NUCLEAR
Russia, U.S., Cut Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear Strike
Russian president arrives in Canada
U.S. and Russia Act to Bar Accidental Launchings
In Spotlight With Putin, Castro Discovers Value of Old Friend
Powell Calls for 'Re-Energized' Iraq Sanctions
Kazakh Mastermind, or New Ugly American?
Russia's Putin Seeking Common Ground in Canada Visit
Russian President Arrives in Canada
Chernobyl Farewell
Idaho
New Mexico
Company ready to build port
DOE's past policy was negligent on flourine
A Soldier-Statesman Who Has Advocated a Blend of Strength and Caution
Powell adds heft to Bush agenda
Colin Luther Powell
WHAT THEY DID
Remarks at Announcement of Powell's Nomination as Secretary of State
A CRUCIAL CHOICE
MILITARY
A Test Ahead for Powell (and His Doctrine)
South Carolina
Iraq Says Not Concerned About Bush's Victory
Study: Ocean Found on Jupiter Moon
Third Moon of Jupiter May Have Sea Under Its Ice
Today In History
OTHER
Hundreds evacuated due to chemical fire
Europe Is Told It May Not Be Safe to Eat Fish, Either
U.S. Approves Part of Plan for Pipeline In New Jersey
States
Biotechnological Ignorance
Sheriff-Elect in Georgia Fatally Shot in Ambush
Conneticut
Ripples From Afghanistan
Former Russian prisoner returns to U.S. soil
Russia Releases American
ACTIVISTS
Violence Erupts As Haider Visits Vatican
Ku Klux Klan Rally in Illinois Erupts in Violence
Today In History
Greenpeace Wants All Chernobyl Type Plants Shut
-------- NUCLEAR
Russia, U.S., Cut Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear Strike
Russia Today
Dec 17, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=230907
BRUSSELS -- (Reuters) Russia and the United States on Saturday made the nightmare of inadvertent nuclear strike a little less likely -- a scenario which came terrifyingly close in 1995 when Moscow mistook a research rocket for a missile.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, with five weeks left in office, agreed with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to share data on more missile tests and other rocket launches like the one that had former Russian President Boris Yeltsin weighing his retaliatory options.
The pre- and post-launch notification system envisages a data center opening in Moscow and builds on agreements to share early warning information signed in 1998 and June 1999.
Albright and Ivanov, at a ceremony in a Brussels hotel a day after they attended a meeting of NATO foreign ministers and Russia, also pledged to include more countries in the hope of creating what Ivanov called a "global system of control".
"Under our agreement, both the United States and Russia will invite the participation of other countries in the missile and space launch notification system," Albright said.
"This reflects the fact that proliferation is a threat to every nation, and that contributing to stability is every nation's responsibility," she added.
The two countries agreed back in 1991 under START I, the first in a series of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties slashing nuclear arsenals, to tell each other about launches of intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Saturday's memorandum of understanding expanded on this to include shorter-range ballistic missiles, sounding and research rockets and most space launch vehicles.
It also allows for each side to notify the other on a voluntary basis of objects leaving orbit or experiments that early warning systems might mistake for missiles.
Norway said it had notified embassies beforehand when it launched its Black Brant XII research rocket in January 1995.
But the message had clearly not reached Yeltsin, who said afterwards he had used his "black suitcase" hotline link to his generals for the first time to discuss a possible retaliatory strike.
The near-catastrophic, 24-minute flight of the 15-meter (50 foot) long research rocket, part of a Norwegian-American project to study the Northern Lights, highlighted the dangers of nuclear arsenals which the former Cold War enemies are committed to reduce in the new era.
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION DISAPPOINTED ON NMD
Before President-elect George W. Bush takes office, President Bill Clinton's administration had hoped to get further with Russia on arms control issues by winning Moscow's agreement to amend a Soviet-era treaty so Washington could start building a missile defense shield.
Critics see the National Missile Defense (NMD), which would use rockets to shoot down rockets in an action so delicate it has been compared to hitting a bullet with a bullet, as threatening the stability of international arms control.
Clinton deferred a decision on the system after tests failed. Bush has put less stress on getting Russian consent for the system, which he has said he will build, and is expected to take a tougher line on arms control issues with Moscow.
A senior State Department official said Saturday's deal showed the nature of U.S.-Russian relations under the outgoing administration. "It's always been about identifying and solving problems and they did a little of that today," he said.
---
Russian president arrives in Canada
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Sunday, Dec. 17, 2000 at 19:22 CST
By Tom Cohen Associated Press
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:POLITICS16/1:POLITICS161217100.html
OTTAWA -- Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Canada Sunday for a state visit aimed at strengthening his nation's role among world powers and enlisting Ottawa's support in opposing a proposed U.S. missile defense system.
Putin was to meet with Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other Canadian officials on Monday, then address business leaders in Toronto on Tuesday before heading back to Moscow.
Also Tuesday, European Union leaders come to Ottawa for a Canadian-EU summit as Canada finds itself in the diplomatic spotlight this week.
Putin's trip to Canada completes his goal of visiting or meeting with every head of state in the G-8 club, which includes the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, England and Canada. His personal diplomacy has helped Russia gain a standing in the group, a crucial step for Putin's efforts to rebuild a struggling economy and try to offset U.S. dominance in the post-Soviet era.
By hosting Putin and the EU-Canada summit, Chretien -- who will be the longest-serving G-8 leader when President Clinton steps down in January -- is seeking to position Canada as a facilitator between his guests and the United States.
Putin arrived in Canada from Cuba. While the United States imposes sanctions on Cuba, Canada defies its powerful southern neighbor by trading with the communist island and holding full diplomatic relations.
Now Putin wants Canada to join Russia in opposing a U.S. proposal for a new North American missile defense system, an idea supported by President-elect Bush.
The missile defense system could provoke Bush's first international dispute. Russia is deeply opposed to its development, which it says would breach a 28-year-old anti-ballistic missile treaty. Russian leaders fear it could ignite another arms race, which their beleaguered economy can't afford.
Putin told Canadian journalists in Moscow last week that Canada could help resolve the dispute by joining Russia in opposing the U.S. plan.
"The lower the level of nuclear conflict between the main nuclear states, the better," Putin said. "That's why we call upon the world community and our partners in the nuclear club to act together to ease the nuclear confrontation."
Canada also has expressed concern the U.S. plan could cause a weapons escalation, but has refrained from openly rejecting it.
Putin will try to jump-start Russia-Canada trade, which has tapered off badly since the 1998 Russian economic crisis.
Trade with Russia comprises less than 1 percent of Canada's total, with Canadian exports to Russia falling to $116 million last year from $255 million in 1997. A central point of discussion when French President Jacques Chirac and European Commission President Romano Prodi visit Tuesday is expected to be a proposed EU rapid reaction military force.
The EU, stepping into the defense arena for the first time, is creating the 60,000-member force to be used in peacekeeping and humanitarian crises when NATO as a whole does not want to get involved.
The new force would have access to NATO resources, such as planning capacity, intelligence and communications.
Canada, a NATO member, supports the general concept but wants guarantees NATO would be compensated for any of its resources used by the EU force, foreign affairs spokesman Carl Schwenger said.
Canadian Defense Minister Art Eggleton said in a recent speech that the EU must cooperate with NATO instead of trying to set up its own decision-making sphere within the alliance.
"From Canada's point of view, exclusion or marginalization is not an option for the alliance of today or the future," Eggleton said. "Nor is polarization, for a polarization between the U.S. and the EU on security and defense issues would leave Canada caught in the middle."
---
U.S. and Russia Act to Bar Accidental Launchings
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/world/17PACT.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 16 - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia signed an agreement today aimed at strengthening cooperation to prevent accidental missile launchings on both sides.
The agreement is an update of an initial early-warning system set up earlier by President Clinton and President Vladimir V. Putin to prevent accidental launchings. The updated pact looks to expand a joint warning center where the sides can exchange information, officials said.
"The result will be deeper confidence and greater strategic stability between our two nations, which translates into a safer and more secure world," Dr. Albright said after the signing.
Mr. Ivanov told reporters that other nuclear powers would be invited to join the agreement. He said such cooperation benefited everyone.
"All these efforts are aimed at strengthening strategic stability," he said.
Cooperation on preventing accidental missile launchings began after a near-launching of a nuclear counterstrike in 1995, when Russia mistook a weather rocket fired from Norway for a NATO missile.
Dr. Albright and Mr. Ivanov used a breakfast together today to discuss a range of issues in what might be their last face-to-face meeting before the Clinton administration makes way for President-elect George W. Bush. Topics ranging from the situation in the Balkans to arms sales to Iran were on the agenda.
Two weeks ago, Russia walked away from a 1995 agreement with the United States that barred Moscow from making new weapons deals with Iran. No agreement was reached on that issue today.
---
In Spotlight With Putin, Castro Discovers Value of Old Friend
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/world/17CUBA.html
HAVANA, Dec. 16 - Only a month ago, Fidel Castro was characterizing Russia as just another cash-strapped third world country, whose former president, Boris N. Yeltsin, had sold out the socialist vision by breaking up the Soviet Union in 1991, supposedly over a bottle of vodka, with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus.
But when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived this week on a state visit to revive the ties between Moscow and Havana - and to try to clear the backlog of $20 billion Cuba owes to its former patron - President Castro summoned brass bands to trumpet the "reconfirmation of friendship," as the Communist Party newspaper put it Friday. The news about the debt was buried.
Behind the switch, according to Cuban analysts and foreign diplomats here, lay a calculation: Mr. Putin's arrival, his first stop on his first journey to the Americas as president, has once again revived Mr. Castro's diminished fortunes as a charismatic leader, who after four decades in power holds sway only over an impoverished revolution.
"The visit of the president of Russia shows the people that Castro is still important, and that is critical because it helps Fidel to keep mobilizing the people," said a foreign envoy who has spent a decade watching the Cuban leader here.
A more recently arrived Western diplomat said, "He is trying to recapture his position on the world stage, not through arms and subversion anymore, but through rhetoric and leadership in the third world, where leaders look to him for help in shaping their arguments."
Some of the gloss seems to be off Mr. Castro's appeal at home, however, even though his power is secure and reinforced by a totalitarian party structure and ample security services.
"The government used to have the absolute support of the people, but it has lost that support," said Óscar Espinosa, an economist who had to shovel bat dung for two years after he first criticized Mr. Castro's economic policies in the 1960's, but who continues to do so today.
The loss of "political capital," as Mr. Espinosa terms it, flows from the economic turmoil of the 1990's when the withdrawal of Soviet and Russian subsidies caused the Cuban economy to contract by 35 percent, forcing Mr. Castro to undertake reforms he had long opposed.
He "dollarized" the economy, allowing Cubans to receive dollars from abroad and trade in them at home. He solicited foreign investment, selling half the country's cigar export monopoly to the Spanish. Canada is buying into the nickel sector and Europeans into the oil sector.
He opened the doors to tourists as never before, with nearly two million visiting this year. He also legalized self-employment, small private restaurants in homes and small agricultural markets.
"The enemy's money is the only money that is really worth something in Cuba today," Mr. Espinosa said, adding that since fewer than half of Cubans have access to dollars by working in the tourism industry or by receiving remittances from relatives in the United States, social inequities between the "dollar haves" and the "dollar have-nots" are mounting.
"This could lead to an economic backlash with extraordinary consequences," Mr. Espinosa said, though he and most analysts here do not see any immediate threat to Mr. Castro's rule.
"Fidel Castro has been the most skillful and clever political figure in our history," said Elizardo Sánchez, a leading dissident whom Mr. Castro has imprisoned three times for a total of eight and a half years.
But Mr. Sánchez believes that he is not just stating the obvious when he says Mr. Castro's regime is in its "terminal phase," not only because Mr. Castro turned 74 this year, but also because the last decade has cracked open the door to economic independence for 11 million Cubans. "He has always controlled everyone through the economy," Mr. Espinosa asserted.
A decade ago, said Mr. Sánchez, 57, fewer than a dozen dissidents dared to criticize Mr. Castro's regime openly. "Now there are thousands of dissidents acting throughout the country," he said.
Twice this year, Mr. Castro has led tens of thousands of Cubans on marches along Havana's waterfront, capitalizing on his "victory" over the United States in the battle to bring Elián González home from Florida after he lost his mother when she and others fled Cuba in a boat.
Mr. Castro is said to have taken great energy from the struggle. On a vacant lot facing the American diplomatic mission here, he has erected the José Martí Anti-Imperialism Plaza as a permanent protest against Washington. Its most prominent feature is a statue of Martí, Cuba's national hero, holding young Elián and pointing an accusing finger at the American edifice.
But as a sign of the times, Cuban political humorists have spread the story that Martí is simply advising the boy where to apply for a visa when he is ready to return to Florida.
-------- iraq
Powell Calls for 'Re-Energized' Iraq Sanctions
Yahoo News
Politics News
Dec 17 Saturday
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001216/pl/powell_iraq_dc_3.html
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Saturday he would work with American allies to breathe new life into sanctions against Iraq.
Powell, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff oversaw the U.S. military during the Gulf War, said Iraq had not lived up to the obligations of the 1991 truce, which called for Baghdad to account for any weapons of mass destruction it possessed and arms technology programs.
``They have not yet fulfilled those agreements and my judgement is that sanctions in some form must be kept in place until they do so,'' Powell said. ``We will work with our allies to re-energize the sanctions regime.''
Powell was responding to a reporter's question during the ceremony at which President-elect George W. Bush (news - web sites) named him to the top U.S. foreign policy post.
Powell said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was sitting on a failed regime.
``We are in the strong position,'' Powell said. ``He is in the weak position. And I think it's possible to re-energize those sanctions and continue to contain him and then confront him should that become necessary.''
In the U.S.-led Gulf War that ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait, Powell served under Bush's father, then-President George Bush.
Iraq said later on Saturday it did not expect U.S. policy to change.
``We are not concerned with who is the president because we are not expecting any change,'' Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said during a meeting with a Spanish delegation.
``The American establishment is the same, so regardless who is the president there will be no change of U.S. hostile policy toward Iraq,'' said Abdul Razaq al-Hashmi, head of the Iraqi Friendship, Peace and Solidarity Organization.
Even though he lost re-election to Bill Clinton in 1992, former President Bush is still the man Iraqis love to hate, after a war that devastated their country and 10 years of sanctions that have crippled the Iraqi economy.
This year, sanctions against Iraq have been eroded, with many countries, including Russia, France and Arab countries resuming flights to Baghdad and moving to revive trade with the oil-rich state.
On Friday, a leading Iraqi newspaper said president-elect Bush would disappoint Arab governments who might see him as an honest broker in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
-------- kazakhstan
Kazakh Mastermind, or New Ugly American?
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/business/17GIFF.html?pagewanted=all
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A Decade ago, James H. Giffen was just another of the scores of American businessmen who trudged the dreary corridors of Soviet economic ministries, shopping press releases through dark Moscow winters to promote business deals for United States companies.
Today, as Russia's post-Communist economy has slumped into dysfunction, the fortunes of Mr. Giffen, a California-born lawyer, have soared. He has retooled and branched out, forging what has proved to be a highly profitable role as deal maker and all-purpose adviser for the oil-rich former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
But a shadow has fallen over Mr. Giffen's relationship with the leaders of this decade- old independent state. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation, based on information turned up in a Swiss inquiry, into whether Mr. Giffen violated federal law in his efforts on behalf of Kazakhstan.
The investigation centers on whether he helped funnel tens of millions of dollars from American oil companies through Swiss banks, Caribbean shell companies and Liechtenstein foundations to private accounts benefiting top Kazakh political figures, including President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.
Mr. Giffen, 59, and his lawyers denied that he violated any American laws, saying he has acted only at the direction of senior Kazakh officials. They said Mr. Giffen, who has deep, longstanding ties in Washington trade and diplomatic circles, has worked hard to bring American-style business practices to a country that many Western observers regard as insular and authoritarian.
