NucNews - May 7, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- korea Ministers urge North Korea back to nuclear talks By REUTERS May 7, 2005 Filed at 6:58 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-asia-europe.html?pagewanted=print KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) - Asian and European foreign ministers urged North Korea on Saturday to return to talks on its nuclear arms program ``without any further delay'' as concerns grew that Pyongyang was preparing for an atomic test. Nearly a year has passed since a third round of six-country talks on the crisis ended inconclusively in Beijing. North Korea declared in February that it had nuclear arms and would stay away from the talks indefinitely -- a matter the foreign ministers said was a cause for ``deep concern.'' ``(The ministers) strongly urged the DPRK (North Korea) to return to the negotiating table of the six-party talks without any further delay, and to make a strategic decision so as to achieve the denuclearisation of the (Korean) peninsula in a peaceful manner through dialogue,'' said a chairman's statement issued at the end of a two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). ASEM, one of the few international groupings not to include the United States, comprises 38 countries accounting for 60 percent of world trade. A third round of nuclear talks among the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China took place in June 2004. ``Over the past 10 months, the six-party talks have not been held and in the meantime, it is highly likely that nuclear weapons development or missile development has proceeded steadily,'' Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference wrapping up the ASEM gathering. The topic came up again when Machimura held talks with China's Li Zhaoxing and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, where the three agreed on the need to resume the six-party talks as soon as possible. Machimura was expected to urge Beijing, at a later two-way meeting with Li, to try harder to persuade its ally North Korea to return to the negotiating table. ATOMIC TEST? But a diplomat familiar with the meeting said China was growing irritated at the mounting pressure it faces to persuade Pyongyang. ``It's China's position that it will work on its own initiative, not because of pressure from others,'' he said. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that China had rebuffed a request last week by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill to cut off North Korea's oil supply as a way of pressuring it to return to the talks. A U.S. defense official in Washington said on Friday that spy satellite images had shown what could be preparations for an underground nuclear test, although he added the warning that this also might be an elaborate North Korean ruse. ``We do hope that North Korea will not take such kinds of measures as to test nuclear weapons,'' Ban told the news conference. He added that it was in Pyongyang's interests to abandon its nuclear arms program in return for economic and energy aid and security assurances from participating countries. Washington has made clear it would consider taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council -- a prelude to possible sanctions -- if North Korea kept shunning the talks. Pyongyang has said sanctions would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Machimura echoed the U.S. stance on Friday but while Ban agreed international patience was wearing thin, he said diplomacy could still succeed. ``The room for negotiations is not completely shut down,'' he said, adding that participants in the talks should ``exert their utmost efforts'' to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. U.S. officials have said they believe Pyongyang has already amassed enough fissile material to make six to eight bombs. JAPAN-CHINA TIES Machimura's talks with Li will also be closely watched as the first such bilateral contact since last month's summit between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao. The leaders soothed ties fractured by Chinese perceptions that Japan has failed to own up to its wartime atrocities. The summit followed a rare public apology by Koizumi one day earlier for suffering caused by Tokyo's past military aggression. But feuds and mutual mistrust remain unresolved, putting at risk the growing economic ties between the two Asian giants which generated nearly $170 billion worth of trade in 2004. ``I believe so long as we take history as a mirror, base ourselves on reality and look to the future, the trilateral cooperation will grow from strength to strength,'' Li said ahead of his trilateral meeting with Ban and Machimura. ---- North Korea wants US apology before resuming six-party talks: Russian deputy MOSCOW (AFP) May 07, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050507145010.ak3o27kh.html North Korea wants an apology for hostile US comments before it will resume six-party talks on its nuclear programme, the head of a Russian delegation to Pyongyang said on returning to Moscow on Saturday. "Pyongyang considers that the ultimate goal is adhesion of the Korean peninsula to nuclear-free status," Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Duma, or parliament, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. However, "we were informed that without public official apologies by Washington in this regard there will be no reconsideration by Pyongyang of its position on six-party talks," Kosachev said. In particular Washington's labelling of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny" is a key obstacle to resuming the six-party talks that stalled in the middle of last year. Russia was a key member of the six-party format that diplomats hoped would help solve the nuclear impasse over North Korea. In addition to North Korea and Russia, the talks also involved China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Kosachev's comments came as reports from the United States said North Korea could be preparing to mount a nuclear test. North Korea declared on February 10 that it had developed nuclear weapons to defend itself from the United States. -------- terrorism Planning for a Nuclear Attack Saturday, May 7, 2005 Washington Post; A16 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601332_pf.html The May 3 front-page article about this country's lack of preparedness for a nuclear attack said that government reports predicted that years of cleanup of 3,000 to 5,000 square miles would be needed. The reports also raised the possibility of forever abandoning many radiated neighborhoods. An atomic strike on this country "would forever change the American psyche, its politics and worldview," said a White House report. Japan recovered from two much larger nuclear explosions and rebuilt the two destroyed cities. Why couldn't we do the same? NICKOLAUS E. LEGGETT Reston · Washington's emergency evacuation plan (which can be found on the District's Emergency Management Agency site, http://www.dcema.dc.gov ) calls for Penn sylvania Avenue to be a dividing line that cannot be crossed in the event of an emergency. Following a nuclear explosion such as The Post's article described, the fallout cloud would run right over many of Washington's evacuation routes. Residents or workers trying to evacuate to the south from offices or homes in Capitol Hill and much of Anacostia would not be allowed to do so; instead, they would be routed east into Maryland and underneath the radioactive cloud such a blast would create. This plan might serve the District in other cases, but in case of such a nuclear disaster, these evacuation routes should be rethought to funnel people away from the area east of the blast, rather than merely away from the center of the city. JAMES P. WALSH Washington -------- treaties Analysis: Nonproliferation Treaty Weakens By CHARLES J. HANLEY The Associated Press Saturday, May 7, 2005; 2:05 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/07/AR2005050700724_pf.html UNITED NATIONS -- "Considering the devastation that would be visited upon mankind ..." is how it begins, a 2,400-word contract some would say saved the world. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has helped keep the lid on that threat of devastation since 1970. Without it, dozens more countries might have joined the atomic-weapons club by now. But the heart of the contract, the deal, grows weaker year by year. Cheaters are found on the inside, nuclear bombs on the outside. And some of the "undersigned" themselves wonder whether the deal they were handed 35 years ago was a raw one. Kofi Annan last week opened a monthlong conference on the NPT with an appeal to its 188 member nations to repair the troubled treaty regime. "You must come to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity," the U.N. secretary-general said. Those dangers lie not only in the Hamgyong Mountains, where North Korea may be readying its first nuclear test blast, and outside ancient Isfahan, where a long-secret uranium-fuel plant could help Iran build a bomb. Many see danger, too, in the corridors of the Pentagon, where planners talk of new nuclear arms. The NPT deal is easily summed up: Countries without the doomsday weapons forever renounce them, in exchange for a commitment by five with the weapons _ the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China _ to negotiate toward giving them up. The "have-nots," meantime, are guaranteed access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In an early blow to the treaty, three nations refused to sign on. Those outsiders _ Israel, India and Pakistan _ now have nuclear arsenals. Then insiders Iraq, North Korea and Libya turned out to be cheaters. Two of those programs _ Iraq's and Libya's _ were shut down, but now Washington charges that Iran is a fourth case of "noncompliance," building its uranium-enrichment plant with weapons in mind, not civilian energy. Treaty members recognize that rules must be tightened up: U.N. nuclear inspectors must have more resources and authority to uncover cheaters; bomb-capable technology like uranium enrichment must be better controlled, perhaps even by U.N. or regional bodies; members must not be able to exit the treaty, as North Korea did, with no consequences. The Americans and French, in particular, say these noncompliance issues must top the agenda