NucNews - November 6, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- asia

Vietnam's civilian nuclear plan awaits political consensus

HANOI (AFP) Nov 06, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051106043712.dtjfx507.html

Supporters of an ambitious civilian nuclear project in energy-hungry Vietnam are making gradual progress towards promoting their dream plan, which awaits consideration by the political leadership, experts say.

The proposal to build a nuclear power plant by 2020 is being formulated despite the lack of experience or infrastructure linked to the nuclear field in the country.

Vietnam will have to raise as much as 3.5 billion dollars to build a nuclear plant but some Vietnamese experts believe it is realistic.

The industry ministry has submitted a pre-feasibility study to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai. Two sites have been identified in the southern coastal province of Ninh Thuan.

Several countries with experience in the field, including France, Japan and South Korea, have shown interest in helping Vietnam build a civilian nuclear plant.

Only a strategic decision by the highest level leadership is needed.

"Relevant agencies are trying to follow the plan, but we need higher determination from the government," said Le Van Hong, Vice President of Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission.

"However, I believe in the commitment of the Vietnamese government as it is the one that has urged agencies concerned to proceed with the project," Hong told AFP.

Energy security is one of the greatest challenges facing Vietnam, whose economy has been growing at about seven percent annually over the past few years.

Demand for energy is growing at 15 percent a year and power projects have been mushrooming apace all over the country.

Although Vietnam is blessed with a number of rivers that are being harnessed for hydroelectricity and has significant natural gas and coal deposits, their exploitation is deemed insufficient to meet the burgeoning power demand.

By 2020, Vietnam will need 200 to 230 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity but will only have 165 billion kw/h with conventional sources, says Tran Thanh Lien, head of the International Relations department of Vietnam's Institute of Energy.

"If the determination is strong enough, the project could be achieved by 2020," he said.

But debate on the issue rages among the country's scientists and politicians.

"There have been signs opinion is divided within Vietnam over the merits of a nuclear power industry," said Carl Thayer, Vietnam expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

"Opposition up to now has partly come from some members of the scientific community who have expressed a variety of concerns regarding safety, proper training of personnel, finance and geographical location," he said.

Doubts about the viability of nuclear power abound since a nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. They were heightened after an incident in Mihama, Japan, in August 2004 when the release of radioactive steam killed five people.

"Obviously there are questions about safety and whether we have the proper trained personnel to run the plant," said Nguyen Ngoc Tran, deputy chairman of the National Assembly's Foreign Relations Committee.

Professor Pham Duy Hien, a leading expert on atomic energy also belongs in the sceptics' camp.

"Even by the year 2017, Vietnam will not be ready for nuclear energy," Hien was quoted as saying in an article by Thayer. "The country lacks necessary human resources as well as a legal infrastructure to address nuclear accidents if they happen."

The fierce debate is expected to continue as the country's parliament, the National Assembly, will have to consider the plan after the approval by the government, if and when it comes.

France has recently offered to help draw up legislation governing nuclear power, which could be put before the assembly by 2007, according to Vietnam News Agency.

In 2003, Vietnam's Institute of Technology for Radioactive Materials said the country had an estimated 230,000 tonnes (tons) of naturally-occurring uranium reserves and could run a nuclear power station for at least 24 years.



-------- australia

Documenting anti-nuclear struggles

Kathy Newnam, Darwin, November 6, 2005 Greenleft Australia

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/648/648p5b.htm

On November 3, 100 people attended the Darwin premiere of Australian Atomic Confessions, a 48-minute film documenting the legacy of the 12 British nuclear-bomb tests carried out in Australia in the 1950s.

Greg Young, the film’s director and co-writer, introduced the documentary, explaining that it documents ordinary Australians’ “unwilling participation in the nuclear industry”. Included in the film are interviews with former Australian army personnel who were exposed to radiation at the test sites and their campaign for compensation.

The film features interviews with Aboriginal people who were affected by the nuclear-bomb tests, including the women of the Kupa Piti Kungka Juta — the Aboriginal women’s council in Coober Pedy — who also talk about their recent battle against the federal government's attempt to build a radioactive waste dump on their land.

In 2004, their eight-year-long campaign against this dump was successful. Their momentous struggle is now documented in a 120-page, full-colour book, Talking Straight Out: Stories From the Irati Wanti Campaign, published last month.

The book had its Darwin launch at the premiere of Australian Atomic Confessions.

Event organiser Justin Tutty from the Darwin No Radioactive Waste Alliance told the audience that the book was “a user manual for those who will have to carry on the fight here in the Norther Territory”. In a message of support to anti-nuclear campaigners, the Kungka Juta wrote: “This is a big story. You don't have to start at the beginning; we've already done a lot of work ... We have to work together. Tell everyone they can do it — you can do it.”

Benedict Stevens, a senior custodian of the land around Mount Evarard (one of the three proposed nuclear waste dump sites in the NT), also addressed the gathering, expressing the growing determination of anti-nuclear campaigners to “stick together and say no to this nuclear waste dump”.

In her welcome to country, Larrakia elder June Mills spoke of the foreign law imposed on this country since the late 19th century British invasion — “a foreign law that keeps changing to suit the people in power”.

On October 2, the federal parliament passed legislation to override the NT parliament’s opposition to the dump. Anti-dump campaigners have held regular vigils outside NT Senator Nigel Scullion's office, calling for him to vote against the legislation in the Senate.

[The next meeting of the No Radioactive Waste Alliance will be on November 15. For more information, phone (08) 8948 3339 or email <darwin@no-waste.org>.]

----

NT advice says no legal basis for nuclear dump challenge

Sunday, November 6, 2005 Australian Broadcasting

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1498809.htm

The Northern Territory Government has been advised there is no legal avenue to stop a nuclear waste facility being built in the Territory.

The House of Representatives has passed legislation enabling the Federal Government to force a waste dump at one of three sites in the Territory.

The Senate is likely to consider it this week.

There has been speculation as to whether the Territory Government would pursue High Court action to stop the Federal Government's plans, as happened in South Australia.

A spokesman for the Territory's Chief Minister Clare Martin says legal advice has now been received on the matter.

He says the federal legislation is watertight and any legal challenge has been ruled out.

----

Indigenous owners stage dump protest in Sydney

Sunday, 6 November 2005 Australian Broadcasting

http://www.abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1498776.htm

Traditional owners from the Northern Territory have gathered outside Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney to rally against plans to place a nuclear waste facility on their land.

The 14 owners are from Harts Range and Mt Everard in Central Australia - two of the three possible sites identified by the Federal Government.

They were travelling with the Central Land Council's David Ross; the Member for the Central Australian seat of MacDonnell, Alison Anderson, and the Territory's Deputy Chief Minister, Syd Stirling.

Mr Stirling will meet tomorrow with senators who could vote down the Commonwealth's nuclear legislation.

He will also be present a petition with 9,000 signatures to the Territory's CLP Senator Nigel Scullion.

Mr Stirling says the Territory's campaign against the dump is gathering interest and support.

"We'll test that tomorrow of course ... we'll have a range of meetings with a number of senators that we can get hold of before the debate and the vote in the Senate," he said.



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-------- depleted uranium

Is it seditious to want the defeat of liars?

Keysar Trad ponders spinmeisters' intent.

November 6, 2005 The Age

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/is-it-seditious-to-want-the-defeat-of-liars/2005/11/05/1130823436825.html?oneclick=true

In a week that brought proposed reforms that would assault our rights to freedom of speech and thought, we also got the curious announcement of a specific threat to Australia.

Is this threat any more specific than the so-called balaclava-clad "Aussie Taliban" aired on Alarabia satellite channel a few weeks ago; or more specific than the threat by the Taliban ambassador in 2001; or the alleged Bin Laden and Zawahiry tape threats?

It is so specific that the public cannot be told the detail, yet the public has been told with such great fanfare that it has pushed aside other news stories.

Every newspaper wrote about and discussed this new "specific" threat. Yet all the while, the threat alert level remained the same, and we have not seen any new videos - just images of our anti-terror police on highly spectacular manoeuvres - and heard sickeningly annoying calls asking us to continue to trust our Prime Minister.

I do not see the logic: how can we trust John Howard when he has been found to be wrong so often? We should ask this question now before the Government invokes its sedition provisions and treats us to seven years' free board at one of Her Majesty's lodges.

We have wondered at the compelling reasons presented by the Prime Minister to COAG (Council of Australian Governments) members, but we have not considered the desire of most political leaders to govern with wide-reaching police powers.

If the PM can use the these powers to quell voices of dissent, then state and territory leaders can do the same. Australians are being bamboozled into believing that political leaders will not use these totalitarian powers. Yet one must wonder whether it was the opportunity to have such powers, rather than the fear of terrorism, that won their support for them.

Last week a newspaper ran a front page article rehashing old allegations against two conservative clerics - thus further exacerbating fears and stereotypes - and blatantly criticised the right of these clerics to oppose military occupation of another nation. This was the newspaper's way of justifying an assault on our freedoms, and to stop the clerics from denying what they have been alleged by others to have said.

