-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

-------- business

Paducah Cleanup Oversight Hearing

Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 14:19:54 -0400
From: jrmichel@icx.net

The Energy Research, Development, Production and Regulation Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold an oversight hearing on a GAO report titled "Nuclear Waste Cleanup-DOE's Paducah Plan Faces Uncertainties and Excludes Costly Cleanup Activities." The hearing will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 27 at 2:30 pm in 366 Dirksen Senate Building.

Witnesses Scheduled to Testify:

1. Gary Jones, Associate Director, Energy, Resources and Science Issues, GAO
2. Carolyn Huntoon, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management
3. David Michaels, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health
4. William Magwood, DOE Director, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology

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USEC Makes Payment for Silex Technology

June 26, 2000
Company Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000626/md_usec.html

BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)- USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU - news) has paid $2.5 million to Silex Systems Ltd. of Australia, following the recent announcement of an Agreement of Cooperation between the United States and Australia.

The Agreement makes possible ongoing development work on SILEX, a laser-based technology for enriching uranium, by allowing the transfer of classified aspects of this technology.

``Now that the two countries have an Agreement for Cooperation in place, we will move to the next phase of development of this promising technology,'' said William Bennett, USEC's Vice President of Advanced Technology.

USEC is exploring SILEX as an alternative to its current gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process. If successfully deployed, it would reduce the production cost of enriched uranium, primarily because SILEX technology requires significantly less electricity.

Currently, electricity makes up the largest portion of USEC's enrichment production costs.

A previous payment of $2.5 million, for the successful completion of an earlier phase of research and development, was made in January 2000. The sum of both payments represents the total of a milestone payment designed to support and further research efforts.

In addition to pursuing SILEX, USEC is evaluating gas centrifuge as another enrichment technology.

USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Contact:

USEC Inc. Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399 or Ron Seeholzer, 301/564-3225 (Investor Relations)

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Arms Trade Resource Center, Part 3

ATRC UPDATE, PART III
From: Frida Berrigan, Michelle Ciarrocca, and Bill Hartung

IN THIS ISSUE . . .

This issue is devoted in its entirety to a profile of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. This is the first in a series of profiles of major weapons makers that ATRC will be producing over the next six to eight months. We decided to do this series of profiles after discussions with Steve Staples of the International Network on Globalization and Disarmament and Alice Slater of the Global Research and Action Center on the Environment (GRACE) about the best ways to inject the issues of disarmament and military spending into the growing movement against corporate-dominated trade arrangements like the World Trade Organization. Other companies in the series will include Raytheon, Boeing, BAE Systems, Bechtel, and Alliant Tech Systems. We also found there is a growing demand among grassroots activists, citizen's organizations, and journalists for detailed information on the operations of major weapons producing companies. We hope this series will help fill part of that need, both by providing information and by sparking discussion on the best ways to deal with military mega-companies, in the realms of both research AND action. Your suggestions are welcome, on what companies to profile, on the most useful formats in which to disseminate this information, and on any specifics with respect to the subject of our first profile, Lockheed Martin.

LOCKHEED MARTIN: ALL-PURPOSE MERCHANT OF DEATH
LOCKHEED MARTIN IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST WEAPONS MAKER

Lockheed Martin is the nation's (and the world's) largest weapons manufacturer. The company received over $18 billion in U.S. government contracts in F.Y. 1999, including $12.6 billion from the Pentagon and more than $2 billion from the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons-related activities. To put this in some perspective, it should be noted that ONE COMPANY -- Lockheed Martin-- receives more federal funding each year than the ENTIRE BUDGET for the nation's largest welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is meant to help tens of millions of Americans living in poverty.

LOCKHEED MARTIN HAS A BIG "POLITICAL FOOTPRINT"

Lockheed Martin is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, but the firm's promotional literature brags of its "facilities in all 50 states." This is a bit of a stretch, since many of these "facilities" are nothing more than small administrative offices. But the company does have impressive geographic reach, giving it what John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists describes as a big "political footprint." Lockheed Martin has major military research and production operations in Moorestown, New Jersey; Marietta, Georgia; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Fort Worth, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; Sunnyvale, California and the Nevada Test Site. Also, for its major production systems, like the F-22 "stealth" fighter plane, Lockheed Martin makes sure to spread its subcontracts around to as many Congressional Districts as possible, as a way to curry favor with key legislators.

LOCKHEED MARTIN WAS CREATED THROUGH A SERIES OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED MERGERS

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were 10 to 15 major weapons producing firms in the United States. In the 1990s, that number has shrunk to just three major producers --Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon-- plus a few smaller niche players like Northrop Grumman, United Defense, TRW, and Northrop Grumman. The consolidation of the weapons industry was strongly pushed by Norman Augustine, then CEO of Martin Marietta, and was shepherded through the bureaucracy by William Perry and John Deutch, major policy makers in the Pentagon during the early years of the Clinton Administration who also happened to be paid consultants to Martin Marietta before joining the administration.

In the summer of 1993, Augustine appealed to Perry and Deutch to change the Pentagon's contracting rules so that weapons companies engaging in mergers could charge the costs of moving factories, paying executive bonuses, legal fees, and other costs generated as a result of there mergers to the U.S. government. Since Perry and Deutch had recent business dealings with Augustine, they had to get waivers of the conflict of interest regulations to rule on Augustine's request. They got the waivers and changed the rules, paving the way for Lockheed to merge with Martin Marietta and reap a windfall of over $1.2 billion in taxpayer funds for merger-related costs, including $2.9 million of the $8.2 million in special compensation that Norman Augustine received as a result of the merger, and roughly $250,000 in payments to former Tennessee Governor and two-time presidential contender Lamar Alexander for the "hardship" he endured when he was asked to step down from the board of directors of the newly merged company. In addition to Lockheed and Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin includes the former defense unit of the Loral Corporation, the aerospace unit of General Electric, and the space division of General Dynamics. Each of these companies in turn had been built up by various mergers before they were absorbed by Lockheed Martin.

LOCKHEED MARTIN SPENDS MORE ON CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS THAN ANY OTHER WEAPONS MAKER

Lockheed Martin has made over $1.6 million in Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions since 1997, plus another $500,000 in soft money contributions to Democratic and Republican party committees. Not surprisingly, the company's political spending has favored Republican candidates by almost a two-to-one margin, 66% to 34%. The company also spent $10.2 million on lobbying during 1997 and 1998, second only to Boeing among military/aerospace firms (Boeing spent $18.4 million on lobbying in 1997/98).

Lockheed Martin has the additional advantage of having key company associates involved at the top levels of the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns. Company Vice President Bruce Jackson, whose most recent claim to fame was his role as the director of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO during the battle over ratifying the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the alliance during 1997 and 1998, served as a vice chair for fund-raising in the Dole for President Campaign in 1996, and is doing the same for the George W. Bush campaign in the run up to the November 2000 elections. At a conference in Europe last year, Jackson was overheard bragging to his colleagues from European weapons companies that if George W. Bush wins the election, the arms industry will be in great shape because he, Bruce Jackson, will essentially write the Republican platform on defense. Meanwhile, Bernard Schwartz, a former Lockheed Martin board member who sold the defense unit of his company, Loral, to Lockheed Martin in 1996, was to top soft money donor to the Democratic Party during the 1996 election cycle, with $601,000 in donations, and he has already nearly doubled that amount in the year 2000 cycle, with more than $1.1 million in contributions to Democratic Party committees. That's one of the reasons that when Lockheed Martin talks, the President and the Congress listen.

LOCKHEED MARTIN IS THE WORLD LARGEST ARMS MERCHANT

Lockheed Martin exports $2 to $3 billion in arms per year, to customers that have included Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. The firm also has investments in place or under way in the arms/aerospace industries of Poland, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. The company's most lucrative export is the F-16 combat aircraft, which has been used by the Turkish government to bomb and burn Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey and to bomb alleged members of the Turkish-based Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) in Northern Iraq. The F-16 has also been a staple of Israel's decades-long air war against Lebanon, which may finally be coming to an end as part of ongoing peace talks between Israel and Syria.

Lockheed Martin has pushed aggressively for changes in U.S. arms export policies that make it easier to sell U.S. weaponry in all corners of the globe, including the Defense Export Loan Guarantee fund (DELG), a $15 billion taxpayer-backed fund designed to help foreign purchasers finance arms deals with U.S. companies; the lifting of the ban on sales of U.S. fighter aircraft to Latin America; and the expansion of NATO, which in theory will make Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic increases their weapons purchases from Western arms manufacturers as part of their drive to meet NATO standards for "interoperability." Lockheed Martin has also been actively involved in efforts to defeat and/or water down the Code of Conduct on arms transfers, legislation that would make it much more difficult to supply U.S.-origin weapons to dictatorships and human rights abusers. Former Lockheed Martin CEO and current Chairman of the Board Norman Augustine has been instrumental in pushing through a number of these changes through his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade (DPACT), a confidential panel which gives advice on U.S. arms export policy to the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Trade Representative.

LOCKHEED MARTIN'S DOUBLE DIP: DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND PROMOTING A NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

Lockheed Martin is in the unique position of deriving a double benefit from the current push to deploy a National Missile Defense system. For 1998/1999, Lockheed Martin ranks second to Boeing in total missile defense contracts with a total of $617 million in contracts.

Lockheed Martin's major missile defense contracts include the Payload Launch Vehicle for the National Missile Defense interceptor system; the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) "High" component, which is supposed to improve the tracking of incoming ballistic missiles; the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, a medium range ballistic missile defense system which recently yielded Lockheed Martin a $4 billion long-term contract from the Pentagon; the Airborne Laser (ABL) --in a partnership with Raytheon and Boeing-- an aircraft-based laser system that is designed to achieve the capability for destroying medium-range missiles as they leave their silos; the Navy Theater Wide system, which is based in part on Lockheed Martin's Aegis anti-tactical missile system, which is produced at the company's Moorestown, New Jersey facility; and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), the major U.S.-European missile defense system which is being produced by Lockheed Martin in partnership with Alenia of Italy and Daimler Chrysler Aerospace of Germany.

On the nuclear weapons front, Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale, California missiles and space unit is responsible for the production of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile, the last major nuclear weapons delivery vehicle still being purchased by the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin receives roughly $2 billion per year to run the Department of Energy's Sandia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico, which is involved in the costly "Stockpile Stewardship program," an effort to gauge the "reliability" of U.S. nuclear stockpiles AND design new nuclear weapons. Lockheed Martin also has a subcontract to Becthel to help develop the capability to conduct simulated nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.

REVOLVING DOOR, ONGOING SCANDALS, AND MORE . . .

As you can see, Lockheed Martin is involved in so many different aspects of the military industrial complex that it is difficult to provide a short summary of their activities.

Other aspects of the company's behavior to bear in mind are its hiring of former members of Congress (like former Democratic Senator Mack Mattingly of Georgia, former Rep. Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi, and former Georgia Rep. Buddy Darden) and former Pentagon officials to lobby on its behalf on issues like fate of the F-22 fighter aircraft; it's involvement in ongoing scandals like its supply of information that could have been used to improve the accuracy of China's ballistic missiles, for which it received the largest fine in the history of the Arms Export Control Act; its faulty launch vehicles which have contributed to the loss of billions of dollars worth of intelligence satellites; its involvement in bribery and bid-rigging in overseas arms sales; and its role in rigging missile defense tests in the 1980s and (possibly) the 1990s and beyond.

ACTION, NOT DEPRESSION: WHAT'S THE USE OF ALL THIS HEAVY INFORMATION?

Taken in one dose, all of this information on Lockheed Martin's far ranging and nefarious activities is liable to make a person feel like giving up. They're big, they're powerful, they're connected, and they usually get what they want, or so it appears. BUT DON'T GIVE UP YET. Despite its $18 billion per year in government contracts and its impressive lobbying operation, Lockheed Martin can be beaten.

Its shares have plummeted to half their prior value within the past few years, and even its former close allies on Capitol Hill, like Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) have taken on the firm on key issues like the ballooning costs of its F-22 fighter plane, which at $160 million per copy is the most expensive fighter plane ever built. The company depends on U.S. government contracts and foreign military sales for the vast majority of its revenues, and its presence in a number of controversial issues simultaneously --from nuclear weapons and Star Wars to weapons trafficking-- make it an inviting target for an international anti-corporate campaign on the issues of de-militarization and disarmament.

The Brandywine Peace Community in the Philadelphia area has long undertaken a campaign of public education and civil disobedience against the company's nuclear weapons work, dating back to when the relevant facilities were controlled by General Electric, and then Martin Marietta, and then Lockheed Martin. A number of religious shareholder organizations have also taken up the issue of nuclear weapons and arms sales with Lockheed Martin in recent years. In effect, these groups inherited Lockheed Martin as a result of the merger craze in the weapons industry. The question now is whether other groups in the international peace and social justice movements want to make Lockheed Martin a part of their work, either as a concrete example of militarism at work or as the focus of some kind of coordinated campaign involving organizations around the United States and around the world. We'd be interested in your thoughts on this point, both with respect to Lockheed Martin and with regard to the other companies we will be profiling in the months ahead.

QUICK SOURCE NOTE ON LOCKHEED MARTIN: In addition to looking at the various reports and articles on our web site, you can get good, up-to-date information on contributions by Lockheed Martin and other weapons makers to your representative on the web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, at www.opensecrets.org. Lockheed Martin itself gives an enormous amount of detail on its military work on its web page, at www.lmco.com. And for the best single guide to how to research a military company, see Lora Lumpe and Jeff Donarski, THE ARMS TRADE REVEALED, available on the web site of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project of the Federation of American Scientists, at www.fas.org/asmp.

William D. Hartung World Policy Institute 65 Fifth Ave. Suite 413 New York, NY 10003 (212)-229-5808, ext. 106 (212)-229-5579 (fax) hartung@newschool.edu

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USEC Makes Payment for Silex Technology

Excite News
June 26, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/000626/md-usec

BETHESDA, Md. (BUSINESS WIRE) - USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) has paid $2.5 million to Silex Systems Ltd. of Australia, following the recent announcement of an Agreement of Cooperation between the United States and Australia.

The Agreement makes possible ongoing development work on SILEX, a laser-based technology for enriching uranium, by allowing the transfer of classified aspects of this technology.

"Now that the two countries have an Agreement for Cooperation in place, we will move to the next phase of development of this promising technology," said William Bennett, USEC's Vice President of Advanced Technology.

USEC is exploring SILEX as an alternative to its current gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process. If successfully deployed, it would reduce the production cost of enriched uranium, primarily because SILEX technology requires significantly less electricity.

Currently, electricity makes up the largest portion of USEC's enrichment production costs.

A previous payment of $2.5 million, for the successful completion of an earlier phase of research and development, was made in January 2000. The sum of both payments represents the total of a milestone payment designed to support and further research efforts.

In addition to pursuing SILEX, USEC is evaluating gas centrifuge as another enrichment technology.

USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Contact: USEC Inc. Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399 or Ron Seeholzer, 301/564-3225 (Investor Relations)

-------- depleted uranium

Health Consequences of NATO Bombings - New Insights

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 02:05:28 +0000

Dear All:

The following contains two e-mails from Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic of the Cancer Foundation , Yugoslavia, sent to me in response to my requests for 1] information on the health consequences of NATO Bombings and 2] specific information on the recent conference held in April in Yugloslavia on "Consequences of Ecological Catastrophe on the Health of the Balkan Population."

Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic also forwarded by attachment to her first e-mail : "A Report of Current Cancer Epidemiology in Serbia based on Available Data " December 1999 which is not yet available on their website which is still under construction. In the section of this report entitled "Projection of Malignant Diseases", the authors note that "when the bombing of Yugoslavia started, the environment of the population of Serbia was greatly altered. The destruction of petrochemical and fertilizer factories, refineries and electro-energetic systems released cancerogens in the air: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen hydroxide, hydrocarbons, pyralene, vinyl-chloride-monomer, lead and other. Many cancerogens have polluted water flows. Excessive radiation is present in the form of uranium oxide from impoverished uranium. ..... It is hard to predict what kind of chemical reactions will take place in the air, soil or water. As a consequence of decreased quality of life and a life style in deprivation, it is reasonable to expect a much higher trend of increase of malignant diseases, both in terms of incidence and mortality."

They also note that long term effects will be visible in 5 to 15 years while suggesting: " It is our job to warn the population of the possible consequences in the future." [See also #3 below for Introduction]

The enclosed information may be useful for those attempting to determine the health consequences for the civilian population of Yugoslavia of NATO's aggressive and illegal bombings of petrochemical and chemical installations and their use of depleted uranium weapons.. Dr. Veljovic's e-mails also shed light on the on-going economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and the NATO bombings of medical and health care infrastructure [some 147 building in all ] and the deprivation these actions have caused in regard to basic medical and health care services and in depriving a whole people of the right to be healthy and to live to anticipated old age.

All the best, janet

--

1] Message #1 from Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic

From: "Fondacija protiv raka" <kbcbkosa@ptt.yu> To: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: Re: (Fwd) Need for information on cancer increase etc for IAC Trib Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 14:11:07 +0200

Dear Ms Janet Eaton,

I would like to thank you, on behalf of Cancer Foundation and my country, for your engagement in fighting for justice and peace in this world, which is not such a grateful task nowadays.

Since last year, almost immediately after the bombing, during which 147 objects (buildings) functioning as health care institutions were totally or partially destroyed and were unusable for the diagnostics and treatment of patients, most of our hospitals and primary health care institutions lack most of the basic and essential medicaments, infusion solutions, sutures, and 70% of the drugs normally provided in our pharmacies are nowhere to be found, especially citostatics. Obtaining a simple blood count has become almost impossible in more than a half of our otherwise relatively modern and advanced health centers.

Surgeons are using linen for sutures as they did 80 years ago, since the regular catgut is far too expensive and this leads to additional problems with respect to postoperative patient care and rehabilitation. Old people have no means to buy medication with their very small pensions. Only in January, in a very short time, almost 2000 people died from the flu pandemic and corpses waited to be buried for 10 or more days since there was not enough room to bury them --people died in numbers in a very short time from pneumonia and the consequences of a severe flu, which the doctors in other non-sanctioned countries were able to treat

The WHO UN charter guarantees the availability of basic health care needs to all, hopefully by year 2000, and here they are in a position of depriving a whole people of the right to be healthy and to live to be at least 74. Not to mention the high level of stress to which people in this country were exposed during all period of sanction and especially during the NATO bombing. Considering all above, we are faced with a severe cancer problem since the incidence of cancer is doubled! I am sending you, as an attachment, our Cancer Epidemiology Report with the projection for malignant diseases to year 2020, which will provide you, I hope, with useful information for your paper.

This report has evaluated our present cancer epidemiology situation, based on available data, which are currently incomplete due to difficulties in a proper registration of malignant diseases, so we can expect that the true numbers are much more higher.

Once again, thank you for your consideration and please, feel free to contact me should you be needing any other data.

Best regards and best of luck in your further activities, Aleksandra Veljovic, MD

Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia 11080 Belgrade Serbia, Yugoslavia Tel: (+381) 11 3010-721 Fax: (+381) 11 606-520

==

2] From: "Fondacija protiv raka" <kbcbkosa@ptt.yu> To: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: Re: Thank you again! Date sent: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 11:51:26 +0200

Dear Ms Janet, Once again we will try to help you. First of all , I want to give you more information about the Conference which Mr Radoje Lausevic has told you about and was organized by Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia. We forget how important our health is until we are in situation to seek for medical help. Economic crisis in our country has provoked crisis in health care as well (as I wrote to you yesterday). Hospitals are unable to fulfill the needs of all patients seeking for advice, check up or treatment. Also it limits the actions of prevention services. Nowadays it is very hard to make sure that all patients get adequate hospital care, to perform all the necessary diagnostic procedures and to provide necessary treatment. Series of new diagnostic procedures have been developed to enable early detection of malignant diseases, but still number of early detected cases of cancer does not increase as expected. That is why Cancer Foundation has been established. The opening of Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia was promoted by Medical Center "Bezanijska kosa", one of the most eminent health centers in Yugoslavia, in which our office is situated. Our team consists of physicians, molecular biologists, oncologists and health care and prevention proffesionals and we all participate in the actions of Cancer Foundation, as well as people of good will, ready to help the ones who need help. One of our actions was the organization of the first international symposium with the topic: Consequences of Ecological Catastrophe on the Health of the Balkan Population. Most eminent physicians, biologists and nuclear scientists took part in it. We are preparing the book which will include all their reports, and we hope that it will be published in the autumn, so I think that this will be something you are looking for. Till then I am sending you, as an attachment, the address book of all participants, so that you can make individual contacts due to your interests. We still do not have our web site but we are working on it, so be sure that I will contact you the very moment it is completed. Be free to quote our Cancer Epidemiology Report, hoping that this will help your philanthropic struggle. Best regards and feel free to contact me for any other data, Aleksandra Veljovic, MD

Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia Bezanijska kosa bb 11080 Belgrade Serbia, Yugoslavia Tel: (+381) 11 3010-721 Fax: (+381) 11 606-520

-------- japan

Okinawans commemorate 55th year of end of Okinawa ground battle

Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 17:18:40 +0900
From: JPS <jpspress@twics.com>

TOKYO JUN 26 JPS -- On June 23, Okinawans observed the 55th anniversary of the end of the 1945 ground battle in Okinawa which took the lives of over 200,000 people, mostly non-combatants.

In the prefecture, the day is set aside for mourning the war dead in the only organized ground battle fought in Japan in WW II. Various events and ceremonies were held in many places to renew the prefectural people's pledge against war and for peace.

In the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman City in southern Okinawa's main island (the site of a fierce battle), a ceremony was held under the auspices of the prefectural government. About 5,000 people attended the ceremony in the park where there is a monument of black granite with the names and nationalities of all the known war dead engraved, regardless of their being friend or foe.

Former Japanese Communist Party House of Representatives member Saneyoshi Furugen attended the ceremony.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori made a speech calling for further steps to be taken by the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), which will result in strengthening the U.S. base function in Okinawa.

Later in the day P.M. Mori in a street speech in Nagoya City referred to the ceremony in Okinawa as "for the service of mourning for 'eirei' (the souls of the fallen war heroes)."

The word "eirei" refers to a military and para-military personnel who died for the Emperor. The use of this word by the prime minister to describe the war dead in Okinawa shows that he views the civilian victims as same as the military. The war dead in Okinawa include such civilians who were killed by the Japanese Army as "spies" and even babies who were bayonetted by Japanese soldiers so that their cries wouldn't be heard from hiding places in caves. (end item)

JPS 06-073 The issue is national sovereignty - 40th anniversary of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty

TOKYO JUN 26 JPS -- On June 23, 1960 the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty took effect. Will Japan continue to be dependent on and subservient to the U.S. by upholding the Treaty system as sacrosanct? This is a question about Japan's choice of course for the 21st century.

Guidelines are War Laws paving the way for Japan's isolation

On June 14, the two leaders of North and South Korea signed a historic joint declaration stating their willingness to solve the question of reunification on their own. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung proposed to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that both sides discuss all possible measures for easing tension and building a system of peaceful reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula.

In Japan, the government and the ruling parties were skeptical of the two Korean leaders' declaration.

Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hiromu Nonaka said, "A threat to Japan has not altogether been removed by it." Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki said, "It has no direct influence (on Japan's two-pronged policy for North Korea of dialogue and deterrence),"

Clearly, the Japanese government has no strategy that meshes with the emerging movement.

Why doesn't the Japanese government have a peace strategy? It is because they have put all their energy into war preparation based on the new "Guidelines" for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and the War Laws, by which Japan follows the U.S. interventionist war and aggression strategy on a global scale.

The May 1999 legislation of the War Laws marked a major change in the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty system, paving the way for Japan's participation in U.S. wars abroad in cooperation with the U.S.

According to Lt. Gen. Paul V. Hester, commander of U.S. Forces in Japan, details of plans have already been worked out for operations to be undertaken by the U.S. Forces and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and mobilization of Japan's local governments and private sectors.

Asagumo, a newspaper devoted to SDF affairs, reported on February 27 that the U.S. Forces and the SDF for the first time carried out a joint command post exercise based on an assumption that an "emergency" (war or turmoil) is breaking out in areas surrounding Japan.

The government and the ruling parties are advocating wartime legislation which will deprive the people of fundamental human rights as a major concept of war preparation.

Relevant government agencies have already drafted legislation based on what they studied. They're waiting for a political decision to submit the bills to the Diet, according to government sources.

Japan is called upon to choose between two ways, the way for peace in solidarity with the rest of Asian countries and the way of isolation that puts emphasis on a military solution.

Japan as a nation structured on U.S. military bases

In Okinawa, where the leaders of the Group of Eight nations will meet in one month, U.S. military bases occupy about 20 percent of Okinawa's main island. These bases were constructed on the land which the U.S. forces took away from local residents using bayonets and bulldozer.

In the northern Okinawan city of Nago, a state-of-the-art military base is going to be constructed. The U.S. forces wants the new base to remain active for 200 years.

In the past 40 years, the number of U.S. military bases in Japan has substantially increased. Although the number of those exclusively for U.S. forces has decreased, those used jointly by the U.S. forces and Japan's Self-Defense Forces has dramatically increased. As a result, the total area of all these bases has almost doubled in the past 40 years.

Tokyo is no exception. The U.S. Yokota Air Base occupies a large area in the western suburbs of Tokyo, as does the U.S. Navy Atsugi Air Station in Kanagawa Prefecture, Tokyo's southern neighbor.

U.S. forces training exercises include: low-altitude flight and bombing of civilian targets, night-landing practices (NLP) in densely populated areas, and live-fire exercises by U.S. Marines. Such exercises are taking place daily in complete disregard of Japanese laws. Noise pollution caused by sonic booms, aircraft crashes, crimes by U.S. soldiers against local citizens, and environmental destruction are what the large U.S. military presence entails.

The Japanese government since 1978 has given the U.S. forces extra sums of money in addition to the money Japan has promised to pay under bilateral agreements. The amount of extra money, which comes from the so-called "sympathy budget," is about 275 billion yen (about 2.6 billion dollars) in 2000.

Japan's contributions to U.S. forces is larger than those by any other U.S. ally. This is why the U.S. government refers Japan as its most generous ally.

A Japan-U.S. special agreement provides that Japan will pay all utility costs for U.S. bases and salaries of Japanese employees of the U.S. bases in Japan. This agreement expires next March. The U.S. forces are pressing Japan to agree with its extension.

How can we allow this subservience structured on U.S. bases to continue into the 21st century?

Government has lied about secret agreements regarding U.S. nuclear weapons

U.S. warships and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons can enter Japan's ports and airports without restrictions, and no prior consultation with Japan is required for transit.

This is what the Japanese and U.S. governments agreed to and kept secret. Japanese Communist Party Chair Tetsuzo Fuwa revealed this fact in the parliament early this year based on the text of a secret arrangement allowing U.S. nuclear weapons to be brought into Japan. The agreement was made at the time when the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was negotiated.

The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was signed on January 19, 1960. On January 6, Japan's Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas McArthur initialed three arrangements which the government has never made public. One of the three agreements was entitled "The Record of Discussion," which was a secret agreement on nuclear weapons.

A Department of State internal document says: While our treaty arrangements with Japan require formal consultation before nuclear weapons are 'introduced' into Japan, the Japanese Government has confidentially agreed, in effect, that weapons of vessels and aircraft in transit through Japan are none of its concern. The Japanese public is unaware of this confidential arrangement..." (June 14, 1961).

The Japanese government still refused to acknowledge the existence of secret agreements on bringing nuclear weapons into Japan.

However, the JCP has uncovered many facts that have been hidden from the public:

- The bringing in of nuclear weapons to Japan has been a customary practice since the early 1950s;

- On April 4, 1963, Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer held talks to re-examine the text and reached complete agreement on what the "Record of Discussion" says;

- When Yokosuka was made a homeport for a U.S. aircraft carrier, nuclear weapons on the carrier were not removed.

Today, the coalition government of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Komei Party, and the Conservative Party obstinately refuses even to try to confirm if the "Record of Discussion" is retained by the Japanese government.

This secret agreement has distorted Japan's foreign policy and undermined Japan's sovereign independence.

The secret agreement on nuclear weapons is not a matter of the past. It indicates that the mechanism in which Japan will be a solid advance base for U.S. nuclear strategy continues to exist well into the 21st century.

JCP calls for an end to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and establishment of foreign policy for peace

One of the major JCP goals is the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Article 10 of the Treaty states: "...after the Treaty has been in force for ten years, either Party may give notice to the other Party of its intention to terminate the Treaty, in which case the Treaty shall terminate one year after such notice has been given."

This means that if a majority of the Japanese people call for the Treaty to be abrogated, it can be scrapped.

However, there are many problems to be resolved immediately without waiting for the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, including:

- Prevent the War Laws (for involving Japan in U.S. wars under the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation) from being invoked, and work with the rest of the world through diplomacy for peace;

- End all outrageous acts by U.S. forces, such as low-altitude bombing training;

- Oppose the construction of a new U.S. base in Nago City in Okinawa and call for U.S. bases in Japan to be reduced and dismantled; and

- Rid Japan of any apprehension about nuclear weapons continuing to be brought into Japan. (end item)

-------- ukraine

Germany hopes West will help Ukraine post-Chernobyl

UKRAINE: June 26, 2000
Story by Dmitry Solovyov
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7260

KIEV - Germany on Friday praised Ukraine's decision to close its accident-prone Chernobyl nuclear plant by the end of this year and said it hoped the West will help ease the financial burden associated with the closure.

"We consider it very important that Ukraine's government has finally made its decision and set the closure date for December 15," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told a news conference at the end of his brief visit to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and Fischer will jointly chair a conference of donor states in Berlin on July 5 to raise funds needed to reinforce the "tomb" sealing Chernobyl's reactor number four, which exploded in 1986.

Fischer said Ukraine's decision to finally shut down the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster had boosted chances of obtaining necessary Western funds.

"The world community, certainly, is obliged to help Ukraine in overcoming the problems linked to the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," he said. "I hope for the success of the donor conference due in July."

Fischer's visit comes at a time when nuclear power is in the political limelight at home. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government struck a deal this month that would phase out nuclear power in Germany in the mid-2020's.

Fischer's own Greens began a party congress in Muenster on Friday and debated whether to support the measure.

UKRAINE SEEKS $375 MILLION, ACTUAL NEEDS MUCH HIGHER

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk told the news conference the project to renovate the concrete "tomb" built to contain radiation from the Chernobyl disaster cost $768 million.

"As of today, a total of $393 million has been raised already," he said. "The task of the conference is to raise the remaining $375 million," he said, adding that he believed Fischer was optimistic that the goal would be reached.

But the tomb project reflects only a fraction of the cost associated with closing Chernobyl.

Experts say the decommissioning of the plant, completion of two new reactors at other plants to replace lost output, construction of safe waste storage sites and social guarantees for Chernobyl workers might cost up to $2 billion in total.

The projects are to be financed by the European Union and members of the G7 group of leading industrial states in line with a memorandum signed in 1995.

Fischer and Tarasyuk avoided speaking in detail about the work that needed to be done and the cost of replacing lost output. Ukraine, already suffering from an energy crisis, relies on nuclear power to supply nearly half its electricity with Chernobyl providing 6-8 percent of all electricity, depending on the season.

UKRAINE VALUES GERMAN SUPPORT OF ITS 'EUROPEAN CHOICE'

Tarasyuk said Kiev valued warm relations with Berlin as part of its strategy of gradual integration into European structures.

"During the presidential election (last November), Ukrainians backed the current president on his platform of a 'European choice', and in realising this course Ukraine counts on the support of Europe, foremost Germany," Tarasyuk said.

He said President Leonid Kuchma and Schroeder would meet in the eastern German town of Leipzig on July 11-12.

Fischer called on Ukraine to boost reforms.

"The eastward enlargement of the European Union implies a new challenge to us. But at the same time I want to say this is a big chance for Ukraine," he said.

-------- us nuc facilities

-------- california

ACTION ALERT CUT FUNDING FROM the NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY

Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:52:05 -0400
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>

Representative Paul Ryan (R) Wisconsin, will be introducing a floor amendment early the week of June 26. This amendment will cut $74 million in construction funding for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The NIF is a nuclear weapons project and will promote nuclear proliferation.

Please call your representative and ask them Co-sponsor and support the Ryan amendment. If you do not know your representative's number then call the capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. This is not a partisan issue, please contact both democrat and republican offices to cosponsor. Your representative's staff can contact Leah Braesch in Ryan's office to sign-on to the amendment.

This is a really important opportunity and can make a big difference in our efforts to stop NIF. Please make this a priority and call the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's DC office at (202) 833-4668 to let us know who you've contacted.

This action alert is sponsored by a coalition of environmental groups including Taxpayers for Common Sense, U.S. Pirg, Tri-Valley CARES, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

BACKGROUND

The National Ignition Facility Ignites Controversy and Skyrocketing Costs but not Ignition

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a partially built stadium size laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLNL) in Livermore, California.

NIF is the most expensive project in the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship nuclear weapons program. Its stated purpose is to simulate the conditions inside the later stages of a nuclear weapon explosion by fusing atoms at pressures and temperature that obtain a net gain of energy. This process is known as thermonuclear ignition. Information gained from these experiments is useful for understanding and potentially improving weapons design. There is a fine but crucial line between maintaining current weapons capabilities and creating new weapons designs. New nuclear weapons designs may ignite a new arms race. ·

Massive cost overruns have transformed NIF into a fiscal black hole siphoning enormous amounts of money from many DOE programs. In the last five years, due to ongoing technical problems and reprehensible management practices, NIF's estimated construction and operation costs over its life-cycle have doubled from 5 Billion to 10 Billion, threatening the funding for other DOE programs and facilities.

In a highly unusual official statement, the Sandia National Laboratory publicly criticized NIF's budgetary overruns and called for a reduction in NIF's funding and laser structure.

Basic Questions about NIF's fundamental purpose, it's chances of achieving ignition and its engineering problems should be further scrutinized. Before this occurs, we must first halt construction. The construction budget of 74 million and Energy Secretary Richardson's supplemental construction request of 95 million should be cut now, during NIF's reevaluation.

NIF IS PLAGUED BY TECHNICAL AND DESIGN PROBLEMS

NIF Optics are Subject to Frequent Blowouts: As each laser beam is converted to ultraviolet (the 3rd harmonic), it damages the very expensive final optics components, causing them to explode after only a few dozen experiments. This problem could take a decade or more and many millions of dollars to resolve. Further, its resolution at any price is uncertain.

Target Material TBA: At the meeting of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task Force on NIF on Dec. 13, 1999, Lab scientists revealed they have not yet found a material to make ignition capable targets - BB-sized pellets that will hold the frozen radioactive fuel for thermonuclear ignition. ·

Diagnostics are Priceless: Also at the SEAB Task Force, it was revealed that NIF's diagnostics have not been designed and will only be partially designed by 2003. Diagnostics show researchers what is actually going on in a NIF explosion, without which there will be no data. Diagnostic costs are not included in most of NIF's rising cost estimates.