of the NPT conference, convened only once every five years. "The priority in 2005 is to meet the serious challenges of the proliferation crises," France's Francois Rivasseau told fellow delegates Thursday. But many of those delegates are pointing to the contract language and demanding that the five nuclear powers' obligations on the disarmament side of the deal be viewed as critically as the nonproliferation commitments of 183 others. The "five" don't act as though they'll disarm anytime soon. Britain is studying an upgrade of its submarine-borne nuclear missiles. Russia boasts it's developing the world's best new strategic weapons. The non-nuclear majority is troubled most by the Bush administration, and its proposals for "bunker busters" and other new warheads, its talk of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and its rejection of the nuclear test-ban treaty, viewed as key to future disarmament. Washington and Moscow have trimmed their arsenals considerably since the Cold War. But U.S. plans allow for keeping 5,000 warheads indefinitely, and the longer "indefinitely" goes on, the greater may be the urge for some _ feeling threatened _ to reach for the bomb. Iran's foreign minister, reiterating Tehran's denial that it has a weapons program, called on the delegates here to press for more decisive steps to rid the world of the thousands of atomic warheads that do exist. "The credibility of the NPT is at stake," he said. But the dealmaker's art that forged the grand bargain of 1970 was so far lacking in 2005. The central argument, of nonproliferation vs. disarmament, deteriorated last week into backroom bickering over diplomatic language, the meaning of words. Despite Annan's admonition that "the consequences of failure are too great," the world's nations, with one week down and three to go, had failed even to agree on an agenda, on what to talk about at a conference meant to preserve their historic but imperiled old deal. EDITOR'S NOTE - Charles J. Hanley has covered nuclear issues for more than 20 years. ---- Rewriting the contract that saved the world Charles J Hanley | United Nations 07 May 2005 10:36 - Sapa-AP http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=237483&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/# "Considering the devastation that would be visited upon mankind ..." is how it begins, a 2 400-word contract some would say saved the world. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has helped keep the lid on that threat of devastation since 1970. Without it, dozens more countries might have joined the atomic-weapons club by now. But the heart of the contract, the deal, grows weaker year by year. Cheaters are found on the inside, nuclear bombs on the outside. And some of the "undersigned" themselves wonder whether the deal they were handed 35 years ago was a raw one. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan last week opened a monthlong conference on the NPT with an appeal to its 188 member nations to repair the troubled treaty regime. "You must come to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity," said Annan. Those dangers lie not only in the Hamgyong Mountains, where North Korea may be readying its first nuclear test blast, and outside ancient Isfahan, where a long-secret uranium-fuel plant could help Iran build a bomb. Many see danger, too, in the corridors of the Pentagon, where planners talk of new nuclear arms. The NPT deal is easily summed up: Countries without the doomsday weapons forever renounce them, in exchange for a commitment by five with the weapons -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to negotiate toward giving them up. The "have-nots," meantime, are guaranteed access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In an early blow to the treaty, three nations refused to sign on. Those outsiders -- Israel, India and Pakistan -- now have nuclear arsenals. Then insiders Iraq, North Korea and Libya turned out to be cheaters. Two of those programmes -- Iraq's and Libya's -- were shut down, but now Washington charges that Iran is a fourth case of "noncompliance," building its uranium-enrichment plant with weapons in mind, not civilian energy. Treaty members recognise that rules must be tightened up: UN nuclear inspectors must have more resources and authority to uncover cheaters; bomb-capable technology like uranium enrichment must be better controlled, perhaps even by UN or regional bodies; members mustn't be able to exit the treaty, as North Korea did, with no consequences. The Americans and French, in particular, say these noncompliance issues must top the agenda of the NPT conference, convened only once every five years. "The priority in 2005 is to meet the serious challenges of the proliferation crises," France's Francois Rivasseau told fellow delegates on Thursday. But many of those delegates are pointing to the contract language, and demanding that the five nuclear powers' obligations on the disarmament side of the deal be viewed as critically as the nonproliferation commitments of 183 others. The "five" don't act as though they'll disarm anytime soon. Britain is studying an upgrade of its submarine-borne nuclear missiles. Russia boasts it's developing the world's best new strategic weapons. The non-nuclear majority is troubled most by the Bush administration, and its proposals for "bunker busters" and other new warheads, its talk of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and its rejection of the nuclear test-ban treaty, viewed as key to future disarmament. Washington and Moscow have trimmed their arsenals considerably since the Cold War. But US plans allow for keeping 5 000 warheads indefinitely, and the longer "indefinitely" goes on, the greater may be the urge for some -- feeling threatened -- to reach for the bomb. Iran's foreign minister, reiterating Tehran's denial that it has a weapons programme, called on the delegates here to press for more decisive steps to rid the world of the thousands of atomic warheads that do exist. "The credibility of the NPT is at stake," he said. But the dealmaker's art that forged the grand bargain of 1970 was so far lacking in 2005. The central argument, of nonproliferation vs. disarmament, deteriorated last week into backroom bickering over diplomatic language, the meaning of words. Despite Annan's admonition that "the consequences of failure are too great," the world's nations, with one week down and three to go, had failed even to agree on an agenda, on what to talk about at a conference meant to preserve their historic but imperiled old deal. # Charles J Hanley has covered nuclear issues for more than 20 years. ---- Iran Defends the NPT by Gordon Prather, May 7, 2005 Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=5861 Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi's address to the Seventh Review Conference of the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons was a diplomatic masterpiece – in sharp contrast to the undiplomatic badgering of the Conferees about alleged "loopholes" in the Treaty by the head of our delegation, Stephen Rademaker. Kharrazi focused on how to strengthen the "pillars" of the Treaty: (a) nonproliferation, (b) peaceful use of nuclear energy, and (c) disarmament. Excerpts on nuke disarmament: "Despite the difficulties that the nonproliferation regime has historically faced, we can generally assess that the NPT has been successful in containing the number of nuclear-weapon states. "On the other hand, the treaty has not been successful in attaining the objective of nuclear disarmament as it has been called for in its Article VI. "Following the major efforts by states parties to strengthen the treaty, the 2000 NPT Review Conference welcomed enthusiastically 'the unequivocal undertakings by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, to which all States Parties are committed under Article VI.' "Therefore, we propose that the Conference would establish an ad hoc committee to work on a draft legally binding instrument, on providing security assurances by the five nuclear-weapon states to non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the treaty, and to submit the draft of the legal instrument to the next review conference for its consideration and adoption." Excerpts on the peaceful use of nuclear energy: "Mr. President, the 'inalienable right' of the states to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes emanates from the universally accepted proposition that scientific and technological achievements are the common heritage of mankind. "The promotion of the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes has been, therefore, one of the main pillars of the NPT and the main statutory objective of the IAEA. "It is unacceptable that 'some' intend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states under the pretext of 'nonproliferation.' This attitude is in clear violation of the letter and spirit of the treaty and destroys the fundamental balance which exists between the rights and obligations in the treaty. "The treaty itself has clearly rejected this attempt in its Article IV by emphasizing that 'nothing in the treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all parties to the treaty to develop, research, produce, and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.' "Let me make it absolutely clear that arbitrary and self-serving criteria and thresholds regarding proliferation-proof and proliferation-prone technologies and countries can and will only undermine the treaty. "Iran, for its part, is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes and has been eager to offer assurances and guarantees that they remain permanently peaceful." Excerpts on nonproliferation: "The IAEA full-scope safeguard system provides the main foundation and basis for preventing the diversion of peaceful nuclear technology to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. "The IAEA has been recognized by the previous NPT Conferences as 'the competent authority to verify and assure compliance with the safeguards agreements' and to consider and investigate concerns regarding noncompliance. "Nonproliferation, disarmament, and peaceful use are the pillars of the treaty. "The international community has lent this responsibility to each of us to preserve the integrity of the Treaty and promote its implementation. "This