Kazakh opposition leaders say Mr. Giffen has redefined the image of the ugly American in the post-Communist era. They accuse him of using his business acumen to help a repressive government gain credibility in the West - which values Kazakhstan's vast oil reserves and politically strategic location - at the same time he was profiting personally from his connections.
Experts on Kazakhstan said Mr. Giffen filled a vacuum as Kazakhstan's inexperienced leaders scrambled to reinvent a government nearly overnight. "Giffen showed Nazarbayev and the Kazakh elite what kind of possibilities were available to leaders of oil-rich countries," said Martha Brill Olcott, a Kazakhstan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "and in return was able to develop a position of trust that was unprecedented for a foreigner."
In a country where horse-meat sausage and camel milk are traditional delicacies, along with cheap Caspian caviar, Mr. Giffen operates in a bubble of privilege - with a Kazakh diplomatic passport, an armed bodyguard, a chauffeured Mercedes, a translator at his elbow and cell phones chirping as he shuttles between his offices here and the Manhattan headquarters of his company, the Mercator Corporation.
His official Kazakh title is counselor to the president, whom Mr. Giffen refers to as "the boss." Mr. Giffen is also a consultant to Kazakhoil, the state-owned energy company headed by his friend Nurlan Balgimbayev, whose white-stucco bungalow is next door to Mr. Giffen's nearly identical house in an American-style subdivision beneath the snow-capped Altai Mountains that dominate this city, the country's business capital.
With consultants he hires for geological, commercial and legal work, Mr. Giffen negotiates on Kazakhstan's behalf and provides strategic advice on major oil deals between Kazakhstan and American companies. After one long day of meetings last summer in Astana, the capital, Mr. Giffen boarded a creaky Russian airliner, settled into his seat and said with a smile, "I never cared about making money; I just love this stuff."
Yet he has become a controversial figure in the oil business, and in Kazakhstan's political life.
Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a former prime minister who is now a principal opposition leader, said in an interview that Mr. Giffen had gained a troubling hold over Mr. Nazarbayev's thinking.
"Giffen became less objective and began advising Nazarbayev on political matters, including appointments of government officials," said Mr. Kazhegeldin, who lives at an undisclosed location in Europe out of fear, he says, for his personal safety. "He then attempted to interfere with economic policies of the country."
Mr. Kazhegeldin says Mr. Giffen should get out of Kazakhstan. Mr. Giffen replies that he is answerable only to one person: Mr. Nazarbayev.
So far, the investigation has remained at low idle. American prosecutors have subpoenaed records from several oil companies that operate in Kazakhstan, including BP Amoco, Phillips Petroleum and ExxonMobil. None of the companies appear to be a focus of the inquiry and all have denied wrongdoing. Government documents in the case indicate that prosecutors are concentrating on Mr. Giffen and whether he violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars Americans from paying bribes overseas, and racketeering, conspiracy and money laundering statutes.
Law enforcement officials said federal authorities were also examining whether Mr. Giffen violated the United States trade embargo against Iran, through his role as an adviser to the Kazakhstan government over an oil swap between the two countries. Neither Mr. Giffen nor his lawyers would discuss the case.
But the principal question about Mr. Giffen is whether he has played what opposition leaders consider a fixer's role in the siphoning off of Kazakhstan's oil wealth by its autocratic rulers.
In legal documents asking Swiss authorities to freeze millions of dollars, some of it in numbered bank accounts, federal prosecutors have said they suspect that more than $60 million - paid as "signature bonuses" for drilling, exploration and production-sharing agreements in Kazakhstan - was transferred through a series of Kazakh government accounts into accounts controlled by individuals including Mr. Nazarbayev, Mr. Balgimbayev and Mr. Giffen himself.
The country's leaders have accused Western governments of meddling in Kazakhstan's internal affairs. The prosecutor general, Yuri Khitrin, said the accusations of wrongdoing were "unsubstantiated nonsense." Mr. Balgimbayev, too, denied that there had been any improper payments.
Mr. Nazarbayev, in the United States in September, appealed directly to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to unfreeze the funds. According to people familiar with that conversation, Mr. Nazarbayev said that Mr. Giffen had done nothing wrong, that the money in the frozen accounts belonged to Kazakhstan and that the United States lacked a basis for its investigation.
Dr. Albright, who met with Mr. Nazarbayev in New York as part of a series of brief sessions with foreign leaders during a United Nations conference, listened but made no offer to intercede, American officials said.
Mark J. MacDougall, a defense lawyer for Mr. Giffen, said the oil company payments were not under- the-table bribes but payments openly negotiated in contracts related to concessions in the rich offshore Caspian region.
"The Caspian transactions were documented in broad daylight by some of the most prominent law and accounting firms in America," said Mr. MacDougall, a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, a Washington law firm.
Those transactions are at the core of oil development here, as Kazakhstan takes its place as a major oil- producing nation. In July, a group of oil companies announced that exploratory wells driven into the Caspian Sea bed had found heavy flows of oil and natural gas from Kashagan, 50 miles off the west coast of Kazakhstan.
Some estimates suggest that Kashagan could hold twice the reserves of Tengiz, the Kazakh onshore field that is one of the world's 10 largest oil deposits. Mr. Giffen said Kazakhstan, within 15 years, could be producing as much oil as Kuwait - what he called a "staggering" production figure, 655 million barrels a year according to Oil and Gas Journal.
A Cram Course in Civics
"Over the years the president has told me, `Look, you are my counselor,' " Mr. Giffen said. " `You are supposed to tell me the truth, even if the news is unpleasant.' I have tried to do exactly that over the years, but I must tell you that delivering unpleasant information to a strong president who is impatient to build a nation is not for the faint of heart."
The two men met in the late 1980's, when Mr. Nazarbayev was in Moscow as a provincial Communist leader and Mr. Giffen was chasing deals throughout the Soviet Union. But they did not forge a close partnership until soon after Kazakhstan declared its independence with the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
Mr. Nazarbayev, presiding over a new nation with vast natural wealth, initially relied on Mr. Giffen to negotiate favorable terms as Kazakhstan began forging deals with Western oil companies.
Mr. Giffen recounted the hours they spent discussing "basic civics" when Mr. Nazarbayev visited the United States in 1992 to get acquainted with American officials. "He had an insatiable appetite for information and a photographic memory," Mr. Giffen said. "We both smoked at the time, and all you could see was a gray cloud."
These days, Mr. Giffen has broadened his portfolio, advising the Kazakhs not only on oil matters, but also on economic planning, education, investments, health care, pensions and communications, often hiring consultants in areas in which he lacks expertise.
How well his lessons in Western ways are sticking is hard to say. Last year, human-rights monitors criticized a presidential election in Kazakhstan because the only credible opposition candidate was barred from running. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe concluded that Mr. Nazarbayev, who won with a Soviet-style 80 percent of the vote, "staged a flagrantly flawed election which sullied his own reputation and set back the country's flagging democratization."
The transactions unearthed by Justice Department and Swiss investigators also raise questions about how the business of state is conducted in Kazakhstan. According to a formal request for assistance filed under a treaty between the United States and Switzerland, the Justice Department says that on March 19, 1997, Amoco Kazakhstan Petroleum, one of the companies involved in the big offshore project in the Caspian Sea, transferred $61 million from Bankers Trust in New York in two payments to account 1215320 at Credit Agricole Indosuez, a bank in Geneva. (The Amoco unit is now part of BP.)
Three days later, the document says, Mr. Giffen and Kazakh officials began a series of what the United States government says were illegal transfers from Kazakh treasury accounts into private accounts benefiting several Kazakh leaders.
On May 21 of that year, the document says that Mr. Giffen transferred about $34.5 million to a Swiss account of a company called Tulerfield Investment Inc. According to the filing with the Swiss, Tulerfield, a shell corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands, was established for the benefit of Mr. Balgimbayev, the head of the Kazakh state oil company.
About the same time, the document says, Mr. Giffen was the intermediary in the transfer of $29 million from a numbered account at Credit Agricole to another account at the bank set up for Hovelon Trading S.A., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that the Justice Department said "appears" to have been established for the benefit of Mr. Giffen.
From that $29 million, the document says, Mr. Giffen authorized several other fund transfers:
• The account of a British Virgin Islands company called Orel Capital Ltd. received $12 million. The company, the document said, appears to have been set up for the benefit of Semrek, a Liechtenstein foundation whose "principal economic beneficiary" appears to be Mr. Nazarbayev.
• Orchard Holding Ltd., an account created for the benefit of Brisa Inc., a company it says benefited Mr. Balgimbayev's daughter, Samal, received $8 million.
• The account of Pio Ltd., a British Virgin Islands company established for the benefit of another Liechtenstein foundation, received $6 million. The document says the foundation appeared to benefit Mr. Kazhegeldin, the current opposition leader, who said he was forced from office as prime minister by Mr. Nazarbayev's allies in 1997.
Mr. Kazhegeldin said that neither he nor any member of his family had access to these funds. The money, he added, was placed in a standing account under his control only because he held the prime minister's title, and he tried to return it. Mr. Kazhegeldin said the transaction was an attempt by Mr. Nazarbayev's allies to entrap him in a corrupt scheme - an accusation that Mr. Nazarbayev's followers dispute.
Mr. MacDougall did not deny that the transfers occurred, but said the government had misinterpreted them.
"The payments by U.S. oil companies were deposited into escrow accounts and disbursed solely at the direction of senior officials of the Republic of Kazakhstan," he said. "That money has not disappeared and was used to fund proper Kazakh government activities or is still on deposit in the banks in Switzerland."
Spokesmen for the oil companies would not discuss the transfers in detail. Some said the companies understood that their payments were made to Kazakh treasury accounts and were unaware of any subsequent transfers to private accounts.
According to bank records obtained by The New York Times, money from some of the accounts was used for what appear to be legitimate purposes, paying geologists, lawyers, public relations consultants and other American advisers to the Kazakh government.
Other financial records suggest that nearly $1 million was spent on personal items, although the records do not show who gave or received these items. Kazakh officials said many of the purchases were made by the government as official gifts for overseas dignitaries.
Mr. MacDougall said that neither he nor Mr. Giffen would discuss the details of these transfers.
The Growth of an Inquiry
The events that spawned the Justice Department investigation appear to have begun in 1999, when the Kazakh government itself began investigating Mr. Kazhegeldin, the former prime minister. Kazakh officials contacted the authorities in Belgium, where they apparently believed that Mr. Kazhegeldin had financial holdings, and Belgian investigators later sought the assistance of the Swiss, who froze more than $100 million in Kazakhstan-related accounts.
Swiss officials began their own inquiry. In January, they notified American prosecutors about what they regarded as a pattern of suspicious transactions involving American and European oil companies' dealings with Kazakhstan.
That prompted the Justice Department to start yet another investigation, which came to light in June, when federal prosecutors filed a formal request with the Swiss magistrate investigating the matter, Daniel Devaud. The United States request asked the Swiss to freeze certain bank accounts and turn over records about them.
To American law enforcement officials, the existence of off-the-books accounts and payments to offshore corporations and Liechtenstein foundations are glaring signs of possible corruption. Nonetheless, American officials and defense lawyers alike said that prosecutors might have problems ever bringing a case under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or other statutes.
To do so, they said, would require proving that the oil companies, the Kazakh officials and Mr. Giffen all knew and had agreed that the payments were bribes tied to winning oil concessions - a difficult evidentiary hurdle. Moreover, each of the oil deals at issue was monitored by lawyers at every stage, and the payment of signature bonuses - as the transactions are described by all the parties - is, indeed, customary practice in the oil business.
"If in fact Mr. Giffen is transferring funds at the request of a foreign government, it is hard to see how that kind of authorized conduct could violate the act, no matter who ends up receiving the funds," said Gregory Husisian, a Washington lawyer who has written extensively on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
So far, the American investigation does not appear to have moved beyond an effort to analyze financial information about the transactions with Kazakhstan. Federal law enforcement officials said they were hunting for a breakthrough document or a witness willing to provide evidence of a violation - without which there is unlikely to be a case.
Adapting to a New Era
Mr. Giffen's emergence as a powerful figure in Kazakhstan came after more than three decades of trying to promote American trade in the Soviet Union. He turned his thesis from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law into a book, "The Legal and Practical Aspects of Trade with the Soviet Union," and began his international business career working for a minerals trading firm. By the early 1970's, he was a vice president of a subsidiary of Armco Steel, later bought by AK Steel, that sold oil-field equipment in Russia and other countries.
He soon emerged as a close associate of Armco's president, C. William Verity Jr., a longtime advocate of increased trade with the Soviet Union. In the late 1970's, Mr. Verity became chairman of the United States-Soviet Trade and Economic Council, a group that sought to persuade the governments of both countries to relax trade restrictions; a decade later, he served as commerce secretary in the Reagan administration.
The president of the trade council from 1978 to 1980, Michael V. Forrestal, also became Mr. Giffen's friend. (Mr. Forrestal, a senior partner at the Shearman & Sterling law firm in New York and a former member of the senior staff of the National Security Council, died in 1989.) Even today, the firm continues to benefit from the relationship, as one of Kazakhstan's principal legal advisers on oil and gas development deals.
Mr. Giffen's projects were buffeted by the ebb and flow of American- Soviet relations. In 1979, he was in Paris celebrating his biggest triumph, a contract for a $350 million steel plant in Russia, when President Jimmy Carter canceled the deal in reaction to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
But Mr. Giffen said he never abandoned his enthusiasm for global trade. "I was trying to change the world," he said.
His efforts brought him into frequent contact with Washington policy and intelligence circles. He helped the Carter administration enlist American companies to support Senate ratification of SALT I, the strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty. He got to know Robert S. Strauss, who later became the American ambassador to Moscow. After his tenure there in 1991 and 1992, Mr. Strauss returned to his position as a senior partner at Akin, Gump, the law firm that represents Mr. Giffen in Washington.
Like many other American executives overseas, he long maintained an informal relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, mainly responding to inquiries about oil and gas matters, he said.
"Since I have become counselor to President Nazarbayev, I do not meet with U.S. government officials unless requested by the government of Kazakhstan," Mr. Giffen said. "Of course, I have met U.S. officials for years at functions where both government and private-sector representatives participate."
In May 1984, Mr. Giffen left Armco to open the Mercator Corporation; it started operations with a five-year contract with Armco. The board included Mr. Verity, the former Commerce Secretary Juanita M. Kreps and the former Treasury Under Secretary Robert V. Roosa.
Still trying to promote business activity, Mr. Giffen helped devise the American Trade Consortium and sought out Chevron and other companies, like Ford Motor, Johnson & Johnson and Kodak, to open new markets for United States companies in the Soviet Union.
That idea collapsed with the Communist regime, but Chevron did enter into a joint venture with Kazakhstan to develop the Tengiz oil field in 1993 - an onshore project in western Kazakhstan that first vaulted this newly independent nation into Westerners' view. Even before that deal was completed, Mr. Giffen negotiated a fee from the company for what Chevron officials said was his early role in the Tengiz deal.
Under the terms of the agreement with Chevron, Mr. Giffen would no longer perform services for the company but would receive a small percentage per barrel of all of Chevron's oil pumped from the field for about a decade. Neither Mr. Giffen's lawyers nor the company would discuss details.
Today, signs abound in Almaty of Kazakhstan's opening to the outside world. Chevron, ExxonMobil and other companies support an American Little League here, managed by one of Mr. Giffen's chief lieutenants. Grocery store clerks swipe Visa cards at crowded checkout lines. The only time that an American executive is likely to see a yurt, the traditional banner-draped nomadic tent, is on a visit to the gleaming Hyatt Regency hotel, where one has been erected over the circular atrium bar.
It is a scene that gives great satisfaction to Mr. Giffen, who recalled forging his alliance with Mr. Nazarbayev by pledging to place his talents at Kazakhstan's disposal.
"I said, `Let's go, boss; let's build a country,' " Mr. Giffen said.
-------- russia
Russia's Putin Seeking Common Ground in Canada Visit
Reuters
December 17, 2000 Filed at 7:12 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-canada-.html
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from a visit to Cuba to restore ties with Moscow's long-standing ally, arrived in Canada on Sunday to seek common ground on international disarmament and other key issues.