No Ignition at the National Ignition Facility??? Even Livermore lab's NIF project manager Ed Moses, stated his reservations about the chances of achieving ignition "the goal of achieving ignition is a longshot" (San Jose Mercury News 11/16/99). The General Accounting Office (GAO) report scheduled for release in June, 2000 may specify half and quarter size options for NIF. A NIF with half or quarter lasers reduces the possibility of ignition exponentially.

A DANGEROUS CATCH-22

NIF is purported to eliminate the need for nuclear testing but upon closer inspection it may eventually lead to the necessity for future nuclear tests. Despite DOE's statement that NIF is essential to the maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, many experts have concurred that NIF has almost no relevance to its stated goal of maintaining the safety and reliability of the current stockpile. Edward Teller, known as the father of the atomic bomb, was asked about the NIF's usefulness to maintaining nuclear weapons, he replied "None whatsoever" (Contra Costa Times 5/14/00). Furthermore, Los Alamos theoretical weapon physicist, Rod Schultz, wrote that NIF's touted importance to the weapons stockpile "does not reflect the technical judgment of the nuclear weapons design community. (Albuquerque Tribune 4/29/97)

NIF would, however, enhance the capability for design of new nuclear weapons and modification of existing weapons. If NIF is realized, lab directors may soon point out that some of the new, modified, nuclear weapons cannot be reliably certified without full scale nuclear testing, thus providing the rationale for future nuclear testing. This is in stark contrast of NIF's stated purpose of eliminating the need for nuclear testing.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT THE WEBSITE OF TRI-VALLEY CARES AT http://www.igc.org/tvc/

Frida Berrigan Research Associate Arms Trade Resource Center 65 Fifth Avenue, Suite 413 New York, New York 10003 212-229-5808 ext. 112 fax: 212-229-2279 email:berrigaf@newschool.edu

-------- colorado

Colorado Mayor Wants Rocky Flats Nuclear Site for Research, School

By Brian Hansen
June 26, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-26-02.html

ARVADA, Colorado, The now mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant - where the soil is still contaminated in spots with high levels of plutonium and other dangerous materials - might make a fine place to build a 400-acre research park or educational facility after it closes in a few years.

So declared Arvada, Colorado, Mayor Ken Fellman in letters sent last week to Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, and Representative Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat. Both have proposed federal legislation that would forever preserve the 6,000-acre site as some form of non-developable open space.

Arvada Mayor Ken Fellman (Photo courtesy Office of the Mayor)

"We would like Rocky Flats to be cleaned up to a level that permits reasonable unrestricted access to the site ... regardless of land use designation," Fellman wrote in his June 16 letter to Allard. "We expect new ideas [pertaining to the future use of the site] may come forward as the cleanup progresses. Federal legislation restricting future options would prevent potential new and better uses."

Allard's bill, which has not yet been introduced to the Senate, would designate Rocky Flats, near Denver, as a federal wildlife refuge. Udall's measure, which was introduced earlier this month, would classify the 6,000-acre site as federally protected open space. Both pieces of legislation would prohibit any permanent development on the site, including the construction of any "through" roads."

Fellman took issue with those restrictions in his letters to the two federal officials.

Colorado Senator Wayne Allard (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)

"It is premature to make final decisions about the future use, ownership, and management responsibility of the site," Fellman declared in his letter to Allard. "The City of Arvada recommends that a range of options be preserved."

In his letters, Fellman declared that future management of the site should be completely turned over to local governments, because federal agencies such as the Department of Energy "do not share the interests of local residents and communities."

However, if federal legislation regarding the future disposition and management of the site were to be drafted, Fellman maintained that it should include the following:

A provision that would "allow and provide for research or educational re-use of land area in or equivalent In size and infrastructure) to the current 400-acre industrial area."

A provision that would "specify numerical cleanup levels in the Buffer Zone and Industrial Area that allow for reasonable unrestricted access and a range of options for re-use."

A provision that would "provide substantive economic considerations to adjacent communities affected by the loss of 5,000 jobs."

A provision that would "provide for substantive involvement of local governments on all issues pertaining to cleanup and reuse."

Fellman, in his correspondence, also re-wrote large portions of Udall's bill and sent it back to the Boulder Congressman.

Fellman redacted Udall's language pertaining to the ecological importance of the Rocky Flats buffer zone, adding his own paragraph that authorizes the establishment of a research or educational facility on the site.

Colorado Congressman Mark Udall (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)

The Arvada mayor also incorporated into Udall's bill a land swap provision that would allow that development to be established anywhere on the 6,000 acre parcel, as well as a measure that would authorize the construction of a major highway across any portion of the site.

David Abelson, executive director of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, said that the issues raised by Fellman and the City of Arvada are "clearly inconsistent with the preferences of the RFCLOG board of directors, six local governments, a United States Senator, a United States Congressman, the Colorado Attorney General and the governor."

"The City of Arvada is proposing to turn some portion of the Rocky Flats buffer zone into industrial use, and that is inconsistent with the long stated desires of the community," said Abelson.

Boulder County Commissioner Paul Danish, Boulder County's representative to RFCLOG, was more frank in his assessment of the proposals articulated by Fellman and the City of Arvada.

"They said last February that they were going to march to the beat of a different drummer, but somehow I never imagined that it was going to be Smokey the Bear who's beating the drum for them," quipped Danish. "It ain't exactly a confidence-building measure."

Danish said that he was particularly concerned by Fellman's proposal to have the management of Rocky Flats assumed by local governments.

"The biggest concern I have is that I think Rocky Flats is the federal government's responsibility, and I hope they keep that responsibility in perpetuity, or until there is zero chance of contamination from the property," Danish said. "I would strongly oppose turning Rocky Flats over to local governments that do not have the resources to manage something that has the kind of unknown risks that are out there."

Specifically, Danish said he was alarmed by the provision that would allow for the establishment of a 400-acre "research" or educational" facility on the site.

"It's obviously an ambiguous, 'Clinton-esque' term - what does he mean by 'research' or 'education?'" Danish asked. "To give some sense of just how intense that could be, the campus of the University of Colorado - which has over 25,000 students and 6,00 staff members - is 300 acres. If the research consists of studying the Preble's jumping mouse or other unique species that might be found on Rocky Flats, that isn't much of an impact. But if the research is something like the Stanford research center or Los Alamos National Laboratory, that's a very different kettle of fish."

Danish also had questions about the transportation related changes that Fellman proposed be made to Udall's bill.

"That opens the possibility of highways designed to serve development," Danish said. "Let's put it this way - it's preserving the option of highways designed to serve development that would be preserved when we preserve another option - and there's a little too much option preservation in there for my liking."

ENS has also learned that the City of Arvada has hired Patton & Boggs, a high powered Washington based lobbying firm, to represent it in matters pertaining to the disposition of Rocky Flats and other federal issues.

"I assume they're not doing that in order to achieve a lower level of use than has been proposed in the Allard and Udall bills," Danish said.

Fellman told ENS that Danish and other critics had the misconstrued the intent of his letters.

"Paul Danish has told me to my face that he doesn't believe me when I say that we're not looking to develop Rocky Flats," Fellman said. "He's a little hesitant to say I'm a liar, but when Arvada says we're not interested in economic development, their position is that they don't believe us.

"I can't stress this enough - we are not looking for economic development or economic re-use at Rocky Flats," Fellman added. "There is the potential for new ideas that we haven't thought of yet, that might relate to alternative energy or some kind of educational or research issues. We just raised that [in the letters] because we think its good policy."

Fellman said that it would be unwise to pass federal legislation now that restricts how Rocky Flats could be utilized a full six years before the facility is scheduled to be closed.

Waste Treatment Control room at Rocky Flats (Photo courtesy Rocky Flats)

Fellman was also quick to reject criticism of the proposed 400 acre research/educational site. The Arvada mayor said that the number is insignificant.

"We had to pick some number, or everyone would have said, 'Oh my god, they want to develop the whole 6,000 acres!'" Fellman said. "I didn't spend more than two seconds thinking about that number. It just strikes me as amusing that people on this coalition have so little trust for anything that Arvada does. If we hadn't put any limitation on there. we'd be accused of wanting to develop the whole 6,000 acres."

Fellman also denied that he was trying to pave the way for the construction of a major highway through the middle of the Rocky Flats buffer zone by proposing changes to Udall's bill.

"That wasn't our intention at all," Fellman said. "We're not asking for any kind of corridor through the middle of the site - we're talking about some kind of corridor adjacent to the site, wherever it is determined is the best place to go."

Fellman also defended the hiring of Patton & Boggs, noting that lots of cities hire lobbying firms.

"We hired Patton Boggs to represent us on federal issues, not specifically Rocky Flats," he said. "We have a wide range of federal issues that we're dealing with. They're a respected firm with a lot of Washington connections."

Udall, reached by telephone in Washington, said he would study Fellman's letter carefully.

"I appreciate Arvada's continued involvement in the discussion of the future uses at Rocky Flats," Udall said. "We'll respond at an appropriate time."

Tanks for storage Of plutonium-containing solutions. (Photo courtesy Rocky Flats)

The Rocky Flats Plant, established in 1951, was a top-secret weapons production plant. The Plant manufactured triggers for use in nuclear weapons and purified plutonium recovered from retired weapons. Activities at the Plant included production, stockpile maintenance, and retirement and dismantlement.

Rocky Flats produced most of the plutonium triggers used in nuclear weapons from 1953 to 1964, and all of the triggers produced from 1964 until 1989, when production was suspended.

In addition to production processes, the Rocky Flats specialized in research concerning the properties of many materials that were not widely used in other industries, including plutonium, uranium, beryllium, and tritium.

----

LOCAL MAYOR PROMOTES ROCKY FLATS NUCLEAR WEAPONS SITE FOR RESEARCH OR SCHOOL

By Brian Hansen ARVADA, Colorado, June 26, 2000 (ENS) - The now mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant - where the soil is still contaminated in spots with high levels of plutonium and other dangerous materials - might make a fine place to build a 400-acre research park or educational facility after it closes in a few years. For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-26-02.html

-------- idaho

USA Today
06/26/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/idmain.htm

Idaho Idaho Falls - A government panel looking at alternatives to an incinerator that would process plutonium-contaminated waste won't include environmental critics. The group Keep Yellowstone Free says it won't participate because the panel is not made up of qualified scientists. The panel was created as part of a settlement reached between the government and western Wyoming environmental groups over construction of radioactive waste processing facilities at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

-------- kentucky

Paducah plant set up secret radiation tests

June 26, 2000
Associated Press
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/jun00/328018.html

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Managers of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant were concerned that workers were being harmed by radioactive dust as far back as 40 years ago, so much so that they secretly arranged for tests on laboratory animals.

Fearing adverse publicity, some managers resisted government recommendations that they screen the workers for neptunium, a dangerous contaminant in the dust.

Documents obtained by The Courier-Journal of Louisville through the Freedom of Information Act show that over the years, officials of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant continued to discuss the hazards of various radioactive materials in the plant but never told workers of their concerns.

In the early 1980s, managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who became ill with leukemia and allied diseases.

It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials that can cause cancer.

The highly radioactive elements came into the plant as contaminants in the spent nuclear fuel the plant re- energized from 1953 to 1977. During production, the contaminants were spread as fine dust throughout the tubing in the processing equipment.

Workers risked exposure during a neptunium-recovery project from 1958 to 1962. A June 1, 2000, draft report, in which the U.S. Department of Energy tracked the path of radioactive materials through the plant, said neptunium exceeded allowable limits in air samples taken during the recovery operation in 1959.

"There is no indication that respiratory protection was used during these activities,'' it said. "Urine samples collected and sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis tested positive for neptunium.''

Workers also faced a high risk in the feed plant, where they prepared uranium for processing, and in maintenance shops when they were replacing pieces of equipment.

Managers for Union Carbide -- the company that then ran the federal government's diffusion plants near Paducah; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- were concerned about workers being exposed to neptunium, according to records released to The Courier-Journal.

L.B. Emlet, production manager for the uranium plants, wrote the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959 requesting animal studies on how workers metabolized neptunium.

"We find some data to indicate a discrepancy in the presently accepted excretion rate by the human organism,'' Emlet wrote. "We recommend that you initiate studies on this problem at some appropriate site.''

----

Plant managers secretly arranged for radiation tests on animals

June 26, 2000
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/012818.htm

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Managers of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant were concerned that workers were being harmed by radioactive dust as far back as 40 years ago, so much so that they secretly arranged for tests on laboratory animals. Fearing adverse publicity and trouble with the union, some managers resisted government recommendations that they screen the workers for neptunium, a dangerous contaminant in the dust.

Documents obtained by The Courier-Journal through the Freedom of Information Act show that over the years, officials of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant continued to discuss the hazards of various radioactive materials in the plant but never told workers of their concerns.

In the early 1980s, managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who had gotten leukemia and allied diseases.

It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials which can cause cancer.

``Workers feel betrayed, and they're angry that these people put their health at risk,'' said David Fuller, president of local 5-550 of the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. ``Workers resent the fact (that the government) decided to risk their health without telling them.''

The highly radioactive elements came into the plant as contaminants in the spent nuclear fuel the plant re-energized from 1953 to 1977. During production, the contaminants were spread as fine dust throughout the miles of tubing in the processing equipment.

Workers risked exposure during a neptunium-recovery project from 1958 to 1962. A June 1, 2000, draft report, in which the U.S. Department of Energy tracked the path of radioactive materials through the plant, said neptunium exceeded allowable limits in air samples taken during the recovery operation in 1959.

``There is no indication that respiratory protection was used during these activities,'' said the report, which The Courier-Journal obtained. ``Urine samples collected and sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis tested positive for neptunium.''

Workers also faced a high risk in the feed plant, where they prepared uranium for processing, and in maintenance shops when they were replacing pieces of equipment.

``The units must be cut open with torches,'' said a 1960 memo from an Atomic Energy Commission medical-research official. ``The pieces certainly can't be handled gently or contained very readily because they are too massive.''

Managers for Union Carbide -- the company that then ran the federal government's diffusion plants near Paducah; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- knew and were concerned about workers' being exposed to neptunium, according to records released to The Courier-Journal under the Freedom of Information Act.

L.B. Emlet, production manager for the uranium plants, wrote the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959 requesting animal studies on how workers metabolized neptunium.

``We find some data to indicate a discrepancy in the presently accepted excretion rate by the human organism,'' Emlet wrote. ``We recommend that you initiate studies on this problem at some appropriate site.''

The following year, Richard C. Baker, a radiation-protection official at the Paducah plant, wrote a memo about a ``neptunium biology research project'' to the plant's medical director, Dr. A. Neal Ward. Baker said early animal-test results at the government's Hanford Laboratories in Washington state showed ``evidence of chemical rather than radiological toxicity'' after animals breathed high concentrations of ``Paducah dust.''

In 1961, Ward wrote in a memo that he had presented a summary of the ``problem of the neptunium contaminated process equipment at the Paducah plant'' to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Maryland. Ward suggested that ``further animal studies be conducted at Hanford.''

Just a year earlier, Ward had been among the Paducah managers resisting neptunium testing of workers, according to the 1960 memo from Dr. Bruner of the AEC. Bruner wrote that Ward and others ``were not receptive to the idea of sending 8 to 10 of the men'' with the most radiation in their urine to Oak Ridge for testing with a wholebody radiation counter.

``There are possibly 300 people at Paducah who should be checked out,'' Bruner wrote, ``but they hesitate to precede (sic) to intensive studies because of the union's use of this as an excuse for hazard pay.''

He added that he had urged Ward to obtain tissue samples from any potentially contaminated workers who die, so they could be tested for radiation, ``but I am afraid the policy at this plant is to be wary of the unions and any unfavorable public relations.''

The resistance to testing apparently faded by the mid-1960s. In a 1966 memo, Baker reported that whole-body counts of some workers had confirmed ``low exposure levels'' to neptunium -- though workers have said they were not told the results of such testing.

The memo said studies of rats exposed to dust containing small amounts of neptunium showed that they retained little of the element and rapidly cleared it from their lungs, suggesting it wasn't a health threat.

But Baker went on to note that higher levels of exposure to neptunium were possible in other ``phases of handling recycling of high burn-up nuclear fuel.''

In fact, the Energy Department reported earlier this year that its investigators had found documents indicating some Paducah workers received high-level exposure to neptunium.

In 1985, an Energy Department task force recommended a study to determine whether Paducah workers were exposed to plutonium, but it was never done.

----

Is contamination being underreported?

By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_back.html

PADUCAH, Ky. -- There is a sharp disagreement among state officials about whether the federal government is properly assessing contamination around the Paducah plant.

On one side, a state environmental official says that for years, the U.S. Department of Energy has been reporting radiological and metal contamination in a way that can minimize threats to the environment and public.

Albert Westerman, manager of the risk--assess-ment branch of the Kentucky Division of Environmental Services, said the DOE is in some cases using flawed background readings to come up with contamination measurements.

Kentucky's top radiation-safety official disputes Westerman's contention, as does the Energy Department.

To know whether radioactivity and metal concentrations are higher than those naturally occurring, scientists compare the readings of soil, water and air samples to "background" levels -- which are supposed to reflect the small amounts of radiation and metals normally found in Western Kentucky. Samples with readings higher than background levels mean there is contamination.

Westerman said in interviews last week that the DOE has distorted its measurements by using areas contaminated by the plant to determine the "background" levels -- including locations at the plant fence.

In a 1994 memorandum, he wrote: "Background level information has essentially only been collected from within (a contaminated) five mile radius; therefore, all comparisons to the background or reference sites are meaningless."

Last week, he said the presence of technetium, a man-made radioactive element, in the DOE's background samples is evidence that they were taken from a contaminated area.

Technetium, which does not naturally occur, shouldn't be in background samples, he said, because DOE is "the only show in town . . . that has that stuff."

Similarly, Westerman's 1994 memo criticized the DOE for using a Tennessee creek hundreds of miles away as a "reference site" for assessing PCB contamination in fish from creeks near the Paducah plant.

But John Volpe, manager of the state Radiation Health and Toxic Agents Branch of the Cabinet for Health Services, said his agency believes the DOE's background levels were "consistent for the earth's crust" in the Paducah region.

When DOE determined background levels in soil in 1997, it took samples from a 6-by-12-mile area west-northwest of the plant, a place considered upwind and less likely to have been affected by contamination from the plant.

Greg Cook, a spokesman for the DOE's cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., said the company "would not propose using any kind of background levels taken from suspect areas."

----

Monitoring gaps let hazards go undetected
Radiation left plant in air, water, vehicles, clothes

By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_mon.html

This air monitor and two others have been newly installed north of Drum Mountain. Although there are 162 air monitors in four buildings at the plant, the most populated parts of Paducah and other communities in the area -- representing up to 60,000 people -- are unprotected by air monitors.

C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger PADUCAH, Ky. -- Spotty monitoring of the air, water, soil and vegetation around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant could be letting radioactive and chemical contamination spread undetected.

A Courier-Journal review of government documents and interviews with state and federal officials suggest that over the decades there has been an ineffective investigation of the dangers the plant poses outside the gates.

For example, tests for contamination in ground water and animals have not looked for most radioactive elements that are present at the plant, including plutonium.

Areas with the heaviest population, including Paducah and nearby communities, lack air monitors to detect radiation.

And, no radiation survey has been conducted despite evidence that:

Contaminated vehicles, people and their clothing left the uranium plant unimpeded.

Used vehicles were sold to the public from the plant without being routinely and thoroughly checked for radiation.

At least 66 tons of uranium was released into the air between 1952 and 1990.

Chemicals known to be radioactive or otherwise hazardous were dumped at sites away from the plant. The absence of monitoring in populated areas needs to be re-examined, David Michaels, the U.S. Department of Energy's assistant secretary for the environment, safety and health, said earlier this month.

"We should be working with public health agencies and the (federal) Health and Human Services Department, and the state of Kentucky and community groups to set some priorities and decide what's important to do."

CITY'S ONE MONITOR Testing is adequate, state official contends In the late 1980s, air monitoring for radiation in the city of Paducah consisted of instruments at a single house near Noble Park.

Now, although there are 162 air monitors in four plant process buildings operated by the United States Enrichment Corp., the most populated parts of Paducah and other communities in the area -- representing up to 60,000 people -- are unprotected by air monitors.

Seven state air monitors and five USEC air monitors have been set up close to the plant. (The state and USEC also each have one monitor farther from the plant for data comparisons.)

But by the state's own admission in a 1996 report, even those monitors, because of where they are, can detect only about 33 percent of the uranium and 70 percent to 80 percent of the technetium-99 discharged from plant operations.

The locations weren't changed, the report said, "because of contractual limitations."

John Volpe, manager of Kentucky's Radiation Health and Toxic Agents Branch, said he disagreed with the report's assessment.

More recent work by the Department of Energy, done in the past year, "indicates they are in acceptable locations," he said. "The monitors will catch (radiation) sources out there."

This assumes the monitors are always on. The Courier-Journal discovered last summer that the monitors had been turned off for a time because there was no one to record their data.

"I think they don't want to know," said Merryman Kemp, a Paducah resident and businesswoman who is on the citizens advisory board for the plant.

Volpe and other state officials insist there is no need to monitor in Paducah because there is no danger.

"I wouldn't have a bit of a problem taking my family and living on Ogden Landing Road (north of the plant)," he said.

GROUND WATER Studies seek few radioactive substances Possible radiation hazards in everything from water to vacant lots to vehicles also have gone undetected because of limited monitoring.

Bob Gross, left, and Jimmy Hicks, technicians with a consulting firm, took samples from a well in the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area this month to test for some contaminants.

C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger Ground-water testing has generally focused on the two known contaminants, because that allows scientists to track the spread of the underground pollution. Other than technetium, specific radioactive substances usually haven't been included in ground-water surveys.

Likewise, many animal studies have not tested for most radio-nuclides, according to information obtained under the state open-record law. The reason, according to UK scientists who did water and animal studies, was that government officials told them that radioactive contaminants other than technetium weren't a significant problem in the environment.

That view is changing in the aftermath of publicity in the past year about plutonium and other highly radioactive contaminants at the plant.

Alan Fryar, an assistant professor in the University of Kentucky's Department of Geological Sciences, said he plans to begin sampling ground water near the plant this summer for radioactive contaminants, including plutonium.

And no one has tested a lot on Palestine School Road about a mile and a half from the plant, though an aerial survey in 1990 found elevated radiation emissions there.

Once a site for storing radioactive cylinders of uranium, the lot has not been used in several years. The site is fenced, but the fence has holes in it, and there are now houses within 100 yards.

In response to Courier-Journal questions about the lot, Volpe said the state will conduct some tests.

In May, the citizens advisory board proposed to the DOE that people on selected land within 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) of the plant -- the distance at which traces of plutonium were found in 1989 -- should be eligible for government grants to test soil, water, vegetation and themselves.

In 1989 traces of neptunium were found in apples grown near the plant, and occasional tests have turned up traces of other radioactive elements in vegetables and crops.

Vegetables haven't been checked for radiation since 1995. "We weren't seeing anything," Volpe said.

A 1996 UK report, however, said Volpe's radiation-control program "should continue monitoring vegetables for Tc-99 (technetium) and other radio-nuclides . . . (for) the foreseeable future."

"We'd be glad to do anybody's gardens," Volpe said.

Efforts also have not been made to track down contaminated vehicles that may have been sold by the plant until the late 1980s.

In a June 1 draft report obtained by the newspaper, the Energy Department said, "Vehicle floorboards and seats were also spot-checked before sale to the public, but the process was informal and was not required by procedure. . . . It is possible that contaminated items were released to various parties during public sales."

Last Friday, Greg Cook, a spokesman for the department's cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., said the issue of possibly contaminated vehicles, and what to do about them, had arisen among company officials in the past week.

ACROSS THE RIVER Illinois official says he didn't get the message Another monitoring problem has been caused by a breakdown in communication.

A 1997 Kentucky report recommended that the DOE and environmental agencies check the municipal wells across the river in Metropolis, Ill., to make sure ground-water contamination from the Paducah plant was not a threat.

It turned out that no one ever talked to Rick Cobb, manager of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's ground--water section.

Mark Donham, a member of the citizens' board who lives in Brookport, Ill., said he contacted the Illinois EPA about the testing, but Cobb said he didn't learn of the recommendation to check the Metropolis wells until a few weeks ago, from The Courier-Journal.

"We didn't know anything about that," he said. "Just knowing about this, we might want to get additional data from those wells."

Cobb said his latest samples were 5 years old.

The state of Kentucky approached the city about visiting the wells, but the Metropolis mayor's office denied access, according to Jack Conway, who heads Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton's interagency task force on the Paducah plant.

But Mayor Beth Clanahan said she has not denied Kentucky access to the wells, and she doesn't think her predecessor, Bill Kommer, did either. She was Kommer's administrative assistant until she became mayor in 1997.

"I think I would remember something like that," she said. "We have since told them (the Kentucky officials) they are welcome to come over and test. . . . Just let us know when they are coming, and we'll be there, too."

The city tested the wells this spring and "we found nothing," Clanahan said. "Everything's fine."

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Raccoons show scientists contaminants are accumulating

By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_bio.html

Because they eat almost anything, raccoons trapped at and near the plant give scientists valuable information.

Photo courtesy of Philip N. Smith PADUCAH, Ky. -- One morning in the spring of 1998, scientists checking a trap northeast of the uranium plant found an grizzled old raccoon inside.

The 11-pound animal, nicknamed Old Snaggletooth by researchers, was sedated and scanned for radiation.

Up near his neck, he registered radiation counts that were three times those of raccoons far from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. While the amount wasn't lethal, it clearly indicated he had taken in radioactive materials from the plant.

The $325,000 bioaccumulation study conducted by Texas Tech University found that more than half of 44 raccoons examined had above-normal radiation emissions. Five raccoons' readings were double the normal background levels.

In addition, many raccoons showed significant levels of PCBs, which cause cancer in animals.

The findings are significant, because raccoons eat almost anything, so if there is contamination low in the food chain, it would show up in them.

Bioaccumulation, the way in which tiny amounts of deadly poisons can be consumed by creatures, then move up the food chain and concentrate in larger animals, has gotten little emphasis at Paducah.

But it has potentially grave implications for humans and the environment.

Philip N. Smith was born and raised 20 minutes from the plant and trained his bird dogs in the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area outside the plant fences.

He also was involved in the study of the raccoons as part of his Ph.D. work for Texas Tech, where he is a research assistant professor.

"There are two concerns," Smith said. "The first is with human health: Is there a potential for movement (of contamination) into humans? Considering the fact that you have a wildlife refuge surrounding the plant where hunting is very common -- I've done it: I've quail-hunted and I've rabbit-hunted there -- that has to be a concern."

"The second concern is with the ecology surrounding the plant," he said. "Do these compounds result in altered survival, altered fitness and altered reproductive capability of these organisms?"

The answers are unknown.

"To tell you the truth, there's still not enough data to tell," said Wayne Davis, chief of the environmental section of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

The study was supposed to pursue the bioaccumulation inquiry for two more years, but Bechtel Jacobs Corp., the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental contractor at the plant, stopped funding the project after the first year.

Walter Perry, spokesman for the DOE at its office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said the raccoon money was used instead to investigate zinc contamination at one of the plant's discharge points. The DOE was able to do some work to prevent additional contamination, he said.

Perry said wildlife on the entire site will be studied.

Scientists will begin taking hair samples from bats this summer to see whether they are storing contamination, Davis said.

"Bats in general (eat) insects heavily, so if the insects are contaminated, bats are a logical receptor," Davis explained.

The Texas Tech researchers did not try to determine what substance produced the radiation readings in the raccoons. Smith said the animals may have ingested the radiation either through food or by grooming themselves after being in contaminated places on or around the plant grounds.

In fact, the radiation scans were added on to what was primarily a study of PCB contamination.

Old Snaggletooth didn't test very high for PCBs. But some of his neighbors did. Three female raccoons living on the east side of the plant had the highest PCB readings; one of the three was living in a building that is closed and is known to be contaminated.

While it was clear that the Paducah raccoons were exposed to PCBs, the scientists also found that some of the raccoons used for comparison, which were trapped at the Ballard Wildlife Management Area about a dozen miles northwest of the plant, also showed high levels of PCBs. Smith believes the Ballard animals probably got contaminants from the Ohio River, which could have received them from a number of places besides the uranium plant.

The scientists also found elevated amounts of metals in some raccoons, both at Paducah and at the Ballard location.

The raccoon studies, along with several conducted on fish, show evidence of bioaccumulation of contaminants, Davis said.

"The question now is: Is it an incidental thing, is it localized, or is it widespread?" he said. "There are a lot of questions that need to be answered."

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Cleanup: Elusive, terribly expensive
Current plan excludes some enormous tasks

By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_clen.html

Workers with protective gear and heavy equipment began to clean up Drum Mountain Friday afternoon. That huge task is just one of many involving contaminants.

Photo: Jim Roshan Special to the C-J PADUCAH, Ky. -- By 2070, people will most likely have set foot on Mars, elected a woman president and conquered cancer.

But the U.S. Department of Energy, or whatever it's called by then, will still be watching over at least part of the 3,400-acre Paducah uranium-plant site.

The Energy Department or contract employees will be cutting the grass and fixing fences, and, more important, monitoring the barren property for residual contamination from operations begun 118 years before to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants.

The stark fact is that the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant isn't likely to be cleaned up, in the way most people understand the term, by the 2010 deadline. And it's not going to be anything more than an industrial site for decades to come.

The DOE has estimated it will cost $1.3 billion to eliminate all the contamination. Federal investigators recently questioned that estimate after finding that it left out much cleanup work. And state officials privately say that figure could more than triple.

Putting a final price tag on the cleanup will be impossible until officials know exactly what is on the site; whether it is spreading; what danger it poses; and what can be done to stop the contamination and to mitigate any environmental effects.

"There has been no thorough, independent review of the extent of air, land and water contamination," said Tom FitzGerald, an environmental lawyer and director of the Kentucky Resources Council. And that's the only way to know that the cleanup would fully protect off-site areas, he said.

Further complicating matters is the fact that significant portions of the contamination can't be attacked until the plant closes. Also, there are questions about the effectiveness of some cleanup methods.

"You're dealing with waste materials that will continue to be a significant environmental problem well beyond our lives," FitzGerald said.

DEADLINES, DOLLARS Critics say DOE budgets too little time, money The 2010 deadline the state has set for the Energy Department to clean up the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is the date by which Kentucky wants contaminated scrap metal and other waste removed, vacant buildings knocked down, buried waste hauled away and sources of pollution attacked.

Yet even if all that happens -- a question mark in itself -- the whole cleanup job at Paducah is very likely going to take much longer.

The 3,400-acre Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, seen from the air May 31, will take much longer to clean up than it did to build. One reason is that 496,000 tons of radioactive uranium hexaflouride is stored there.

C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger Right now, the scope, cost and length of the cleanup are only partially known. All of those factors -- but especially cost -- are going to dictate the pace of the cleanup work.

The DOE estimates that repairing the vast environmental damage will cost $1.3 billion. That includes removing or containing contamination of the ground water, surface water, soil and buried wastes, as well as treating and disposing of 52,000 drums of mixed waste, and decontaminating and demolishing two large, unused buildings.

The state puts the number at $2 billion, adding in the cost of treating and removing 37,000 cylinders of depleted uranium now stored at the site. In the end, though, some officials in Frankfort say, the final cost of cleanup could be as much as $4 billion.

"Dollars are what's gonna talk," said Rob Daniel, director of the state's Division of Waste Management, who said spending will need to be "well over $100 million a year."

So far, the nearly $400 million in federal money spent on cleanup at the site has cleaned up almost nothing. According to the Energy Department, much of that spending went to finding out what contaminants are at the site, and to trying to contain the most serious threats to worker and public health, like treatment of the plumes of ground water fouled with trichloroethylene and radioactive technetium.

Glossary Depleted or spent uranium: A byproduct of the enrichment process, this is a solid compound of unusable uranium and fluoride. It is stored in cylinders at the plant. Dosimeter: A tag worn to measure a person's exposure to radiation -- the dose received. Gaseous diffusion: A process that converts natural uranium into enriched uranium, which can be used either in weapons or as fuel for nuclear power plants. The process separates out the uranium-238 isotope, increasing the concentration of uranium-235, the form of uranium that fuels nuclear reactions. Hazardous waste: Toxic chemicals and metals, as well as scrap, old equipment, soil and other materials contaminated with these toxic substances. Mixed waste: A combination of hazardous and radioactive waste. Pyrophoric uranium: Uranium shavings that ignite if exposed to air or water. Radioactive waste: Unusable material -- including chemicals, used parts, soil, water, clothing, tools and scrap -- that emits radiation. Transuranic elements: Eleven elements, all radioactive and not naturally occurring, with atomic numbers greater than 92. They are neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and lawrencium.

Critics say too much time has been lost, allowing contaminants to spread.

"The problem is serious," acknowledged Wendell Seaborg, the DOE's site manager at Paducah. "We may have tried too hard to know too much when we got started."

Now, under pressure from a very dissatisfied and impatient Kentucky delegation in Congress, the Clinton administration has begun funneling more money to Paducah with the aim of achieving noticeable cleanup at a site that has been sickening workers and contaminating the soil, water, air, animals and plants for almost five decades.

The first visible result of that increased spending is the start of the removal of Drum Mountain, a vast, 8,000-ton pile of crushed and contaminated barrels. The work began Friday.

But congressional investigators and Kentucky officials say still more money is needed to meet the 2010 deadline. The General Accounting Office, the non-partisan auditing arm of Congress, says that $124 million a year is needed, almost $50 million more than will be spent this year.

"2010 is realistic with a significant increase of federal funding for the cleanup job and increased focus from the Department of Energy," said Jack Conway, who heads Gov. Paul Patton's interagency task force on the Paducah plant."

GLARING OMISSIONS Cleanup plan leaves out some enormous problems Even if the 2010 deadline is met, the plant site would not really be clean.

The plant continues to produce radioactive waste and other contaminants, and the cavernous buildings and huge gaseous-diffusion equipment would eventually have to be cleaned and removed -- at an estimated cost of $1 billion.

And as long as the plant continues to operate, it may be impossible to reach the source of the contaminants leaking into the ground water. That source is believed to be under a building still in use.

Federal and state officials also have deep disagreements -- some of them being fought out in court -- over how "clean" the Paducah site should be.

The Energy Department and the state, for example, disagree over what level of radioactivity would be acceptable after the site is cleaned up. The DOE wants to leave some waste that the state wants removed.

There are numerous other items that are not reflected in the Energy Department cleanup plans but were found earlier this year by investigators from the General Accounting Office:

The 496,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride stored in canisters on the site need to be converted to a more stable form and removed. The cost to build and operate a conversion facility is estimated at $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion. The conversion process itself would take almost 25 years.

Sixteen unused buildings and structures have to be cleaned and removed. There are no cost or schedule estimates for such work.

A million cubic feet of scrap metal and waste stored all over the plant must be treated and removed. John Volpe, the state's top radiation-control official, said the buildings, scrap and waste could be cleaned up by the 2010 deadline -- if the DOE put that work on a fast track.

WILL METHODS WORK? Intended technology is unproven, GAO says The GAO auditors also said some cleanup projections relied on unproven technology -- for example, a plan to inject a gummy gel into the ground to intercept contaminated water underground.