What did these clerics say, and what does it mean? Why does a national newspaper selectively translate some words but not others? The clerics were alleged to have said, "Allah yinsur el-mujahideen fe-Iraq." A literal translation would be, "May God, give victory to those who strive in Iraq". Keeping the Arabic word mujahideen in the middle of a sentence about victory in Iraq can only evoke images of resistance fighters. In this context, the spin would suggest suicide bombers, the consequence being mass outrage at the comments of the clerics, the essence of whose alleged message is an intellectual sympathy with resistance to occupation.

As a man of God, I too oppose the military occupation of any nation; and history has shown that no occupation can be permanently sustained. The quicker the occupation ends, the less costly it will be to the occupying powers.

Am I being seditious if I question the decision of my Government to send our children to occupy another country, using our tax dollars to do so, and to kill in my name? Am I exposing Australian troops to danger if I call for their withdrawal from a theatre of war that is replete with contamination from depleted uranium?

In this scenario, it is clear who is not acting in the best interests of the Australian military, or our nation. Yet, the decision-maker in this instance wants to strip us of our right to care for our own children, the men and women of our proud defence forces.

Many clerics will say: "Allahumma Insur Al Mu'mininal Mujahideena fi kulli makan." In English, "God, give victory to the faithful believers who strive in every place." But if the Government's spinmeisters were to translate it, it would read: "O Allah, give victory to the faithful Mujahideen everywhere."

To make the prayer politically correct, and actually present it in its true spirit, it would read thus, "O God, we implore you to give victory to the just and truthful." To stir the pot, I would add, "and defeat the unjust liars". Amen!

Keysar Trad is the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia Inc



-------- iran

Tehran's Vitriol Sparks Sympathy for Israel

Dan Baron
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 6, 2005

http://www.jewishexponent.com/ViewArticle.asp?ArtID=1414

JERUSALEM 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 15

Israel often comes under international criticism for its counterterrorist and settlement-building policies. But comments by Iran's president calling for its destruction have suddenly elicited some international sympathy for the Jewish state.

In itself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call - at a televised anti-Zionist rally in Tehran - for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map" wasn't so new, a reiteration of the traditional rhetoric of hard-line religious officials.

But since the comments came not from one of the country's ayatollahs but from its president - so soon after Israel garnered international plaudits for its Gaza Strip withdrawal, and as international scrutiny on Iran's nuclear-weapons program intensifies - they drew a great deal of attention.

Israel found its objections to the radical rhetoric echoed worldwide - from the United States to Europe to the United Nations.

Even Russia, which is helping Iran build its Bushehr nuclear reactor and has long been hesitant to criticize its trading partner in the Persian Gulf, joined in.

"What I saw on television is unacceptable. We will bring this to the attention of the Iranians," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, who only last month in his landmark U.N. address bemoaned the fact that "no one opens their mouth" when such threats are made against the Jewish nation, launched a campaign to have Iran expelled from the forum.

"A country that calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member of the United Nations," he said.

Jerusalem officials admitted that a U.N ouster of Iran was unlikely, given that it would require a Security Council recommendation and two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly.

"I don't know if it has any chance of success," admitted Vice Premier Shimon Peres of the campaign. "But it is something we must say. I don't think it is a matter of what one thinks is worthwhile or not. This is intolerable."

Last Friday, the U.N. Security Council did rebuke Iran for Ahmadinejad's comments.

For its part, over the weekend Iran accused the West of using its president's comments about the destruction of Israel in order to intensify pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

At the same time, Iran's Foreign Ministry released a statement saying the government's official stance "is that the occupation of Palestine should end, refugees should return and a democratic state should be formed with Jerusalem as its capital."

Hinting at Use of Force

According to some Jerusalem officials, the international community responded so strongly to Israel's diplomatic offensive in a bid to avert an Israeli military offensive.

Sharon, like President Bush, has long hinted that force could be a last resort for preventing Iran from getting the bomb.

Ahmadinejad's speech at the "World Without Zionism" rally - where the title was posted in English, not Farsi, for international consumption - coupled with a lack of cooperation with European-led efforts to help curb Iran's nuclear program, have made this specter of confrontation loom ever larger.

"Such a country, with nuclear arms, is a danger, not just to Israel and the Middle East, but also to Europe," said Sharon.

Similar comments came from the White House.

Still, no one expects military escalation before the exhaustion of U.S.-led efforts to bring Iran before the Security Council and impose sanctions unless it abandons its quest for weapons of mass destruction.

Ahmadinejad has now made this possibility more likely.

----

Iran issues fresh nuclear challenge  	
     	     	
AFP, Sunday, 06 November 2005

http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/511/1/

November 6 - Iran again defied the international community over its nuclear programme, announcing it would soon embark on fresh nuclear fuel work and was seeking investors for uranium enrichment activities.

Officials said Sunday Tehran would be converting a fresh batch of uranium ore -- the precursor step before enrichment -- in a flagrant rejection of calls from Europe and the United States for Tehran to halt all such activities.

The state press also said the government had given the country's atomic energy agency the go-ahead to look for foreign and domestic investors in uranium enrichment, even though this practice remains suspended.

The decisions appear a fresh sign of Iran's determination to make full use of the nuclear fuel cycle, despite the international pressure to cease all enrichment-related activities as proof it is not seeking a nuclear bomb.

They come three weeks ahead of a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog which could theoretically send Iran to the Security Council and amid mounting concerns about the direction of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

"The government is authorising the Iranian atomic energy agency to seek Iranian or foreign investors -- from the public or private sectors -- for the Natanz enrichment project," the press said, apparently quoting from an official directive.

According to the press, the decision was taken on Wednesday by the cabinet.

The central town of Natanz is the site of Iran's nuclear enrichment plant, which is to host thousands of centrifuges which spin at supersonic speeds to enrich the uranium.

The enrichment process provides the fuel for civilian nuclear power stations but in highly enriched form the uranium can also be used to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.

Iran also said on Sunday that it will be converting new consignments of uranium at its plant outside the central city of Isfahan, after resuming this crucial part of the fuel cycle in August following a suspension.

"We have told the (International Atomic Energy) Agency that we are going to inject new initial materials (uranium ore) into the production chain," Javad Vaidi, an official from Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television.

Iran says it only wishes to enrich to the low-level purity required for reactor fuel but its enemies have accused Tehran of seeking to make a nuclear bomb.

European countries, led by Britain, France and Germany, had attempted to persuade Iran to permanently suspend uranium enrichment as a watertight guarantee that its nuclear programme was peaceful.

However the talks came to a shuddering halt when the Islamic republic in August resumed its uranium conversion activities, the precursor of enrichment.

Iran has vehemently maintained that its right to enrichment is enshrined under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a position reaffirmed on Sunday by foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.

"We will never abandon our right to the nuclear fuel cycle," he told reporters, at the same time stating that "the door is open to discussions, nothing has been closed."

International concern about Iran's nuclear policy of hardline Ahmadinejad's administration has intensified after he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

On the horizon now looms the November 24 meeting of the IAEA, where the United States and Europe could call for Tehran to be hauled up before the UN Security Council if it does not halt all uranium enrichment related activities.

Previous attempts for such a move have foundered over the opposition of Russia and Moscow is once again expected to play a key role in November's meeting.

Iran also moved to weigh the scales in its favour by last week allowing UN inspectors access to the Parchin military site, where Washington alleges Iran may be testing high-explosive charges with an inert core of depleted uranium.




-------- japan

Revamped alliance not to change Japan's pacifism: senior MPs

TOKYO (AFP) Nov 06, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051106071844.x39s16xd.html

A revamped US-Japan alliance would not violate the nation's pacifist constitution, senior lawmakers from Japan's ruling party said Sunday

"It will never happen that Japan's Self Defense Force would be involved in the US military strategy," said Hidenao Nakagawa, a parliament member and policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

"We are determined to keep to our constitution's pacifism" when the alliance between Japan and the United States is strengthened, Nakagawa said in a televized interview.

"But it is necessary to respond to new kinds of threats such as terrorism," Nakagawa added.

Involvement of Japanese troops in US military deployments abroad which have little to do with Japan's national defense, "should never be permitted under the constitution," said Yoshihisa Inoue, policy chief of the LDP's junior coalition partner, New Komeito.

The comments came eight days after the two governments adopted an interim report designed to cut US forces in the Japanese island of Okinawa, deploy a powerful missile defense radar in Japan and bind their militaries more closely together.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also proposed to give Japan's military a firm legal basis by revising the pacifist post-war constitution.

Japanese opposition parties and local officials have criticized the new military agreement as lifting limits on the country's military support for the United States.

The agreement, which "authorizes Japan's support and commitment for military action by the United States, is extremely dangerous," Seiji Mataichi, secretary-general of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, has said.

Under a 1960 Japan-US Security Treaty, Japan's support for the US military is limited to activities contributing to peace and stability in the "Far East."

Japan's 1947 constitution, written after the country's World War II defeat, says "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes."

As a result, Japanese troops have been limited to a non-combat, logistical role in international peacekeeping operations.

But Koizumi broke with tradition by deploying about 600 troops on a reconstruction and humanitarian mission in southern Iraq since late 2003. To avoid violating the pacifist constitution, the government says the troops operate in a "non-combat zone" within Iraq.

