NucNews December 5, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- britain Williams attacks Blair plans for Trident fleet By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent 05/12/2006 UK Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/04/ntrident04.xml The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is today expected to launch an attack on plans to replace Britain's nuclear deterrent. Dr Williams, whose opposition to the Iraq war infuriated Downing Street, is to respond to the long-awaited White Paper on the future of Trident. He is also preparing a new year statement exploring the morality of nuclear weapons that will reflect the concerns of 19 bishops who warned Tony Blair in July that the possession of Trident was "evil". The Prime Minister will today announce plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered submarines which carry the Trident missiles. The plans, which are backed by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, would enable the deterrent to continue into the middle of the century. But the issue is causing growing unrest among Labour MPs, and Dr Williams's intervention could add fuel to a parliamentary revolt when it is debated in the Commons early next year. The Government could find itself relying on Tory votes. Dr Williams has held confidential meetings with a number of the 19 bishops who have attacked Trident. They said in a letter to the Independent: "Trident and other nuclear arsenals threaten long-term and fatal damage to the global environment and its people." The Archbishop, a prominent peace campaigner, was arrested during a CND demonstration at a US airbase near Cambridge while he was a university college chaplain. He proved a significant thorn in the side of the Government over the Iraq war, and his views on the morality of nuclear deterrence are likely to unsettle Mr Blair, a committed Christian. Although Dr Williams's views are not shared by all Church of England bishops, many senior Christian leaders have issued strong condemnations of Trident. However, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Tom Wright, said yesterday that he had not yet made up his mind and that a "multifaceted" look at the global situation was needed. Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister, urged Mr Blair not to rush to a decision. He told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "It is a very inopportune moment to be replacing Trident. It sends out the wrong message. "We don't even know the putative enemy these things will be pointed at in the future. "It was a weapon that was designed for the Cold War and it is not necessarily appropriate in the future." Mr Kilfoyle is the latest prominent Labour figure to question the need for a speedy decision. But ministers say a decision is necessary as the submarine fleet starts coming to the end of its life from 2020 and replacements will take 14 years to design and build. Speculation is growing that Mr Blair will announce a reduction in the size of the fleet from four to three submarines and a cut in the number of nuclear warheads, as a gesture to opponents. Julian Lewis, the shadow defence minister, said it was "highly probable" that the Conservatives would back the Government in the Commons. ---- Blair to Renew Britain's Nuclear Arsenal December 05, 2006 — By Adrian Croft and Katherine Baldwin, Reuters http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11777 LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged on Monday to renew Britain's nuclear arsenal, saying new threats from Iran, North Korea or nuclear terrorists made it "unwise and dangerous" to disarm. Britain will buy up to four new nuclear submarines at a cost of up to 20 billion pounds ($39.60 billion), enabling it to keep a nuclear deterrent into the 2050s, the government said. The new submarines will replace Britain's existing nuclear submarines which are due to go out of service around 2024. In a concession to legislators in his Labour Party who oppose a new nuclear weapons system, Blair said Britain would cut its nuclear warheads by 20 percent to less than 160 and may reduce its submarine fleet to three from four. The decision keeps Britain in a nuclear club comprised of all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain. Blair argued that Britain needed a deterrent as an insurance policy against future unpredictable threats. He pointed to a "new and potentially hazardous threat" from states such as North Korea, which carried out a nuclear test in October, or Iran, which the West accuses of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Tehran denies the accusation. "It is not utterly fanciful either to imagine states sponsoring nuclear terrorism from their soil. We know this global terrorism seeks chemical, biological and nuclear devices. It is not impossible to contemplate a rogue government helping such an acquisition," Blair said. "It would be unwise and dangerous for Britain, alone of any of the nuclear powers, to give up its independent nuclear deterrent," he said. COLD WAR WEAPON? The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and scores of Labour parliamentarians, however, say Britain is contributing to nuclear proliferation by updating its arsenal. They argue there is no need for a costly deterrent now the Cold War has ended. The government plans to build the new submarines in Britain, preserving thousands of highly skilled jobs, Blair said. Britain's existing nuclear defence consists of Trident missiles aboard four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines. The government said Britain would take part in a U.S. programme to extend the life of the Trident missile until 2042 when it would work with the United States on a new missile. "How can this proposal really be justified when there is an utterly different post-Cold War environment?" Labour member of parliament Michael Meacher told Reuters. Labour was committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament until the late 1980s. "It's going to drain off colossal sums of money from where I think it's most needed for Britain's future, dealing with real threats -- terrorism, climate change and long-term energy insecurity," he said, pointing to estimates the cost of the programme could run to 75 billion pounds. Countries such as Iran would now say to Britain: "If you need nuclear weapons for your security, why shouldn't we have it for ours?" he said. Labour legislator Jeremy Corbyn asked Blair if he didn't think that "the security of the 21st century is better served by seriously pursuing disarmament rather than rearmament?" The government will decide later if it needs three or four new submarines in order to keep one at sea at all times. Blair's announcement signalled the start of weeks of heated debate, set to culminate in a parliamentary vote next March. He is expected to win the vote with the support of the opposition Conservatives despite a Labour revolt. ---- British Press Chastise Blair For Rushing Trident Decision Nuclear weapons are a divisive issue within Blair's governing Labour Party, as unilateral disarmament was a key plank of its policy at the height of the Cold War during the 1980s. But he is unlikely to suffer an embarrassing defeat in parliament. by Prashant Rao London (AFP) Dec 05, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/British_Press_Chastise_Blair_For_Rushing_Trident_Decision_999.html British Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposals presented to parliament to modernise Britain's nuclear deterrent were met with sceptism in the country's press on Tuesday, which asked: Why now? Left- and right-wing newspapers alike united to question the seemingly rushed decision-making process after the government said lawmakers would vote on the issue early next year, on a decision that will affect Britons for a generation. The right-of-centre Daily Mail, no fan of the government, while stating its support for Britain retaining an independent nuclear deterrent asked in its editorial: "Why is the nation being bulldozed into a decision without a proper debate?" "Aren't there vitally important questions we need answered before we are committeed to this huge decision for a generation to come?" "For a start, is the case totally proven that Britain still needs a deterrent?" The Daily Telegraph -- another right-of-centre supporter of retaining nuclear weapons -- similarly asked: "Why the rush?" "Mr Blair claims it will take the better part of two decades to build replacement submarines and the process must start swiftly," the newspaper's editorial, which usually backs the main opposition Conservatives, read. "The more sceptical will suspect that the entire timetable has been dictated by Mr Blair's endless quest for a political legacy as he prepares to hand over power." The left-wing Daily Mirror, traditionally a government-backing tabloid, said in its editorial: "Tony Blair is a man in a hurry to persuade Britons to spend tens of billions of pounds on an expensive new generation of nuclear weapons." "After nine-and-a-half years in power, just three months' debate is inadequate on a decision of fundamental importance that will have far-reaching consequences long after he's gone," it read. The Guardian, another supporter of the governing Labour Party, was also unimpressed by Monday's announcement: "The question the government must answer in the debate it has promised before parliament votes next March is not just 'why', but 'why now?'." "Intended as a gesture of seriousness to show Britain's intentions in the world, the weapons may or may not impress a future and unknown enemy." "They are certainly not 'critical' as the prime minister said yesterday." Also chiming in was the Financial Times, which similarly noted in the headline of its editorial that there were "unanswered questions surrounding Trident". "What exactly ... is it for? ... What is Britain's deterrent meant to deter?" "Put simply: do we need Trident as 'the ultimate insurance' as Mr Blair says? Or are we clinging to the ultimate vestige of the great power delusions to which this prime minister seems especially prone?" The Independent, a left-of-centre daily, lamented: "There was a chance here for Britain to set a new direction in the international debate: one that was about restraint rather than escalation," the newspaper's editorial read. "That opportunity has been lost." The only two newspapers that offered support for Blair's proposals were The Times and The Sun. The Sun, Britain's best-read daily, noted in its "The Sun Says" editorial column that it "was good to see Tony Blair and (Conservative Party leader) David Cameron united yesterday in support of a second generation of Trident nukes." "In these troubled and uncertain times, it is vital we maintain our guard and stand together against all possible threats." The Times, meanwhile, noted: "There is indeed little chance now or in the next few years that any dictator would be able to launch a nuclear strike on Britain." "But that may not be the case in 10 or 20 years, when nuclear proliferation may have gone far beyond Pyongyang and Tehran." "Mr Blair, to his credit, is not prepared to gamble Britain's future security." -------- depleted uranium US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 1 of 3: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon By James Brooks Online Journal Contributing Writer Dec 5, 2006, 01:19 http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1502.shtml It’s been almost five months since the first report that Israeli drone aircraft have been dropping a “mystery weapon” on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since then, news media around the world have run stories depicting the strange and “horrific” wounds inflicted by the new bomb. The international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say Israel’s new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. [1] [2] In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic evidence that suggests the new weapon may also represent the near future of US “counterinsurgency warfare.” Combined with photographs of the victims and testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). [3] DIME is an LCD (“low collateral damage”) weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [4-11] It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel’s new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people -- reason enough for the media to suppress it. [12] Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have introduced Americans to their government’s DIME weapons program. This three-part article will ask whether Israel is ‘testing’ US DIME bombs in the Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in the US military’s long-running development of genotoxic weapons. “They cannot return to life again” The first reports about ‘Israel’s new weapon’ came from Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using “a new ‘chemical’ weapon” and its siege was “a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200.” He observed that, “despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body.” [13] “There were usually entry and exit wounds,” Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. “When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. . . . A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality.” The effects of the weapon seemed “radioactive.” [14] [15] According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa “confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again.” [16] “When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones . . . it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.” [17] However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently destroyed Gaza’s only crime laboratory. [18] Despite his pleas to the “international community” to investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, “no one has lifted a finger,” the doctor was quoted in mid-July. “What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing.” [19] On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd had visited Dr. Al-Saqqa’s hospital, “where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds resulting in an unusually high number of amputations.” Commissioner AbuZayd commented that “what we saw in Al-Shifa . . . was rather horrific.” [20] According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International), “75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital needed amputations” following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. [21] The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel “agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation.” [22] Tungsten in tissue samples: A DIME weapon? On October 19, Italy’s Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found “a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten.” The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME." Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF's) weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." [23] The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the ‘weapons of choice’ for targeting “terrorists hiding among civilians,” as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it. [24] With “focused lethality [and] higher energy materials . . . nano particles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality,” the Air Force “will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage.” Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites "previously off limits to the warfighter." [25] [26] This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering, and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next installment of this article. References 1) Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza, Ma'an News, 7/10/2006 2) Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006 3) Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006 4) Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006 5) Abstract: Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed, 11/26/2006 6) Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal–tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC, et al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford University Press 7) Abstract: Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra C Miller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) 8) Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant, alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002 pp. 246– 252 9) Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005 10) Abstract: Effect of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2), Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004 11) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006 12) If Americans Knew 13) Israel 'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Duraid Al Baik, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006 14) Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza and Lebanon?, David Halpin MB BS FRCS, Electronic Intifada, 8/14/2006 15) Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006 16) ibid. 17) Doctors Report Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza, Pacifica/Free Speech Radio News 7/11/2006 18) Israel 'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006 19) Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006 20) UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd: "Please don't forget what's going on in Gaza," ReliefWeb/UNRWA, 8/3/2006 21) Hospitals in Gaza overwhelmed and running out of supplies, Electronic Intifada/Merlin, 8/8/2006 22) Gaza doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries', Donald Macintyre, The Independent 9/4/2006 23) Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006 24) Air Force seeks a bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006 25) Munition Technology Drivers, Col. Thomas “Mas” Masiell, Air Force Research Laboratory, 12/1/2006 26) USAF Unfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54 -------- russia Kremlin intrigue feeds theories on poisoned-spy case Who was behind ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko's highly public demise? By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor December 05, 2006 http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/world/~3/57214713/p01s02-woeu.html MOSCOW – Even seminal spy novelist John le Carré would have been hard put to craft such an inscrutable web of shadowy figures and murky alliances. As Scotland Yard expands to Moscow its investigation of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning, the "whodunit" theories now implicate just about every possible player: • Enemies - or friends - of President Vladimir Putin • Mr. Putin himself • Russia's secret services • The St. Petersburg mafia • Mr. Litvinenko's friend, Boris Berezovsky, and even Litvinenko himself. But another theory gathering momentum in Russia is that Litvinenko's highly public demise - taken with the October murder of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya - are byproducts of intense jockeying for power ahead of Putin's departure in 2008. "Putin has not yet made his plans clear over who will be his successor or what the process will be," says Andrei Ryabov, an expert with the Gorbachev Foundation, a Moscow think tank run by the former Soviet leader. "In the absence of clarity, the competitive groups may be beginning to act on their own, to reshape the political field to suit their own needs. It must be stressed that Russia is not a European-style democracy, where political struggle is limited by laws and constitutions." Who benefits from Litvinenko's death? One suggestion is that "enemies of Putin" in the hard-line silovik Kremlin faction, composed of members of the secret services, may be trying to drive a wedge between Russia and the West to fuel nationalist sentiment at home and improve chances for one of their number to become the next president. "Politkovskaya and Litvinenko's murders reflect an internal struggle within the Russian elite," says Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the independent Institute of Globalization Problems in Moscow. "Some groupings are very interested in aggravating the situation, because the more tensions rise, the more Putin becomes dependent upon them." Most Russian experts doubt any personal involvement by Putin in the alleged assassinations, but agree that the political consequences - domestic and global - can't help but fall at his doorstep. Indeed, some suggest, they may have been deliberately designed to do just that. Ms. Politkovskaya was shot on Putin's birthday, and just days before a crucial Russia-European Union summit meeting. Litvinenko's spectacular death-by-radiation in London last month came on the eve of another key European conference attended by Putin. "Everything has been going so well for the Kremlin, economically and politically, so why would Putin want to disrupt that?" asks Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow. Another theory here is that "friends of Putin" are deliberately implicating him in the murders in order to convince him not to quit at all - since, out of power, he might not be safe from prosecution - and to grant himself a third term of office by amending the Constitution. Polonium-210 - extremely unstable, fissiparous, and dangerous to those meddling with it - may be an apt metaphor for Putin's Kremlin and its turbulent inner politics. Over nearly seven years in power, Putin has built a traditionally Russian top-down system of power in whose workings he, personally, is the indispensible component. Yet Putin has announced that he will resign, as the country's 1993 Constitution prescribes, when his second term expires. "This is the source of great uncertainty within the system, and it will increase as 2008 grows closer," says Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "When you have a system that's hinged totally on one figure, any change is fraught with destabilization." Some Kremlin experts here say the murderers will be found among the back-biting Russian-émigré community that Litvinenko inhabited, where intrigues and conspiracies allegedly abound. In particular, they point to exiled anti- Kremlin tycoon Boris Berezovsky, whom they accuse of trying to destabilize Russia in a possible bid to overthrow the Kremlin leadership in the troubled run-up to 2008. Russia's chief prosecutor, Yury Chaika, told journalists Monday that evidence implicating Mr. Berezovsky will be handed over when British investigators visit Moscow this week to pursue leads in the Litvinenko case. "The version about Berezovsky's involvement finds further confirmation," former chief of the FSB security service Nikolai Kovalyov told the official RIA-Novosti news agency. "The ultimate goal of the operation could have been further building-up of KGB-phobia [in the West], to claim that Russia is ruled by members of the secret services." Monday, lawyers for another former security officer - now in prison in central Russia - appealed to the British to collect testimony as soon as possible from Mikhail Trepashkin, saying he had key evidence and that his life was in danger. In a letter from prison, Mr. Trepashkin, who was jailed for revealing state secrets, said he had warned Litvinenko several years ago about a government death squad that intended to kill Putin opponents. Meanwhile, the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia explored four theories of Litvinenko's death in an article last week, most involving Berezovsky. First was the suggestion that Litvinenko may have been dealing in illicit nuclear materials, perhaps on Berezovsky's behalf, and was accidentally poisoned by his own contraband. The second, which casts Litvinenko as a hero, cites alleged evidence that Berezovsky may have been building a nuclear bomb for Chechen terrorists, using a polonium triggering device. In this version, Litvinenko swallowed the polonium "as his final service to his Motherland." In the third scenario, Litvinenko may have been planning to betray Berezovsky, and was killed by his erstwhile patron. "Think about where the first traces of polonium were found [in Berezovsky's office]," it said. Izvestia's final theory, and the only one the newspaper attempted to debunk, is that Russian special services may have killed the turncoat Litvinenko in revenge for his defection six years ago. "But Litvinenko was a pawn.... There was no reason for Moscow to get involved in an international scandal [over him]," it argued. British media have reported that the St. Petersburg mafia may have put out a hit on Litvinenko. Mario Scaramella, who helped Italy's parliament investigate cold war-era Soviet espionage, said he met Litvinenko at a London sushi bar on the day he is thought to have been poisoned. "We know very well who are the enemies of Litvinenko. The work we did for years was to underline the links among Russian mafia and some high-level corrupt officers in the Russian government," Mr. Scaramella told BBC radio. Scaramella said that he showed Litvinenko e-mails warning that their lives may be in danger. The threat came from organized criminals in St. Petersburg, he said. Regardless of who may have killed the Kremlin's vocal opponents - Politkovskaya and Litvinenko - the damage to Putin and Russia's fragile political stability may already have been done. "The atmosphere of lawlessness is undermining the unspoken rules that have kept Russia's elite more or less unified during the Putin years," says Mr. Ryabov. "Public faith in rule of law has been shaken. Any kind of political activity is starting to look very dangerous." Tracking polonium-210 In order to obtain a large enough dose of polonium-210 to kill someone - as was allegedly done in Alexander Litvinenko's case - it would have to be manufactured by bombarding the metal bismuth with a stream of neutrons, say experts. The best way of doing this is in a channel-type nuclear reactor - common only in Russia, Britain, and Canada. Russia produces about 8 grams of polonium-210 monthly, says its Atomic Energy Agency head, Sergei Kiriyenko. The entire output, produced at one plant in the Urals, is exported to the US for use in the paint and printing industries. "The control in Russia is very strict," Mr. Kiriyenko insists. "We have only one producer, and it is transported under special conditions." Polonium-210's alpha rays are weak, blocked by a few sheets of paper. In order to be deadly, a fairly large quantity would have to be ingested. But some Russian scientists say the choice of polonium as a weapon is logical. "It easily diffuses," which means it can be used in aerosol form, says Nikolai Chechenin, deputy director of the Skobeltsyn Nuclear Physics Institute in Moscow. "Besides being radioactive, it is also a poison. So it has a double effect," he says. Russian scientists say the Soviet Union experimented with polonium in a 1950s scheme to build a radiological bomb, but abandoned the effort due to the substance's very short half-life of 138 days. • Information from the wire services was used in this report. ---- Where Polonium Comes From December 05, 2006 By Manfred Dworschak SPIEGEL Magazine http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,452706,00.html Polonium 210 isn't easy to come by. To produce significant amounts, a nuclear reactor is necessary. But only a tiny amount of the substance can kill. Polonium is an extremely dangerous element that is mainly produced in Russian nuclear reactors. For a murderer, it is also an ideal poison. The radioactive metal sends out such strong alpha-rays that in the dark it glows a faint blue. But the deadly rays don't travel much more than five centimeters. You can even hold polonium in your hand, since it is unable to penetrate skin. In fact, its destructive powers are only fully unleashed when the substance is swallowed -- even a miniscule amount can be fatal. In Alexander Litvinenko's case a milligram would have been sufficient. Experts agree, though, that even such a small amount would have been very difficult to procure. "To produce the amounts required you would need too use a nuclear reactor," British toxicologist Nick Priest of the University of Middlesex told the BBC. Extremely low levels of polonium are actually naturally present in the atmosphere and the ground. The shiny silvery metal is created in several stages as uranium decays, and it also decays extremely rapidly. As a result, a ton of uranium ore contains only one ten thousandth of a gram of the deadly substance. Patient assassins with plenty of time could use a chemical process to produce polonium from uranium. "There is even a book that explains how it can be done," notes Herwig Paretzke of the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health in Neuherberg near Munich. But this method only creates insignificant quantities of the element. Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, can be used to artificially generate larger amounts of the highly valuable substance. Russia exports about eight grams per month to the US, its sole buyer, with a single gram selling for about $2 million. Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898. She won the Nobel Prize for her efforts and named the element after her home country, Poland. Scientists have found a wide range of applications for the element since that time. It was used in the detonators of the first atomic bombs, where its rays acted to trigger atomic reactions. In the 1940s it was used in automobile spark plugs in order to strengthen the ignition spark. Later it was used in the production of plastic films and other artificial fibers. Surrounded by gold film, polonium acted to reduce the effect of harmful electrostatic charges during the production process. Today, polonium is hardly used in manufacturing or other industries anymore. It decays too quickly, and more effective substitutes have been discovered. However, researchers still use it as a source of alpha rays. It is not known to what extent defense industry researchers continue to toy with the idea of using polonium for military purposes. Modern bombs no longer contain polonium, but all the atomic powers likely continue to maintain old separation facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors the sale of the element. The agency has registered numerous cases of illegal trade in radioactive substances, but there are no confirmed reports of stolen polonium. Still, that means little in this case, since the poison could easily be stored in a small bottle or capsule and smuggled across several borders. In any case, experts say it would be all but impossible to manufacture the necessary amount of polonium in a simple basement laboratory. The amount that was used in the attack almost certainly came from a nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator. In order to create a larger quantity of polonium in an accelerator, the element bismuth is bombarded with particles. A variety of the element, called polonium 210, was used in the murder. It decays rapidly, having a half-life of just 138 days, indicating that whoever acquired the polonium for the murder must have had access to a relatively fresh supply. Paretzke estimates that the polonium used to kill Litvinenko was less than one year old. There is little risk that any bystanders were irradiated in this case. In fact, standing near smokers is riskier. Tiny airborne particles of the radioactive metal commonly settle on tobacco leaves. This explains why cigarettes can contain significant quantities of polonium. Heavy smokers are exposed to an annual dose of radiation from polonium equal to about 250 lung x-rays. ---- Russia upgrades nuclear missiles The system is said to give Russia nuclear parity with the US BBC Tuesday, 5 December 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/europe/6209236.stm Russia says it is deploying a mobile version of its most important long-range nuclear missile. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said the new Topol-M missiles would be able to penetrate a multi-layered missile defence system. Russia already has 42 fixed-site Topol-M missile systems, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reports. The missile, known in the West as the SS-27, has a range of more than 10,000km (6,200 miles). Mounted on a heavy off-road launch vehicle, it is harder to detect than the earlier version, which has been in service for more than 20 years. "These systems will form the basis of our strategic missile troops in the future. The first regiment is now being put on combat duty," Mr Ivanov said. Under disarmament treaties, Russia and the US are committed to cutting their nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 each. Russian military expert Alexander Golts said the new Topol-M system would give Russia strategic nuclear parity with the US. -------- u.n. SA renews nuclear pledge December 05 2006 South Africa Independent Online http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=iol1165352077406B252 South Africa signed a five-year international agreement on peaceful nuclear technology use on Tuesday, the department of science and technology said. The agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) makes South Africa the only African country to finalise its second Country Programme Framework (CPF). The framework replaces a similar agreement for 1999 to 2004 and outlines South Africa's current and future priority needs for nuclear technical co-operation and development. "The CPF is the mutually agreed strategy for matching nuclear technology to priorities identified by South Africa for its sustainable development," said Dr Philemon Mjwara, the science and technology department's director-general. The IAEA will provide $4-million over the CPF period for equipment, training and the exchange of scientists and technologists. Department spokesperson Kristin Klose said areas that had been focused on were agriculture, water, energy and health. Projects included pest control, groundwater monitoring, technical expertise in the energy field, radiotherapy and a neonatal screening programme. Nine model projects were supported in the previous CPF cycle and 12 would be under the 2005/10 cycle, Mjwara said in a speech prepared for the signing. "The department is resolute that nuclear energy should be applied for peaceful uses to benefit South Africa's health, agriculture, water and other resources and sectors." South Africa become a state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. Shortly afterwards an agreement was signed with the IAEA which allowed periodic on-site inspections and verification to ensure nuclear materials and installations were used for peaceful purposes. - Sapa -------- u.s. nuc weapons U.S. seeks to make stolen nukes useless Bush has told weapons labs to render bombs terrorist-proof. But critics say theft risk is low and more urgent issues are being ignored. By Ralph Vartabedian Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 5, 2006 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nukes5dec05,0,325807,print.story?coll=la-headlines-nation LIVERMORE, CALIF. — In response to a secret order from President Bush, the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories are developing technology to make the weapons virtually impossible to use if they fall into the wrong hands. The security system will be part of a new generation of nuclear weapons, approved formally last week by a special panel of the Defense and Energy departments. A nuclear bomb equipped with such safeguards could theoretically be left on the streets of Los Angeles or Manhattan and terrorists would be unable, even given months of tinkering, to detonate it. Scientists say they are working on technology that would destroy every component inside — including the plutonium and uranium — if anyone tampered with it. But the 3-year-old effort, known as National Security Presidential Directive 28, has drawn strong criticism from many nuclear weapons experts, who doubt that absolute safeguards are necessary or even possible. Instead, they say, the federal government should fix known security weaknesses at bomb labs and factories. The nation has 6,000 nuclear warheads, on missiles and in military depots in places as disparate as Texas, North Dakota and Europe. They all have electronic locks or other safeguards, known as use controls, that pose a tough challenge to terrorists. But the new plan aims for a dramatic improvement. The big leap would involve the self-destruction of the weapon without dispersing radioactivity or causing an explosion. The new system would be able to destroy the electronic and mechanical components and to render the plutonium and uranium materials unusable in any crude improvised device. How? That's secret. But one possibility is that the bomb would contain a powerful acid or other chemical that would poison the uranium and plutonium. The resulting sludge theoretically could be reprocessed, but only in a highly specialized chemical-processing factory. And, the thinking goes, terrorists who had access to such a factory probably wouldn't need to steal a bomb. The nation's two nuclear weapons laboratories — Lawrence Livermore in California and Los Alamos in New Mexico — are competing to design the new generation of bomb, known as the reliable replacement warhead. The Nuclear Weapons Council, a panel of top Defense and Energy officials, could select a winner as soon as this week. The use controls on nuclear weapons are among the most secret parts of a very secret enterprise. Scientists call them the "inner workings of the bank vault door." The national security order Bush signed in 2003 — the contents of which have not been made public — has only a single unclassified sentence: the instruction that the labs make it impossible for terrorists to detonate a bomb without its "remanufacture." That clause allows for the remote possibility that terrorists could take the remnants and reassemble them into a new weapon. "It is essential that we make sure our weapons are impossible for terrorists to use," said Bruce Goodwin, chief of nuclear weapons design at Livermore. The weapons produced during the Cold War, he said, were not designed for an age of terrorism. "There was no motivation for the Red Army to send in a suicide squad to steal an American weapon," Goodwin said. "They had plenty of their own. There is tremendous incentive to certain people who don't have nuclear weapons to terrorize this nation by stealing one." Before Sept. 11, security experts had not considered the prospect of a nuclear weapons scientist leading a suicide squad to seize and detonate a U.S. nuclear weapon. But critics say a terrorist seizing a U.S. bomb is the least likely form of future nuclear terrorism. A more probable scenario, they say, is the theft of highly enriched uranium or plutonium that could be fashioned into a crude nuclear device, or the smuggling of a complete nuclear bomb into the U.S. "The real threat is the uranium and plutonium materials that are spread across the country in totally inappropriate places and inadequate facilities," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington group that has long criticized security at Energy Department sites. "So, rather than fixing the problem they have, they are trying to fix a problem they don't have." The Energy Department stores weapons-grade materials at many sites, including Livermore, Los Alamos, the Y-12 plant in Tennessee, the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas and the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas. The department is trying to upgrade protection, but some of its sites fail to meet post-Sept. 11 security standards. "The secret to avoiding an unauthorized nuclear detonation is maintaining custody of the weapon," said Bob Peurifoy, a retired vice president at Sandia National Laboratory who helped to pioneer use controls during the Cold War. "If a terrorist gains possession of a nuclear weapon because of some fault in custody, I assure you that sooner or later there will be a nuclear detonation." * Accidents happen Although a U.S. nuclear weapon has never been stolen, the U.S. has accidentally lost custody of some. Bombs were dropped or destroyed in a 1961 accident in Goldsboro, N.C.; a 1966 accident in Palomares, Spain; a 1968 accident in Thule, Greenland; and a 1980 accident in Damascus, Ark. Those were recovered, but others have been lost at sea. Philip Coyle, a former deputy director of the Livermore lab, worries that even the best U.S. technology might not be truly tamper-proof. "They make it sound like you could leave a nuclear weapon on the streets of Baghdad and nobody would know what to do with it," Coyle said. "I don't think that is quite the case. People can reverse-engineer many things." And the military, which has always worried about putting locks on weapons, is concerned that a use-control malfunction could prevent the authorized use of a nuclear weapon. "The argument against doing more and more of the use controls is that you lose confidence in the weapon," said nuclear weapons expert David Mosher of Rand Corp., a Santa Monica think tank. Such technical concerns could lead the military to ask to resume underground nuclear testing, he said. But scientists at weapons labs say their goal of "absolute surety" is not only the right policy but is clearly achievable. "We know how to do it," Goodwin said. "The details from an engineering, physics and chemistry point of view are superb. They are just compelling." * Piecemeal security The existing stockpile of nuclear weapons is protected by sophisticated electronic and physical systems, only some of which are acknowledged openly. Not all weapons are equally protected. Some have relatively weak controls, whereas others have very advanced systems. Bush's order was designed to end this piecemeal approach. All existing systems are to be enhanced and integrated in future weapons. In addition, new technology is to be developed to meet the "impossible" standard. Until 1962, no locks of any kind existed on U.S. nuclear weapons, including weapons deployed across Europe. President Kennedy issued the first secret directive calling for locks and raised concerns in a then-secret national security directive that a "psychotic individual" in the chain of command could start a nuclear war. Peurifoy recalled being sent on a secret mission in 1962 to install the first locks on warheads in Turkey — mechanical combination locks on the arming mechanisms. As nuclear weapons have spread, so have fears about loose controls abroad. Peurifoy and former Los Alamos director Harold Agnew suggest that the U.S. share some of its know-how with other nations, such as Pakistan and India. But Energy Department and weapons lab officials usually reject these suggestions, saying that the U.S. should not help nuclear-club newcomers to improve their weapons and that declassifying such technology could undermine U.S. systems. American systems have evolved into sophisticated multistage use controls. Many arming mechanisms have electronic locks — "permissive action links" — that require transmission of a code, believed to be a 12-digit sequence, to a chip deep inside the bomb. A wrong code is supposed to lock the bomb's arming mechanism. At least two other use controls also exist. Modern warheads have environmental sensors to determine whether the bomb is on the expected trajectory to a target. If certain accelerations and barometric pressure changes are not confirmed by the sensors, the arming mechanism is disabled. The most secret use controls involve the plutonium and uranium that set off the nuclear reaction. They disrupt nuclear fission and fusion by distorting internal components until the proper arming sequence is executed. It is here that an acid or other material would poison fissile materials, making the bomb essentially worthless to a terrorist. Goodwin, the Livermore designer, said that if a U.S. nuclear weapon fell into the wrong hands, he would want it so thoroughly damaged that every part would have to be rebuilt. "It is really the key to security," he said. * ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com * (INFOBOX BELOW) Authorizing an attack How the U.S. would conduct an authorized nuclear attack: 1. The president carries a card bearing authentication codes at all times, so that if he needs to order a nuclear attack he can confirm his identity on a secure line. A briefcase that accompanies the president contains a secure phone and the top-secret nuclear war plan. The call would go to one of the Defense Department's national military command centers — in the Pentagon, on an airborne jet or at a military base. 2. The president would select a preset war plan, authorizing military commanders to issue a launch order encrypted in 30 alphanumeric digits. The code would identify its origin, which plan had been selected, a time to begin the attack and an eight-digit code to unlock weapons. 3. When the message arrived in submarines, in launch-control bunkers or at air bases, crews would unlock a safe containing the eight-digit unlock code to verify the legitimacy of the launch order. Land-based missiles are ready to launch in 60 seconds. Submarine-based missiles take longer because their guidance systems must be activated. 4. Two launch officers would use special keys to unlock consoles and simultaneously transmit the same launch orders to the missiles. The orders would identify which war plan had been selected. The targets and their coordinates are already programmed into the missile-guidance computers. 