If this new treatment doesn't work as planned, it actually could change the trichloroethylene (TCE), one of the two major contaminants in the water, into vinyl chloride, an even more toxic substance.

Another project calls for injecting steam underground to force the TCE back to the surface. Environmental Protection Agency officials told congressional auditors of problems with this technology at another site and said they weren't sure whether the geology under the Paducah plant would let it work there.

Existing efforts to remove contamination have already fallen short.

The "pump and treat" system that brings contaminated water to the surface, cleans it, then puts it back into the ground, didn't halt the flow of TCE and radioactive technetium to the Ohio River, nor did it stop the underground contaminants from spreading into surface streams.

Even if some of these technologies ultimately succeed, options for future uses of the site appear limited.

"This will never be an industrial site that will be . . . cleaned up where the general public would be interested in it," said Ric Ladt, chairman of the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization, who emphasized he was speaking only for himself and not for his federally funded economic-develop-ment organization.

The property could remain a uranium-enrichment plant, become some type of metal-recycling facility, or a place for heavy manufacturing that could use some of the buildings or materials already there, Ladt said.

Other possibilities include waste-water treatment or power generation, he said.

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Toxins altering life in fragile ecosystem
Official reassurances breed skepticism

By JAMES R. CARROLL and JAMES MALONE,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_env.html

This creek is closed off -- though the gate was open in May -- because of radiation. And that's not the only problem in streams: University of Kentucky scientists found the lead level multiplying.

C-J Photo: James Malone PADUCAH, Ky. -- Nearly every creature that swims, walks or flies near the Paducah uranium plant carries unseen poisons that have escaped from the nuclear-fuel factory.

>From the furtive mink to the darting sunfish to the soaring red-tailed hawk, nature's denizens now have new, lifelong companions -- chemical and radiological contamination, reports obtained by The Courier-Journal show.

Toxic chemicals have entered the Western Kentucky food chain, and abnormalities similar to birth defects have already shown up in at least one species.

A half-century of emitting, burying and dumping waste from the vast plant built to safeguard America has caused ecological damage for miles around, a 10-month investigation by the newspaper has found.

Streams, ponds, underground water, soil, plants and animals have been contaminated with some of the most dangerous chemicals known, including plutonium and dioxin.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Kentucky officials and the company that leases and runs the plant say environmental conditions at the site are improving. They note that polluted areas on plant grounds and in a surrounding wildlife area, which is used for hunting, fishing and camping, are marked and roped or fenced off.

And they have assured workers and the public that the contaminants pose no "imminent" danger.

"When I walk around that place, I am not worried for my health," said David Michaels, the assistant secretary of energy for the environment, safety and health. "At pres-ent, it (the threat to public health and workers) is extremely low. And I'm comfortable and confident saying that."

"I would not be afraid to live there," said Robert Logan, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection.

But the official judgment on the contamination is being met with deep and mounting skepticism from many plant workers, environmentalists and residents -- because much remains unknown about the extent of pollution and about past operations at the secretive plant, which was once part of the government's Cold War nuclear weapons complex.

"They are putting a soft spin on everything, the same as they've always done," said Merryman Kemp, a businesswoman who has lived in Paducah since 1965.

A member of a citizens' advisory board on the plant, she is worried that contamination is more widespread than is being admitted.

"I've been buying bottled water. I've quit eating the fruit off the two trees in my back yard," said Kemp, who lives about 10 miles from the plant. "I'd like to move."

BEYOND THE FENCE Records show pollution didn't stay within plant For nearly a year, The Courier-Journal has examined thousands of pages of public and secret government records obtained -- through state and federal freedom-of-information laws -- internal plant documents and files from lawsuits, and has interviewed state, federal and plant officials, scientists and community leaders. The findings include these:

Fish studied by University of Kentucky scientists for at least 12 years show increasing contamination with various toxic metals. A 1998 UK report found that Big Bayou Creek and other streams near the plant contain 50 to 100 times as much lead as they did a decade earlier.

Dioxin -- the potent chemical that caused cancer among the residents of New York state's Love Canal neighborhood and was so prevalent in Times Beach, Mo., the town had to be destroyed -- was found in soil samples from five drainage areas outside the plant fence in the early 1990s. The levels at Paducah weren't on the scale of Love Canal or Times Beach, but they exceeded standards the state had set for the Energy Department. The contaminated soil is now stored at the plant in more than 11,000 55-gallon drums, most of which are buried.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which cause cancer and other diseases in animals and possibly in humans, have been found at levels ranging from traces to significant concentrations in fish, hawks, mice, rats, mink, raccoons and a bobcat.

Incomplete records suggest that almost 9 ounces of highly radioactive plutonium were released into the air and water and buried at the plant, greater than the amounts released at most other Department of Energy nuclear sites. Traces of plutonium and neptunium were found in soil samples 11 years ago as far as nine miles from the plant, and traces of neptunium were found in apples, but there apparently was no further investigation.

Streams that flow off site are now believed to be carrying small amounts of radioactive material into the Ohio River, the DOE recently conceded. Though diluted by the Ohio's huge flow, radioactive substances may build up in sediment and enter the food chain.

Underground, three plumes of water contaminated with tri-chloro-ethyl-ene, a suspected carcinogen, and radioactive technetium are spreading northward from the plant, and one is believed to have reached the river. Traces of contaminants have penetrated as far as 14 stories below ground. The Paducah plant is not the worst of the sites on the nation's Superfund list -- a sort of Fortune 500 of environmental problems -- at least based on what is now known.

The West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area adjoins the uranium plant (background). Earlier this year 11 miles of rope was strung to warn of radioactive debris dumped in the wildlife area. Veterinarian Johnny Myers worries that the area will be closed if the government doesn't clean it up.

C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger But there are gaping holes in the Energy Department's data about pollution. For example, the DOE acknowledged last summer in its plan for attacking surface-water contamination that "documentation pertaining to specific releases from the (plant's) storm sewer system currently is not available."

In a February letter, the Environmental Protection Agency called the lack of information on the "primary pathways for contaminants . . . completely inappropriate."

A former top Energy Department official said he thinks the agency is concealing dangers to workers and the public. The DOE thinks it can get away with this, charged Robert Alvarez, a consultant who was formerly a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, because it perceives Paducah as comparatively remote, geographically and politically.

"I would apply what I call the East Hampton test to this," said Alvarez, referring to the swank summer resort of the rich and powerful on New York's Long Island.

"If you found this in East Hampton, do you think there would be 'no imminent danger?' "

209 TROUBLE SPOTS 'The place is unique,' U.S. energy official says Over the decades, contaminants spread from the plant through wholesale dumping and discharges of radioactive and other hazardous waste into the air and water.

So far, 209 contaminated sites have been located on plant grounds and nearby land. Earlier this year a contractor strung 11 miles of rope to warn of radioactive debris dumped in the neighboring West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area.

Wendell Seaborg, who became the DOE site manager in Paducah this year, said, "The place is unique in my experience because there was contamination in an area where the public had access."

Paducah veterinarian Johnny Myers, who runs retrievers in the wildlife area, said concerns about the contamination contributed to a 50 percent drop in attendance at a recent dog field trial.

David Evans, who trains retrievers weekly on public land near the plant, says he is not worried about the contamination.

C-J Photo: James Malone He worries the area will be closed if the government doesn't clean it up. "We have a gold mine here," he said.

David Evans has the same fear. Evans said he has trained dogs in the wildlife ara for years and has not been concerned about pollution.

He worked at the plant for seven years and his father worked there for about 30 years.

"If they show me proof of a danger, then I'd be thinking about it," he said. "My major concern is that it could close. It's the only area available to work dogs."

Disposal practices considered acceptable in the 1950s, 1960s and even into the 1970s were looser than they are today. Indeed, the dumping dated to the operations of the Kentucky Ordnance Works, an ammunition plant, on the same site during World War II. It left chunks of TNT behind.

The TNT, spread over "a few acres" in the wildlife area, is now fenced off. It is "pretty stable" but would ignite if heated, said Gary Chisholm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' district office in Louisville. "You just don't want kids or hunters picking the stuff up or walking home with it."

After the uranium plant opened, radioactive and hazardous waste, including uranium and asbestos, went into what had been a dump for construction debris, according to an Energy Department draft report dated June 1, 2000.

Air and water pollution were not much of a concern in the plant's first decades, either. All kinds of chemicals flowed into the streams from what eventually totaled 19 pipes and ditches. For example, in a report released in February on past practices at Paducah, the Energy Department said tritium, a radioactive substance used in nuclear-bomb triggers, had been found in 1991 in five drainage flows.

The report also said contaminated gases were released for decades. "The magnitude of these unmonitored releases is unknown," the DOE said. Past estimates of how much radiation reached the public are clearly "questionable," it said.

The DOE estimated, however, that 66 tons of uranium spewed from the stacks between 1952 and 1990. Although uranium is a millionth as radioactive as plutonium, it's also a toxic metal that can harm the kidneys.

The agency also said radioactively contaminated emissions apparently had been discharged into the air at night, when they were less visible.

Dumping, burying and discharging wastes on the plant grounds, plus major leaks under buildings, created another path of contamination -- into the ground water.

The underground plumes of polluted water have become well-known to hydrologists and geologists nationwide as "the mother of all plumes," said Jack Stickney, a geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey.

The chief contaminants in the plumes are trichloroethylene (TCE), a degreasing solvent that can break down into even more toxic substances such as vinyl chloride; and tech-ne-tium, a radioactive element.

TCE, the Energy Department's Michaels said, is "probably of greater concern than the radioactivity in some cases."

A June 1999 investigation conducted for DOE found severe contamination in the ground at four places around a repair and machine shop at the plant. The sites pose risks of cancer and toxicity that "exceed the accepted standards" of the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the investigators wrote.

They found TCE, PCBs, neptunium, cesium, beryllium and other toxic metals. In two of the areas -- one a fifth of a mile long and another a sixth of a mile long -- more than 6.3 million cubic feet of soil was estimated to be contaminated, enough to fill about the first 17 floors of the 102-story Empire State Building. One boring found toxic metals in soil below the water table at levels as much as 400 times normal.

Contaminants also have been spread in other ways, according to three current employees who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit last year. They allege that radioactive salt was used to melt ice on roads, employees tracked contamination off the site to their cars and homes, and vehicles transported radioactive materials right into the heart of Paducah.

New standards, monitoring and controls, as well as technological improvements, have decreased pollution from the plant, although it still occurs and sometimes exceeds what is allowed under permits from the state.

Earlier this month, the state cited United States Enrichment Corp., which leases and operates the plant, for high levels of toxic chemicals at three discharge points outside the plant fence. The releases, checked during March and April, were six to 27 times the state-allowed toxicity.

USEC must determine what is causing the high readings and report to the state by mid-July.

INCREASING EFFECTS 'Nearly every fish . . . shows signs of contamination' The contamination reaches into nearly every organism near the Paducah plant that has been tested.

Fish, for example, have been studied for at least 12 years. And the contamination in those fish is generally rising, UK studies show.

"Nearly every fish we looked at shows signs of contamination," said Wesley Birge of the University of Kentucky's School of Biological Sciences.

A 1998 report on stone-roller minnows near the plant found that "metal pollution in the Bayou Creek system, especially Big Bayou Creek, now exceeds by a considerable margin that reported in 1988."

At one site of plant effluents, not one minnow embryo survived.

The report said a host of metals -- beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, silver and zinc -- are moving downstream and were found in the fish at levels higher than in 1988. A study of the underwater vegetation minnows eat found high metal concentrations.

The DOE's annual environmental report for 1998 noted that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), "the highest potential ecological concern to fish-eating birds and mammals," were present in sunfish and stone-rollers at twice the level in fish from a less polluted creek farther from the plant, meaning the PCBs were coming from the plant. Copper, lead, selenium and uranium also were found in the fish.

The DOE report said PCB levels in fish in Little Bayou Creek "continue to be low." But fish the state recently sampled in the area had almost 10 times the state PCB standard for fish that can be safely eaten, said Albert Westerman, a branch manager in the Kentucky Division of Environmental Services.

Another UK study in 1998 found that PCBs were moving through the food chain. Some red-tailed hawks contained enough of those chemicals to perhaps decrease the hawk population in the plant area. A 1997 Clemson University study showed that white-footed mice and marsh rice rats collected around the uranium plant also contained PCBs. The contamination also showed up in the livers and kidneys of minks.

PCBs also have been found in raccoons and a bobcat. Copper, iron, manganese and zinc have been detected in rabbits. The muscles and livers of some deer have revealed exposure to silver, beryllium, nickel and vanadium.

Radioactive material, too, has been found in animals on the site and around the plant. A 1990 DOE inspection report states that trace quantities of neptunium were found in deer, rabbits, and squirrels. Other annual environmental reports tell of finding uranium, strontium, technetium and, starting in 1993, plutonium in deer.

The 1998 UK minnow study found so much toxic metal in the water and sediment of streams near the plant that "metal pollution may pose a threat to environmental health as far downstream as the Bayou Creek confluence with the Ohio River." Such spreading contamination should be given "high priority," the study said.

The implications for life in the Ohio River are obvious, said Birge, one of the authors of the minnow study.

"There's little doubt the Ohio River is receiving contaminants," he said. "That means you will see further downstream sediment contamination in fish."

Most ominous are the abnormalities found in one type of tiny insect.

A 1992 environmental report by UK said that places where eyes form on the larvae of midges sometimes weren't properly defined, were fused together or were missing. In some cases, the eyes were forming in the wrong places, the study found.

"In humans, we would call it birth defects," Birge said.

At one location on Big Bayou Creek, a third of the larvae had eyespot abnormalities. At six other locations, between 6 percent and 17 percent of larvae were abnormal.

But no studies have been done around Paducah to determine whether the pollution is causing genetic mutations, Birge said. That would be more serious, because animals pass such changes on to their offspring.

The DOE's Michaels said in an interview that the contamination is insufficient to have a significant impact on wildlife.

"My sense is that none of the exposures are at any level where we can expect any sort of genetic shift in the biota, in the flora and the fauna," said Michaels, who is an epidemiologist with 20 years' experience dealing with occupational- and environmental-health issues.

"I think the bigger concern is that the contamination of either animals or plants will lead to human disease. And that's the reason we try to control that."

DIOXIN Toxin-laced wood drew salvage hunters to dump One of the most deadly carcinogens known also has leached from the plant.

Dioxin was in wood preservative used on the redwood linings of cooling towers at the Paducah plant, according to Greg Cook, spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the DOE's environmental contractor.

Records of 1986 tests on the wood show dioxin was not one of the substances looked for. The wood was put in landfills at the plant.

The landfills were accessible to the public and the dioxin-laced redwood "attracted salvaging from the public and possibly workers," said the Energy Department's June 1 draft report.

The dioxin from the wood had contaminated enough soil at four plant sites by 1990 that the state required the soil to be excavated and put in drums. The dirt contained as much as 4.5 times the dioxin that the state allowed.

Of the more than 11,000 barrels of dioxin-contaminated soil, about 3,000 are stored above ground, primarily because they also contain radioactive contaminants. The rest of the drums of soil were crushed and put into a landfill at the plant.

USEC checked for dioxin in its effluents in 1994, 1997 and 1999 and found nothing, according to company spokeswoman Georgann Lookofsky.

Bechtel's Cook said the Energy Department has found no spread of dioxin contamination, either.

Animal studies have shown that even at extremely low levels, in parts per trillion, dioxin causes reproductive and immunological disorders as well as damage to growth glands and the liver.

PLUTONIUM 9 ounces are missing; traces are in soil, water Eleven years ago, traces of plutonium and another highly radioactive element, neptunium, were detected in soil 8 miles and 9.3 miles from the site.

The samples were taken at locations south and west of the plant. The wind rarely blows in those directions over the plant. No samples were taken at similar distances in other directions from the plant.

A 1990 internal memo from DOE's Oak Ridge office said "the significance of trace quantities of trans-uran-ics in the environment did not appear to have been fully evaluated."

The memo said traces of neptunium also were found in apples grown nearby. Radioactive substances also have shown up in vegetable gardens and crops near the plant. In 1992 Kentucky scientists detected radioactive technetium in turnip greens, beets, lettuce, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, corn and squash.

Plutonium, often referred to as the world's deadliest poison, came into Paducah in minute quantities as an accidental byproduct of "impure" uranium that had been used to fuel reactors that made plutonium at other DOE facilities. The DOE estimated the total amount of plutonium at Paducah through the years at 328 grams, or 11.6 ounces.

The whereabouts of three-quarters of that plutonium, almost 9 ounces, is unknown, other than evidence of it in the environment.

In its February report on Paducah, the DOE acknowledged that plutonium and neptunium were released into surface water, especially from 1956 to 1970, and that the amounts were "significantly" underestimated. The department did not say by how much.

Traces of plutonium also were found in ground water outside the plant fence, the DOE said last October.

The February report said plutonium and neptunium also could have been released into the air, though such releases were "considered to be insignificant." However, the DOE has said there was no specific monitoring for air emissions of those two elements.

The 11.6 ounces of plutonium that passed through the plant is what could reasonably be inferred from the plant's poor record-keeping. Alvarez said that number is just a guess. A draft DOE report obtained this month by The Courier-Journal, however, said a new analysis confirmed the accuracy of the earlier estimate.

Plutonium is so dangerous that inhaling as little as 3 millionths of an ounce -- the weight of just one of 6,250 equal slices of an aspirin tablet -- would guarantee fatal lung cancer in a human being.

Put another way, the 11.6 ounces of plutonium known to have passed through the Paducah plant was enough to kill more than 4.1 million people -- more than all the men, women and children in Kentucky -- if they each had inhaled just that speck.

"You can expect that there was probably some exposure to the public from these radio-nuclides that was avoidable," said Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Washington.

"It doesn't matter how little plutonium there is in the body; no one wants it there. Once you inhale it, it's there for a long time and gets incorporated into the bones."

----

Salvation came with a price Uranium plant went from godsend to nightmare

Evansville Courier & Press
06/26/00
By The Associated Press
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200006/26+salvation062600_news.html+20000626

When the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission decided in 1951 to build a gaseous-diffusion plant to enrich uranium on 5,000 acres of swampy land in Western Kentucky, it was a godsend to the residents of Paducah.

The Ohio River city was still struggling to get back on its feet from the devastating 1937 floods. The plant, however, changed all that.

Overnight, Paducah became one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. Residents took to calling it "Boomtown," and Life magazine reportedly came to do a photo essay.

"It turned the community on its ear," said John E.L. Robertson, a local historian and retired professor. "It got Paducah moving."

But Paducah's salvation also came with a price.

Fifty years after welcoming the uranium plant into their community, residents are beginning to believe the unthinkable: that their patriotic toil at the height of the Cold War has created a toxic, radioactive badland in their midst.

Though federal and state officials have reassured workers and the public that the contamination poses no "imminent" danger, a 10-month investigation by The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., shows there are many reasons to be troubled.

Neither the companies that have operated the plant nor the U.S. Department of Energy has given the public a clear picture of the scope and virulence of the problems arising from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors.

Sloppy safety practices, concealed health concerns, and decades of ignorance, expediency and poor oversight have left workers, nearby wildlife and the land itself damaged by chemical and radioactive toxins.

Contamination from radioactive and hazardous chemicals, including plutonium, has spread well beyond the plant's chain-link fences. Biological abnormalities have been found in one species of insect, and disease-causing PCBs and toxic metals are moving through the animal food chain.

Dozens of former workers have lung damage that has been partly attributed to inhaling asbestos and other chemicals on the job.

In the 1980s, as wells were capped because the drinking water had become contaminated and suspicions grew over worker illnesses and deaths, a few began to buck the taboo against questioning the plant.

Plant managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who had gotten leukemia and allied diseases.

It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials which can cause cancer.

"Workers feel betrayed, and they're angry that these people put their health at risk," said David Fuller, president of Local 5-550 of the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. "Workers resent the fact (that the government) decided to risk their health without telling them."

-------- new mexico

Can't anybody keep a secret?
The nuclear leakage at the Energy Department keeps getting worse

US News & World Reports
U.S. News 6/26/00
By Warren P. Strobel and Douglas Pasternak
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000626/nuke.htm

The scene was both shocking and shockingly familiar: yet another major security lapse, and thundering senators demanding answers-and maybe heads-from apologetic bureaucrats. The last year has seen State Department computers go missing, suspected Chinese infiltration of U.S. nuclear labs, and a former CIA chief caught taking his secret-stuffed computer home. What now?

This: Two computer hard drives the size of soap bars, filled with information about U.S. and foreign nuclear weapons, disappeared from a supposedly secure 3-by-10-foot vault at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The hard drives are used by the Energy Department's Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), trained to find and disarm errant nuclear weapons.

Booby trap. When they turned up at week's end behind a photocopying machine in a secure area of the lab's nuclear weapons design bureau, X Division, it wasn't much comfort. Officials didn't know who had moved the drives, whether they'd been tampered with, and why it took more than three weeks to report the loss, discovered May 7 during an evacuation because of an approaching fire. The drives contain "raw and unadultered nuclear design information" that could help someone develop a bomb, says a U.S. official. Even worse, they might help terrorists build a booby trap in an existing bomb to foil NEST's attempts to disable it.

And a new report by the department's inspector general details yet another security blunder with hard drives, this one at the department's Savannah River site in South Carolina. Drives and floppy disks with unclassified, but still sensitive, nuclear data were sold for surplus. They were being readied for shipment to China when a local businessman noticed the mistake and alerted officials.

The FBI is still investigating the Los Alamos fiasco. But there was rapid political fallout, with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson the target (box, Page 18). Past security breaches "he's been able to put off on some predecessor. Not this one," acknowledged a White House official.

Congress thought it had ordered Energy's security debacles fixed last year, establishing a new agency in the department to oversee the vast nuclear weapons complex. But the White House and Richardson didn't want to cede authority to the National Nuclear Security Administration. With exquisitely bad timing, news of the missing drives broke as a fellow Democrat, Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada, was holding up confirmation (many suspect at Richardson's behest) of the new agency head. The "hold" was suddenly lifted last week, and the Senate, voting 97-0, confirmed Air Force Gen. John Gordon to the post.

It was just a year ago that a presidential board called the department "a dysfunctional bureaucracy . . . incapable of reforming itself." That was after Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos scientist, was suspected of transferring mounds of secret data to unclassified computers.

Yet the breadth of U.S. security breaches suggests the problem goes beyond Energy and even the Clinton administration. Why is the country misplacing so many secrets? Some possible causes:

Post-Cold War reforms. Last week, senators demanded to know why 26 Los Alamos workers had permission to take sensitive data in and out of the vault with less of a tracking system than a Blockbuster movie rental. In 1992, the Bush administration eliminated governmentwide rules requiring signatures to take custody of classified data, except for "top secret" and above. The hard drives contained only "secret restricted data."

Technology. In the old days, spies had to go through the cumbersome process of photocopying documents. Now, they just log on. Thousands of pages of secrets can be lost through a nabbed laptop computer or hacking. Security procedures, and employees' mind-sets, haven't caught up. "People understand what it is to be carrying around a piece of paper," says a top U.S. security official. But they are not used to the "fluidity" of today's information. And it's not just here: British intelligence recently lost two laptops with highly sensitive data.

Carelessness. Last month, congressional probers showed how easy it is. Using IDs downloaded from the Web, they posed as cops to penetrate secure areas at the CIA, Justice Department, and 17 other agencies.

Last week's incident would have been far less serious if the data on the har.

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Strange bedfellows below the desert
Will cosmology and nuclear dumping mix?

US Newa & World Report
June 26, 2000
By Charles W. Petit
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000626/physics.htm

CARLSBAD, N.M. - Something seemed akilter last week in a briny plain 26 miles from this town of 28,000 people in New Mexico's arid southeast corner. Several dozen astronomers and physicists showed up in search of a low-radiation home for a large, underground lab. They were in hot pursuit of the wild physics behind exploding stars, black holes, and gravity--with methods that work best deep inside the Earth. Their specific quarry: exotic particles like neutrinos spawned in the depths of space. To cut costs they needed a place where most of the digging has already been done.

A hole is what drew them here. But low radiation? This hole is called WIPP, shorthand for the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the world's first underground repository for radioactive garbage. In March last year WIPP's operators, after $2.5 billion in expenses and two decades of legal wrangling, launched this grave for material contaminated by the making of nuclear warheads. Some 6.2 million cubic feet of such waste will be left in rooms along 50 miles of WIPP corridors. Within a century the salt, creeping under geologic pressure, will seal the drums in. Some contents will be radioactive for a half-million years.

The 45 visitors donned hard hats with miners' lights on front. Passing through airlocks, they loaded into a steel cage elevator able to carry 40 tons at a time. Five minutes later they were 2,150 feet down, hopping into golf carts for a tour of a growing network of caverns, all carved into white and pink rock salt left by a drying sea 225 million years ago. They were clearly pleased by repeated assurances that, money permitting, almost any volume of new caverns could be carved for them, too.

Calming fears.

Roger Nelson, DOE's chief scientist at WIPP, hosted an accompanying, three-day workshop at the town's meeting center along the Pecos River. He presented data showing that despite its function, the facility's radiation is much lower than most places with no waste. Salt has a fraction of the natural radioactive uranium and thorium in ordinary rock. The nuclear garbage is shielded by its containers and will be half a mile or more from any research areas. WIPP management hopes, he freely concedes, that a project that demands low radiation will allay public worry about the waste.

University of California-Los Angeles physicist David Cline whispered to 79-year-old Alfred Mann that it could be his dream come true. A University of Pennsylvania physicist, Mann has been plotting for decades to persuade the U.S. to build an underground lab far superior to the Super-Kamiokande Observatory in a Japanese zinc mine, or Gran Sasso National Laboratory in a highway tunnel through a mountain east of Rome, or the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in a Canadian nickel mine.

Carlsbad would win, too. Indeed, civic leaders toasted the scientists, knowing they could bring not only scientific luster but also jobs to a town where mining and oil work is getting scarcer. Still, hurdles are high. Costs could be a billion dollars or even more. Some in the energy department fear that extra labs could invite lawsuits from public-interest groups worried that science might displace safety.

The astronomers came out with stars in their eyes. Chang Kee Jung, associate professor of physics at the State University of New York-Stony Brook, plumped for something really big, an anchor project that will take decades to run its course. His idea is a sensor-lined, 650,000 ton tank of purified water--hundreds of feet on a side and 13 times bigger than the world's largest existing detector. It would intercept the wispy neutrinos streaming from the sun and from distant, exploding stars. The detector might even determine whether protons and other basic building blocks of atoms are very slowly evaporating. Other scientists talked of hundreds or even thousands of tons of lead and iron, or smaller detectors of germanium, tellurium, or argon. Such a lab could even detect so-called dark matter, the elusive stuff thought to account for most of the universe's mass.

Jung, a South Korean-born New York physicist, was dressed for success. "I got my bolo tie on, my cowboy boots on," he declared. "I'm ready to move in."

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Secrecy and Security
More restrictions at weapons labs will only worsen the problem

San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, June 29, 2000
Hugh Gusterson
mailto:chronfeedback@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/29/ED45030.DTL

YOU MIGHT THINK, given the recent furor over the missing computer drives at Los Alamos National Laboratory, that this security lapse is unusual. But there have been security lapses as long as there have been weapons laboratories -- starting with the Soviet theft of the first atomic bomb design from Los Alamos in the 1940s.

Consider the following stories from the 1980s, which I discovered while researching a book on the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory: The General Accounting Office found that 170 scientists from ``sensitive'' countries were allowed to visit the weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore in 1986 and 1987 without the required background checks; in 1986, a federal investigation uncovered a Livermore drug-trafficking ring that included employees with top secret clearances; in 1987, a Livermore scientist, Ronald Stump, fled abroad to escape charges that he accepted a bribe from a contractor; and a 1980s government audit found that the Livermore lab could not account for hundreds of secret documents in its custody.

If such scandals came to light today, Congress would hold widely publicized hearings, Republicans would call for the resignation of the energy secretary, and the story would be on Page One. But these security lapses took place when Ronald Reagan was president and no one was accusing the government of being weak on national security. The Republicans in Congress were largely silent, while the media lowballed the stories.

This year, searching for an election issue, Republicans are trying to portray the White House as treasonously lax on national security. Democrats are striving to show that they are no less hawkish than the Republicans. And Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, still mentioned as a possible running mate for Al Gore, is trying to save his career. As the two parties jockey to establish their patriotic correctness, the main casualty may, ironically, be nuclear security itself.

As the rhetoric heats up in Washington, we can expect to hear suggestions that more nuclear weapons scientists be polygraphed, that security regulations at the weapons labs be tightened and that the brakes be applied to recent initiatives to make the weapons laboratories more open. But the cure might turn out to be worse than the disease.

If we want an example of the harm that knee-jerk responses can do, we need look no further than last year when, in the face of congressional hysteria over the arrest of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee for security violations, Secretary Richardson announced that 5,000 nuclear weapons scientists would be forced to take regular polygraph tests and that security precautions within the weapons laboratories would be intensified.

Employees at the nuclear weapons laboratories already permit government surveillance that most of us would not tolerate. They allow the government to investigate their finances, sex lives and political beliefs; they agree not to talk to their families about their work and to allow the government veto power over foreign travel; and they agree to observe a host of minute security regulations that require them, for example, to keep computer monitors a prescribed distance from telephones, to lock away all documents when they leave their office and to report conversations with foreign nationals.

The new regulations announced by Richardson last year increase the burden on weapons scientists without adding much to security. For example, one leading nuclear weapons designer told me that he wasted hours last summer stamping the word ``secret'' on the penultimate page of hundreds of documents in his safe because the Department of Energy, demonstrating its new seriousness about security, decreed that the second-to-last page of such documents should be stamped ``secret'' in case the bottom page fell off. This is not a good use of the time of one of the few people capable of finding safety problems in our nuclear arsenal.

More damage was done by the new polygraph tests. Polygraph tests often fail to catch real spies -- Aldrich Ames passed his -- yet produce a high number of false positives. Afraid of losing their jobs because of a test they see as no more scientific than tea leaf reading, Los Alamos scientists last summer discussed the formation of a labor union for the first time.

Meanwhile, word soon got around university science departments that security at the weapons labs was increasing. Thus, when Los Alamos recruiters visited Stanford University last year, an open house that usually draws 50 students attracted none. Ironically, our leaders in Washington have achieved what the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s could not: they have deterred bright young scientists from seeking jobs at the weapons laboratories.

In the aftermath of the Wen Ho Lee case, Washington also restricted visits to Los Alamos by foreign scientists. Some of these scientists were Russians collaborating with their American counterparts on ways to ensure that poorly secured uranium, plutonium and complete nuclear weapons did not fall into the wrong hands in the chaos that is now Russia.

These Russian scientists have not been allowed access to U.S. nuclear weapons design secrets or to the most sensitive parts of Livermore and Los Alamos labs. Despite the fact that collaboration with these scientists was vital in securing materials that might be used in a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, the Department of Energy slowed the level of exchange to a trickle in an attempt to show that it was taking the Wen Ho Lee case seriously.

In the coming weeks, as the inquisition into security lapses at Los Alamos evolves, it is important to keep a sense of perspective and to resist a reversion to the paranoia of a Cold War security culture. We should oppose new regulations that turn the weapons laboratories into hermetically sealed institutions staffed by second- rate scientists incapable of finding safety flaws in the nuclear stockpile.

Nor will ill-considered measures that undermine collaboration with foreign scientists to prevent nuclear proliferation make us more secure. Our problems will only be made worse by a plethora of still more restrictions that look good when they are unveiled at press conferences but exacerbate the very problems they are supposed to solve.

Hugh Gusterson is associate professor of anthropology and science studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

---

Tainted Los Alamos Soil Dug Up

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 6:41 PM ET
By BARRY MASSEY, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000626/us/los_alamos_soil_1.html

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - A legacy of the Atomic Age lies in the soil along a canyon about two miles from a reactor once important in nuclear weapons research and manufacturing.

Now there's a race against time and weather to ensure the radioactive-contaminated soil from Los Alamos National Laboratory doesn't flush onto neighboring Indian lands and into the state's largest river, the Rio Grande.

Seasonal rains are expected soon and lab officials fear that could bring heavy flooding because of a fire last month that consumed more than 48,000 acres in and around Los Alamos.

Workers are digging up truckloads of the dirt along Los Alamos Canyon and shipping it to a waste storage site on the federal laboratory's property.

Large swaths of the once-green mountainsides are barren, except for the blackened remnants of pine trees. There's little or no vegetation to slow water or stop sediment from pouring into some of the canyons that lead to the river about 10 miles from the city of Los Alamos.

On Monday, lab officials led a tour of the contamination site and explained the excavation operation that should be finished late in the week.

Lee McAtee, the lab's deputy director of environmental safety and health, said there's no serious health risk from the soil because it has very low levels of radiation. A frequent hiker to the area, for example, would receive a radiation dose equal to riding in an airliner for one hour. But McAtee said the lab wanted to ease potential concerns of the public by preventing any contamination from moving off of the government's property.

``We're doing it because we believe it's the right thing from the standpoint of being a good neighbor,'' said McAtee.

So far, about 360 cubic yards of soil - 33 dump truck loads - have been dug from a sandy area alongside a rocky road that leads up the canyon. Up to twice that much may be removed by the end of the week. The digging started Friday.

Environmentalists welcomed the lab's effort to stop the spread of contamination.

``It's a good idea to do cleanup where cleanup is possible,'' said Greg Mello, director of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group in Santa Fe.

Except for the excavation operations - roped-off areas with radioactivity warning signs - there's nothing to visibly suggest the place had become a dumping ground for early makers of the atomic bomb. It looks no different from the high desert canyons all around Los Alamos. A road leading into the area has a gate that warns of possible contamination, but there are no markers of specific contamination sites. The area and road has been open to hikers.

The soil is believed to be contaminated from dumping in the 1940s and 1950s of liquid wastes near a weapons research reactor shut down seven years ago. Rains have carried contaminated sediment down the canyon.

Lab officials selected the area for excavation because it contained among the highest levels of contamination in flood-prone canyons. Once the soil is removed, clean dirt will be brought to the site and then rocks will be placed along the meandering channel - now dry - where water flows when it rains.

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Los Alamos Scientist Heads to Court

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 9:39 AM ET
By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000626/us/scientist_secrets_1.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Before the wildfires, before the missing computer hard drives and floppy discs, there was Wen Ho Lee.

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist charged with 59 counts of breaching security at the lab was one of the first cases in a series of alleged security lapses reported at the facility - the latest coming last week.

Lee, who faces charges mostly alleging he transferred restricted files to unsecured computers and computer tapes at the lab, planned to ask a judge Monday to suppress some evidence and order prosecutors to say what foreign nation he allegedly tried to aid.

Lee, 60, was fired last year and arrested in December. He could spend life in prison if convicted and already has spent more than six months in jail without bail. Trial is set for Nov. 6.

Prosecutors do not allege he committed espionage or passed any secrets to anybody. To convict, however, prosecutors must prove he acted with intent to harm the United States or gain advantage for another nation.

