation security this year but $32 million for surface transportation security. TSA employs 45,000 people for its air screening program but received funding only recently to increase the number of rail security inspectors from three to 100.
After the March 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid, CSX voluntarily rerouted all but 87 cars containing hazardous materials from one line that passes through downtown and shipped about 1,645 cars on a second line that passes mostly through Northeast Washington, in consultation with U.S. security officials, according to court documents filed early this year.
TSA has acknowledged the problem. It conducted the country's first urban rail corridor study here last year and is implementing a $7 million plan to add fencing, patrols and other safeguards.
McHale said additional precautions are needed, such as limited rerouting, securing information about hazardous shipments, minimizing waiting times, using decoy cars and increasing track inspections.
McHale said the D.C. case has provoked "the best debate we've had with rail security since 9/11, or at least since Madrid. This will help force the federal government to respond and to recognize it has to have a more visible security strategy with the rail industry."
-------- iran
Iran says expectations partly fulfilled in nuclear talks
(AFP) 22 April 2005
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/April/middleeast_April580.xml§ion=middleeast
TEHRAN - Iran said Friday negotiations with Europe over its controversial nuclear program were making progress and that the Islamic republic’s expectations had been partly fulfilled.
The head of Iran’s negotiating team Cyrus Nasseri told state radio that Tehran was now expecting “a definitive response” from the Europeans at the next round of negotiations set for April 29 in London.
His comments were the latest in a series of cautiously upbeat assessments by Tehran of the nuclear talks, building hopes that Iran would be able to reach a deal with Europe over its contested nuclear programme.
The two-day talks between Iran and the European three of Britain, France and Germany which ended on Wednesday in Geneva “have shown the Europeans’ seriousness for the work to make progress,” Nasseri said.
“You could say our expectations are partly fulfilled to ensure we will eventually reach a solution,” he said, without elaborating. However, “these are the preliminary steps,” he added.
“We hope to have a clear and definitive answer from the EU as soon as possible,” he said. “We insist on having a definitive response at next week’s meeting” in London.
Tehran had warned earlier this month that months of talks could collapse over EU demands that Iran abandon uranium enrichment to guarantee it will not make atomic weapons.
The United States, which backs the EU diplomatic initiative but is not party to the talks, charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and must be kept from enriching uranium, the first step to nuclear weapons capability.
Enrichment makes fuel for nuclear power reactors but also the explosive core of atom bombs.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement: ”We feel the negotiations are still making progress”.
According to Asefi during the two days of “technical talks” the experts have discussed “ideas put forward by Iran” in the March 23 meeting, as well as “doubts from two sides”.
They have decided to submit the results of their work to the steering committee which directs the negotiations and is due to meet April 29 in London, Asefi said.
Iran and the European Union, represented by Germany, Britain and France, have been involved in lengthy negotiations, with the EU demanding that the Islamic republic abandon nuclear fuel work to guarantee it will not make atomic weapons.
Iran suspended enrichment last November as a confidence-building measure to start the talks with the EU, which offers Tehran trade, security and technology rewards if it makes the suspension permanent.
Iran expects the Europeans to accept a proposal it has made to allow limited uranium enrichment.
According to the text of the proposal, read to AFP by a diplomat close to the talks, the Iranians seek the “assembly, installation and testing of 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz,” the site where Iran wants to build an enrichment plant and has already set up a pilot project of 164 centrifuges.
The Iranians have so far refused to reveal the content of their proposal.
They have warned several times that talks with the European Union could collapse if they did not feel negotiations were making progress. They have also repeated suspension of enrichment is ”voluntary and temporary”.
Nasseri, told the state news agency IRNA on Thursday that reaching an agreement was “probable”, but insisted that “producing nuclear fuel is Iran’s right, and only Iran can take a decision on the matter”.
However, he said on Friday “we have just started talking about a solution since March 23; we cannot predict the final result now.”
The United States has agreed to wait at least until summer before lobbying to take Iran’s dossier to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
----
Iran, EU-3 end nuclear negotiations in Geneva
Friday, April 22, 2005 - IranMania.com
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=31226&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
LONDON, April 22 (IranMania) - Iran and the EU- 3ended Thursday the latest round of nuclear negotiations held in Geneva with one official saying that the two sides were satisfied with the results the negotiations.
"The two sides are satisfied with the trend and outcome of the negotiations," a source close to the talks told IRNA.
The negotiations centered around demands Iran provide the world with 'objective guarantees' that its nuclear program is not steered toward military intentions, while the Europeans guarantee Tehran's access to nuclear technology.
Technical issues relating to the 'principles and framework' of an Iranian proposal aiming a breakthrough in the standoff were also to be discussed in the negotiations which began Tuesday at a working group level.
There is no word yet on how the Europeans have received the proposal.
The outcome of the negotiations is to be examined at an steering committee, comprising foreign ministry diplomats from the two sides, in London on April29 .
The head of Iran's negotiating team, Sirous Nasseri, had sounded upbeat ahead of the talks, saying they 'are on the right track, leading to a wise, logical and balanced solution satisfactory to both sides'.
On Wednesday, Iran announced that it would wait for 'a couple of more months and not years' to settle differences in its nuclear talks with the Europeans, or ditch the negotiations.
"If the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Europeans do not lead to a resolution in the next couple of months, we will break them off," Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rowhani, said.
"The negotiations must be restricted to the span of the month; there is no question of years. If they reach a resolution in the next couple of months, we will continue them; otherwise, we will halt them," he told reporters after attending a closed-door parliament session.
The senior official stressed that Tehran would judge the Europeans according to their 'sincerity' toward the 'basis of the negotiations' which he said was 'the mechanism of uranium enrichment without causing any concerns'.
"Our arrangements with the Europeans since March 23 have been such that only issues tabled by Iran are discussed," Rowhani said, adding, "There is no question of a halt to the enrichment and the basis (of the talks) is how Iran's ideas are implemented and how enrichment is carried out without causing concerns.
"The basis of the negotiations must be moving forward and that we take a step forward in each round of the negotiations and we are assured that we reach a resolution in the near future.
"But whenever we feel the negotiations are useless and the Europeans want to waste time ... we will halt them then and there and there is no timetable for this," Rowhani said.
The official said Iran had proposed ideas in order to move out of the stalemate and accelerate the negotiations.
"The criteria in the negotiations must be how to actualize tangible guarantees so that they reach a firm conclusion," Rowhani said.
The key sticking point is uranium enrichment which Tehran has suspended as a confidence-building gesture since last November, but the country insists that it cannot be cajoled to sustain the suspension for good.
The Europeans have been pressing the Islamic Republic on this in return for a package of incentives. Iran stresses that economic incentives may help improve foreign relations but won't permanently stop Tehran from pursuing a peaceful nuclear program.
According to President Mohammad Khatami, the two sides have taken steps forward, citing the Europeans' 'very open' reaction to Iran's proposal, particularly that of France.
"I hope that during the April 29 meeting, thanks to French support, but equally due to the welcome given to the overall plan, we will be able to make even more substantial progress," Khatami said in Paris after meeting with French President Jacques Chirac recently.
Khatami says the two sides are closer to a settlement over Tehran's right to develop nuclear power.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, expressed optimism recently that he would eventually be able to tell Tehran that it has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
EU diplomats were then quoted as saying that Chirac has been pushing the EU to drop its refusal to consider letting Iran enrich uranium.
Iran says its nuclear program is aimed at power generation in the face of US accusations that the program may be a cover to build atomic weapons, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
In a dramatic U-turn last month, the United States offered to allow Iran to start talks on joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and consider letting it buy civilian airliner parts as part of incentives to Tehran over its nuclear cooperation.
Member of Iranian team to nuclear talks with EU, Sirus Nasseri, said Washington seems lately to be taking a more down-to-earth approach towards Iran's nuclear program, closer to that of the Europeans.
He however played down US engagement in the marathon talks between Tehran and the EU trio of Britain, Germany and France.
"I personally do not see any need for the presence of the Americans at the negotiations and even don't believe it could be helpful," Nasseri said.
The official said the United States seems to have started abandoning its threats against Iran, realizing the country's weight in the Middle East.
"We think the Americans are gradually becoming aware of the realities in the political scene of the region, including the extent and amount of Iran's influence in regional developments, particularly in Afghanistan, Iran and Lebanon.
"The Americans must have come to their sense and realized that there is no possibility of a confrontation with Iran and if they initiate a confrontation, the risks of vulnerability will be high." Nasseri said, "When they unleashed their threats two years ago, the Americans were seeing themselves at the apogee of their power, cherishing sweet dreams and hoping to change the regional situation according to their will.
"But today, the Americans have woken up to their ignorance and at least some sections of the ruling establishment, including its extremists elements, began to adapt to the realities," Nasseri said.
-------- mideast
Vital Nuclear Parts Missing
Investigators worry that some components of a weapons factory ordered by Libya have fallen into the hands of another nation.
By Douglas Frantz
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 22, 2005
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes601.html
ZURICH, Switzerland — Critical components and specialized tools destined for Libya's nuclear weapons program disappeared before arrival in 2003 and international investigators now suspect that they were diverted to another country, according to court records and investigators.
Efforts to find the missing equipment have led to dead ends, raising what investigators said was the strong likelihood that the sophisticated material was sold to an unidentified customer by members of the international smuggling ring that had been supplying nuclear technology and weapons designs to Libya.
The equipment — components for advanced centrifuges, along with material and precision tools to manufacture more of them — does not constitute an immediate threat, but nuclear experts said it would cut years off an effort to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb.
The mystery of the missing high-tech equipment illustrates both the extensive knowledge investigators have gained about the smuggling operation and the troubling gaps that remain. It also raises the question of whether a rogue nation or group might be secretly building a nuclear weapon.
Two senior international investigators said that the illicit technology had been shipped to Turkey, Malaysia and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before it disappeared and that it remained unaccounted for.
The equipment was initially meant for a $100-million, clandestine uranium enrichment plant and bomb factory being built for Libya by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and a network of middlemen on three continents.
The seizure by the United States and Britain of a separate shipment of nuclear-related components from a freighter headed for Libya in October 2003 crippled the network and led to Khan's admission that he had been selling know-how and technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Since then, the biggest concerns for international inspectors and intelligence agencies examining Khan's operation have been whether an unidentified customer is also pursuing a nuclear weapon or whether Iran might have received the missing technology and, potentially, designs for an atomic weapon.
Investigators said business records and interviews with some participants in the ring suggested the existence of a customer other than Libya. They said the vanished equipment, though not proof, constituted the strongest clue yet.
The list of potential clients for a nuclear weapons program is not long, but it extends to countries in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. Khan traveled extensively and had contacts worldwide. Investigators have identified at least 30 companies and middlemen who sold goods to his network.
"For sure there were other customers," said one of the senior investigators, who spoke on condition that his name be withheld because the inquiry is ongoing. "We just don't know who and we don't know how far along they might be."
U.S. and Israeli government officials have publicly accused Tehran of operating a nuclear weapons program, and intelligence officials from both countries have suggested that Iran might have hidden installations.
A non-Western intelligence official said it was possible that the missing centrifuge components and other material was sold secretly to Iran by someone in the Khan network as the operation started to unravel after the seizure of the shipment in 2003.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity and that it has opened all of its atomic-related installations to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog.
The IAEA has been inspecting Iranian installations for nearly two years and says it has uncovered no proof that Iran is working on weapons.
But concerns remain. Last month, the agency's deputy director complained publicly that Tehran had not turned over all information related to a 1987 meeting in which Khan's associates offered to sell weapons designs to Iran.