Under the new accord with the US, Washington will move 7,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam and relocate US bases in Japan. Tokyo is to expand the roles and missions of its military both in home defense and in international missions with the United States.

The accord comes amid tensions with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programs and growing concern over China's military buildup, which the Pentagon has said threatens the regional military balance.



-------- russia

Avoiding a Russian arms disaster

By Ted Turner /Stanley A. Weiss
November 6, 2005 Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20051105-101712-9766r.htm

Hurricane Katrina drove home the staggering devastation that disasters -- natural or man-made --can inflict. Meanwhile, July's attacks on the London Underground reminded us terrorists can still strike major world cities. Now imagine the two joined together: terrorists, armed with weapons of mass destruction, unleashing Katrina-scale chaos and death in the heart of a U.S. city.

    Such attacks are hardly unthinkable. Roughly half of Russia's weapons-grade nuclear materials are poorly protected. In the small Russian town of Shchuch'ye, nearly 2 million shells of VX and sarin nerve gas -- each lethal enough to kill 85,000 people -- lay stacked in chicken cooplike structures. The September 11 commission said al Qaeda has pursued getting and using these weapons as a "religious obligation" for more than a decade.

    Fortunately, unlike hurricanes, much can be done to prevent this nightmare from becoming real. One of our first and best lines of defense is the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, created by former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, Georgia Democrat, and Sen. Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican. Since 1992, the program has eliminated thousands of Russian nuclear warheads, missiles, submarines and bombers.

    But in recent years, a set of burdensome congressional restrictions has marred the program and led to a series of disruptive stop-and-start cycles. Key projects vital to America's security have ground to a halt for months on end because, for example, Russian human-rights obligations were not met or the paperwork to waive them was not completed.

    Congress now has the chance to end such dangerous disruptions once and for all. Mr. Lugar, decrying those misplaced priorities, introduced language to repeal all the restrictions, which the Senate embraced by an overwhelming, bipartisan 78-19 vote in July. But until the full Congress approves it, CTR's vital efforts remain in danger, from both a national security and a business perspective.

    Danger of delay: Current restrictions carry real costs on the ground. In mid-2002, all new CTR projects -- including security upgrades at 10 nuclear weapons storage sites -- stalled for four months because the conditions could not be certified. Destruction of the Shchuch'ye stockpile was delayed some 15 months from 2001 to 2003 for similar red-tape reasons.

    Such stoppages not only prolong threats to America, they also endanger the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars already invested in Shchuch'ye and other projects. So long as the conditions remain, these dangerous disruptions are inevitable.

    Wasted resources: In a yearly drama, defense staffers and intelligence analysts must spend thousands of hours assessing Russian compliance with CTR restrictions -- even when it is immediately clear Russia cannot meet them. Nor can the president simply waive the conditions without first submitting to this annual exercise in foregone conclusions.

    Abetting such delays or allowing concerns like human rights, however important, to threaten human existence massively is the height of folly. We not only agree with Mr. Lugar that, during a war on terror, these artificial barriers "are destructive to our national security"; we see them undermining one of the best investments our country can make.

    CTR, simply is good security on the cheap. At an annual cost of as little as one-tenth of 1 percent (0.001) of the Pentagon budget, the program has deactivated and helped guard 6,760 Russian nuclear warheads. It has upgraded security to the Shchuch'ye depot and similar sites. It also helped remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

    Today, CTR continues upgrading security and aiding accounting of nuclear weapons transportation and storage. It also works to destroy biological weapons production facilities and lock down pathogen collections in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

    CTR's largest current project, eliminating the Shchuch'ye stockpile, will rid us of all 2 million of those weapons -- and cost each American roughly the same as a large latte.

    Nor is this money "foreign aid": More than 80 percent of CTR funds go to five U.S. prime contractors that dismantle and destroy these weapons.

    The risk of a Katrina-scale terrorist attack with Russian weapons is too critical to tolerate any delays to these crucial efforts. Congress must act and free us to meet what President Bush calls "the greatest threat before humanity today."

    Ted Turner is chairman of Turner Enterprises in Atlanta. Stanley A. Weiss is chairman of Business Executives for National Security, of which Mr. Turner is a member. 




-------- terrorism

Al-Qaeda woos recruits with nuclear bomb website

Uzi Mahnaimi and Tom Walker, November 6, 2005 UK Sunday Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1859222,00.html

AN Al-Qaeda website containing detailed instructions in Arabic on how to make nuclear, “dirty” and biological bombs has attracted more than 57,000 hits and hundreds of readers’ inquiries. Terrorism experts are warning that the site could be boosting the organisation’s appeal to would-be assassins in Britain and abroad.

The manual, posted on October 6 on a forum titled Al-Firdaws, or Paradise, contains 80 pages of instructions and pictures of kitchen bomb-making techniques. It is divided into nine lessons under the overall heading The Nuclear Bomb of Jihad and the Way to Enrich Uranium, and is dedicated as a “gift to the commander of the jihad fighters, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, for the purpose of jihad for the sake of Allah”.

As well as describing how to make a nuclear bomb from enriched uranium — impossible for the layman — the manual explains how to make simple bombs that can blow up anything from electrical generators to petrol stations.

The site encourages its readers to look for materials such as radium, which it says is an “effective alternative to uranium and available on the market”. It is unclear who the author is or where he is based: he describes himself simply as “Layth al-Islam”, or the “Lion of Islam”, belonging to a group called “the Black Flags”.

“Fight them so that Allah will punish them at your hands and will put them to shame and will give you victory over them,” he writes, quoting the Koran. “Perhaps nuclear weapons represent a technology of the 1940s. However, the Crusaders, the allies of the Satan, Allah’s curse be upon them, insist on depriving the jihad fighters of the right to have these weapons.”

The site’s appeal is evident from the enthusiasm of its correspondents. One of the most recent, Mariyam al-Jihadiyya, writes: “God bless you for this precious topic . . . fight them, through your hands God tortures them . . . and heal the hearts of the faithful people.” Beneath she includes a couple of pictures for her hero. “I love you, Osama,” she writes.

Other users complain that not all the site’s links are activated, and several urge caution. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” writes one. For enthusiasts there are links to a mailing service that provides regular updates on bomb-making techniques.

Nuclear physicists were alarmed by the site. “Normally you just get generic principles, but this appears to be more like a proper instruction manual,” said John Hassard, reader in physics at Imperial College, London. “The thing about this website that is striking is that it is very particular. A lot of effort has been put into it.”

He said that while it was highly unlikely that amateur bomb-builders could get hold of fissile material, smuggling networks with access to nuclear materials from the break-up of the Soviet Union could use the information.

“It is a very real threat and one which we can’t afford to ignore,” he said. “I would say this is public enemy No 1.”

Experts on Al-Qaeda said the organisation appeared to be moving from a phase where it preached a fatwa permitting the use of weapons of mass destruction — issued two years ago — to one where it encourages its followers to produce both “dirty” bombs and smaller devices similar to those used in the London Tube attacks.

“Al-Qaeda strives to move directly from the stage of obtaining the WMD to the stage of using it,” said Matti Steinberg, an Israeli expert on the organisation. He said efforts by Al-Qaeda, whose members are Sunni Muslims, to produce a nuclear weapon also reflected its fear that Shi’ite Iran was on the brink of producing a bomb. Bin Laden wanted to “balance the efforts by Iran to obtain the first Shi’ite bomb by building the first Sunni one”.

While assessing the website’s influence on young British Muslims is difficult, terror experts believe it is an important potential recruiting tool.

Jeevan Deol, a terrorism analyst at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, said that while Al-Qaeda could not match western military capabilities and intelligence, its use of “cyberwarfare” helped redress the balance.

“They are using the web in a focused way for propaganda and recruiting,” said Deol. “Some jihadi kid in Leeds clicks on it and thinks, ‘Wow, 50,000 hits — we don’t see Osama on telly any longer but we’re big, we’re bad and extremely engaged in all these things’.”

Additional reporting: Widiane Moussa and Flora Bagenal 




-------- treaties

Nuclear war may no longer be inevitable, but that hasn't stopped 
every country wanting to own the ultimate weapon. And why not?

Ian Bell, Sunday Herald - 06 November 2005

http://www.sundayherald.com/52620

YOU probably remember the peace dividend. That was the bounty for all mankind guaranteed by the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Five decades of mutual paranoia would be lifted from our shoulders; Cruise missiles would be beaten into GameBoys; and all the insane sums spent previously on unused whizzbangs would be put to sensible uses.

You dared to believe it, didn’t you, just for a brief second? Can’t be blamed for that. Who goes on getting tooled up for Armageddon when there is nobody credible left to fight? If the USSR had been sent into economic defeat, it stood to reason that the democracies would find other outlets for their wealth and energies. If there was nobody left to deter, clearly the instruments of deterrence were superfluous. We could buy ourselves some peace.

It didn’t happen. The runners in the nuclear arms race barely missed a beat. “Reason” had nothing to do with it. Older players in the game, such as Britain, had a few embarrassing moments when they were asked where the missiles were currently pointed, and why. New and eager prospective members of the club drew a simple lesson: this crap works. Buy yourself something new and thermonuclear and the arts of diplomacy become a little less relevant.