Prosecutors have said they need not specify any foreign nation before trial. The defense contends that's unfair, and want U.S. District Judge James Parker to order the government to reveal whether the alleged would-be beneficiary of Lee's actions might be China or perhaps his native Taiwan. Lee has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for about 25 years.

Defense lawyers Mark Holscher and John Cline also want Parker to suppress evidence seized with a search warrant that they contend was too broad. Among items seized from Lee's home, they have said, were the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant and the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Defense attorneys have said they also hope to raise again the no-bail order that has kept Lee jailed. Cline has said he intended to ask for another bail hearing in early July.

The Lee case grew out of an investigation into a suspected theft of U.S. nuclear secrets by China, but prosecutors have said the allegations against him are separate from that investigation.

Since then, other security lapses have been uncovered at Los Alamos.

As a forest fire burned toward Los Alamos last month, scientists discovered two hard drives with secret nuclear weapons information were missing. The fire ultimately burned more than 200 homes and nearly 40 temporary lab buildings, forcing the town and lab to evacuate and delaying the search for the hard drives by weeks. They were found June 16 behind a photocopying machine at the lab.

Last week, two 10-year-old floppy discs were reported missing at the lab as scientists, criticized in Congress for lax security, mounted an intensive inventory of such hardware. The discs were found a day later, attached to a paper report, and lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said they were obsolete and virtually unusable anyway. Lab secrecy was not compromised, he said.

Danneskiold said the lab was itemizing all classified data in response to the uproar over the disappearance of the hard drives.

A federal grand jury has been convened in New Mexico to look into the disappearance of the hard drives, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told senators.

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2 more possible breaches at lab Los Alamos takes inventory of data

USA Today
06/26/00 Page 6A
From wire services
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000626/2399179s.htm

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- An inventory of all classified data at Los Alamos National Laboratory, taken in response to criticism over the disappearance of two top-secret hard drives, has found two more possible security breaches, according to a lab official.

In addition, a government report due out this week shows more than 75 incidents of foreign spies targeting U.S. nuclear scientists traveling abroad.

Two 10-year-old floppy disks containing classified information were reported missing Wednesday at the nuclear weapons lab. A day later, however, they were found attached to a paper report in a nearby, secured area. Apparently, no classified information was compromised, spokesman Jim Danneskiold said.

This and the second case, involving an unlocked door, aren't as serious as the missing computer hard drives, but Danneskiold said the disappearance of the floppy disks will be investigated by the Department of Energy, which oversees the lab.

The disks ''are obsolete. Very few, if any, computers are around that can read them,'' Danneskiold said.

The disks had last been recorded in an inventory conducted two years ago.

Danneskiold said he didn't know how the disks got misplaced and would not disclose what type of information they contained. In the second incident, Danneskiold said a computer repair person left an equipment closet unlocked inside a secure room. The room door was locked, however.

Danneskiold said the lab is itemizing all classified data in response to the uproar over the disappearance of the hard drives last month. ''We've instituted a number of additional security measures beyond what's required,'' he said.

A grand jury has been convened to look into the disappearance of the two computer hard drives from the lab's top-secret X division. The drives resurfaced mysteriously June 16 behind a copy machine near the vault where they were discovered missing May 7.

The drives held information that would be needed to locate and dismantle nuclear devices that might be used in a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported Sunday that a General Accounting Office report to be released this week has identified the incidents of spies targeting U.S. nuclear scientists traveling overseas. The GAO report recommends that such travel be approved by counterintelligence officials at the Energy Department's national laboratories.

The report, requested by Reps. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., and Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., says the scientists have had their hotel rooms bugged and their personal belongs rifled and have been offered sexual favors.

Edward Curran, the Energy Department's counterintelligence chief, called the GAO study ''fair and objective'' and said his staff is working to implement its recommendations. He noted that his office had given GAO investigators access to its classified counterintelligence database, which is made up of hundreds of trip reports filed by scientists returning from overseas.

''Laboratories' foreign travelers face many threats in other countries,'' the Post quoted the report as saying. ''DOE's approach of emphasizing 'sensitive' country travel discounts the reality that travelers to non-sensitive countries may be targeted by intelligence entities from 'sensitive' or even 'non-sensitive' countries.''

According to the Post, the report recommended that counterintelligence officials review all requests for foreign travel to non-sensitive countries such as Britain and France as well as travel to sensitive countries such as China and Pakistan.

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Gov't To ID Nation in Nuke Spy Case

Associated Press
June 26, 2000 Filed at 5:59 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000626/us/scientist_secrets_7.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Prosecutors in the nuclear secrets case against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee must disclose which foreign country they believe he intended to help, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge James Parker gave prosecutors until July 5 to provide the information to Lee's lawyers.

Prosecutor George A. Stamboulidis had argued that specifying a country at this point would ``prematurely lock the government into one theory'' during Lee's trial, which is expected to begin Nov. 6.

Defense attorney Mark Holscher said he wasn't asking for specific evidence, only for the government to say one word -- ``PRC or Taiwan.'' ``PRC'' refers to China.

Lee, a 60-year-old native of Taiwan who has been a U.S. citizen for about 25 years, is charged with illegally transferring restricted files from secured to unsecure computers and to computer tapes at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Prosecutors do not allege Lee committed espionage or passed any secrets to anyone. To convict, however, they must prove he acted with intent to harm the United States or gain advantage for another nation.

Stamboulidis had argued that Lee might not have decided which nation he might help at the time the information was transferred. ``The defense is not entitled to the government's legal theories,'' the prosecutor said.

The judge also heard arguments on a defense request to throw out evidence seized under a search warrant the defense contends was too broad. Among items seized from Lee's home, defense attorneys said, were the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant and the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Stamboulidis said that notes had been written in the margins of some of the books and that some of the notations were in a language the agents did not understand.

Defense attorneys also are seeking materials related to what they allege is selective prosecution of Lee.

In a memorandum, they said Lee is the only person ever selected for indictment under the Atomic Energy Act since it was passed in 1948. The memo says the Justice Department has repeatedly declined to investigate or charge people who may have compromised classified nuclear weapons information, and that Lee has a sworn deposition from a lab counterintelligence official that the government targeted Lee ``because he is ethnic Chinese.''

Lee was fired from the lab last year and was arrested and jailed in December. He could get life in prison if convicted.

The case grew out of an investigation into a suspected theft of U.S. nuclear secrets by China.

Since then, other security lapses have been uncovered at Los Alamos.

As a forest fire burned toward Los Alamos last month, scientists discovered two hard drives with secret nuclear weapons information were missing. The drives, which are believed to have disappeared in March from a vault in a top-secret area, were found June 16 behind a copying machine in an area that officials said had been thoroughly searched at least twice.

A federal grand jury has been convened to look into the disappearance of the hard drives.

---

Lee Asks Judge to Suppress Evidence

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/26cnd-alamos.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A scientist charged with breaching security at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab asked a judge Monday to suppress some evidence and order prosecutors to say what, if any, foreign nation he tried to aid.

Wen Ho Lee is charged with 59 counts, mostly alleging he transferred restricted files from secured to unsecure computers and to computer tapes at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Federal prosecutor George A. Stamboulidis told the judge disclosing a particular foreign nation at this point might limit the prosecution during trial.

"The defense is not entitled to the government's legal theories," Stamboulidis said, adding that Lee might not have decided which foreign nation he might secure an advantage for at the time the information was transferred. To state a particular country now would "prematurely lock the government into one theory" and exclude others, he argued.

Defense attorney Mark Holscher said he wasn't asking for specific evidence, only for the government to say one word -- "PRC (China) or Taiwan."

"These are not countries that are friendly with each other," he said.

The prosecution still could amend its case later if it named a country now, he said.

Holscher said the defense would have to go to whatever country is alleged to be the beneficiary to interview scientists. In the case of China, he said, that would take weeks if not months to arrange.

"If you are going to say he intended to aid PRC, tell us. If it's Taiwan, tell us," Holscher said.

Lee, a 60-year-old native of Taiwan, has been a U.S. citizen for about 25 years.

Prosecutors do not allege he committed espionage or passed any secrets to anybody. To convict, however, prosecutors must prove he acted with intent to harm the United States or gain advantage for another nation.

The defense also wants U.S. District Judge James Parker to suppress evidence seized with a search warrant that they contend was too broad. Among items seized from Lee's home, they have said, were the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant and the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Defense attorneys have said they also hope to raise again the no-bail order that has kept Lee jailed.

Lee was fired last year and arrested in December. He could spend life in prison if convicted. He already has spent more than six months in jail without bail. Trial is set Nov. 6.

The case grew out of an investigation into a suspected theft of U.S. nuclear secrets by China, but prosecutors have said the allegations against Lee are totally separate from the investigation into the W-88, the United States' smallest, most sophisticated nuclear warhead.

Since then, other security lapses have been uncovered at Los Alamos.

As a forest fire burned toward Los Alamos last month, scientists discovered two hard drives with secret nuclear weapons information were missing. The fire ultimately burned more than 200 homes and nearly 40 temporary lab buildings, forcing the town and lab to evacuate and delaying the search for the hard drives by weeks. They were found June 16 behind a photocopying machine at the lab.

Last week, two 10-year-old floppy discs were reported missing at the lab as scientists, criticized in Congress for lax security, mounted an intensive inventory of such hardware. The discs were found a day later, attached to a paper report, and lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said they were obsolete and virtually unusable anyway. Lab secrecy was not compromised, he said.

Danneskiold said the lab was itemizing all classified data in response to the uproar over the disappearance of the hard drives.

A federal grand jury has been convened in New Mexico to look into the disappearance of the hard drives, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told senators.

---

Report Says Los Alamos May Mislead on Security
Staff Reputedly Urged to Make It Look Good

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/062600los-alamos.html

WASHINGTON, June 25 -- Officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have pressured employees to report that security at the laboratory is better than they actually believe, a new report by the Energy Department's inspector general says.

Managers at the laboratory, which has been rocked by several major security breaches over the last year, appear to be more concerned about making the laboratory "look good" on security than in reporting real conditions, several employees told the inspector general.

About 30 percent of the security operations personnel at the laboratory interviewed by the inspector general, the report said, believed they had been pressured to alter their responses on periodic surveys of Los Alamos security conducted by the Energy Department. The management pressure on employees was designed to improve the laboratory's security ratings, the inspector general found.

The inspector general's report, issued May 30, concluded that the security evaluation system used at Los Alamos has "raised legitimate concerns that the overall security condition at the laboratory was not being accurately reported."

The report, which has previously received little attention, offered a prescient warning of the latest security crisis involving the strange case of nuclear lost and found at the New Mexico laboratory.

Just days after the inspector general's report was released, the public disclosure that two computer hard drives containing nuclear weapons data used by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, were missing, sparked yet another crisis at the laboratory. The loss of the hard drives -- followed by their mysterious reappearance behind a copying machine at the laboratory -- came at a time when Los Alamos had not yet recovered from last year's security crisis. That concerned accusations of Chinese nuclear espionage and the arrest of a former Los Alamos scientist, Wen Ho Lee.

Dr. Lee was fired in March 1999 for security violations after he had been investigated in connection with charges of Chinese spying. After he was fired, investigators discovered that he had downloaded vast amounts of nuclear weapons data from the classified computer network at Los Alamos and copied it onto portable computer tapes, some of which are missing. He was never charged with espionage, but he was arrested in December and charged with mishandling classified information. Dr. Lee says he is innocent.

Repeated security failings at the laboratory have prompted Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to try to impose tougher measures, but he has acknowledged that he is fighting an attitude among laboratory scientists of indifference and outright hostility to security regulations. The disappearance of the hard drives -- coming so soon after the Wen Ho Lee case -- has also prompted Congressional leaders to call for Mr. Richardson's resignation, and seemed to end any chances he had of becoming Vice President Al Gore's running mate on the Democratic ticket.

The inspector general began its investigation into altered security ratings at Los Alamos as a result of two complaints from laboratory employees, the report said. One employee said that Los Alamos security operations division personnel were pressured to change their findings on security reports, while the second employee said that managers in the Energy Department's Albuquerque field office changed the security ratings after an Energy Department team had completed its survey of security at the laboratory.

The inspector general found that laboratory management had repeatedly played down the security concerns reported in self-assessments written by laboratory employees. Investigators from the inspector general's office were told about two instances at Los Alamos in which laboratory managers became so upset with the fact that employees had mentioned certain security problems in their surveys that they reassigned the surveys to be filled out by other employees. Those new reviews by more accommodating employees found that "there were no issues to be raised" and gave the laboratory satisfactory security ratings as a result.

The inspector general found that managers at the Albuquerque office altered the ratings for both 1998 and 1999 for Los Alamos after survey teams from Albuquerque had already assigned security ratings for the laboratory. Among other changes, the inspector general found that Albuquerque upgraded the ratings given by the survey team for "nuclear materials control and accountability" at Los Alamos. The Energy Department's Albuquerque field office conducts annual security surveys of Los Alamos security operations to ensure that the laboratory is in compliance with Energy Department requirements.

Although the inspector general could not find evidence of collusion or deal-making between Albuquerque and Los Alamos, it reported that it also could not find any rationale used by Albuquerque management to alter the security ratings. "Albuquerque management said that the rating process was subjective and that ratings remain fluid until a final report is issued," the inspector general's report stated. Yet, the inspector general said, it could find "no documented basis to support the Albuquerque management position concerning rating assignments or changes."

-------- new york

Plan to restart Indian Point 2 opposed

By DAVID NOVICH
The Journal News Publication
date: 6/26/2000
From: DDeBar [mailto:spikey@bestweb.net],
"Mark Jacobs" <mjac@concentric.net> MIME

CORTLANDT --Angry residents and members of the state's congressional delegation told federal regulators yesterday that Indian Point 2 should not reopen until the outdated and unsafe steam generators are replaced with new equipment.

The strong opposition, expressed at a public hearing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was directed at a plan by Consolidated Edison Co. to restart the troubled nuclear power plant using four repaired generators before the end of the year.

According to the proposal, Con Ed would begin replacing the steam generators by the end of the year. Residents in the area are concerned by this because it was a generator leak that caused the plant's first emergency alert Feb. 15.

"They should trash that old machine," said Bobby Lawlor, 51, of Cortlandt Manor. "We can't wait until more things go, because next time it could be dangerous."

Rep. Sue Kelly, R-Katonah, said the NRC and Con Ed had not told the public everything about the plant's safety, leading many residents to distrust the company and the federal officials.

A Con Ed memo obtained last week by The Journal News said workers at the plant had to contend with dozens of equipment and organizational failures during the early hours of the Feb. 15 leak. Con Ed also was blamed by the NRC earlier this year for doing a sloppy job of inspecting the steam generator tubes in 1997.

"This community will not accept anything short of full public disclosure of all the information related to the safety of the plant," Kelly said. "And we will not accept this plant being restarted without new steam generators." Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-Greenville, said he would call for a congressional hearing into the safety of the facility with Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, chair of the House Government Reform Committee, if the NRC allowed it to reopen without replacement of the steam generators and better emergency and safety procedures.

"The proper maintenance of the Indian Point facilities is vital to the safety and welfare of millions of citizens," Gilman said. "It's about time that the NRC and Con Ed open their eyes and ears and listen to the concerns of the citizens of the Hudson Valley."

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, and local officials also called for the replacement of the generators. Many who attended yesterday's meeting said they wanted the plant shut down permanently.

"The steam generator is a symptom of a greater problem," said Michelle Riddell, a New Paltz resident and co-president of Safe Legacy, a safe energy group. "That we have a Chernobyl on the Hudson. What technology has an evacuation plan for five counties?"

-------- tennessee

New gov. web site From: pambo1@aol.com Date: Mon Jun 26 11:21:04 2000

You may be interested in the information below about the new web site, http://www.firstgov.gov. Also, see the press release on "eGovernment" initiatives at http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/e-government.html and the press release on "Twenty Things You Can Do and Learn on Government Web Sites" at http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/government-web-sites.html.

Pam Watson DOE subcontract worker Oak Ridge, TN
-------- utah

Phone Lines Cross, Weave Tangled Web

June 26, 2000
By Paul Rolly and JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells,
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/06262000/utah/62145.htm

When former House Minority Leader Frank Pignanelli agreed to seek a legislative audit of a hazardous waste storage facility in Tooele County nine years ago, he had no idea of the tangled web he would weave.

The Democratic leader was urged by his colleague, then House Minority Whip Kelly Atkinson, to ask auditors to investigate whether Envirocare Inc. was violating safety regulations and receiving favorable treatment from state regulators.

The two were acting at the behest of lobbyist Paul Rogers, who was representing Envirocare's competitor.

Rogers warned the two legislators that Envirocare president Khosrow Semnani, a native of Iran, had powerful international connections and may have posed a danger to them.

That turned out to be false, but Pignanelli, at the time, noticed clicking noises on his telephone line. So he asked a private investigator to determine whether his phone was tapped. Pignanelli also warned his wife, parents and siblings that they may be under surveillance.

Later, the investigator reported to Pignanelli that his line indeed was tapped. But not by anyone affiliated with Semnani. The tappers were from the FBI because "red-flag" words that may indicate a threat to U.S. security were being picked up by a computer from Pignanelli's line at an alarming rate.

At the time, a young woman who was a citizen of Iraq was living with the Pignanellis. Her Iraqi father had married the aunt of D'arcy Pignanelli, Frank's wife.

It was during the time U.S. forces were bombing Baghdad as part of the Gulf War. The house guest was on the phone frequently calling relatives in Baghdad to determine their well-being.

Words in the conversations such as "bomb," "Iraq," "Baghdad," and "Allah" were making the security computer go crazy. Pignanelli got the situation straightened out and realized Semnani was no threat. But he forgot to tell his family.

Nine years later, Pignanelli's sister, Gia Dowling, is working as an environmental quality officer for the University of Southern California. Her office routinely ships hazardous materials to Envirocare's western Utah storage facility.

Recently, Semnani's brother, who also works at USC, mentioned to Dowling that she works with his brother, Khosrow Semnani. Dowling then launched into a tirade about the man's evil brother who terrorized her family and threatened her brother.

Pignanelli received a call from Khosrow Semnani, asking the question: "Why is your sister telling people in California that I tapped your phone and threatened you?"

An embarrassed Pignanelli then took Semnani to lunch and explained the whole misunderstanding. He also finally told his sister she could sleep soundly.

Beyond the Call

Virginia Nunley of Murray was driving to Salt Lake City International Airport to pick up her brother and sister-in-law Tuesday when her car engine died amid bumper-to-bumper traffic at 3900 South and 200 West in South Salt Lake.

A woman behind her telephoned for a tow truck. Meanwhile, Salt Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Troy Dial happened upon the scene and turned on his flashing lights to warn oncoming motorists. Nunley mentioned to Dial that she had an oxygen tank in her trunk for her brother, who had a respiratory problem, and that she needed to deliver it to him when he got off the plane.

As the tow truck pulled up, the deputy got the oxygen from the car and drove Nunley to the airport. He then loaded the baggage, oxygen and passengers into his car and drove everyone back to Nunley's home.

----

Think before sacrificing western desert

By Chip Ward and Jason Groenewold,
June 26, 2000
Deseret News
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,175014846,00.html?

Utah's western desert has become the largest environmental sacrifice zone in the country.

Besides having the largest toxic polluter in the country, Utah's western desert is burdened with the largest toxic air polluter in the U.S., two chemical-weapons incinerators, two hazardous-waste incinerators, a massive radioactive-waste landfill, a hazardous- waste landfill, the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world, a proving ground for biological and chemical warfare (much of it contaminated with unexploded ordinance and anthrax spores), a massive bombing range, and an Army depot with a large underground plume of carcinogenic water.

These facilities emit toxins such as PCBs, dioxins, radioactive curies and mercury that can affect our nervous, immune and reproductive systems and have been linked to cancer, learning disorders and birth defects. With Envirocare's current proposal to accept much "hotter" radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear industry and another proposal to store spent nuclear fuel rods at the Goshute Indian Reservation, are we certain we want to leave a toxic legacy for Utah's future generations?

There is a direct relationship between the vitality and capacity of a community's civic environment and the health of its natural environment. People without power and without civic skills and experiences are more likely to have fewer choices and less likely to make wise choices than those who are part of a robust civic environment. Look at where toxic dumps and dangerous industries are located, and you will also find communities characterized by scarcity, powerlessness, ignorance, anemic leadership and corruption.

A dysfunctional civic environment not only fails to defend itself against the abuse of its natural environment, it invites that abuse. Such is the case in Tooele County , where the western desert has become the nation's biggest environmental sacrifice zone. The closed-door deals and weak oversight that preceded the creation of Utah's desert sacrifice zone were not coincidental but causal.

If we want to stem the destruction of our natural environment, we must resuscitate and invigorate local democracy. To the extent that we allow Utah's western desert to become the enabler for a toxic economy, we encourage a collective behavior that is self- destructive.

A clear pattern has been established that invites ever more toxic waste. Unless we act soon, radioactive debris from America's first generation of decommissioned nuclear power plants will also land in the western desert, but only after passing through all our backyards. Accidents are inevitable.

We believe the state of Utah is sending mixed signals by fast- tracking permits for much hotter radioactive waste for Envirocare while opposing the proposal to store spent nuclear fuel rods on Skull Valley Goshute land. The Goshute/Private Fuel Storage project is a case study in how hard it is to bar the door from any and all nuclear industry players once that door is opened.

We believe a moratorium on new levels of radioactive waste should be implemented while Utahns take a long, hard look at the implications of such uses.

We invite all Utahns to collectively join in the discussion of which direction our community will head before a decision is made that will impact Utah's future generations for thousands of years.

Chip Ward, author of "Canaries on the Rim," and Jason Groenewold write on behalf of Families Against Incinerator Risk. Groenewold is director of the organization, while Ward is a member.

-------- us nuc weapons

Arms Trade Resource Center
Update: Part II June 26, 2000
From: Frida Berrigan, Michelle Ciarrocca, and Bill Hartung

INTRODUCTION

This is part II of the update we sent out on Friday the 23rd. The first part dealt with Kosovo one year later, military aid to Colombia, and the economic roots of African wars. This part provides an update on the "SON OF STAR WARS" program. In part III, which you will receive later today, we will provide a profile of Lockheed Martin, as the first in our series of profiles of major weapons manufacturing companies. We chose to divide this issue up because we had a big backlog of information on each of our major issue areas, and we wanted to keep each installment at a manageable length. Hang in there, there's definitely some good and useful material here.

IN THIS ISSUE . . .

I. MISSILE DEFENSE UPDATE: THE GROUND IS SHIFTING
II. MISSILE DEFENSE RESOURCE LIST =======================================================

I. MISSILE DEFENSE UPDATE: THE GROUND IS SHIFTING . . .

CLINTON'S TRAVELS:

During President Clinton's trip to Europe and Russia in early June to promote his National Missile Defense (NMD) scheme, he asserted it would be "unethical" not to share U.S. missile defense technology with other "civilized nations." Clinton's pledge echoed the promises Ronald Reagan made in the mid-1980s when he was hyping his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The goal of Clinton's remarks was to generate support from European leaders for his NMD system before heading off to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. While some in Washington thought Clinton might offer Putin a "grand compromise" -- larger reductions in US/Russian nuclear arsenals in exchange for Russia's consent to amend the ABM Treaty to allow a limited U.S. missile defense system -- it seemed clear from the outset that their differences over missile defense would not be reconciled. In a joint statement released by the two leaders they agreed only that "there is an emerging ballistic-missile threat that must be addressed," but not on the best way to deal with the threat. Putin bluntly dismissed U.S. missile defense plans saying, "We're against having a cure that is worse than the disease."

But while the two leaders were unable to agree upon U.S. NMD plans, they were able to agree on establishing a Joint Data Exchange Center in Moscow to share information from each side's missile warning systems on launches of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. This is the first time the U.S. and Russia have agreed to a permanent joint operation involving U.S. and Russian military personnel. The center, which officials said they hoped would be operational by the fall, will reduce the danger of ballistic missiles being launched in error and will increase confidence in the capabilities of each nation's early warning systems, thus marking a positive step in securing Russia's nuclear arsenal and improving U.S./Russian relations.

PUTIN'S TRAVELS

Putin indicated Russia's willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in dealing with the "rogue" threat by developing a boost phase defense system that would benefit not only the U.S. and Russia, but Europe as well. Before Clinton even left Moscow Putin was on his way to visit Russia's two biggest trading partners, Italy and Germany. In addition to trying to attract much needed investment in Russia, Putin was working on gathering support for his missile defense proposal as an alternative to the U.S. proposal. Putin met with Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, Pope John Paul II, and business and energy industry executives in Italy. In Germany, Putin met for four days with numerous government officials and praised Germany's "constructive and sensible" ambivalence over the U.S. NMD system. Throughout the U.S. missile defense debate the German stance has been firm in saying that the "disarmament architecture" must be preserved, but there has been no comment on the Russian proposal.

A JOINT DEFENSE?

While the details of the Russian proposal have yet to be totally fleshed out, Secretary of Defense William Cohen met with Russian officials to discuss the idea of working with Russia to develop a missile defense system. In a joint press conference with Cohen and Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev in Moscow, Cohen stated, "We have also indicated our willingness to explore ways in which we can cooperate on issues involving theater missile defense, but I will also indicate that there is continued disagreement over the urgency that the U.S. feels in terms of the nature of the threat coming from rogue states and how it should be addressed." Cohen emphasized that any agreement to work with the Russians on missile defense would not be a substitute to the current NMD system that is being developed by the U.S.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING THREAT

While U.S., Russian and European leaders go back and forth debating the missile defense issue, the North Korean threat - the supposed impetus behind U.S. NMD plans - has been greatly exaggerated. Not only has their missile program been on hold for over a year, but, in their recent, historic summit, the presidents of both North and South Korea met and signed an agreement stating the two nations would work towards peace and unity after 50 years of hostile relations. More importantly, as Howard French of the New York Times reported, "the emergence of the reclusive North Korean leader in the role of a jovial statesman was certain to challenge the image of North Korea as a 'rogue state' so dangerous that Washington is proposing to spend billions of dollars on an anti-missile system to defend against it."

In response to the warming relations between North and South Korea, the Clinton administration has finally eased some of the economic sanctions placed on North Korea a half century ago. With the easing of the sanctions North Korea will now be able to export raw materials and goods to the U.S., which should help North Korea's economy immensely. In addition, the U.S. has formally stopped using the alarmist designation "rogue state* to refer to North Korea (and Iran, Iraq, etc.) in an attempt to form closer relations with that isolated nation. According to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, these nations will now be referred to as "states of concern."

Furthermore, a U.S. decision to deploy NMD may actually increase the very threat it seeks to nullify. A forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate --details of which were leaked to Bob Drogin and Tyler Marshall of the Los Angeles Times and revealed in a May 19th front page story -- states that NMD deployment could provoke "an unsettling series of political and military ripple effects . . . that would include a sharp build-up of strategic and medium-range nuclear missiles by China, India, and Pakistan and the further spread of military technology in the Middle East."

BACK IN THE USA: NMD TESTS RIGGED

Despite numerous claims of fraud and deception in missile defense programs, the "true believers" continue to claim that missile defense technology is ready and has proven that it can work. Yet, in addition to the charges filed against Pentagon contractor TRW by former senior engineer Nira Schwartz that came to light this past March (see ATRC Update March 15), weapons scientist Theodore Postol of MIT conducted an independent review of the data generated by TRW's tests. Postol found that not only were the test results inflated, but that the data concluded that the decoys and the warheads were essentially indistinguishable; therefore no existing technology can tell a harmless mylar-coated balloon from a nuclear warhead that could destroy an entire American city. When Postol sent his findings in a letter to White House official John Podesta in late May, the Pentagon responded by classifying Postol's letter on the grounds that it contained secret information. In turn, Postol has accused the DoD of improperly using the classification system to cover up waste, fraud, and abuse in the missile defense program.

The New York Times has reported that "critics of the proposed anti-missile defense [including Ted Postol] and even some military experts say all flight tests of the $60 billion weapon have been rigged to hide a fundamental flaw: The system cannot distinguish between enemy warheads and decoys." Despite remarks by BMDO director, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish that the NMD testing program is designed to ensure that it will work with a "very high level of confidence," the Pentagon continues to "dumb" down the intercept tests. Anti-missile expert and former Lockheed scientist Michael W. Munn agreed with the criticisms: "The only way to make it work is to dumb it down. There's no other way to do it. Discrimination has always been the No.1 problem, and it will always remain that way."

These recent charges against the Pentagon add to the mounting criticism over the feasibility of such a system. Furthermore, they reinforce previous reports by the Pentagon's own Philip Coyle of the Independent Office of Testing & Evaluation and by a special panel of missile defense experts chaired by former Reagan administration Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch that raised questions concerning whether the NMD program could meet its ambitious goal of fielding a modest but workable system by 2005. Both reports cited inadequate and compressed testing schedules placing NMD programs in a "high risk" category and both concurred that the NMD intercept tests are not representative of real world threats.

Dr. Postol aptly sums up the situation, stating that the Pentagon officials "are systematically lying about the performance of a weapon system that is supposed to defend the people of the United States from nuclear attack."

NEW WELCH REPORT RELEASED

The independent Welch panel released its third assessment on missile defense development programs on June 13, 2000. While the previous two Welch reports were a bit more critical of the missile defense programs, the purpose of the latest report was to examine the progress being made toward the Deployment Readiness Review (DRR) and towards the planned Initial Operating Capability of 2005 for a limited system. Overall, the report could be used as a green light for initial deployment.

The report stated that "the technical capability to develop and field the limited system to meet the defined C1 threat is available," but warned, "more advanced decoy suites are likely to escalate the discrimination challenge." As Stephen Young of the Council for a Livable World points out, "It is crucial to note, however, that the 'defined limited threat' EXCLUDES the use of realistic countermeasures that the recent National Intelligence Estimate concluded would be available to any state developing long-range missiles. Thus, the Pentagon has carefully designed a goal that it has some hope of achieving -- intercepting warheads unaccompanied by realistic countermeasures -- rather than designing a system that can meet a real-world threat."

The new Welch report also argues that the Pentagon*s upcoming Deployment Readiness Review is a feasibility assessment and that the final deployment decision is planned for the summer of 2003, leaving yet another opportunity for President Clinton to "fudge" his NMD decision this fall by pushing ahead towards deployment without CALLING IT a deployment decision (if he can quibble about the meaning of "is," splitting hairs about the meaning of "deployment" should be a piece of cake for the president). To access the summary of the Welch report see: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2000/nmdreview06202000.pdf

NEW GAO REPORT ON NMD RELEASED

A new report from the General Accounting Office on the status of the NMD program found that since 1983 only 4 of 14 intercept tests of various missile defense programs have demonstrated the hit-to-kill capability. As for the current NMD program, the report points out that the upcoming intercept test, scheduled for July 7, will be the first intercept attempt with all system elements, except the actual booster, integrated. The report goes on to warn that the "actual three-stage booster reaches a much greater velocity than the two-stage payload launch vehicle. Hence, the actual booster places much higher acceleration and vibration loads on the kill vehicle." It is unclear whether the kill vehicle can withstand the loads of the actual booster, which will not be tested until early 2001.

The GAO report also points out that there are numerous flight test restrictions that limit the Pentagon's ability to test the NMD system. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) said the report raises serious concern and "as a longtime supporter of NMD, I believe that the increase in performance risks because of flight-test restrictions and uncertainties regarding the nature of the threat need to be addressed sooner rather than later in the testing phase . . . Right now we appear to be pushing the envelope of our technical capabilities."

The GAO report echoes similar findings by both the Welch panel and other independent assessments on the unresolved problem of countermeasures and decoys. The report said, "The intelligence community is uncertain about what countermeasures a rogue nation would employ in attempting to defeat a missile defense system." The full General Accounting Office report is available at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ns00131.pdf

WHAT NOW?

As the next intercept test fast approaches(scheduled for July 7th) it seems every day another report or editorial questions not only the technology of the proposed NMD system, but also the threat, the politics and the likely response of our allies. Despite the mounting uncertainty over NMD - from both supporters and opponents - the Pentagon and the Clinton administration remain steadfast in their commitment to make a deployment decision this fall.

However, some members of Congress finally seem to be waking up. This week 53 Representatives --led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)-- called on the FBI to investigate allegations of fraud in the NMD test program and Senator Durbin has introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill (S.2549) that would require the Pentagon to conduct realistic testing of the NMD program including against reasonable decoys and countermeasures. The amendment would also establish an independent panel to review the testing program. These actions mark the first step in slowing the missile defense momentum and with that, now more than ever, members of Congress need to hear from their constituents on this issue. Support for the Durbin amendment would take NMD off the "fast track," saving billions of dollars and reducing the risk of a new nuclear arms race in the process. National peace and arms control organizations are also encouraging individuals and organizations to write to President Clinton and the presumptive Democrat and Republican candidates expressing their concerns about the mad rush towards missile defenses (check out the Don't Blow It web site below). The candidates need to hear that recent polls suggest that the American people far prefer a world free of nuclear weapons, to the pursuit of a costly, dangerous, unworkable missile defense system.

Also, join the protests being organized by the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space around July 7, the scheduled date for the next NMD test from Vandenberg AFB, CA. Actions will be held at these key space facilities: Cape Canaveral (June 24); Vandenberg (July 1); Lockheed-Martin Valley Forge, PA (July 1); Ft. Meade, MD (July 4); Menwith Hill, England (July 4); and Peterson AFB, Colorado (July 8).

Major plans are also now underway by the Global Network and other groups for an International Day of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space on October 7, 2000. Already protests are being scheduled in France, Azerbaijan, Germany, England, Nepal, Canada, and throughout the U.S. to give voice to the growing global consciousness that demands we keep space for peace. These actions intend to make clear that decisions about the future of space are too important to be left to politicians and weapons profiteers.

For the full list of coming protests please check the Global Network website at: www.globenet.free-online.co.uk

--

MISSILE DEFENSE RESOURCE LIST

NMD CRITICS

World Policy Institute - www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms (click on reports) "Tangled Web: the Marketing of Missile Defense 1994-2000" by William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, June 2000.

ISIS-Europe - Gordon Mitchell, "U.S. National Missile Defense: Technical Challenges, Political Pitfalls, and Disarmament Opportunities," available at http://www.fhit.org/isis/isiseu/english/no23.html This is one of the best synopses available of the technical, political, and strategic issues raised by the NMD initiative.

Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers - www.clw.org/coalition "Pushing the Limits: The Decision on National Missile Defense," by Stephen W. Young, April 2000. (Also check out the archive of the coalition's NMD Updates at www.clw.org/coalition/nmdnews.htm)

Federation of American Scientists - www.fas.org/starwars/index.html

John Pike of FAS provides up-to-date news coverage, as well as useful links on missile defense.

Center for Defense Information - www.cdi.org "Star Wars: New Hope or Phantom Menace?" video released March 30, 2000.

Don't Blow It - www.DontBlowIt.org Tell President Clinton 'Don't Blow It!' Send him a free postcard and help make nuclear weapons a thing of the past. Union of Concerned Scientists - www.ucusa.org/arms/index.html "Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System," by UCS and the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 2000.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON NMD

Congressional Budget Office - www.cbo.gov "Budgetary and Technical Implications of the Administration's Plan for National Missile Defense," April 2000.