5. After the missiles were launched, the nuclear weapons would arm themselves. Sensors aboard the missile would verify that it was experiencing the expected accelerations. A mechanical safe-arming device, which looks like a Swiss watch, would insert a piece of high explosive into a detonator circuit. The bomb would then be ready to burst above its target. * Sources: Bruce Blair, World Security Institute; Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories; John Pike, GlobalSecurity.org ---- Bush picks new US nuclear weapons chief WASHINGTON (AFP) Jan 05, 2007 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070105185405.ezngmjf9.html US President George W. Bush has picked a successor to the head of the US nuclear weapons program who was dismissed after a series of alleged security breaches, the White House said Friday. Bush plans to name Thomas D'Agostino to be acting undersecretary for nuclear security of the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Department of Energy, replacing Linton Brooks, it said in a statement. D'Agostino is currently deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. On Thursday, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced that Brooks would tender his resignation to Bush and leave his post later this month. "During my tenure at the department, and even before, there have been a number of management issues involving the National Nuclear Security Administration, the most recent of which was a serious security breach several months ago at the Los Alamos National Laboratory," said Bodman, who has been energy chief for two years. "These management and security issues can have serious implications for the security of the United States. ... While I believe that the current NNSA management has done its best to address these concerns, I do not believe that progress in correcting these issues has been adequate," he said. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Memo: Administration tried to cut payouts to nuke workers Updated 12/5/2006 By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-12-04-nuke-workers_x.htm WASHINGTON — The Bush administration repeatedly sought ways to limit payouts to nuclear weapons workers sickened by radiation and toxic material, according to a memo written by congressional investigators and obtained by USA TODAY. The investigation focuses on a federal program created in 2000 to compensate people with cancers and other illnesses tied to their work at government and contractor-owned facilities involved in Cold War nuclear weapons production. About 98,000 cases have been filed under the program, and the Labor Department has approved compensation in about 24,000 of those cases. However, program records show that not all of those approved claims have been paid. Since 2002, "there is a continuous stream of (administration) communications … strategizing on minimizing payouts," according to the Nov. 30 memo by staff for the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims. The memo, prepared for the panel's chairman, Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., summarizes and quotes from thousands of pages of records reviewed by the subcommittee in its probe. The subcommittee holds a hearing Tuesday on the investigation. Hostettler is pressing ahead despite losing re-election last month, vowing to release key documents and urging Democrats to continue the probe when they take over in 2007. Administration officials say the memos reflect internal brainstorming on how to avoid compensating workers who aren't eligible. "We're not pursuing those ideas," says Shelby Hallmark, the Labor Department's director of workers' compensation programs. "What we've been doing all along is trying to ensure that the program is implemented in a way that is fair and consistent and in accord with the law." Hostettler was not available for comment, but he said at a November hearing that records reviewed in the investigation "do not support" the administration's stance. "This program was supposed to assure workers … (that) their government was finally going to do right by them," he added. "Those tasked with implementing (it) have failed that purpose miserably and they need to be exposed." The program covers workers from about 350 facilities nationwide, as well as uranium miners. Claimants can get up to $150,000; some also can get paid for medical bills, lost wages and disability. In a memo from October 2005, program director Hallmark complains to White House officials that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which reviews some claims, is adopting "extreme exaggerations of (worker exposure) on the grounds that every decision point must be as 'claimant favorable' as conceivably possible." The documents also show officials debating ways to change the balance of a program oversight panel by adding members skeptical of workers' claims. "You've got bureaucrats pressuring the scientists and when they can't get what they want, they try to squeeze the (adjudication) process wherever they can," says Richard Miller, a claimants' advocate with the Government Accountability Project. "These workers are dying with every day that goes by." FEW CLAIMS PAID About one-fourth of compensation cases filed by nuclear weapons workers have been approved. About 60% of those have been paid. Status of claims as of Nov. 28: Total filed: 97,778 Denied: 36,780 Approved: 24,056 Pending: 36,942 Source: Department of Labor ---- Nuclear Power Revival Could Encounter Hurdles Tight Uranium Supplies, Scarce Processing Facilities May Hurt Bush Energy Plan By JOHN J. FIALKA December 5, 2006 Wall Street Journal; Page A4 http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116528163961740669-wMz_E3hqPBuln8wDINXaJz9Mjq0_20071204.html?mod=rss_free WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's plan for a "renaissance" in nuclear power may be crimped by tightening world-wide supplies of uranium and a lack of enrichment facilities to turn the uranium into fuel for power plants. In a recent setback, an accident in October flooded the world's largest uranium mine, which was set to open in Canada next year. That nudged prices for processed uranium ore, already up more than 800% since 2001, even higher. Meanwhile, enrichment facilities, which turn uranium into fuel for nuclear power plants, have already pledged their services because of growing interest in nuclear fuel by other countries. The result is that the U.S. is relying more than before on Russia, which provides about half the enriched nuclear fuel used in this country. Uranium is extracted from mines and processed into a form called "yellowcake." The yellowcake, in turn, is processed at enrichment plants, into fuel for nuclear-power plants. A far more time-consuming process is required to turn yellowcake into fuel for nuclear weapons. Spurred by President Bush, who for years has touted nuclear power as a clean, safe way to generate electricity, the owners of U.S. utilities have made plans for at least 30 new U.S. nuclear power plants. The administration is calling its plan a "renaissance," as it would revive a domestic industry that has been dormant for decades. The most recent time a utility ordered a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. was 1973. Spurring the renaissance isn't just the tax breaks the administration is offering for the first six plants. Some utilities also are looking to nuclear power because of the soaring prices of natural gas and the prospect of controls on fossil-fuel generated power. Possible climate-change legislation wouldn't affect nuclear power, which doesn't generate the same pollutants. However, the "Ad Hoc Utility Group," an industry collective that represents 85% of the utilities involved in producing nuclear power is nervous about securing adequate fuel supplies for nuclear power plants over the next 10 years. The group is lobbying the administration to allow Russia to sell enriched fuel directly to U.S. utilities. That effort is opposed by USEC Inc., the Bethesda, Md., company that acts as the U.S. agent for Russian enriched fuel under a 1993 agreement that requires Russia to supply $12 billion of enriched uranium derived from its nuclear weapons to the U.S. USEC opposes the introduction of more Russian fuel, arguing that it could interfere with its plans to finance and build a new enrichment plant in the U.S. The supply situation with uranium and enrichment facilities will be discussed today at an international gathering of nuclear power experts here. One speaker, Thomas L. Neff, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the supply issues mean that "it will take heroic efforts to fuel the expected growth in nuclear power by 2015. Under the most positive assumptions you might just get there. But they may not pan out." Mr. Neff, who has followed the nuclear fuel market for 30 years, blames the tightening uranium supply on a failure to open mines in the U.S. and elsewhere. Between 1987 and 2001, he says, stockpiles of processed uranium were "sold off really cheap." Some hedge funds, he adds, are exacerbating the situation by buying and holding uranium off the market in an effort to reap profits later. The accident at the Canadian mine highlights the supply problem. In October, the ceiling of the nearly completed mine, located in Saskatchewan, collapsed and let in a flood of water. The mine's owner, Cameco Corp., says the mishap will delay completion for as long as three years. The mine could eventually supply 17% of the world's uranium demand, Cameco says. The dwindling supply of uranium enrichment plants began after two U.S. facilities, built after World War II, shut down, leaving power-plant owners more dependent on the Russians. Natural uranium has less than 1% of the unstable isotope U-235, which must be concentrated to a level of 4% to 5% to make fuel for nuclear power plants. The concentration required to make nuclear weapons is closer to 90%. The concentration is done through a complex sifting process called enrichment. USEC plans to build a $2 billion enrichment facility near Piketon, Ohio, scheduled to open around 2009, but it still must obtain the financing -- a concern for utility-plant owners who need an assured supply of fuel. The plant will use a type of high-speed centrifuges that haven't been commercially proven in the U.S. Currently USEC operates a plant near Paducah, Ky., built in the 1950s. "If anything happens to that, where do you go?" asks Jim Tramuto, a vice president of PG&E Corp., a San Francisco utility, and a leader of the Ad Hoc Utility Group. "You want to have as many suppliers in the market as you can have," adds Mr. Tramuto, noting that most non-Russian suppliers already have promised their supplies of enriched uranium to buyers. The Russians say they could supply more enriched uranium to the U.S., but they are blocked by an agreement with the Commerce Department that restricts their imports to the current levels managed by USEC. While the Russians have some additional near-term capacity, they say they will cut shipments to the U.S. in half after 2013, when the current agreement to use fuel derived from nuclear weapons ends. "We're having our own nuclear renaissance," says Vladimir I. Rybachenkov, a counselor at the Russian embassy in Washington. He notes Russia recently announced plans to increase its use of nuclear power to generate electricity to 25% from 15%, which means it will need more of its uranium and enrichment facilities. Still, Mr. Rybachenkov says, Russia is willing to help the U.S. if the limits on its near-term imports of enriched fuel are lifted. "If nothing happens by 2013, there will be a black hole in deliveries of enriched fuel for the U.S. from Russia," he predicts. Clay Sell, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy and an architect of U.S. plans for more use of nuclear power, admits that there are near-term problems with both uranium and enrichment services, but adds: "We think it can all be managed." His department is circulating a draft plan among U.S. power-plant owners that suggests that more enriched uranium fuel could be provided by "blending down" highly enriched uranium from retired U.S. nuclear warheads and by reprocessing uranium tails, or wastes from the process of enriching uranium for U.S. nuclear weapons. "The higher uranium prices go, the more these tails look like money instead of trash," Mr. Sell says. Getting more fuel from U.S. enrichment wastes, however, might require the Russians to enrich them, another option under discussion. Mr. Sell says the future U.S. supply picture may not be as bleak as the "black hole" described by Mr. Rybachenkov. "You've got to understand that a lot of what they're saying right now has to do with bargaining," he noted. Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@wsj.com -------- missouri U.S. university drops plans to double nuclear reactor's capacity The Associated Press Tuesday, December 5, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/05/america/NA_GEN_US_Nuclear_Reactor.php The University of Missouri has dropped plans to double the capacity of its nuclear research reactor, citing progress in a nearly 30-year federal effort to develop a safer alternative to the highly enriched uranium the reactor uses as fuel. Six of the eight American universities that continue to use highly enriched uranium — an ingredient experts say is crucial to building nuclear weapons — are in the process of switching to the low-enriched uranium commonly found at commercial power reactors. Technical limitations, such as smaller reactor core sizes, have prevented the University of Missouri and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from converting their reactors — a nationwide process begun in 1978 by the U.S. Department of Energy. University of Missouri officials had long planned to increase the reactor's capacity from 10 megawatts to 20 megawatts, a power upgrade they hoped would enhance the university's ability to help produce cancer-fighting drugs and radioactive isotopes used for medical diagnosis and treatment. But the university's recent application for renewal of its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license makes no mention of the upgrade. Instead, reactor scientists are working with Department of Energy and the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois on a new fuel type that "holds some promise," said reactor director Ralph Butler. "We need to do what we can to focus our energy on conversion," he said Tuesday. "That's the highest priority right now. It's the government's priority, so it's our priority too. "We have tabled our desire to upgrade," he said. A spokeswoman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration said the alternative fuel could be commercially available by 2010. A statement on the agency's Web site adds, "It has long been U.S. nonproliferation policy to minimize, and to the extent possible, eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium in civil nuclear programs throughout the world." The University of Missouri reactor's federal license limits the amount of unirradiated, highly enriched uranium to 5 kilograms. As little as 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or about 55 pounds, is needed to build a nuclear bomb on