The toys in question are weapons of mass destruction, of course, the very best. The world abhors them. The world, if you believe its statesmen, would like rid of them. But if you happen to be a state that already has them, or thinks it might have use for a few, the moral parameters appear to change. Your WMD are my necessary defensive capabilities held, regrettably, in the name of peace and security.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) was supposed to put an end to such sophistry. It was nobody’s idea of a charitable gesture. It was the device by which the five existing holders of top-grade WMD (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China) would seek to persuade or cajole all other states into abandoning their nuclear ambitions. If a lid could be put on the box, Pandora might behave herself and the top five could proceed to “disarm”.

Three problems. First, the official nuclear powers had no intention of ever relinquishing all the really good stuff. What would the generals say? When did you hear a British government, of any party, declare an ambition to become nuke-free within a stated timetable? When did you last hear of a British government engaged in negotiations with anyone on the subject? Disarm? No fear. Ditto the other four.

Secondly, and consequently, there was the logical flaw in non-proliferation. If it worked, where would potential enemies come from? Why would the arsenals be required? But if your intention was to keep your own arsenal come what may, what better way to justify it than with a few potential enemies, real or actual? Best not to make too much of a fuss, then, over the NNPT, unless a fuss is convenient. Better, perhaps, to use it as a bargaining chip: the people we like get to join the club; the rest can make up the numbers as potential foes.

That was the third point. Three of the West’s sometime friends saved everyone a lot of bother simply by ignoring the NNPT. Israel, India and Pakistan refused to sign and set about acquiring nukes without anyone’s permission. No wars ensued. Nobody threatened to invade, bomb reactors, or even impose sanctions. WMD were loose in the world and the world, more or less, shrugged. What can you do?

Quite a lot if you can only allege that Saddam might have fancied a warhead or two of his own, prove that North Korea’s nut-job dictator has a crude weapons programme at his disposal, or allege that Iran has ambitions. Clearly, none of these states can match China’s record on democracy or human rights, but unlike China and ourselves they are “unstable”. Or to put it another way: they justify the weapons whose possession we claim as a right. They are the necessary enemy.

Iran is certainly flavour of the month for John Reid, defence secretary. Last week he was using that country’s (still non-existent) nuclear threat to explain to the Commons cross-party defence committee why Britain cannot afford to relinquish its nuclear capabilities. The Iranians had been deceiving the world, he said, and “not complying with their obligations under the non-proliferation treaty”. Unlike Israel.

The real point was to prepare the way for the eventual replacement of the Trident submarine-launched system. Undoubtedly, like a good client, HMG will wait to see what the Americans come up with before a choice is made. Equally predictably, the Blair government will do whatever it can to ensure that MPs are denied a vote on Trident-replacement. The boats carrying the nukes will not have to be replaced for at least 15 years, but Reid is keen to make a start.

At this point you might be asking yourself how many victims of the London bombings on July 7 might have been saved by improved nuclear weapons. You might ask, as many Americans asked at the time, what George Bush’s proposed grandiose missile defence shield would have done to prevent 9/11. But this is full-spectrum paranoia, and like the “war on terror”, it is self-fulfilling.

Invade Iraq and, as night follows day, there are terrorist bombings in Europe. Replenish your nuclear arsenal and ambitious states around the world, nice or not so nice, decide they want to play with the big boys. Reid would have it that a potential nuclear threat doesn’t mean we no longer need the SAS to assault terrorists, any more than the London bombers obviate the need for a nuclear capacity. But he misses the point: in his world, all is escalation, permanent and eternal. The trouble is, he cannot keep the game within the club, even if that is his aim. The worse trouble is, his American friends are using the gift of club membership as a form of patronage.

India is the prime case in point. Just lately, Washington has taken to ignoring the fact that the Indians have broken every nuclear rule going, even as America inveighs, with possible justification, against Iran. Currently, George W is offering to overturn screeds of American law, including his country’s own Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, in exchange for Delhi’s friendship. Countries that fail to put their nuclear industries under international safeguards – the beef against Iran – or who have detonated a nuclear device since 1978 are supposed to be denied America’s “co-operation”. India is therefore disqualified, but George doesn’t care.

India could be a very useful regional ally, after all, what with its proximity to China. But nobody is bothering to ask why Delhi thinks it needs an estimated 50 warheads, or why it plans to produce 400 to 500 more over the next decade, other than as a subscription to the club. Is India threatened by Pakistan or China? Possibly so. Certainly, the potential exists. But why would India then have need of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), now being planned, when its existing Agni rocket can hit its regional rivals easily?

The ICBM might one day take an Indian into space. In the meantime, or at least in the near future, it could strike Europe or America. Indian officials have already admitted that such would be the “presumed targets”.

Not that Delhi would do any such thing, of course. A capability of that magnitude would merely demonstrate that India had joined the top table in the peaceable, stable club of those we trust. Yet in the world of changing friend and ever-altering foe, Reid’s language, and British policy, is stripped bare. Why should India be denied the accoutrements of global power? And which successor to Bush, witnessing the explosive economic growth on the subcontinent, will fail to detect a new enemy emerging from a former ally?

The only way to get rid of nuclear weapons is to get rid of them. If Britain replaces Trident with the latest American kit, acquired at a special discount rate, what entitles us to pick on Iran or North Korea, to deny them their status symbols or, as they might see it, their own guarantors of security? And what entitles us to lecture anyone on the iniquities of weapons of mass destruction?

We’re the good guys. We, along with our American friends, are the best of the good guys. Which is to say that alone among the weapons fetishists of world history, we are the only people ever to have developed and dropped atomic weapons on anyone. It’s what we call moral authority. John Reid, with his “range of threats”, his “potential enemies”, and his refusal to rid the world of a plague, knows all about that.

For most of my life nuclear war seemed imminent. Then we believed the cloud might have passed. Check the horizon now, but rest assured: Britain will do its bit.



-------- u.s. nuc facilities



-------- arizona

Uranium mines poised to reopen

By CYNDY COLE
Sun Staff Reporter
11/06/2005

http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=118642
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:_Fww_tzL7lwJ:www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm%3FstoryID%3D118642+Uranium+mines+poised+to+reopen&hl=en

Soaring uranium prices are spurring a prospecting frenzy on the Arizona Strip north of the Grand Canyon, with at least one company considering reopening mining operations near Fredonia.

"The Strip mines are still, I think, some of the richest mines in the United States," said Ron Hockstein, president of International Uranium Corporation, which has four mines there, including two south of Fredonia near Hack Canyon. "...We'd like to put those into production as quickly as we can."

Whether his mines will reopen depends on the prices of compounds used in processing the radioactive ore, finding workers and the cost of gasoline to truck it about 300 miles to Blanding, in southeast Utah, one of two uranium mills still operating in the United States.

If the mines were to reopen, it could mean at least dozens, if not hundreds, of jobs for Fredonia.

Coconino County Supervisor Carl Taylor is working on an economic plan for the region, one not based solely on mining, which he dubs "not as desirable" as other jobs.

Still, "People in Fredonia see this as an opportunity," he said.

The Bureau of Land Management expects mining corporations to stake out 1,500 to 2,000 claims on the Strip by the end of this year.

That compares with 10,000 claims that were active in the boom time of the 1980s.

Uranium mining on the Strip essentially ended in 1990, when prices for uranium fell to $7 per pound, Arizona Strip BLM spokesman David Boyd said.

Now it's resurfacing across the Colorado Plateau.

Prices for the element used in nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants and medicine have rebounded nearly five-fold.

"There's about six or eight other companies drilling up there as we speak," Arizona Mine Inspector Doug Martin said.

While they may be doing initial work to find ore, no company has filed paperwork with the BLM or state to reopen or establish a uranium mine on the Strip at this point, Boyd and Martin said.

Mining will not be allowed inside national monuments on the Strip.

To the east, the Navajo Nation has banned uranium mining across its land, blaming it for cancer and other health problems. Uranium mine workers in Utah have received settlements as a result of health problems.

This time around, mining would be safer, Martin said, and the workers would have to wear equipment that would monitor their exposure to radiation.

Nuclear power production across the U.S. is near record levels and is predicted to increase next year, according to U.S. Energy Information Association data.

The United States gets about 20 percent of its energy from nuclear power plants, according to the association.

Cyndy Cole can be reached at ccole@azdailysun.com or at 913-8607.



-------- north dakota

Basin - Nuclear

November 6, 2005 (AP)

http://www.kfyr.com/cc-common/local_news_common.html?ID=20051105092558&feed=local

BISMARCK, N.D. _ When the chief executive officer of Basin Electric Power Cooperative talks about generating electricity, he talks about coal and wind. But now Ron Harper is raising the possibility of nuclear energy. Harper says the Basin board decided to look at nuclear power about three months ago, to better understand the industry. He says Basin brought in a consultant, and is taking a more in-depth look to see if it's a viable option. Harper says it's just ``prudent business.'' He says he's still convinced most of the power Basin produces will come from coal.