Department of Defense - www.dote.osd.mil/reports/FY99 Click on "Other defense programs" and then on "National Missile Defense." "Director, Operational Test and Evaluation FY'99 Annual Report - National Missile Defense," referred to as the Coyle Report. Submitted to Congress February 2000.

Ballistic Missile Defense Organization - www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo within the Department of Defense, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization is responsible for managing, directing and executing the Ballistic Missile Defense Program.

NMD SUPPORTERS

Center for Security Policy - www.security-policy.org A not-for-profit, "nonpartisan" educational corporation established in 1988 by Frank Gaffney, which is currently involved in an advertising and web site project called the Coalition to Protect Americans Now (at www.protectamericansnow.com) - a shameless and inaccurate campaign of scare-mongering regarding the ballistic missile threat to the United States.

Heritage Foundation - www.security-policy.org The conservative nonprofit think tank offers "a website devoted to disseminating information and policy analyses regarding U.S. national security issues."

Empower America - DC policy organization founded in 1993 by William J. Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Vin Weber.

William D. Hartung World Policy Institute 65 Fifth Ave. Suite 413 New York, NY 10003 (212)-229-5808, ext. 106 (212)-229-5579 (fax) hartung@newschool.edu

<a name="military">

----

Editorial: Rocketing ahead An anti-missile defense needs time to develop

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, June 26, 2000
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20000626edmissile1.asp

Whether to build and deploy an anti-missile defense system to protect the continental United States is perhaps the biggest question facing the nation. Not surprisingly, strong arguments have been raised both for and against. And some weak ones, too.

One of the weakest belongs to the skeptical critics. For starters, they tend to see the current reduced-scale project in the same terms as Ronald Reagan's visionary "Star Wars" shield. That scheme was supposed to insulate the United States against a super power-strength attack by the old Soviet Union; its ambitions were much grander than countering a small number of missiles from a rogue state.

But even this new Star Wars lite, these critics say, is a technological impossibility. They say that shooting down an incoming ballistic missile is as difficult as intercepting a rifle bullet in flight. They find encouragement in a report earlier this month that said the Pentagon had made interceptor tests easier by using fewer and simpler missile decoys, allegedly to cover up the system's shortcomings.

The technical challenges are indeed formidable. But the problem with the "it-can't-work" theory is that it slights American ingenuity. This is a nation, after all, that was able to put a man on the moon a dozen years after the Russians became the first to launch a satellite - Sputnik.

And what if an anti-missile defense does work? Where will the critics and their credibility be then?

Most tellingly, those who most fear a defensive shield - the Russians - clearly believe the United States can build such a system. That is also the opinion of a Pentagon-appointed panel of experts.

The Washington Post reported last week that the panel concluded that the system eventually should work. Its skepticism was greatest for the system being ready by 2005, the deadline set by Congress and the White House. Mr. Clinton is supposed to make a decision on the project later this summer.

These are artificial deadlines. This is a project with a price tag running into the billions. It is also one that threatens to overturn the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which for close to 30 years has been one of the pillars supporting the uncertain peace of the nuclear age. Rushing to deploy a system that is unproven would make no sense and threaten to be destabilizing.

As it happens, North Korea, chief among the rogue states that the system is aimed to counter, has indicated it will extend its moratorium on testing missiles. That gives President Clinton a little more breathing room. As we have argued before, this is one decision that he should leave to his successor after the issue is aired in the context of the presidential campaign.

That debate should not be based on the assumption that the system won't work, but that it will. The real question is whether the United States would be more secure as a result and whether it would be worth the cost. In the meantime, without an unrealistic deadline, testing and development can go on methodically.

-------- MILITARY (by country)

-------- colombia

Senators plunge US into Colombia's civil war

by Ana Carrigan
Irish Times,
Monday, June 26, 2000
From: "Adam Isacson" <isacson@us.net>

US intervention in the conflict in Colombia could have disastrous consequences for the entire Andean region, writes Ana Carrigan THE US/COLOMBIA: Potomac fever has overtaken US Latin American policy once again - this time triggered by the failure of Washington's "drug war" in a presidential election year, and corporate lobbying by US arms manufacturers and oil men.

The result: last week's US Senate vote to approve $1.3 billion in new military aid for Colombia, which will recklessly propel the United States into the vortex of Colombia's civil war, burying the fragile peace hopes with frightening implications for the entire Andean region. The vote was immediately hailed by the US drug czar, Mr Barry McCaffrey, as "a crucial step . . . that will greatly enhance counter-drug efforts in Colombia". Mr McCaffrey should know. It was his announcement of "a drug emergency" in Colombia last summer that pushed the panic button in the Clinton White House.

President Clinton commended the Senate vote as showing that the US was "committed to a democracy and to fighting the drug wars in Colombia, and to strengthening the oldest democracy in Latin America".

The vote has still to be reconciled in conference with leaders of the House of Representatives, who passed an even more generous version of the aid bill last March.

The Republican Senate leader, Mr Trent Lott, who destroyed efforts to reduce funds for the Colombian military and redirect the money to social programmes and alternative crop development in Colombia, and to drug treatment and prevention programmes in the US, said: "To those worried about slipping toward being involved (in Colombia), where better to be involved? . . . This is a question of standing up for our children, of standing up and fighting these narco-terrorists in our part of the world, in our neighbourhood, in our region." When the roll was called last Thursday, the senators voted 95 to 4 to quadruple current US aid to Colombia.

Another Republican senator, Mr Slade Gorton, who cast one of the four No votes, disagreed with Mr Lott, saying: "The capacity of this body for self-delusion appears to this senator to be unlimited. There has been no consideration of the consequences, cost and length of involvement."

The bill, he said, "let's us get into war now and justify it later. Mark my words, we are on the verge . . . of involvement in a civil war in Latin America, without the slightest promise that our intervention will be a success".

Mr Gorton's efforts to make deep cuts in the package were routed, 79 to 19.

The bulk of this massive escalation in US aid will go to the Colombian army, at a rate equivalent to $2 million a day over two years, to finance three new battalions, trained by US Special Forces, and equipped with American hardware and a fleet of American combat helicopters. With a minimum training, 2,800 young Colombian soldiers will go on the offensive against drugs and insurgents in the remote jungles of one of Colombia's most neglected and lawless regions, the south-western state of Putumayo.

Marine Gen Charles Wilhelm, commander-in-chief of US Southern Command, and the man responsible for overseeing this joint American-Colombian military strategy, told the Senate last February that the objective is to "push" thousands of guerrillas out of their jungle bases to facilitate US spray planes to fly in and eradicate the region's coca crops. Once they have dispatched the most powerful insurgent force in Latin America, the new battalions are expected to "secure" a vast and impenetrable jungle area and "assist Colombia . . . to reassert its sovereignty over its territory and to curb growing (drug) cultivation".

In Senate testimony last February, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, State Department Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, indicated how this assistance would address Colombia's complex crises: "fighting the drug trade, fostering peace, increasing the rule of law, improving human rights, expanding economic development . . . and giving the Colombian people greater access to the benefits of democratic institutions".

Mr Pickering was Ronald Reagan's ambassador to San Salvador and oversaw the US's disastrous involvement in the Salvadoran civil war.

Critics note that his testimony is at odds with realities on the ground. Putumayo's 600 square miles of jungle and river produce 50 per cent of Colombia's coca leaves. FARC guerillas dominate the countryside, and right-wing paramilitaries, with the complicity of local police and army officers, control the towns. Twothirds of Putumayo's 300,000 inhabitants are small coca farmers and migrant leaf pickers, and many are refugees, already displaced by the civil war.

In implicit anticipation of the human suffering that will result from the assault on the coca fields, funds have been allocated to assist up to 10,000 displaced people with emergency relief. However, Ecuador, which shares a border with Putumayo, has been alerted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to prepare for the arrival of 30,000 people fleeing the US spray planes.

Perhaps, most disturbing, is the hermetic silence of US officials in the face of persistent reports that the paramilitaries are organising to support the military operation.

-------- iraq

Saddam suspends military zones

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
World Scene
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200062621522.htm

BAGHDAD - President Saddam Hussein issued a decree yesterday suspending his 1998 order that divided the country into four military zones in anticipation of the heavy wave of U.S.-British air strikes that year.

It is not clear whether Saddam's decision will lead to any changes on the ground because most of Iraq's government-controlled provinces now are run by veteran army commanders. Iraq's three Kurdish provinces in the north are administered by Kurdish rebels outside government jurisdiction.

In the decree, read over state-run television, Saddam said the United States and Britain had failed to impose their will during air raids launched in December 1998 to punish Baghdad for not cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors.

-------- korea

A remarkable summit eases Korean peninsula tensions

US News & World Report
(6/26/00)
By Bay Fang
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000626/korea.htm

SEOUL-Lee Gon Young was 15 when he left his family on the banks of the Imjin River. In the twilight, he stepped aboard the ferry, heading south to escape being drafted into the North Korean Army at the start of the Korean War. His father turned to go back home, saying, "Come home in a few days, when it's safe."

That was 50 years ago. In the meantime, the most heavily fortified boundary in the world sprang up between Lee and his family, separating them with a 2-mile-deep swath of minefields and chain-link fences stretching from coast to coast. On one side is the capitalist South, protected by American troops. On the other is the North, the world's last Stalinist dictatorship, closed to the world but maintaining one of its largest standing armies as well as an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.

Last week, the leaders of these archenemy states met in their first-ever summit. But they more than met. They laughed, they hugged, they signed a communiqué stating a common goal of unification. And the rest of the world stood by, shocked.

For a half century, the area had been regarded as one of the world's most dangerous flash points. North Korea repeatedly antagonized the South and its allies, sending commando teams to attempt to blow up the presidential residence in Seoul, digging invasion tunnels under the DMZ, and test-launching a missile over Japan in 1998. Kim Jong Il was commonly rated the Dictator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War, developing a weapons program while his people starved. But there he was, the so-called hermit of the North, surprising his southern counterpart by greeting him at the airport, cracking jokes about his reputation as a recluse, and generally upstaging the stiffer Kim Dae Jung.

No one was more transfixed by the unexpected success of the summit than those South Koreans who have waited for some kind of reconciliation. The 15-year-old Lee who crossed the Imjin River now holds his 3-year-old grandson on his lap, recalling the moment in 1953 when he learned the armistice had been signed, ending the three-year hostilities of the Korean War and cementing the line dividing him from his family, just 2 miles away in the Communist North. "That was when I realized that I would probably never see my family again," says Lee. "But back then, crossing the river, I never thought that would be the end. I didn't even say goodbye."

Family ties. The 1.2 million Koreans like Lee who fled the North during the war (and who, with their families, constitute 15 percent of the South Korean population) could hardly believe that the summit accord may grant what has been denied them for a lifetime: a reunion with the families they left behind. One of the accord's five points-alongside vague provisions to engage in economic cooperation and to pursue unification-is that on August 15, the anniversary of Korea's liberation from colonial rule in 1945, the South and the North will "exchange delegations of separated families."

The details are yet to come. It could be dangerous for Pyongyang to allow open exchanges between relatives, since up to now it has even banned foreign newspapers, magazines, and satellite television, teaching that its capitalist neighbors are much worse off than citizens of North Korea's own socialist utopia.

But Kim Jong Il may be willing to sacrifice ideological control for aid to his rapidly failing economy; he recently launched a diplomatic drive, resuming ties with Italy and Australia and approaching Germany, Britain, and Canada. And South Korea's Kim said they had productive talks about sensitive security issues, including the North's nuclear and missile programs and the 37,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in the South. The United States was quick with its reality check, saying American troops are likely to remain "for a long time to come." Still, the Clinton administration blessed the summit by promising to lift some banking and trade sanctions in place against the North since it invaded the South in June 1950.

As for actual unification, almost everyone agrees that is a long way off. While most South Koreans ultimately believe the country should be unified, they remain wary of the potential cost. Still, the summit has set a positive agenda for the future. The next step will be Kim Jong Il's visit to Seoul, which the two sides have agreed will occur "at an appropriate date." For people like Lee, all they can do is keep on waiting. "For 50 years, I saw my family only in my dreams," he says. "This gives me my first hope."

---

Seoul Mutes War's 50th Anniversary

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By CALVIN SIMS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/062600korea-anniversary.html

SEOUL, South Korea, June 25 -- In a muted ceremony commemorating the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula 50 years ago, President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea paid tribute today to the soldiers who fought and those who died in the conflict, which continues to divide the North and South.

Addressing thousands of veterans and visiting dignitaries at the War Memorial in downtown Seoul, Mr. Kim called for a continuation of the steps toward peace that began this month when he and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, held their first summit meeting, in Pyongyang.

But despite an agreement between the two leaders to seek peace and reconciliation, Kim Dae Jung today urged South Korea's military, which is locked in a tense standoff with Communist North Korean troops on the border, to remain on alert.

"Until unification is actually fully achieved and a firm guarantee of peace is arranged, we cannot afford to relax," South Korea's leader said in a televised speech. "Peace can be guaranteed only through a tight defense posture. We should not allow the slightest gap in our security."

Mr. Kim's remarks appeared intended to address widespread criticism over his government's decision to scale back celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Korean War to avoid offending North Korea, which said that it had canceled all its war commemorations to maintain a spirit of cooperation.

But war veterans from South Korea and abroad said they were insulted that the South Korean government had canceled an annual military parade and the scheduled battle reenactments. This morning's opening ceremony was attended by about 10,000 people, including veterans from 21 countries who participated in the conflict. But aside from this ceremony and a few other quiet events, the war anniversary went largely unnoticed in South Korea.

The war began on June 25, 1950, after North Korea invaded the South.

The fighting officially ended in 1953. The two sides signed an armistice agreement, but technically they are still at war.

Russia and China took the side of the North while the United States led a United Nations force fighting for the South. About three million people died on both sides, including an estimated 900,000 Chinese troops and 30,000 Americans.

There were benign commemorative events today -- seminars, the laying of wreaths at cemeteries and battlefields, war exhibitions, and luncheon and dinner parties for the veterans. But these ceremonies were overshadowed by several boisterous street protests calling for the withdrawal of the 37,000 United States troops from South Korea.

"Let's kick out the United States military," a group of student protesters shouted in downtown Seoul. "Until that time, we can't be happy." There were no arrests of protesters, most of whom were college students.

Officials of the United States and South Korea have said that neither government has plans to remove the American troops, which they said serve as a stabilizing force on the peninsula and in Asia.

In Washington today, Vice President Al Gore, standing in front of a score of veterans seated at the foot of the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, remembered those who fought in the Korean War. June 25, Mr. Gore said, "will live in honor," and the anniversary is a day when Americans will remember the veterns of war and their sacrifices.

Mr. Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, said that while looking into the past to remember this day, it is also important to look to the future. Pointing to the recent summit meeting between the North and South Korean leaders, Mr. Gore said that the region was moving toward "a new progress for peace."

North Korea made no comment today on the war anniversary. The Rodong Shinmun, an organ of the North's ruling Workers Party, did not carry an editorial on the anniversary, unlike previous years when it used the occasion to denounce the South's grand celebrations, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news service.

-------- puerto rico

Resumption of Bombing in Exchange for Resumption of "Talks"

Date: Jun 26 2000 17:06:18 EDT
From: "Vieques Libre" <viequeslibre@viequeslibre.org>
by Flavio Cumpiano

In his seven plus years as President, William Jefferson Clinton has never visited Puerto Rico. The year that the National Governor's Association annual meeting was held in Puerto Rico, was the one year Clinton decided to skip that event. Other than issuing a few statements and press releases on the status of Puerto Rico, Clinton hasn't done much else on this issue, as Congress has primary federal authority on this matter.

Moreover, ever since the struggle to get the U.S. Navy to leave Vieques intensified after the April 19, 1999 death of David Sanes as a result of a bomb dropped by the U.S. Navy on Vieques, Clinton has rejected all of the reasonable demands by the political and religious leaders of Puerto Rico to personally meet with him before he makes a final decision with regard to Vieques. Despite repeated requests, Clinton has even rejected a meeting with those directly affected: the people of Vieques.

So why has this President all of a sudden offered the leaders of the three political parties in Puerto Rico, and others, a meeting at the White House this coming Wednesday June 28, not on Vieques, but on the political status of Puerto Rico?

The answer lies in the Quid pro Quo between the White House and Governor Rossello, whereby peace in Vieques was sacrificed in the altar of status politics.

Wednesday's meeting takes place at the same time that President Clinton, with the full support of Governor Rossello, has authorized bombing to resume in Vieques on a massive scale.

Meanwhile, Congress is about to go on recess and Congressional approval of Clinton's so-called directives on Vieques is dubious at best. But since bombing has resumed and the federal and state authorities are cracking down on the protesters in Vieques, one hardly hears any grumblings from the Inhofes and the Warners.

Clinton and Rossello achieved what they wanted and have been crafting since last year: Clinton washed his hands, chose not to exercise his authority as Commander in Chief to stop the bombing in Vieques, and passed off the political hot potato of Vieques to Congress in an election year. Rossello, also a lame duck, betrayed Vieques and the will of the majority of Puerto Rico that the U.S. Navy stop bombing Vieques, in exchange for "talks" at the White House concerning the political status of Puerto Rico, shortly before a Republican Congress in an election year goes on recess and shortly before he and Clinton leave office.

That was, in a nutshell, the essence of the Quid pro Quo that has been crafted between the White House and the Governor's Office and whose implementation we are witnessing. Bombs in exchange for B.S. Resumption of bombing in exchange for resumption of "talks".

Rossello went from the defiant "Don't push it!" at Senator Inhofe, to turning his back on his own Special Commission on Vieques's recommendation that the US Navy permanently cease and desist all military activities in Vieques; accepting and cooperating with the arrests in Vieques; accepting bombing to resume in Vieques; appointing a pro-Navy "Commissioner of Vieques" (his aide Maria Rosa Ortiz Hill, universally rejected by Viequenses); refusing to share and make public all the government studies and reports on the damage done by the Navy in Vieques; publicly mocking the lawsuits filed by cancer victims and others against the U.S. Navy; agreeing in writing not to sue the Navy for any of the atrocities it has done and may do in Vieques; deciding not to support the option in Clinton's proposed referendum that the Navy supposedly would leave Vieques after three years of bombing; and agreeing that the guarantees of Navy compliance discussed last year be eliminated from Clinton's directives on Vieques.

Why this monumental betrayal? As has been denounced for a year now, Rossello sacrificed Vieques and his people in exchange for resumption of "talks" by the White House on the political status of Puerto Rico.

Let's remember that last year, Clinton's point man on Puerto Rico, Jeffrey Farrow, told Vieques Mayor Manuela Santiago at a White House meeting that the US Navy was preparing to offer $80 million if she were to drop her demand that the Navy leave Vieques. Even Mayor Santiago felt insulted and publicly went to the press to denounce this. Puerto Rico's major papers covered this story.

Subsequently, Farrow and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste met at the White House with the three Puerto Ricans in the US Congress, Jose Serrano, Luis Gutierrez and Nydia Velazquez, and tried to persuade them to drop their demand that the US Navy leave Vieques. In exchange, Farrow promised resumption of talks on the political status of Puerto Rico, knowing full well that this is of major interest to those three Members of Congress. The three Members of Congress rejected this attempted quid pro quo. They said that the political status of Puerto Rico must be dealt with, but not at the expense of sacrificing the one issue where Puerto Ricans reached consensus: That the US Navy stop bombing Vieques and leave.

Congressman Gutierrez put it this way: "We told [the White House] that we were available to discuss the issue of status, as long as there is no bombing in Vieques." In an October 27, 1999 press conference on Capitol Hill, several other Members of Congress echoed this sentiment. Puerto Rico's major papers also covered these stories.

Eventually, it was Governor Rossello who bought and accepted the quid pro quo hook, line and sinker. Why?

Rossello has spent millions of dollars in public funds, over several years, lobbying for statehood for Puerto Rico. Shortly after his inauguration, he pushed for the 1993 referendum on the political status of Puerto Rico. Statehood lost. He pushed for the 1994 referendum to amend the Constitution to increase the number of Justices in the Puerto Rico Supreme Court in order to appoint more pro-Statehood advocates. Rossello's proposal was soundly defeated. He hired dozens of lobbyists, law firms, public relations firms and consultants to get Congress to pass the so-called Young bill which called for a political status referendum. It passed the House by one vote, but died in the Senate. He then pushed for the 1998 local referendum on the political status of Puerto Rico in which the Statehooders defined all the status options. Statehood lost once again.

Then, in April 1999 came the death of David Sanes in Vieques by the U.S. Navy. The struggle to free Vieques united Puerto Ricans of all political affiliations and ideologies. The Navy was with is back against the wall. A consensus among Puerto Ricans was forged the likes of which official Washington had never seen. Victory for the people of Puerto Rico in general, and Vieques in particular, was at hand. . .

. . .until Rossello was lured away from the consensus on Vieques and back into "political status" mode. All the President would be offering would be to start talks on the possibility of a process whereby the leaders of the three political parties of Puerto Rico agreed to a process, etc., etc., etc. But for Rossello, it constituted his last opportunity to attempt to rehabilitate his losing record concerning a process towards Puerto Rican Statehood. Although by the time anything substantive happens, Clinton and Rossello will be long gone, under this deal Vieques would continue to be used and abused by the U.S. Navy.

While they now will talk about "self-determination" for Puerto Rico, Clinton and Rossello have chosen to ignore the self-determination of Puerto Ricans with regard to an issue as important and critical as Vieques, an issue of dignity and morality to millions of Puerto Ricans and of literally life and death to thousands of Viequenses.

Let's not forget that Clinton never met with those directly affected, the leaders of Vieques, in spite of repeated requests for months. Clinton never met with the religious leaders, who have simply called for a meeting with the President before he takes a final decision concerning Vieques. Recently, a young Puerto Rican student went on an eight-day hunger strike in front of the White House demanding that Clinton meet with Viequenses. Clinton replied with more bombs over Vieques.

After ordering hundreds of arrests and after authorizing bombing to resume in Vieques, Clinton now suddenly grants a "summit" meeting to statehood advocates Rossello, the Statehood Party's gubernatorial candidate Carlos Pesquera, pro-Statehood Resident Commissioner Carlos Romero Barcelo, and Representative Don Young, the Statehooders' chief ally in Congress. The Puerto Rican Independence Party's Ruben Berrios and the Commonwealth Party's Sila Calderon were also invited to this Wednesday's meeting and have agreed to attend, promising the people that they would bring up the issue of Vieques.

As this Wednesday's "summit" meeting at the White House takes place, we must not lose sight of the fact that the people have been left to fend off for themselves in Vieques, devising strategies to defend their land after Clinton allowed the U.S. Navy to impose might over right, and after Rossello betrayed his own people.

President Clinton still has time to issue an Executive Order calling for the U.S. Navy to stop the bombing and leave Vieques. For now, bombs are falling in Vieques against the will and self-determination of the people, as a lame duck President and a lame duck Governor get ready to begin to talk about respecting self-determination for Puerto Rico.

----

Call for protesters to come to Vieques in opposition to Navy bombing

Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, PO Box 1424, Vieques, Puerto Rico 00765
Telefax (787) - 741-0716 - E mail: bieke@coqui.net
26 June, 2000
PRESS RELEASE

The Committee for the Rescue and Development called today for organizations and individuals in solidarity with the cause of Peace for Vieques to travel to the island municipality today, Monday and during the resto of this week to participate in protests and actions of civil disobedience to denounce the US Navy bombing here.

The Peace and Justice Camp, in front the Navy base, Camp García, will be the meeting point for protesters who should bring their camping equipment and provisions. At the camp people will receive instructions about participation in the protest actions that will take place over the next several days under the direction of Vieques´ community leaders.

A vigil in front of the entrance to Camp García will be held each night this week in support of protesters inside the bombing area and for those who will be entering next. Contacto: Robert L. Rabin Siegal 787 741-0716 CEL. 375-0525

¡FUERA LA MARINA DE VIEQUES!

The Committee for the Rescue and Development called today for organizations and individuals in solidarity with the cause of Peace for Vieques to travel to the island municipality today, Monday and during the resto of this week to participate in protests and actions of civil disobedience to denounce the US Navy bombing here.

The Peace and Justice Camp, in front the Navy base, Camp García, will be the meeting point for protesters who should bring their camping equipment and provisions. At the camp people will receive instructions about participation in the protest actions that will take place over the next several days under the direction of Vieques´ community leaders.

A vigil in front of the entrance to Camp García will be held each night this week in support of protesters inside the bombing area and for those who will be entering next.

Contact: Robert L. Rabin Siegal 787 741-0716 CEL. 375-0525

----

Responding to the Crisis in Vieques

From: Doug Rokke <drokke@jsucc.jsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 08:41:15 -0500

I have personally warned residents of Vieques during a community meeting on June 6, 2000 held on Vieques of the potential hazards from exposures. The significant issue in this new case is that Navy officials knew, I called the Admiral's staff and reisdnts of Vieques told them personally, that demonstrators were occupying the range and still they proceeded to bomb. This willful act in violation of all known military firing or explosive range safety procedures is a serious crime against humanity. It is obvious and mandated by military safety procedures that absolutely no firing will be done if anyone is in within the danger area. Yet, in this case, the Navy's bombing of Vieques proves absolute arrogance and disregard for human health and safety and the environment and their own safety guidelines.

Please remember that it has been verified that conventional muniitons and non-conventional munitions to include depleted uranium munitions were deliberately used on Vieques by the U.S. Navy and other NATO countries. Today, Navy officials still refuse to provide medical care and environmental remediation. This refusal occurs because the health problems observed and documented in residents of Vieques mirror those of Gulf War vets and the residents of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Okinawa, Kosovo, Serbia, Panama, Calhoun county in Alabama, and at many other sites around U.S. military installations where activities have caused air, water, and soil contamination.

VIEQUES IS THE EXAMPLE OF ALL THAT CAN OCCUR WHEN ARROGANCE PERVAILS!!!
doug rokke

----

Despite Protests, Navy Resumes Shelling of Puerto Rican Island

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/062600vieques-pr.html

VIEQUES, P.R., June 25 -- Military shelling returned to Vieques Island today as the United States Navy began training, even while protesters vowed to invade the range.

Ships began shooting inert shells at the range at about 2 p.m., said Lt. Jeff Gordon, a spokesman for the Navy. The exercises are the first since a fatal accident prompted a yearlong occupation of the range.

The training is to continue Monday and Tuesday, although it could continue through July 2, Lieutenant Gordon said. He said public notices of the shelling had been posted Saturday night and broadcast to mariners by the Coast Guard this morning.

"The Navy did notify the public in Vieques in an appropriate manner today," Lieutenant Gordon said.

Sandra Reyes, a 32-year-old painter who lives in sight of the range, said her children ran into the house screaming after the exercises began.

"My house is shaking, the doors shake, things on the table shake, my eardrums hurt," Ms. Reyes said. "We all feel very frustrated, impotent, violated and harassed."

The Navy detained 38 protesters who had entered the range Saturday night after three ships from the U.S.S. George Washington battle group appeared on the horizon. Eight people remained in custody today because they refused to identify themselves, said Robert Nelson, a Navy spokesman.

Carlos Ventura, a leader of the protesters, said he would meet with religious, union and political leaders to arrange a peaceful demonstration.

"We're preparing ourselves for a massive demonstration and we want you to give your support," Mr. Ventura told a crowd of protesters.

In April 1999, a civilian guard was killed on the range. His death led to increasing demands by many Puerto Ricans that the Navy end its bombing of Vieques, a 21-mile-long island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The Navy has been carrying out the exercises for six decades.

President Clinton has ordered the Navy to use only inert ordnance on the island.

The Navy has said the five warships taking part in the current exercises will fire up to 600 rounds and aircraft will drop between 550 and 830 dummy bombs over two to five days. The ships will then join the rest of their battle group in the Mediterranean Sea.

Islanders say six decades of live bombing have contaminated water supplies, stunted tourism, destroyed fishing grounds and led to a high cancer rate.

The Navy says Vieques is the only place its Atlantic fleet can hold simultaneous land, air and sea exercises using live fire.

Mr. Clinton has ordered the Navy to abandon Vieques by May 2003 if the island's 9,400 residents vote to expel it in a referendum expected next year. If the referendum does not pass, the Navy will be able to use live munitions again.

---

Six protesters arrested during exercises on Vieques

USA Today
06/26/00- Updated 12:30 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsmon02.htm

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) - Six Puerto Rican protesters were arrested Monday inside the U.S. Navy's training ground on Vieques Island during the largest Navy exercises here since a fatal bombing accident last year.

One of those arrested was inside the 900-acre target zone on the eastern tip of Vieques, Navy spokesman Bob Nelson said. The protester wasn't hurt, and it wasn't immediately known if inert shelling and bombing were occurring at the time of the arrest, Nelson said.

The other five were arrested on horseback outside the target zone, Nelson said.

Navy ships began firing non-explosive dummy shells at the range Sunday. The exercises could run through July 2.

Lt. Jeff Gordon said that notices were posted Saturday night and broadcast to mariners by the U.S. Coast Guard. The advisories were seven pages long, and previous reports that bombing was to begin Monday could have been due to a misinterpretation of the lengthy notice, he said.

''The Navy did notify the public in Vieques in an appropriate manner,'' Gordon said.

Sandra Reyes, a 32-year-old painter who lives in sight of the range, said Sunday that her children came running into the house screaming after the start of the exercises.

''My house is shaking, the doors shake, things on the table shake, my ear drums hurt,'' Reyes said. Nothing could be heard early Monday, however.

The Navy detained 38 people Sunday inside the range - but not inside the bombing zone - after three ships from the USS George Washington Battle Group appeared on the horizon. Helicopters and dog patrols routinely check the target zone before exercises, the Navy says.

The vice president of Puerto Rico's Independence Party, Fernando Martin, said he and other party leaders would enter the range shortly. Party president Ruben Berrios, who led a yearlong occupation of the range, will attend a Wednesday summit in Washington on Puerto Rico's political status as an unincorporated territory, or ''commonwealth,'' of the United States.

The April 1999 bombing death of a civilian guard on the range united Puerto Ricans as never before to demand the Navy end its six-decade-long presence on Vieques, a 21-mile-long island east of Puerto Rico.

Federal officials evicted more than 220 protesters from the bombing range last month, and since then officials have arrested more than 200 for trespassing onto Navy land.

President Clinton has ordered the Navy to use only non-explosive bombs and shells on the island.

Ships and aircraft will drop about 130,000 pounds of dummy bombs and shells inside the bombing area, which is about nine miles away from a non-Navy sector of Vieques inhabited by 9,400 civilians. The ships and warplanes will then join the rest of their battle group for a tour of the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf.

Islanders say six decades of live bombing have caused environmental damage, contaminated water supplies, stunted tourism, destroyed fishing grounds and led to what they say is a high cancer rate.

The Navy says Vieques is the only place its Atlantic fleet can hold simultaneous land, air and sea exercises using live fire.

Clinton has ordered the Navy to abandon Vieques by May 2003 if Vieques' residents vote to expel it in a referendum expected next year. If the Navy wins, it gets to use live munitions again.

-------- russia

Putin Pushes Stronger Military

Associated Press
June 26, 2000 Filed at 2:28 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Chechnya.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Toasting recent military academy graduates, President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia's armed forces must be made strong again if the country is to reverse years of decline and take its place as a world power.

Russia's underfunded military is plagued by shoddy equipment and poor training. Its collapse has been a stark display of the deterioration in most aspects of Russian life since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

``In the new century, it will be impossible for Russia to solve the huge tasks of reviving the state without the army,'' Putin told the graduates.

Putin, who was elected president in March, has won popularity with his promises to restore Russia's economic and military might. Pledging to avenge Russia's humiliating loss in the 1994-96 Chechen war, Putin spearheaded the army's re-entry into Chechnya last September.

``In any country, and especially in Russia, the army has always been the foundation of the state,'' he said. Putin then toasted champagne with the officers at an ornate, gilded Kremlin hall as a military band played marches.

A former KGB agent, Putin never misses a chance to emphasize the importance of the military and security organs. He has frequently mingled with servicemen, flying in a fighter jet, taking a cruise aboard a nuclear submarine and visiting troops in Chechnya.

Putin's government has reintroduced military training in schools and taken efforts to draft more college graduates into the military, in what liberal critics see as signs that a Soviet-style, militarist model is being imposed on Russia.

The military enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity at the outset of the Chechnya war, when Russian forces won a string of quick victories over rebel fighters.

But in recent months, the Russians and the Chechens have been locked in a stalemate. Despite daily air and artillery raids, federal forces have been unable to oust the rebels from their bases in the southern mountains.

On Monday, federal artillery and jets shelled suspected rebel positions in southern Chechnya. There were no reports of casualties or major progress.

Russia claims the militants are on the verge of defeat, and signs of a split in the rebel command have been mounting.

On Monday, three rebel commanders broadcast a televised appeal for fighters to throw their support behind Mufti Akhmad Kadyrov, a Chechen who has been named head of the Moscow-backed administration in Chechnya.

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov reportedly admitted Monday that several commanders have split from his command. Observers say Chechnya's toughest warlords have long refused to defer to Maskhadov, a key reason Moscow cites in refusing to negotiate with him.

Yet Maskhadov and other rebels say they are determined to keep fighting. Militants attacked Russian positions at least five times overnight Monday but inflicted no casualties, the Russian military said.

Despite frustration over the deadlock in Chechnya, Putin claimed that army morale was on the rise.

``The army is reviving both in its organization and its quality, but the most important thing is that its spirit is also being restored,'' he told the military graduates.

-------- spying

----

Eyes on Spies Report: Traveling Scientists Targeted

ABC News
06/26/00
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/spy000626.html

WASHINGTON, June 26 - America's nuclear scientists have been followed, bugged, burglarized, photographed and even sexually propositioned by spies during official foreign travel, according to a government report.

The draft report by the U.S. General Accounting Office says investigators found more than 75 incidents over five years of attempted espionage by foreign intelligence services seeking secrets from employees at four U.S. national laboratories, including the Los Alamos nuclear lab in New Mexico, where officials are investigating possible domestic leaks of nuclear secrets.

Scientists often return to their hotel rooms to find their bags had been searched, or mysterious "guest" entries in laptops containing sensitive information. Some were propositioned again and again by prostitutes and others for sex - something officials fear could lead to blackmail attempts had any of the scientists obliged.

Some were flat-out asked about some of the nation's most sensitive secrets - and in some cases, the inquisitors were well versed in classified nuclear issues.

The report lists no cases where sensitive secrets were compromised, but notes that unless improvements are made during foreign travel, national security may be at risk.

Spy Activity Real, Not Just Fiction

"People who are traveling need to recognize this is not just spy novels or theory, but it really happens and they have to be responsible and on the watch for them," said T.J. Glauthier, deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the Department of Energy.

The labs are operated by contractors, but the Department of Energy has ultimate oversight of America's nuclear secrets. In fact, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, the head of the department, came under fire last week for possible security lapses at Los Alamos - most recently the mysterious disappearance and recovery of two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets (see related stories).