Canada was the last of the G7 industrialized countries Putin has visited since his election in March. During a three-day trip intended to stress similarities between two nations with vast Arctic expanses, the Russian leader was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Jean Chretien and was expected to tell industrialists it was safe to invest in Russia.
Putin's Ilyushin-96 aircraft flew into Ottawa, gripped by a stiff breeze, in the early evening. He was immediately whisked to dinner with Chretien through streets decked with Canadian maple leaf flags and the Russian tricolor.
He made no comment upon arrival.
Putin and Chretien will almost certainly discuss the new administration of U.S. President-elect George W. Bush and the proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system he backs. Both Moscow and Ottawa fear it could undermine a crucial treaty designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.
``We have many common issues (with Canada), economic, like exploration in the north, and also political, like maintaining the balance of forces and preserving the system of international security which has been created until now,'' Putin said during his four-day stay in Cuba.
But even before his arrival, lobby groups and editorial writers signaled they would take issue with him over Russia's bloody campaign to crush separatists in Chechnya and the Kremlin's treatment of the independent media.
In an editorial, the Toronto Star, asked ``Why is Canada rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, chief architect of the genocide in Chechnya?'' and said Chretien would be wrong to soft pedal concerns over human rights.
``If Canada's human security agenda has any moral code to it, Chretien will demand of Putin that Moscow stop dodging an international inquiry into Russian atrocities in Chechnya ... and grant Chechnya the greatest possible autonomy,'' it said.
The Canadian Jewish Congress urged Chretien and other officials to protest against the arrest in Spain of media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky and to speak out against what liberals see as attacks on independent media.
Gusinsky, jailed briefly in June, is head of the Russian Jewish Congress. He faces fraud charges in Russia.
Russian tax officials last week sought the closure on insolvency grounds of NTV, Russia's biggest independent television network, and other outlets of his Media-Most group.
Canadian officials say they intend to raise these issues, particularly Russia's record in more than a year of military operations in Chechnya. Putin has rejected allegations of excessive use of force, saying Russia is waging an ''anti-terrorist operation'' against a broad Islamic conspiracy.
DISARMAMENT LIKELY TO TOP AGENDA
Both Chretien and Putin have congratulated Bush on his delayed election victory, the Russian leader extending his good wishes while still in Cuba.
But with disarmament high on the agenda, both countries will stress their concerns about Bush's plans to alter the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Bush proposes amending the treaty to proceed with NMD and guard against missile strikes by ''rogue states'' like Iran and North Korea.
Though a NATO member, Canada has periodic, subtle foreign policy differences with the United States that have been irritants between the two countries, which share what is often dubbed ``the longest undefended border in the world.''
In an interview prior to leaving Russia, Putin said common ground on ABM was proof the two countries had plenty of potential for cooperation.
But he stressed that any agreements could not be directed against third countries -- meaning the United States.
Both sides hope to boost trade, due to climb back this year to around C$1 billion -- about the same as before Russia's 1998 financial crisis.
Russia will also raise complaints about Canadian legal action against alleged dumping by Russia on world markets.
---
Russian President Arrives in Canada
Associated Press
December 17, 2000 Filed at 6:52 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Putin.html
OTTAWA (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Canada Sunday for a state visit aimed at strengthening his nation's role among world powers and enlisting Ottawa's support in opposing a proposed U.S. missile defense system.
Putin was to meet with Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other Canadian officials on Monday, then address business leaders in Toronto on Tuesday before heading back to Moscow.
Also Tuesday, European Union leaders come to Ottawa for a Canadian-EU summit as Canada finds itself in the diplomatic spotlight this week.
Putin's trip to Canada completes his goal of visiting or meeting with every head of state in the G-8 club, which includes the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, England and Canada. His personal diplomacy has helped Russia gain a standing in the group, a crucial step for Putin's efforts to rebuild a struggling economy and try to offset U.S. dominance in the post-Soviet era.
By hosting Putin and the EU-Canada summit, Chretien -- who will be the longest-serving G-8 leader when President Clinton steps down in January -- is seeking to position Canada as a facilitator between his guests and the United States.
Putin arrived in Canada from Cuba. While the United States imposes sanctions on Cuba, Canada defies its powerful southern neighbor by trading with the communist island and holding full diplomatic relations.
Now Putin wants Canada to join Russia in opposing a U.S. proposal for a new North American missile defense system, an idea supported by President-elect Bush.
The missile defense system could provoke Bush's first international dispute. Russia is deeply opposed to its development, which it says would breach a 28-year-old anti-ballistic missile treaty. Russian leaders fear it could ignite another arms race, which their beleaguered economy can't afford.
Putin told Canadian journalists in Moscow last week that Canada could help resolve the dispute by joining Russia in opposing the U.S. plan.
``The lower the level of nuclear conflict between the main nuclear states, the better,'' Putin said. ``That's why we call upon the world community and our partners in the nuclear club to act together to ease the nuclear confrontation.''
Canada also has expressed concern the U.S. plan could cause a weapons escalation, but has refrained from openly rejecting it.
Putin will try to jump-start Russia-Canada trade, which has tapered off badly since the 1998 Russian economic crisis.
Trade with Russia comprises less than 1 percent of Canada's total, with Canadian exports to Russia falling to $116 million last year from $255 million in 1997.
A central point of discussion when French President Jacques Chirac and European Commission President Romano Prodi visit Tuesday is expected to be a proposed EU rapid reaction military force.
The EU, stepping into the defense arena for the first time, is creating the 60,000-member force to be used in peacekeeping and humanitarian crises when NATO as a whole does not want to get involved.
The new force would have access to NATO resources, such as planning capacity, intelligence and communications.
Canada, a NATO member, supports the general concept but wants guarantees NATO would be compensated for any of its resources used by the EU force, foreign affairs spokesman Carl Schwenger said.
Canadian Defense Minister Art Eggleton said in a recent speech that the EU must cooperate with NATO instead of trying to set up its own decision-making sphere within the alliance.
``From Canada's point of view, exclusion or marginalization is not an option for the alliance of today or the future,'' Eggleton said. ``Nor is polarization, for a polarization between the U.S. and the EU on security and defense issues would leave Canada caught in the middle.''
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl Farewell
New York Times
December 17, 2000
In Review: December 10-16
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/weekinreview/17P2ST.html?pagewanted=all
Talk about long goodbyes: nearly 15 years after Earth's worst nuclear accident, workers shut down the last of four reactors at the Chernobyl power station. Ukraine had long resisted the move; it relied on Chernobyl for power and, more important, for 9,000 badly needed jobs. The West pledged huge sums to finish two replacement reactors and safeguard the lethally radioactive wreckage of the Unit Three reactor, where the Chernobyl disaster occurred. Now comes the really long goodbye: the half-life of the melted plutonium in Unit Three is 24,000 years. Michael Wines
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- idaho
USA Today
12/17/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Idaho
Idaho Falls - The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory's new contractor was praised in an evaluation of its second six months of work. The U.S. Department of Energy will pay Bechtel BWXT Idaho $17.5 million for its work from April to September, about $5 million more than former contractor Lockheed Martin got for the second half of its first year.
-------- new mexico
USA Today
12/17/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
New Mexico
Los Alamos - An independent audit of Los Alamos National Laboratory's radioactive air emissions found that the nuclear weapons lab complies with the federal Clean Air Act. The audit is the second of four inquiries ordered by a federal court into what the lab's smokestacks and machinery release into the air.
-------- south carolina
Company ready to build port
Jasper County looks toward entering international shipping market.
Carolina Morning News
Web posted Sunday, December 17, 2000
By Mark Kreuzwieser Carolina Morning News
mailto:markk@lowcountrynow.com
mailto:cmn@lowcountrynow.com
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/121700/LOCjasperport.shtml
GARDEN CITY--It is nearly a straight shot from the sea buoy marking the entrance to the port of Savannah six miles off Tybee Island, to the site of Jasper County's future shipping terminal.
After that, the channel loses its ruler-straight length at the big curve at the northwest end of Elba Island, another turn at Back River near Old Fort Jackson, and then past the bustling River Street.
But many of the giant freighters that carry container boxes full of goods soon won't have to make the tortuous, time-consuming journey up the Savannah River to the Georgia Ports Authority's ContainerPort.
On Jan. 2, Jasper County officials intend to file condemnation proceedings against the Georgia Department of Transportation which owns the site they intend to build upon. The county's notice to the GADOT requires the 30-day waiting period. Basically, Jasper County has made an offer to Georgia to purchase the land, which would be refunded to the county by Stevedoring Services of America. But, Georgia so far has balked at giving up the land, for what reasons now are unknown but may become apparent through the condemnation proceedings.
After the 1,776 acres are in Jasper County's hands, the county will lease the land to Stevedoring Services of America, a Seattle-based company with offices in Garden City, just down the street from the Georgia Ports Authority's main offices.
It's an odd juxtaposition: the GPA being neighbors with SSA, and SSA's future container cargo port being downriver of the GPA's massive, East Coast-leading containerized port facility.
"The Georgia Ports Authority should not be worried about us," said Jake Coakley, regional vice president of Stevedoring Services of America. "There's plenty of growth. There has been an average of 10 percent growth in container cargo traffic in the South Atlantic ports - Savannah and Charleston the last three years."
The Youngstown, Ohio, native started in the shipping business in 1967 just a year before joining the U.S. Army. After the service, he worked for General Tire, but tired of that and was hired by Harrington Shipping in Miami.
In the mid 1970s he first worked in Savannah, but left for Charleston and a faster pace of life. But in 1984, he returned to Savannah to work for Seaco, one of the nation's oldest shipping companies.
"I remember there was rumbling about a South Carolina port across the river, but we were traditionalists and laughed it off," he said. The Seattle-based SSA decided to venture onto the East Coast and began looking at acquisitions. It settled on Carolina Stevedoring, an old, third-generation company in Charleston.
SSA's president called Coakley and asked him what he thought about the West Coast company buying a firm on the East Coast. He also asked him if he wanted a job, and it wasn't long after Coakley joined SSA that the company also bought Seaco.
"They were buying the best of both worlds: Carolina was strong in container cargo in Charleston and break bulk in Savannah, and Seaco had the containers in Savannah and break bulk in Charleston," Coakley said, pointing to SSA's business acumen and shipping business savvy.
"They're visionary owners. When they want to expand, they know how to do it," he said. "They have a long-term interest in terminals, and we have looked at properties from Maine to Miami. Jasper County is at the top of our list."
A New Dawn in Jasper County
Although shipping folks have long known that large land masses lie just north of the Savannah River, the idea of a port there didn't take form until Coakley saw Jasper County Administrator Henry Moss in a newspaper photograph "standing on a piece of dirt in Jasper County. We had looked at everything else, so I called him up."
Coakley and his right-hand man, chief of operations Gary Morelli, had lunch with Moss and launched the talks that eventually led to Jasper County entering a development agreement for the private construction and operation of an international container shipping terminal.
He'd been to Jasper before: He and his wife own property on the Okatie River, and they love its peacefulness and pristine environment.
"And we've met Henry Moss before: They wanted to build a cement factory near the Okatie, and we were involved in talking them out of that location," Coakley said.
The environment is one element that makes the site for the proposed Jasper County port viable. The Georgia Department of Transportation and the U.S. Corps of Engineers used the site to dump dredge spoils from the Savannah River shipping channel. When the channel is maintained at a certain depth and width, the dirt, sand and mud must be deposited on nearby land.
Questions have arisen about the dredge spoil over contaminants from area and regional discharges into the Savannah River, including the Savannah River Site, where the government once produced nuclear bomb-grade plutonium. But, Coakley said, port development will pave over the dredge spoil, sealing in any contaminants under several inches of pavement.
With Savannah and Charleston's container cargo ports nearing the build-out point, Coakley and Moss believe that Jasper County's proposal presents the most economical answer. The port will be privately built and operated, resulting in jobs, tax revenue and a minimum of government and public cost.
"We think the answer to the future growth of South Atlantic container ports is in Jasper County," Coakley said. "The South Atlantic is the growth area of the United States, people are moving here, companies are coming here, industries are opening here. This is the perfect place for a new international shipping port on the Atlantic."
Nuts and Bolts
Stevedoring Services of America initially will build 400 acres of port facilities, including 4,000 feet of ship berthing, or docks, which will enable the installation of six container cargo cranes. That translates to three of the world's biggest container docks end to end, being unloaded by the giant, automatic cranes.
The cranes will be operated by highly trained, experienced stevedores, cargo handlers and engineers. Because container ships roam the world under an international agreement with trade unions, much of the labor pool will be from the International Longshoremen's Association.
Construction will take a year to 18 months with delivery and setting up of the cranes toward the end. The first big chunk of land to be developed will be the eastern end of the site, just west of Jones Island. Related roads and railroads also will have to be built to provide access to U.S. 17 and Interstate 95. The rail line is one of the biggest hurdles now. An existing line runs parallel to U.S. 17, but reaching it may be troublesome because it would have to cross privately owned wetlands. The access probably will go north toward Hardeeville.
And, county and Hardeeville officials have said, the Jasper port may be the needed impetus to get U.S. 17 four-laned from the Talmadge Bridge to just south of Hardeeville. That widening will be a boon for the entire county, officials have said.
SSA, which built and manages Manzanillo International Terminal in Colon, Panama, will run the Jasper port under a lease agreement with Jasper County.
"We've learned a lot in Panama, how to build a port terminal and how to run it," Coakley said.
The port will be the front of a wave that is moving through the country, most recently in the shipping and terminal business: privatization.
"The South has been a little behind on this, but most ports in the United States and overseas are privately owned and/or operated," Coakley said. "I think it's coming here too. The Georgia Ports Authority and the South Carolina Ports Authority are a couple of the last, big publicly funded shipping terminals."
http://www.gaports.com
Coakley said his company, founded in 1949, fits the Jasper port like a glove. His 55-person staff now permanently working in Garden City is progressive, port-loving and highly experienced.
"Shipping gets in your blood, like the circus," Coakley said. "You meet a lot of people from around the country and the world. But, it's a seven-day-a-week deal. Still, it's a lot more fun than it probably should be."
-------- tennessee
DOE's past policy was negligent on flourine
Sun, 17 Dec 2000 06:57:37 EST
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/20426.shtml
OAK RIDGE -- The U.S. Department of Energy last week assembled an emergency response team involving nearly 200 people to deal with a small fluorine leak at the Oak Ridge K-25 plant. Ironically, when K-25 operated as a uranium-enrichment plant from the 1940s until the mid-1980s, discharges of fluorine and related compounds were common, and the government and its contractors hardly flinched at the consequences.
"Standards are obviously much different today than during the Cold War era when releases of that magnitude occurred," DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said from a special information center set up last week in Loudon County to deal with inquiries about the fluorine leak.
"Today, we are much more sensitive toward the potential impacts and dangers of hazardous material than we were in the past," Wyatt said. "For that reason, we believe that the precautionary actions taken this week are both prudent and necessary."
A DOE investigation report released two months ago noted, "Over the life of the plant, there were as many as a thousand inadvertent releases of process gas (uranium hexafluoride) from the cascade and support building equipment, potentially exposing workers."
The report detailed a wide range of historic hazards at K-25, some of them linked to major accidents.
For example, in the mid-1970s, 5,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride was released when a repairman accidentally sawed into a transfer line.
In late 1952 a valve failed on a cylinder and released more than 1,500 pounds of uranium hexafluoride. The next year another cylinder accident rapidly released more than 600 pounds of toxic compounds into the atmosphere.
"The drifting cloud required evacuation of personnel in a number of buildings," the report said.
Building K-1302, the source of the recent fluorine leak, was constructed as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II to serve as a storage facility for fluorine gas. Even though the building's five storage tanks reportedly were drained in 1992, a small amount of residual material may have been left in the tanks or distribution lines.