-------- washington

Board says expanding vit plant may be best option

Published Sunday, November 6th, 2005
By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald staff writer

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/7176534p-7086319c.html

SEATTLE -- As costs rise for building a bulk vitrification pilot plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation, the Department of Energy may need to consider at what point it should cut its losses, the Hanford Advisory Board said Friday.

It called on DOE to set criteria for when it should stop spending money on demonstrating bulk vitrification as a waste treatment method and instead expand the main vitrification plant already under construction.

DOE is building a massive plant in central Hanford to turn some of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks into glass logs for permanent disposal. But it's also looking at an alternative technology to turn some of the low-activity radioactive waste from the tanks into large blocks of glass, which is intended to lower costs.

The board continues to support exploring ways to provide a less expensive, but equally safe, supplemental treatment to the $5.8 billion main vitrification plant, called the Waste Treatment Plant, the board said in advice it approved Friday to send to DOE.

But at some point, it may be less expensive to build a second low-activity waste treatment facility at the main vitrification plant rather than proceed with plans for a bulk vitrification plant, the board said.

Part of the concern is that the cost of building a pilot plant to test bulk vitrification on radioactive waste has increased from a preliminary estimate of about $45 million in 2002 to about $160 million in this year, with the larger figure also including additional work. The price could increase again because of concerns that proposed safety systems may be inadequate.

The board also wants assurances that the glass produced by bulk vitrification would immobilize the radioactive waste as well as the glass produced at the main vitrification plant.

The last test run of bulk vitrification helped show that engineering problems in the design of the container for melting the waste into glass blocks had been overcome. The process would mix Hanford soil with radioactive waste inside land-sea shipping containers, then use electrodes to melt the soil and waste into molten glass.

However, the test also raised questions about the quality of the glass that would be produced when the iron in Hanford soil formed chunks of slag at the bottom of the box rather than mixing into a homogenous glass.

Engineering changes are being considered that could solve that problem as DOE and its contractor on the project prepare for another test run before the end of the year using a simulant for radioactive waste.

In the meantime, construction has stopped. It is partly because of price increases on the pilot plant being built at Hanford to test the bulk vitrification technology on radioactive waste, rather than simulated waste.

The design on the bulk vitrification pilot plant will be completed before construction resumes, preventing some of the problems of the main vitrification plant, according to DOE. At the main vitrification plant, construction slowed in the last year because of well-publicized troubles that included an inadequate earthquake design standard and some design and purchasing that was being completed barely ahead of construction or delaying construction.

In addition, construction will not resume on the bulk vitrification pilot plant until after new cost and schedule information is completed, likely in June, and then an independent review team assesses it, said Roy Schepens, manager of DOE's Hanford Office of River Protection.

He also pointed out that DOE is building a pilot plant to test the technology after being criticized for not building full-scale pilot plants in the past, including for the main vitrification plant.

"We are spending the extra time and money to do it right," he said.

Under a legal deadline that's already been extended six months, DOE was to have a report prepared in June that would look at alternative technologies for treating tank waste. The report requires information from the pilot plant tests that have been delayed.

In August, CH2M Hill Hanford Group still said that it could have the pilot plant ready for a test melt in late May or early June. However, construction of the pilot plant is not likely to have resumed by the time the report is due.

Building a second low-activity waste facility at the main vitrification plant appears to be the surest way of emptying Hanford's radioactive waste tanks, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest and a member of the Hanford Advisory Board.

The plant now is designed with a high-level waste treatment facility to treat the most radioactive waste from the underground tanks and a low-activity waste treatment facility to treat some, but not all, of the most radioactive waste from the tanks.

Hanford workers are transferring waste from old single-shell tanks, many of which have leaked, to newer double-shell tanks. But the double shell tanks likely will be full years before even part of the main vitrification plant could start production. That would end work to empty single-shell tanks.

If bulk vitrification proves viable, it might provide a way to continue emptying old tanks.

"I'm becoming more patient and willing to see if (bulk vitrification) can work because we desperately need it to work," said Pam Larsen, executive director of the Hanford Communities and a Hanford Advisory Board member.

The board is recommending that DOE set criteria for continuing financial support of the bulk vitrification demonstration project, starting with whether the glass produced would be of high quality. DOE also should consider the cost per unit of waste treated, the ability to meet legal deadlines, the risk of worker exposure to radioactive materials and environmental releases, the board said.

Reporter Annette Cary can be reached at 582-1533 or via e-mail at acary@tri-cityherald.com.



-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501366_pf.html

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.

National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.

Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. Criticized for failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot, the bureau now casts a much wider net, using national security letters to generate leads as well as to pursue them. Casual or unwitting contact with a suspect -- a single telephone call, for example -- may attract the attention of investigators and subject a person to scrutiny about which he never learns.

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress bought time and leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on 16 provisions. The changes involving national security letters were not among them. In fact, as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and Congress prepares to renew or make permanent the expiring provisions, House and Senate conferees are poised again to amplify the FBI's power to compel the secret surrender of private records.

The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a prison term for breach of secrecy.

Like many Patriot Act provisions, the ones involving national security letters have been debated in largely abstract terms. The Justice Department has offered Congress no concrete information, even in classified form, save for a partial count of the number of letters delivered. The statistics do not cover all forms of national security letters or all U.S. agencies making use of them.

"The beef with the NSLs is that they don't have even a pretense of judicial or impartial scrutiny," said former representative Robert L. Barr Jr. (Ga.), who finds himself allied with the American Civil Liberties Union after a career as prosecutor, CIA analyst and conservative GOP stalwart. "There's no checks and balances whatever on them. It is simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want information, and they can basically just go and get it."

'A Routine Tool'

Career investigators and Bush administration officials emphasized, in congressional testimony and interviews for this story, that national security letters are for hunting terrorists, not fishing through the private lives of the innocent. The distinction is not as clear in practice.

Under the old legal test, the FBI had to have "specific and articulable" reasons to believe the records it gathered in secret belonged to a terrorist or a spy. Now the bureau needs only to certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

That standard enables investigators to look for conspirators by sifting the records of nearly anyone who crosses a suspect's path.

"If you have a list of, say, 20 telephone numbers that have come up . . . on a bad guy's telephone," said Valerie E. Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, "you want to find out who he's in contact with." Investigators will say, " 'Okay, phone company, give us subscriber information and toll records on these 20 telephone numbers,' and that can easily be 100."

Bush administration officials compare national security letters to grand jury subpoenas, which are also based on "relevance" to an inquiry. There are differences. Grand juries tend to have a narrower focus because they investigate past conduct, not the speculative threat of unknown future attacks. Recipients of grand jury subpoenas are generally free to discuss the subpoenas publicly. And there are strict limits on sharing grand jury information with government agencies.

Since the Patriot Act, the FBI has dispersed the authority to sign national security letters to more than five dozen supervisors -- the special agents in charge of field offices, the deputies in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, and a few senior headquarters officials. FBI rules established after the Patriot Act allow the letters to be issued long before a case is judged substantial enough for a "full field investigation." Agents commonly use the letters now in "preliminary investigations" and in the "threat assessments" that precede a decision whether to launch an investigation.

"Congress has given us this tool to obtain basic telephone data, basic banking data, basic credit reports," said Caproni, who is among the officials with signature authority. "The fact that a national security letter is a routine tool used, that doesn't bother me."

If agents had to wait for grounds to suspect a person of ill intent, said Joseph Billy Jr., the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, they would already know what they want to find out with a national security letter. "It's all chicken and egg," he said. "We're trying to determine if someone warrants scrutiny or doesn't."

Billy said he understands that "merely being in a government or FBI database . . . gives everybody, you know, neck hair standing up." Innocent Americans, he said, "should take comfort at least knowing that it is done under a great deal of investigative care, oversight, within the parameters of the law."

He added: "That's not going to satisfy a majority of people, but . . . I've had people say, you know, 'Hey, I don't care, I've done nothing to be concerned about. You can have me in your files and that's that.' Some people take that approach."

'Don't Go Overboard'

In Room 7975 of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, around two corners from the director's suite, the chief of the FBI's national security law unit sat down at his keyboard about a month after the Patriot Act became law. Michael J. Woods had helped devise the FBI wish list for surveillance powers. Now he offered a caution.

"NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant information," he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2001, "electronic communication" to the FBI's 56 field offices. "However, they must be used judiciously." Standing guidelines, he wrote, "require that the FBI accomplish its investigations through the 'least intrusive' means. . . . The greater availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in every case."

Woods, who left government service in 2002, added a practical consideration. Legislators granted the new authority and could as easily take it back. When making that decision, he wrote, "Congress certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI exercised it."

Looking back last month, Woods was struck by how starkly he misjudged the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no one noticed.

"This is not something that should be automatically done because it's easy," he said. "We need to be sure . . . we don't go overboard."

One thing Woods did not anticipate was then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's revision of Justice Department guidelines. On May 30, 2002, and Oct. 31, 2003, Ashcroft rewrote the playbooks for investigations of terrorist crimes and national security threats. He gave overriding priority to preventing attacks by any means available.