The Department of Energy has security controls in place for foreign travel. But the report says the department concentrates on "sensitive" countries such as China and Russia, and underestimates the threat when employees travel in non-sensitive countries. Foreign intelligence operatives travel worldwide, the report notes.

"Because of the information these employees have access to, some are targeted by foreign intelligence services," reads the draft report obtained by ABCNEWS. "According to counterintelligence officials, those employees on foreign travel are most vulnerable to attempted espionage - efforts by foreign nationals to gather information."

Dozens of Cases Cited

The report cites several instances of apparent invasions of privacy or sensitive outside contact with lab employees traveling overseas - sometimes in countries considered non-sensitive - including apparent solicitations from prostitutes or other sexual overtures.

Most nuclear scientists alluded to in the report declined the offers of sex, but one employee admitted to having sexual contact with a prostitute, a waitress and two female employees at the facility where he was visiting.

In an apparent eavesdropping incident, a traveling lab employee's wife discussed bingo when she called him at a hotel. Later in the hotel lounge, the employee's host asked him, "What is bingo?"

In another case, the briefcase of a lab employee was taken from his hotel room. It was later returned, but documents and ID badges showed evidence of being handled.

In another suspicious incident, a lab employee at a foreign hotel noticed flashing lights whenever she changed clothes.

Besides Los Alamos, the GAO looked at scientists from the Lawrence Livermore nuclear lab in California, the Sandia nuclear lab in New Mexico and the Oak Ridge lab in Tennessee, which is not a nuclear lab.

ABCNEWS's Martha Raddatz contributed to this report

---

Report: U.S. Scientists Targeted

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 12:37 AM ET
By H. JOSEF HEBERT,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000626/pl/nuclear_scientists_3.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. nuclear scientists traveling abroad have reported being targeted by foreign agents who tried to obtain secrets by bugging hotel rooms, rifling briefcases and computers, or offering sexual favors, congressional investigators say.

A report based on information gathered by the Energy Department's counterintelligence office identified at least 75 such cases in recent years involving trips by scientists from federal weapons labs.

The Energy Department said Sunday it agreed with the findings, which were largely based on data the department provided. The scientists' names and countries involved were deleted.

``What they (the scientists) were reporting is that they were approached by someone,'' Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier said in an interview Sunday.

He said there is no evidence that secrets were compromised in any of the incidents cited by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Glauthier acknowledged the incidents demonstrate the degree to which research scientists from the weapons labs are targets of foreign intelligence operatives.

He said thousands of trips are made abroad annually by scientists working in a wide variety of disciplines at the labs, including many involved in nuclear weapons research.

The report, expected to be formally released this week, said foreign travel ``can greatly benefit'' the country through scientific exchanges. It also said some travelers ``may not be receiving the necessary preparation to recognize and thwart espionage.''

A copy of the report, requested by Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and Tim Roemer, D-Ind., was obtained Sunday by The Associated Press. Its contents was first reported in Sunday's Washington Post.

Glauthier said that in 1998, the Energy Department increased efforts to make scientists more aware of the potential risks when traveling abroad. The agency agreed with most of the report and recommendations, including the need ``sensitize'' scientists about the risk, he said.

The report covered incidents reported between late 1995 to late 1998 by scientists from nuclear weapons facilities at Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico, Lawrence Livermore in California, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

Foreign intelligence operatives ``used a variety of methods'' from bugging hotel and conference rooms to breaking into scientists' computers and personal belonging, and casually eavesdropping on conversations, the GAO said. It said the incidents involved trips not only to ``sensitive'' countries - Russia, China and Pakistan, for example - but also other nations.

As a result, the GAO urged the Energy Department to establish procedures to more closely monitor and advise scientists of the risks involving all foreign travel and not only those to sensitive nations.

``Foreign intelligence entities can operate worldwide,'' the report said.

Among the incidents cited in the GAO report:

-Several scientists said suitcases or briefcases disappeared and then were returned with their contents. One scientist said his computer had been pried open from the back. Others reported zippers being in different locations or locks missing on suitcases.

-A scientist noticed a flashing red light in her hotel room when the lights were dimmed, and heard a noise that sounded like an auto-focus camera lens. She believed pictures were possibly being taken from a ceiling smoke detector.

-A scientist traveling in a ``sensitive'' country reported being propositioned every night by prostitutes, a waitress and two other women. He said he declined the offers.

-Scientists attending an unclassified technical conference noticed microphone wires leading from behind a door into the conference room, leading some to believe their discussions were being monitored.

In one case involving a ``sensitive'' country, a scientist became convinced his phone was being tapped. He telephoned his wife in the United States and she mentioned she was going to play bingo. The next day someone asked him, ``What is bingo?''

On another matter, Glauthier played down two incidents over the weekend at Los Alamos - the discovery of two 10-year-old floppy computer disks where they were not supposed to be, and a door being left unlocked in a secure area.

The two floppy disks contained outdated material and were, in fact, found in a secure vault, although their whereabouts was uncertain for a day. ``Now that we're asking everybody to inventory everything and doublecheck. ... We will find things like that,'' he said.

The two floppy disks ``were secure and nothing was lost,'' he said.

---

Spooks galore

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm

Espionage buffs will be crowding into the National Archives at noon tomorrow to hear Linda McCarthy, a 24-year veteran of the CIA, talk about her book with the intriguing title "Spies, Pop Flies, and French Fries: Stories I Told My Favorite Visitors to the CIA Exhibit Center." We're told her topics tomorrow include the Corona spy-satellite program, spy catchers, and the famous "Limping Lady of the OSS," Virginia Hall. The Office of Strategic Services was the precursor to the CIA.

John McCaslin can be reached at 202/636-3284 or by e-mail at mccasl@twtmail.com.

-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy

Energy Cooperative to Offer Customers 'Green' Electricity

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/26/news/national/regional/conn-green-energy.html

STAMFORD, Conn., June 24 -- Creating the power utility's equivalent of an organic food store, a Connecticut company is to announce Monday that it will begin selling what it calls "green" electricity, generated not from oil or nuclear reactors, but from renewable sources like wind, water and methane gas captured from garbage dumps.

Naturally, it will be more expensive -- about $5 to $6 more a month. But the company, the Connecticut Energy Cooperative, is betting that some customers will be willing to pay a premium for it. Those who do not mind fossil fuels can still buy traditional power.

The cooperative plans to begin offering the service on July 1, the day that state legislation deregulating the electricity industry takes full effect. Green power will be available in most parts of the state, including most of Fairfield County. The cooperative, which also sells oil, natural gas and propane and long-distance telephone service, is like a food co-op, operating nonprofit to reduce prices for its members, both homeowners and businesses.

State Representative Bob Maddox, who is leaving the Legislature after this year to work for the co-op full time as its director of marketing, said he thought people would gladly pay more for the green energy "for their own health," reducing pollution.

"The monthly pricing difference for the average family in Connecticut will be about the same as the cost of a Big Mac with super-size fries and a Coke," said Mr. Maddox, a Republican from Litchfield County, who lives in a solar-powered home in Bethlehem and drives a Honda Insight, a gas-electric hybrid car that gets up to 70 miles per gallon.

Green electricity is already available in parts of California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but not New York State. In New Jersey, it is sold by two companies, Connectiv Power Delivery and Green Mountain Energy.

The cooperative's electricity will come from wind in upstate New York, landfill gases in New Hampshire and small hydroelectric plants in Connecticut. The co-op will also sell non-green electricity at prices Mr. Maddox says will be lower than rates charged by Connecticut Power and Light and United Illuminating.

As with organic food, the motives of providers of clean energy can be both environmental and political. Although hydropower is green energy, the co-op will not do business with Hydro-Québec, the large government-owned utility in Canada, which has been criticized by environmentalists. Hydro-Québec, which has long called such criticism unwarranted, backed off from its most controversial project, called Great Whale, in 1994. Critics said the project would have flooded Indian tribal lands in Canada and destroyed subarctic wilderness.

Whatever their reasons for choosing green energy, customers who want it will simply be able to call the co-op or visit its Web site, www.energyforme.com. Customers who sign up will not necessarily have green energy going through the outlets in their homes; rather, they are paying to increase the amount of renewable energy on the local power grid, proportional to their monthly usage.

Because customers have no way of knowing what kind of electricity they are paying for, many companies offering green power, including the Connecticut cooperative, have joined the Green-e Renewable Electricity Certification Program, run by the Center for Resource Solutions, an environmental group in San Francisco.

To be certified, power providers must disclose their sources of energy and demonstrate that at least 50 percent of the supply comes from renewable sources.

Ashok Gupta, an economist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said a cooperative selling both green and traditional energy is "like a cereal company offering healthy cereal and not-so-healthy cereal."

"It's a great thing," he said. "It gives people choices. Avoid coal, nuclear and Hydro-Québec, and buy green power."

-------- imf / world bank

ACLU Suspects Philadelphia Cops Spied on Activists

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 9:37 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday it was trying to learn whether Philadelphia police have been spying on activists who are organizing a mass demonstration to take place on the eve of next month's Republican National Convention.

Activists long have suspected that law enforcement agents scrutinize their press statements and monitor their online discussion groups for information about upcoming marches and demonstrations.

Protest organizers said the cat-and-mouse game took a new turn last week when two men appeared on the roof of the downtown Pennsylvania Convention Center and began photographing members of a coalition called the R2K Network as they arrived across the street for a weekly organizing session.

``The people who were taking the pictures refused to say who they're working for,'' said Stefan Presser, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

Activists said a security guard saw the two men exiting a nearby police substation. Organizers also got out their own camera and turned photographs of the pair over to the ACLU.

Police had no immediate comment on the surveillance claim. Presser, acting as the protest organizers' attorney, said he intended to ask City Police Commissioner John Timoney for an explanation.

While taking photos on a public street is not illegal, the ACLU said police must get surveillance operations cleared by the city managing director under a legal agreement reached in the 1980s by the administration of former Mayor W. Wilson Goode.

``I'm on the verge of communicating with Timoney to make sure that, to the extent any of this is going on through the department, he's done what's required by a city executive order,'' Presser said.

The reported incident was the latest to escalate tensions between protest organizers and the city barely a month before 45,000 people, including 15,000 journalists, begin arriving for the July 31-Aug. 3 Republican convention.

Activists have been meeting weekly to organize a July 30 protest rally called UNITY 2000, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of demonstrators to Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a broad tree-lined boulevard that runs between City Hall and the Philadelphia Art Museum.

UNITY 2000 organizers have promised a peaceful demonstration but still had to sue the city in federal court to get permission to hold the rally and win promises of infrastructure support.

City officials fear a repeat of the violence that marred meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 and the International Monetary Fund in Washington last April.

``(The police) are doing lots of things to intimidate demonstrators in general,'' said Mike Morrill, one of the lead UNITY 2000 organizers.

He claimed last week's incident, if carried out by police, would not be the first act of surveillance by law enforcement officials.

``The Secret Service, the FBI, the Justice Department and the Philadelphia police have all videotaped our news conferences,'' Morrill said. ``There were people there with cameras and they identified who they were with -- those four law enforcement agencies.''

-------- us politics

Bush-Gore:Does it matter?

USA Today
06/26/00- Updated 12:21 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/acovmon.htm

When it comes to the economy, there is little difference between the major candidates. The realities of the global economy herd the presidential candidates to a common vision. But neither the public nor all economists are sure this is a good thing. USA TODAY correspondent Susan Page looks at the issue.

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush and Al Gore have been campaigning for months spotlighting the differences they offer voters. But when it comes to the policies they believe will keep Americans employed and the nation prosperous, they could just as well be running on the same ticket.

Both candidates generally embrace free trade, endorse a balanced budget and agree that a first-class education system is a critical federal priority in a high-tech Information Age. Both lobbied for the controversial China trade deal that has passed the House and is now before the Senate.

Century-old economic debate appear to be settled

George W. Bush (AP) "The world is much more connected than ever before." - Bush

The consequence of this new consensus is a dramatically changed American political scene in which some century-old economic debates appear to be settled. There are still stark differences between the candidates - over how to bolster Social Security, for instance, whom to appoint to the Supreme Court and whether to develop an umbrella-like national missile defense system.

But on what is arguably the president's top foreign and domestic priority now that the Cold War is over - maintaining a strong national economy in a globalized system - the two candidates are in remarkable accord.

That means they presumably would govern in similar ways on these issues as president because other policies would jeopardize the confidence of global investors and the fundamental health of the U.S. economy.

That has robbed this election of some of its drama and sense of high stakes. It may be costing Gore credit he hoped to gain for the current strong economy. For some voters, it may even raise the question: Does it really matter who wins?

"It's very hard, extremely hard, to imagine either a Democratic or a Republican presidential candidate differing much on these issues," says Laura D'Andrea Tyson, dean of the business school at the University of California at Berkeley and an economic adviser to Gore.

"I would not say their views are identical, but there's a broad consensus in America and they both reflect that consensus," says Larry Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve governor and the chief economic adviser to Bush.

There are naysayers to the general consensus that globalization not only is inevitable but also, all in all, a good thing for the country.

They include some conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in Congress as well as the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan and the Green Party's Ralph Nader. Both warn of the impact of globalization on American workers and national sovereignty, but neither has managed to attract more than a few percentage points in national polls.

For the major party contenders, an embrace of globalization despite its complications and costs has been dictated by the facts of life in the new economy.

"They realize that you can't fight the forces of globalization," says Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office "They're like the rising tide."

2000 marks the first 'new economy' election

Vice President Al Gore (AP)

"It's all too easy for those of us who feel that that logic is so compelling to feel that it's irresistible to the point where there's now a new national consensus on this." - Gore

In this new world, the discretionary powers of the presidency on some issues seem to be shrinking, with basic questions settled regardless of the candidates' philosophical views on the size and role of government. The limitless global economy paradoxically has put presidents in a policy box.

That's a marked change from the big debates in other presidential elections over the past century, from the impassioned dispute over the gold standard in 1896 to the fevered clash on the perils and promises of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992.

Gone is the sense of clear choices in the 1932 election between Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt over tackling the Depression, or the stark contrast in world view between internationalist Lyndon Johnson and aggressive nationalist Barry Goldwater in 1964.

"This election reminds me of the elections in the late 19th century when nobody remembers who those candidates were and who those presidents were, when the parties looked more alike than they were different," says presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents.

"Of course, it's vastly different given the kind of global involvements the United States has and the enormous power of this country. But for all that there are echoes of that time."

Dallek adds, "That's partly what makes this election so unexciting." A poll by the Associated Press last November found 24% wanted a Democrat for the next president and 21% wanted a Republican. But the greatest number, 48%, said it made no difference who won the presidency this year.

This is the first presidential election of the new economy, the first national contest since both parties made significant adjustments to reflect the realities of the world in which most voters have access to the Internet and satisfying global investors looms as one of a president's primary concerns.

Among the changes:

Just eight years ago, in 1992, candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore promised to "re-evaluate" most-favored-nation trading status with China because of human rights concerns and didn't mention balancing the budget in their campaign bible, Putting People First. Now President Clinton sees extending normal trade relations to Beijing as a major achievement of his presidency. Gore pledges to fund campaign promises within the newly-balanced budget.

Four years ago, in 1996, Buchanan made the second of two significant GOP presidential bids by denouncing the impact of NAFTA on manufacturing workers and decrying the loss of sovereignty to institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Congressional Republicans a year earlier tried to dismantle the Department of Education.

Now Bush has become the first Republican candidate since the Education Department was created to propose expanding its mission in financing education programs and demanding accountability from them. Buchanan has bolted the GOP to take his message of economic nationalism to the Reform Party.

In the past, the machinations of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board often have been the source of griping by one candidate or the other. But this year, Bush and Gore have lavished praise on chairman Alan Greenspan, a celebrity of the new economy, and joined in urging his reappointment.

Public isn't so sure

Laura D'Andrea Tyson, head of the business school at the University of California at Berkeley (Leslie Smith Jr., USA TODAY)

"It's very hard, extremely hard, to imagine either a Democratic or a Republican presidential candidate differing much on these issues." - Tyson

In an interview with USA TODAY in his West Wing office, Gore said a new "Global Age" was being shaped by the Internet and the jet plane. The vice president called it the successor to the Cold War era.

"The world is much more connected than ever before," Bush said in a separate interview just after delivering a speech at Boeing in Seattle on the importance of trade. "I think we are in a new era."

Both candidates look to the next generation of issues on the new economy with similar philosophies. Bush takes a more laissez-faire approach than Gore on some issues, and Gore ruminates in greater detail on the challenges ahead from technological advances.

Both say the private sector should be allowed to develop with minimal regulation while the government addresses issues including the "digital divide" between rich and poor and concerns about smut and privacy on the Internet.

One problem: The public isn't so sure about the path both major candidates have decided to follow.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll conducted this month found an overwhelming 78% saying the "new economy" has been good for the nation, compared with 15% who said it had been bad.

But another USA TODAY poll conducted this spring asked, "Do you think free trade would be good for the United States because it helps the U.S. economy, or free trade would be bad because it costs the U.S. jobs?"

In response, 43% said good and 45% bad The responses presumably would be much more negative if there was an economic downturn. A recession would fan fears that globalization means U.S. jobs will be shipped overseas and U.S. markets flooded with foreign-made goods.

At the end of a recessionary period in 1992, Reform Party nominee Ross Perot managed to win 19% of the vote with a call to arms against NAFTA. In a strong economy four years later, he received just 8%.

"The oil that's spread on the rough sea of the global economy is prosperity," says Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World. "If the economy goes south or the speculative bubble on Wall Street bursts, you can be sure that could change very fast."

A harder act?

Robert Reischauer, former director of the Congressional Budget Office (Tim Dillon, USA TODAY)

"(Candidates) realize that you can't fight the forces of globalization ... They're like the rising tide." - Reischauer

In today's poll-driven politics, on no other major issue is there such a disconnect between the public and the major parties. Opposition to globalization sparked angry protests in recent months in Seattle and Washington, D.C., when the WTO and the World Bank held meetings.

"If we can protect the international financial institutions we can certainly find a way to protect the workers, and that's what our bottom line is," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who helped lead the protests, said in an interview. But Buchanan and others acknowledge that their message isn't likely to resonate with many voters at a time of unprecedented prosperity, even if some are uneasy.

The USA TODAY survey that found such ambivalence about free trade also showed that one in five of those polled said they or someone in their household held a job that depended on trade.

"The same people who express those opinions (of concern about trade) say 'good-bye' to the pollster and then turn off their Yamaha hi-fi and get into their Toyota and drive to the store to buy some French cheese," Reischauer said. "Then they pick up their clothing, which has been made in China, Jamaica and India, from the cleaners."

Bush and Gore say they see divisions in the country and within their parties that could bedevil the next president. Clinton could tell them how frustrating that can be: He failed to win "fast-track" negotiating authority for trade deals and had to engage in hand-to-hand combat to win on NAFTA and the China trade proposals. His 1993 economic package passed each house of Congress by a single vote. "It's all too easy for those of us who feel that that logic is so compelling to feel that it's irresistible to the point where there's now a new national consensus on this," Gore said. "I don't think there is."

Bush agreed. "There are some obviously in my party and some in the Democrat party, particularly the unions, trying to turn back the clock," he said, adding, "I don't think they'll be able to do so."

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his best-selling book on globalization, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says leaders around the world are constrained by what he dubs "the Golden Straitjacket," the one-size-fits-all policy prescription for free-market economies. "As your country puts on a Golden Straitjacket, two things tend to happen: your economy grows and your politics shrinks," he wrote. Policy choices are limited within prescribed parameters.

"The confidence of global investors has become enormously important to domestic policy," says Robert Reich, a former Labor secretary who is now a professor of economics and social policy at Brandeis University. "Every world leader is now a carnival barker, seeking to attract investors to that leader's own nation, and every leader is potentially worried that investors will suddenly get up and leave.

That line of reasoning helped sway Clinton during the first days of his first term as the requirements of the new economy were beginning to become clear. He reluctantly proposed an economic package that raised taxes and focused on trimming the budget deficit at the expense of new spending on social programs that he had promised during the 1992 campaign.

Economists want someone who dares

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary (Tim Dillon, USA TODAY)

"The confidence of global investors has become enormously important to domestic policy." - Reich

Now both major-party candidates promise to make their campaign promises fit within a balanced budget. Bush argues the surplus can support his $1.3 trillion, 10-year tax cut without deficit spending. Gore makes the same argument for his proposed domestic spending programs.

"Because of the kind of globalized economy that we are now in, presidents don't have the kind of arbitrary decision-making power that they used to," presidential scholar Michael Beschloss says. Economists warn that a president who dares to step outside the new policy consensus risks spooking global investors and souring the nation's economy.

Why?

A budget deficit of any significant amount - say, when it reaches the levels of the mid-1980s, around 5% of the gross domestic product - would drive down the value of the dollar and drive up interest rates. That would slow growth and cost jobs. What's more, a drop in investment would curb gains in productivity, the main engine of the current prosperity.

Tariffs or other barriers to protect U.S. industry would limit competition, resulting in higher prices and less choice for consumers. If the barriers violated WTO rules, stiff sanctions could be imposed or retaliatory measures taken by other countries against U.S. industries, hurting economic growth.

A second-rate education system could limit the availability of skilled workers for expanding high-tech businesses. That would cost the United States the edge in innovation that has made it the capital of the new economy.

"In a global economy, investment capital and psychological confidence flow in the direction of countries that are willing to accept responsibility for making hard-nosed decisions: balancing their budgets, paying down their debt, investing in the future, investing in their people, and harmonizing their fiscal and monetary policies," Gore says. "The principles are not new, but they have a new power in the global economy that increasingly characterizes this global age."

Bush insists that the vigor of the U.S. economy means that a president's choices aren't limited, at least not yet.

"Our economy is so strong now and we can attract capital because we are the most entrepreunerial and one of the most efficient markets in the world," the Texas governor says. "For the short term, I think the United States still has got pretty good leeway as to how we conduct our fiscal matters."

But as to whether future presidents will face policy constraints imposed by the new economy, he adds, "Maybe for the long term, that may be right."

--- Washington Times

Sale of federal oil field boosts Gore fortune

June 26, 2000
By Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200062622040.htm

Vice President Al Gore's push to privatize a federal oil field added tens of thousands of dollars to the value of oil stock owned by the Gore family, which has been further enriched by skyrocketing gasoline prices.

Shares of Occidental Petroleum jumped 10 percent after the company purchased the Elk Hills oil field in California from the federal government in 1998. Mr. Gore, whose family owns at least $500,000 in Occidental stock, recommended the sale as part of his "reinventing government" reform package.

The sale, which constituted the largest privatization of federal land in U.S. history, transformed Occidental from a lackluster financial performer into a dynamic, profit-spewing, oil giant. Having instantly tripled its U.S. oil reserves, the company began pumping out vast sums of crude at low cost.

As the months went by, Occidental was able to sell the oil, which ends up at gasoline retail outlets like Union 76, for more profit. Rising oil prices have significantly improved Occidental's bottom line, said analyst Christopher Stavros of Paine Webber.

This year, the company posted first quarter revenues of $2.5 billion, or 87 percent higher than a year earlier. That's a bigger increase than at nine of 10 other oil companies listed in a survey that Mr. Gore cited last week as evidence of price gouging.

The rise in Occidental oil prices, coupled with the acquisition of the Elk Hills field, has paid handsome dividends for the Gore family.

The vice president recently updated his financial disclosure form to put the value of his family's Occidental stock at between $500,000 and $1 million. Prior to the Elk Hills sale and gasoline price spike, Mr. Gore had listed the value of the stock at between $250,000 and $500,000.

Gore aides insist the vice president's push to sell Elk Hills does not constitute a conflict of interest. They point out the family's Occidental shares were originally owned by Mr. Gore's father, who died in 1998, leaving the stock in an estate for which the vice president serves as executor.

Although Mr. Gore continues to list the stock on his financial disclosure forms, aides said the shares are in a trust for the vice president's mother, Pauline.

"He doesn't own stock because he's trying to avoid conflicts of interest," said Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway. "He's the executor of the estate, but he's not the trustee of the trust. It's a separate thing."

Still, Mr. Gore's recommendation to privatize Elk Hills ended up enriching his mother, who is expected to eventually bequeath the stock to the vice president, her sole heir.

Last week, Mr. Gore began a concerted effort to blame skyrocketing gasoline prices not only on "big oil," but also on Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Gore aides have emphasized that Mr. Bush once ran several oil-exploration firms and has accepted more campaign contributions from oil companies than the vice president.

The Texas governor has dismissed the attacks as an attempt to divert attention away from Mr. Gore's energy and environmental policies, which have driven up gasoline prices. Political analysts say the spiraling gas prices could imperil Mr. Gore's presidential bid because they are highest in the Midwest, which he must carry in order to win the White House.

The political and financial fortunes of the Gore family were established largely with oil money from Occidental's founder, Armand Hammer. Part capitalist and part Communist, Mr. Hammer became the elder Gore's patron more than half a century ago, showering him with riches and nurturing his political career through the House and Senate.

The elder Gore enthusiastically returned the favors. In the early 1960s, Sen. Gore took to the Senate floor to defend Mr. Hammer against FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted to investigate Mr. Hammer's Soviet ties.

In 1965, the elder Gore helped Mr. Hammer obtain a visa to Libya, where he opened oil fields that turned Occidental into a multinational powerhouse.

When the elder Mr. Gore lost his re-election bid in 1970, Mr. Hammer installed him as head of an Occidental subsidiary and gave him a $500,000 annual salary. The man who had begun his career as a struggling schoolteacher in rural Tennessee ended it as a millionaire oil tycoon.

The younger Gore also benefited from Mr. Hammer's generosity. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual payments of $20,000 for mineral rights to a parcel of land near the family's homestead in Tennessee that Occidental never bothered mining.

When the younger Gore first ran for president in 1988, Mr. Hammer promised former Sen. Paul Simon "any Cabinet spot I wanted" if he would withdraw from the primary, according to a 1989 book by the Illinois Democrat.

Mr. Gore and his wife, Tipper, once flew in Mr. Hammer's private jet across the Atlantic Ocean. They hosted Mr. Hammer at several presidential inaugurations and remained close to the oilman until his death in 1990.

In 1992, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was considering Mr. Gore as his running mate, the elder Gore wrote a memo describing his son's ties to Mr. Hammer. The document was designed to provide Mr. Clinton with answers to possible questions from reporters, most of whom did not focus on the connections after all.

Mr. Hammer's successor at Occidental, Ray Irani, has continued to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of Mr. Gore and the Democratic Party. For example, two days after spending the night in the Lincoln Bedroom in 1996, he cut a check for $100,000 to the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the vice president has reciprocated in much the same way his father did decades ago. In 1995, Mr. Gore recommended the sale of the Elk Hills field, which had been zealously guarded by the U.S. Navy as a strategic oil supply since 1912.

When the $3.5 billion sale to Occidental went through in 1998, the Energy Department dispensed with its customary assessment of environmental impact. Instead, it allowed the assessment to be handled by a private firm that was run in part by Tony Coelho, who served as Mr. Gore's campaign chairman until this month.

The privatization of Elk Hills, which covers 74 square miles near Bakersfield, Calif., was a dramatic departure for the Clinton-Gore administration, which has used federal funds to purchase vast tracts of private land in order to block development.

---

THE INVESTIGATION / NEWS ANALYSIS
An Old Issue Returns to Haunt Reno Again

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/062600reno-investigate.html

WASHINGTON, June 25 -- In the coming weeks, Attorney General Janet Reno must decide whether to name a special counsel to investigate Vice President Al Gore's political fund-raising in the 1996 presidential campaign. The issue has haunted Ms. Reno, threatening her chances of leaving a legacy of nonpolitical stewardship of the Justice Department.

She has struggled to bring an end to the fund-raising case, having twice refused to submit Mr. Gore to the scrutiny of an independent counsel. But the issue arose again last week when Justice Department officials said the chief of her campaign finance unit, Robert J. Conrad Jr., had recommended that she refer Mr. Gore's case to an outside prosecutor.

The recommendation held ominous implications for Mr. Gore's presidential candidacy and thrust Ms. Reno into another painful, politically combustible decision about the vice president, even as senior government legal officials have discounted the likelihood that she will make such an appointment.

To begin with, Mr. Gore would not be subject to the independent counsel law, which expired in mid-1999. Since then, under regulations adopted by the Justice Department, Ms. Reno has the sole discretion to appoint a special counsel, but only if she finds that the department has a conflict of interest or if she decides that an outside inquiry is in the best interests of justice.

The special counsel, if Ms. Reno named one, would operate with nearly the same powers that independent counsels had been granted to convene grand juries, subpoena witnesses and use the investigative resources of agencies like the F.B.I. to carry out their inquiries. The attorney general would have the authority to remove a special counsel.

Ms. Reno, the officials said, is studying the recommendation to name a special counsel, but she seems unlikely to move forward -- barring new and specific evidence that shows Mr. Gore broke the law by lying in an April 18 interview with a Justice Department investigator about his 1996 fund-raising activities.

Beyond the specifics of Mr. Gore's statements in the interview, Ms. Reno's reluctance to make the appointment has a far broader context than the facts and the law relating to Mr. Gore. Her thinking about cases involving high officials has been shaped by the bruising experience of her seven years in office.

At her confirmation hearings in 1993, Ms. Reno expressed enthusiastic support for the independent counsel law as a nonpolitical legal mechanism to handle politically sensitive cases. But by the time the law was about to lapse last year, after Ms. Reno had been widely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for her use of it, she had become a staunch opponent.

At a Senate hearing in March 1999 to consider renewing the independent counsel law, she declared it fatally flawed, complaining that the outside counsels appointed under the law had "unduly expansive" views of their jurisdiction and had ventured "down every investigative side street" in pursuit of their subjects.

She said the law had distorted prosecutorial decisions because an independent prosecutor had unlimited time and money to investigate a single official, whereas career prosecutors are more restrained, in part because they must constantly balance competing cases and priorities.

The law, Ms. Reno continued, artificially limited her own ability to evaluate an accusation against high-level officials, forcing her to seek an outside inquiry unless she was certain it was unwarranted.

Moreover, she said, independent prosecutors were judged not on a broad record but on their performance in a single case, which could lead prosecutors to protracted inquiries out of fear that if they uncovered nothing they would be accused of wasting time and money.

Ms. Reno has sought the appointment of more independent counsels than any other attorney general. She asked for seven to investigate Whitewater-related matters; Eli Segal, a former top campaign aide to President Clinton; and secretaries of the departments of Agriculture, Housing, Commerce, Interior and Labor.

But she has steadfastly refused to apply it to Mr. Clinton or Mr. Gore when allegations of fund-raising improprieties swirled around them after the 1996 election -- a stance that legal experts have said was based on the technicalities of the independent counsel law. Her interpretation led Republicans to accuse her of misusing the law to protect the president and vice president.

In 1997, she determined that no inquiry was needed to examine the legality of Mr. Gore's fund-raising phone calls from his West Wing office, based on her conclusion that Mr. Gore's calls were meant to solicit only contributions for general Democratic Party purposes, and that he did not realize a portion was allocated to pay specific expenses of the Clinton-Gore campaign.

Few of Ms. Reno's aides ever felt there was any likelihood that a prosecutor would bring a case under the law in question -- a 116-year-old statue designed to bar government appointees from pressuring their subordinates for donations.

Mr. Gore's fund-raising was again under scrutiny in 1998 when investigators unearthed memorandums and witness statements that raised questions about whether Mr. Gore had been truthful when he told investigators that he did not realize the donations he solicited in his phone calls were used for the Clinton-Gore campaign.

Ms. Reno's advisers were badly split on how the law applied to this case, and several aides said the statute required an independent counsel to determine whether Mr. Gore's statements were true. Ms. Reno overruled them, acting on advice from other career prosecutors who said the discrepancies involving Mr. Gore's statements were minimal.

Not long afterward, the independent counsel law died, signifying the end of a post-Watergate experiment that failed in its objective of taking politics out of high-level official corruption cases. The statute, with its rigid requirements that left an attorney general relatively little discretion, has been replaced with the looser regulations now in place.

But legal officials said Ms. Reno's aides were doubtful that the Gore interview would prove persuasive in changing her mind about an outside inquiry, because it did not show direct evidence of wrongdoing.

Rather, the officials said, Mr. Conrad's recommendation to Ms. Reno was based on a broader conclusion that further investigation by an outside counsel was warranted based on what prosecutors viewed as Mr. Gore's overall contentious elusiveness and misstatements. The interview covered a number of specific topics, among them Mr. Gore's appearance at a Buddhist temple in California in April 1996, White House coffees for supporters and e-mails missing from the office of the vice president.

At one point, Mr. Gore insisted that the 103 White House coffees with campaign donors were not "fund-raising tools," even though a Senate panel found in 1997 that supporters who attended these events between November 1995 and October 1996 contributed $7.7 million within one month of having attended them.

During the questioning, Mr. Gore recalled that he had been to few of the coffees and remembered "only one that I attended briefly." But the Senate panel found that he had been the host of 23 coffees and attended 8 with President Clinton.

Mr. Gore, in an effort to blunt the suggestion that he had been uncooperative during the interview, released a transcript of the session on Friday. Law enforcement officials said Mr. Gore's answers appeared to provide too little evidence of wrongdoing to justify referring the case to an outside counsel -- a step that they said Ms. Reno would take only if there was evidence that Mr. Gore had deliberately lied to conceal a relevant fact.

Since the expiration of the independent counsel law, Ms. Reno has named only one special counsel. She appointed former Senator John Danforth, a Missouri Republican, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by the F.B.I. during the agency's 1993 tear gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex.

But Ms. Reno may have little time to reflect on her decision. She is scheduled to testify on Tuesday at a Senate hearing. She is certain to be questioned about the Gore fund-raising case and why she refused to refer it to an independent counsel when prosecutors first recommended that she do so in 1997, and again when the issue was brought to her attention in 1998.

Few in the Senate or the Justice Department expect Ms. Reno to shed much light on the matter. She has never proved a talkative witness in Congressional appearances, and she has been especially closemouthed on the subject of controversial investigations related to the highest administration officials.

---

Albert agonistes

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • June 26, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-2000626174634.htm

Trouble never seems to end for Al Gore. The explosion in gasoline prices throughout the politically crucial Midwest has put a damper on his "prosperity tour," and revelations of the vice president's investments on Occidental Petroleum suggested that he himself might prosper from the crisis. Meanwhile, important developments in long-brewing scandals have bubbled back into the media and the minds of voters. The campaign-finance scandal was especially cruel to Mr. Gore last week, as was the simmering controversy over the computer-savvy vice president's missing e-mail.

The Wall Street Journal revealed Thursday that two FBI agents and the chief of the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force spent four hours on April 18 grilling the vice president over his role in the scandal. For the first time ever, the task force got around to questioning Mr. Gore about his repeated public assertions that he did not know that the Buddhist temple luncheon he attended in April 1996 was in fact a fund-raiser - and an illegal one at that. Mr. Gore initially insisted the event was for "community outreach." He later conceded it was "finance-related." But he has continued to insist that he did not know it was a fund-raiser despite the fact that he received numerous e-mails to that effect from then-White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes and despite the fact that the affair was arranged by fund-raisers John Huang and Maria Hsia. Miss Hsia is a longtime Gore associate who subsequently pleaded guilty to multiple felonies related to the temple event.