The complexity of enriching uranium makes it likely that an unknown customer would be a country rather than a terrorist group. Intelligence officials said it was unlikely that even a sophisticated terrorist group would have the resources for such an undertaking, though they could not rule it out.
The primary investigation of the Khan network is being conducted by a small team of nuclear experts from the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna. Intelligence officials and prosecutors from other countries, including the United States, Germany, Britain, France, South Africa and Switzerland, are involved.
Seven people alleged to have ties to the ring have been taken into custody in Dubai, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa and Switzerland, but none has gone to trial.
Khan, 68, regarded as a national hero for helping build his country's atomic weapons, was pardoned by Pakistan for selling its nuclear secrets. He remains under house arrest, outside the reach of foreign investigators.
Those involved in the inquiry said it was unclear whether members of the network might have sold the missing equipment. Some key members have remained silent.
Tens of thousands of documents and computer files have been recovered from suspected participants in the ring. Other records were destroyed after members suspected that they were under surveillance in late 2002.
The first confirmation that sensitive technology had disappeared was in court records filed this year by German prosecutors trying to extradite Gotthard Lerch, a German engineer who lives outside Zurich.
Lerch was not charged in connection with the missing equipment, but German prosecutors accused him of helping Libya obtain restricted technology for uranium enrichment. He is being held without bond in Switzerland.
His lawyer, Adrian Bachmann, denied that Lerch had any connection to Khan or Libya. "The German authorities are under huge international pressure to produce something and Lerch is the last chance for them to get any result," Bachmann said in an interview. "He wouldn't even know how to build a centrifuge plant."
In a previously undisclosed meeting June 17 in Vienna, Olli Heinonen, the senior IAEA investigator, told German prosecutors that Lerch had helped the Khan network develop the Libyan plant.
Heinonen said nine rotors for an advanced type of centrifuge had been delivered to the network's base of operations for the Libyan plant in Dubai and he said records showed two of them were later shipped to Libya, according to an account of the meeting written by the prosecutors and filed in the Lerch case.
Heinonen told the prosecutors that the other seven rotors remained unaccounted for. He did not say when the rotors had arrived in Dubai, according to the account. But previous IAEA reports and other interviews indicate that they were shipped there from Pakistan in early to mid-2000.
Libyan officials later told the IAEA that two of the rotors had arrived in Tripoli in September 2000 as samples for an order of 10,000 that was never filled, according to an IAEA report in February 2004.
The rotors are slim cylinders, about 6 feet high, manufactured to exact measurements. The missing ones were for P-2 centrifuges, and experts said they would be extremely valuable prototypes for an enrichment plant.
In addition to the rotors, a shipping container of centrifuge components and a ton of high-strength aluminum intended for manufacturing parts for Libya's centrifuges also vanished, Heinonen said. Those parts, last seen in Turkey and Malaysia, disappeared after the seizure of the separate shipment to Libya in 2003, according to the account.
Mark Gwozdecky, chief spokesman for the IAEA, and Frauke-Katrin Scheuten, spokeswoman for the German federal prosecutor's office, declined to comment on the meeting or other elements of the investigations.
Another international official, who refused to permit his name to be used because he is directly involved in the investigation, said the rotors, components and aluminum are still missing.
In addition, he said, a separate container filled with precision tools and key parts for two specialized lathes that were supposed to manufacture the 10,000 rotors for Libya also disappeared at some point after the 2003 seizure.
The components and tools were either manufactured by the network or purchased by it from suppliers for use in the Libya enrichment project. The account by the prosecutors did not provide precise dates about the acquisition of the material or its disappearance.
The most common way to produce fissile material, the biggest challenge in building a nuclear weapon, is to use centrifuges.
The complicated process involves converting uranium ore to a gas and pumping it into an array of thousands of interconnected centrifuges. Rotors inside the centrifuges spin at up to twice the speed of sound to separate isotopes and concentrate the uranium to produce weapons-grade material.
Centrifuges must be manufactured to precise tolerances so they remain balanced as they spin rapidly for long periods. Years of testing and experimentation are usually required before an array of 1,000 or more centrifuges can produce enough material for a single weapon.
Khan used blueprints that he allegedly stole from a European consortium to help build Pakistan's enrichment plant in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He developed a network of suppliers in Europe and elsewhere to secretly provide much of the equipment.
In 1987, with Pakistan well on its way to its first bombs, the scientist began selling centrifuge know-how and equipment to Iran. The scheme lasted until at least the mid-1990s and remained secret until August 2002, when elements of Iran's hidden program were exposed by an Iranian exile group.
Since then, Iran has grudgingly drawn back the curtain on its nuclear program in the face of evidence uncovered in a series of IAEA inspections.
Iranian authorities confirmed to IAEA experts this year that Khan's associates had first provided a written offer to supply both centrifuges and designs for a nuclear weapon in 1987 at a meeting in Dubai.
The Iranians said they had bought centrifuge designs and components and a list of suppliers, but rejected the weapons technology.
Pierre Goldschmidt, deputy director of the IAEA, told the agency's board last month that Iran showed the IAEA a one-page offer for centrifuges, but he said Tehran refused to produce other documentation from the meeting.
In addition to the sales to Iran, Khan is suspected of transferring enrichment technology to North Korea in return for help developing missiles for Pakistani nuclear warheads.
But the network's most ambitious — and now most transparent — transaction involved engineering and manufacturing the $100-million, off-the-shelf plant in Libya to produce nuclear weapons.
U.S. and British intelligence agencies seized five crates of centrifuge components from a ship bound for Libya in October 2003. The components had been manufactured at a Malaysian factory affiliated with the Khan network.
The seizure helped persuade Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to give up his nuclear program later that year. Along with equipment and designs for a nuclear warhead obtained from Khan, Libya turned over records of six years of dealing with the network to the U.S. and IAEA.
Tucked among thousands of documents were four pages outlining the journey of two specialized lathes, each of which weighed several tons. Following that trail led investigators to the discovery that critical components and machinery produced for Libya were missing, according to documents and investigators.
Khan and his associates had struck the deal with Libya in 1997. To avoid attracting attention, elements of the engineering and production were farmed out to separate locations. The entire plant was then to be shipped to Libya and reassembled.
An operating system for the plant was being manufactured in South Africa. German prosecutors alleged that Lerch used contacts in South Africa to set up that part of the project. The system eventually filled 11 huge shipping containers.
The centrifuges themselves were to be produced in Dubai, the Persian Gulf port where the network operated quietly from a computer firm and several nondescript warehouses.
On July 7, 2000, two lathes bought from a Spanish manufacturer left the port of Barcelona bound for Dubai, according to the shipping invoice.
Production of some components of the centrifuges was undertaken at a factory in Malaysia. For help on the rotors, according to court papers in South Africa and interviews there, the network turned to Tradefin, a company outside Johannesburg, South Africa, that was already producing the plant's operating system. Its owner, Johan A.M. Meyer, had worked for South Africa's nuclear program before it was closed down in the early 1990s.
Meyer agreed to try to make the rotors and records show that one of the lathes was shipped to his company from Dubai in late 2000.
The rotors had to be made from maraging steel, a high-strength alloy that is under export controls because of its use in weapons. A lawyer for Meyer, who was charged with helping the Libyan project and is cooperating with authorities, said he was unable to buy the steel, so the lathe sat unused.
In December 2001, the lathe was shipped back to Dubai. Both lathes later were discovered in Libya along with two of the nine P-2 rotors initially shipped to Dubai. The other seven rotors are still missing.
Heinonen told the German prosecutors that four supposedly had been destroyed and three were still somewhere in Dubai, according to the prosecutors' account. But investigators have found no evidence that the rotors were destroyed, and searches of the network's facilities in Dubai did not locate them or other missing equipment.
The senior investigator who suspects the existence of an unidentified network customer said the rotors and other equipment could have gone directly to the other customer or to an undiscovered manufacturing site operated by the network.
The P-2 rotors in particular are too valuable to have been destroyed, even as investigators closed in on most of the network's operations, he said.
-------- missile defense
U.S. missile company scouts Labrador
Last Updated Fri, 22 Apr 2005 10:51:45 EDT
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/22/missile-labrador050422.html
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - An American missile contractor has been secretly scouting locations for a radar installation in Labrador, despite Prime Minister Paul Martin's decision to keep Canada out of the U.S. missile defence shield program.
* INDEPTH: Ballistic Missile Defence
In late February, Martin made it clear that Canada won't be part of Washington's controversial program to shoot down incoming missiles aimed at North America.
"We took the decision on ballistic missile defence in terms of where Canada's interests lay," he said.
* FROM FEB. 24, 2005: Canada won't join missile defence plan
A little more than a month later, CBC News has learned, senior officials from the Raytheon Company travelled to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, on a scouting trip.
The Massachusetts-based corporation builds missiles for the American military and is a major player in the design of the North American ballistic missile defence shield.
One visitor was the principal mechanical engineer of national missile defence with Raytheon. The other was the manager of X-band sensor systems, a finely tuned type of imaging radar used in early-warning systems.
One of the Raytheon officials reached by CBC wouldn't do an interview or talk about any details of his visit to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Saying he travels extensively on Raytheon business, he said he could not recall whether he'd been in Happy Valley-Goose Bay any time after Martin's announcement.
However, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro confirms its officials met with Raytheon executives to discuss power supply in the area.
A short statement from Raytheon issued to CBC says the company routinely "looks at areas around the world where its products could provide value."
* FROM MARCH 4, 2005: Rompkey keen on radar system for Goose Bay
A committee of politicians and businesses continue to push Happy Valley-Goose Bay as a location for missile defence, but they want to keep Raytheon's involvement off the public radar.
No one from the committee returned calls to CBC.
In early March, Liberal Senator Bill Rompkey said he would keep pushing for the Americans to build a missile defence radar system in Labrador, even though Canada's government had rejected participation in the U.S. defence initiative.
He said the system could track incoming missiles and pass that information on to the U.S. through Norad, the North American Aerospace Defence Command.
Rompkey said 100 permanent jobs could be created at the Happy Valley-Goose Bay air base if an American installation were built there.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Report: DOE needs better management of records
By Suzanne Struglinski
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Las Vegas SUN
April 22, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/apr/22/518647200.html
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department needs to improve its overall management of records, illustrated by problems with Yucca Mountain project documents, according to an inspector general's report issued Thursday.
The report found that across all department offices there is no method for archiving original e-mails or other electronic information and there is a lot of redundancy in the records programs in place. Eliminating duplicative systems could save the department $2 million, according to the report.
Documents are currently a hot topic for the Yucca Mountain project, with ongoing federal investigations into e-mails that suggest U.S. Geological Survey employees falsified scientific information. Nevada officials are also compiling their own arsenal of e-mails they claim prove the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, does not meet criteria required by law.
The report recommends the department create policies for storing e-mails and electronic records. The department Chief Information Officer Rosita Parks agreed with the reports finding and said the department is addressing the issues.
The department is working toward completing its submission to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's License Support Network, a document database designed to make information available to the public. The commission will not docket the project's license application until six months after the department completes the database.
The department said it was complete last year, but Nevada object, saying it was missing millions of e-mails and other documents. An administrative court within the commission agreed with Nevada, so the department plans to try again. The department discovered the USGS e-mails while reviewing documents to put on the network.
The report used the department's failure to emphasize the need for better records management in Thursdays report.
"...employees were required to manually review, classify, and catalogue millions of e-mail messages prior to posting them to the licensing network." the Inspector General found. "At the time of the review, about 6.4 million e-mails remained unprocessed due to the lack of system requirements for archiving e-mail records."