would be achieved if we take appropriate decisions on: 1. Concrete steps toward ensuring universality of the NPT; 2. Realization of the commitment by nuclear weapons states not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty through concluding a legally binding instrument; 3. Ensure and promote the basic rights of states parties to unhindered access to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes without discrimination; 4. Reconfirm the undertakings by nuclear weapon states to implement 13 practical steps toward nuclear disarmament. "Today, the credibility of the NPT is at stake. The treaty faces new challenges which we need to effectively address. However, the fact [is] this treaty – with whatever shortcomings it may have and the deficiencies in its implementation process – provides the only internationally viable foundation for curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and attaining the goal of nuclear disarmament. "I sincerely hope that the deliberations of this conference could assist us to consolidate the foundations of this treaty in the circumstances that global security, more than ever, requires wise and brave decisions to salvage the credibility of the treaty." -------- u.n. U.N. Nuclear Chief Pushes 'Sea Change' By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 7, 2005 Filed at 9:09 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-ElBaradei.html?pagewanted=print UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Sixty years after Hiroshima, Mohamed ElBaradei has big ideas for changing the way the world handles the atom. The sweeping overhaul he envisions -- bringing uranium and plutonium technology under tougher, possibly international control -- would mean a ''sea change'' in the nuclear realm. But it's necessary, the U.N. nuclear chief says, ''because we are facing a threat.'' ElBaradei spoke with The Associated Press on Friday at the end of a week in which he canvassed support for his ideas at a conference here of more than 180 nations reviewing the status of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He said he expects to win global support to begin planning such changes, in part because of the current alarm over Iran's ability to establish a uranium-enrichment capability. ''Everybody understands that if we continue in that fashion, in the next 10, 20 years we'll have 20, 30 countries that I would call virtual nuclear-weapons states, meaning countries that could move within months into converting their civilian capacity or capability into a weapons program,'' said ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran's enrichment program, using centrifuges that can produce uranium fuel for either nuclear power plants or nuclear bombs, is a major issue at the treaty review. Tehran says the program is meant only for peaceful purposes of civilian energy; Washington contends it is a cover for eventual bomb-building. Under the 1970 nonproliferation treaty, states like Iran without nuclear weapons renounce them forever in exchange for a commitment by nuclear-weapons states to move toward disarmament. Access to peaceful technology is guaranteed under the treaty, but ElBaradei said the spread of such capabilities has become a ''serious problem.'' The tighter controls he envisions ''would be a real sea change in the way we have been managing nuclear energy,'' the IAEA chief said. He has asked the current treaty conference to consider several possible approaches suggested by an IAEA expert group in February. They range from simply tightening controls on current commercial sales of dual-use equipment, to turning all enrichment and plutonium reprocessing operations -- another potential bomb-making system -- over to multilateral control, by region or continent. ElBaradei himself has proposed a five-year moratorium on new nuclear fuel facilities anywhere while the world's nations negotiate over new controls. Addressing the U.N. conference Monday, he offered to investigate ways to guarantee international supplies of fuel for those who need them. In consultations since then with treaty nations, he has found a ''mixed reaction'' to the moratorium idea, ElBaradei said, since Iran is not the only country with plans for new uranium-enrichment or plutonium-reprocessing facilities. But he said he hopes the IAEA will get formal approval from the treaty conference or his agency's member nations to explore legal, institutional, financial and other aspects of possible new controls. ''I'm pretty confident that I will be asked by either the nonproliferation treaty parties or our IAEA member states to continue that work,'' he said. The Americans demand that Iran dismantle its enrichment equipment. President Bush has proposed simply banning sales of enrichment and reprocessing technology to nations other than the dozen or so who already have it, and ensuring that any who want fuel can buy it ''at reasonable cost.'' ElBaradei said that idea ''has merit'' but also has two problems. He said one is that many countries already can develop the sensitive technology on their own, and the other is that it raises questions of ''different standards'' -- that is, double standards for those allowed to have fuel technology and those denied it. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- nevada Nuclear physicist takes over helm of Los Alamos lab UC braces for competition to run facility Zachary Coile and Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writers Saturday, May 7, 2005 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/07/UCLABS.TMP The tough-talking director of the University of California-run Los Alamos National Laboratory is being replaced with a veteran of the nuclear weapons establishment, the university announced Friday. The move to replace George "Pete" Nanos, a former Navy admiral who has run the scandal-haunted lab since January 2003, with nuclear physicist Robert W. Kuckuck comes at a tense time for UC, which faces a national competition to hang onto its six-decade-old contract to run the New Mexico laboratory where the atomic bomb was born. Nanos is moving effective May 16 to a new position at the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Washington. Kuckuck's title for now at the 13,500-employee Los Alamos lab is interim director, and his salary will be $356,000 a year. Kuckuck's appointment was made by UC President Robert C. Dynes, with the approval of U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. UC has run the lab since its founding under contract to the federal government. The university chose Kuckuck, educated at Ohio State University and UC Davis, because of a combination of factors: He knows the university from serving in UC's Office of Laboratory Management, but he also has connections to top officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration. UC officials also believe that Kuckuck's 35-year career as a top weapons scientist and senior manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory makes him the best person to present what the university thinks is its strongest argument for winning the contract to continue to manage Los Alamos: UC's academic pedigree and long history of producing top-notch science. "Without a doubt, he understands the importance of science and that science is the underpinning of the work at Los Alamos," said UC spokesman Chris Harrington. Even so, Kuckuck may be a short-timer, as he indicated to reporters Friday that he plans to retire later this year. Nanos' departure caps more than two years of tumult inside the lab, where he vowed to "drain the swamp" upon taking power in early 2003. In recent years, the lab has been racked by financial, management, safety and security scandals, including the repeated loss of computer disks containing classified information. The first month on the job, when Nanos was still interim director, he told the UC regents that he would undertake reform measures that would be as painful as "ripping off someone's skin." He kept his promise: Among other acts, he publicly chewed out staffers at meetings; called certain employees "butt-heads'' and "cowboys''; and ordered a shutdown of regular lab operations in order to give staff time to rethink their behavior. In September 2004, he fired four employees and forced another to resign. In the process, Nanos infuriated some Los Alamos staffers. For months, via blogs and e-mails to reporters, Nanos' critics inside the lab have circulated rumors that his days as director were short. The blogs made no difference to Nanos, though: "Anyone who thinks that a decision as important as who is director of Los Alamos National Laboratory is influenced or directed by people anonymously complaining about their boss on the Internet is deluding themselves. It absolutely does not have that kind of clout, nor should it," said Kevin Roark, a Los Alamos spokesman. Dynes, in a statement Friday, said: "Pete (Nanos) has done a remarkable job under extraordinary pressures and circumstances these past two years. He has been a stalwart agent of change." In an e-mail to Los Alamos staffers Friday, Nanos wrote, "Dear colleagues ... I am very proud of how the laboratory has responded" to his direction. "... We have emerged from the suspension as a stronger laboratory -- with our core weapons program deliverables now back on track and on schedule, and a viable business plan for science in place for the future." On Friday, Kuckuck (pronounced "cook-cook") told reporters he plans to serve only until the Energy Department decides who will get the $2.2 billion contract to run the lab in the future. That decision should come toward the end of this year, he said. The Energy Department is preparing to release its request for proposals -- the guidelines for the anticipated intense competition -- within the next two weeks. Already two major defense contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, are lining up academic and other private sector partners to try to break UC's lock on the contract. On Friday, Kuckuck made the simple sales pitch he'll use to urge that UC continue to manage the lab. "I think, No. 1, an academic and scientific basis for these laboratories is critical," he said. "Second, I think UC is the greatest research and scientific university in the world. "The difference between having a for-profit company, a defense contractor run this science lab versus a university will be a clear