All of this was enough, apparently, to convince yet another employee of Attorney General Janet Reno, no less than the chief of the task force handling the campaign finance probe, Charles J. Conrad Jr., to recommend to Miss Reno that she appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal. Mr. Conrad's recommendation, which follows upon that of his predecessor Charles LaBella and FBI Director Louis Freeh, presents one more acute embarrassment for Miss Reno, master of the stonewall technique. Mr. Gore's office, for their part, responded with a classic Clinton maneuver, a giant document dump of the entire transcript of the FBI interview and much besides, in order to enable Mr. Gore to make the ludicrous assertion that he had certainly not been trying to hide anything.

On top of all of that, yet another felon, Pauline Kanchanalak, will plead guilty to serious campaign-finance abuses involving the funneling of hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign money to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic state parties during 1996, when the DNC and the Clinton-Gore re-election committee exhibited an insatiable appetite for contributions with utter indifference to the money's origins. Once again Janet Reno's Justice Department has portrayed the DNC and its state affiliates as hapless victims of conniving Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants determined to flood the supposedly unsuspecting party with foreign money. In exchange, the bamboozled Democratic Party just happened to provide the donors and their foreign business partners seemingly unlimited access to the president, the vice president, the first lady and senior White House officials, including members of the National Security Council (NSC).

Kanchanalak, readers may recall, attended 26 White House events, including three meetings with NSC officials, two events attended by Mr. Gore, and a particularly notorious June 18, 1996, White House "coffee" at which she and her foreign business partners discussed U.S.-China policy with President Clinton. Kanchanalak funneled nearly $500,000 to the DNC and several state parties for the privilege of discussing U.S. foreign policy with the president that day. And once again the felonies to which Kanchanalak pleaded guilty Friday are election-law violations - violations that a federal appeals court had to revive after Judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton-appointed federal district judge, had earlier dismissed them. Kanchanalak will join fellow felons Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, Huang and Hsia in the rogues gallery of Democratic Party victimizers.

On the e-mail front, Howard Sparks, a longtime - and current - White House computer network specialist, has testified in an affidavit filed recently with a federal court that a political aide to Mr. Gore essentially told him to "get lost" when he offered in 1993 to save the vice president's e-mails. "At this meeting, we carefully explained to [top Gore information expert Mike] Gill" - who later earned the nickname "Mad Deleter" - "the legal requirement that the Office of Vice President [OVP] manage its electronic records," Mr. Sparks testified. "Mr. Gill did not care about these legal requirements and essentially told us to get lost." Mr. Sparks added, "If our advice had been followed, the year's worth of OVP e-mail that was reported 'lost' last week by the Clinton-Gore White House would still be in existence." That period, March 1998-April 1999, is the one that would have included sensitive e-mail communications involving the campaign-finance investigation, the Monica Lewinsky affair and other scandals.

Amazingly, Mr. Gore, who once claimed to have played an indispensable role in the creation of the Internet, told reporters, "I don't know anything about why that happened or - or how it happened. I'm not an expert on computers." Once again, as with everything else, Mr. Gore wants to have it both ways. Just another hapless, bamboozled victim. This does not exactly sound like presidential material.

---

THE VICE PRESIDENT
Gore to Unveil a Plan to Foster Cleaner Energy

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062600wh-gore.html

WASHINGTON, June 25 -- Under fire from Republicans who say he has no energy plan, Vice President Al Gore will propose on Tuesday an array of economic incentives to encourage cleaner technologies intended to reduce the nation's dependency on foreign oil, aides said today.

The aides said Mr. Gore would call for billions of dollars in tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants and other federal subsidies to encourage consumers to buy clean-energy products, like alternative-fuel cars or solar houses, and to encourage companies to develop sources of energy that do not burn oil.

In recent days, Mr. Gore has come under sharp attack by his likely Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, for having supported higher gas taxes in the past. Mr. Bush has also accused the Clinton administration of idly allowing gasoline prices to rise steeply this summer. Prices at the pump have soared nationwide, rising as much as 50 cents a gallon in parts of the Midwest, an important battleground region in the presidential race.

Mr. Gore's advisers counter that they can turn the issue to their advantage by portraying Mr. Bush, a former executive with a small oil company, as a pawn of big oil producers whose profits have risen sharply over the last year. Mr. Gore's aides say they are planning an offensive this week in which surrogates will attack Mr. Bush's ties to the oil industry while the vice president focuses on a more positive message.

In an early taste of those attacks, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said today on "Fox News Sunday," "It seems to me what Mr. Bush and what the Republicans are saying and the oil companies are saying is that their answer to the crisis is to keep their profits up."

Mr. Gore had planned to devote this week to discussing the environment in his three-week "progress and prosperity" tour. But with gasoline prices dominating the news in the Midwest, he has chosen to shift gears somewhat and focus his message as much on reducing oil prices and consumption as on cleaning up the environment.

Mr. Gore's aides declined to provide specifics on the cost of the plan. They said the vice president would propose setting aside part of the federal surplus in a protected "environmental trust fund" that would pay for the proposals.

The aides acknowledged that Mr. Gore's new proposals would have little short-term effect on oil prices. But they noted that he had already called for having the Federal Trade Commission investigate possible price gouging by the oil industry and had urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase production.

Under the plan that the aides said Mr. Gore would unveil this week, he would provide tax breaks to encourage consumers and small-business owners to buy houses, cars, hot-water heaters and other products that were energy efficient. His aides said the plan would expand on a similar proposal by President Clinton that would cost $9 billion over 10 years.

Mr. Gore would also propose federal subsidies to help utility companies upgrade or replace coal-fired power plants that are the source of much of the air pollution that causes acid rain and smog along the Eastern seaboard, the aides said.

In addition, they said, the plan would call for expanding federal spending on mass transit and having the federal government help underwrite investments in cleaner, energy-efficient technologies.

Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said of Mr. Gore's proposals, "After eight years of weak leadership on energy issues, Al Gore is proposing nothing new." He added, "One thing that is consistent is Al Gore's longtime support of higher gas prices."

In 1993, Mr. Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the administration's economic stimulus plan, which was intended to reduce the budget deficit by cutting spending and raising some taxes, including taxes on gasoline. Some Republicans in Congress are now calling for suspending all or part of that federal gasoline tax.

Governor Bush has tried to use Mr. Gore's writings to accuse him of wanting to increase gasoline taxes as a means of discouraging consumption. Last week, Mr. Bush read a passage from Mr. Gore's 1992 book "Earth in the Balance" that described "higher taxes on fossil fuels" as "one of the logical first steps in changing our policies in a manner consistent with a more responsible approach to the environment."

But Mr. Gore's aides say that the Republicans have willfully misread "Earth in the Balance." The book proposed taxing companies that emit carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels that is also a significant component of smog. But Mr. Gore also proposed reducing payroll taxes for those companies so that they would not have to increase prices to consumers.

In turn, the Gore campaign has circulated copies of a 1992 letter from Mr. Bush warning that his father, President George Bush, who was then seeking re-election, might lose support in some oil-producing states because he "is viewed as favoring cheap energy." Mr. Gore's aides contend the letter demonstrates that Governor Bush is more concerned about protecting oil companies' profits than reducing retail prices.

Mr. Bartlett said today that Governor Bush was simply urging his father's administration to support a tax break for small, independent oil companies that could help them increase production. He said that Mr. Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, also supported that tax break.

During Mr. Gore's swing through Pennsylvania, Ohio and parts of the Midwest this week, the aides said, he will argue that cleaning up the environment could help the economy, rather than hinder it.

The aides said that the vice president would assert, for instance, that American companies could reap large profits from selling products that help clean the environment to developing nations. And, the aides said, he would argue that American consumers were "ravenous" for products that were cleaner and more energy efficient.

"The environment and the economy are really one and the same thing," Mr. Gore said to a group of Democrats in Miami on Saturday night.

---

Nader is nominee of the Green Party

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
By Valerie Richardson
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000626221132.htm

DENVER - Consumer advocate Ralph Nader won the Green Party presidential nomination yesterday by a huge margin, a move that could drain crucial votes from the Democratic Party's bid to hold the White House.

The 66-year-old Nader, a registered independent, and his running mate, Winona LaDuke, took 295 of the 326 delegate votes cast at the two-day party convention by vowing to end corporate subsidies, downsize the military, provide universal health care, push for public campaign financing and clean up the environment

Referring to the Democrats and Republicans as "the drab and the dreary" and "do-littles and do-nothings," Mr. Nader predicted his campaign would appeal to a wide spectrum of voters disgusted with a corrupt and unresponsive political system.

"Let us not prejudge any voters, for Green values are majoritarian values," said Mr. Nader, speaking to delegates behind a podium clustered with sunflowers at the Marriott Renaissance Hotel here.

Using the word "corporate" as an all-purpose slur, the longtime big-business nemesis spent much of his 90-minute acceptance speech denouncing "corporate welfare," "corporate abusers," "corporate paymasters," "absentee and giant corporations," "mass corporate power" and even "corporatists."

His nomination sends a ripple of unease into the tight presidential contest, particularly among Democrats and particularly in voter-rich California, where polls have shown him garnering as much as 9 percent of the vote.

Analysts agree that his entry into the contest could hurt Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore by siphoning off left-leaning voters.

But delegates at yesterday's convention said the prospect of boosting Texas Gov. George W. Bush's chances was the least of their concerns.

"That's not a worry, that's a strategy," said D.C. delegate Mike Livingston. "If the Democrats wanted support from voters that are left of center, they would field a candidate with views that were left of center. We hope this sends a message."

Thomas Smith, a Green Party candidate for the District school board, said that if Democrats lost the White House, "frankly, my dear, as Rhett said, I don't give a damn. They deserve to lose. They haven't represented working-class people for a long time."

Other delegates said they didn't care whether Mr. Bush defeated Mr. Gore because their parties are both are beholden to corporations and special interest groups.

"There needs to be a serious change in our political system," said Bill Smedley, an environmental activist from Pennsylvania. "I'm tired of the corruption in both parties."

Even Mr. Gore's much-touted environmental credentials, including his book, "Earth in the Balance," left delegates unimpressed. "He's a fake environmentalist. His book was ghost-written - he doesn't believe any of it," said Vicki Smedley of Pennsylvania.

For many delegates, the last major-party candidate they supported was Bill Clinton in 1992. Most said they switched in 1996 to the Green Party, which drafted Mr. Nader as its presidential candidate with a shoestring budget of $5,000. Mr. Nader received less than 1 percent of the vote that year in the 22 states where he appeared on the ballot, finishing fourth behind Reform Party candidate Ross Perot.

This year, however, he has a fund-raising goal of $5 million, which will allow him to take his campaign on the road. His first stop: California, where he plans to hold two press conferences today.

Mr. Nader appears poised to surpass his 1996 performance. The ticket has qualified for the ballot, or expects to qualify for the ballot by June 30, as an Independent or Green Party candidate in 30 states.

"The states where Nader is strong - Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Maine and California - are all states that Gore has to win," ABC news analyst George Stephanopoulos noted yesterday on "This Week." "If Nader gets 5 percent, it could cut into that."

A Newsweek poll released Saturday showed Mr. Nader with 3 percent of the vote, ahead of Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, who got 2 percent. Mr. Bush led with 42 percent, followed closely by Mr. Gore with 40 percent.

At a press briefing yesterday, Mr. Nader received the endorsement of the California Nurses Association based on his advocacy of universal health care. Afterward, Mr. Nader predicted a poor showing for Mr. Gore in that state.

"If Al Gore doesn't change the spectrum of his agenda and broaden it out, he's going to lose California," Mr. Nader said.

Cutting into Mr. Gore's voting bloc "is something we want to do because we want to win," he said. "We don't do that by allowing Al Gore to win."

As for the specter of a Bush presidency, Mr. Nader said he wasn't concerned. "You mean [do I worry] about George W. Bush replacing George Reagan Clinton?" he quipped. "You mean a do-nothing replacing a do-little?"

Told that he spends more time criticizing Vice President Gore than the Texas governor, Mr. Nader promised to rectify the situation over the next four months. "I do come in third to [columnist] Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower when it comes to bashing George Bush, but I hope to be first soon," he said, adding that "the record in Texas is really abysmal."

His first priority is to convince the two major parties to include him and Mr. Buchanan in the televised presidential debates. He also called on Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore to reject corporate sponsorship of the debates, which are now being funded by beer brewer Anheuser-Busch and others.

"Why are these two men afraid? They should overcome their fear of facing new ideas and alternative voices," Mr. Nader said.

---

THE GREEN PARTY
Nader, Nominated by Green Party, Attacks Politics as Usual

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062600wh-nader.html

DENVER, June 25 -- With a blistering attack against Republicans, Democrats, Congress, corporate America and the commission that sets the rules for presidential debates, Ralph Nader today accepted the presidential nomination of the Green Party, a growing political force that could weaken the prospects of Vice President Al Gore.

Condemning a political system that he said makes Mr. Gore and his likely Republican opponent, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, virtually indistinguishable, Mr. Nader said he could imagine winning in November, especially if the Presidential Debate Commission -- and by extension, its corporate sponsors and the two major parties -- allowed him and the Reform Party nominee to take part in the debates.

"Polls show that the American people want the debates opened to my candidacy and that of Pat Buchanan," Mr. Nader said at the Green Party National Convention, referring to the leading contender for the Reform nomination. "But the demands of the people mean little to Gore and Bush. It is very important to them that the electoral process remains a closed-door affair between the Republican and Democratic parties."

Mr. Nader, a well-known consumer advocate who won less than 1 percent of the vote four years ago when he ran a symbolic presidential campaign as a Green, had little trouble gaining the nomination for the 2000 race. He faced only marginal opposition and won 295 of the 319 votes, or 93 percent, from delegates representing the District of Columbia and the 39 states where the Greens have a party organization.

No other candidate ran a serious campaign. Jello Biafra (whose real name is Eric Boucher), leader of the now-defunct punk-rock band Dead Kennedys, and Stephen Gaskin, the founder of a commune in Tennessee, each won 10 votes. Joel Kovel, the Green candidate for the Senate from New York in 1998, got 3 votes, and one voter abstained.

Mr. Nader, who belongs to no political party, including the Greens -- "It's a thing with me," he told reporters -- has demonstrated broad appeal to voters who see Mr. Gore's moderate positions on many issues, including support of the death penalty and international trade agreements as a betrayal of traditional Democratic constituencies, like labor unions. Because of his opposition to global trade agreements, Mr. Nader also has a certain attractiveness to some Republican conservatives.

But with Mr. Nader's strongly held liberal views on social issues, views that most Republicans would oppose -- he favors gun control and abortion rights for women, which are popular among Democrats -- his support in the fall's election is far more likely to come at the expense of Mr. Gore.

And with the support he predicted he would win from people who are disenchanted with the electoral process because of the influence of money on the major parties, Mr. Nader has appeared to eclipse Mr. Buchanan as the leading third-party contender. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Mr. Bush leading Mr. Gore by 43 percent to 39 percent and Mr. Nader leading Mr. Buchanan, a Republican-turned-Reform candidate, by 7 percent to 4 percent.

In his denunciation of Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush as "drab and dreary" choices whose policies largely reflect the influence of corporate campaign contributions, Mr. Nader called on the debate commission to change the criteria for participation. Currently, a candidate must show at least 15 percent support in the polls.

Mr. Nader said that with so many voters yearning for more choices, the commission should open the debates to any candidate who has reached 5 percent -- the level that qualifies a candidate for federal matching funds in the next election -- or to a candidate who has qualified for the ballot in a majority of states. Currently, Mr. Nader is on the ballot in 20 states and the District of Columbia, the same as Mr. Buchanan.

While the focus of Greens around the country has largely been environmental issues, Mr. Nader has made the centerpiece of his campaign the influential role of corporations in politics. He insisted that Democrats and Republicans have become beholden to corporations through large campaign contributions that win them preferential treatment, leaving average Americans to suffer with needlessly low wages, inadequate health care and failing schools.

He chided both parties for pursuing a missile defense system that he contended was unworkable, dangerous to American foreign policy and too expensive. He said the leaders of both major parties supported the missile system because defense contractors who have a stake in building it were major campaign donors.

Further, he charged that corporate influence has blurred any meaningful distinctions between the parties, referring to President Clinton as "George Ronald Clinton."

In his acceptance speech today, Mr. Nader told delegates that corporate interests have virtually strangled the ability of government to represent ordinary citizens, pushing them away from politics.

"Feelings of powerlessness and the withdrawal of massive numbers of Americans from both civic and political arenas are deeply troubling," Mr. Nader said. "The situation has to be addressed by a fresh political movement arising from the citizenry's labors and resources and dreams about what American could become at long last."

---

Clinton Says Gas Tax Repeal Would Come at Price

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 5:19 PM ET
By Patrick Connole
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000626/pl/gasoline_tax_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton on Monday warned Congress that if it temporarily repealed the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gasoline tax for the summer to offset skyrocketing pump prices, lawmakers will also have to postpone highway projects which the taxes were meant to fund.

A Republican-backed plan to temporarily stop collecting the tax has been offered as a way to defuse motorists' anger over soaring gasoline prices during the peak summer driving season.

But the proposal has other costs, Clinton said.

``Now, if the Congress wants to consider some sort of relief on the federal gas tax... they would have to be willing to defer substantial highway projects,'' Clinton told reporters. ``That's something they have to come to terms with.''

Most of the gasoline tax collected by the federal government pays for highway roads construction projects.

Clinton pointed out that eliminating the tax would provide only ``modest'' relief to drivers, with retail gasoline prices more than 55 cents a gallon higher than one year ago.

Regular unleaded gasoline prices now average $1.65 a gallon nationally. Drivers in the Midwest were paying even more, with clean-burning gasoline grades averaging above $1.88.

Republicans On The Attack

The gasoline tax gained new attention over the weekend, when Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said she favored repealing the full 18.4-cents tax until the autumn.

Hutchison on Monday formalized her intentions, announcing on the Senate floor she would soon introduce legislation to repeal the full tax. Her Republican colleague, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, said in Chicago that he also would offer a bill to put the tax on hold for 90 days.

Similar efforts in the spring to repeal 4.3 cents per gallon of the tax -- a portion earmarked for U.S. deficit relief -- stalled in the Senate. A spokesman for Majority Leader Trent Lott on Monday said there were no scheduled votes for any of previously introduced bills for repealing the tax.

Hutchison said it was time to both attack the short-term energy problem and move to longer-term solutions to solve a growing supply-demand imbalance. The short-term tax repeal ''must be tied to long-term relief so we won't still be under the thumb of foreign interests,'' she said.

A Republican spokesman for the House Transportation Committee, the panel in charge of highway construction, said it did not support any repeal.

``We certainly opposed the 4.3 cents repeal, and the 18.4 cents would be four times worse,'' said the spokesman.

The gas tax helps pay for around $30 billion a year for various transportation projects across the country, he said.

Clinton Wants Action On Long-Term Energy Problem

Clinton said for the near-term, his administration had opened a Federal Trade Commission investigation into possible price gouging by Midwest oil companies.

``What we're doing immediately is continuing this investigation. If the prices are being set for noneconomic reasons, then we ought to do what we can to pressure them down,'' Clinton said.

The oil industry denies playing around with the market to increase prices. It blames the run-up on stringent clean air rules, higher oil prices, pipeline supply disruptions, state taxes and high demand.

Republican lawmakers have in turn blamed the administration for not having an energy policy to effectively develop domestic energy reserves in Alaska and elsewhere, and favoring environmental regulations for cleaner air over fuel inflation.

Clinton noted Congress would help the longer-term energy situation if it passed legislation to develop alternative fuel sources and mandate higher mileage for vehicles.

Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), presidential hopeful, was to unveil a broad energy plan on Tuesday calling for cleaner-burning and more fuel-efficient automobiles. It would also offer tax incentives to help homeowners switch to solar energy.

The federal Energy Information Administration said the oil industry's profits rose by 236 percent in the first quarter, mainly due to higher prices for oil and natural gas. Gore and some other politicians have accused major oil companies of gouging American drivers, and pocketing profit increases of as much as 500 percent this year.

---

Clinton Floats Tax-Cut, Prescription Drug Deal

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 11:46 PM ET
By Arshad Mohammed
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000626/ts/clinton_budget_dc_8.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton on Monday forecast the U.S. budget surplus at a massive $1.87 trillion over the next decade and offered to use some of the money to cut taxes for married couples if Congress enacts a prescription drug benefit for the elderly.

The budget projection -- $1 trillion higher than estimated four months ago for the 2001-2010 period -- provides a windfall that the Democratic White House and the Republican-led Congress already are fighting over ahead of the Nov. 7 presidential and congressional elections.

The White House said the huge increase in the projected surplus, which was forecast at $746 billion in February, reflected the booming U.S. economy, and it also boosted growth forecasts for this year and next.

In presenting the figures, Clinton dangled the carrot of $250 billion in tax relief to reduce the so-called marriage penalty paid by two-income married couples -- a long-standing Republican goal -- if Congress approved a prescription drug benefit for the elderly of roughly the same cost.

Clinton also made the deal contingent on Congress walling off $403 billion in Medicare surpluses from being spent on tax cuts or government programs, a position championed by Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites).

``This is a proposal for true compromise. It asks each party to accept some of the positions of the other party in the name of progress,'' Clinton said in the White House Rose Garden, saying top Republicans had expressed interest in the plan.

But influential Republicans reacted coolly to the idea, which Clinton proposed to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert on Monday, suggesting the parties may not cut a deal before the election.

Republican Criticizes ``Raw Deal''

``I would not be interested in a raw deal where American families get just a few more pennies in tax relief and President Clinton gets a trillion dollar blank check for more government spending,'' added Rep. Bill Archer, the Texas Republican who chairs the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Lott said he would work with Clinton to end the ``punitive'' marriage penalty and to find common ground on a drug benefit, but seemed hostile to any link, saying: ``What I will not do is engage in political horse-trading that gives short shrift to the long-range challenges we face as a nation.''

Both presidential candidates have designs on the new money, with Democrat Gore calling for much of it to be set aside to pay down debt and Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) hoping to use the windfall to buttress his argument for a five-year, $483 billion tax cut.

While crowing over the new surplus forecasts, Clinton told reporters the money might not actually materialize and argued that the government therefore should not commit to spending all of it or returning all of it to the public through tax cuts.

``I believe it would be a big mistake to commit this entire surplus to spending or to tax cuts,'' he said. ``The projections could be wrong, they could be right. That's why we shouldn't spend it all now.''

PAYING OFF DEBT BY 2012?

Endorsing an idea put forward by Gore as part of his presidential campaign, Clinton proposed dedicating $403 billion of the projected surplus resulting from the Medicare health care program for the elderly to paying down the debt.

The White House said the new forecasts in the mid-session budget review, and the dedication of some of the new surplus to debt reduction, would allow the government to pay off its debt by 2012, a year earlier than forecast in February.

What Clinton and Gore are effectively trying to do is to wall off much of the surpluses generated by Medicare, which provides health insurance to about 40 million senior citizens, much as they persuaded the Republicans to wall off the massive surpluses generated by the Social Security System.

The so-called unified budget surplus would amount to $4.193 trillion over the next decade if government policy remains unchanged. This includes $2.317 trillion from Social Security, $1.47 trillion from the general government operations, $403 billion from Medicare and $3 billion from the Postal Service.

The White House also revised its economic assumptions on Monday, predicting gross domestic product growth at 3.9 percent this year and 3.2 percent next, up from the 2.9 percent and 2.6 percent predicted with the February budget submission. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was forecast at 3.2 percent in 2000, up from the 2.3 percent predicted four months ago.

---

$1.9 Trillion Surplus Predicted

USA Today
June 26, 2000
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/26cnd-surplus.html

WASHINGTON, June 26 -- President Clinton said today that the federal budget surplus over the next decade will be nearly $1.3 trillion higher than previously projected, putting a breathtaking sum of new money on the table as the two parties and their presidential candidates battle over tax cuts, spending and how to prepare for the nation's long-term challenges.

The estimate, developed by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, reflected the economy's current strength and an expectation that at least some of the improvement in the economy will be long lasting.

It foresees a surplus in the Social Security system over the next decade of $2.3 trillion, money that the two parties have agreed should go only to debt reduction or shoring up the retirement system to deal with the aging of the population. And it projects a surplus of nearly $1.9 trillion over the same period in the general budget, funds that are up for grabs as the nation debates how best to take advantage of its prosperity.

Nearly all the improvement was in the non-Social Security surplus. Seeking to frame the debate over how the money should be used, Mr. Clinton immediately proposed a deal to divide a portion of the windfall with the Republican majority in Congress.

Mr. Clinton said he would agree to a Republican proposal to cut taxes for married couples by roughly $250 billion over 10 years if the Republicans would go along with his $253 billion proposal to add prescription drug coverage to the Medicare system of health insurance for the elderly.

Mr. Clinton said the deal would be contingent on Congress agreeing to use the portion of the surplus generated by Medicare -- $403 billion over ten years -- only for reducing the national debt.

"This is a proposal for true compromise," Mr. Clinton said. "It asks each party to accept some of the positions of the other party in the name of progress."

The initial response to the proposal from Republican leaders ranged from non-committal to outright rejection.

Administration officials said much of the improved surplus outlook stemmed from the economy's robust performance since late last year, when the White House last made budget projections. Because the economy is bigger now than previously foreseen, it would generate larger than anticipated tax revenues even if growth from this point on did not exceed the rates that the White House had assumed earlier this year.

But the White House also revised upward its growth estimates, reflecting a general consensus among economists that the economy is capable of higher rates of non-inflationary growth than previously thought. The administration also built into its estimates some upward revisions in personal income tax receipts linked to capital gains from the stock market.

Mr. Clinton also said the new surplus estimates that the nation's $3.5 trillion debt could be eliminated by 2012, one year sooner than he had predicted in January.

The presidential campaigns of Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush have both revised their tax cut and spending plans as the projected surpluses has grown. Mr. Gore has said he would spend the money on the Social Security system, health, schools and the environment, as well as on a $500 billion tax cut. Mr. Bush has said he would spend about $1.3 trillion on a tax cut and the rest on Social Security and reducing the national debt.

---

Spanning continents

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm

"A local resident returned from London with the attached newspaper item. The reception accorded [President] Clinton was not so reported in our U.S. press," writes one Inside the Beltway reader, referring to President Clinton's address this month to the Russian parliament. The newspaper clipping, from the London Times, opined that Mr. Clinton's "folksy tone" might serve him well in Arkansas, but his powers of persuasion fell far short of charming the State Duma. In fact, the newspaper reported those Russian deputies who bothered to turn up - there were many empty seats - calmly read the papers or stared at their watches. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, deputy speaker of the Duma, acknowledged that the audience was packed with "bureaucrats, cleaners and security guards," barely 20 percent of them deputies, who were told to clap when Mr. Clinton arrived and departed. "Clinton will think that he was warmly received by the deputies. But he wasn't," admitted Mr. Zhirinovsky. But the real action was in the corridors, the Times reported, when Mr. Clinton was ambushed by a woman shouting: "Bill, drop your trousers and show us what a sex boss you are."

---

All in the family

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
Inside Politics Greg Pierce
http://208.246.212.80/national/inpolitics.htm

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, got laughs over the weekend on CNN's "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields" when asked to name the best vice presidential choice for Al Gore.

"Well, I'm very torn in this selection process . . . because I can't choose between Andrew Cuomo and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend," Mr. Kennedy told hosts Al Hunt and Robert Novak.

"And so, we're going to have a family convention on the Fourth of July at the Cape. Stay tuned, and I'll give you who the Kennedys are supporting," he promised.

Mr. Hunt said he can think of another member of the Kennedy family who is "far more experienced" than either Mr. Cuomo, the U.S. housing secretary, or Mrs. Townsend, Maryland's lieutenant governor.

Mr. Kennedy's niece, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, is married to Mr. Cuomo. Mrs. Cuomo and Mrs. Townsend are both daughters of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

"In all seriousness, if Al Gore came to you and said, 'I really need you,' would you go on the ticket?" the liberal pundit asked Mr. Kennedy.

"No, no," Mr. Kennedy said, adding: "I enjoy the Senate, and I have every intention . . . of continuing in the Senate until I get the hang of it." Mr. Kennedy is finishing up his seventh term there.

'Wacky sour grapes'

Kentucky Gov. Paul E. Patton, a Democrat, says he is tired of seeing George W. Bush in his state.

"Enough already," Mr. Patton said recently after Mr. Bush raised $1.7 million for his presidential campaign and the GOP. Mr. Patton accused Mr. Bush of using "strong-arm tactics" to get money from voters.

"This is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to participate this way," said Mr. Patton, who wants to keep Republicans from maintaining their 20-18 majority in the Kentucky state Senate. "It just blows my mind."

Republican state Chairman Ellen Williams replied that Mr. Patton is suffering from "wacky sour grapes." Mr. Bush sent Mr. Patton a more pointed message, Cox News Service reports.

"I'm coming. Get used to it," Mr. Bush said. "I'm going to come to your state as many times as I feel like coming - and win the vote."

Clinton's name-calling

President Clinton, in a campaign appearance Saturday, likened presumed Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush and Texas Republicans to fascists, the Associated Press reports.

"You don't see them passing out copies of the Texas Republican platform, do you?" Mr. Clinton said in a speech to California Democratic organizers, suggesting the GOP is less centrist than it appears.

Mr. Clinton said that when he was in Texas the week before, a friend described the platform to him this way: "It was so bad that you could get rid of every fascist tract in your library if you just had a copy of the Texas Republican platform."

Mr. Clinton did not identify the friend or what it was about the platform that he considered so bad, reporter Anne Gearan said.

But he added a note about Mr. Bush. "I noticed their leader didn't go to the [state party] convention and he didn't repudiate it," Mr. Clinton said.

The president, who has been making a point of saying there is no need for negative campaigning, appeared to catch himself right after his remarks about Mr. Bush and the platform, the wire service said.

"I say that in a good-natured way," he said. "I don't think we have to have negative campaigns, and I don't think we should."

The party, at its state convention earlier this month, came out against abortion and homosexual "marriage." It also called for elimination of high estate taxes and income-tax penalties for married couples, and for private investment of some Social Security money and keeping the U.S. military out of foreign countries that are not a direct threat to the United States.

Al Gore, C.S.A.

"In 1992, after receiving the vice-presidential nomination, Federal Election Commission records show that Gore gave $40 to a group known as the Confederate Memorial Committee," David Schuster of Fox News reported Thursday.

A Gore spokesman confirmed the donation, saying the candidate "was simply honoring a Southern tradition."

"The money to the Confederate group paid for a wreath honoring Southern soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery," Mr. Schuster reported.

"Forty dollars isn't much," Mr. Schuster noted, "but it was more than the $25 he gave to the Chattanooga chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."

V.R.W.C. Department

Who was responsible for last week's news about a probe of Vice President Al Gore's 1996 campaign fund-raising? Top Justice Department prosecutor Robert Conrad? Attorney General Janet Reno?

No and no, say some Democrats.

It was the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

"Gore supporters . . . accused the GOP of orchestrating the leak about the recommendation on a day that rival candidate [Texas Gov.] George W. Bush was facing his own negative story, the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Gary Graham," reports Susan Page of USA Today.

"The untimely release of this information to a partisan opponent of the vice president is likely to make it very suspect in the minds of the American people," Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, New Jersey Democrat, told the Associated Press.

Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or by e-mail: Pierce@twtmail.com

---

Silent March Ads Target Gun Control During Republican National Convention

Yahoo News
Monday June 26, 6:29 pm Eastern Time
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000626/pa_silent_.html

PHILADELPHIA, June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Silent March, a national grassroots gun control organization, has unveiled an advertising campaign that will appear on 100 Philadelphia city buses and fifty trains leading up to, and during, the Republican National Convention. The bus ads will travel the City Center route and the subway ads will be on trains traveling to and from First Union Center -- site of the convention. Commuters, tourists and convention delegates will see the ads, scheduled to run from July 10 to August 10.

Designed by the Connecticut based firm Unconventional Wisdom*, the advertisements (www.silentmarch.org/noguns/data/advert.jpg) feature a photograph and the shoes of Derek Paul Valentin, murdered by gunfire at the age of 17. Derek, an Iona Prep student and aspiring physician, was shot three times in the back. The advertisement's caption reads: ``When you kill handgun legislation, you kill more than a bill.'' The tagline reads: ``It's just common sense.''

Since 1994, Silent March has organized empty shoe exhibits, or ``silent marches'' across the country -- from the US Capitol to the front gates of the nation's largest gun makers. At these demonstrations, Silent March displays thousands of empty shoes to raise awareness and to encourage voters to examine the positions of candidates regarding how they would reduce gun violence. The Silent March supports ``commonsense'' measures such as closing the gun show loophole, one-gun-a-month laws, and regulating guns like other consumer products. It does not call for a ban on handguns.

``As the Republican party gathers in this historic city to engage in one of our nation's greatest democratic traditions, we must recognize how we are failing our children by allowing the epidemic of gun violence to go unchecked,'' said Ellen Freudenheim, co-founder of Silent March. ``These advertisements are a wake up call that American families are demanding sensible regulation of the gun industry, including oversight of the design, manufacture, distribution, marketing of firearms.''

These powerful advertisements will be part of a series of protests and demonstrations during the convention to draw attention to the need for stronger laws to prevent gun violence. 350 pairs of empty shoes will be displayed at the Liberty Bell, symbolizing the Americans that will be lost to gun violence over the four days spanning the Republican convention (projected daily average based on 1997 statistics). All 350 pairs of these shoes belonged to someone killed by gunfire. At Independence Historic Park, a massive display of nearly 30,000 pairs of shoes will be erected symbolizing the number of Americans killed by gunfire in a single year. Silent March will also stage protests and demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention.

Schedule of Events

Friday, July 28: 6:30-8:30 PM: YOUTH SPEAK OUT, Old First Reformed Church

Saturday, July 29: Silent March at the Liberty Bell 6 AM Meet at Liberty Bell. Lay out 30,000 pairs of shoes to protest US gun death toll 8-9 AM WAKE UP AMERICA RALLY: Honorary award to Tom Mauser, parent of Columbine victim 9-10:15 AM: Gun violence PROTEST PARADE 11-4 PM Press invited to view shoes, interview state spokespeople

Sunday, July 30: Silent March at the Liberty Bell 6 AM Meet at Liberty Bell to lay out shoes 11-4 PM Victims Speak Out 4 PM Moment of Silence; Closing

SOURCE: Silent March

-------- human genome

First Step of Human Gene Map Finished

Yahoo News
Monday June 26 3:52 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000626/ts/genome_dc_7.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Monday they had printed out the ``book of life'' -- the complete human genetic sequence -- and were now settling down to read it.

Public and private researchers announced they had finished sequencing the genetic code and had virtually finished assembling it into the right order in the first step of a process they say will transform medicine and could eventually mean the eradication of some diseases.

It is only the first step in a decades-long process that they say will allow doctors to tailor drugs for each individual and to predict who is at risk of certain diseases.

``Today we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life,'' Dr. Francis Collins, head of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which headed the public effort, told a White House ceremony.