The Inspector General Office performed the review between October 2003 and December 2004.
The Inspector General also pointed to problems with the department's work preparing for the project's document database in May 2004.
----
Secretary Bodman's Statement Regarding the Resignation of William D. Magwood, IV
April 22, 2005 U.S. DOE
http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=17800&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC –Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman today released the following statement regarding the resignation of William D. Magwood, IV, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy:
“Bill Magwood has provided strong, credible leadership for the department’s Office of Nuclear Energy. During Bill’s tenure, the department’s nuclear energy program initiated several pioneering efforts that hold great promise for America’s energy future. His knowledge and experience will surely be missed.”
In his letter of resignation, delivered to Secretary Bodman on April 21, 2005,
Mr. Magwood noted, “I depart with confidence that under your leadership, the leadership provided by Deputy Secretary Sell, and most importantly the leadership provided by this President, our pace toward a prosperous future powered by new generations of safe, clean, nuclear energy will continue and, indeed, accelerate.”
Mr. Magwood has served as the head of the Office of Nuclear Energy since 1998. During his tenure, Mr. Magwood helped develop programs such as the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, Nuclear Power 2010, and the Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Initiative. He has also served as the first chairman of the Generation IV International Forum and as chair of the Steering Committee on Nuclear Energy Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation.
Deputy Director for Nuclear Energy, R. Shane Johnson, will serve as Acting Director following Mr. Magwood’s departure on May 15, 2005.
Media contact: Mike Waldron, 202/586-4940
-------- california
UC, lab want suit verdict tossed
University hopes for reduction of $2 million whistle-blower decision
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
04/22/2005 Oakland Tribune
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2679413
After twice losing in court, the University of California and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab are asking a judge to throw out a $2.13 million verdict against them and hold a third trial on a former employee's claims of retaliatory firing.
Lab officials said they felt jurors awarded too much to former Livermore lab computer technician Dee Kotla for emotional damages.
The jury foreman doesn't see any reason to give the lab a third chance to make its case.
"Unless there's some specific, new evidence that's come to light or some blatant legal issue, you could keep asking for new trials over and over again without there being any basis for it, just because you lost," said foreman Read Bell, a software-development engineer for Cisco. "I just don't see how there could be any valid basis for another trial."
Testimony in the case showed that a lab attorney reported Kotla as a "hostile witness" in a sexual harassment case against the lab and one of its senior scientists.
When Kotla showed up to testify for a co-worker, the lab attorney phoned lab internal police and launched an investigation that turned up $4.30 in personal phone calls and many computer files of work for a friend's business.
During a break in the deposition, Kotla went to the restroom and, according to her testimony, was still in a stall when two attorneys entered. She said she overheard the lab attorney say, "If Kotla knows what's good for her, she'll keep her mouth shut."
Lab police unsuccessfully tried twice to get the Alameda County District Attorney's Office to prosecute her, and she was fired soon after.
A jury in 2002 found that the lab fired Kotla in retaliation and awarded her $1 million. The university and the lab asked for a reduction in the award and a new trial. The judge declined a new trial but reduced the award to $745,000. The lab and university appealed the verdict on the grounds that Kotla's expert witness had testified that the evidence in her case suggested retaliation. A state appeals court agreed that opinion could have swayed the jury and granted a new trial.
A new jury spent five weeks this spring hearing the case and deliberated a day-and-half.
In motions filed this week, attorneys for the university and the lab asked the judge to discard the jury's verdict and grant a new trial. They argued that jurors had only indirect and insufficient evidence for a verdict of retaliation.
The Kotla case has been Exhibit A in a congressional debate over the U.S. Department of Energy's practice of reimbursing more than 96 percent of legal costs, settlements and award payments by the University of California and its other contractors.
Kotla attorney Gary Gwilliam said the lab and the university "should be ashamed of themselves."
"It's time to bring this matter to a close," he said. "This case is a terrible example of the ongoing harassment, intimidation and financial waste that UC and the lab engage in."
Bell, the jury foreman, found the request for a new trial insulting to jurors, most of whom served for $15 a day.
"As long as they know the Department of Energy's going to write them another check, there's no motivation for them to change what they're doing," he said.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.
-------- nevada
New e-mails: Yucca 'flunked'
Messages show DOE knew that rock alone wouldn't isolate waste
By Suzanne Struglinski
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
April 22, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/22/518648054.html?Yucca%20Mountain%20Nuclear%20Waste%20repository
WASHINGTON -- A new set of e-mails written by Yucca Mountain employees shows the Energy Department knew the project "flunked" because the mountain couldn't live up to its scientific billing, an attorney for Nevada says.
E-mails found on a public database of documents supporting the Energy Department's plan to request a license to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, show how scientists came to accept that the mountain itself couldn't keep moisture away from stored nuclear waste as planned.
A 1997 message from department scientist Larry Rickertsen, titled "Real Trouble Ahead," says: "The answer is clearer than ever. Engineering has to do the job."
It's a key point because the original plan, approved by Congress, was to store high-level nuclear waste in a geological repository, meaning the rock would stop radiation.
Egan said the messages provide missing details about how program managers and scientists decided to change the rules in the late 1990s, shifting the program away from what Congress had directed them to find -- a waste repository reliant on "natural" rock barriers to keep water away from the waste -- to one that relied heavily on man-made "engineered" barriers, such as high-tech metal waste containers and drip shields.
"They (the e-mails) show the site not only flunked but it flunked spectacularly and there is nothing they can do to stop it," said Joe Egan, a Washington attorney representing the state in its fight against Yucca Mountain. "I think this is going to go down in history as the greatest scientific fraud of all time."
Egan, who represents the state on Yucca issues, and his staff found the new batch of e-mails in the project's public document database.
"These e-mails are part of the back-and-forth that is reflective of any collaborative scientific process," said department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton. "As part of the license application that DOE (the Energy Department) is developing and will submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we will thoroughly outline the safety basis for Yucca Mountain.
"DOE's application will address all appropriate public health and safety, scientific and technical issues as part of the NRC's thorough and public review process."
These e-mails are different from those written by U.S. Geological Survey employees and now under investigation by the Energy and Interior Departments and the FBI. But Egan said they are just as important and give more ammunition to the state's fight against the proposed repository.
In September 1997, one scientist urged another to stop clinging to the notion that Yucca's rock tunnel walls could isolate waste, telling him that Yucca Mountain itself "cannot do the job."
"I know you are trying to dodge the geologic disposal problem, and steering clear of fatal flaw type concerns," the scientist wrote to his colleague. "But the simple fact is that the only purpose of the natural system now is to provide a benign environment for the engineering."
Egan said the messages show the radiation exposure will be a lot higher and come quicker than originally predicted and would not be able to meet a radiation protection standard.
"We knew what they did but didn't know how to prove it," Egan said. "This is what we are going to prove in the licensing hearings. There's no mystery to this anymore."
In the e-mails, scientists discuss how the department will need to use the drip shields and containers because the potential radiation exposure levels has jumped from a "few hundred" millirem a year to "tens of rem/yr (or thousands)." Their research discovered water flows through the mountain faster than they expected creating "indefensible flow models."
"The beauty of the drip-shield approach is that I don't need to know that stuff any more," according to a March 1997 e-mail from Rickertsen.
Yucca critics have argued for years that the Energy Department abandoned its pursuit of proving that a purely geologic repository could isolate waste once it became apparent Yucca couldn't do the job. Critics say the department then embraced a plan that relied on a combination of protection from the rock and man-made or "engineered barriers."
Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency of Nuclear Projects, has said the term "geologic" is key because it set Yucca apart from other sites designated as suitable to store the waste. Nevada's attorneys used these arguments as part of the state's six lawsuits argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in January 2004.
Nevada sued the Energy Department for changing the Yucca Mountain guidelines in 2001 to rely on man-made protection, and then sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when it changed its licensing rules to fit the department's man-made barrier additions.
Department officials have argued that they always intended to rely on both natural barriers and robust waste containers.
Ultimately, in a ruling last year, the court declared the Nevada argument "moot" because Congress approved the site and the president signed it into law.
But if the project moves into a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearing, Nevada officials will use these e-mails to resurrect the argument in challenging Yucca. The NRC will ultimately would decide whether the site is safe, and whether to grant a license to the Energy Department.
"You can pass legislation based on lies and cheating but you can't get a license based on lies and cheating," Egan said. "It will still fail the test of science."
Egan said the department lied to Congress, telling lawmakers it had a suitable site when it knew it did not.
Nevada lawyers plan to sing a familiar refrain: If the Energy Department acknowledges that it is relying on engineered barriers, then it could bury the waste anywhere, including, as some Yucca critics have sarcastically suggested, the basement of the department's Washington headquarters.
Egan said his staff has discovered new e-mails by searching the Energy Department's Yucca database using the word "falsification" since the Energy Department announced last month it discovered USGS employees may have made up some scientific data.
In a 1998 e-mail, the scientist describes how a manager has said "calculations without the waste packages are not allowed."
"That kind of calculation will let the state argue we are engineering a bad mountain," according to one 1998 e-mail from Rickertsen, quoting his manager, Steve Brocoum.
Attempts to reach the scientists were unsuccessful.
The department was supposed to use just the mountain to contain the radiation, but this conversation not only shows that measurements would not meet requirements without the waste packages but that it knew the state would use that point.
The Energy Department continues to assemble the license application for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca. It aims to have the application completed by the end of the year, although the schedule may depend on the outcome of e-mail investigations and the issuance of a new radiation protection standard by the Environmental Protection Agency.
----
New pro-Yucca group formed
By Benjamin Grove
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Las Vegas SUN April 22, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/apr/22/518647267.html
WASHINGTON -- A collection of advocates for a national nuclear dump on Monday is to announce the launch of a new lobbying group, the Yucca Mountain Task Force.
The group's top goals will be advocating more congressional funding for a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and "facilitating" a timely new radiation standard for the containment of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.
The founding groups will be the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry's top lobby group; the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; the U.S. Transport Council, a group formed in 2002 to educate the media and public about waste shipping; and the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, the waste strategy coalition's executive director, Martez Norris, said.
Yucca budget shortfalls have long slowed progress of the nuclear waste repository project, frustrating nuclear power industry leaders, as well as officials and utility commissioners in states where waste is piling up at power plants. Yucca advocates have argued that the Energy Department should have more access to a national nuclear waste fund, rather than being limited in spending by Congress every year. So far lawmakers have rejected relinquishing any annual budget control.
The new group's co-chairmen will be David Wright, a South Carolina Public Service Commissioner, and Charles Pray, nuclear safety adviser for Maine.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Arms ban is outdated, Raffarin tells China
By Chris Buckley
International Herald Tribune
Friday, April 22, 2005
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/21/news/beijing.html
France is still pressing the European Union to lift its embargo on arms sales to China this year and does not question China's antisecession law, which authorizes use of military force against Taiwan, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin of France said Thursday, on the first day of a three-day visit to China intended to shore up cooperation between the two countries.
"The measure is anachronistic, wrongfully discriminatory and in complete contradiction of the current state of the strategic partnership between Europe and China," Raffarin told Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, according to the official Xinhua press agency. "France continues to require the lifting of the embargo and does not see what could lead the European Council to change its position on the subject," he said.
France expects the EU to stand by a policy made last year to decide whether to lift the ban during the first half of this year, Raffarin said.
Raffarin also said China's new antisecession law, which sets out steps, including ultimately armed force, to discourage Taiwan from making moves toward formal independence from the mainland, is "completely compatible with the position of France," according to Xinhua.