There has been a history of problems linked to K-1302 and K-1301, a fluorine production plant (now demolished) that was located across the street. According to the DOE investigation report, the fluorine storage tanks were equipped with rupture disks that failed numerous times, releasing the entire contents of the tanks.
"These early failures were reduced considerably when the rupture disks were modified," the report said.
The document also noted that during fluorine production in the 1960s, some material that didn't meet quality-control requirements "was vented directly to the atmosphere."
Floyd Brown, 84, who worked as a maintenance mechanic at K-25 in the 1950s, said he and other workers were exposed to the hazardous compounds on a routine basis.
"Any place where your skin wasn't protected or covered, it was like you got too much sun down in Florida," Brown said. "We worked in that stuff all the time and were told it wouldn't hurt you or that it would take a whole lot (to do any damage)."
Investigators who reviewed the hazardous activities at K-25 said: "The potential for exposure to fluorides ... was widespread and involved many workers. There are a number of documented overexposures, burns and respiratory illnesses resulting from fluorine compounds. Medical records indicated that many workers were treated for burns from exposure to HF (hydrogen fluoride)."
In July 1955 nine workers were burned when a hydrogen-fluoride cylinder ruptured.
"By 1959, one worker at the K-1131 fluorine generating facility had been burned by fluorine on at least 10 occasions during his employment....Some of these workers did not seek medical attention, nor did plant policy require reporting to the medical department."
Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.
===
Comments:
DOE was much more than negligent, they did intentional cover ups since the beginning of the project. The fluorine processes were designed around Buffalo, NY and accidents up there caused evacuations of half the city and burned paint off homes and frosted window glass in residences.
At K-25, there were times when the entire purge cascade vented to atmosphere and left nearly a foot of U O2 F2 on the floors and tones of HF vented to the atmosphere, and it went on for days. Extremely huge losses occured and they did damage worker and community health.
They have also lost entire cylinder of enriched material.
Huge losses of HF and F occured each year and it went on for decades and was kept secret. The DOE and ORNL fully knew the dangers and health impacts of fluorides releases on workers and communities in the mid-80's with internal investigations and they covered it all up.
Criminal conspiracy to cover up a health disaster is more the term, not negligence.
The Magnum-Opus Project DOE Watch List--Solver of Mysteries Subscribe: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/doewatch DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch
Oak Ridge and its' industry minions use supplanted activist organizations fabricating mysterious illness directions to hide HF emission/toxic effects and nuclear human experiment war crimes.
Oak Ridge and other gas diffusion sites are primarily Bhopal like chemical affected areas and secondarily a Chernobyl like radiation affected area. Gas diffusion sites are also affected with high coal power emissions and compounded with heavy metal toxins and hundreds of other toxic exposure from the plants.
These exposures cause shortened longevity, impacted learning, and produce a gullible population for political and industry profiting.
Gulf War affected have related fluoride toxic effects from nerve gases.
In common with GW and DOE gas diffusion ills are long term halogen toxic insult via bioconcentration into the lymphatic system, impairment of macrophages, and damage to mitochondria of cells resulting in immune protection damage and resultant rise of viral, bacterial, microplasma, and fungal cell damage.
In the new millenium, the truth will set all free to enter a kinder and gentler time for environment and health.
-------- us nuc politics
FOREIGN POLICY
A Soldier-Statesman Who Has Advocated a Blend of Strength and Caution
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/politics/17POLI.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - The personification of American military power in the early 1990's, General Colin L. Powell is certain to cut a forceful figure as secretary of state. Like his model, George C. Marshall, he will be able to use his soldier- statesman's stature to wield influence abroad and to command respect at home.
But the world has become no less messy since General Powell stepped down as a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seven years ago, and the question is whether his view has adapted to the new realities.
The seemingly invincible hero of the Persian Gulf war, who warned the Iraqi Army that "first we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it," General Powell has always been more cautious behind the scenes. He was initially reluctant to go to battle over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and ultimately agreed to stop short of Baghdad.
For those who believe in American engagement around the world, the Powell doctrine - that American military force should only be used in overwhelming strength to achieve well-defined strategic national interests - translates into a nervous distaste for peacekeeping and small interventions. Some fear that it is a handy excuse for doing nothing.
How the new administration actually behaves will depend in part on how the general settles in as diplomat in chief, a different role than he held at the Pentagon.
General Powell may become a dominating secretary of state. But he will probably operate in tandem with his best friend, Richard L. Armitage, seen as a likely deputy defense secretary, and with his erstwhile civilian boss, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, as the virtual president of foreign policy within the White House. There, will also be Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who by virtue of long proximity to Mr. Bush will be a trusted coordinator of policy rather than the dominant force.
None of these people are keen interventionists, and what they do - or don't do - will stir heavy debate.
General Powell's early mentor, Frank Carlucci, who plucked him out of the ranks and placed him as a White House fellow at the Office of Management and Budget early in the 1970's, says that the team knows that "international engagement is a fact" and "will have to roll with the punches." Mr. Carlucci later became defense secretary.
But Leslie H. Gelb, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is not so sure how they will act when the United States' broad values, rather than its narrow security interests, are at stake. "Where there is genocide, the United States must - given our values and interests - take strong action. But our policy should be geared to preventing this and not arguing about intervention," Mr. Gelb said.
However General Powell might exercise power abroad, it is perfectly clear how he will exercise it at home. He will put the State Department back on the map. After 12 years of institutional neglect under Madeleine K. Albright, Warren Christopher and James A. Baker III, it is demoralized and underfinanced, rocked by security lapses and uncertain of its role.
The general sees himself as an experienced manager of large organizations, and has told people that he believes the department needs a top- to-bottom overhaul.
In some respects, people in the Bush camp say, General Powell's initial mission at the State Department will be familiar to him. When he became deputy national security adviser under Ronald Reagan, and then stepped up to the adviser's position, these people say, his main chore was to clean up the mess in the wake of illegal arms sales to Iran. Nothing illegal has happened at the State Department, but morale is low, as it was at the national security council then. Experienced foreign service officers believe they have been ignored in favor of a coterie of political appointees around Dr. Albright, and many diplomats are angered at her emphasis on security in the building.
Over and over again in his best- selling autobiography, "An American Journey," General Powell describes himself as a people person, a firm believer in self-improvement for himself and others, skills that he no doubt plans to exercise from the moment he steps in the front door of the State Department at C Street.
Since his retirement, General Powell has been in high demand as a motivational speaker. In recent years he has addressed dozens of seminars at which thousands of corporate employees gather to listen to advice on how to succeed. He will almost surely will become the chief spokesman for the new administration's foreign policy, using his forceful oratory as a contrast to the muted discussion of late.
He will also be using his persuasive powers in Congress, where he is expected to reap sorely needed funds for the State Department's foreign operations. But while he favors strengthening embassies abroad, he is probably unlikely to seek big increases for United Nations peacekeeping.
No doubt, diplomats say, General Powell, accustomed to the richly endowed military, will be shocked by the State Department's starved home base. Only last year, the department threw out the last of its 1970 Wang computers.
"He will want to get the money because he will want to be a successful secretary of state," said Richard Gardner, a former ambassador to Italy and Spain, who now specializes in State Department financing. "The Republican leadership has been the principal problem, but they will want a Bush administration to succeed and Colin Powell to succeed."
Moreover, his reputation as a political general who knows the innards of the bureaucracy could help him extract the $2 billion the department needs in an immediate supplemental appropriations bill, Mr. Gardner said.
But above all, General Powell's sheer stature will help rescue the State Department from the danger of irrelevancy in a world where the economists and businessmen at the Treasury and Commerce departments are as influential around the globe as the diplomats at Foggy Bottom, if not more so.
Mr. Armitage, who has been consulting feverishly with General Powell about the shape of the new foreign policy firmament, said: "Under a Powell State Department, you would return again to the secretary of state being the first among equals. No one in any of the cabinet positions will have his depth of experience."
The nature of that experience - as national security adviser to President Reagan, then as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for President George Bush and briefly for President Clinton - came as the cold war was ending and a new world was being created.
In this period, General Powell was known as the "reluctant warrior," a label that he owns up to in his memoirs. "Guilty. War is a deadly game; and I do not believe in spending the lives of Americans lightly," he writes.
In the days leading up to the gulf war, General Powell says, he was not as eager as some of his colleagues, including President Bush, to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. He wanted to draw the line at Saudi Arabia.
As chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President Clinton, where his authority inspired something akin to fear among the foreign policy newcomers, he argued forcefully against air strikes as a way of halting Serb aggression in Bosnia.
His opposition was so adamant that Dr. Albright, then ambassador to the United Nations, asked: "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
Two years after General Powell retired, NATO unleashed sustained air strikes against the Serbs, which, in conjunction with the Croatian Army on the ground, led to the end of the war, a sequence of events that critics assert proved him wrong.
General Powell says in his book that he was not opposed to all limited missions, and that some successful ones, including protecting the Kurds in northern Iraq after the war, occurred under his watch.
But there was one foreign venture that was spectacularly unsuccessful during the general's tenure: the mission in Somalia that became synonymous with the notion that an intervention without a vital interest at stake can go badly awry.
General Powell says in his memoir that he and Mr. Cheney, the secretary of defense at the time, were skeptical of the initial mission of sending soldiers to alleviate famine in Somalia. But they did not fight the idea.
More disastrous was the subsequent nation-building effort in Somalia under President Clinton, which also occurred while General Powell was in charge and which resulted, three days after his retirement on Sept. 30, 1993, in the deaths of 18 American soldiers. Such missions were derided by George W. Bush during his campaign as exactly the kind of action that a new Bush administration would avoid.
How that mission went wrong was discussed by General Powell soon after it occurred, and by President Clinton recently. They put different emphases on what happened.
In an interview in the Oval Office this month, President Clinton told reporters for The New York Times that General Powell came to him "very near the end of his term" and said that American soldiers in Somalia were the only ones capable of capturing Muhammad Farah Aidid, the warlord responsible for the slaughter of United Nations Pakistani peacekeepers.
"I said: `What are the chances of success?' " Mr. Clinton said he asked the general. "He said: `I think we've got a 50-50 chance to get him, probably not more than a one in four chance to get him alive,' something like that."
Mr. Clinton continued: "But, he said, `I think we ought to do it.' So I said, O.K. I asked him if he thought I ought to do it, and he said: `Yes, I do. On the balance I think you should, because you just can't just walk away from the fact that these Pakistanis were murdered.' "
In an account he gave after the American soldiers were killed, General Powell stressed his contempt for nation-building in Somalia and his deep reservations about the dispatch of American special forces for the purpose of capturing Mr. Aidid.
"I always said that disarming the factions was stupid," General Powell was quoted as saying in a report by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and the ranking member, Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan.
General Powell said he had sent the Rangers into Somalia after the deaths of the Pakistanis "with the greatest reluctance" and viewed the chance of success as "even less than 50 percent."
But the general's account makes clear he did not actively try to stop the deployment. He gave as the basis of his decision the "steady drumbeat" of advice from the field commanders, rather than his own belief, that it was necessary to arrest Mr. Aidid, as Mr. Clinton described.
In the end, though, he concluded: "The overall policy for Somalia should have been reviewed long before Oct. 3."
During his retirement, General Powell remained above the fray in foreign policy debates, choosing his shots carefully and concentrating instead on America's Promise, the organization he founded dedicated to improving the lives of disadvantaged children through volunteerism.
He criticized the Clinton administration's conduct of the war in Kosovo, saying that removing the threat of ground troops was a bad idea, and noted that soon after the air strikes started more than 800,000 Kosovar Albanians fled as refugees.
During the election campaign, he added to the credibility of Mr. Bush by standing along aside him - with other Republican foreign policy grandees, including former Secretary of State George P. Schultz - during a major speech on national missile defense.
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Powell adds heft to Bush agenda
The former Joint Chiefs chairman counters the president-elect's lack of foreign policy experience and may help mend rifts with blacks.
St. Petersburg Times
December 17, 2000
By PAUL DE LA GARZA
http://www.sptimes.com/News/121700/Worldandnation/Powell_adds_heft_to_B.shtml
WASHINGTON -- In his first Cabinet appointment Saturday, President-elect George W. Bush nominated retired Army Gen. Colin Powell, one of the most admired people in the country, as the nation's 65th secretary of state.
His selection, announced at a schoolhouse ceremony in Crawford, Texas, was expected to serve Bush immediately in helping to begin the healing process in the wake of the post-election meltdown in Florida, especially within the African-American community.
By naming Powell as the nation's top diplomat, Bush also confronted concerns -- both here and abroad -- over his lack of experience in foreign affairs.
To further shore up his national security team, Bush is expected to announce today the selection of Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser. Rice served under former President Bush as a Russia specialist in the National Security Council.
During an emotional ceremony Saturday afternoon, Bush praised Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as "an example of integrity."
"He believes as I do that our nation is best when we project our strength and purpose with humility," Bush said, with his wife, Laura, Powell, and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney standing by his side. "If we do not set our own agenda, it will be set by others, potential adversaries or the crisis of the moment."
At age 63, Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants and a product of the South Bronx, will become the first African-American to hold the post, if, as expected, he wins Senate confirmation.
Powell played a major role in national security councils during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bush's father, and, for several months, Bill Clinton. He was treated as a hero after the Persian Gulf War and found his name floated as a presidential prospect.
Conservatives, however, have groused about his support for abortion rights and affirmative action.
In his first news appearance as secretary of state-designee, Powell outlined America's foreign policy vision under a Bush administration.
Acknowledging "a dangerous world," Powell said the United States would deal from a position of strength.
Among his priorities, Powell said, was the Middle East, where the United States would continue to be "very engaged."
He described other issues that would confront him: "from nations of the world that are transforming themselves, nations such as China and Russia," to those that are poorly led "by failed leaders pursuing failed policies."
He spoke of the need for a missile defense system, which is certain to rile the Russians and Chinese. And he sent a warning to America's enemies like Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the architects of weapons of mass destruction.
"We will not be frightened of them," he said. "We will meet them. We will contend with them."
Beyond the challenges, Powell pointed out the opportunities available to the United States in the post-Cold War, with the spread of democracy and the technological revolution.
Powell's appointment was greeted with immediate praise in Washington.
Indeed, analysts say Bush will need an experienced and competent national security team in place to deal with the world's woes immediately upon taking office.
To appreciate the scope of Bush's challenge in foreign affairs, imagine him standing in the Oval Office, blindfolded, and throwing a dart at a world map. Wherever it lands, he'll likely find trouble.
A quick look at the globe reveals a chaotic picture, with democracy faltering in former Soviet republics, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Haiti, South Africa, Nigeria, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
Whether dealing with the threat of nuclear war in south Asia, saber rattling by China over Taiwan, the re-emergence of Russia as a world power, drug trafficking or terrorism, foreign affairs experts and diplomats agree on one thing: Bush will have to hit the ground running.
"The world is going on every day. It doesn't stop just because we have a (presidential transition)," said Patrick Conin of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, nonpartisan, federal institution.
"The new administration will have its hands full."
Some analysts say Bush's most pressing task will be here at home, even before he takes office. U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fort Myers, whose name has surfaced as possible CIA director in a Bush administration, said Bush's No. 1 priority would be to assemble "a star-studded cast" of players on his national security team.
He said Bush was on the right track with people like Cheney, the secretary of defense in the previous Bush administration, and Powell.
"Reassurance is probably the most important message the United States has to be sending to its friends," said Goss, chairman of the House's Select Intelligence Committee.
And the message to its enemies, he said, is this: "If you continue to go after American interests at home and abroad, you can expect bad things to happen."
To fashion a successful foreign policy strategy, analysts say Bush will need bipartisan support, no small feat with the way the post-election played itself out.
And the world will be watching.
According to published reports, some world leaders already are questioning Bush's mandate. Others wonder whether Bush is prepared to be the leader of the free world.
Consider his treatment by the British press.
The Mirror of London featured a picture of the globe on its front page the other day with an arrow pointing to Britain. The headline: "Congrats on becoming president. P.S. We are here."