Ashcroft remained bound by Executive Order 12333, which requires the use of the "least intrusive means" in domestic intelligence investigations. But his new interpretation came close to upending the mandate. Three times in the new guidelines, Ashcroft wrote that the FBI "should consider . . . less intrusive means" but "should not hesitate to use any lawful techniques . . . even if intrusive" when investigators believe them to be more timely. "This point," he added, "is to be particularly observed in investigations relating to terrorist activities."

'Why Do You Want to Know?'

As the Justice Department prepared congressional testimony this year, FBI headquarters searched for examples that would show how expanded surveillance powers made a difference. Michael Mason, who runs the Washington field office and has the rank of assistant FBI director, found no ready answer.

"I'd love to have a made-for-Hollywood story, but I don't have one," Mason said. "I am not even sure such an example exists."

What national security letters give his agents, Mason said, is speed.

"I have 675 terrorism cases," he said. "Every one of these is a potential threat. And anything I can do to get to the bottom of any one of them more quickly gets me closer to neutralizing a potential threat."

Because recipients are permanently barred from disclosing the letters, outsiders can make no assessment of their relevance to Mason's task.

Woods, the former FBI lawyer, said secrecy is essential when an investigation begins because "it would defeat the whole purpose" to tip off a suspected terrorist or spy, but national security seldom requires that the secret be kept forever. Even mobster "John Gotti finds out eventually that he was wiretapped" in a criminal probe, said Peter Swire, the federal government's chief privacy counselor until 2001. "Anyone caught up in an NSL investigation never gets notice."

To establish the "relevance" of the information they seek, agents face a test so basic it is hard to come up with a plausible way to fail. A model request for a supervisor's signature, according to internal FBI guidelines, offers this one-sentence suggestion: "This subscriber information is being requested to determine the individuals or entities that the subject has been in contact with during the past six months."

Edward L. Williams, the chief division counsel in Mason's office, said that supervisors, in practice, "aren't afraid to ask . . . 'Why do you want to know?' " He would not say how many requests, if any, are rejected.

'The Abuse Is in the Power Itself'

Those who favor the new rules maintain -- as Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put it in a prepared statement -- that "there has not been one substantiated allegation of abuse of these lawful intelligence tools."

What the Bush administration means by abuse is unauthorized use of surveillance data -- for example, to blackmail an enemy or track an estranged spouse. Critics are focused elsewhere. What troubles them is not unofficial abuse but the official and routine intrusion into private lives.

To Jeffrey Breinholt, deputy chief of the Justice Department's counterterrorism section, the civil liberties objections "are eccentric." Data collection on the innocent, he said, does no harm unless "someone [decides] to act on the information, put you on a no-fly list or something." Only a serious error, he said, could lead the government, based on nothing more than someone's bank or phone records, "to freeze your assets or go after you criminally and you suffer consequences that are irreparable." He added: "It's a pretty small chance."

"I don't necessarily want somebody knowing what videos I rent or the fact that I like cartoons," said Mason, the Washington field office chief. But if those records "are never used against a person, if they're never used to put him in jail, or deprive him of a vote, et cetera, then what is the argument?"

Barr, the former congressman, said that "the abuse is in the power itself."

"As a conservative," he said, "I really resent an administration that calls itself conservative taking the position that the burden is on the citizen to show the government has abused power, and otherwise shut up and comply."

At the ACLU, staff attorney Jameel Jaffer spoke of "the profound chilling effect" of this kind of surveillance: "If the government monitors the Web sites that people visit and the books that they read, people will stop visiting disfavored Web sites and stop reading disfavored books. The FBI should not have unchecked authority to keep track of who visits [al-Jazeera's Web site] or who visits the Web site of the Federalist Society."

Links in a Chain

Ready access to national security letters allows investigators to employ them routinely for "contact chaining."

"Starting with your bad guy and his telephone number and looking at who he's calling, and [then] who they're calling," the number of people surveilled "goes up exponentially," acknowledged Caproni, the FBI's general counsel.

But Caproni said it would not be rational for the bureau to follow the chain too far. "Everybody's connected" if investigators keep tracing calls "far enough away from your targeted bad guy," she said. "What's the point of that?"

One point is to fill government data banks for another investigative technique. That one is called "link analysis," a practice Caproni would neither confirm nor deny.

Two years ago, Ashcroft rescinded a 1995 guideline directing that information obtained through a national security letter about a U.S. citizen or resident "shall be destroyed by the FBI and not further disseminated" if it proves "not relevant to the purposes for which it was collected." Ashcroft's new order was that "the FBI shall retain" all records it collects and "may disseminate" them freely among federal agencies.

The same order directed the FBI to develop "data mining" technology to probe for hidden links among the people in its growing cache of electronic files. According to an FBI status report, the bureau's office of intelligence began operating in January 2004 a new Investigative Data Warehouse, based on the same Oracle technology used by the CIA. The CIA is generally forbidden to keep such files on Americans.

Data mining intensifies the impact of national security letters, because anyone's personal files can be scrutinized again and again without a fresh need to establish relevance.

"The composite picture of a person which emerges from transactional information is more telling than the direct content of your speech," said Woods, the former FBI lawyer. "That's certainly not been lost on the intelligence community and the FBI."

Ashcroft's new guidelines allowed the FBI for the first time to add to government files consumer data from commercial providers such as LexisNexis and ChoicePoint Inc. Previous attorneys general had decided that such a move would violate the Privacy Act. In many field offices, agents said, they now have access to ChoicePoint in their squad rooms.

What national security letters add to government data banks is information that no commercial service can lawfully possess. Strict privacy laws, for example, govern financial and communications records. National security letters -- along with the more powerful but much less frequently used secret subpoenas from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- override them.

'What Happens in Vegas'

The bureau displayed its ambition for data mining in an emergency operation at the end of 2003.

The Department of Homeland Security declared an orange alert on Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that hinted at a New Year's Eve attack in Las Vegas. The identities of the plotters were unknown.

The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known Proactive Data Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to assemble a real-time census of every visitor in the nation's most-visited city. An average of about 300,000 tourists a day stayed an average of four days each, presenting Grigg's team with close to a million potential suspects in the ensuing two weeks.

A former stockbroker with a degree in biochemistry, Grigg declined to be interviewed. Government and private sector sources who followed the operation described epic efforts to vacuum up information.

An interagency task force began pulling together the records of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in the city. Grigg's unit filtered that population for leads. Any link to the known terrorist universe -- a shared address or utility account, a check deposited, a telephone call -- could give investigators a start.

"It was basically a manhunt, and in circumstances where there is a manhunt, the most effective way of doing that was to scoop up a lot of third party data and compare it to other data we were getting," Breinholt said.

Investigators began with emergency requests for help from the city's sprawling hospitality industry. "A lot of it was done voluntary at first," said Billy, the deputy assistant FBI director.

According to others directly involved, investigators turned to national security letters and grand jury subpoenas when friendly persuasion did not work.

Early in the operation, according to participants, the FBI gathered casino executives and asked for guest lists. The MGM Mirage company, followed by others, balked.

"Some casinos were saying no to consent [and said], 'You have to produce a piece of paper,' " said Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, who previously built data management systems for casino surveillance. "They don't just market 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They want it to be true."

The operation remained secret for about a week. Then casino sources told Rod Smith, gaming editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that the FBI had served national security letters on them. In an interview for this article, one former casino executive confirmed the use of a national security letter. Details remain elusive. Some law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge particulars, said they relied primarily on grand jury subpoenas. One said in an interview that national security letters may eventually have been withdrawn. Agents encouraged voluntary disclosures, he said, by raising the prospect that the FBI would use the letters to gather something more sensitive: the gambling profiles of casino guests. Caproni declined to confirm or deny that account.

What happened in Vegas stayed in federal data banks. Under Ashcroft's revised policy, none of the information has been purged. For every visitor, Breinholt said, "the record of the Las Vegas hotel room would still exist."

Grigg's operation found no suspect, and the orange alert ended on Jan. 10, 2004."The whole thing washed out," one participant said.

'Of Interest to President Bush'

At around the time the FBI found George Christian in Connecticut, agents from the bureau's Charlotte field office paid an urgent call on the chemical engineering department at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. They were looking for information about a former student named Magdy Nashar, then suspected in the July 7 London subway bombing but since cleared of suspicion.

University officials said in interviews late last month that the FBI tried to use a national security letter to demand much more information than the law allows.

David T. Drooz, the university's senior associate counsel, said special authority is required for the surrender of records protected by educational and medical privacy. The FBI's first request, a July 14 grand jury subpoena, did not appear to supply that authority, Drooz said, and the university did not honor it. Referring to notes he took that day, Drooz said Eric Davis, the FBI's top lawyer in Charlotte, "was focused very much on the urgency" and "he even indicated the case was of interest to President Bush."

The next day, July 15, FBI agents arrived with a national security letter. Drooz said it demanded all records of Nashar's admission, housing, emergency contacts, use of health services and extracurricular activities. University lawyers "looked up what law we could on the fly," he said. They discovered that the FBI was demanding files that national security letters have no power to obtain. The statute the FBI cited that day covers only telephone and Internet records.

"We're very eager to comply with the authorities in this regard, but we needed to have what we felt was a legally valid procedure," said Larry A. Neilsen, the university provost.