China's new law, which was approved by its Parliament, the National People's Congress, in March, is one of the issues that has led some European countries into public opposition to lifting the arms embargo on China.
Earlier this year it seemed the EU was only months away from lifting the ban. But insistent opposition from the United States and concerns in many European capitals about the antisecession law, China's failure to ratify the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and, most recently, sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in Chinese cities, have sapped the effort of momentum. It now seems unlikely the ban will be lifted this year, many observers agree.
In Beijing, Raffarin, Wen and accompanying officials signed 21 agreements intended to strengthen cooperation between France and China in fields like agriculture, legal affairs and technology, Qin Gang, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said in a news briefing.
----
Sharon: Russian missiles being sold to Syria do threaten Israel
By Aluf Benn and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service, 22/04/2005
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/567608.html
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Israel Radio that Israel does not accept the Russian assessment that the anti-aircraft missiles Russia intends to sell Syria do not threaten Israel, in an interview broadcast Thursday.
"What concerns us with the shoulder-launched missiles, the anti-aircraft missiles, is that they can find their way into the hands of terrorist organizations," Sharon said.
The prime minister said, however, that Israel cannot intervene in Russian weapons sales to other countries.
Israel has been trying to apply as much pressure as it can to deter the Russians from selling Syrian the SA-18 missiles, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has not been convinced. He decided to go ahead with the sale after promising Sharon that the missiles would be vehicle-mounted, and impossible to convert into shoulder-launched rockets that could end up in the hands of one of the terror organizations that Damascus hosts.
The missiles "will of course make it difficult to fly over the residence of the Syrian president," Putin bluntly stated Wednesday. "It will make flying low difficult," implying what has long been believed to be the reason for the sale of the anti-aircraft missiles: Syrian embarrassment over Israeli air force planes "buzzing" presidential palaces in Syria to issue warnings to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Russian president, who gave an interview to Channel One ahead of his historic visit next week to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, said the sale of the missiles to Syria would not upset the balance of power in the Middle East.
A government source in Jerusalem said Wednesday night that "Russia, which is fighting terror with one hand, is helping a state that supports terror with the other hand."
In the interview, Putin referred to his good relations with Sharon and to the criticism leveled at him by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, because of his initiative to extend his term beyond the limits imposed by the Russian constitution. He said Russia would "abide by the existing law in Russia and not the attitudes of our allies," adding that "we would be happy if Rice runs for president one day in the U.S."
While Putin emphasized that the missile Russia is selling to Syria is vehicle launched and hardly a threat to Israeli planes, Israel is particularly worried by shoulder-launched versions of the missile, which could end up in the hands of Hezbollah along the Lebanese-Israeli border and limit Israeli air force overflights into Lebanon.
Shoulder-launched missiles would also worry the U.S., which fears that they could end up in the hands of terror groups operating against U.S. forces in Iraq.
However, Israeli defense sources say the deal gives cause for concern even if it is a vehicle-mounted missile. The missile launchers could easily be dismantled, and with relatively simple engineering be transformed into shoulder-launched rockets.
Moreover, say Israeli sources, even if the missiles remain in the hands of the Syrian army they could be a threat to Israeli planes, if they try flying into Syrian air space.
Although the air force has various means to disrupt anti-aircraft weapons fired at its planes, the presence of advanced anti-aircraft weapons in Syria would require a change in the flight profiles of the Israeli planes on Syrian sorties in the future.
-------- britain
John Pilger: Britain's Absurd Election
"For millions of decent Britons the subversion is over, and the penny has finally dropped.."
By John Pilger, Palestine Chronicle
Friday, April 22 2005 @ 06:10 AM EDT
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050422061042305
http://www.newstatesman.com/200504250011
A familiar, if desperate, media push is underway to convince the British people that the main political parties offer them a democratic choice in the general election on May 5. This demonstrable absurdity became hilarious when Tony Blair, leader of one of the nastiest, most violent right-wing regimes in memory, announced the existence of "a very nasty right-wing campaign" to defeat him. If only it were that funny. If only it were possible to read the "ah but" tributes to a "successful" Labour government without cracking a rib. If only it were possible to read warmongers bemoaning the "apathy" of the British electorate without one's laughter being overtaken by the urge to throw up.
Truth can be subverted, but for millions of decent Britons the subversion is over, and the penny has finally dropped. For that, they have Blair to thank. On May 5, they will silently go on strike against a corrupt, undemocratic system, as they did at the last election, producing the lowest turnout since the franchise, including barely a third in some constituencies. Others will come under extraordinary pressure to put aside considerations of basic morality and vote for this "successful" Blair government. They – allow me to change that to you – ought to be aware of what this will mean for your fellow human beings.
By voting for Blair, you will walk over the corpses of at least 100,000 people, most of them innocent women and children and the elderly, slaughtered by rapacious forces sent by Blair and Bush, unprovoked and in defiance of international law, to a defenseless country. That conservative estimate is the conclusion of a peer-reviewed Anglo-American study, published in the British medical journal the Lancet. It is the most reliable glimpse we have of the criminal carnage caused by Blair and Bush in Iraq, and it is suppressed in this election "campaign."
By voting for Blair, you will be turning a deaf ear to the cries of countless Iraqi children blown up by British cluster bombs and poisoned by toxic explosions of depleted uranium. These unseen victims of Blair and Bush – including Iraqi women who have developed rare "pregnancy cancer," and children with unexplained leukemia – will not be your concern. According to one of the military experts who cleaned up Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf war, Blair and Bush have created "another Hiroshima" in parts of Iraq. You will be voting to endorse that.
By voting for Blair, you will turn away from the tens of thousands of children left to starve in Iraq by his and Bush's invasion. On March 30, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights heard that malnutrition rates among Iraqi infants under the age of five had almost doubled since the invasion – double the number of hungry children under Saddam Hussein. The author of the report to the commission, Jean Ziegler, a UN specialist on hunger, said the "coalition" was to blame.
By voting for Blair, you will be affirming that liar's triumph. Blair is a liar on such an epic scale that even those who still protect him with parliamentary euphemisms, like Robin Cook ("He knew perfectly well what he was doing. I think there was a lack of candor") and the Guardian and the BBC, now struggle to finesse his perjury.
Take his latest lie. On March 13, Jonathan Dimbleby asked Blair about the leaked memo of David Manning, the prime minister's foreign policy adviser, in which Manning confirmed to Blair in March 2002 that he had assured the Americans "you would not budge in your support for regime change." Blair lied to Dimbleby that "actually he didn't say that as a matter of fact": Manning "[made] clear that the development of WMD in breach of the United Nations resolutions will no longer be tolerated."
Following are the words Manning wrote to Blair: "I said [to Condoleezza Rice] that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament, and a public opinion that was very different [from] anything in the States." There is no mention, nothing, about United Nations resolutions, or weapons of mass destruction.
By voting for Blair, you will invite more lies about terrorist scares in Britain so that totalitarian laws can be enacted. "I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state," said George Churchill-Coleman, the former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad. Like the fake reasons for Blair's tanks around Heathrow on the eve of the greatest antiwar demonstration in British history, so anything, any scare, any arrest, any "control order," will be possible.
By voting for Blair, you will fall for the spin, the myth, of the social reformism and "economic achievements" of his government. The ban on fox-hunting and the lowering of the age of gay consent are political and media distractions that do nothing to protect a social democracy being progressively shorn of ancient liberties, such as those enshrined in Magna Carta.
Little of this is up for discussion. In 2005, we have an election, not politics; a media court, not critical debate. True politics is about all of humanity, and our responsibility for those who commit crimes in our name. No reverence for the sanctity of a debased vote or a false choice – or the lesser evil of a nonexistent, sentimental, pre-Blair Labour Party – will change that. We owe that truth to the people of Iraq, at least.
-John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
-------- business
Double Trouble for Halliburton
by William Fisher
(Inter Press Service)
April 22, 2005
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=5698
The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war's poster child for "waste, fraud, and abuse," has been hit with a new double whammy.
A report from the U.S. State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its $1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq's vital southern oil fields.
And a powerful California congressman is charging that Defense Department audits showing additional overcharges totaling $212 million were concealed from United Nations monitors by the George W. Bush administration.
The new overcharges bring to $2 billion, or 42 percent of the contract amounts, the grand total of questionable bills from Halliburton.
According to Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Government Reform, "both the amount of Halliburton's overcharges and the extent of the information withheld from the auditors at the UN's International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) were much greater than previously known."
Waxman said the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which monitors all Pentagon contracts, had identified Halliburton overcharges and questionable costs of totaling $212.3 million – double the total amount of known overcharges under Halliburton's Iraq oil contract.
In one case, Waxman said, the overcharges exceeded 47 percent of the total value of the task order.
But the Defense Department – at Halliburton's request – withheld the new amount from IAMB, the UN audit oversight body for the Development Fund for Iraq, Waxman charged.
In letters to government auditors, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root explained that it redacted statements it considered proprietary or "factually inaccurate or misleading" and gave consent for the release of the audits to international auditors "in redacted form." The administration then sent the heavily edited report to the IAMB.
"The withholding of this information is highly unusual and raises serious issues," Waxman complained in a letter to Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays. "The evidence suggests that the U.S. used Iraqi oil proceeds to overpay Halliburton and then sought to hide the evidence of these overcharges from the international auditors."
Waxman also renewed his request that the subcommittee hold hearings on the administration's "mismanagement of the Development Fund for Iraq."
Previously, Waxman disclosed that Defense Department auditors found $108 million in fuel-related overcharges by Halliburton for work in Iraq under one of several Halliburton task orders for the importation of fuel into Iraq.
He also alleged that although Halliburton was paid in significant part from Iraqi oil proceeds in the Development Fund for Iraq, the administration – acting at Halliburton's request – concealed these overcharges from the international auditors charged by the United Nations with monitoring the expenditures from the fund.
In these new audit reports, he says, "extensive additional information has been withheld by the Administration from the IAMB. A review of these audits shows that references to overcharges and other questioned costs were blacked out over 450 times in the versions of audits sent to the IAMB."
Rick Blum of the advocacy group OpenTheGovernment.org told IPS, "Once again, the secrecy system fails us. They wouldn't have done it if they thought anyone cared or would find out."
"If the public had known about this earlier, we could stop it, better protect our troops, and better use our taxpayer dollars to make our families safer," he said. "This should be a wake-up call to ensure more openness to strengthen our national defense." And Scott H. Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog, told IPS, "If a taxpayer was able to support only 63 percent of their tax return, he or she would be brought to justice. In the case of Halliburton, however, the government continues to let it slide." The State Department's report focused on Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), the Halliburton subsidiary contracted to repair Iraq's southern oil fields.
The report does not provide details about what it calls "poor performance and excess spending," but it says that the American Embassy had issued a "Cure Notice," a threat to terminate the contract unless Kellogg, Brown & Root replaced some senior managers. It says the government remains dissatisfied.
As a consequence, one of KBR's competitors, Parsons Corporation, has been asked "to execute some of the remaining work" in the south, originally meant for KBR.
KBR has previously been criticized for excess spending in its multibillion-dollar contract to provide logistical support for the military and in an earlier, $2.2 billion contract for oil repairs and fuel imports that was granted secretly as the Iraq invasion began. KBR won the contract to work on northern oil fields.
The Embassy has reallocated an additional $832 million in planned spending away from huge projects managed by U.S. companies toward smaller repairs using local businesses and the training of Iraqis to maintain power and water systems.
Halliburton has attributed its slow progress to attacks by insurgents, years of neglect, and lack of investment in the country's oil facilities. The State Department report says Iraq's oil output of 2.1 million barrels a day in February was lower than it was last fall.