choice," Kuckuck said. "I hope it escalates into a very intellectual national debate." On Friday, many scientists expressed glee about Nanos' departure and the appointment of a veteran nuclear weapons scientist to head the lab. "Based on some of the calls I've been getting from scientists and researchers, people were really happy about it," said Manuel Trujillo, an electrical engineer and president of the local University Professional and Technical Employees Union. "Basically, Nanos' management style just didn't fit in with research and development aspects of this laboratory," Trujillo said. "... For a person in a management capacity dealing with the situation here, I think he could have been more respectful of these people." If the UC regents formally vote, as expected, to join the competition for the next contract, they face some powerful foes inside the Washington Beltway. UC's adversaries in Congress are holding regular hearings to bash its management of Los Alamos. Members of a House Energy subcommittee on Thursday criticized the lab's long shutdown of normal operations under Nanos, which they claim may have cost taxpayers $120 million to $370 million. Energy Department officials defended the lab, saying the shutdown was needed to improve security and safety. But Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., suggested the possibility of closing the lab and moving its work to other facilities. "We have a lab that is a constant problem. Why do we need this one?" Change at the top Coming: Robert W. Kuckuck, a nuclear physicist, has a 35-year career as a top weapons scientist and senior manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. UC officials hope his background will help the university in its quest to keep running the Los Alamos National Lab. His tenure, however, may be short: He said he plans to retire later this year. Going: George "Pete" Nanos took over Los Alamos in January 2003, a time when the lab was beset by problems. Nanos' hard-line approach infuriated some Los Alamos staffers. He will take a new job with the Department of Defense. -------- pennsylvania TMI emergency test finds no big problems Saturday, May 07, 2005 BY GARRY LENTON Of The Patriot-News (Pennsylvania) http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1115457792305850.xml An emergency drill designed to test the region's ability to respond to a nuclear emergency at the Three Mile Island power plant found no serious problems. "We found nothing that would indicate a ... problem [that would jeopardize] ... the health and safety of the TMI community," said Darrell W. Hammons of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A detailed analysis of the region's performance will not be ready for about three months, Hammons said. FEMA spent Tuesday observing state, county and municipal personnel during a drill that simulated an accident at TMI resulting in a release of radiation. The evaluation covered emergency communications between agencies and the public, traffic control, radiation monitoring and decontamination services. FEMA is expected to review the state's ability to evacuate so-called special populations, a category that includes child day care centers, nursing homes, prisons and other institutions that house people who cannot move themselves. Hammons could not say yesterday what FEMA officials found. The drill tested whether local emergency planners had adequate resources to evacuate special groups, but did not test how well those plans would work, Hammons said. The ability to evacuate children in day care and people in institutional housing has been called into question by the Harrisburg-based watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert. In letters to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FEMA, TMIA has alleged that evacuation plans for day care centers within the 10-mile radius of nuclear plants are inadequate. It has called on the NRC and FEMA to force the state to provide transportation The group conducted a survey of day care centers within the 10-mile radius and found that 90 percent did not know who would provide transportation for their children. If FEMA finds the state is not complying with the guidelines, the NRC could order the state's five nuclear power stations shut down until the requirements are met. Such a move isn't considered likely. State officials have maintained that the emergency plan does include ways to evacuate children in day care. GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com -------- MILITARY -------- business Court Dismisses FBI Contractor's Suit Against U.S. Associated Press Saturday, May 7, 2005; A05 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601815_pf.html A federal appeals court rejected a fired FBI contractor's bid to revive her lawsuit against the government. Sibel Edmonds said she was fired from her job as a wiretap translator because she told superiors she suspected that a co-worker was leaking information to targets of an ongoing FBI investigation. The FBI said it fired her because she committed security violations and disrupted the office. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday upheld a lower-court ruling that Edmonds's allegations might expose government secrets that could damage national security. The Justice Department's inspector general said Edmonds's allegations about a co-worker "raised serious concerns that, if true, could potentially have extremely damaging consequences for the FBI." ---- Boom Times For Federal Contractors Surge in Tech Work Brings Record Profit By Griff Witte Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 7, 2005; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601344_pf.html In an ornate hall across the street from the White House, newly minted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stood before an audience of 400 business executives last week and asked for help. "We don't have the expertise in this department, even across the government, to get into very specific solutions for some of the challenges we face. You have that expertise," Chertoff said. The private sector, he repeated again and again in his address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, must be the government's "partner" in pioneering products and services to keep Americans safe. When he finished, the executives applauded heartily. But Chertoff wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know. If industry leaders want a reminder that the government is turning to them more than ever for assistance, all they have to do is look at their latest earnings reports. Double-digit profit gains and record revenue were commonplace last quarter for firms that specialize in serving the government, a trend largely fueled by ramped-up demand for outsourced technology services in areas such as defense, intelligence and homeland security. "It's a good time to be a government contractor," said Ray J. Oleson, chief executive of Reston-based SI International Inc., an information technology supplier whose first-quarter profit was up 37 percent from a year earlier. "In 10 years, we'll be calling these the good old days." Not that Oleson, or anyone else in the industry, expects the boom to end in the foreseeable future. If anything, they say, the outlook is bright for even greater profit for firms that make their living doing the government's business. Among the factors: The pace and level of contracting in Chertoff's department are increasing as the department matures. At the same time, officials government-wide are looking to outsource more work as federal employees retire and as the private sector sells itself as a more efficient replacement. Finally, the reelection of President Bush has given contractors and government officials a clearer sense of what the nation's priorities will be over the next four years and where both should put their money. J.P. "Jack" London, chief executive of Arlington-based CACI International Inc., said that last year the presidential election and the uncertainty over who would lead key departments such as Defense made some in the government reluctant to award major, long-term contracts. "You had a lot of things going on that tend to slow new contract initiatives," said London, whose firm specializes in computer network and information security work for the government. Not so in the first few months of 2005. "Decisions are moving through the pipeline," London said last month when his company posted a 37 percent profit gain for the quarter. "It's really a booming situation." Although many areas of the federal budget faced cuts this year, Bush has proposed increasing total information technology spending from $60 billion this year to $65 billion next year. IT programs linked to national security have been growing especially rapidly. Homeland Security spent $9 billion on contracted goods and services in fiscal 2004, according to department spokeswoman Valerie Smith. It plans to spend $11 billion this year, a 22 percent increase that contractors expect will ultimately boost their bottom lines. At some companies, including many in the Washington region, it already has. At least a half-dozen locally based public companies that do most of their business with the government -- all with at least $250 million in annual revenue -- recorded double-digit earnings growth last quarter. While some of the growth came through acquisitions, much of it was from new contracts. Many are hiring, as are numerous companies based elsewhere that maintain a large presence locally to be close to their government customers. The contractors' fortunes are having an impact on the local economy, driving up incomes and housing costs as better educated, highly skilled and highly paid workers flock to the region. SI added 200 employees in the past quarter. Fairfax-based SRA International Inc. added 286. "The Washington area economy is generating more jobs this year than it did last year, and last year was not a bad year," said Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. Fuller said that demand for contractors is responsible for much of that growth and that some firms are actually having trouble finding workers to fill their ranks. As the government increasingly outsources its work, however, not everyone is sure the country as a whole is better off. "We don't know if this is costing us money or saving us money in the long term. We just know the work is all going in one direction -- out," said John Threlkeld, a lobbyist for the American Federation of Government Employees. The size of the federal workforce has dropped from over 2 million in 1994 to under 1.9 million now, even as the burden on the government has risen. As federal workers retire and are not replaced, Threlkeld said, too few are left to ensure that the government gets its money's worth from contractors that have to think about their own bottom lines, not just the government's. "It's a very cozy arrangement for contractors," he said, pointing to instances of no-bid work and contracts that go awry due to a lack of oversight. "I'd be disappointed in any IT firm that didn't generate record profits, because it seems like a pretty hospitable environment." There are, in fact, some contractors that are not being showered in profit. Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president at FSI, a market research firm in McLean, said life has gotten more difficult for some smaller companies. With the size of contracts growing, some have a hard time selling their products without an army of service workers ready to work full time installing the product, integrating it with other technologies and fixing it when it breaks. The government "needs someone to come in and tell them how to do the job, how to solve the problem," Bjorklund said. "If you've got a great solution, that's one thing. But if you've just got a great technology, it may be hard for you to get any traction." The largest defense contractors, meanwhile, are facing their own problems, with legacy weapons programs threatened by cuts in deference to futuristic communications devices or immediate demands for bullets and bombs in Iraq. For instance, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. said last week that they would merge their struggling rocket businesses, a recognition that with ebbing demand, neither business could be profitable on its own. Bethesda-based Lockheed, one of the government's largest suppliers of IT, still managed to record a 27 percent profit increase for the quarter. Boeing's quarterly profits were dragged down by its commercial airline business, but its defense earnings remained robust. The companies doing the best, Bjorklund said, are the ones that can meld technology with high-end human services and have employees with the clearances to perform sensitive jobs in defense and intelligence. San Diego-based Titan Corp., which has about 2,500 employees in the Washington area, logged more growth in intelligence work last quarter than in any other area, according to chief executive Gene W. Ray. The company's revenue hit $559 million, a record for the first quarter and a 23 percent increase over last year, when the company struggled during a failed merger with Lockheed. Profit was $19 million, also up sharply from last year. Ray said he expected the growth to continue. "We're seeing a lot of opportunities," he said. "We're expecting May to be the busiest month we've seen in the history of Titan in terms of writing new proposals." Last year, Titan pursued 18 contracts valued at $100 million or more. This month alone, Ray said, the company plans to go after nine. The company is also getting considerably more work from Homeland Security, a department that had been considered a disappointment to some in the industry in its first couple of years. "The department spent the first part of its life really figuring out how to manage the operation and what kind of needs they have," said SI's Oleson. "Those needs are now starting to be accounted for." ---- Pentagon Revises Contractor Rules By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 7, 2005; E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601359_pf.html The Pentagon issued new regulations this week governing the conduct of civilian contractors who accompany soldiers overseas, including thousands providing security, fixing equipment and cooking meals in Iraq and Afghanistan. In explaining changes in the rules, which were proposed in March 2004, the Pentagon said there was an "urgent need" for them. Pentagon and industry officials said yesterday that the rules codify existing policies and informal practices but disagreed about whether they will be enough to address all the difficult issues that have arisen with the increased number of civilians, many of them armed, working in a war zone. The final regulations, published Thursday in the Federal Register, state, for example, that military "combatant commanders" will establish a plan to protect the civilian workers, unless the company's contract says otherwise. It is also up to the military commander to decide whether the contractors can carry government-issued or privately owned weapons and wear military clothing. For the first time, the rules will allow the military to track the number of contractors accompanying troops overseas. Some of the provisions do not apply to foreign employees hired by the defense contractors, the explanation of the rule noted. They take effect June 6. The Pentagon began developing the regulations in 2003 as thousands of contractors left for Iraq and sometimes found themselves unclear on the rules. "There had been small companies showing up thinking that housing and everything would be provided for them," said Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association. The use of contractors in Iraq has been controversial because more than 250 civilians have been killed, many of whom were performing duties that previously had been handled by the military, and because of reports of misspending by some of their companies. Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has been critical of the role of contractors in the war zone, said in a written statement that issuing the regulations now "means contractors have been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan in a major way without knowing what rules apply to them and without our forces being given clear directives on the chain of command as it relates to contractors." She added: "And this rule does not answer those questions in a meaningful way." The American Federation of Government Employees had proposed in its comments scaling back the use of the contractors all together. "The bottom line is that contractor personnel can always walk away with relative impunity," Jacqueline Simon, public policy director for the group, said yesterday. "And no rule can change that." The State Department is working on separate rules that will govern contractors working on some reconstruction projects, the Pentagon said. One of most controversial issues the rules addressed was whether contractors should be allowed to carry weapons to protect themselves. The proposed rule said they must have the express permission of the combatant commander. Several commenters complained that this was unrealistic, while another expressed concern it would spawn "armies of mercenaries." United Technologies Corp. said in its comments that allowing contractors to carry weapons issued by the military "may create unmitigated liability for contractors in the event of injury or loss of life resulting from intentional use or accidental discharge of such weapons." Stan Z. Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade group of contractors, noted one provision said that contractors are responsible for educating their employees about U.S. and local laws. "That is a pretty broad prescription" and will be difficult to meet, he said. -------- nato Putin Questions NATO Enlargement Sat May 7, 6:15 PM ET Associated Press http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050507/ap_on_re_eu/france_putin PARIS - Russian President Vladimir Putin said NATO enlargement has not necessarily improved world security, and warned in a television interview broadcast Saturday that bringing Ukraine into the alliance could pose problems. Ukrainian officials say they want their country to join NATO eventually, but Putin said Russia would not keep sensitive weapons in Ukraine if the alliance had a military presence there. Russia's current cooperation with its southern neighbor is "enormous," Putin said in the interview with France-3 recorded Friday. But "if there were a NATO military presence in Ukraine, I wouldn't maintain our latest technologies and our sensitive armaments." "Ukraine could have problems," Putin said through a translator. Russia's relations with former Soviet states became a subject of discontent with the United States after President Bush decided to bracket his visit to Moscow for Monday's World War II commemoration with trips to Latvia and Georgia, which is in the Caucasus. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko last month set joining NATO and the European Union as a key goal, and Putin was likely reacting to the new push that would move Ukraine further from Moscow's influence. In the interview, he said NATO's decision to admit the Baltic states to the alliance last year did not enhance security in the world. "The fact that NATO exercises a great influence on the Ukraine or Georgia does not indispose us," Putin was quoted as saying by the translator. "On the other hand, all enlargement of NATO does not (necessarily) improve security in the world." "I don't see in what way enlarging to our Baltic neighbors, for instance, can improve the security of the world." Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga is the only Baltic leader to accept an invitation to attend the commemoration in Moscow. The leaders of Estonia and Lithuania said they could not go because Russia has refused to acknowledge five decades of Soviet domination of the Baltics following WWII. Putin reiterated that Russia will not answer the demands of Baltic states to repent for years of Soviet domination. "I would like to underscore in this regard that such pretensions are useless," Putin wrote in the daily Le Figaro. He suggested that in 1989 the Supreme Soviet had already made amends, giving a "judicial and moral appreciation" of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that led to the Soviet role in the Baltics. Russia insists the three Baltic states willingly joined the Soviet Union on the basis of the pact. Putin said Friday that the 1989 resolution criticized the pact as "a personal decision by (Soviet leader Josef) Stalin that contradicted the interests of the Soviet people." Putin suggested the Baltic states are using their complaints "to justify a discriminatory, reprehensible policy of governments toward a considerable part of their own Russian-speaking population," referring to claims that Russian speakers face discrimination today in the Baltics. -------- russia / chechnya Bush says Cold War captivity one of great wrongs By REUTERS May 7, 2005 Filed at 1:34 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-bush-baltics.html?pagewanted=print RIGA (Reuters) - President Bush denounced Soviet Cold War rule of eastern Europe as ``one of the greatest wrongs of history'' on Saturday in a jab at Moscow two days before celebrations of the 1945 victory over Hitler. Bush, visiting Latvia before the ceremonies in Moscow marking 60 years since the end of World War II in Europe, also held up the three Baltic states as examples of democratic reform since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He said the end of the war brought liberty from fascism for many in Germany but meant the ``iron rule of another empire'' for the Baltic states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- and nations from Poland to Romania. Bush admitted the United States shared some responsibility for the Cold War division of Europe after the 1945 Yalta accord between Russia, the United States and Britain. ``Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable,'' he said. ``Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. ``The captivity of millions in central and eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history,'' he said in a speech at Riga's guildhall. The three Baltic states joined both NATO and the European Union last year. Bush's visit to Riga has angered Russia by reviving tensions about the Soviet occupation when Moscow is focusing on celebrating the end of World War II, a conflict that cost 27 million Soviet lives. Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed calls by the Baltic states for an apology for Soviet rule and accused them on Saturday of trying to cover up past Nazi collaboration. BUSH MEETS PUTIN The differing versions of history may make for frictions when Bush meets Putin in Moscow on Sunday and Monday. Putin insists the Red Army was a liberator, not an oppressor, of Eastern Europe. ``Our people not only defended their homeland, they liberated 11 European countries,'' Putin said on Saturday after laying a wreath at a monument to Russia's war dead. In a recent state of the nation speech he bemoaned the demise of the Soviet Union as ``the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'' He has also said Washington should not try to export its own brand of democracy. Bush said Russia's leaders had made ``great progress'' in the past 15 years. ``In the long run it is the strength of Russian democracy that will determine the greatness of Russia and I believe the Russian people value their freedom and will settle for no less,'' he said. ``As we mark a victory of six decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox. For much of Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire.'' He also held up the Baltics as examples of successful shifts to democracy, a theme he stressed for nations including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Belarus. ``These are extraordinary times that we're living in and the three Baltic countries are capable of helping Russia and other countries in this part of the world see the benefits of what it means to live in a free society,'' Bush told a news conference. But Bush did not back pleas by the Baltic countries for an apology from Russia. ``My hope is that we are able to move on,'' he said. He later flew to the Netherlands where he will spend Saturday night. The presidents of Lithuania and Estonia will boycott the May 9 ceremonies in Moscow. Georgia's president will also stay away, but Latvia's president will attend. All three Baltic nations, whose combined population is now about 6 million, were occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940 after a pact between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia which divided up spheres of influence in East Europe. In 1941, German troops occupied the Baltics and remained there until the end of the war when Soviet troops returned and ruled with an iron fist. The collapse of communism enabled the Baltic states to win their independence in 1991. Bush also urged free elections in Belarus, which shares borders with Lithuania and Latvia, and ruled out any secret U.S deal with Moscow allowing President Alexander Lukashenko to remain in power. ``We don't make secret deals,'' he said. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday: ``Russia would gain immensely by ... expressing its genuine regret for the crimes of the Soviet regime. ``Until Russia does so ... its relations with its immediate neighbors will remain uneasy at best.'' But writing in the French daily Le Figaro, Putin dismissed calls for an apology and accused the Baltic countries of trying to justify their own government's ``discriminatory and reprehensible policy'' toward their Russian-speaking populations. Police detained about 20 protesters from Latvia's big Russian minority after they hurled smoke bombs in a demonstration against Bush. ``Bush is a horror,'' said protest leader Beness Aija. Posters in another demonstration said: ``Stop the war in Iraq.'' But many Latvians welcome Bush. ``It's important to recognize the struggle that our fathers had against communists and the Soviet Union,'' said Ugis Senbergs, a 50-year-old architect. -------- spies Intelligence chief picks 4 top deputies May 07, 2005 By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050506-110950-6753r.htm The United States' first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, has appointed four deputies from within the intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracy, drawing fire from reform advocates. Mr. Negroponte picked two career CIA operations officers, a State Department intelligence analyst and a career foreign service officer as the new agency's first deputies, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. "The sweet spot in all this is that we now have senior people whose sole job is the smooth functioning of the intelligence community," said the official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. Several defense and intelligence officials privately voiced concern about the selections, saying they do not include people willing to push ahead with intelligence reforms in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and intelligence failures related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "All these appointees share a common outlook -- opposition to both the WMD commission and 9/11 reforms," said a defense official. "Not a single outsider has been brought in. It's tragic." According to senior intelligence officials, the appointees are: c State Department intelligence director Thomas Fingar, a China specialist, who will become the new deputy DNI for analysis. He will oversee all U.S. intelligence analysis and reports. •A CIA operations directorate official currently at the White House National Security Council staff, David Shedd, who will become the chief of staff to Mr. Negroponte, the officials said. Mr. Shedd worked with Mr. Negroponte and was involved in Latin American covert operations in the 1980s. •Another CIA directorate official, Mary Margaret Graham, will become the deputy DNI for collection, the top post in charge of managing all human and technical spying activities. •Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, the Foreign Service officer, was selected as deputy DNI for management. "As we are setting up the new office of the director of national intelligence (DNI), we are spending a lot of time searching for good people, and it is imperative we get the right people for these jobs," Mr. Negroponte said in a statement. The DNI office was created under intelligence reform legislation designed to better coordinate activities of the 15 agencies and departments that make up the U.S. intelligence community. Its analysis branch will be in charge of producing the president's daily intelligence digest, as well as taking over the National Intelligence Council, formerly under the CIA director, that produces national intelligence estimates -- consensus reports of all agencies on specific subjects. Intelligence officials critical of Mr. Negroponte's choices said they will protect the status quo within the intelligence bureaucracy, rather that reshaping agencies to meet new challenges. An official said the selection of Mrs. Graham, in particular, was a snub of Charles Allen, a gifted intelligence officer who for years has been in charge of managing intelligence collection at the CIA. "She has no experience at all in this complex area," the official said. Plans for the new DNI office, currently located at the New Executive Office Building near the White House and at the National Counterintelligence Center in Tysons Corner, were disclosed yesterday by the senior official. Over the next several months, the DNI will include a staff of about 300 people and will move into temporary offices at Bolling Air Force Base. As many as 1,000 people will work for the DNI when the office is fully set up in the next year or two. The counterterrorism center will soon begin operating a 24-hour watch center at its offices in Tysons Corner, the senior official said. Mr. Negroponte, former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, and Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the principle deputy DNI, are the president's main intelligence advisers under reform legislation passed last year. In addition to the deputy DNIs for analysis, collection and management, a deputy for "customer outreach" will interact with policy-makers, the military, and law enforcement and homeland security officials. The office will include the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive and a chief information officer who will be in charge of both information security and intelligence sharing. The senior official said the new office is studying the recommendations of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, known as the WMD commission, but has not adopted its recommendations. -------- us Fewer base closings anticipated May 07, 2005 ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050506-110951-1698r.htm Far fewer military bases are likely to be closed and realigned than originally foreseen, in part because of the planned shift of tens of thousands of troops from bases in Asia and Europe to the United States, according to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld said surplus base capacity is not as great as earlier estimated -- an assessment that will be comforting to communities hoping to retain bases they rely on for an economic boost. "Without final figures, I would say the percent will be less than half of the 20 to 25 percent that has been characterized previously," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a conference call Thursday with newspaper editorial writers across the country, according to two writers who were on the call. He had previously said the current round of base closings and realignment -- the first since 1995 -- would result in less shrinkage of base capacity than the 20 to 25 percent figure the Pentagon has cited for the past few years. But he had not previously said it might be less than half that range. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said in an interview yesterday that in a meeting on Feb. 8 Mr. Rumsfeld told him and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican, that about 15 percent of base capacity would be cut. Mr. Rumsfeld has until May 16 to recommend which domestic bases should be closed or realigned. His recommendations will be the basis for deliberations by the independent Base Closing and Realignment Commission, which will submit its own list to President Bush by Sept. 8. The Pentagon wants to close some bases to save money over the long run, and base realignments are aimed at advancing the ability of the military services to operate and train together. States and cities are trying to avoid closures by making the case that their bases are crucial for national security. They have hired high-powered lobbyists with Washington connections and tried to make their facilities -- through new construction and other improvements -- more resistant to closure. The Pentagon declined to release a transcript of Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks to the editorial writers until their editorials have been published. Two of the writers confirmed in telephone interviews yesterday that the secretary made the statement that the reduction in base capacity would be less than half the 20 to 25 percent range. J.R. Labbe, editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, said she pressed Mr. Rumsfeld on this point, noting that his words suggested that only 10 percent to 12 percent of capacity would be eliminated in this round of base closings. She said Mr. Rumsfeld did not dispute her characterization. "He did not try to back off on that," she said. Andrea D. Georgsson, editorial writer for the Houston Chronicle, confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld did not object to the 10 percent to 12 percent estimate, although he did not use those figures in his own comments. -------- ACTIVISTSS US War Crimes and the Legal Case for Military Resistance Paul Rockwell 07/05/2005 source : commondreams.org http://www.anti-imperialism.net/lai/texte.phtml?section=BDBK&object_id=23758 Irak US Dissents http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-25.htm "Whensoever the general Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." Thomas Jefferson May 10th is a national day of action for GI resisters. A newly formed group, Courage-To-Resist, is organizing veterans, military families, and community activists in a campaign to support military objectors. Demonstrations to support sailor Pablo Paredes, who faces a court martial in San Diego May 11th, are in the making. On December 6, 2004, Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes refused to board his Navy ship. In his press statements, he called attention to the intrinsic wrongs of war, the gross illegality of the invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing pattern of U.S. atrocities in Iraq. Kevin Benderman is also facing a court martial at Fort Stewart, Georgia, May 11th. On January 5th, 2005, Benderman refused to deploy for a second tour of duty with his Third Infantry Army Division in Iraq. (Seventeen other soldiers from his unit went AWOL. Two tried to kill themselves). Benderman witnessed atrocities and unforgettable brutality in Iraq. "U.S. military personnel," he said, "are increasingly killing non-combatants. On my last deployment in Iraq, elements of my unit were instructed by a Captain to fire on children throwing rocks at us." Both Paredes and Benderman are conscientious objectors to war. So far the military has refused to acknowledge their acts of conscience. Both resisters face jail time and lost of pay and benefits. The moral justification for refusing to participate in unjust wars is not difficult to grasp. We tend to forget, however, that acts of conscience are also affirmations in the rule of law. Camilo Mejia, Stephen Funk, Jeff Paterson (Gulf War objector), Carl Webb, Abdulla Webster, Michael Hoffman, Jimmy Massey, David Blunt, Aidan Delgado, Diedra Cobb, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, and dozens of other war resisters are not only heroes of peace, they are vindicators of the Constitution, the U.N. Charter, Nuremberg Conventions and the Geneva Conventions as well. American commanders promote a widespread misconception that, once American youth sign an enlistment contract, they are obligated to participate in any kind of war, whether it is based on fraud or truth, whether it is a preemptive invasion or a genuine war of self-defense. In a "voluntary military," Rumsfeld said at a recent press conference, soldiers have no right to complain. That's preposterous. No soldier owes absolute allegiance to any military system. The prevailing doctrine of blind obedience is a fascist, not a democratic, doctrine of military service. Of course all military systems require discipline, and all operate through a chain of command. But the legal authority of command depends on adherence to the rule of law. As sailor Pablo Paredes noted recently, the U.S. Military Code of Justice says that, while soldiers are obligated to obey all legal orders, the same soldiers have a right, even a duty, to disobey illegal orders. That is the essence of the legal case for military resistance. Once unrestrained leaders, in their lust for power and world domination, place our military system beyond domestic and international law, the obligation of soldiers to serve the military in its state of lawlessness is dissolved. Long ago Thomas Jefferson captured the spirit of legal resistance when he wrote: "Whensoever the general Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." A Broken Covenant It is the U.S. government, not war-resisters, that violate the covenant between soldier and the state. The ways in which the government betrays its promise to our troops are manifold. First there is no formal declaration of war from Congress, as required by the Constitution. That may seem like a small matter. But James Madison made it clear: the legal power of military command depends on a declaration in accordance with all laws. Nor does Congress have any authority to efface the separation of powers, to transfer its solemn lawmaking obligation to the Executive branch. In the Constitution, war falls under lawmaking, not foreign policy. In 1952 President Truman took over U.S. steel companies in order to fulfill the material needs of his undeclared war in Korea. The corporations lodged a protest, and the court quickly provided judicial review for the big corporations-the kind of review now denied American soldiers. The Court ruled that a president, whatever emergencies he declares himself, cannot take over industry or private property. Concurring, Justice Jackson wrote: "No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role. it is not a military prerogative, without support of law, to seize persons or property because they are important or even essential for military and naval establishments." (Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343, U.S.) If the Constitution protects profits of corporations from the tyranny of Presidential war, the same Constitution protects American troops from presidential abuse of power. The same law applies to both. Are the lives of American troops less sacred than corporate profits? The Fifth Amendment also applies to the war-resistance movement: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This amendment dates back to the centuries-old Magna Carta, written to stop arrogant kings from the misuse of soldiers in private wars of power and conquest. Where, then, is due process for American soldiers? Why is judicial review in wartime restricted to American corporations? In 1866 the Supreme Court clarified the limits of military power: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers of the people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence." (Ex Parte Milligan. 