Soon afterward, the FBI returned with a new subpoena. It was the same as the first one, Drooz said, and the university still had doubts about its legal sufficiency. This time, however, it came from New York and summoned Drooz to appear personally. The tactic was "a bit heavy-handed," Drooz said, "the implication being you're subject to contempt of court." Drooz surrendered the records.

The FBI's Charlotte office referred questions to headquarters. A high-ranking FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the field office erred in attempting to use a national security letter. Investigators, he said, "were in a big hurry for obvious reasons" and did not approach the university "in the exact right way."

'Unreasonable' or 'Oppressive'

The electronic docket in the Connecticut case, as the New York Times first reported, briefly titled the lawsuit Library Connection Inc. v. Gonzales . Because identifying details were not supposed to be left in the public file, the court soon replaced the plaintiff's name with "John Doe."

George Christian, Library Connection's executive director, is identified in his affidavit as "John Doe 2." In that sworn statement, he said people often come to libraries for information that is "highly sensitive, embarrassing or personal." He wanted to fight the FBI but feared calling a lawyer because the letter said he could not disclose its existence to "any person." He consulted Peter Chase, vice president of Library Connection and chairman of a state intellectual freedom committee. Chase -- "John Doe 1" in his affidavit -- advised Christian to call the ACLU. Reached by telephone at their homes, both men declined to be interviewed.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall ruled in September that the FBI gag order violates Christian's, and Library Connection's, First Amendment rights. A three-judge panel heard oral argument on Wednesday in the government's appeal.

The central facts remain opaque, even to the judges, because the FBI is not obliged to describe what it is looking for, or why. During oral argument in open court on Aug. 31, Hall said one government explanation was so vague that "if I were to say it out loud, I would get quite a laugh here." After the government elaborated in a classified brief delivered for her eyes only, she wrote in her decision that it offered "nothing specific."

The Justice Department tried to conceal the existence of the first and only other known lawsuit against a national security letter, also brought by the ACLU's Jaffer and Ann Beeson. Government lawyers opposed its entry into the public docket of a New York federal judge. They have since tried to censor nearly all the contents of the exhibits and briefs. They asked the judge, for example, to black out every line of the affidavit that describes the delivery of the national security letter to a New York Internet company, including, "I am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('FBI')."

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in a ruling that is under appeal, held that the law authorizing national security letters violates the First and Fourth Amendments.

Resistance to national security letters is rare. Most of them are served on large companies in highly regulated industries, with business interests that favor cooperation. The in-house lawyers who handle such cases, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, "are often former prosecutors -- instinctively pro-government but also instinctively by-the-books." National security letters give them a shield against liability to their customers.

Kenneth M. Breen, a partner at the New York law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, held a seminar for corporate lawyers one recent evening to explain the "significant risks for the non-compliant" in government counterterrorism investigations. A former federal prosecutor, Breen said failure to provide the required information could create "the perception that your company didn't live up to its duty to fight terrorism" and could invite class-action lawsuits from the families of terrorism victims. In extreme cases, he said, a business could face criminal prosecution, "a 'death sentence' for certain kinds of companies."

The volume of government information demands, even so, has provoked a backlash. Several major business groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, complained in an Oct. 4 letter to senators that customer records can "too easily be obtained and disseminated" around the government. National security letters, they wrote, have begun to impose an "expensive and time-consuming burden" on business.

The House and Senate bills renewing the Patriot Act do not tighten privacy protections, but they offer a concession to business interests. In both bills, a judge may modify a national security letter if it imposes an "unreasonable" or "oppressive" burden on the company that is asked for information.

'A Legitimate Question'

As national security letters have grown in number and importance, oversight has not kept up. In each house of Congress, jurisdiction is divided between the judiciary and intelligence committees. None of the four Republican chairmen agreed to be interviewed.

Roberts, the Senate intelligence chairman, said in a statement issued through his staff that "the committee is well aware of the intelligence value of the information that is lawfully collected under these national security letter authorities," which he described as "non-intrusive" and "crucial to tracking terrorist networks and detecting clandestine intelligence activities." Senators receive "valuable reporting by the FBI," he said, in "semi-annual reports [that] provide the committee with the information necessary to conduct effective oversight."

Roberts was referring to the Justice Department's classified statistics, which in fact have been delivered three times in four years. They include the following information: how many times the FBI issued national security letters; whether the letters sought financial, credit or communications records; and how many of the targets were "U.S. persons." The statistics omit one whole category of FBI national security letters and also do not count letters issued by the Defense Department and other agencies.

Committee members have occasionally asked to see a sampling of national security letters, a description of their fruits or examples of their contribution to a particular case. The Justice Department has not obliged.

In 2004, the conference report attached to the intelligence authorization bill asked the attorney general to "include in his next semiannual report" a description of "the scope of such letters" and the "process and standards for approving" them. More than a year has passed without a Justice Department reply.

"The committee chairman has the power to issue subpoenas" for information from the executive branch, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a House Judiciary Committee member. "The minority has no power to compel, and . . . Republicans are not going to push for oversight of the Republicans. That's the story of this Congress."

In the executive branch, no FBI or Justice Department official audits the use of national security letters to assess whether they are appropriately targeted, lawfully applied or contribute important facts to an investigation.

Justice Department officials noted frequently this year that Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reports twice a year on abuses of the Patriot Act and has yet to substantiate any complaint. (One investigation is pending.) Fine advertises his role, but there is a puzzle built into the mandate. Under what scenario could a person protest a search of his personal records if he is never notified?

"We do rely upon complaints coming in," Fine said in House testimony in May. He added: "To the extent that people do not know of anything happening to them, there is an issue about whether they can complain. So, I think that's a legitimate question."

Asked more recently whether Fine's office has conducted an independent examination of national security letters, Deputy Inspector General Paul K. Martin said in an interview: "We have not initiated a broad-based review that examines the use of specific provisions of the Patriot Act."

At the FBI, senior officials said the most important check on their power is that Congress is watching.

"People have to depend on their elected representatives to do the job of oversight they were elected to do," Caproni said. "And we think they do a fine job of it."

Researcher Julie Tate and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.



-------- POLITICS

Greens need to be more positive: Blair adviser

LONDON (AFP) Nov 06, 2005

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051106005939.47ywpltk.html

Green campaigners need to change their approach and put across a more positive message or risk increasing isolation in the political debate, one of Britain's leading environmentalists was reported as saying on Sunday.

According to Jonathan Porritt -- who co-founded the Green Party in Britain -- the green movement is "too narrow, too technical, too depressing, often too dowdy".

Pressure groups must also shoulder some of the blame for the failure to make inroads into tackling issues such as climate change because of their overly negative approach, The Observer newspaper quoted him as saying.

Porritt, who is now an adviser on sustainable development to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, makes the comments in his new book, "Capitalism: As if the World Matters", seen by The Observer and to be published this week.

The book argues that all sides should embrace capitalism as "the only economic game in town" and thus search for ways in making free markets work for a more sustainable future, the newspaper said.

Without change by environmentalists, "a continuing decline in (their) influence seems the most likely outcome", Porritt says in his book.

In an interview with The Observer, Porritt added: "Environmental organisations for many years (were) saying 'no' and protecting and stopping because in a way that became part of the culture of the movement.

"There's still a lot of criticising and blame-laying and not enough saying what solutions are available."

Instead, he argued, the movement must emphasise the positive, worldwide benefits of issues such as using clean energy to help tackle climate change.

"If you consider the way the environmental movement portrays climate change, it's the end of the world as we know it," Porritt told the paper.

"In reality, climate change could provide a stimulus to an extraordinary shift in the economy (and) it could improve people's quality of life. You never hear of all that," Porritt told the paper.

Porritt -- a former director of Friends of the Earth who currently advises Britain's heir to the throne Prince Charles -- conceded he had been guilty of negative campaigning in the past.



-------- investigations

Spy story that has enmeshed Bush

Michael Smith, November 6, 2005 UK Sunday Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1859301,00.html

THERE was no hint in the few small pieces of intelligence that came into the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, London, in February 1999 of what was to follow. There was certainly no indication that nearly seven years later they might rock America.

By last week, however, the fallout from that intelligence had caused a senior White House aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to be indicted on charges of perjury over the naming of a CIA officer.

Speculation mounted that two of the most powerful figures in Washington — Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Karl Rove, political adviser to President George W Bush — would also be implicated in the scandal.

This is no Watergate or Lewinsky affair. It is a relatively arcane matter reflecting the mutual contempt of the vice-president and the CIA. But because it feeds on the increasingly bitter debate about the war in Iraq, it threatens the authority of an increasingly lame-duck second-term president.

The background to the scandal lies in Saddam Hussein’s attempts to rekindle his clandestine nuclear weapons programme in the 1990s, despite the United Nations sanctions regime, and in Cheney’s determination to see the dictator fall from power.

The information that reached London in 1999 came from MI6’s French counterpart, the DGSE. It arose from a visit made by Wissam al-Zahawie, an Iraqi diplomat, to Niger, the former French colony in west Africa. According to the DGSE, he was alleged to have asked President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara of Niger to supply Baghdad with the semi- processed uranium ore known as yellowcake.