Halliburton – of which Vice President Dick Cheney was formerly chief executive officer – is the largest single contractor in Iraq. The Pentagon has already awarded the company contracts worth up to $18 billion for its work in the country. Many of them were no-bid contracts that drew widespread criticism on Capitol Hill and in the press.
The company says it performed well under difficult circumstances in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and that cost disputes "are part of the normal contracting process." But former Halliburton employees have alleged intentional and systemic waste.
Lower-than-expected oil exports are exacerbating the Iraqi government's budget deficit, which the report estimates could reach $5 billion this year. A quarterly update on Iraqi reconstruction was delivered to Congress last week.
A former Halliburton employee, Marie deYoung, audited accounts for Halliburton subsidiary KBR. She claims there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers. She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud.
The company's response, according to deYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody's going to care."
The former Army chaplain produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for soda, at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes – or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.
"That money could have been used to take care of soldiers," she said.
Another former employee, Mike West, says he was paid $82,000 a year to be a labor foreman in Iraq, but never had any laborers to supervise. "They said just log 12 hours a day and walk around and look busy," he said.
-------- russia / chechnya
U.S.-Russian breakthrough?
April 22, 2005
By Harlan Ullman and Sergei Rogov
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050421-090753-6030r.htm
Despite a productive meeting earlier this year between President Bush and President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Russian-American relations are far from healthy. Indeed, negative sentiments toward the other are surfacing in both states.
The reasons are well known, stemming in part from American concern about the erosion of democracy in Russia and Russian worries about American policies in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics where a string of U.S. bases have been constructed.
With Mr. Bush's visit to Russia in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, we believe the time is right for an important step that can improve the political and military relationships between Russia and the United States, and send a strong, positive signal about our mutual intent to combat terrorism along with the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Kyrgyzstan is the point of leverage and joint U.S.-Russian military exercises are the means. The present crisis in Kyrgyzstan is both a challenge and a further opportunity to prevent destabilization in Central Asia by radical fundamentalist groups connected to al Qaeda.
Everyone is aware of the "revolution" that ousted Kyrgyzstani President Askar Akayev. But many people do not know that both Russia and the United States have military bases in Kyrgyzstan in or close to the capital of Biskek. The Russian base at Kant is 20 kilometers away, where no more than a few dozen aircraft and several hundred troops are stationed. The United States has plans for a 37-acre base as well as a small facility at Manas Airport. Its presence is purposely low key but provides the United States the ability to stage forces and material to Afghanistan and nearby hot spots should they arise.
Given that both Russia and America have military forces in relative proximity, it makes sense to establish liaison and communications' links and run joint training operations. Exercises focused on counterterror and counterproliferation missions should be conducted in concert with local forces and possibly under the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace. This will also help to stabilize a fragile situation in Kyrgyzstan and ensure its territorial integrity.
An additional step could be expanded cooperation in Afghanistan in the fight against narcotics production and traffic. Afghan drug production has been a major concern for Russia since Taliban rule ended and Afghanistan became the main source for narcotrafficking through the Central Asian states. Hence, this is another opportunity for Russian, U.S. and NATO forces to deal withthe dual threat of terrorism and drugs.
Timing is often everything. The NATO partnership was created in 1994. Beginning in 1995, all of the now 30-nation members, less Russia, signed the so-called Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), meaning that each nation kept legal jurisdiction over its troops no matter where they were stationed within the NATO partnership. Now, Russia may be ready to ratify the SOFA. Thus, Russian territory could be used to supply American and NATO forces in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. This cooperation may have profound consequence for the entire greater Middle East.
Some very positive political effects could be achieved. First, such joint operations would improve mutual trust and confidence and demonstrate that Russia and the United States are not playing zero-sum games against each other. There are important precedents for that. Indeed, in the 1990s when U.S. Army Gen. George Joulwan was supreme NATO commander, he directed his staff that there were to be no "secrets" between him and his Russian counterpart stationed in Mons, Belgium and that "he [the Russian general] sees what I see."
Second, other former Soviet republics in the region, such as Georgia and Ukraine, would take note. Perhaps this action would check some of the animosity that is building in Russia and America toward each other.
Third, it can also open the way for expanding Russian participation in NATO should that be desired by all parties. Some will argue this means Russia someday could join NATO, while others suggest that this means NATO could ultimately join Russia.
There are cautions. Americans who view human rights and democratic leanings as more important than cooperative engagement and joint military training will object. Russians who fear that this would simply be a ploy to disguise continuing American encirclement and encroachment on Russian sovereignty will not be automatically supportive. And, of course, there is China.
Some will argue that a Bush-Putin agreement to this suggestion would be a "Nixon in reverse" — that is, instead of going to China as means of leveraging the Soviet Union, Bush is using Russia to affect China. While untrue, harming relations with China must be avoided.
A decision for joint exercises in Kyrgyzstan will not fundamentally alter U.S.-Russian relations. However, they are one means of at least setting them on a more positive trajectory.
Harlan Ullman is a columnist for The Washington Times. Sergei Rogov is director of the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
-------- space
Rocket Roulette
Friday 22nd April 2005
SchNEWS, PO Box 2600, Brighton, BN2 0EF, England
http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news494.htm
“It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen,” sneered Commander-in-chief of US Space command, Joseph W. Ashy “We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space.”
Unlike the rest of the planet, who generally agree that space should be used for peaceful and beneficial purposes, the US still think that it would make a nice location to lobb missiles from. Back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan introduced the original ‘Star Wars’ plan to defend the US against what was hailed as ‘the evil empire’, the Soviet Union. We are told that the original cold war relic was a very ‘complex and extensive’ strategy but apparently the next episode is a bit more Bush friendly. The ‘Son of Star Wars’, otherwise called the Ballistic Missile Defence programme (MDP), is a project hoping to create a defensive screen for the entire US, which would be able to detect any incoming missiles through ground and space-based radar. A rocket is then launched, destroying the enemy’s missile in space before it reaches American soil.
The fact that the US had signed the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty didn’t act as an obstacle to George Wanker Bush and within months of his presidency the treaty was effectively killed by US withdrawal. After bulldozing their way through government negotiations, Star Wars bases have been set up all over the world with six MDP missile interceptors in Alaska and 4 in California waiting for deployment. Of course it was easy as pie getting Tony to participate in hijacking the planet despite a large number of Labour MPs said to be “disgusted” with Britain’s interest in backing the US. “Flyingdales” is US ground-based radar which has been set up in North Yorkshire and a communications installation now graces Menwith Hill. Bush is reported to be keen to get the system up and running as soon as possible! So what’s the hurry then? Well first of all, the US have decided that military conflict in Iraq is a perfect indication of how ‘important’ the use of space is to national security and military operations. But those whose heads are screwed on don’t get why waging a completely unnecessary war means that this grossly expensive project with an eerie apocalyptic ring to it should be at the top of the US’s ‘to do’ list. Well, there’s also the supposed growing threat from North Korea who the US intelligence community insist have developed long-range missile capability. However, a number of outside experts highly doubt that this is the case. Joseph Cirinione, a specialist in weapons proliferation reckons that this would have meant “a huge technological leap for them”. So, the urgency to find a new missile menace continues. Step up the next phantom threat contender …Iran! US officials have often quoted Iran as close behind N. Korea in its pursuit of longer range rockets, even though all they have come up with is a missile just capable of limping to southern Europe. Of course, believe it or not there is actually another country America really fears but doesn’t like to actually mention too much. Behind closed doors, they engage air force space workers in a bit of innocent brainwashing against this mystery country - freebee computer war games are handed out in which the enemy “red team” just happens to be named after a little place beginning with C n ending in A! No, not Canada, but China! The fact that they have a gigantic population and rapidly increasing wealth and military space ability is pissing the US right off!
But whilst Bush’s grubby hands are reaching for the stars, China is trying to slow things down and is hoping (with Russia) to renew a new global veto on weapons in space. You see, China and Russia are likely to contest the MDP, only they do not yet have the funding to match up to the US’s loony investments. A big fear is that if Bush gets the system up and running, it is unlikely the planet is going to chill out while the US military looms above the Earth’s surface. Other countries will be under enormous pressure to start developing their own space weapons and devices to blind US satellites. The US will only increase their expenditure and justifications (more wars, people!) whilst other countries struggle to meet the challenge of creating a costly and lethal arms race into space. Frightened yet? Well you probably don’t have to be for a while…
It IS Rocket Science
All this extra-terror-estrial talk and no action! ‘Why?’ you might (or US taxpayers should) ask, when $10 billion a year is being spent on star wars (while US education, health care, social security etc constantly get cut back)? Well fortunately for the universe, the missiles are, ahem, refusing to take off.
Even though the US have spent decades launching satellites, space shuttles and oh, man on the moon (nudge, nudge) the missiles are veering far off course. Maybe this is ‘cos although the US now accounts for 43% of world military spending, they thought they’d save themselves a bit of cash, relying on commercially proven motors. “We thought off-the-shelf technology was kind of a slam-dunk!” quipped Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish. Despite a $45 million bonus being offered for a successful test (which cost $10 million each), the shabby missiles are still careering off all over the gaff, often having to be postponed due to bad weather! The US had better hope that they don’t get attacked by any missiles when it is raining.
All this work in the name of defence…America must have a serious missile neurosis don’t they? Or do they? ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ is a term coined by US space command, meaning COMPLETE military dominance of land, sea, air, info and space. Two documents by the US Space Command, “Vision for 2020” and “Long Range Plan”, also bring to light what Americans are really salivating over here; “The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership…Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life - contributing to unrest in developing countries. The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multi-national corporations, will blur security agreements. The gap between ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ nations will widen - creating regional unrest. One of the commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction or country clearances required to overfly a nation from space.” Maniacal power ploys such as this and the US effort to “control space” in “Vision for 2020” are reminiscent of the great empires of Europe ruling the waves, and thus the earth, and all point to a very unsettling reality of ultimate global control - and as Bush stated in his post 9-11 speech “It’s going to be a long, long war.”
http://www.space4peace.org/
http://www.stopstarwars.org/
-------- spies
Shaking Up Israel's Spy Nest
AIPAC scandal resurfaces
April 22, 2005
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5696
In a case of incredibly bad timing, neoconservative columnist and author Joel Mowbray recently came out with a piece claiming that "stories on Larry Franklin, dual loyalties, and espionage for Israel look more far-fetched with each passing day." According to Mowbray, the spy scandal that has enveloped AIPAC since last fall is all part of a conspiracy by the Washington Post, which "deluged" readers with tall tales of Israeli spies under the floorboards of the Pentagon. Mowbray strongly implies the Post's prominent coverage of the events surrounding the FBI's two raids on AIPAC's Washington office was all pretty much due to an ill-concealed anti-Semitism: after all,
"The Post didn't stop there. Over seven days, the paper's coverage even broadened to report that investigators had 'specifically asked about' five named individuals in, or close to, the administration. All were Jews, and the Post reported, all 'have strong ties to Israel.'"
Mowbray doesn't mention that Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, the central figure in all this, is not Jewish. That would ruin the consistency of his narrative, which focuses on the ethnic victimology angle: clearly we are supposed to think that this is not an investigation into spying operations, in which a foreign power is given ready access to top secret documents, but a reenactment of Kristallnacht. Mowbray is an expert when it comes to this kind of whining: remember how he smeared General Anthony Zinni?