the scale of the one dropped on Hiroshima six decades ago. Smaller nuclear bombs could be built using as little as 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of highly enriched uranium, experts say. The distinction between irradiated and unirradiated fuel is significant. Once uranium-based fuel is doused with radiation, the number of isotopes rapidly diminishes, making it unsuitable as a weapon. Safety concerns at several campus reactors recently prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review security measures at the sites, which typically keep low profiles, rely on campus security guards and can often be found near dormitories and classrooms. The emphasis on conversion of U.S. research reactors also increased after the 2001 terrorist attacks, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered enhanced security at nuclear sites over concerns that terrorists would target such power supplies. Butler said it will take an additional two to three years before results from the experimental fuel studies are known. -------- new york Nuke relicensing-plan change rejected by NRC December 5, 2006 By LIZ ANDERSON THE JOURNAL NEWS http://www.nynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061205/NEWS02/612050345/1017 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected an attempt by Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano to broaden the standards it uses to review plants such as Indian Point when they apply for relicensing. The decision comes just weeks after Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owners of the Buchanan plants, announced it would seek to continue operating them through 2035. The licenses for the existing plants expire in 2013 and 2015; the company plans to formally apply for 20-year license extensions in the spring. "It is just outrageous," said Susan Tolchin, Spano's chief adviser, of the ruling. "Unfortunately it's a typical decision that didn't take into account all of the things we brought to their attention." She said the decision "once again sides with the nuclear industry rather than with concern about public safety, which is what County Executive Spano is most concerned about." Spano, who opposes the plants' relicensing, had sent a petition to the NRC in May 2005 in the hope of making the process more difficult for Entergy, should it go that route. Among other things, he asked the NRC to treat a plant seeking relicensing in the same way it would a new operator seeking to build a plant in that location today, review such issues as local demographics, the physical site, emergency evacuation plans and site security. The NRC, in its ruling, denied both Spano's request and a similar petition from the mayor of Brick Township, N.J., north of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station. The agency said the two petitions "raise issues that the commission already considered at length in developing the license renewal rule." "These issues are managed by the ongoing regulatory process or under other regulations, or are issues beyond the commission's regulatory authority," it added. But Tolchin said the demographics had changed. "When these plants were sited here ... this was something that was not meant to be forever and ever. Things change, roads get clogged, cities get built up, population increases, we had Sept. 11. The county executive remains concerned that he cannot safely evacuate people if the plant has a fast-breaking (disaster) scenario." Lisa Rainwater, director of the Indian Point Campaign for the Riverkeeper, called the NRC's decision "ludicrous." Tolchin said Spano's staff planned to hold a "strategy session" today to discuss what to do next. Reach Liz Anderson at ecanders@lohud.com or 914-696-8538. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon By David Hambling| Dec, 05, 2006 Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,72134-0.html The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects. According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games. The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven. The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues. Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly. The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds. "It will repel you," one test subject said. "If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again." But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," the Air Force experiments concluded. The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects. The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would "benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory," said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants. The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses. In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim. The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims. The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN. This may mean yet more rounds of testing for the ADS. New bombs can be rushed into service in a matter of weeks, but the process is more complex for nonlethal weapons. It may be years before the debates are resolved and the first directed-energy nonlethal weapon is used in action. The development of a truly safe and highly effective nonlethal crowd-control system could raise enormous ethical questions about the state's use of coercive force. If a method such as ADS leads to no lasting injury or harm, authorities may find easier justifications for employing them. Historically, one of the big problems with nonlethal weapons is that they can be misused. Rubber bullets are generally safe when fired at the torso, but head impacts can be dangerous, particularly at close range. Tasers can become dangerous if they are used on subjects who have previously been doused with flammable pepper spray. In the heat of the moment, soldiers or police can forget their safety training. Steve Wright of Praxis, the Center for the Study of Information and Technology in Peace, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights, notes that there are occasions when this has happened in the past. He cites British soldiers, who increased the weight of baton rounds in Northern Ireland. "Soldiers flouted the rules of engagement, doctoring the bullets by inserting batteries (to increase the weight) and firing at closer ranges than allowed," says Wright. There may also be technical issues. Wright cites a recent report on CS gas sprays which turned out to be more dangerous in the field than expected. "No one had bothered to check how the sprays actually performed in practice, and they yielded much more irritant than was calculated in the weapon specification. This underlines the need for independent checking of any manufacturers' specifications. Here secrecy is the enemy of safety." Eye damage is identified as the biggest concern, but the military claims this has been thoroughly studied. Lab testing found subjects reflexively blink or turn away within a quarter of a second of exposure, long before the sensitive cornea can be damaged. Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim. "A speculum was needed to hold the eyes open to produce this type of injury because even under anesthesia, the monkeys blinked, protecting the cornea," the report says. The risk of cancer is also often mentioned in connection with the ADS system, despite the shallow penetration of radiation into the skin. But the Air Force is adamant that after years of study, exposure to MMW has not been demonstrated to promote cancer. During some tests, subjects were exposed to 20 times the permitted dose under the relevant Air Force radiation standard. The Air Force claims the exposure was justified by demonstrating the safety of the ADS system. The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough -- you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won't work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight. Wet clothing might sound like a good defense, but tests showed that contact with damp cloth actually intensified the effects of the beam. System 1, the operational prototype, is mounted on a Hummer and produces a beam with a 2-meter diameter. Effective range is at least 500 meters, which is further than rubber bullets, tear gas or water cannons. The ammunition supply is effectively unlimited. The military's tests went beyond safety, exploring how well the ADS works in practice. In one war game, an assault team staged a mock raid on a building. The ADS was used to remove civilians from the battlefield, separating what the military calls "tourists from terrorists." It was also used in a Black Hawk Down scenario, and maritime tests, which saw the ADS deployed against small boats. It might also be used on the battlefield. One war game deployed the ADS in support of an assault, suppressing incoming fire and obstructing a counterattack. "ADS has the same compelling nonlethal effect on all targets, regardless of size, age and gender," says Capt. Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which decides where and how the ADS might be deployed. "It can be used to deny an area to individuals or groups, to control access, to prevent an individual or individuals from carrying out an undesirable activity, and to delay or disrupt adversary activity." The precise results of the military's war games are classified, but Capt. Delarosa insists that the ADS has proven "both safe and effective in all these roles." The ADS comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. As well as System 1, a smaller version has been fitted to a Stryker armored vehicle -- along with other lethal and nonlethal weapons -- for urban security operations. Sandia National Labs is looking at a small tripod-mounted version for defending nuclear installations, and there is even a portable ADS. And there are bigger versions too. "Key technologies to enable this capability from an airborne platform -- such as a C-130 -- are being developed at several Air Force Research Laboratory technology directorates," says Diana Loree, program manager for the Airborne ADS. The airborne ADS would supplement the formidable firepower of Special Forces AC-130 gunships, which currently includes a 105-mm howitzer and 25-mm Gatling guns. The flying gunboats typically engage targets at a range of two miles or more, which implies an ADS far more powerful than System 1 has been developed. But details of the exact power levels, range and diameter of the beam are classified. -------- business Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq Civilian Number, Duties Are Issues By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 5, 2006; D01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401311_pf.html There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield. The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country. It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers. Official numbers are difficult to find, said Deborah D. Avant, author of the 2005 book "The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security," but an estimated 9,200 contractors deployed during the Gulf War, a far shorter conflict without reconstruction projects. "This is the largest deployment of U.S. contractors in a military operation," said Avant, an associate professor at George Washington University. In addition to about 140,000 U.S. troops, Iraq is now filled with a hodgepodge of contractors. DynCorp International has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force. Blackwater USA has more than 1,000 employees in the country, most of them providing private security. Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country. The Pentagon's latest estimate "further demonstrates the need for Congress to finally engage in responsible, serious and aggressive oversight over the questionable and growing U.S. practice of private military contracting," said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has been critical of the military's reliance on contractors. About 650 contractors have died in Iraq since 2003, according to Labor Department statistics. Central Command, which conducted the census, said a breakdown by nationality or job description was not immediately available because the project is still in its early stages. "This is the first time we have initiated a census of this robustness," Lt. Col. Julie Wittkoff, chief of the contracting branch at Central Command, said in an interview. Those figures do not include subcontractors, which could substantially grow the figure. In June, government agencies were asked to provide data about contractors working for them in Iraq, including their nationality, a description of their work and locations where they were working. The information was provided by more than a dozen entities within the Pentagon and a dozen outside agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, Wittkoff said. The count increased about 15 percent from about 87,000 since Central Command began keeping a tally this summer, she said, though the increase may reflect ongoing data collection efforts. The census will be updated quarterly, Wittkoff said. Three years into the war, the headcount represents one of the Pentagon's most concrete efforts so far toward addressing the complexities and questions raised by the large numbers of civilians who have flooded into Iraq to work. With few industry standards, the military and contractors have sometimes lacked coordination, resulting in friendly fire incidents, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. "It takes a great deal of vigilance on the part of the military commander to ensure contractor compliance," said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you're trying to win hearts and minds and the contractor is driving 90 miles per hour through the streets and running over kids, that's not helping the image of the American army. The Iraqis aren't going to distinguish between a contractor and a soldier." The census gives military commanders insight into the contractors operating in their region and the type of work they are doing, Wittkoff said. "It helps the combatant commanders have a better idea of . . . food and medical requirements they may need to provide to support the contractors," she said. Staff writer Griff Witte contributed to this report. -------- iraq Al-Maliki says Iraq will call for regional conference on stabilizing country Updated 12/5/2006 (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-12-05-iraq_x.htm BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Tuesday that his government will send envoys to neighboring countries to pave the way for a regional conference on ending the rampant violence in his country as more than 40 Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings. The Shiite leader appeared to back down from previous opposition to handing neighboring nations a say in Iraqi affairs but stressed that he wants the conference to be held in Iraq and while his government would welcome help, it would not tolerate interference. In new bloodshed, suspected insurgents set off a car bomb to stop a minibus carrying Shiite government employees in Baghdad, then shot and killed 15 of them, the government said. In another attack in the capital on Tuesday, two car bombs exploded in a commercial district, killing 15 other Iraqis, police said. The U.S. command said an insurgent attack on an American military patrol in Baghdad on Monday killed one soldier and wounded five. Another U.S. serviceman died in southern Iraq on Monday in an accident involving his vehicle. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the military expects all of Iraq to be under the control of Iraqi forces by next year. "We would expect to see the entire country having reached provincial Iraqi control by early fall of next year," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference. "We should see the complete transfer of command and control of all Iraqi army divisions by late spring, early summer." He said this is part of an accelerated timetable discussed by President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during their summit in Jordan last week. The U.S. maintains about 140,000 troops in Iraq and is now considering changing its strategic course in the country, which the U.S.-led coalition invaded in March 2003. Al-Maliki said the government will send envoys to neighboring countries to exchange views and discuss their possible contributions to building security and stability in Iraq. "After the political climate is cleared, we will call for the convening of a regional conference in which these countries that are keen on the stability and security of Iraq will participate," the Shiite leader said. The statement came a day before the Iraq Study Group, headed by former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana, is to release recommendations on changing U.S. strategy in Iraq. Those are expected to include a suggestion to engage Iraq's neighboring nations, including U.S. adversaries Iran and Syria, in the search for an end to the violence in Iraq. Other top Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talabani and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who leads parliament's largest bloc, have in recent days rejected a suggestion for an international conference by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The outgoing U.N. chief said that such a gathering could be useful if the political parties involved met outside Iraq. "These delegations I mentioned will go to these (neighboring) governments because we want a regional or international conference on Iraq to be convened, but not on the premise that it finds solutions on its own, but in light of what the national unity government wants," he said. "We are leaning toward convening this conference in Iraq because that will be a show of support for the Iraqi people," he said. Al-Maliki also announced that a frequently delayed national reconciliation conference designed to rally the country's various ethnic, religious and political groups around a common strategy for handling Iraq's problems would be held later this month. He added that he planned to shortly announce a reshuffle of his six-month-old government "to boost the effectiveness and strength of the national unity government," but he gave no details. The latest American deaths came after a weekend in which 13 American service members died in Iraq, including four whose Sea Knight helicopter plunged into a lake in volatile Anbar province, the military said. The Defense Department identified one of the four dead as Army Spc. Dustin M. Adkins, 22, of Finger, Tennessee, who was assigned to the Group Support Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In northern Baghdad, gunmen set off a car bomb to intercept a minibus carrying employees of the Shiite Endowment, a government agency that cares for Shiite mosques in Iraq, to work, the organization said. The gunmen then opened fire on the workers, killing 15 of them and wounding seven, said Salah Abdul-Razzaq, an Endowment spokesman. An Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, also said the blast occurred first and was followed by the ambush. The U.S. military said 14 Iraqis were killed and four were wounded before the explosion, when the bus on which they were riding received small arms fire, then a BMW drove into the area and exploded as the wounded were being transferred to a hospital. The car bomb caused no further injuries, according to the military statement. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained. AP Television News video of the aftermath showed shattered glass and shoes in the middle of the highway, with the burned-out hulk of the car that exploded on the side of the road. A similar attack occurred late last month in southern Iraq against the Sunni Endowment, the government agency that cares for Sunni Arab mosques in Iraq amid sectarian violence and retaliatory killings that have been rising since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. In another attack in the capital on Tuesday, two car bombs exploded near one another in western Baghdad, killing at least 15 people and wounding 25, police said. The explosions occurred at about 9:45 a.m. near a gas station in Baiyaa, a commercial area of the capital with a mixed Sunni Arab and Shiite population, a policeman said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. A parked car bomb also struck a market in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding seven, police said. At least 13 other people were killed in shootings and bombings elsewhere, and four bodies were pulled from the Tigris River in Suwaira, about 45 miles south of Baghdad. On Monday, insurgents attacked a U.S. Army patrol in Baghdad as it was trying to control the movement of insurgents and enforce curfew restrictions in a northeastern neighborhood of the capital, the military said. In southern Iraq, a 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) soldier died Monday when his M-1117 Armored Security Vehicle rolled over north of Camp Adder, which is 200 miles southwest of Baghdad, the military said. The deaths raised to at least 2,904 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Assoccount. -------- spies Robert Gates' Former CIA Branch Chief and a CIA Analyst Who Testified Against Him on the Politicization of Intel During Iran-Contra Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/05/1452228 Robert Gates, President Bush's nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense is facing his Senate confirmation hearings today. We speak with two former CIA analysts who worked with Gates at the Agency. Ray McGovern was Gates' CIA branch chief in the early 1970s and Jennifer Glaudemans is a former CIA analyst who was asked to testify at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Gates when he had been nominated to be CIA Director. [includes rush transcript] John Bolton is the second high-profile member of Bush's national security team to announce his departure since the November 7th elections. Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld resigned last month. Bush's nominee to replace him, Robert Gates, faces his confirmation hearings today in the Senate. Gates served as CIA Director during the Bush Senior Administration. He was first nominated to serve under President Reagan but the nomination had to be withdrawn because of stiff opposition in the Senate. Observers are predicting a swift confirmation, with little opposition expected from Democrats. But Gates is not without controversy -- questions have swirled around his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal and his role in the US government's arming of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. He was also accused of skewing intelligence to suit the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet views. Newly declassified government documents also reveal Gates advocated for President Reagan to bomb Nicaragua in 1984 in an effort to topple the Sandinista government. At the time Gates was deputy director of the CIA. Today we are joined by two former CIA analysts who worked with Robert Gates at the agency. Ray McGovern served in the CIA for 27 years and was Gates' branch chief at the CIA in the early 1970s. Jennifer Glaudemans is a former CIA analyst who was asked to testify at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Gates when he had been nominated to be CIA Director. She worked in the CIA's office of Soviet analysis back when Gates was the agency's deputy director for intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council. * Ray McGovern, 27-year career analyst with the CIA. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Read OpEd in the Miami Herald. * Jennifer Glaudemans, former CIA analyst and an attorney. Read OpEd in the Los Angeles Times. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Today, we are joined by two former CIA analysts who worked with Robert Gates at the agency. Ray McGovern served in the CIA for 27 years and was Gates’s branch chief at the CIA in the early ’70s. Jennifer Glaudemans is a former CIA analyst, who was asked to testify at the ’91 confirmation hearings for Gates, when he had been nominated to be CIA director. She worked in the CIA’s Office of Soviet Analysis back when Gates was the agency's deputy director for intelligence and chair of the National Intelligence Council. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!, and we begin with Jennifer Glaudemans, former CIA analyst, who testified against Robert Gates when he went up for confirmation as CIA chief for the second time. Now, he did not get that post the first time under Reagan. He did get it under President George H.W. Bush, but the highest number of senators opposed that nomination than all the senators combined in voting for CIA chiefs over the preceding decade. Jennifer Glaudemans, why did you testify against Robert Gates? JENNIFER GLAUDEMANS: Good morning, Amy. I testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1991, because the staff had called me that summer and asked me to come and talk with them about some of the issues I had worked on while I was in the Office of Soviet Analysis, in particular the Third World Activities Division. Prior to Mr. Gates's nomination, to be DCI, the staff committee had begun looking into the question of politicization of analysis. They had already talked to a large number of senior and mid-level analysts and managers at the agency. At that point, I had already resigned government and was living in Connecticut. I was called because I had been a witness and a participant in some of the intelligence products that had been politicized. And after talking with them several times over the summer, they flew me down, they paid my expenses. I did not contact them. They asked me to testify. What was clear was that there were a number -- I was sort of to represent the analysts, a number of, dozens of analysts, who had talked to the committee over the summer in early fall of 1991. I first gave my testimony in closed hearing. And after that was done, I believe it was Senator Nunn insisted that it go public. We were asked to leave, and there was a several-hour meeting among the senators on the committee. They decided to make it public, and at that point, I was asked, “Mrs. Glaudemans, would you like to voluntarily come testify to this committee, or would you like a subpoena?” My production folders and records had already been subpoenaed by the staff, and, you know, I do happen to believe that the legislative branch of our government is an equal branch of our government, and when they ask you to inform them about the work you did at taxpayers' expense, of course, I volunteered. I did not need a subpoena to talk to my government. But it is not something -- and I don’t like the perception that I went running to the committee or to anyone else. They had been looking into this prior to me ever talking to them. AMY GOODMAN: And Russia, the old issue of the Soviet Union at that time, specifically this issue of fixing the facts around the policy to fit the policy of the administration, something people are very concerned about today in the lead-up to the invasion, the whole argument put forward of weapons of mass destruction, when it turned out not to be the case. How did it play out then? JENNIFER GLAUDEMANS: It was a very tumultuous atmosphere, particularly in the Third World Activities Division, where the Cold War was hot. There were volatile situations throughout the Middle East, as well as Central America, and a few -- Africa, even in -- the question of, you know, remaining Soviet bases in Cam Rahn Bay. So it was throughout the third world. The Cold War ideologues had -- that’s where the issue was fought out, was, how was Soviet behavior going to play out. That’s where all of the intelligence arguments and battles were. My problem with that was, I’d love vigorous debate. I had some tremendous mentors in the agency who challenged me all of the time, who made me a better analyst, but it was always about evidence. What happened in the Third World Activities Division was analytical judgments were put out as community view in estimates or as CIA view, for which there was no evidence. The Iran estimate in 1985 is just a classic example of that, and one I was personally involved with. There was no evidence to support the key judgment about the Soviets in that Iranian estimate. There was a ton of evidence that contradicted that. So it’s not a question of a young junior analyst not getting her view taken, it was a question of evidence versus no evidence. AMY GOODMAN: And Bob Gates’s role in that exactly? JENNIFER GLAUDEMANS: He was -- as the CIA was the drafter of that segment of the estimate, he was our boss as deputy director of intelligence, but he was also simultaneously the chairman of the National Intelligence Committee, which put out the estimate. Now, one of the interesting facts, when you go back and look at these allegations, is that the CIA never took a footnote to an estimate, could not dissent to an estimate, as long as Mr. Gates was also the chairman of the NIC. Now, not since he held that position has anyone ever yet again held a conflict of interest position of holding those two jobs. That alone, I think, speaks of what happened. Now, in my division, I don’t remember exactly how many people it was, but, you know, we were colleagues. We saw each other's work. We saw each other every day. I had bosses fired, some come and go. I mean, it was a tumultuous atmosphere. It was so tumultuous that the Inspector General did an investigation when Webster became our DCI. And long before Gates’s second nomination to be DCI, there was an Inspector General investigation. Many analysts, not just myself, many managers -- I think everyone in the Office of Soviet Analysis was interviewed. And one of the judgments of that IG report was that the perception of politicization of analysis was pervasive. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Jennifer Glaudemans. She is talking about the times -- DCI, of course, standing for “Director of Central Intelligence,” head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Ray McGovern, also with us, was with the agency for 27 years. When you look at the senators who are in office today that voted against Robert Gates to be head of Central Intelligence for the second time in 1991, of the 31 senators who voted against, 12 of them are still in the Senate. But I saw Senator Carl Levin interviewed this weekend, who is a key figure here in this decision, who said while he did vote against him in the past, that was something like 15 years ago. Your response, Ray McGovern? RAY McGOVERN: Well, I am very distraught to see that the Senate appears willing to acquiesce in a witness or a candidate who was very disingenuous the last time he was called before Congress and before the Iran-Contra affair. It’s a very problematic decision. In some ways, the Democrats are facing their first test after the election. They have the power to block this nomination or at least to investigate Gates to look into the evidence that has come to light since the 1991 confirmation proceedings. And it looks like they’re more inclined to give him absolution, so to speak, and say, “Well, let bygones be bygones. Iran-Contra was a terrible thing, but maybe he’s reformed.” Daschle, Senator Daschle, back in ’91, said, “We can’t afford to take the chance that a fellow who has deliberately trimmed intelligence and taken liberties with the truth will reform.” The real question is whether Gates will bring what is called a fresh perspective to policymaking on Iraq, for example. We see in the Post today, Robert Burns saying that the President needs to have people who are strong and who will disagree with him. Now, Bobby Gates is not that kind of person. He never has been, and he never will be. And so, what we have here is just an additional person in this very tightly closed circle around the President, which in intelligence parlance is called a “self-licking ice cream cone.” What you have here is a slight change in flavor, less tart, more sugary, with the replacement of Bobby Gates for Dick Cheney. But you don’t have any real change in policy. The recipe for the ice cream is still being dictated by Bush, and even more so by Cheney. The big question, of course, is whether Cheney has lost influence with the departure of Rumsfeld. The conventional wisdom was, of course, he will have lost that influence. But looking at what the President has been saying about Iraq and looking at the way they are dissing already the Baker-Hamilton report as just one of the inputs into the situation suggests to me that Cheney is still very much in control and that Gates’s modus operandi will be to become Cheney’s best friend and write memos, as he did for Bill Casey. Bill Casey wanted to wage war in Nicaragua. Bobby Gates would give them a reason not only to do the Contra thing, but also to bomb Nicaragua. AMY GOODMAN: Explain that, Ray McGovern, for people, especially young people, who aren’t familiar with Iran-Contra, and specifically the bombing of the Nicaraguan harbor in 1984. What was Robert Gates’s position? RAY McGOVERN: Well, his position was whatever Bill Casey's position was. And that’s, you know, that’s the real problem here. AMY GOODMAN: Bill Casey, former director of Central Intelligence. RAY McGOVERN: Yes. He was sort of a creation of Bill Casey. Bill Casey had this bizarre notion that the Soviets were going to come up through Nicaragua and Mexico into Texas. Reagan even said such things. And Bobby Gates sort of played on that kind of shibboleth. And when Casey mined the harbors, well, Gates wrote a memo that said we ought to bomb them, as well, bomb the tanks. So, you know, whether he believed that or not, this was a deliberate sort of pandering to the known proclivities of Bill Casey and, of course, the President. And, you know, worse still, when the folks in the White House decided to sell arms to Iran so that some of the profits from that arms sales could be given to the Contras in contravention of US law, when all that happened, Gates was right in the middle of all that. Right in the middle. And we have documentary evidence of that now, which has come out since the ‘91 hearings. And the prospect of our senators not even bothering to look into that evidence, not bothering to honor their constitutional oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, not the President or not the President’s nominees, that is really very disappointing. AMY GOODMAN: Do you take this vote, which they’re hoping to push through very quickly, within a week, to confirm Robert Gates to be a kind of test, a bellwether of what’s to come with a Democratically controlled Senate and Congress? RAY McGOVERN: I hope not, Amy. You know, there is this one predominant factor, which I call the “ABR factor,” anybody but Rumsfeld, and Gates is a supreme beneficiary of that factor. They want Rumsfeld out of there, but it’s unseemly haste, in my view. There is a report that Gates can’t come in until January, in any case, because he has obligations still down there in Texas. If that’s the case, these senators should do their homework. And if they do their homework, they will see more damaging evidence still of Gates’s role in Iran-Contra and in other areas that still have yet to be thoroughly explored. AMY GOODMAN: Ray McGovern and Jennifer Glaudemans, I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Two former longtime CIA analysts. -------- un Bolton Resigns As UN Ambassador Ending Controversial 16-Month Term Democracy Now! Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/05/1452222 John Bolton resigned as Ambassador to the United Nations on Monday ending a controversial 16-month term. In August 2005, Bolton was a given temporary recess appointment after he failed to be confirmed by the Senate. Last month President Bush re-nominated Bolton but a number of Democratic and Republican Senators announced they would not back his confirmation. We speak with UN expert Phyllis Bennis. [includes rush transcript] United Nations Ambassador John Bolton announced Monday that he would step down from his post when his temporary appointment expires in January. Bolton, an outspoken critic of the U.N, was appointed by President Bush last August when Congress was in recess. This was done after Senate Democrats had blocked a floor vote on his nomination. The recess appointment allowed Bolton to bypass Senate confirmation and hold the UN job until a new Congressional term began. In November, Bush nominated Bolton again and planned to push for confirmation before his term expired. But as both Democrat and Republican Senators announced they would not support him, it became clear that Bolton's chances for confirmation were slim. Bush accepted Bolton's resignation yesterday in the Oval Office. * President Bush, speaking December 4, 2006: "I received the resignation of Ambassador John Bolton. I accept it. I'm not happy about it. I think he deserved to be confirmed. And the reason why I think he deserved to be confirmed is because I know he did a fabulous job for the country. And I want to thank you and Gretchen for serving in a very important position and doing so in a way that a lot of Americans really appreciate, John. We're going to miss you in this administration. You've been a stalwart defender of freedom and peace. You've been strong in your advocacy for human rights and human dignity. You've done everything that can be expected for an ambassador. And I accept your letter, and I wish you and Gretchen all the very best." Bolton was a controversial choice for UN ambassador. Sixty-four former American Ambassadors recently signed a letter opposing him. Many felt that his hard-line conservative ideology and his confrontational approach was at odds with the UN's multilateral goals. This is Bolton speaking at a conference in New York in 1994 was widely cited as evidence of his incompatibility with the job. * John Bolton, speaking February 3rd, 1994: "If you think that there is any possibility in this country that a 51,000 person bureaucracy is going to be supported by most Americans, you better think again. The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The United Nations is one of the most inefficient inter-governmental organizations going. UNESCO is even worse. And others go down hill from there. The fact of the matter is that the international system that has grown up, and again, I leave out the World Bank and the IMF because I do think that they're in a separate category, has been put into a position of hiring ineffective people who do ineffective things that have no real world impact, and we pay 25% of the budget." For more on the resignation of John Bolton as UN ambassador, we speak with UN expert Phyllis Bennis. * Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, specializing in Middle East and United Nations issues. Author of "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power." RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Bush accepted Bolton's resignation yesterday in the Oval Office. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I received the resignation of Ambassador John Bolton. I accept it. I'm not happy about it. I think he deserved to be confirmed. And the reason why I think he deserved to be confirmed is because I know he did a fabulous job for the country. And I want to thank you and Gretchen for serving in a very important position and doing so in a way that a lot of Americans really appreciate, John. We're going to miss you in this administration. You've been a stalwart defender of freedom and peace. You've been strong in your advocacy for human rights and human dignity. You've done everything that can be expected for an ambassador. And I accept your letter, and I wish you and Gretchen all the very best. AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton was a controversial choice for UN ambassador. Sixty-four former American Ambassadors recently signed a letter opposing him. Many felt his hard-line conservative ideology and his confrontational approach was at odds with the UN's multilateral goals. This is John Bolton speaking at a conference in New York in 1994, widely cited as evidence of his incompatibility with the UN job. JOHN BOLTON: If you think that there is any possibility in this country that a 51,000-person bureaucracy is going to be supported by most Americans, you better think again. The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The United Nations is one of the most inefficient inter-governmental organizations going. UNESCO is even worse. And others go downhill from there. The fact of the matter is that the international system that has grown up, and again, I leave out the World Bank and the IMF because I do think that they're in a separate category, has been put into a position of hiring ineffective people who do ineffective things that have no real world impact, and we pay 25% of the budget. AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton, speaking in 1994. Phyllis Bennis was there at that event and joins us now from Washington, D.C., a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies specializing in Middle East and United Nations issues, author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Phyllis. PHYLLIS BENNIS: Good morning, Amy. Good to be with you. AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by the resignation? PHYLLIS BENNIS: I was pleased by the resignation. I think it was probably inevitable after the elections, where the overall Bush policy was repudiated so powerfully in those elections. John Bolton -- President Bush said something just now that was quite right: John Bolton was a good representative of the Bush administration policy. He made a decision -- Bush made a decision to send a bully to carry out a policy of bullying the United Nations, and Bolton did a very good job of that. The real question now is, the bully is gone, is there a chance that the policy that gave rise to such bullying, is that going to change, as well? That’s what we don’t know yet. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the people who are possibly going to succeed him? PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, the most -- the top of the list that we’re seeing right now is someone like the Zalmay Khalilzad, who’s currently the US ambassador to Iraq, also known as a conservative hardliner, a very aggressive style of diplomacy, not seen as abrupt and dismissive and aggressive in the form of John Bolton. Perhaps a, quote, “better” diplomat in that sense, but certainly reflecting the same bullying politics. The only one on the list that I have seen that is slightly different that reflects the more realistic positions within the administration is Nick Burns, who has a long history both in the Clinton administration and throughout the Bush administration. He is one of Condoleezza Rice's top deputies. And his style is much more traditional diplomacy, very glad-handing, very friendly. He would presumably make it more difficult at the United Nations for other countries to mobilize strong opposition. This morning's New York Times quotes the current ambassador to Tanzania at the United Nations, who is on the Security Council this year with John Bolton, who said that Bolton had deepened the divisions between the developing world and the great powers and said that he would be remembered as the person who could have done it differently in order to minimize the negative perceptions of the positions of the United States. Of course, the issue becomes now, if the Bush administration decides to send a, quote, “good” diplomat, somebody who will be friendly at the UN, who will be more collaborative in the Security Council, respectful in the General Assembly, it will make it more difficult for government representatives there to mobilize as powerfully as they did against John Bolton. But the real question is, what policy will that new ambassador reflect? And so far we’ve seen absolutely no indication from President Bush or anyone else in his administration that there is any intention of taking the United Nations more seriously, respecting the independence of the institution rather than treating it with the same disdain that we just heard from John Bolton. In that same year, in the debate in Washington, where he was debating with me and the late Erskine Childers, he actually said, ‘There is no United Nations. There is a group of countries that do something once in awhile when the United States tells them to.’ That was always John Bolton's view of the United Nations. I think that is George Bush's view of the United Nations. And the real question is, is that still their view? AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis, I’m looking at a piece by Justin Rood, who says, “The Man with the Iron Mustache is leaving the international arena -- but not before attempting a thoroughly embarrassing and wholly unsympathetic maneuver. Less than two weeks before the White House announced his resignation, Ambassador John Bolton's U.N. mission blocked an effort to celebrate the end of slavery in our hemisphere.” PHYLLIS BENNIS: This is only one of a number of incidents like this, where it was not even a matter of US policy -- whether this was even dictated by the White House or the State Department, we don’t even know, or whether this was just John Bolton on his own, the rogue ambassador representing the large rogue state, saying, ‘This isn’t relevant to me. I’m not going to let anyone else do it,’ and without any concept of what that means for how Americans, as well as US policy, is viewed around the world. The opposition to John Bolton at the United Nations is really hard to overstate. It was enough that the staff of the UN was given orders yesterday, when the announcement came about his resignation, that no one was to comment, that the only answer, if anyone on the staff was asked their opinion, their only answer was to be “no comment.” AMY GOODMAN: Then, Ian Williams writes in The Nation, “From the White House point of view, Bolton's appointment appeased the know-nothing foreign policy crowd while rewarding his longstanding loyalty to the Bush dynasty. That loyalty had been shown most memorably in 2000, when the man who has spent the past year preaching democracy to the members of the United Nations strode into a library polling place in Florida yelling, ‘I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count.’" PHYLLIS BENNIS: That’s, again, a very good example of what John Bolton represented. He had no sense of any other feature than power as the basis of what he did as a diplomat, what he did in representing the Bush administration. This was a man, when he was the Under Secretary of State for Disarmament Affairs under Colin Powell, he was there at the moment that the Israeli military used a set of US weapons to assassinate a Hamas leader in Gaza. This was in 2002, when 15 people, civilians, in the same apartment building inevitably, because it was a strike, a rocket strike, at 3:00 in the morning -- nine of them were children -- were killed in that rocket strike. And state Department officials prepared a memo for Colin Powell saying that this might be a violation of US law, not international law, but the Arms Export Control Act that prohibits the use of US-provided weapons in that way. Bolton saw that memo, said, ‘Ah, this is rubbish,’ and ordered his staff to write a memo saying, ‘No harm, no foul. There was no problem.’ The two memos were supposed to be sent together to Colin Powell, but it was reported in US News & World Report at the time that John Bolton got a hold of the earlier memo, pulled it, so to make sure that his own boss was denied access to the material that had been prepared by his own staff, because Bolton didn’t happen to like it. So it's that kind of arrogance and that kind of certitude about his own view of unilateralism, militarism, the sacred support of the United States for Israel. All of these things were very much at the center of why he was appointed to work at the United Nations and why George Bush lets him go now with such reluctance. AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis Bennis, I want to thank you for being with us, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her book, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power. ---- Bush: 'I'm not happy' about Bolton's resignation December 5, 2006 (CNN) http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/04/bolton.resigns/index.html?section=cnn_latest WASHINGTON -- An unhappy President Bush said Monday he regretfully accepted John Bolton's decision to leave his temporary job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Senate opposition, led mostly by Democrats, doomed Bolton's confirmation to serve permanently. "I'm not happy about it," Bush said during a farewell appearance at the White House attended by Bolton and his wife, Gretchen. "I think he deserved to be confirmed. The reason I think he deserved to be confirmed is that I think he did a fabulous job for the country." (Watch Bush react to Bolton's resignation Video) Turning to Bolton, Bush said, "We're going to miss you in this administration. You've been a stalwart defender of freedom and peace. "You've been strong in your advocacy for human rights and human dignity. You've done everything that can be expected for an ambassador." A controversial history In March 2005, Bush nominated the outspoken Bolton, then an assistant secretary of state, to be U.N. ambassador. (Watch U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talk about Bolton Video) But most Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans were against giving Bolton the job. They complained he gave the Senate false information when he failed to note on a confirmation questionnaire that a State Department inspector had formally questioned him. The investigation, part of a joint inquiry by the State Department and CIA, centered around intelligence about whether Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Niger. The State Department acknowledged the error in Bolton's statement. Also, Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, took to the floor and read a list of complaints from Bolton's subordinates. They said Bolton had a reputation of bullying his colleagues, taking facts out of context and exaggerating intelligence. Carl Ford, the former chief of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, called Bolton "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and a "serial abuser" of subordinates. Because GOP leaders could not push through the nomination, when Congress was in recess in August 2005, Bush used his constitutional power to make recess appointments and put Bolton in the post temporarily, without Senate approval. A recess appointment only lasts until the end of the term of Congress in which it is made, so Bolton's appointment was to end in January unless the Senate acted to confirm him. Bush continued to fight for Bolton's nomination, resubmitting it to the Senate just two days after Democrats won control in last month's midterm elections. The president had hoped that GOP leaders might be able to get it through before the Senate changed hands. However, Senate Democrats were unmoved. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, said Bolton's confirmation was "going nowhere." Friday, Bolton sent a letter to Bush saying that after "careful consideration, I have concluded that my service in your administration should end when the current recess appointment expires." -------- us U.S. Army Battling To Save Equipment Gear Piles Up at Depots, Awaiting Repair By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 5, 2006; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401347_pf.html ANNISTON, Ala. -- Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt. The Army and Marine Corps have sunk more than 40 percent of their ground combat equipment into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to government data. An estimated $17 billion-plus worth of military equipment is destroyed or worn out each year, blasted by bombs, ground down by desert sand and used up to nine times the rate in times of peace. The gear is piling up at depots such as Anniston, waiting to be repaired. The depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear, officials say. Partly as a result of the shortages, many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy, officials say, raising alarm in Congress and concern among military leaders at a time when Iraq strategy is under review by the White House and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is lobbying hard for more money to repair what he calls the "holes" in his force, saying current war funding is inadequate to make the Army "well." Asked in a congressional hearing this past summer whether he was comfortable with the readiness levels of non-deployed Army units, Schoomaker replied: "No." Lt. Col. Mike Johnson, a senior Army planner, said: "Before, if a unit was less than C-1," or fully ready, "someone would get fired." Now, he said, that is accepted as combat-zone rotations are sapping all units of gear and manpower. "It's a cost of continuous operations. You can't be ready all the time," he said. Across the military, scarce equipment is being shifted from unit to unit for training. For example, a brigade of 3,800 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division that will deploy to Iraq next month has been passing around a single training set of 44 Humvees, none of which has the added armor of the Humvees they will drive in Iraq. The military's ground forces are only beginning the vast and costly job of replacing, repairing and upgrading combat equipment -- work that will cost an estimated $17 billion to $19 billion annually for several more years, regardless of any shift in Iraq strategy. The Army alone has 280,000 major pieces of equipment in combat zones that will eventually have to be fixed or replaced. Before the war, the Army spent $2.5 billion to $3 billion a year on wear and tear. At Anniston, the sprawling lots of tanks and other armored vehicles are just the start of a huge backlog in broken-down gear. "There's stuff, stuff everywhere," Joan Gustafson, a depot official, said as she wheeled her brown Chevrolet van through a landscape of rolling hills lined with armadas of mobile guns. "There's another field of M1s," she said, motioning toward a swath of M1A1 Abrams tanks next to the winding road. "We're just waiting for someone to tell us what to do with them." The Army's five depots carry out the highest level of maintenance for Army gear ranging from rifles and other small arms to tanks, helicopters and missile systems. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Army has left behind hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment in Iraq and has relied heavily on field maintenance facilities in Kuwait. But as the war has continued, Army leaders have recognized that they cannot afford to wait for a drawdown of troops before they begin overhauling equipment -- some of it 20 years old -- that is being used at extraordinary rates. Helicopters are flying two or three times their planned usage rates. Tank crews are driving more than 4,000 miles a year -- five times the normal rate. Truck fleets that convoy supplies down Iraq's bomb-laden roads are running at six times the planned mileage, according to Army data. Equipment shipped back from Iraq is stacking up at all the Army depots: More than 530 M1 tanks, 220 M88 wreckers and 160 M113 armored personnel carriers are sitting at Anniston. The Red River Army Depot in Texas has 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 450 heavy and medium-weight trucks, while more than 1,000 Humvees are awaiting repair at the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania. Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs. In the spring, a funding gap caused Anniston and other depots to lose about a month's worth of work, said Brig. Gen. Robert Radin, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir. "Last year we spent as much time trying to find available money as managing our program," he said. "We don't want to go into the next rotation . . . with equipment that's at the far end of its expected life." Responding to urgent requests from the Army and Marine Corps, Congress approved an extra $23.8 billion in October to replace worn-out equipment in fiscal 2007. With the money, the Army plans to double the workload at its depots, which will repair and upgrade 130,000 pieces in 2007, up from 63,000 last year. This will include a quadrupling of the number of tanks, Bradleys and other tracked vehicles overhauled, from 1,000 to 4,000. At Anniston, which will handle 1,800 combat vehicles in fiscal 2007, a cavernous 250,000-square-foot repair shop is humming as damaged tanks are rolled in one by one and disassembled with the help of giant cranes. Removing an M1 tank's turret alone takes a day and a half, and the entire overhaul requires 54 days and costs about $1 million, said Ted A. Law, the depot's vehicle manager. Earnest Linn, 58, a heavy-mobile-equipment mechanic who as of January will have worked at Anniston for 30 years, said that "it's never been like this" since the end of the Vietnam War. In October, Anniston became the official repair facility for the Army's newest armored vehicle, the Stryker. Repairs for those vehicles will soar from eight in fiscal 2006 to 75 this fiscal year -- including 58 that received some level of battle damage, said Gregory McMath, program manager for Stryker repair. "This one hit a triple-stacked land mine," he said, peering up into the underbelly of a Stryker ripped open by the blast. Some of the Strykers are coming in with 40,000 miles on their odometers, he said. Workers at Anniston take pride in patching, rebuilding and testing the broken-down gear and returning it to like-new condition. Often, they must innovate by taking parts from wrecked vehicles if new parts do not exist or have not been ordered in time. "The supply system can't keep up with us," said Rodney Brodeur, division chief for turbine engines, speaking over the clang and whir of his workshop. It is projected that in 2007, Anniston will rebuild 1,400 turbine engines for M1 tanks, compared with 800 this year. Fine sand and heavy use erode the blades on the tank engine rotors, eventually leading the blades to snap off and stall the engines. Such erosion, which is invisible to the Army's field mechanics, can lead to catastrophic failure without timely maintenance. "If your Cadillac stops by the side of the road, that's an inconvenience," Brodeur said. "If the tank quits in the middle of the fight, that's a hard target." ---- The US counter-terror nerve centre By Frank Gardner Security correspondent, BBC News Tuesday, 5 December 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6210090.stm In a Washington suburb, I am on a journey. No address, no postcode. Just the phone number of a US government official known only as "T". After months of requests, he has granted us permission to visit one of America's newest and most secret establishments: the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC. It is a nondescript building, but inside is the beating heart of America's counter-terrorism nerve centre. "This is where we maintain a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week operational watch in the counter-terrorism intelligence community and monitor situational awareness in the world of CT [counter-terrorism]," says Vice Admiral Don Loren, one of the watch officers in the Operations Room. The Operations Room is a large open-plan chamber filled with desks and computer terminals. But today it is almost empty. Because we are media, all the undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency who would normally sit here have been moved out of sight. But up on the wall is a giant plasma screen showing every plane approaching the United States. "Right now, you're looking at the Eastern Seaboard air corridor, and we use that to monitor events of special interest and to keep an eye should there be any reports of what we call no-fly activity," Vice Adm Loren says. A "no-fly" means a plane with a passenger suspicious enough that the flight can even get turned back over the mid-Atlantic. In everyone's minds is the thought: "9/11, never again." Enormous data flow The NCTC is also intended to remedy the sort of information blockages that led to 9/11. When it was set up two years ago, they brought in the "imagineers" from Hollywood - experts on sharing information. The data flow here is enormous: more than 6,000 reports come through every day from satellite, electronic and human intelligence sources. When an incident