In proving himself, Bush will have to step out of his father's shadow, because early assessments of him overseas are based on his dad and not him. But some world leaders welcome the idea of having the elder Bush serve as his son's mentor.
Analysts agree that one of Bush's biggest headaches will be getting the peace process back on track in the Middle East.
Ted Carpenter, an analyst with the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization, said, "The question there is, "Can a corpse be resuscitated?' "
The consensus is that he won't have a choice but to try.
"You can't do strategic planning around it," Conin said. "It's right there in your face."
Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to the United States, agreed.
He said once Bush takes office, he would inherit one of two scenarios in the Middle East: going ahead with the parameters for a peace treaty put in place in the waning days of the Clinton administration -- or bloodshed.
"If it gets worse or they continue where they are, the next president will be faced with a Middle East crisis because nobody can put up with continued killing," Fahmy said. "He will have to deal with the Middle East immediately."
The ambassador's advice to the new administration?
"The peace process is one element of the region. It is not the region. And that's how it needs to be looked at."
For example, Fahmy said, while "nobody I know" supports Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, "without a doubt we cannot accept that Iraqi people continue to suffer because of (U.N.) sanctions, because simply it's not palatable."
While engaging the Palestinians and the Israelis, Bush will have to watch his back, analysts say, as America's enemies look for ways to test the new president's mettle.
In outlining the various challenges of a new American administration, Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said Bush would have to be prepared for anything.
"That's the ultimate irony of foreign relations," he said. "You never know when it's going to hit you."
Take the risk of nuclear war in south Asia. Described by Clinton earlier this year as the "most dangerous place on Earth," the region is on the warpath.
India and Pakistan, the newest members of the nuclear weapons club, are engaged in a bloody conflict over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Zamir Akram, the deputy chief of mission at the Pakistani Embassy, characterized south Asia as "a nuclear flash point."
Akram said Pakistan and India are too responsible to engage in nuclear war, at least intentionally. His fear, though, is that a misunderstanding could lead to a nuclear exchange.
One side, for example, could interpret a missile test as a nuclear attack, and with only three minutes to decide what to do, the other side could respond with a nuclear bomb.
"The new administration will have to recognize, as did the Clinton administration," Akram said, "that this issue is far too dangerous to be left alone."
Meanwhile, if Clinton leaves office without exacting a price in the fatal bombing two months ago of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, Bush will be under tremendous pressure to act.
And after raising it as an issue during the campaign, he will be hard-pressed to come up with a policy governing America's peacekeeping role in the Balkans.
In addition, the new president will have to commit to the future of America's missile defense program, envisioned as a shield against missile attack by so-called rogue countries like North Korea.
If Bush decides to move forward, as he has vowed, he can expect intense opposition from Russia and China, which see the program as a way to neutralize its nuclear arsenal.
In Africa, analysts warn the administration not to forget that there are 17 separate ongoing conflicts.
In Latin America, the sense is that Bush has big plans, a welcomed feeling, considering that people there often complain that Washington abandoned them at the end of the Cold War.
The thinking about Bush, said Luis Alberto Moreno, the Colombian ambassador to Washington, is that "he wants to make his mark."
The big question is whether his vision extends beyond Mexico.
In his war-plagued country, Moreno said the bigger challenge is the implementation of Plan Colombia, a $7.5-billion internationally financed program designed to promote peace.
"As you know," he said, "there are bound to be setbacks."
Next door, Bush will have to keep Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in check, as the one-time military coup leader grows increasingly callous toward the United States.
Chavez has forged a very close and very public relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and Venezuela is America's biggest oil supplier outside the Arab world.
Finally, the debate in Washington last week focused on the threat of terrorist attacks, possibly with biological weapons.
To sum up Bush's task over the next four years, Conin said, "There will be no time to sleep."
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MAN IN THE NEWS
Colin Luther Powell: Insider With Star Power
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/politics/17POWE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - Gen. Colin L. Powell has been lionized in stamps, baseball cards, bronze medals, audiotapes and more than a dozen biographies for children and adults.
But of all the icons venerating the retired four-star general over the years, the one than stands out is the limited-edition, G. I. Joe action figure that the toy maker Hasbro produced two years ago.
The doll's face is fiercer, its shoulders broader, its waist slimmer and its complexion fairer than the real- life model. But it came dressed in a true-to-scale uniform decorated with ribbons, insignias and stars and included a press release that lauded General Powell as "a real-life hero" and an "inspiration" to the children of America.
Now General Powell will get the chance to channel some of that star power to a Bush presidency. As the nominee for secretary of state - the first black who will hold the post - he brings 35 years of military service with him, including four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff both for the Bush and the Clinton administrations.
General Powell brings savvy negotiating skills honed as deputy national security adviser and then as national security adviser in the Reagan administration, where he was a key player at the summit meetings that brought the United States and the former Soviet Union closer.
He is the ultimate insider, a policy maker's general, touted as the model of the modern Army general in an era when diplomatic finesse seemed as important as combat experience. Indeed, except for four command assignments, none more than 15 months, General Powell served in the power corridors of Washington from 1969 until he retired in 1993.
General Powell was offered the job of secretary of state once before, in 1994, by President Clinton, when Warren Christopher was thinking of leaving. But the general said no, writing in his autobiography that when Mr. Clinton summoned him to the White House, he said he and his wife, Alma, wanted a "longer break from public life." He added, "Left unspoken were my reservations about the amorphous way the administration handled foreign policy."
In private life, General Powell has made millions from his speeches (about $75,000 an appearance) and his 1995 autobiography, "My American Journey," which earned him a $6 million advance and was a runaway best seller. Under an arrangement with his agent, he has barred most video or audio taping of his speeches, which means there is no definitive public record of his views since he left government service.
In 1995, General Powell flirted with the idea of running for president, and his deliberations tantalized voters and for a time froze the Republican nomination. At about the same time, he embarked on a successful book tour for his autobiography. But his wife said that she would worry about her husband's safety if he became a candidate, and he announced that he would not run in 1996 because the campaign would require "a calling that I do not yet hear."
Two years later, he became founder and chairman of America's Promise: The Alliance for Youth, an organization that works with corporations, charities and communities to encourage volunteerism to help disadvantaged youth. (The organization, which has claimed to have mobilized millions of volunteers and contributed $300 million to programs helping 10 million children, has been criticized by some experts on volunteerism for inflating its results.)
"He is," wrote the historian Ronald Steel, "as Walter Lippmann wrote about Ike before he won the Republican nomination in 1952, `not a real figure in our public life, but a kind of dream boy embodying all the unsatisfied wishes of all the people who are discontented with things as they are.' "
The son of immigrants from Jamaica, Colin Luther Powell was born on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, and reared in a racially and ethnically integrated neighborhood in the South Bronx. His father was a gardener and a building superintendent, and a stock boy, shipping clerk and foreman in Manhattan's garment district; his mother was a seamstress.
He earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the City University of New York, where he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., in 1958. There, he found a career in the Army, probably the most integrated institution in American life.
He met his wife, Alma Vivian Johnson, on a blind date in 1961. They were married less than a year later. "She came from a fine family, got along with my circle of friends and was even a great cook," he wrote about her in his memoirs. They have three grown children, Michael, Linda and Anne, and two grandchildren.
Less than four years after his first commission, General Powell was on his way to Vietnam. Although he wrote in his memoirs that he knew the Vietnam War was pointless, he completed two tours of combat duty. Wounded slightly in combat, once by stepping on punji stick, once in a helicopter crash, he was awarded the Purple Heart. He also holds the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the military's highest noncombat decoration, and two Presidential Medals of Freedom.
After Vietnam, the Army sent him to George Washington University, in 1969, to earn a master's degree in business administration. When only a major, he was catapulted into the political arena in 1972 with membership into an elite club: the one-year White House fellowship program, working in the Office of Management and Budget studying the structure of government. After tours of duty in the field, including command of an infantry battalion in South Korea, he spent four years in the Pentagon under President Jimmy Carter, followed by a year as a senior aide in the Energy Department.
In 1983 he became military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. In that job, General Powell issued the secret order approved by President Ronald Reagan to transfer 4,000 antitank missiles from the Army to the Central Intelligence Agency for transshipment to Iran to help free American hostages in Lebanon in violation of the administration's stated weapons embargo of Iran. (Despite the uproar that ensued, it was determined that General Powell did nothing illegal.)
After three years, he returned to soldiering, when he commanded the Army's Fifth Corps in Western Europe. But the lure of Washington was too strong, and in 1986 he was drawn back to the White House as deputy national security adviser, becoming national security adviser the following year. Before President Reagan left office he awarded General Powell his fourth star, assigning him to head the Forces Command, overseeing all troops in the continental United States.
As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush administration (the youngest ever), General Powell is best known by the American public for wielding a mean baton at the televised war briefings from the Pentagon as he oversaw the war that forced President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. Criticized afterward as a "reluctant warrior" for ending the war without destroying all of Iraq's elite Republican Guards and removing Mr. Hussein from power, he wrote in his memoirs: "A reluctant warrior? Guilty. War is a deadly game and I do not believe in spending the lives of Americans lightly."
General Powell also opposed Mr. Clinton's pledge, made in the 1992 campaign, to end the ban on gays in the military. The unwieldy "don't ask, don't tell" policy was the result.
Since his retirement, he has made no secret of his disdain for the centralized decision-making process in Washington. "I don't waste time in Washington," he said in an interview during this year's campaign.
General Powell has not spent nearly as much time with Mr. Bush as has Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's choice as national security adviser, or Dick Cheney, the vice president- elect. How the general's strongly held views will fit with those of Mr. Bush and others on his team will have to unfold along the way.
During the campaign, for example, Mr. Bush repeatedly used the phrase "rogue state" to refer to North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
"I detest the term `rogue state,' " General Powell said in the interview during the campaign. "I don't know what you gain throwing a lot of different countries into a pot and calling them rogue states. They are all so different."
And while Mr. Bush has said the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should be scrapped if the Russians refused to make changes acceptable to the United States, General Powell has been more cautious, saying: "I think probably it should be modified. But it's going to scare the bejesus out of a lot of our friends."
General Powell has also split with Mr. Bush on the issue of affirmative action. Mr. Bush has opposed policies that have given preferences to minorities; General Powell has fiercely criticized the Republican Party for condemning affirmative action. "Some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand kids get an education, but you hardly hear a whimper when it's affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax code with preferences for special interests," he said at the Republican convention.
There is also the question of whether the general, even wearing diplomatic pinstripes, might outshine the commander in chief. In serving in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, General Powell served a president who was a decorated combat pilot in World War II.
In serving in a George Walker Bush administration, General Powell will serve a president who avoided service in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard. And yet General Powell, in his memoirs, condemned as "an anti-democratic disgrace" the way America's political leaders chose who would and who would not serve in Vietnam.
He wrote: "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed" managed "to wrangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."
"Of the many tragedies of Vietnam," he continued, "this raw class discrimination strikes me a the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
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WHAT THEY DID
A Survey of the Voting Record of the 106th Congress
New York Times
December 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/politics/17CBOX.html
BANKING Approved legislation that overhauls the nation's financial system, removing Depression-era barriers that have limited the ability of banks, insurance companies and securities firms to expand into one another's businesses.
IMPEACHMENT On Feb. 12, 1999, the Senate acquitted President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Needing 67 votes to convict, the Senate rejected the perjury charge, 55 to 45, and split 50 to 50 on the obstruction charge. (The House impeached Mr. Clinton on both charges on Dec. 19, 1998.)
EDUCATION Passed a compromise bill that finances President Clinton's program to add 100,000 teachers over seven years..
LAWSUITS Enacted a law that limits suits arising from Year 2000 computer problems. The law gives companies 90 days to fix problems before suits can be filed, limits punitive damages for small businesses and narrows the scope of class-action suits.
DISABLED Passed a bill that expands Medicaid and Medicare so that people with disabilities will continue to receive health insurance coverage if they go to work.
ENERGY DEPARTMENT Approved legislation that overhauls the Energy Department and sets up an agency - the National Nuclear Security Administration - within the department to oversee nuclear weapons programs.
PAY INCREASE Approved the first presidential pay increase in three decades. The next president's salary will increase to $400,000 a year from $200,000.
BANKRUPTCY Approved an overhaul of the nation's bankruptcy laws, making it harder for people to seek legal protection of their debts. President Clinton has promised to veto the bill.
CHINA TRADE Voted to extend permanent normal trade relations to China.
ESTATE TAX Passed a bill that would gradually eliminate the federal tax on large estates. The House was unable to override President Clinton's veto.
`MARRIAGE PENALTY' TAX Voted to cut taxes for married couples by $293 billion over the next decade. The bill addresses the quirk in the tax code that pushes some two-income married couples into higher tax brackets or limits their deductions, making them pay more taxes than they would if they were single. The House failed to override President Clinton's veto.
EVERGLADES Approved a $7.8 billion plan intended to revive the Florida Everglades over four decades.
What Congress Did Not Do
TAX PACKAGE The House passed a tax package that would cost about $240 billion over 10 years. The package includes breaks for small businesses, allows workers to set aside $5,000 in individual retirement accounts, up from $2,000 now, and raises the annual limit on tax- deferred employee contributions to 401(k) retirement plans to $15,000 from $10,500. The bill also increases the minimum wage by $1, to $6.15 an hour, over two years. The Senate failed to take final action.
TREATY The Senate refused to approve the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans all underground nuclear testing.
GUN CONTROL In May 1999, the Senate approved an array of new gun control measures, including mandatory background checks on all people who buy firearms at gun shows. The House passed no such gun control when it considered the issue in June 1999.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM In September 1999, the House passed a bill that would ban soft-money donations in federal elections and regulate issue advocacy advertisements. The Senate failed to break a filibuster on a similar bill that banned soft-money donations but did not contain the issue advocacy provision.
PATIENTS' BILL OF RIGHTS Congress spent hundreds of hours working on legislation to define patients' rights, but adjourned without agreeing on any measure. In July 1999, by a vote of 53 to 47, the Senate passed a Republican bill to regulate health maintenance organizations and insurance companies. In October 1999, the House passed a more comprehensive bill, 275 to 151, with 68 Republicans supporting it. Negotiations bogged down over the question of whether to expand a patient's right to sue H.M.O.'s for injuries or the denial of care.
PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFITS In June, by a vote of 217 to 214, the House passed a bill offering prescription drug benefits to millions of elderly and disabled people on Medicare. Under the bill, the government would pay subsidies to insurers that offered policies covering prescription drugs. Democrats insisted that drug benefits should be a standard part of Medicare. The Senate turned down the Democratic plan, 53 to 44, as an amendment to an appropriations bill, and Republican proposals died in the Senate Finance Committee.
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Remarks at Announcement of Powell's Nomination as Secretary of State
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/politics/17PTEX.html?pagewanted=all
Following are excerpts from remarks by President-elect George W. Bush designating General Colin L. Powell as secretary of state and General Powell's response as recorded by The New York Times:
PRESIDENT-ELECT BUSH: Many times during the course of my campaign I said that if all went well Gen. Colin Powell just might be called back into the service of his country. Today it is my privilege to make that call and ask him to become the 65th secretary of state of the United States of America.
Colin Powell first answered the call to duty as a lieutenant in the United States Army, where he served for 35 years. He's been a decorated infantry officer, an Army corps commander, a national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, adviser to our last three presidents; providing good counsel, strong leadership and an example of integrity for everyone with whom he served.
His entire life has prepared him to fulfill the responsibilities that he will soon hold. General Powell is an American hero, an American example and a great American story. It's a great day when a son of the South Bronx succeeds to the office first held by Thomas Jefferson.
Much has changed since our country's early days. But the fundamental principles guiding American foreign policy are the same. Foreign policy in the coming years must serve our national interests in the world while speaking for the highest of America's ideals.
In word and deed we must be clear and consistent and confident that our values are real. And we must be true to our friends. We must conduct our foreign policy in the spirit of national unity and bipartisanship.
Our next secretary of state believes as I do that we must work closely with our allies and friends in times of calm so that we will be able to work together in times of crises. He believes as I do that our nation is best when we project our strength and our purpose with humility.