In any case, Mowbray isn't impressed by the Post's reporting, nor by the FBI's apparently intense interest in one of Washington's most powerful lobbying groups – although one wonders what his attitude might be if we were talking about a Muslim or Arab-American organization. Instead, his attitude is blithely dismissive:
"In an online chat at the Washington Post's Web site recently, the paper's intelligence reporter Dana Priest said that there had been 'nothing new' to report in the investigation of low-level Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin – whose case dominated the Post's front page over the course of a full week last fall – 'or we would have written something.' Well, something 'new' has happened: the passage of time has largely debunked the Post's breathless coverage."
Not so fast, my friend. One of the dangers of writing with such certitude is that subsequent events could all too easily prove otherwise. With the latest news about the Franklin affair – and, yes, it's from the Washington Post – it looks like Mowbray's would-be debunking has been debunked:
"Two senior employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of Washington's most influential lobbying organizations, have left their jobs amid an FBI investigation into whether they passed classified U.S. information to the government of Israel, a source close to the organization said yesterday.
"The source characterized the departures as firings."
Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman aren't mailroom clerks: Rosen, a longtime AIPAC official, is the group's director for foreign policy issues; Weissman is his deputy and a specialist on Iran. The two are accused of procuring the contents of a secret presidential directive on Iran at a luncheon meeting with Franklin. Lawyers for the duo denied any wrongdoing, but the big news here is that AIPAC is clearly trying to distance itself from two of its top officials:
"'The statement made by Rosen and Weissman represents solely their view of the facts,' said AIPAC spokesman Patrick Dorton. 'The action that AIPAC has taken was done in consultation with counsel after careful consideration of recently learned information and the conduct AIPAC expects of its employees.'"
Translation: They're guilty as sin and we're throwing them overboard.
This is quite a reversal for AIPAC, which once doggedly defended all of its employees caught up in the FBI's spy dragnet. Last summer, when CBS News first revealed that Franklin had been caught red-handed trying to pass off classified information to Israeli officials in the company of AIPAC employees, AIPAC spokesman Josh Block couldn't have been clearer:
"Any allegation of criminal conduct by the organization or its employees is baseless and false. We would not condone or tolerate for a second any violation of U.S. law or interests."
That was then, but this is now: the FBI clearly has the goods, not only on Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman, but on AIPAC as well. They don't just start launching raids on one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington for the fun of it: this investigation has been going on for at least two years, and something has been sustaining it. Mowbray and Israel's amen corner insist it's anti-Semitism, but is AIPAC, too, part of the Vast Anti-Semitic Conspiracy? The once-powerful lobby is now running away as fast as possible from these two because they're the victims of a pogrom?
A nest of spies in the Pentagon, determined to bend policy – and the rules governing the dissemination of top secret materials – to Israel's benefit. That's what the FBI investigation has uncovered, and it's no accident that the core of this espionage cell is located in the policy department of the Pentagon, formerly overseen by Douglas J. Feith, who resigned earlier this year. Why did he resign so suddenly? Perhaps we are about to find out.
Franklin worked in the bureau for Near East and South Asian Affairs, under William J. Luti, until he was reassigned in the wake of the scandal: it was Luti who presided over the infamous Office of Special Plans, which was responsible for "stove-piping" patently false "intelligence" on Iraq prior to the invasion. According to Julian Borger of the Guardian, there was an identical unit based in Israel that was funneling phony intelligence to key decision-makers: Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, now retired, also witnessed a strong Israeli connection, with IDF officers exempted from having to sign in on visits to agency facilities. What is under investigation by the FBI is what Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, writing in Mother Jones, dubbed "the shadow agency within an agency" – Israel's fifth column in the Defense Department.
Mowbray's impatience with the speed of the investigation is finally about to assuaged, according to the Post. Two law enforcement officials are cited as sources for the news that "things are moving quickly," as one of them says. Federal prosecutors, we are told, are weighing criminal charges, presumably against Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman, at the very least.
My advice to Joel Mowbray is to chill out, dude. The wheels of justice may turn slowly, even imperceptibly – especially when so many people are trying to "debunk" a case in which they don't have access to all the facts – but this is still America, at least to some extent, where treason is a crime – even if it's committed by partisans of Israel.
– Justin Raimondo
----
Intelligence Chief: Spies Must Work Better
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2005
Filed at 7:45 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Intelligence-Chief.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The new national intelligence director, John Negroponte, told the thousands of employees at the nation's spy agencies Friday that the government will pioneer new ways of organizing itself to face ''a new order of threats to national security.''
In a message to the intelligence community in his first day on the job, Negroponte wrote, ''We know we need to do our work differently and do it better, but the most critical element in intelligence reform resides in you, the people who will carry it out.''
Negroponte takes over a collection of 15 highly independent spy agencies that have been criticized in numerous reports since Sept. 11, 2001, for neglecting to collect information, misreading what they had and failing to communicate.
Congress created his job in December to improve coordination among the agencies as part of the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years.
It's unclear precisely how many employees are part of the intelligence community; those figures are classified. Yet Negroponte promised them changes.
''In the months and years ahead, we will be pioneering new ways of organizing ourselves and allocating our resources,'' he wrote in the four-paragraph message shared with The Associated Press.
Even as Negroponte takes over the immense management task, he still must handle even the most basic details. He and his deputy, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, are looking for permanent office space for a staff that may someday number at least 500. Government officials familiar with the search say they've considered several locations, including an office building near the White House.
Officials say Negroponte and his close advisers also are considering how to structure the new organization, interpret the intelligence reform law and handle briefings for the president and other senior policy-makers.
-------- un
Cheney Backs Bolton As Ambassador Nominee
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2005
Filed at 11:05 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Ambassador.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Known for his own acerbic style, Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday came to the defense of John R. Bolton, who is struggling to survive blistering criticism and win confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee set May 12 to vote on the nominee, Cheney tried to turn around accusations that Bolton was not fit for the sensitive diplomatic post because of his blunt -- and, according to some critics, berating -- style.
''If being occasionally tough and aggressive and abrasive were a problem,'' Cheney said, ''a lot of members of the United States Senate wouldn't qualify.''
His thrust seemed partly aimed at Democrats on the committee, who in their effort to block Bolton have made his temperament an issue. The remarks drew chuckles from the audience at the National Press Club, the Republican National Lawyers Association.
''In this time and place, it's extraordinarily important for us to have a tough advocate at the U.N., and I think John is that advocate,'' Cheney said. ''I've looked at all the charges that have been made. I don't think any of them stand up to scrutiny.''
Even so, senators' staffers held another day of interviews with critics of Bolton. Among them was Thomas Hubbard, who was President Bush's ambassador to South Korea until he retired last year.
Among Hubbard's accusations were that Bolton berated him for failing in 2003 to arrange a meeting with the president-elect of South Korea, Roh Moo-Hyun.
Hubbard also is challenging Bolton's testimony to the committee that he had praised Bolton for a speech that year denouncing Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, as a ''tyrannical dictator.''
Instead, Hubbard said, he had suggested that the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security ''tone down'' the speech.
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., complained that staff aides to Democrats were not permitted to testify. He said the Democrats would have to interview Hubbard separately.
Dodd said he did not know if there were enough votes to block Bolton's confirmation. ''But the bulk of the stuff pouring over the transom -- that he's a bully, that he has a dreadful temperament -- that's note debatable,'' Dodd said.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, has talked to two fence-sitting Republican senators, Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, at their invitation.
''The general considers the discussions private,'' said his spokeswoman, Peggy Cifrino.
Powell was the only living former Republican secretary of state who did not sign a letter of support for Bolton that was sent to the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., on April 5.
When Powell ran the State Department his views were often at odds with Bolton's. Powell was inclined to take a moderate position on world issues while Bolton, like Bush, hewed to a hard line.
The State Department seemed nonchalant about Powell's intervention, which could be critical to Bolton's chances of clearing the committee and winning confirmation in the Senate itself. The nomination was set back last Tuesday when Lugar's panel postponed a scheduled vote on Bolton because some Republicans, as well as Democrats, wanted to continue investigating his past.
''Secretary Powell is answering requests for information the way that we do, the way than any American citizen would,'' said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shares that view, Ereli said. ''The secretary and the State Department believe that questions of the committee should be answered,'' he said.
The May 12 voting date was set by Lugar and the senior Democrat on the committee, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. It meant that Bolton and the administration have more time to solidify GOP support -- and nearly three more weeks during which additional revelations about the nominee could emerge.
They also agreed to complete their work by May 6. Lugar and Biden also agreed that Bolton might be called to testify a second time but have not made a decision, Biden said in a letter to Lugar.
Bolton answered questions under oath for more than seven hours on April 12.
On the Net:
State Department: http://www.state.gov
Senate Foreign Relations Committee: http://foreign.senate.gov/
-------- war crimes
The Armenian Genocide:
90 Years Later Turkey Continues to Deny the Extermination of a People
Friday, April 22nd, 2005
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/22/1339201
This week marks the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide when more than a million Armenians were exterminated by the Young Turk government through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Almost a century later, Turkey continues to deny the genocide. We speak with Colgate University professor Peter Balakian, author of "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response" and Zanku Armenian of the Armenian National Committee of America. [includes rush transcript] This week marks the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. On April 24, 1915, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic premeditated genocide of the Armenian people - an unarmed Christian minority living under Turkish rule. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. An ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.
Today, almost a century later, the Turkish government continues to deny this genocide. Books about the genocide are banned in Turkey and its government funds chairs in Turkish studies at American universities to ensure a certain version of history is presented. To this day, Turkey and Armenia do not have diplomatic relations.
But now, Ankara's ambitions to join the European Union are in jeopardy. French President Jacques Chirac has said Ankara must first acknowledge the genocide before being allowed to become a member of the EU. In response, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people during World War I.
Today we commemorate the 90th (ninetieth) anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
- Peter Balakian, author, "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response." He is also the Professor of English at Colgate University
- Zanku Armenian, of the Armenian National Committee of America.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Today we look the at Armenian genocide. We're joined in our New York studio by Peter Balakian, Professor of English at Colgate University and author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. Here in our Los Angeles studio, we're joined by Zanku Armenian of the Armenian National Committee of America. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Thank you.
PETER BALAKIAN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, let's begin with you. If you can simply start off by telling us what happened 90 years ago.
PETER BALAKIAN: I think it's important for people to understand that the plan to exterminate the Armenians of what is today Turkey, then Ottoman Turkey, was implemented by the central government, and it was a very well-organized plan. It involved the formation of mobile killing squads. It involved a central bureaucracy called the Special Organization. The Special Organization put into gear the mobile killing squads, and the killing squads were made up of some 30,000 convicts who had been released from prison, a little bit like the Nazis’ Einsatzgruppen. It's also important to understand that there was emergency executive legislation used to implement this plan, that technology was used to train, to deport Armenians from the western part of Turkey down to the south and into the desert. And it's important to understand that the population was systematically dismembered.
And the reason Armenians commemorate the genocide on April 24 is because on that evening in Constantinople, more than 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested and deported by train to the interior, where they were subsequently tortured and murdered. The idea here is, of course, that you cut the head off the culture, you rip its tongue out, its journalists, its poets, its playwrights, its novelists, its clergy and professors. So this was very systematically done, and it's important to understand that this whole operation, which in the end resulted in the deaths of close to 1.5 million unarmed, innocent minority population citizens of Turkey, this became the template for all genocide to follow. And Adolf Hitler did say eight days before invading Poland in 1939, who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians. Hitler was inspired by the fact that the young Turk government had succeeded in doing what they did and also he was inspired by the fact that what had been the most important international human rights catastrophe of the second decade of the 20th century had only 20 years later been sort of washed down the memory hole.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, we're going to break and then come back to this discussion on this 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're broadcasting from Los Angeles, California, on this 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. This morning, about 4:00, as we were driving to the studio, we made a right turn on Little Armenia. Yes, this area has the highest concentration of Armenian Americans anywhere in the country. Our guests are Peter Balakian, he's in the New York studio, author of The Burning Tigris, also Professor of English at Colgate University. And here in our Los Angeles studio, we're joined by Zanku Armenian of the Armenian National Committee of America. And we welcome you, as well, to Democracy Now!