4.Wall, 2) U.S. troops have no military obligations beyond the Constitution. Moreover, all military power is subject to international treaties codified by the U.S. Senate. The supremacy clause of the Constitution is clear and unequivocal: Article VI provides: "All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State contrary notwithstanding." The treaty clause reflects a profound understanding of the opinions of mankind and makes the United States an equal member of the community of nations. Perhaps history can remind us of the profound significance of the treaty supremacy clause in the Constitution, especially its relevance to soldiers. Article 4 of the Constitution of Germany's Weimar Republic was modeled on the U.S. Constitution. The Weimar Constitution provided that "the generally accepted rules of international law are to be considered as binding integral parts of the law of the German Reich." That law was designed to protect German citizens from the greed and egotism of their own leaders. It not only protected foreign countries, it protected German youth from being used in wars of aggression. We know the rest. The German judiciary caved in to fascism. It did not overthrow the Weimar Constitution. It simply ignored it, as one democratic law after another became "quaint" and obsolete. The Geneva Conventions are not the only humanitarian laws that are becoming quaint in the United States. The Nuremberg Conventions and the U.N. Charter, among a host of treaties, are also laws of our land. They uphold the sovereignty of nations. They affirm the principle that human rights are measured by one yardstick. There are no privileged super-states. The honor and legitimacy of military service depends on these laws in respect to war and peace. Under the U.N. Charter, except for rare Security Council resolutions, defensive necessity is the sole basis for legal war. Outside of genuine self-defense, war is aggression. It represents the supreme crime, a "crime against peace." Nor is self-defense an elastic, discretionary concept. In a war of self-defense, there must be an armed attack, so demonstrably imminent that there is no alternative to force. Outside defensive necessity, American troops have no obligation to serve in war. At least in theory, international law protects soldiers from being turned into agents of aggression, mere cannon fodder for greed and world domination. It is one thing for Marines, or army reservists or sailors to risk life in defense of their country under attack. It is quite another to take innocent lives in other countries in order to placate corporate lust for power and profit. Massive War Crimes Spawn Resistance The enlistment contract, the very relationship between soldiers and military service, must be re-examined in the light of what the world has learned about monstrous and systematic war crimes in Iraq, sanctioned brutality that goes far beyond the scandals at Abu Ghraib. The pattern of U.S. atrocities in Iraq provide not only motivation, but the legal basis for military resistance. When war crimes are systematic, especially when they are intrinsic to the imperial nature of invasion, resistance is justified. The mounting evidence from Iraq-testimony about raided hospitals, "wanton destruction of towns and villages," U.S. cluster-bomb shrapnel buried in the flesh of children, babies deformed by depleted uranium, farms and markets destroyed by 500-pound bombs-establishes what many Americans do not want to face: that the highest leaders of our land are violating almost every international agreement relating to the rules of war. The forcible transfer of populations from their homes and towns; collective reprisals against civilians in cities where resistance flourished; mass roundups and imprisonment of non-combatants; the destruction of crops; the placing of prisoners in the line of fire; the shooting of unarmed prisoners at demonstrations; the use of heinous weapons that are indiscriminate and cause unnecessary suffering; constant, predictable checkpoint killing of civilians; the use of economic sanctions leading to death and malnutrition; the destruction of hospitals and mosques; the killing of opposition journalists; the sacking of museums and cultural artifacts under the eye of the Occupying power; pillage (the selling-off of Iraqi property); the rewriting of domestic laws in the occupied territory; shooting disabled prisoners (army units are trained in "dead-checking", a war crime); torture, rendition (proxy torture); assassinations and summary executions-these are just some of the major crimes of planning and calculation. The commonplace violations of the Geneva Conventions cannot be reduced to isolated acts of unrestrained individual soldiers. The great war crimes in Iraq are not crimes of passion; they are crimes of policy and calculation. In the annals of collective terror and reprisal, the U.S. siege of Fallujah, a city leveled by U.S. air power, ranks with the fascist bombing of Guernica in Spain in 1937. Prior to the onslaught against Fallujah, U.S. commanders drove nearly 200,000 Fallujans out of their own city, bereft of housing, food and water. Those who remained in their homes were trapped in a rain of death. The siege began with an attack on the Fallujah general hospital. Injured patients were forced out of their beds. Doctors were prevented from treating, even reporting, casualties. Today Fallujah is a wasteland. Robert Worth in the New York Times reports, in the aftermath of the bombing campaign: "Cars sit on the roofs of buildings. Lamp posts lie at odd angles. Fire has blackened the face of building after building." No type of building-mosques, homes, medical facilities-was exempt from aerial destruction. Five-hundred pound bombs are utterly indiscriminate in their effects. A 1,000-pound bomb obliterated the city's rail station, a transfer point for all Iraq. Another strike turned a small hospital into rubble. Mosques were assaulted. Entire neighborhoods were flattened. Fires raged throughout residential communities. American commanders openly declared that Fallujah needed to be "taught a lesson." The people of Fallujah were murdered in their own homes, their own streets, their own hospitals and mosques-in their own homeland. They were not threatening any one else's soil. Unlike their invaders, they never possessed nuclear weapons. Unlike the CIA, they never aided Osama Bin Laden. They possessed no air force, no satellite systems, no anti-aircraft weapons, not even bullet-proof vests. Fallujah had no modern means of self-defense against industrial war and foreign aerial bombardment. If the ruin of Fallujah is not a war crime, power is all, there is no law, and the very concept of crime is meaningless. The United States is not a fascist country. There are major differences between the current decay of American law and morals and the unprecedented, unique horrors of the Third Reich. But the evidence from Iraq should give us pause: American leaders and commanders are carrying out policies-torture, mass collective reprisals, wanton destruction of cities-for which Nazi commanders were executed after due process at Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Tribunal explicitly repudiated the very doctrine which President Bush champions today-preemptive war. The Nazi defendants at Nuremberg cited the concept of preventative war to justify the German invasion of Norway. The judges wisely rejected their defense. They ruled that a war of choice is a crime against peace. How can American civilians provide genuine support for their troops? It is impossible to support the troops while supporting the commander who betrayed the troops. Yet it is inappropriate for civilians, in their position of privilege, to tell soldiers how to behave. We cannot tell our troops to disobey orders. Sailors and Marines, and Army reservists have to make their own decisions according to their own situation and conscience. Soldiers deserve our empathy. They are trapped in atrocity-producing situations. It's easy to lecture them about the laws of war, but if they refuse to carry out illegal policies, they face severe reprisals. And if they follow immoral and illegal orders, they are filled with shame, a burden which they may repress and carry for life. When Marine Sgt. Massey refused to continue killing innocent civilians, his commanders ostracized him and treated him with contempt. When Army Reservist Aidan Delgado, a witness to multiple war crimes at Abu Ghraib, spoke out, his own commanders took away his body armor, putting his life at risk. The American military has reached a point where soldiers are imprisoned for telling the truth and upholding the law. Camilo Mejia refused to participate in the commission of war crimes. He spent nine months in jail. No soldier should ever be forced to choose between his own self-preservation and his moral faith. While we do not encourage soldiers to disobey orders, we must be thankful that our warriors of peace-Camilo, Pablo, Kevin, Jimmy, Michael, Jeremy and hundreds of others-are defending our Constitution, promoting human rights and the sacredness of life. Understanding the legal case for resistance, we can join our soldiers of conscience on May 10th, a national day of resistance. For information on demonstrations go to: CourageToResist.org. Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine [ http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ ]. He can be reached at rockyspad@hotmail.com -------- ACTIVISTS Historic exhibit of Hiroshima/Nagasaki artifacts The Chicago Peace Museum Saturday, May 07, 2005 Art For A Change http://www.art-for-a-change.com/blog/2005/05/chicago-peace-museum.html The Peace Museum in Chicago is hosting the very first Japanese government-sponsored exhibition in the US of artifacts and materials related to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [Actually, this exhibit is simultaneous with the historic exhibit in the United Nations in New York City. A reception was held at the U.N. on May 2, 2005, which I attended. Unofficially, there has been an exhibit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki photos standing in front of the White House since the 1980's. See http://prop1.org - NucNews editor] The exhibit opened on May 6th, and runs until August 14th, 2005, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan. The Peace Museum’s exhibition features 41 photos and photographic panels, video installments, and 23 objects - including a melted Christian cross removed from a Church obliterated by the nuclear blast. At the opening reception held on May 6th, 73-year-old A-bomb survivor Katsuji Yoshida, talked about having lived through the terror of the Nagasaki bombing. He was a thirteen year-old high school student when the bomb went off a half mile from where he stood outside his school. He was thrown some 130 feet into the air and received severe burns to his body… but by some miracle survived. Today, as a member of the Nagasaki Peace Promotion Association, Yoshida does all he can to deliver the message that “Humans must never be made into atomic bomb victims. I pray these peaceful skies go on forever.” The Chicago Peace Museum’s exhibit is sponsored the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Hall, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and the citizens of Japan. The museum is located at 100 N. Central Park Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60624. The exhibit is open 10 am to 4 pm. Tuesday through Friday, and 9 am to 2 pm on Saturday and Sunday. The exhibit moves to an undisclosed location in California after its run in Chicago, and I’ll be sure to announce the details when they are made public. For more information, visit the Chicago Peace Museum website.