As president I will set our priorities and we will stand by them. If we do not set our own agenda, it will be set by others, potential adversaries or the crises of the moment.
Our administration will work with our allies in Europe and in the Far East and around the world to extend the peace. We will promote a fully democratic Western Hemisphere bound together by free trade. We will defend America's interest in the Persian Gulf and advance peace in the Middle East, based - as any lasting peace must be - on a secure Israel. We will fight the weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We will work toward a world that trades in freedom.
And my administration will understand that American values always are at the center of our foreign policy. Our stand for human freedom is not an empty formality of diplomacy but a founding and guiding principle of this great land. By promoting democracy we lay the foundation for a better and more stable world.
This is a moment of great opportunity and my administration will seize it. America has unique power and unmatched influence. And we will use them in the service of democracy, spreading peace across the world and across the years.
In this cause I've known of no better person to be the face and voice of American diplomacy that Colin L. Powell. Wherever he goes and whomever he meets, the world will see the finest of the United States of America.
In this office he follows in the footsteps not only of Jefferson but also of one of his personal heroes, Gen. George C. Marshall. And I would say of General Powell what Harry Truman said of General Marshall: He is a tower of strength and common sense. When you find somebody like that you have to hang on to him.
I have found such a man. In directness of speech, his towering integrity, his deep respect for our democracy and his soldier's sense of duty and honor, Colin Powell demonstrates the qualities that made George Marshall a great secretary of state - qualities that will make him a great representative of all the people of this country.
And so it is a great honor for me to submit the name to the United States Senate of Colin L. Powell as secretary of state.
GENERAL POWELL Thank you so very, very, much ladies and gentlemen. Mr. President- elect and Mrs. Bush, Mr. Vice President- elect Cheney, ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Crawford, Tex., it's a great pleasure to be with you this afternoon and I am honored, honored to be given the opportunity to return to public service as the 65th secretary of state of the United States of America.
Mr. President-elect, I thank you for the confidence that you have placed in me and I look forward to serving you, the American people and the cause of peace and freedom around the world.
And it is a special privilege for me to once again have the opportunity to serve with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney. We have been through many adventures together and many more adventures await us in the future.
Mr. President-elect, during your administration you will be faced with many challenges, and crises that we don't know anything about right now will come along. But I believe that these challenges and these crises will pale in comparison to the wonderful opportunities that await us.
Opportunities that have been brought about by the end of the cold war, by the spread of democracy and the free enterprise system around the world.
Opportunities that come to us because we held steadfast in our belief in democracy.
Opportunities that will come to us because of the information and technology revolutions that are reshaping the world as we know it, destroying political boundaries and all kinds of other boundaries as we are able to move information and capital, data around the world at the speed of light - able to move knowledge around the world at the speed of light.
Opportunities that will come to us because the old world map as we knew it of a red side and a blue side that competed for something called the third world is gone. And the new map is a mosaic, a mosaic of many different pieces and many different colors spreading around the world. A world that has seen that Communism did not work, Fascism did not work, Naziism did not work.
If you want to be successful in the 21st century you must find your path to democracy, market economics and a system which frees the talents of men and women to pursue their individual destinies.
And at the center of this revolution America stands, inspiration for the world that wants to be free. And we will continue to be that inspiration by uniquely American internationalism, as President-elect Bush has stated it.
Not by using our strength and our position of power to get back behind our walls but by being engaged with the world. By first and foremost letting our allies know that we appreciate all we have been through over the last 50 years and our alliances are as strong now as they ever have been and they are as needed now as they ever have been. And we will work with our allies to expand and to make those alliances the center of our foreign policy activity.
We will work with those nations in the world that are transforming themselves - nations such as China and Russia. We will work with them not as potential enemies and not as adversaries but not yet as strategic partners but as nations that are seeking their way. We will have areas of agreement and areas of difference and we will discuss them in rational ways, letting them know of our values, letting them know of the principles that we hold dear.
For those nations that are not yet on this path of democracy and freedom, for those nations that are poorly led - led by failed leaders pursuing failed policies that will give them failed results - we will stand strong. We will stand strong with our friends and allies against those nations that pursue weapons of mass destruction, that practice terrorism. We will not be afraid of them, we will not be frightened by them. We will meet them, we will match them, we will contend with them. We will defend our interests from a position of strength.
That strength comes to us from the power of our system, the democracy and the free enterprise system. It comes to us from our economic power. It comes to us from our military power.
As as we go into this new century and as we begin this new administration we have to make sure that all those elements of power are protected and allowed to thrive even more. With an economy that is strong, growing, part of a now international economic system, global trade. With military power - we are the best on the face of the earth; we're going to keep it that way; and we're going to take actions early on to ensure that our young men and women who might be called to go in harm's way have what they need to be successful. We owe that to them.
And I've spent a good part of my life helping those G.I.'s get ready for battle and I've spent a good part of my life up on Congress, before Congress, working hard to get those troops what they needed. Well, I don't have to do that quite anymore but I will certainly be there with the secretary of defense, assisting the secretary in getting what he needs for the military.
But I now will be up before the Congress letting them know in the most powerful terms that I can muster that the dedicated men and women of the State Department need that same kind of support. They are in the front lines; they are part of this contest; they are part of the battle. And we must make sure that when they go to do the work of the American people they not only have the support that they need but they have the resources that they need.
And that will be a priority of my stewardship as secretary of state.
So I think these are promising times, times of great opportunity but times also of challenge and danger. We are up to the task. President-elect Bush has given us the guidance we need. We're going to pull together a great team. We're going to communicate with the American people to make sure that we are crafting a foreign policy that reflects their values and their will.
We will work with Congress in a bipartisan fashion so that we can arrive at consensus and that the world can see us united behind our foreign policy.
Exciting times. And I am so proud to be a part of those times. And I thank the president-elect for giving me this opportunity.
I'm especially pleased that he chose to hold this ceremony in a school in Crawford, Tex. I was, frankly, glad it wasn't at the ranch. Nothing wrong with ranches, but I don't do ranchwear very well. And I'm from the South Bronx, and I don't care what you say, those cows look dangerous.
But the real reason - but the real reason I'm so happy that we're doing this in a school is because for the last several years of my life I've been working with young people - young people such as the students who come here every day to be prepared for the future.
I have been working hard as the chairman of America's Promise: The Alliance for Youth, a great crusade that we have been conducting for the last three years. It was a mission that was given to me by former President Bush and President Clinton and former President Carter, President Ford and Mrs. Reagan.
We've accomplished a lot over the last three years and as I now take on new duties as secretary of state I want to say to all of the partners who have worked with us in America's Promise that I'm not leaving it. I'm going to find a way to continue to play an important role in the work of America's Promise and the president-elect has encouraged me to do just that.
I go around the country telling people no matter how busy you are you have time to give back to young people. And that's what I'm going to do as secretary of state. Not only to encourage other cabinet officers to do likewise but hopefully to take this promise message around the world so that all nations realize that we have nothing more valuable as a national asset, in anyone's country, than the young people. And we have to prepare them. So the little red wagon will still be a part of my life.
And finally, I would just like to note that in the newspaper stories that will be written about this occasion they will say that Colin Powell is the first African-American to ever hold the position of secretary of state. And I'm glad they will say that, and I want it repeated.
I want it repeated because I hope it will give inspiration to young African-Americans coming along - but beyond that, all young Americans coming along - that no matter where you began in this society with hard work and with dedication and with the opportunities that are presented by this society, there are no limitations on you.
And I also want to pay tribute to so many people who helped me reach this position in life: African-Americans who came before me who never could have risen to this position because the conditions weren't there and we had to fight to change those conditions.
For me this isn't history, it's my lifetime. I was exposed to these things in my lifetime. And I will work with President-elect Bush and with Vice President-elect Cheney to do everything I can do to help them. To show to America, as President-elect Bush said the other evening, that this will be an administration, he will be a president for all the people, all the time.
I know that is the deepest emotion in his heart. The American people will see that in due course. We'll get over these difficulties that we have seen in recent days. And we'll come through this a stronger, greater nation on the way to that more perfect union that we always dream about. Thank you very much.
Questions and Answers
Q. General Powell, Mideast peace has proved elusive for many years. There are some preliminary talks this weekend in Washington. Will you be monitoring these? And when you become secretary of state, when you're confirmed, what do you see as the U.S. role. . . . .
GENERAL POWELL: I will certainly be monitoring them. But, you know, you can only have one president, one secretary of state and one foreign policy team at a time. And so although we'll be monitoring them, it's entirely in the hands of President Clinton, Dr. Albright and their team.
It is absolutely a given that under a Bush administration, America will remain very much engaged in the Middle East. I expect it to be a major priority of mine and of the department. It will be based on the principle that we must always ensure that Israel lives in freedom and in security and peace. But at the same time, we have to do everything we can to deal with the aspirations of the Palestinians and other nations in the region who have an interest in this.
And so I think America will continue to be a friend to all sides. America will continue to put forward ideas. America will remain engaged until we can find that solution to this most difficult problem. But at the end of the day, it's going to be the parties in the region who will have to find that solution and come into agreement. They are going to have to live with each other.
And hopefully, in the near-future we can find ways that they can accommodate their differences and find that elusive solution. It is elusive, but it is out there somewhere. And hopefully, if it doesn't happen in the very near-future and it becomes something for us to manage, you can be sure that we'll be fully engaged in trying to find a solution to that problem.
Q. Inaudible
GENERAL POWELL: We have a different situation now than we had in 1991 and 1992. At the end of the Gulf War, the Iraqi regime agreed to the conditions that brought an end to the conflict, that they would fully account for all the weapons of mass destruction and other evil technologies that they were working on. They have not yet fulfilled those agreements.
And my judgment is that the sanctions in some form must be kept in place until they do so. We will work with our allies to re- energize the sanctions regime. And I will make the case in every opportunity I get that we're not doing this to hurt the Iraqi people. We're doing this to protect the peoples of the region, the children of the region, who would be the targets of these weapons of mass destruction if we didn't contain them and get rid of them.
Saddam Hussein is sitting on a failed regime that is not going to be around in a few years' time. The world is going to leave him behind and that regime behind as the world marches to new drummers, drummers of democracy and the free enterprise system. And I don't know what it will take to bring him to his senses. But we are in the strong position. He is in the weak position. And I think it is possible to re-energize those sanctions and to continue to contain him and then confront him, should that become necessary again.
Q. Inaudible
GENERAL POWELL: Well, our plan is to undertake a review right after the president is inaugurated and take a look not only at our deployments in Bosnia but in Bosnia and Kosovo and many other places around the world, and make sure those deployments are proper. Our armed forces are stretched rather thin, and there is a limit to how many of these deployments we can sustain.
So we're going to take a look at that. We're going to talk to our allies. We're going to consult. We're going to make on-the- ground assessments of what we're doing now, what's needed now, but also what is really going to be needed in the future and see if we can find ways that it is less of a burden on our armed forces, not as a way of running out but as a way of substituting others or substituting other kinds of organizations and units and perhaps police organizations to handle the remaining missions.
So we're not cutting and running. We're going to make a careful assessment of it, in consultation with our allies, and then make some judgments after that assessment is concluded. . . .
Q. Inaudible
GENERAL POWELL: The president-elect has made a commitment to national missile defense. I have watched the debates on national missile defense for many, many years, and I think a national missile defense is an essential part of our overall strategic force posture, which consists of offensive weapons, command-and-control systems, intelligence systems, and a national missile defense. And I still hearken back to the original purpose of such a defense, and that is to start diminishing the value of offensive weapons.
We have been pursuing the technology. I'm quite confident that when a secretary of defense is named, that person will go into the Pentagon and make a full assessment of the state of technology - Where are we? What can we accomplish? - and structure a plan that is consistent with the approach that then-Governor Bush gave in Washington early this year.
So we're going to go forward. We have to spend time discussing it with our allies, discussing it with other nations in the world that possess strategic offensive weapons and don't yet understand our thinking with respect to national missile defense.
These will be tough negotiations. I don't expect them to be easy. But they will have to come to the understanding that we feel this is in the best interest of the American people - and not only the American people, the people of the world - to finally start to move in the direction where we can take away the currency associated with strategic offensive weapons and the blackmail that is inherent in some regime having that kind of weapon and thinking they can hold us hostage.
---
A CRUCIAL CHOICE
Powell, Bush's Pick for State Dept.,
Will Lend a Voice of Experience on Foreign Policy
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/politics/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=all
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 16 - In his first cabinet appointment, President-elect Bush today named retired Gen. Colin L. Powell to be his secretary of state, and called for a robust foreign policy addressing global opportunities, challenges and dangers "in a spirit of national unity and bipartisanship."
By naming the well-known former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as was long expected, and by naming him first and alone, Mr. Bush signaled stability in foreign policy, and also that he intended to reach out to the black voters who had deserted him in droves in November.
Standing together with Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary who will become vice president, in a high school auditorium in a dusty crossroads town near his ranch, Mr. Bush and General Powell delivered a detailed foreign policy prescription for the new administration. In Washington, Senate leaders promised a swift confirmation of the appointment, which puts Mr. Powell, the first black to hold the post, fourth in the constitutional line of succession.
"As president, I will set our priorities and we will stand by them," said Mr. Bush. But when the time came for questions it was General Powell who answered them, and his remarks were broader and more detailed than the incoming president's.
"Challenges and crises that we don't know anything about right now will come along," Mr. Powell said, recalling the "adventures" such as the Persian Gulf war that he and Mr. Cheney fought together when the general was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [Excerpts, Page 51.]
He issued a stern warning to Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, said of terrorists that "we will meet them, we will match them," reassured allies that the United States would remain engaged with them, and said that there would be quick reviews of such touchy subjects as the presence of American forces in the Balkans and the eventual deployment of a national defense against ballistic missiles.
He also promised to support "action early on" to maintain the readiness of American military forces - and then, as if abruptly noticing that he now has a new portfolio, said that the "dedicated men and women" of the diplomatic corps also deserve higher priority in government spending programs.
Mr. Bush compared Mr. Powell to George C. Marshall, the general who became secretary of state after World War II and helped rebuild Europe. "I would say of General Powell what Harry Truman said of General Marshall," he said. "He is a tower of strength and common sense. When you find someone like that you have to hold on to him."
For his part, General Powell said Mr. Bush "will be a president for all the people, all the time. I know that is the deepest emotion in his heart. The American people will know this in due course. We will get over these difficulties that we have seen in recent days." He was referring to the contested election, and demonstrating his value to Mr. Bush as a consensus builder.
Both Mr. Bush and General Powell spoke of global changes that they said presented opportunities for spreading democracy and capitalism, as well as risks of many kinds.
"The old world map as we knew it, of a red side, and blue side that competed for something called the third world, is gone," General Powell said. "And the new map is a mosaic, a mosaic of many different pieces and many different colors spreading around the world."
In a broad sense, General Powell seemed to signal that the United States would not retreat into an isolationist mode - as some have interpreted the intent of his Powell Doctrine - but would work toward "a uniquely American internationalism."
This would be achieved, he said, "Not by using our strength and our position of power to get back behind our walls, but by being engaged in the world."
Similarly, while he did not use the word globalization, he stressed that the information and technology revolutions were destroying boundaries around the world and creating new opportunities for the United States, both economically and politically.
Both Mr. Bush and the general talked of a foreign policy that was not only centered on vital national interests - as Mr. Bush touched on during the campaign - but embraced American values as well. "Foreign policy in the coming years must serve our national interests in the world while speaking for the highest of America's ideals," the president-elect said.
On the Middle East, General Powell said it was "absolutely a given" that the Bush administration would remain "very much engaged" in the region. He balanced his comments by striking a traditional United States posture on Israel but at the same time noting the needs of the Palestinians.
His policy would be based "on the principle that we must always ensure that Israel always lives in freedom and security and peace," he said. "But at the same time we have to do everything we can to deal with the aspirations of Palestinians and the other nations in the region who have an interest in this."