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe this area, this highly concentrated area of Armenian Americans?
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Yeah. We basically have about a 400,000- half a million Armenians just in the southland area in Los Angeles in various smaller cities around this area. And this community has grown relatively newly compared to the East Coast, in that it -- a lot of immigration happened from different wars or unrest that has happened in the Middle East, and as in the upheaval in the Soviet Union, etc. We have had a lot of immigrations happen here. So this population tends to be more newly immigrated in that they have immigrated in the last 20 years, a lot of first generation Armenian Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the significance of this march that was taken by students and others from Fresno to Sacramento, and the naming of this weekend of April 24th as the California Day Of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide?
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Yes. Well, the March for Humanity was actually organized by the Armenian Youth Federation, which is a very large youth organization for the Armenian American community here in the U.S. And they decided that they wanted to do something that was symbolic of not only the marches that their grandparents and great grandparents went through as part of the forced marches in Turkey, but also wanted to do something in the great -- name of greater humanity, as we see other genocides happening, to bring attention to the issue of genocide, in general. So it was decided that this march would take place, 215 miles starting from Fresno, which is actually the oldest Armenian community in California. And this group would start their march, and it would end in Sacramento, and in Sacramento yesterday we had a rally on the State Capitol, where about approximately 1,500 Armenian Americans gathered with legislators from both the State Assembly, as well as the Senate, to mark this day, as well as have legislation passed which permanently designates the week of April 24 as a Week of Remembrance for California from this point forward?
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, who denies that the genocide took place? What are the various forces and their influence here in this country, for example?
PETER BALAKIAN: Well, I think that the denial is propelled mostly by Ankara, by the Turkish government, and it has impact mostly in State Departments on State Department levels. The good news is that really the grassroots intellectual world and the educational world and the curricular world in the United States, for example, have really put forth a very impressive, scholarly discourse on the Armenian genocide that has grown year by year. The Armenian genocide is now being taught in the curriculum as a staple of the 20th century history and, for example, the history of World War I, but the Turkish government's denial persists, and scholars of genocide around the world continue to articulate this: That the denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide because it seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators and because it sends the message that genocide demands no moral accountability, no moral response. So the Turkish government's denial is a serious ethical issue. It's become an international ethical issue. Turkey has a few hired hands, I would call them, scholars who have given their careers to help defend the Turkish State in its efforts to cover up and sanitize its past, but I think for the most part, this has been unmasked for what it is by the general scholarly community.
I would note, you mentioned earlier that the Turkish Prime Minister has called for an impartial investigation into the Armenian genocide, and it's important to note that the International Association of Genocide Scholars has responded in a formal letter to the Turkish Prime Minister by reminding the Prime Minister that the record on the Armenian genocide is in. It is abundantly documented by eight decades of scholarship and by the unanimous consensus of genocide scholars worldwide, and that the man who coined and invented the term genocide, Rafael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish jurist and legal scholar, did so in large part on the basis of what had happened to the Armenians in 1915 and on the basis of what had happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. So, really, the Armenian extermination is part of the entomology of the word genocide. And the International Association of Genocide Scholars is making a statement to Turkey to acknowledge the historical record and to make it clear that calling for an impartial investigation is nothing more than a public relations gimmick. And sooner or later, I think the Turkish government has no choice but to own up to the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: What would it lose, almost a century later? Why would the current Turkish government, for example, lose any standing?
PETER BALAKIAN: Well, I think, actually, quite the contrary, that the Turkish government would gain an enormous amount of respect in the eyes of the world if it were able to come to terms morally with the crimes of its culture's past, the way Germany has done with the Holocaust, for example. It bewilders intellectuals and scholars and others worldwide as to why Turkey continues to maintain this irrational, and one, I think, must call it a hysterical response to the Armenian genocide past. And I think Turkey, if it wants to show that it has the dimensions of democratic culture in its own society, that it must begin to learn how to critique its past honestly, and I think this will help it in its bid to join, at least, the accession process. I realize that admission to Europe is a long way off for Turkey, but even just to get the accession process going, I think that coming clean on this would help Turkey immensely.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask, Zanku Armenian, if you've have had family members killed in the genocide, and what happened to them, exactly?
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Well, my great grandparents and grandparents were from the Central Anatolia area. Luckily, my immediate grandparents did survive. They were marched at a young age and were able to escape towards the South, one through the Seleukia Region, which is the region of Turkey that actually borders the Mediterranean Sea, and others through Syria, and they were able to escape. But several hundred members of my extended family were part of the victims, the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide. But, you know, growing up here in the U.S., you know, as you interact with your grandparents, and this is a common experience for Armenian Americans, you hear the stories. You know, you hear the stories of escape, stories of heroism at a very, very young age, something that we would not even fathom in this country even thinking about, because, you know, I'm talking about five years old, seven years old, eight years old, being rescued or just escaping through other families while they have left their main families behind.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, what does the Turkish government say happened?
PETER BALAKIAN: I think the Turkish government basically wants to confuse and divert attention from the truth. So, they will say anything, really, but I think the main things you will hear are, (a) this was not planned or organized. It's something that happened during World War I. It got out of control. We don't really know what happened to the more than two million Armenians living on their historic homeland. And that is why I underscored in the beginning of our conversation how meticulously this event was planned. Secondly, the Turkish government wants the world to believe that somehow the Armenians were seditious, that they were trying to take down the Ottoman Empire, and that they --and the Turkish government will use the term civil war, which is really an obscene notion, because an unarmed Christian minority population living in the Ottoman Empire was not capable of engaging in anything close to civil war. These were defenseless civilians, more than half of them women and children and elderly people who were massacred and deported, raped and tortured. These were professors and writers sitting in their classrooms and at their desks, who were ripped from their homes in the middle of the night. The idea that this could be civil war is absolutely a fantasy and, of course, we understand that genocide is always the result of an asymmetry in power, that there's a defenseless, stateless people who are being annihilated systematically by a government that has a military apparatus and a huge state bureaucracy, and that, of course, is one of the defining dimensions of modern genocide.
ZANKU ARMENIAN: And, Amy, if I could add something to what Peter is saying and something that you asked about previously, which is why Turkey spends so much effort in denying this genocide. Let's not forget that there are actually two parts to the equation. There's the issue of coming to terms with their past. That's the first part. The second part comes right after that, is what are the consequences to that crime? Because if there are no consequences to the crime, then it can be repeated again in the future. Just like Germany to this day pays reparations to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. That is part of the main issue that is behind and in back of their minds, as well. So, that is one side of the equation, and I would say here in the U.S., the U.S. government has complicity in this issue in that it supports Turkey in its denialist campaign. Instead of breaking from Turkey and showing the leadership, showing Turkey how a democracy acts, saying Turkey, you are our ally, however, we are not going to help you cover up this crime. You must come to terms with these pasts. So we expect the U.S. government to break from Turkey on this issue, but unfortunately, the State Department uses this issue as a way to leverage Turkey in diplomatic circles.
AMY GOODMAN: What you to mean?
ZANKU ARMENIAN: Well, they will use this issue. They will dangle it out there, saying, you know, there's this Armenian genocide issue, Turkey. You know, things can pass in the U.S. Congress, commemorative resolutions could pass. They start to rattle their cage a little bit and use that as a way to say, you know, if you don't behave in the area, if you don't follow our policy objectives, then we're going to let the Armenian genocide out of its box.
AMY GOODMAN: So you're calling for reparations?
ZANKU ARMENIAN: I'm calling for that they will be -- there has to be consequences with any crime. Otherwise, for them to just accept the genocide is meaningless. We already know that there was a genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, we had a discussion on Democracy Now! a while ago about Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia and how Turkey was putting pressure, saying it would throw out Microsoft from Turkey if they talked about the Armenian genocide. What has come of that dispute?
PETER BALAKIAN: You know, I haven't followed the aftermath of the Encarta drama. At the time, the Microsoft people stood by the scholars who had prepared the entry on the Armenian genocide for the Encarta Encyclopedia at the time. But what's so really tragic about this is that the Turkish government is disallowing its own people a proper intellectual education and democratic inquiry into its own history. I mean, one of the things that we affirm in a democracy is the importance of critiquing one's own culture and one's past, of doing it in the classroom, of doing it in the educational and popular culture of a given society, and Turkey has continually displayed its inability, its incapacity to engage in critical self-evaluation, and the Encarta episode is yet another tragic example of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Balakian, we just have ten seconds. What is happening in New York on Sunday?
PETER BALAKIAN: On Sunday, there'll be a huge gathering at Times Square and then one following at St. Patrick's Cathedral to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the century's first genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Peter Balakian, author of The Burning Tigris, also Professor of English at Colgate University, and here in Los Angeles, Zanku Armenian of the Armenian National Committee of America. Thanks for being with us.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Negroponte wins approval to be intelligence director
April 22, 2005
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050421-111728-9745r.htm
John D. Negroponte yesterday won easy approval by the Senate to become the first national intelligence director, a job created last year to better coordinate U.S. spy agencies in the wake of criticism after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq.
Within 45 minutes of his approval, Mr. Negroponte was sworn in at the White House by chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. President Bush witnessed the ceremony. Probably beginning next week, Mr. Negroponte will take over the task of giving Mr. Bush a daily briefing on intelligence matters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Mr. Negroponte, 65, has said this was his "most challenging assignment" in more than 40 years of government service. The Senate voted 98-2 to approve the former Iraq ambassador for the job.
Mr. Negroponte now oversees the intelligence agencies that were criticized for failures leading up to the 2001 terrorist attacks and for their prewar intelligence on Iraq. Mr. Bush said Mr. Negroponte "will lead a unified intelligence community as it reforms and adapts to the new challenges" of this century.
In the summer, the independent September 11 commission urged Congress to create a single, powerful director to oversee all 15 intelligence agencies. Congress approved the post in December as part of the most significant overhaul to the intelligence system since 1947.
Yet, intelligence veterans and some lawmakers still question whether the job comes with enough power to lead the highly competitive agencies that handle everything from recruiting spies to studying satellite imagery.
"He's going to carry heavy burdens," said Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I am convinced, however, that he has the character, that he has the expertise, and he has the leadership skills to successfully meet these challenges and shoulder these responsibilities."
Also yesterday, the Senate unanimously approved the nomination of Mr. Negroponte's deputy, Michael Hayden, who used to lead the National Security Agency.
A diplomat most of his career, Mr. Negroponte speaks five languages and has held official posts in eight countries, including ambassadorships in Mexico and the Philippines. He was in President Reagan's National Security Council from 1987 to 1989.
Since Mr. Negroponte left Iraq last month, he has met with many lawmakers. West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the two discussed issues such as whether changes are needed in the intelligence director's powers.
"Reform of the intelligence community will involve stepping on the turf of some of the most powerful bureaucracies in Washington; first and foremost among those is the Department of Defense," Mr. Rockefeller said yesterday.
The Pentagon controls 80 percent of the intelligence community's estimated $40 billion budget.
Voting against Mr. Negroponte were Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Mr. Wyden questioned whether Mr. Negroponte adequately had reported human rights abuses as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s.
-------- ENERGY
FACTBOX - Major Provisions of US House Energy Bill
REUTERS USA: April 22, 2005
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30498/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives was expected to approve on Thursday a wide-ranging $8 billion bill to promote domestic energy production.