``Without a doubt, this is the most important and most wondrous map ever produced by humankind,'' President Clinton told the ceremony.

Celera Genomics Inc., a Rockville, Maryland-based company founded with the specific purpose of being the first to map the human genome, said it had finished the sequence and assembled the genetic code.

The Human Genome Project, a collegial and publicly funded international effort that has been working toward the same goal for 10 years, said it had finished a rough draft of the genome sequence and completed 85 percent of the assembly.

The two sides had been negotiating on how best to make the information public and it was not clear that they would be able to reach an agreement. The Human Genome Project has been publishing the information on the Internet as it progresses, while Celera wants to protect some corporate rights to the information.

But Clinton said an agreement had been reached for joint publication.

``Public and private research teams are committed to publishing their genomic data simultaneously later this year, for the benefit of researchers in every corner of the globe,'' he said.

All the researchers involved stressed that the sequencing was only a very early beginning.

``There's a lot of work yet to be done ... We need to finish this job. We should not be satisfied with a book of life that has gaps and errors in it,'' Collins said.

``Having the genetic code is actually not a very important moment other than it is the beginning of what we can do with it,'' Craig Venter, president and chief scientific officer of Celera, told a news briefing after the announcement.

What the two teams have is a long read-out of A's, T's, C's and G's -- the molecules, or nucleotides, that make up the rungs of the DNA ladder.

``It wouldn't fit on a CD-ROM,'' Collins said. ``It would fit on a DVD (digital video disk).'' If printed out on sheets of standard, letter-sized paper stacked one on top of another, Collins said, the stack would reach as high as the Washington Monument, 555 feet (170 meters) tall.

``It would take you 100 years to read your own genetic code but I suspect you would fall asleep far earlier,'' Venter said.

Collins said 90 percent of all known genes had already been found in the sequence that had been done, and 95 percent of known disease-causing genes.

It is useful to compare the already-known genes because these can be used as a template for finding other genes.

But most of the sequence is unknown territory -- like a satellite photograph that needs the roads, cities and other landmarks filled in before it can be turned into a proper map.

Collins said scientists still do not know how many genes there are, but about 38,000 had been identified. ``All those in the betting pool (who predicted) under 38,000 may have to give up their $1 bets,'' he said.

``We need to uncover the genes that are involved in every common disease,'' Collins said.

Venter thinks the potential is enormous. ``As a consequence of the genome efforts that you've heard described by Dr. Collins and myself this morning and the research that will be catalyzed by this information, there is at least the potential to reduce the number of cancer deaths to zero during our lifetimes,'' he said.

``There will be discoveries made across the board, but it's impossible to predict which diseases, at this point, will see the breakthroughs first.''

---

Genome projects complete sequence

USA Today
06/23/00- Updated 02:20 PM ET
By Tim Friend, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/life/health/genetics/lhgec067.htm

Cracking the human genetic code - a 10-year effort involving thousands of scientists worldwide - is essentially complete, and the door to the future of medicine has been thrown wide open.

On Monday, scientists involved in two separate projects - at the publicly funded Human Genome Project in the USA and Britain and at the private company Celera Genomics in Rockville, Md. - will announce the historic achievement, which is similar in scale to man walking on the moon. Their announcements will launch an unprecedented era of scientific discovery.

The genetic code, a compilation of 3.5 billion letters that scientists call the Book of Life, has been wrested from the nucleus of our cells, deconstructed to its minimal essence like the individual notes of a grand symphony, and reassembled from beginning to end. If the entire code, or this genetic symphony, were printed in this newspaper, it would fill 151,910 pages and create a 42-foot-high stack of folded newspapers at the newsstand.

Generations of scientists will spend most of the next century interpreting the code's meaning and learning to play it on computers in increasingly complex ways that they believe will lead to treatments for most, if not all, human diseases. The genetic code also will launch a mammoth growth industry and marry the new darlings of Wall Street: computer technology and biotechnology.

Scientists from the public and private projects predict that the information contained in the genetic code will allow them for the first time to study the interactions of many different genes involved in complex diseases such as cancer and heart disease and to develop drugs that target these diseases at their most fundamental root levels.

Researchers also will be able to compare the human genetic code with those of other organisms, including the fruit fly, the mouse and yeast. Looking for similarities will reveal genes that are key to life's basic process as well as to disease. Comparisons also will provide volumes of information about how humans differ from other creatures and how we evolved.

"The completion of these projects is the beginning of the next phase of human biology," says Mike Pallazzola, senior director of biosystems at Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, Calif. In the late 1980s, Amgen became one of the first biotechnology companies to create a drug based on a gene discovery. Today it is one of the most voracious consumers in the world of gene sequence data. "Now scientists everywhere can do a lot of things they couldn't do before," he says.

J. Craig Venter, who spearheaded the Celera program, and Francis Collins, the U.S. leader of the international Human Genome Project, are expected to announce the completion of their projects at press conferences Monday in Washington, D.C.

"Achieving this milestone is an exhilarating moment in history, and a credit to the ingenuity and dedication of some of the brightest scientists of the current generation," Collins told USA TODAY. "Even more importantly, it brings us a major step closer to understanding and better treating a host of diseases for which genomics offers the best hope of prevention and cure."

Announcements also will be made in London by John Sulston, director of the Sanger Centre, Cambridge, and co-leader of the Human Genome Project; Michael Dexter, director of the Wellcome Trust; and Michael Morgan, chief executive of the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus. The U.S. public project is funded by taxpayers through the National Institutes of Health. The British effort is funded by the Wellcome Trust, a private philanthropy.

The public sequencing effort has been conducted by the Sanger Centre; the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Baylor College of Medicine in Houston; and the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif.

What Celera intends to announce Monday is that it has assembled the 3.5 billion letters of genetic code into their natural order. According to Venter, who formed Celera with PE Corp. in 1998, company scientists have placed the letters in the same order as they are found on the 24 human chromosomes in the DNA of every cell. While some letters are missing and others may be out of order, Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health, said publicly this week that he believes Celera's data are accurate and essentially complete.

Celera announced in March that it had completed a similar sequencing effort on the fruit fly with government-sponsored Drosophila Genome Project scientists. The fruit fly is an important model for understanding human disease. At the time, Human Genome Project scientists attacked Celera's fruit fly data. But the data are now regarded as highly accurate and foreshadowed Celera's successful sequencing of the human genome.

Spelling out instructions

The genetic sequence at the focus of Monday's announcements is represented by the first letters of the four components of DNA - guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, or G,A,T,C. The sequence, which varies in its order depending on its function, spells out every instruction of every gene in the human body.

About 3% of the sequences represent the instructions for all of the proteins made in the body, such as insulin or hemoglobin. The remainder make up mysterious regions of DNA that stretch for relatively vast distances between genes. These regions are certain to hold important genes, such as those that act as master switches that turn other genes on and off. Having the full genetic sequence of the entire genome will allow scientists to view the whole human genetic landscape and begin to understand how genes interact with one other and their environments.

"This is the first time in history that the human genetic code has been assembled in a linear fashion," Venter says. To assemble the 3.5 billion letters of genetic sequence in their correct order, Celera's scientists - actually its supercomputers - performed 480,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations, he says.

The Human Genome Project, which was launched in 1990, will report that it has completed a "working draft" of the human genome, which contains the genetic sequence of an estimated 90% of human DNA with more than 20% of the sequence arranged in near perfect order on a genetic map.

Human Genome Project scientists have used a different strategy, which makes direct comparisons between their achievement and Celera's difficult.

Varmus said Celera technically finished the sequence first but that the two groups are very close. He also emphasized that Human Genome Project data, unlike Celera's, are freely available to scientists worldwide in academia and at drug and biotechnology companies.

"We're engaged right now in an intense effort involving quite a large number of people to dig out what the interesting features are, determine how many genes there are, see what they look like, how they are organized along chromosomes, how they fit together and how the sequences snuggle up next to each other," says Collins, who in 1993 took over the U.S. project from James Watson, one of the founding fathers of the Human Genome Project. "These are all answerable questions with the working draft."

Now what?

"What does all this mean? From a pure science point of view, we now have coverage of the human genome," says Richard Gibbs, director of the sequencing center at Baylor. "If it is the instruction book of life, then we've looked at every page, and 90% of the pages have been analyzed in sufficient detail to see most of the sentences. We have a pretty good idea of the content and the composistion of this instruction book. To break away from the analogy, we have the raw material in the database from which to extract the human gene list. That's the importance of next week's announcement."

Although the two sides have been bitter rivals in a race and war of words, a behind-the-scenes agreement by Venter and Collins is expected to yield something akin to a shared victory, or at least a truce. Sources say the two sides believe a public showing of goodwill will polish their images for the history books.

"Everyone can have a happy ending," Collins says.

Scientists agree that the achievements by Celera and the Human Genome Project have dramatic and positive implications for human society. Some predict the expected health benefits will begin to appear with regularity in about 10 years.

"We will see an increasing proportion of gene-based medicines coming to the market that are targeted to the disease process," says Paul Herrling, director of global research at Novartis Pharmaceutiucal Corp. in Basel, Switzerland. "Many traditional therapies address the end stages of disease. These new therapies will address the disease process, so if a person has Alzheimer's disease or diabetes, we will develop medicines that stop or slow down the disease process. Having the human sequence is just the beginning."

The first fruits of the projects - profits and power - will fall to companies and scientists who commercialize the data. Certainly the investors in the most successful companies will benefit.

Celera's human sequence data are being mined by key drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and Amgen, for targets for drug development. The companies pay Celera $5 million to $15 million per year for access to the data. Celera says it charges academic scientists a reduced amount - $2,000 to $10,000 per lab - for the data. Vanderbilt University currently pays for an academic subscription. Celera may announce Monday how it plans to make its data freely available for academic research.

There's a glimpse of the future in the relationships being built between Celera and other institutions and at the companies springing up as direct result of the Human Genome Project's free accessible data. City of Hope, a comprehensive cancer treatment and research center at Duarte, Calif., announced a partnership March 20 with Celera to hunt through the gene sequence data for gene variations involved in breast cancer.

"For the first time we can actually sit and find out which of the variations are causing disease," says Larry Couture, vice president of technology transfer and development at City of Hope. "This is a huge milestone. Is it curing disease? No. Is it directly leading to the discovery of new therapeutics for disease? No. But it gives us a tool for the first time to find out which genes are associated with which diseases, to know which pathways and genes to go after."

A San Francisco firm, Double Twist Inc., is the first to base a company on the public data from the Human Genome Project and begin repackaging it for customers, primarily drug companies. Double Twist is involved in the complex process known as annotation, which means identifying individual genes from the sequence data and learning their function, locations and relationships with other genes.

Discoveries also are being made by academic laboratories using the public data. Eric Green, chief of the Genome Technology Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, has traced the discovery of more than a dozen genes by outside laboratories directly to the public sequence data.

"The real advance," Green says, "is being able to identify more efficiently genes associated with human diseases. Perhaps the most important point is to contrast how we are today compared to two years ago. Imagine exploring the continent without a map and only a collection of random photographs and a satellite photo showing the outline. Now we have the Rand McNally for the human body."

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Cracking genetic code has weighty potential

USA Today
06/26/00- Updated 10:14 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/edtwof.htm

In a rare moment of genuinely awesome significance, scientists in Washington Monday are expected to announce that they have unstrung the human genome, biology's basic book of life. It's an achievement of thrilling and unimaginable consequences, for which we are woefully ill-prepared.

The achievement heralds the dawn of a new medical era. Decoded but not yet fully deciphered, the genome promises to give us a vastly improved understanding of disease and a greater facility with diagnosis and treatment. Genetic tests can be used not just to anticipate illnesses, but also to customize individual therapies to prevent or remedy them.

Indeed, compared to other medical-research campaigns, which typically focus on curing ailments or solving riddles, the sequencing of the human genome is remarkable more for the possibilities it presents than the science it resolves. It took more than 10 years for scientists to assemble the 3.5 billion rungs of the human genetic code. Interpreting and understanding it could take scientists most of the next century.

What does it all mean? Think of the human genome as the ingredients list for a massive Thanksgiving dinner. Scientists long have had a general understanding of how the feast is cooked. They knew where the ovens were. Now, they also have a list of every ingredient.

Yet much remains to be discovered. In most cases, no one knows exactly which ingredients are necessary for making, for example, the pumpkin pie as opposed to the cornbread. Indeed, many, if not most, of the recipes that use the genomic ingredients are missing, and there's little understanding why small variations in the quality of the ingredients can "cook up" diseases in one person but not in another.

Consequently, publication of the genome is bound to accelerate an already-frenzied sprint among scientists to claim ownership of valuable recipes. This high-stakes race illustrates the need for new regulatory and ethical thinking in at least three fields.

Ownership: Should someone be allowed to claim ownership of the recipe for pecan pie simply because he suspects he has found the right ingredients in the kitchen? Some researchers have tried filing patents on strings of genetic code without knowing exactly what the code produces.

Use: Carrying a gene that indicates a disease risk doesn't mean you'll get the disease. Yet there are allegations already by individuals who believe they were denied jobs or health insurance on that basis. Likewise, fears are rising that the privacy of a person's genetic coding, the ultimate in personal information, is not adequately protected.

Utility and ethics: Imagine being able to replace the gene linked to a horrible developmental disorder. Now imagine a "genetocracy" created by adjustments for intelligence, strength or beauty. Say no more.

In each case, the necessary conversations or controls are inadequate. Patent officials have only recently cracked down on imprecise applications. Almost 40 states have outlawed genetic discrimination, but there's no unifying federal standard. And neither researchers nor regulators have exercised reassuring control of gene-therapy experiments.

Unraveling the human genome is a spectacular, even millennial, achievement. But on the cusp of a new age in medicine, the high-fiving cooks of genomic science require more oversight in the kitchens and at the table.

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Mapping of genetic code announced

USA Today
06/26/00- Updated 12:25 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/life/health/genetics/lhgec068.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton joined a government project and private venture Monday in announcing virtual completion of the first rough map of the human genetic code, an achievement Clinton called ''a day for the ages.''

Clinton, joined at the White House announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who appeared by satellite transmission, hailed completion of the work after a 10-year race that cost billions.

Clinton, who had helped calm a bitter rivalry between public and private groups racing to complete the genome map, beamed with pride at the announcement before a large gathering at the White House.

''Today we are learning the language in which God created life,'' Clinton said. ''We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift.''

He called the achievement a ''day for the ages,'' and likened it to Galileo's celestial searchings and the mapping of the American wild by explorers Lewis and Clark. He also cautioned that the genetic map must never be used to segregate, discriminate or invade the privacy of human beings.

Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project of the National Institutes of Health, said the breakthrough allows humans for the first time to read ''our own instruction book. Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life.''

Said Blair: ''Let us be in no doubt about what we are witnessing today: A revolution in medical science whose implications far surpass even the discovery of antibiotics, the first great technological triumph of the 21st century.''

At a press conference in London, hours ahead the one scheduled here, the Human Genome Project announced that scientists had decoded the 3.1 billion sub-units of DNA, the chemical ''letters'' that make up the recipe of human life.

The chemical mapping for more than 90% of human DNA, seen as one of history's great scientific milestones, has been keenly fought over, and the Human Genome Project initially embargoed the information with its joint announcement in Washington with the private company, Celera Genomics, of Rockville, Md.

But an announcement so significant proved impossible to suppress, and British media immediately reported the news conference. To map the human genome, the publicly financed Human Genome Project and the parallel private effort by Celera had to decipher some 3.1 billion sub-units of DNA, the chemical letters that code biological workings of humans.

Within the DNA there are an estimated 50,000 or more genes. These determine what a person inherits from parents and how well the cells function through out a lifetime. Flawed or missing genes can cause disease.

Mapping the entire human genome is seen as one of history's great scientific milestones, the biological equivalent of the moon landing.

Now, ''the real work begins,'' Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said in advance of Clinton's announcement.

''We've been racing down white water in a narrow channel trying to get the sequencing done,'' Collins said in an interview. ''Now we're opening into the ocean'' where the research possibilities and the effects on medicine are almost limitless.

''There is a very long list of things that we can now do, all of which will greatly benefit medicine,'' said Collins. Researchers now will concentrate on finding disease-causing genes and developing therapies that treat disorders at the fundamental, molecular level.

In London, Dr. Michael Dexter of Britain's Wellcome Trust, a part of the public project, said: ''Mapping the human genome has been compared to putting a man on the moon. But I believe that in terms of the future impact on society, the human genome project will be seen as the outstanding achievement, not only of our lifetime, but perhaps in the history of mankind.''

''This code really is the essence of mankind,'' he added.

Dexter said the research should be available to all - an apparent jibe at Celera boss, American scientist-entrepreneur J.Craig Venter, who has made no secret of wanting to profit from the discovery, possibly by patenting it. ''It should not be owned by one individual, one company, or one country,'' he said.

Venter, appearing alongside Clinton and Collins in Washington, said his company mapped the genetic codes of five people - three women and two men - of different races. Venter said scientists studying the maps were unable to tell one ethnicity from another.

''What we've shown is the concept of race has no scientific basis,'' Venter said.

Scientists believe that eventually medicine will be able to identify from birth the diseases that a person may develop and to provide treatment to extend life and health beyond what was ever possible before.

''It's a giant resource,'' said James D. Watson, the American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology for his work in discovering the double-helix structure of DNA in the early 1950s.

''Now we have the instruction book for human life and will have the instruction books for many other forms of life,'' Watson said in a telephone interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

''Things are just going to move faster. After the printing press, there was an explosion, more people could have information. We'll understand ourselves better, have a better idea of what human nature is.''

''The information obtained from the generic blueprint will have major implications for understanding disease processes - especially cancer,'' said Sir Paul Nurse, director general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

The public project is a joint effort of agencies of the American National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, several universities and the Wellcome Trust in England. Researchers in Germany and Japan also participated.

Researchers now will turn their attention toward identifying the proteins made by the genes. This research will determine the function of about a million proteins in the body and then devise therapeutic drugs. Researchers believe ultimately doctors will tailor treatment to individuals and even correct genetic flaws before birth.

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Human gene facts

USA Today
06/26/00- Updated 12:03 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/life/health/genetics/lhgec069.htm

Competing private and public projects to sequence and assemble the human genome are essentially complete, researchers announced on Monday. Here are some facts:

The human genome is the biological instruction for how an individual is formed and how the cells in the body function.

There are more than 50,000 genes - no one knows exactly how many - in the human genome.

Only a small percentage of all the genes had been identified before the mapping projects started.

Except for identical twins, the gene structure is unique in each individual.

Half the genes in a person come from each parent.

Genes direct the formation, or expression, of proteins that a cell uses to function, repair or defend itself, and to divide.

Genes are contained in the chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell.

There are 22 numbered chromosomes, plus two that determine gender, X and Y. A female has two X chromosomes, while a male has an X and a Y.

A human normally has 23 pairs of chromosomes.

A complete human genome is contained in a coiled double helix of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. Stretched out, the coil would be 5 feet long, but only 20 microns wide. A human hair is about 50 microns wide.

About 3 billion DNA subunits, called base pairs, make up the double helix.

Base pairs are composed of four types of chemicals, called nucleotides, that are weakly bonded in pairs to link the sides of the DNA double helix. The base pairs resemble rungs in a coiled ladder.

The nucleotides are called adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. They are abbreviated A, T, C and G in the scientific description of the genome.

The bases form specific nucleotide pairings, with ''A'' linking only with ''T'', and ''C'' only with ''G''.

Genes can have thousands of base pairs. The sequence and arrangement of these base pairs create a genetic code.

Most of the base pairs of DNA between genes have no known function. These base pairs are commonly referred to as ''junk DNA.''

Genes give coded instructions to the cell on how to assemble proteins. Making of a protein from this code is called ''gene expression.''

Many human disorders are caused by genetic flaws, or by the absence of one or more genes.

Researchers hope to identify all the genes that play a role in human disorders.

Once a gene has been linked to a human disorder, researchers hope to learn how to manipulate, correct or replace that flawed gene, or the protein its expresses, in order to treat the disorder.

Even after all of the genes are identified, it will take many years before science fully learns how to use this new knowledge to diagnose illness, to predict the individual genetic tendency toward illness and to develop and test drugs and other new medical treatments.

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Scientists Complete Rough Draft of Human Genome

New York Times
June 26, 2000
By NICHOLAS WADE NYT UPDATE 2:40 P.M.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/26cnd-genome.html

WASHINGTON -- In an achievement that represents a pinnacle of human self-knowledge, two rival groups of scientists said in a joint announcement today they had effectively deciphered the genome, the set of genetic instructions that defines the human organism.

The genome consists of two sets of 23 giant DNA molecules, or chromosomes, with each set containing a total of 3 billion chemical units. The successful decipherment of this vast genetic archive marks the extraordinary pace of biology's advance since 1953, when the structure of DNA was first discovered, and presages a post-genomic era of brisk progress.

"Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life," said Dr. Francis Collins, leader of the National Institutes of Health team that took part in the effort.

Understanding the human genome is expected to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Biologists expect in time to develop an array of genomic-based diagnostics and treatments tailored to individual patients, some of which will exploit the body's own mechanisms of self-repair. Knowledge from the project also has the potential to raise a host of ethical and social problems -- everything from discrimination by insurance companies or employers to the morality of designing babies to inherit particular traits.

Today's announcement was hailed not only by scientists but also by President Bill Clinton and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose governments had jointly supported the mapping effort.

President Clinton, announcing the feat at the White House, called it "one of the most important, most wondrous maps ever produced by humankind," even more significant than the mapping of the American continent in the early 19th century.

"Today we are learning the language with which God created life," Mr. Clinton said.

Prime Minister Blair, in a televised linkup from London, said: "Let us be in no doubt about what we are witnessing today: A revolution in medical science whose implications far surpass even the discovery of antibiotics, the first great technological triumph of the 21st century."

Today's announcement heralds an unexpected truce between the two groups of scientists who have been racing to finish the genome. Veering away from the prospect of asserting rival claims of victory, the two have chosen to report simultaneously their attainment of different milestones in their quest.

"The only race we're interested in today is the human race," Dr. Collins said at a joint news conference with J. Craig Venter, president of the Celera Corporation.

Dr. Venter said he has assembled the complete, contiguous sequence of DNA units in the human genome, save for gaps that amount to 2 percent of the estimated 3.12 billion units. Most of these gaps contain DNA that does not code for genes.

A different result was reported by Celera's rival, the Human Genome Project, a consortium of academic centers supported largely by the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust, a medical philanthropy in London.

Dr. Collins, leader of the N.I.H.'s part of the consortium, said its scientists had sequenced 90 percent of the human genome in draft form, meaning its accuracy will be upgraded later.

Dr. Collins, speaking at the White House ceremony today, said, "Science is a voyage of exploration into the unknown. We are here today to celebrate a milestone on a truly wondrous voyage into ourselves."

Both versions of the human genome meet the important goal of allowing scientists to search them for desired genes, the genetic instructions encoded in the DNA. The consortium's genome data is freely available now. Celera has said it will make its human genome data freely available at a later date. Dr. Venter said his company would make money by "helping our clients interpret that data."

The two genome versions were obtained through prodigious efforts by each side, involving skilled management of teams of scientists working around the clock on a novel technological frontier.

Spurring their efforts was the glittering lure of the genome as a scientific prize, and a rivalry fueled by personal differences and conflicting agendas.

Dr. Venter, a genomics pioneer whose novel methods have regularly been scorned by experts in the consortium's camp, has often cast himself, not without reason, as an outsider battling a hostile establishment.

The consortium scientists were halfway through a successful 15-year program to complete the human by 2005, when Dr. Venter announced in May 1998 that as head of a new company, later called Celera, he would beat them to their goal by five years.

His bombshell entry turned an academic pursuit into a fierce race. Dr. Collins, the consortium's unofficial project manager, responded by moving his completion date forward to 2003 and setting this month as the target for the 90 percent draft. "These folks have pulled out all the stops," he said of his staff in an interview last week. "They have achieved a ramp-up that is beyond anything one would have imagined possible."

The consortium has spent $250 million on sequencing the human genome since January 1999, when its all-out production phase began, said Dr. Robert Waterston of Washington University, St. Louis, one of the principal researchers. Celera has not released its costs but Dr. Venter said in May last year that he expected Celera's human genome to cost from $200 to $250 million.

The race opened with mutual predictions of defeat.

The groups were divided by political as well as technical agendas. The consortium's two principal scientists, Dr. John E. Sulston of the Sanger Centre in England and Dr. Waterston insisted the genome data should be published nightly, an unusually generous policy because scientists generally harvest new data for their own discoveries before sharing it.

Both of the consortium's administrative leaders, Dr. James D. Watson and his successor Dr. Collins, made a point of seeking out international partners so that the rest of the world would not feel excluded from the genome triumph. Thus even though centers in the United States and Britain have done most of the heavy lifting, important contributions to the consortium's genome draft have been made by centers in Germany, France, Japan and China.

Academic scientists have felt some chagrin that an altruistic, open, and technically successful venture like the Human Genome Project should be upstaged by a commercial rival financed by the company that made the consortium's DNA sequencing machines.

But though Celera seeks to profit by operating a genomic data base, Dr. Venter also believed he could make the genome and its benefits available a lot sooner. He has succeeded in doing so, as well as in spurring the consortium to move faster.

"This is a triumph for public and private funding," Dr. Venter said. "Which, if it hadn't happened, decoding the human genome would be far off."

Today's truce between the two teams has been driven less by an outbreak of warm feelings than by calculation of its advantages. For Celera to claim victory over the consortium would risk alienating customers in the academic community. For the consortium, the surety of opting into a draw now may have seemed better than the risks of claiming victory with a complete genome much later.

Although Celera has a substantially complete sequence of the genome, which is considerably ahead of the consortium's 90 percent draft, its version incorporates and depends on the consortium's data. And the many small gaps in Celera's sequence will probably be filled by the consortium's scientists, adding further to their claim on credit for the final product.

The present truce between the two sides is limited to today's announcement and an agreement to publish their reports in the same journal, although the details remain to be worked out.

"All that has been discussed with Collins is just cooperation, not collaborative efforts," Dr. Venter said.

The versions of the human genome produced by the two teams are in different states of completion because of the different methods each used to determine the order of DNA units in the genome.

The consortium chose first to break the genome down into large chunks, called BACs, which are about 200,000 DNA letters long, and to sequence each BAC separately. This BAC-by-BAC strategy also required "mapping" the genome, or defining short sequences of milestone DNA that would help show where each BAC belonged on its parent chromosome, the 23 giant DNA molecules of which the genome is composed.

BACs are assembled from thousands of snippets of DNA, each about 500 DNA letters in length. This is the longest run of DNA letters that the DNA sequencing machines can analyze. A computer pieces together the snippets by looking for matches in the DNA sequence where one snippet overlaps another.

But the BACs do not assemble cleanly from their component snippets. One reason is that human DNA is full of repetitive sequences -- the same run of letters repeated over and over again -- and these repetitions baffle the computer algorithms set to assemble the pieces. The stage the consortium has now reached is that all its BACs are mapped, making the whole genome available in a nested set of smaller jigsaw puzzles. But the BACs are in varying stages of completion. The BACs covering the two smallest human chromosomes, numbers 21 and 22, are essentially complete. But many other BACs are in less immaculate states of assembly. Many consist of assembled pieces no more than 10,000 units long, and the order of these pieces within each BAC is not known.

The sum of the assembled pieces in each BAC now covers 90 percent of the genome. This working draft, as the consortium calls it, is maybe not a thing of beauty but is of great value to researchers looking for genes and represents a major accomplishment.

Celera's genome has been assembled by a different method, called a whole genome shotgun strategy.

Following a scheme proposed by Dr. Eugene Myers and Dr. J. L. Weber, Celera skips the time-consuming mapping stage and breaks the whole genome down into millions of the 500-letter fragments produced by the DNA sequencing machines. The fragments are then assembled in a single mammoth computer run, though with a handful of clever tricks to step across the repetitive sequence regions in the DNA. Though Celera's genome will probably be judged by scientists to be a much better version than the consortium's rough draft, the consortium can justifiably share the credit for it.

But the genome decoding is just the beginning.

"Having the genetic code is not a very important moment other than it's the begining of what we can do with it," Dr. Venter said.

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Last Lap in the Genome Race

New York Times
June 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/26mon1.html

Scientists from rival teams are scheduled to announce today that they have come very close to deciphering the entire human genome, a feat that will stand as a landmark in scientific discovery. The publicly financed Human Genome Project has put together a "working draft" of the genome, while Celera Genomics, a private company, has completed its "first assembly" of the genome. Neither side in this bitter rivalry has deciphered every single chemical unit of the human genetic material -- that is not possible with today's technology -- but each side has made tremendous contributions toward what future historians will surely rate as a pivotal scientific achievement, ushering in an exciting new stage of biological exploration.

It is humbling to recall that when the idea of deciphering the human genome was first proposed in the 1980's, most of the major figures in biology deemed it a waste of time, talent and resources that would generate reams of useless data. It was the Energy Department that pushed for a federally financed project, forcing the National Institutes of Health to join the task to preserve leadership in its own domain. Since then, mainstream biologists have embraced the cause with enthusiasm, largely because automation and other technical advances made the task far easier and faster.

Understanding the genome is important because it contains the chemical code letters that direct cells to make the proteins that carry out all the body's vital functions, usually by catalyzing chemical reactions or building cellular structures. Thus it will be enormously handy to have the exact letter-by-letter sequence of the entire genome as a framework from which to determine how many genes there are, where precisely on the chromosomes they are located, and how they function. That will open the way to a far deeper understanding of everything from normal cell function to human development to cancer and other disease states. With a gene-detector chip at hand, scientists will be able to tell which genes are turned on and which are not in both normal and diseased cells, providing a powerful new tool for analysis and treatment.

Deciphering the human genome has been likened to discovery of the periodic table of elements, which accelerated chemical research, and to the first detailed description of the human anatomy, which facilitated subsequent advances in medical treatments. Some practical results may come in a matter of years, including new drugs already in clinical trials that were derived from the rapidly accumulating knowledge of the genes. But for lots of diseases, scientists must first identify the gene or genes involved and then find a way to intervene therapeutically. That will not be easy. Scientists have known about the genetic defect that causes sickle cell disease for decades but still have no way to cure it.

The race to decipher the human genome has been, some say, a race to the starting line, not an end in itself. The contestants will have compiled, in one scientist's analogy, a genetic dictionary filled with letters and words, most of which have not yet been given any meanings. Identifying what proteins the genes produce and how those proteins generate their effects in the body will be far harder than simply deciphering the genome. Eminent biologists describe it as a quest that will occupy their discipline for at least the next 50 years, if not the next century.

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Five-nation team drafts working map of human genome

Washington Times
June 26, 2000
By August Gribbin
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200062622253.htm

Scientists are set to announce the completion of a "working draft" of the human genome - a remarkable feat they say is immensely more significant than man's landing on the moon.

The five countries involved in a project to map the human genome - the United States, France, Britain, Japan and China - will announce their results today, according to Chris Mihill, a spokesman for the Wellcome Trust, the medical research organization sponsoring the scientific work at Cambridge University in southeastern England.

The draft is a key that will unlock the mysteries of heredity and the sources of disease. It is a basic tool medical researchers will use in finally devising ways to prevent or cure such intractable diseases as Alzheimer's, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, cancer and others.

"Producing the human genome draft has more far-reaching consequences than the moon landing because the landing was essentially a technical feat. Sequencing the genome is a technical achievement, too. But it's more. It's important in many, many ways that relate directly to people. It affects basic research and medical science," says geneticist Peter Bruns of Cornell University.

Although sequencing the 3 billion parts of the human genome is by all accounts an epic accomplishment and establishes a scientific landmark, its impact has been blunted. And news about it well may leave many members of the public confused.

That's because there have been repeated excited announcements when individual chromosomes -or genome segments - were identified, and each discovery was celebrated as a revolutionary breakthrough. Then, too, it is difficult for the nonscientist to comprehend exactly what researchers really have achieved by probing the largely invisible molecular world.

To get a rough idea, imagine scientists studying Earth from a distant planet - maybe Mars. Using telescopes they plot the city, then record the location of every house on every block of every street on the globe.

"But it goes further than that," says Mr. Bruns. "It's as if the distant scientists on Mars use their equipment and techniques to produce detailed plans and drawings for every single house and all the utilities and equipment in all the houses.

"It's as if they work this way: They see what the houses have in common. All have refrigerators, so they conclude that's important. Then they analyze refrigerators to see what they have in common. Maybe it's the compressor. So they analyze compressors and record what they do, and so on."

Instead of telescopes, the biologists have used microscopes to peer into human cells and, more recently, complex sequencing machines, chemical detectors and powerful computers. Then they investigated the cell's chromosomes, then the chromosomes' DNA and the DNA's genes.

Thus researchers have isolated and depicted a full set of all 23 human chromosomes. In fact the term "human genome" means a full set of chromosomes, which contain all of a human's inheritable traits. The draft of the genome is, in effect, a blueprint of life - a useful guide, showing how the basic chemicals of life are ordered.

Scientists refer to this initial human genome as a working draft because it is incomplete. It's roughly equivalent to a map that depicts an entire state and outlines highways and main roads, but omits certain secondary roads and paths. What it shows, it shows in detail, reported in thousands of rows of letters on reams of paper cranked from high speed computers.

The government-funded international Human Genome Project consortium includes scientists in 16 mostly academic centers in France, Germany, Japan, China, Great Britain and the United States. It is dominated by American laboratories and Britain's Sanger Centre at Cambridge University.

In the United States, sequencing is done at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and at various Department of Energy laboratories in California.

The National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Research Institute coordinates and directs the $300,000,000 a year U.S. effort.

For the last 10 years, each of the consortium labs have been sequencing individual chromosomes. The results have now been assembled into one working draft.

Celera Genomics Corp., a 2-year-old, investor-owned company in Rockville, boldly undertook to sequence all the chromosomes at once, in what founder and president Dr. J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics has called "a whole genome shotgun."

Dr. Venter, a former NIH scientist and director of the Institute for Genomics Research, had espoused that approach while at NIH. But various members of the consortium objected. They declared the process unworkable.

Faced with his colleagues' intransigence, Dr. Venter quit, founded Celera and proved his critics wrong.

Nonetheless, members of the consortium say their work has aided Dr. Venter and helped speed Celera's sequencing. The claim rests on the fact that since 1996, consortium members have been publishing the results of their work on the World Wide Web for all researchers to use.

Celera's scientists presumably have incorporated the consortium's finding into their finished product. If so, that well may have saved Celera time and effort.

It has became common in past years to refer to the competition between Celera and the consortium as a race. But Dr. Venter has said that, if there has been a race, it has been to the starting line.

For as he and almost everyone else sees it, the working draft has opened a new universe for scientists to explore. The effort to identify the specific genes that cause given illnesses will intensify and quicken. Likewise attempts to perfect ways of curing or preventing illness by inserting replacement genes into cells that have missing or damaged copies of the gene will accelerate.

Scientists also agree that although these miraculous medical advances won't come overnight and there are years or decades of discovery to come, the genome draft makes it possible to forge ahead.