The general said that as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators arrived in Washington next week for talks that could lead to one last effort by the Clinton administration to forge a peace deal he would be "monitoring." But he emphasized that there was only one president and secretary of state at a time, and that those efforts were strictly the business of Mr. Clinton and his foreign policy team.
"At the end of the day it's going to be the parties in the region who will have to find that solution," General Powell added. He called the solution "elusive" but said "it is out there somewhere."
General Powell also offered strong warning to Iraq, whose leader, President Saddam Hussein, he confronted as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the gulf war. "Saddam Hussein is sitting on a failed regime that is not going to be around in a few years' time," he said. "The world is going to leave him behind and that regime behind, as the world marches to new drummers, drummers of democracy and the free enterprise system."
He acknowledged that the world was different today than it was when the war ended. Indeed, the coalition that the president-elect's father built to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait has frayed, with many of the allies of Desert Storm now chipping away at the sanctions on Iraq.
He pledged to "re-energize the sanctions regime," saying that Iraq had not fulfilled its agreement to end its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile programs, one of the conditions for ending the war he commanded.
"And I will make the case in every opportunity I get that we're not doing this to hurt the Iraqi people," he said. "We're doing this to protect the peoples' of the region, the children of the region, who would be the target of these weapons of mass destruction if we didn't contain them and get rid of them."
Speaking at times not only as the next secretary of state but as the next secretary of defense, too, General Powell said the administration would review the role of American troops deployed around the world. That had been a core campaign pledge of Mr. Bush's, though it was never clear where exactly he planned to withdraw troops.
General Powell suggested that the review would reconsider not only the presence of American peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, but also troops stationed overseas in a variety of missions.
"Our armed forces are stretched rather thin," General Powell said, echoing campaign themes raised repeatedly by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. "And there's a limit to how many of these deployments we can sustain."
At the same time, appearing sensitive to fears of American isolationism, he said the administration would only reduce troops after consulting with allies and finding other forces to take up some of the duties.
"We're not cutting and running," he said.
General Powell also made a strong case for building a national missile defense, saying it was necessary to thwart the "blackmail inherent in some regime" possessing long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. During the campaign, Mr. Bush called for deploying a more expansive system than the limited one President Clinton considered but ultimately deferred earlier this year.
Although General Powell did not offer details of the system the new administration intends to propose, he said a defensive shield was "an essential part" of the nation's security strategy. He also echoed the rationale for missile defense first articulated by President Ronald Reagan, whom he served as national security adviser.
"I harken back to the original purpose of such a defense, and that is to start diminishing the value of offensive weapons," he said.
As secretary, General Powell will be the administration's chief negotiator, responsible for assuaging the concerns not only of Russia and China, but of European allies who believed that even a limited system, let alone a more expansive one, would be destabilizing. He acknowledged it would be a challenge.
"These will be tough negotiations," he said, referring indirectly to Russia and China, as well as to Britain and France. "I don't expect them to be easy. But they will have to come to the understanding that we feel this is in the best interest of the American people - and not only the American people, the people of the world."
General Powell described Russia and China "not as potential enemies or adversaries, but not yet as strategic partners," and as countries that the United States would attempt to work with, not against. There would be disagreements with Moscow and Beijing, he said, and "we will be letting them know what we believe."
-------- MILITARY
A Test Ahead for Powell (and His Doctrine)
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/weekinreview/17PERL.html
ASSUME that Gen. Colin Powell is confirmed as President-elect George W. Bush's secretary of state. Will his first challenge be trying to avoid getting sucked into a Vietnam-style war in this hemisphere - just the kind of conflict his famous Powell Doctrine was intended to prevent?
Just as the administration of Gerge W. Bush's father bequeathed Mr. Clinton a difficult American military mission in Somalia, the Clinton administration is leaving the new Bush administration a commitment of American special forces in Colombia, where they train antinarcotics battalions.
But a growing group of critics, including some Republicans in Congress who initially backed the plan, are asking whether this fight isn't really a war against leftist insurgents, a chilling echo of Vietnam.
Eventually, according to this argument, the United States could be drawn into directly fighting the rebels, who have joined forces with the narcotics traffickers.
General Powell, as secretary of state, would not be acting just as a military strategist, of course; he would also be directing diplomacy. And while President- elect Bush has said he supports Plan Colombia, already there are hints that his administration may seek new approaches in Colombia.
In a speech during the campaign Mr. Bush said there should be more to a Latin American policy than drugs. He noted that the United States imports more oil from Venezuela than from Kuwait.
And people in his camp say that with the recent departure from the Clinton administration of Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who designed Plan Colombia, General Powell would have a freer hand to direct a broader policy.
In any event, General Powell will find that powerful leaders in the region are increasingly opposed to the military focus of Plan Colombia. Instead of military advisers and helicopters, they are asking for more development aid, credits and trade to fight the narcotics trade by fighting poverty.
Still, even as the Clinton administration prepares to leave office, it has been looking at ways - perhaps by expanding aid - to combat a "spillover effect" from the Colombian drug war into neighboring countries from Panama to Peru.
Does that sound like mission creep?
---
USA Today
12/17/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
South Carolina
Charleston - Charleston is paying convicted drug dealer Michael White $38,500 for a store that he says was sold to him for $1 to keep it from becoming an eyesore. Police seized the store about 10 years ago for unpaid property taxes, then the city sold it to White. He pleaded guilty to distributing cocaine in the building and the city moved to evict him.
-------- iraq
Iraq Says Not Concerned About Bush's Victory
Yahoo News
World News
Dec 17 Saturday December 16 4:03 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001216/wl/bush_iraq_dc_1.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said on Saturday it was not concerned with the new U.S. president-elect, George W. Bush (news - web sites), as American policy toward Iraq would not change.
``We are not concerned with who is the (U.S.) president because we are not expecting any change,'' Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said during a meeting with a Spanish delegation.
Aziz's comment was the first official Iraqi reaction to the Bush's presidential election victory.
Bush's father, former President George Bush, is reviled in Iraq for leading the multi-national coalition that ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 and for spearheading painful U.N. trade sanctions against Iraq.
``The American establishment is the same, so regardless who is the president there will be no change of U.S. hostile policy toward Iraq,'' said Abdul Razaq al-Hashmi, head of the Iraqi Friendship, Peace and Solidarity Organization.
On Saturday, Colin Powell (news - web sites), the man named by Bush as his new Secretary of State, said he would work with American allies to breathe new life into sanctions against Iraq.
Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, said Iraq had not lived up to the obligations of the 1991 truce.
``They have not yet fulfilled those agreements and my judgement is that sanctions in some form must be kept in place until they do so,'' Powell said. ``We will work with our allies to re-energize the sanctions regime.''
Sanctions against Iraq have been eroded this year, with many countries, including Russia, France and Arab countries resuming flights to Baghdad and moving to revive trade with the oil-rich state.
Many Iraqis, reeling under the stringent U.N. sanctions imposed for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, believe that Bush's father in person has been the driving force behind the Western campaign to isolate and punish their country.
In their eyes, U.S. policy under George W. Bush could be much worse than that of President Clinton (news - web sites).
On Friday, a leading Iraqi newspaper said president-elect Bush would disappoint Arab governments who might see him as an honest broker in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
-------- space
Study: Ocean Found on Jupiter Moon
Associated Press
December 17, 2000 Filed at 10:21 a.m. ET
http://search.nytimes.com:80/plweb-cgi/fastweb?view=site&dbname=siteToday&TemplateName=hitlist.tmpl&numresults=10&operator=AND&query_rule=%28%24query%29&query=nuclear%20OR%20plutonium%20OR%20uranium%20OR%20radioactiv%3F%3F%3F%20OR%20missile&simplesearch.x=10&simplesearch.y=10&sorting=BYRELEVANCE
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Ganymede, the solar system's largest moon, appears to have a liquid, saltwater ocean deep beneath its cratered and fractured surface of solid ice, researchers said Saturday.
With the new findings, Ganymede joins Europa and Callisto as yet another moon of Jupiter suspected to harbor underground water -- a key ingredient for life.
The ocean is the latest finding announced by scientists interpreting data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which began orbiting Jupiter in December 1995.
``Galileo is sparking a new revolution in our understanding of the solar system by opening our minds to the role played by that precious ingredient to life -- water,'' said Robert Pappalardo, a senior research associate at Brown University.
Scientists received the latest data as Galileo made its closest flyby of Ganymede, coming within 503 miles on May 20. They discussed the findings at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
An instrument that measures magnetic fields detected a subtle change in the moon's internal field -- a signature of a global layer of a conducting liquid, such as saltwater.
``After months and months of wrestling with the data ... we believe there is very strong evidence of a layer of melted water beneath Ganymede's icy surface,'' said Margaret Kivelson, a space physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
If the interpretation is correct, a layer of water several miles thick lies more than 100 miles below the surface, Kivelson said. Researchers believe the temperature of the water is about 68 degrees below zero but doesn't freeze because of the high pressure deep inside the moon.
``It's not the silver bullet that we would like to have but it looks really good,'' she said.
Galileo scientists also said the latest high-resolution images from the spacecraft suggest Ganymede's surface is active like Earth's.
In Ganymede's case, the surface of solid ice apparently floats on a layer of more malleable ice, which is heated by the decay of uranium and other radioactive elements found toward the icy moon's core.
On parts of Ganymede, regions are pulling apart at the surface. That allows the ductile material to ooze upward and form smooth bands. Scientists previously thought the patterns were formed by volcanoes that spewed water when Ganymede's icy surface heated up.
The Galileo spacecraft, which is now making joint observations of Jupiter with NASA's Saturn-bound Cassini probe, also has provided strong evidence of liquid underground oceans on the moons Europa and Callisto.
Europa remains the leading candidate for life and will be the target of a future NASA orbiter because, unlike Callisto and Ganymede, Europa's suspected ocean lies only a few miles beneath its surface.
Scientists said their understanding of Ganymede has improved dramatically in the last five months thanks to the Galileo data.
``It always had the advantage of being big,'' Kivelson said of Ganymede, a moon larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto. ``Relative to what we knew five months ago, Ganymede has become a great deal more exciting.''
---
Third Moon of Jupiter May Have Sea Under Its Ice
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/science/17MOON.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 16 - Scientists have found evidence that Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, has an ocean. That is the third Jupiter moon that shows signs of water sloshing beneath its frozen exterior.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft has detected telltale undulations in Ganymede's magnetic field. Planetary scientists had previously found indications of under-ice oceans on Europa and Callisto, two other moons. Water is considered a necessary ingredient for the development of life, although no signs of life have yet been seen on any of the moons.
"It looks pretty persuasive to us," said Dr. Margaret Kivelson, a professor of space physics at the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the research. She was to present her Ganymede findings Sunday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union here.
"I think it's an exciting result," said Dr. Robert Pappalardo, of Brown University. "It makes sense if Callisto has really retained a liquid water layer over the age of the solar system, that Ganymede should, too."
In recent years, planetary scientists have found much evidence of an under-ice ocean on Europa, including its fractured surface and areas that look as if water had erupted from below the surface. In 1998, Dr. Kivelson and her collaborators offered additional evidence by looking at how the direction and strength of Jupiter's magnetic field shifted somewhat each time the Galileo spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, passed near Europa.
The moon, the researchers said, was generating electrical currents as it swept through Jupiter's powerful field. The new electrical currents, in turn, generated magnetic fields that altered Jupiter's field.
For electrical current to flow on Europa, some part of Europa must conduct electricity, and ice is not a good conductor. But salty liquid water is, and the magnetic-field fluctuations therefore pointed to an ocean 5 to 10 miles below the surface. To their surprise, the researchers also found swings in the magnetic field around Callisto, smaller and farther away from Jupiter than Europa.
The new findings, based on data from two visits by Galileo to Ganymede in 1996 and one in May, found similar magnetic fluctuations. At 3,270 miles in diameter, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, three-quarters the width of Mars.
Photos of Ganymede have shown channels of smooth ice that might have flowed out of "ice volcanoes" billions of years ago. Dr. Kivelson's findings are the first evidence that liquid water might still exist on Ganymede, although it would now be tens of miles beneath the surface.
The data indicates either a thin ocean - about half a mile thick - within 30 miles of the surface or a thicker ocean deeper down, perhaps about 100 miles below the surface. The temperature of the water would probably a few degrees below zero.
Complicating the analysis is that Ganymede, unlike Europa and Callisto, still possesses a molten core that generates its own permanent magnetic field similar to Earth's. With Europa and Callisto, the researchers only had to figure out if the moons were producing any magnetic fields. With Ganymede, they had to detect whether the moon's existing permanent fields were changing direction by a few degrees.
"It just rocks back and forth," Dr. Kivelson said. "You can see that is much more difficult to be confident about."
It was possible that irregularities in Ganymede's permanent field could mimic the effect, but it was "unlikely nature has conspired" that effect, Dr. Kivelson said.
Other researchers are presenting evidence that Ganymede is more like Europa than previously thought. In the latest photos from Galileo, scientists have spotted geological features like craters that broke and moved apart, as if on two sides of an earthquake fault.
The photos indicate that most of the bright areas seen on Ganymede are not ice floes from volcanic eruptions, but were instead formed by a process similar to how new ocean floor is created on Earth when two tectonic plates pull apart and molten material wells up. On Ganymede, two ice sheets would have pulled apart, and more malleable ice would have risen to fill the gap.
-------- u.n.
Today In History
Associated Press
December 17, 2000 Filed at 7:00 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html
Today is Monday, Dec. 18, the 353rd day of 2000. There are 13 days left in the year.
On this date:
In 1956, Japan was admitted to the United Nations.
Ten years ago: Less than a month before a U.N. deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, President Bush told reporters he believed Americans would support a military strike, if one proved necessary. In Baghdad, the ruling Revolutionary Command Council said Iraq was ``ready for the decisive showdown.''
-------- u.s.
Today In History
Associated Press
December 17, 2000 Filed at 7:00 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html
Today is Monday, Dec. 18, the 353rd day of 2000. There are 13 days left in the year.
On this date:
In 1972, the United States began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam to that point during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ended 12 days later.)
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-------- chemicals
Hundreds evacuated due to chemical fire
USA Today
12/17/00- Updated 07:30 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndssun07.htm
OSHKOSH, Wis. (AP) - Hundreds of residents who were rushed from their homes when fire broke out in a chemical-carrying train car may not be allowed to return for several days because of dangerous fumes, authorities said Sunday.
Hazardous material teams continued to fight the fire Sunday afternoon, more than 24 hours after it began. The car was loaded with 141,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite, a highly flammable chemical, fire officials said.
Firefighters were able to contain the blaze to the boxcar, but evacuated about 750 homes for fear the fumes could cause respiratory problems.
Residents were allowed into their homes briefly Sunday to gather essential items, said Scott Snyder, an American Red Cross spokesman.
There were no reports of serious injuries.
Fire officials said Sunday they don't know when they would have the fire under control.
Hazardous material response teams used poles to open the train car, but that apparently fueled the flames, said John Holland, a spokesman for the Oshkosh Fire Department. He said an official from North Carolina-based Clariant Corp., which manufactures the chemical, is on the way to advise the teams.
Authorities cut off access to everything within two blocks of the train car, most of it industrial.
''They rapped on my door and said 'Grab your coat and get out of here,'' said Viola Knack, 99, who was among the residents ordered to leave their homes immediately. She spent the night on a cot in a school.
''I'm here without anything,'' she said. ''Just what I got on.''
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Europe Is Told It May Not Be Safe to Eat Fish, Either
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/world/17DIOX.html
PARIS, Dec. 16 - Just as worried Europeans are turning their backs on beef and flocking to the fish counter, there is more bad news about dinner: scientists have warned that they have found unacceptably high levels of toxic industrial chemicals in the region's seafood.
Experts from the Scientific Committee for Food, in a report prepared for the European Union, said fish both from fish farms and from the region's seas are regularly contaminated by dioxins and similar toxins.