The Senate Energy Committee is scheduled to finish writing its version of an energy bill next month, which would be followed by a vote in the full Senate. Both versions of the legislation, once approved by each chamber, must be reconciled into a final bill.
Key elements of the House bill include the following:
OIL/GAS
* Opens Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling.
* Suspends federal royalty payments five years for drilling in Gulf of Mexico deep water of more than 400 meters.
* Earmarks $2 billion in royalties from federal Outer Continental Shelf for research in ultra-deepwater drilling.
* Eases environmental constraints to build or expand oil refineries in economically depressed areas.
* Expands the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 300 million barrels to 1 billion barrels, and halts new shipments if US oil futures prices rise above $40 per barrel.
* Authorizes more than $3 billion in research for oil, gas and coal industries.
* Gives Federal Energy Regulatory Commission final say if localities object to new liquefied natural gas projects.
FUEL/TRANSPORTATION
* Limits product liability for makers of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a fuel additive and suspected carcinogen that has fouled groundwater in cities across the nation.
* Bans MTBE use by 2014 and gives more than $1.7 billion in transition aid for MTBE makers to switch to other products.
* Cuts number of special gasoline blends now required to ease air pollution in cities and regions.
* Requires at least 5 billion gallons of corn-blended ethanol be used in US gasoline supply by 2012.
* Offers $750 million in subsidies to build new ethanol production plants.
COAL
* Doubles funding to develop low-emission coal plants to $2.5 billion.
* Offers federally guaranteed loans for five petroleum coke plants and a coal gasification plant in West Virginia.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
* Extends expiring accident insurance protection for owners of nuclear power plants by 20 years.
* Spends $1.3 billion for experimental Idaho reactor that would also produce hydrogen fuel.
ELECTRICITY
* Sets mandatory reliability standards for the electric power grid to prevent a repeat of the August 2003 blackout that left 50 million people in the dark.
* Offers financial incentives to generate more electricity from solar, wind, biomass and geothermal sources.
MISCELLANEOUS
* Extends annual US daylight-saving time by two months to cut energy use.
* Extends deadline for cities downwind of polluting factories to comply with smog standards if states can prove that most pollution comes from outside their borders.
* Requires 20 percent cut in federal buildings' energy use by 2015.
* Authorizes more than $3 billion annually to help poor families pay winter heating bills.
-------- alternative energy
Earth Day is New Jersey's Solar Power Day
TRENTON, New Jersey, April 22, 2005 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-22-09.asp#anchor5
On the eve of Earth Day, New Jersey Public Interest Research Groups (NJPIRG), The Sun Farm Network, the New Jersey Farm Bureau, the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry in New Jersey, Green Faith, and several other solar energy supporters and users met Thursday with the Board of Public Utilities Office of Clean Energy to take note of the diverse users that have contributed to solar energy’s growth in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) announced that they will hold two meetings in May and June to bring in interested parties to discuss plans to increase the Renewable Portfolio Standard.
“On Earth Day, it is appropriate to stop and realize that this world is blanketed in enough clean, non-polluting energy from the sun in one day to power our world for a full year,” said Jeanne Fox, president of the Board of Public Utilities.
“Harnessing that energy can change our world for the better," said Fox. "In New Jersey, we know about changing our world - with our favorite son Tom Edison having invented a way for us to hold electricity in our hands. Over the years, we at BPU have helped to finance the development of that system. We helped to change the world. We are now helping to finance a way to hold the electricity generator in your hand with solar photoelectric systems and again change our world for the better.”
The fast growth of solar energy in New Jersey is no accident. The BPU Office of Clean Energy offers rebates to homes and businesses that install solar panels to help defray the initial costs of installation.
Solar energy has been adopted by many different types of users over the past few years, including farms, churches, schools, large corporations, small businesses, and residential homes. Thanks to that support, the BPU Office of Clean Energy recently received their 1,000th application for a solar energy installation.
Another reason for success is the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires power companies to purchase Renewable Energy Credits from solar energy to diversify their energy sources and increase the amount of clean energy in New Jersey’s electricity mix.
“Clean energy like solar power benefits our environment and fuels our economy with renewable energy sources at stable prices. New Jersey must now build on our success by ramping up our clean energy standards to 20 percent of our use by 2020,” said Emily Rusch, Energy Advocate for NJPIRG.
A recent study by the Rutgers Center for Energy Economics and Environmental Policy found that a 20 percent Clean Energy Standard would lead to negligible, if any, increased costs for electricity, and a variety of economic and environmental benefits, including up to 11,700 new jobs in the state.
Growing companies like The Sun Farm Network are examples of growth that has already occurred. “The extension and expansion of the RPS requirements to 20 percent by 2020, builds on the critical regulatory mechanism that recognizes the real societal benefit of solar energy economically," said Pamela Frank from The Sun Farm Network in Flemington. It creates jobs, cleans the air, diversifies our energy supply…it just makes sense.”
“Farmers are embracing solar energy because renewable energy is a natural fit for a farm, and it matches well to those who already have a commitment to the land. In addition, the financial incentives make solar energy a smart business decision for farms,” said Pete Furey from the New Jersey Farm Bureau.
Religious groups are putting up solar panels on their houses of worship, including recent installation at a Lutheran Church in Mendham.
“People of faith believe that using solar power is a way to protect the good Earth that God has given us," said Fletcher Harper of Green Faith in Trenton. "We are called to be stewards of creation, and that’s what solar power is all about."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Study Says Antarctic Glaciers Are Shrinking, Sea Levels May Climb
Bloomberg
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8000-2005Apr21.html
Most of the coastal glaciers along the 1,200-mile Antarctic Peninsula have shrunk as temperatures have risen over the past 50 years, and sea levels may climb if the trend continues, according to a study published today in the journal Science.
About 212 of the 244 glaciers surrounding the peninsula, which stretches north from the southern polar continent toward South America, have retreated as temperatures have risen more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, reported the study by Alison Cook and colleagues.
The glacial retreat puts Antarctic ice shelves and sheets at risk, wrote Cook, a geographic data analyst with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, and the study's lead author. Inland glaciers that flow from mountains into the ocean and keep continental ice sheets in place are retreating, Cook said.
"We can expect more retreat to happen across the peninsula," Cook said in a telephone interview from Cambridge. "The glaciers haven't disappeared, though they are still moving backward, and I think we will definitely see more of that if the climate continues to warm in the same way."
The Antarctic Peninsula is a mountainous region that extends from the 14 million-square-mile continent and ends 600 miles from the tip of Argentina. Its eastern side is flanked by the Larsen ice shelf, a floating ice mass that broke from the main continent in 2002.
The authors used more than 2,000 aerial photographs taken from 1940 to 2001 and more than 100 satellite pictures taken after the 1960s to make maps of the peninsula, then compared them with a composite of images from NASA's Landsat satellites.
The research is part of a U.S. Geological Survey study of the entire continent.
----
Mercury in Vaccines Different, US Study Shows
Story by Maggie Fox
REUTERS USA: April 22, 2005
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30507/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The mercury contained in some vaccines is processed differently in the body and is possibly less toxic to children than mercury found in pollution and fish, US researchers reported on Thursday.
Tests in monkeys showed that the ethyl mercury contained in the vaccine preservative thimerosal is cleared quickly by the body, while methyl mercury persists much longer.
This suggests that current Environmental Protection Agency guidelines on mercury exposure should not apply to the type of mercury in vaccines -- and could help answer doubts about the safety of some vaccines, the researchers wrote in this week's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
"The current debate linking the use of thimerosal in vaccines to autism and other developmental disorders has led many families to question whether the potential risks associated with early childhood immunizations may outweigh the benefits," Thomas Burbacher of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues wrote in their report.
The Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the federal government, has said there is no evidence of any link between vaccines and autism. It has advised researchers looking for the causes of autism to look elsewhere.
This has enraged autism activists, who fear a cover-up.
Burbacher's team said it would make sense to study more closely the effects of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once widely used in vaccines. It has been removed from most childhood vaccines because of the furor.
Thimerosal remains in the influenza vaccine and in some vaccines used outside the United States.
Current government advice on vaccine exposure limits are based on studies done on people who were exposed to methyl mercury from industrial accidents. It can clearly cause long-term brain and nervous system damage.
An earlier study calculated that children receive 187.5 micrograms of ethyl mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines given over the first 14 weeks of life. This can exceed EPA guidelines for methyl mercury exposure during pregnancy.
Some experts have argued that thimerosal breaks down into a different form of mercury in the body -- ethyl mercury -- and that this is cleared more quickly.
Tests on human infants suggest this does happen, but their brains cannot be directly examined.
Burbacher's team tested 41 newborn monkeys, feeding them either methyl mercury or giving them shots of thimerosal in doses comparable to those given vaccinated human infants. The mercury from the vaccines was cleared out of the body much more quickly than was methyl mercury, they said.
It took just over eight days to completely clear mercury from thimerosal, while it took 21 days to clear methyl mercury from the blood, they found.
"Brain concentrations of total mercury were significantly lower by about three-fold for the thimerosal-exposed infants when compared to the methyl mercury infants," they wrote.
The researchers said this does not mean thimerosal is harmless and urged more research.
"This information is critical if we are to respond to public concerns regarding the safety of childhood immunizations," they wrote.
"This study emphasizes that thimerosal and methyl mercury behave differently in the body. Given that we routinely inject thimerosal into millions of infants, the study authors' call for more in-depth research on the subject is the right way to go," said Dr. Jim Burkhart, science editor for the journal.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Vanunu blasts Israel in Internet chat with Norwegian readers
By The Associated Press Last update - 21:47 22/04/2005
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/568445.html
OSLO, Norway - Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu lashed out at Israel Friday in an Internet chat with readers in Norway, defying a ban on contact with foreigners.
The former nuclear technician exposed his country's nuclear weapons program in 1986, and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
"I saved Israel from its madness to go toward nuclear genocide war," Vanunu said in the chat set up by Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. "I am very proud of publishing nuclear secret."
Vanunu, released from prison last year, has been in the news in Norway after it rejected his asylum application.
Dagbladet editor Helge Oegrim said they repeatedly called Vanunu on a secret telephone number to be sure he was the person answering the readers.
"I'm not saying it couldn't be a top spy answering," Oegrim told The Associated Press. "But we feel very certain that this is the real person."
Vanunu confirmed to the Associated Press in Israel that he had participated in the Norwegian paper's question and answer session.
Israel this week extended a ban on Vanunu leaving the country or contacting foreigners for another year, drawing protests the London-based human rights group Amnesty International.
Security officials have said Vanunu could still have classified information that he didn't release earlier
Vanunu, 50, said he was taking the risk of contact with foreigners because to help continue his campaign against nuclear weapons in Israel and the world.
"All my activity here is open and known to everyone," said Vanunu. "The Israel government can put me back in prison if they want."
Vanunu has applied for asylum in numerous countries, including Norway, which rejected his request because he applied at Oslo's embassy in Israel rather than in Norway as required. The government also said it feared compromising its role as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Vanunu, who has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize given annually in Oslo, said he was disappointed by the rejection, but buoyed by support from the Norwegian people, including a city that offered him shelter under an international program to protect persecuted writers.
Vanunu was convicted of treason in 1988 for divulging information and pictures of Israel's top secret nuclear reactor. The details, published in London's Sunday Times, led experts to conclude that Israel has the sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, including hundreds of warheads.
Israel neither acknowledges nor denies having a nuclear weapons' program, following a policy of nuclear ambiguity.