The French had a finger in every pie in their former colony and their atomic energy commission controlled its uranium mines. They knew that Niger had provided Iraq with uranium in the 1980s.

It was only two months after UN weapons inspectors had left Iraq and both MI6 and the DGSE had been expecting Saddam to test the sanctions regime. So MI6 saw the intelligence as entirely credible. There were other reports that backed it up, including intercepted Iraqi communications, but only the French intelligence was conclusive.

Crucially, MI6 also believed that Saddam would be unable to restart his nuclear weapons programme until sanctions came to an end, a view which concurred with that of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

The DGSE began an intelligence operation to block Saddam from obtaining uranium, urging its agents to find out all they could about his efforts. One of those who got involved was Rocco Martino, a former police officer who had worked for the Italian intelligence service between 1976 and 1985, when he was sacked for being a “chancer”. He tapped up contacts at the Niger embassy in Rome.

The French did not at the time pass their information to the CIA. Under the rules that govern intelligence exchange, MI6 could not do so without French permission, although it did pass on its own less conclusive evidence.

The Iraq-Niger nexus vanished from intelligence screens for two years. By the time it reappeared, global politics had been transformed by the September 11 attacks on America.

In October 2001, as Bush launched his war on terror, the CIA raised the yellowcake affair in its intelligence assessments for the first time. Its information came, however, from Italian sources, not French.

The CIA cited the Italian intelligence service as saying that Niger had agreed to send several tons of uranium to Iraq. There was little detail in the report and the State Department dismissed it as “highly suspect”. 

Indeed, western intelligence officials say now that the Italians had told the Americans to treat it with caution and that there was no evidence that any uranium had changed hands.

In February 2002, however, the Italians provided more details. Niger had allegedly signed a deal in 2000 to sell Iraq 500 tons of yellowcake. This was again circulated by the CIA to top American officials.

Anxious to make the case for war against Iraq, which was under fierce debate within the administration, Cheney wanted to know more.

Unable to provide further information, the CIA asked Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, to go to Niger to investigate. In his own words, he “spent the next eight days drinking mint tea with dozens of people” who all assured him that there was no deal to supply Iraq with yellowcake. However, they left open the possibility that Iraq had tried and failed to obtain it.

At the time his visit was not seen as significant. A number of US officials pointed out that even if there had been a deal, there was not much chance of anyone admitting it to Wilson.

The yellowcake made its next appearance in September 2002 in the British dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which said that “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from Niger”.

Martino then re-entered the picture. In October 2002 he presented the DGSE with documents which appeared to show that Niger had signed a deal in July 2000 to supply Iraq with yellowcake — similar to the story Italian intelligence had told the CIA. The DGSE rejected the documents as fake.

Martino offered them for €15,000 to a journalist working on Panorama, the Italian magazine, who took them to the US embassy in Rome for authentication. Copies were sent to Washington. Then, a few weeks later, on November 22, the French opened up. They told the Americans about their original 1999 intelligence and said they were now certain that Iraq had tried and failed to obtain yellowcake.

Washington was receptive. When Iraq complied with a UN demand for details of its WMD programmes, the State Department accused it of omitting its “efforts to procure uranium from Niger”.

By now the yellowcake was at the top of Bush’s agenda. He wanted to mention it in his state of the union address on January 28, 2003 but it was agreed that rather than use disputed classified CIA intelligence, he should cite the British WMD dossier.

He used what have become infamous in America as “the 16 words”: “The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Six days later, in response to an IAEA request for evidence of Iraq’s attempts to procure uranium, the United States handed over the Martino documents. But in March, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the IAEA told the UN security council that the documents were fakes.

Shaken, the CIA eventually withdrew any suggestion that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. Neither Cheney nor Wilson let go, however.

That July, in the wake of the war, Wilson wrote an angry article in The New York Times accusing the Bush administration of twisting the intelligence on Niger to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.

This prompted a campaign from within the White House to discredit both Wilson and the CIA. Journalists learnt “on double super secret background” that his wife, Valerie Plame, was one of the CIA analysts who had come up with the yellowcake intelligence in the first place. 

As a result Robert Novak, a columnist on the Chicago Sun-Times, named her as “a CIA operative”.

Outing a covert CIA officer is illegal under US law and the resultant criminal investigation under a special federal prosecutor has reached right into the White House.

The DGSE, meanwhile, is standing by its original intelligence that in early 1999, Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. So is MI6, despite having ditched every other contentious report that it made on Iraqi WMD.



-------- us politics

Iraq Conflict Not Worth Fighting, Say Americans

(Angus Reid Global Scan) Sunday, November 6 2005

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/9718

Many adults in the United States believe their federal administration should not have launched the coalition effort, according to a poll by CBS News. 64 per cent of respondents believe the result of the war with Iraq was not worth the loss of American life and other costs.

The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,037 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 15,300 troops have been injured.

In his Oct. 29 radio address, U.S. president George W. Bush ruled out any changes to current policies, saying, "The best way to honour the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and win the war on terror." 50 per cent of respondents believe U.S. troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable, while 43 per cent think the soldiers should stay in Iraq.

Yesterday in Argentina, Bush discussed his strategy, saying, "My job is to set clear goals and deal with the problems we face. Now, look, we’ve got an ongoing war on terror. And my administration is working with friends and allies to find these terrorists and bring them to justice before they strike us again. We’re fighting the terrorists in Iraq." 62 per cent of respondents disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.

Polling Data

Do you think the result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?

			Nov. 2005	Oct. 2005	Sept. 2005

Worth it	 31%			32%			33%

Not worth it 64%			64%			61%

Don’t know	  5%			 5%			 6%

Should the United States troops stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy, even if it takes a long time, or should U.S. troops leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable?

			Nov. 2005	Oct. 2005

Stay as long as it takes
			 43%			 36%

Leave as soon as possible
			 50%			 59%

Don’t know / No answer
			  7%			  5%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?

			Nov. 2005	Oct. 2005	Sept. 2005

Approve		 32%			32%			36%

Disapprove	 62%			64%			59%

No opinion	  6%			 4%			 5%

Source: CBS News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 936 American adults, conducted from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, 2005. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Other poll highlights: 57 per cent say things going badly for U.S. in Iraq, 48 per cent say Iraq will never become a democracy, 38 per cent say the Bush administration hid "important elements" when discussing the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.




-------- ENERGY 

Energy experts warn of global crisis

By Casey Santee
Sunday, November 06, 2005 Pocatello Idaho State Journal
 
http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/11/06/news/local/news04.txt

POCATELLO - World governments better do everything possible to develop sustainable fuel sources because a global energy crisis is on the horizon, according to Leonard Bond.

Bond and other experts spoke at the Idaho Energy Symposium Saturday morning at Idaho State University.

“We're going to need everything this planet can give us,” Bond told the crowd gathered in the university's Physical Science building.

Bond, the Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies in Idaho Falls, made grim predictions for current energy sources. He said global oil production will peak this year or next year and the supply could be exhausted by 2070. He said natural gas could be gone by 2025 and coal by 2150.

His solution? Nuclear energy.

“The rest of the world is going to go nuclear whether we like it or not,” he said, adding that China has plans to build two new atomic power plants per year for the foreseeable future.

Bond said the main problem with nuclear power in the United States is more political than technical, citing a collective “scare factor” in the minds of Americans. He said contrary to popular belief, the waste can be stored safely underground at facilities such as at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. By harnessing the power of the atom and recycling the spent fuel, he said people could generate enough energy to last the planet for hundreds of years.

Bond also mentioned hydrogen technology for cars and other alternative sources such as biomass, geothermal and wind power. He said many will provide important niche roles in the future.

Harold Blackman, an official with Idaho National Laboratory, spoke about the connection between energy and water. And Susan Capalbo, a Montana State University professor of agricultural economics, talked about storing carbon waste from fossil fuels underground.




-------- OTHER


-------- environment

British engineers to help build 'eco-cities' in China: report

LONDON (AFP) Nov 06, 2005

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051106000324.4fo2iy3m.html

British engineers will this week sign a contract with Beijing to design and build a string of so-called 'eco-cities' in China, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Coinciding with a state visit to Britain by Chinese President Hu Jintao, London-based consulting firm Arup will announce that it has clinched a deal to work on the self-sustaining urban centres equivalent to the size of a large western capital, The Observer weekly newspaper said.

Arup has already signed up for one such project near Shanghai, said the paper, which added that the eco-cities are regarded as a prototype for urban living in over-populated and polluted environments as well as a magnet for investment funds in China, whose economy is booming.

The signing ceremony was expected to take place at the official residence of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the partly state-owned Shanghai Industrial Investment Company acting on behalf of Beijing.

"We are going to help establish a model of how a sustainable city works, but it must also be a viable financial proposition in the long term to attract international investment," the paper quoted Peter Head, the Arup director in charge of the first eco-city Dongtan, as saying.

Head added: "It is no gimmick. It is being led at the highest levels of the Chinese government."

The Dongtan development aims to build a city three-quarters the size of Manhattan by 2040, with the first phase accommodating some 50,000 people, the paper said. Up to four more eco-cities will be built, though exact locations have yet to be revealed, it added.