Fish oil and fish meal have the highest levels of these chemicals, the panel said. Dioxins, which are produced as a waste product by industrial plants and waste incineration, have been linked to hormone changes, cancer in animals and other severe disorders.
The scientists also called for changes in the levels of dioxin considered acceptable for human consumption.
"Nobody is saying we can't eat fish anymore, but consumers must be made aware that fish contributes significantly to the intake of dioxins," said Johan Reyniers, a European Union spokesman. This is particularly true, he said, for fish from the more polluted areas like the North Sea and the Baltic around Scandinavia.
Mr. Reyniers said Europeans can eat fish in moderation, but "if you eat fish every day, you are likely to have a problem."
The warning about fish comes as Europeans are already panicking about the spread of mad cow disease and the consumption of beef is dropping drastically. With more and more cases of sick cows and infected people in Europe, agriculture ministers this month decided that large numbers of suspect cattle must be destroyed and that feed laced with animal products will be banned.
They have not suspended the use of fish oil or fish meal. But European officials said that early next year, when the governments debate the new dioxin findings, these are likely to produce more pressure to reduce pollutants as fast as possible.
Dioxins were included in the global ban that was negotiated this month by representatives from 122 nations, but specialists said it would take time for countries to carry out the provisions of the treaty, which is to be signed in May. The ban will affect dioxins and a dozen other toxic, long- lasting chemicals - "persistent organic pollutants" - that are recognized as a threat to the environment, and to human health in particular.
In Northern Europe, the dioxin fallout from combustion has already been reduced by about half since the 1980's, but lawmakers are now expected to demand more stringent measures because the new report has confirmed the troubling buildup of dioxins in the food chain. Once absorbed by animals, dioxins are trapped in fatty tissues. People consume them in fish, meat and milk products.
According to the new report, fish meal and fish oils of European origin have dioxin levels up to eight times as high as similar products from nonindustrial regions, like the waters off Peru and Chile. The fish meal and fish oil also contain up to 10 times more dioxin than is found in meat and eggs.
This is troubling because the fish meal is used in the diets of farmed fish and other food animals like chickens and pigs.
Dioxins are also found at higher levels in carnivore fish, like salmon, eel and trout, than in herbivores, the scientists said.
The new report by the Scientific Committee on Food, and a second one by the Committee on Animal Nutrition, are not binding on the European Union countries, but their opinions are generally treated seriously. The studies were made at the request of the European Union after a scare last year, when Belgian animal feed was found to be laced with dioxins as a result of a factory mix- up.
Responding to complaints that food safety standards are too lax all over Europe, the European Union ordered a wide study of dioxin contamination of food and feed.
If stricter limits for dioxins are set next year, related legislation is expected to provoke opposition from the strong fishery lobbies in North European countries, which have a sizable fish-meal industry. Europe produces 500,000 tons of fish meal a year.
Solutions may include removing the dioxins from the fish meal or replacing the feed with soy meal. Users argue that soy meal is a less effective feed because of its lower protein content.
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U.S. Approves Part of Plan for Pipeline In New Jersey
New York Times
December 17, 2000
By ROBERT HANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/nyregion/17PIPE.html
HACKENSACK, N.J., Dec. 15 - The federal government has approved about a third of a controversial natural gas pipeline proposed in New Jersey and set strict conditions for the rest of the project.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday accepted about 30 of the 90 miles of new transmission mains that the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corporation wants to install, in segments, along existing lines in 33 towns in the state.
The future of the remaining 60 miles, which would cross the most densely populated of the 33 towns, is uncertain. In its ruling, the federal commission gave Transcontinental four months to arrange binding sales contracts for new natural gas supplies that the remaining 60 miles of pipeline would carry. If the company fails to meet the deadline, that portion of the project would be rejected, the commission said.
Transcontinental had asked to complete installation of the 60-mile stretch by November 2004. The commission rejected that timetable and said the 60 miles, if ultimately approved, would have to be installed by Dec. 13, 2002.
Transcontinental plans to install the 30 approved miles in two phases. The company hopes to start work on the first phase in March and finish it by Nov. 1, 2001. It involves 4.2 miles of new 42-inch pipe in rural Warren County and 5 1/2 miles near Woodbridge, across the Arthur Kill from Staten Island. The second phase calls for installation by November 2002 of about 7 more miles of new pipe in Warren County and neighboring Hunterdon County and 13 miles near Bordentown and Mount Laurel in southern New Jersey.
Gov. Christie Whitman, who has led the fight against the pipeline project for months, was cheered by the deadline for contracts even though the commission rejected the state's request to block the entire project, aides said.
"They've given them a very high hurdle to clear," the governor's spokesman, Pete McDonough, said. He said that Transcontinental originally wanted to install the entire project by the end of this year, but later asked for the four-year delay to finish its biggest piece.
"We take that as a signal they're going to need a long time to get those contracts or may not be able to get them," he said.
Transcontinental executives, however, expressed optimism today about lining up buyers by the mid- April deadline. Gary D. Lauderdale, a senior vice president, said soaring prices for natural gas in the Northeast in recent weeks showed a need for new pipelines to bring more natural gas into the region.
"This winter, we think we'll certainly be able to market it," Mr. Lauderdale said. "The marketplace is demonstrating some need for additional capacity."
Mr. Lauderdale also said he hoped the Whitman administration and other critics of the project would soften their opposition, since only a 30-mile portion had received final approval.
But spokesmen for the governor and another critic, Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat of Paterson, said they remained opposed to the installation of any new pipelines.
Mr. Lauderdale said Transcontinental hoped that the Whitman administration would drop its legal challenge to the regulatory commission's ruling in April that tentatively approved the entire 90-mile project. That appeal is pending in a federal appeals court in Washington. In it, the state argued that New Jersey did not need any new natural gas and that the proposed pipeline would threaten public safety and damage wetlands and other sensitive environmental areas.
Lawrence O'Reilly, an assistant state attorney general involved in the case, said there were no plans to abandon the appeal. Although the commission's ruling on Wednesday modified its April decision by imposing new conditions on the 60-mile stretch of pipe, Mr. O'Reilly said it did not disturb the approval of the other 30 miles. Consequently, he said, the state's appeal remained valid.
The federal appeals court has not scheduled oral arguments yet on the state's appeal. It is uncertain now when the appeal will be resolved. It is also unclear how Transcontinental will be able to start installing the first phase of pipeline by March if the appeal is still alive then and the environmental permits have not been approved.
Transcontinental needs several state environmental permits for the first phases of pipeline. State officials said today that they planned to meet with Transcontinental by the end of next week to discuss that.
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USA Today
12/17/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Alaska
Kodiak - Brown bears on Kodiak Island have caused $20,000 in damage to the Coast Guard Communication Station's antenna field. The cables carry essential communication signals to antennas that transmit to boats and aircraft along Alaska's coast. Biologists say the bears love to chew anything that's a little flexible.
Arizona
Flagstaff - The Forest Service rejected a proposal by environmentalists to reduce the number of acres to be thinned in Coconino National Forest to limit wildfire danger. Environmentalists had sought to have 1,700 acres thinned instead of 4,500 acres.
Kentucky
Coalton - A proposed landfill at a reclaimed strip mine in northeastern Kentucky would take an average of 1,000 tons of garbage daily, according to a draft permit from the state. The Big Run Landfill would receive garbage from 158 counties, including some in Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee. River Cities Disposal LLC plans to open the landfill next summer.
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Biotechnological Ignorance
New York Times
December 17, 2000
In Review: December 10-16
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/weekinreview/17P2ST.html?pagewanted=all
In an assessment that, astonishing, was called fair by both biotech industry representatives and critics of genetically engineered crops, two researchers have reviewed the published data on environmental risks and benefits from new plants and, in a paper in Science, found that studies to address critical questions were conflicting, incomplete or altogether missing. Carol Kaesuk Yoon
-------- police
Sheriff-Elect in Georgia Fatally Shot in Ambush
New York Times
December 17, 2000
National Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/national/17NATI.html
DECATUR, Ga., Dec. 16 (AP) - A man who was to be sworn in as DeKalb County sheriff on Monday was fatally shot at his home on Friday in what the police called an ambush.
The sheriff-elect, Derwin Brown, 46, was shot several times when he arrived home after a party celebrating his graduation from a sheriff's training academy, the police said.
Mr. Brown's wife and five children had driven home separately and were inside when they heard shots. They found Mr. Brown lying on the driveway.
Mr. Brown had promised to clean up corruption in the department, and last month had told 38 employees that they would be fired on Jan. 1, the police said.
Mr. Brown, a former DeKalb County police captain, was elected sheriff in an August runoff after an acrimonious campaign against the incumbent, Sheriff Sidney Dorsey.
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USA Today
12/17/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Conneticut
Hartford - City officials agreed to drop legal action against a deputy police chief accused of using racist and sexist language. In exchange, Robert Casati will retire as third-ranking officer in the state's largest police department. Casati was demoted to captain in 1997 for allegedly using racial, ethnic and anti-homosexual slurs.
D.C.
Crime in the nation's capital is down 4% this year. But Police Chief Charles Ramsey believes there is still "a long way to go." Interviewed on WTOP Radio, Ramsey said crime figures are still "way too high" for the district's size. He believes crime would have to drop close to 50% before D.C. could be considered among the USA's safest cities.
Maryland
Frederick - A diabetic man has filed a federal lawsuit seeking up to $170 million from Frederick County, claiming sheriff's deputies overreacted during a traffic stop. Frederick Moore of Centreville, Va., spent four days in the hospital after police mistook his symptoms of diabetic shock for drunken belligerence, and used batons and a police dog to subdue him.
Nevada
Carson City - Police responses to domestic violence calls are up 13%, a figure that would be much higher if thousands of other calls to crisis centers had gone to officers instead. Veronica Frankel, the state's domestic violence ombudsman, attributed the rise to more people reporting violence.
New Hampshire
Laconia - The city decided not to ask the state to earmark some rooms and meals tax revenue to cover costs of extra police during Motorcycle Week in June. Instead, sponsors of the event suggested higher vendor fees to cover costs. Attendance this year was a record 340,000. About 90% of the more than 100 arrests were for alcohol-related and drug offenses.
-------- terrorism
Ripples From Afghanistan
New York Times
December 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/opinion/17SUN2.html
For a small, remote nation of 26 million people that has never had an effective central government, Afghanistan has certainly managed over the decades to be a major source of international instability. In the 1980's, Soviet troops and American- backed Islamic guerrillas fought a brutish war there that helped speed the Soviet Union's demise. Today, in an ironic turnabout, the United States and Russia are united in their opposition to Afghanistan's role as a sanctuary for terrorists and an exporter of Islamic fundamentalist revolt.
This week Washington and Moscow are jointly sponsoring a United Nations resolution tightening international sanctions against Afghanistan's current Islamic fundamentalist rulers, the violent and obscurantist Taliban movement. These new penalties are well deserved and stand a good chance of being approved.
Since coming to power in 1996, the Taliban has spun a web of insurgency and terror reaching into the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, western China and Indian-ruled Kashmir. The Taliban also provides a safe haven for the Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, whose associates have been linked to the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa and this year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. Mr. bin Laden is the most prominent of the "Arab Afghans" - militant Muslims from the Arab world recruited by American and Pakistani intelligence agencies to fight the Soviets in the 1980's war. Arab veterans of Afghanistan have since been tied to terrorist plots across the Mideast and North Africa.
The U.N. sanctions are designed to pressure the Taliban into turning Mr. bin Laden over to a country that will prosecute him and to force the closure of his and other terrorist training camps. These bases are used by Chechen rebels at war with Russia, Uighur independence fighters in China's largely Muslim Xinjiang Province, Islamic rebels fighting the government of Uzbekistan and Muslim guerrillas fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Building on a milder set of restrictions imposed last year, the new sanctions would impose a worldwide freeze on assets belonging to Mr. bin Laden, whose wealth is estimated at $300 million, embargo arms shipments to the Taliban, close most Taliban offices outside Afghanistan and halt international flights in and out of the country. They would also ban exports to Afghanistan of a vital chemical used in processing heroin. Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium and the tax the Taliban levies on processing it into heroin is a major source of revenue.
The Taliban, which rose to power with Pakistani support, still enjoys strong backing from Islamabad. Washington and other Western nations should make clear they expect Pakistan to abide by the new sanctions or risk its own further international isolation. Through its support of terrorism, the Taliban has managed to unite an extraordinary coalition of nations against it. That opposition should now be translated into effective international sanctions.
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Former Russian prisoner returns to U.S. soil
USA Today
12/17/00- Updated 07:50 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndssun08.htm
HEBRON, Ky. (AP) - An American businessman who was convicted by a Russian court of espionage and then pardoned in a ''goodwill gesture,'' partly for health reasons, returned to the United States on Sunday.
Edmond Pope's plane touched down at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, then headed for Oregon, where his mother waited for his weather-delayed flight.
''I feel pretty good,'' Pope told The Associated Press during the flight layover. ''I can't tell you how happy I am to be home.''
Pope, 54, was discharged Saturday from a U.S. military hospital in Germany where he had been undergoing tests since his release Thursday from a Russian prison.
He appeared to be in good shape Sunday, although a little tired. He said he couldn't say much about his experience but was glad to be going home to be with his family.
Pope, a retired U.S. Navy officer, became the first American convicted of espionage in Russia since U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960.
He spent eight months behind bars in Russia before he was convicted Dec. 6 of illegally obtaining classified blueprints of a high-speed underwater torpedo. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Pope maintained his innocence and argued that the plans were not secret because they had already been sold abroad and were published in open sources. His company, CERF Technologies International, specializes in information about foreign maritime technology.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's pardon, released Thursday, cited ''the health condition of the convict and his personal appeal, and also ... the high level of ties between the Russian Federation and the United States of America.''
Pope has suffered from a rare form of bone cancer and it was unclear if it had resurfaced; his family became concerned when a lump appeared in his neck and he began suffering back pain.
Pope wouldn't elaborate on his health Sunday. He is scheduled to be examined by another doctor who will consult with experts at Bethesda Naval Hospital, near Washington D.C.
After his release from prison, Pope immediately flew to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he joined his wife, Cheri. His first destination in the United States was to be Grants Pass, Ore., where his mother and ailing father live.
Pope said Friday he had not been mistreated while in Moscow's high-security Lefortovo prison.
''There was no physical abuse,'' he said. ''They were extremely careful with me. It was clear to me after a while that I was there for political reasons.''
He declined to comment further on Sunday, but said he was working with members of Congress.
''The reception I've gotten from the American people has been great,'' he said. He and his wife plan to return to their hometown of State College, Pa. for Christmas.
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Russia Releases American
New York Times
December 17, 2000
In Review: December 10-16 By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/weekinreview/17P2ST.html?pagewanted=all
President Vladimir V. Putin pardoned Edmund Pope, the 54-year-old American businessman and former naval intelligence officer who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 20 years. Mr. Pope immediately flew out of Russia. Mr. Putin, in a speech during an official visit to Cuba, said he pardoned Mr. Pope as a goodwill gesture. Sabrina Tavernise
-------- activists
Violence Erupts As Haider Visits Vatican
Yahoo News
World News
Dec 17
By Philip Pullella and Luke Baker
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001216/wl/pope_haider_dc_10.html
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Protesters against a visit by Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider to the Vatican clashed with riot police blocking their approach to St Peter's Square on Saturday.
The violence was the worst at a demonstration of its kind. Audiences by Pope John Paul (news - web sites) for other controversial political figures have provoked protests during his 22-year pontificate but all were moderately peaceful.
Hundreds of demonstrators wearing crash helmets or with faces swathed in scarves tried to force their way down the Via della Conciliazione avenue leading to St Peter's Basilica, throwing cobblestones, bottles and smoke bombs.
Some 200 heavily armed police officers in riot gear formed a phalanx with shields and batons before charging the crowd. They lobbed teargas canisters and beat many of the protesters to the ground, witnesses said.
Some demonstrators were left with blood streaming from their noses. Photographers were also hit. Police told reporters five officers had been slightly hurt.
``You're protecting a fascist,'' was the main chant hurled at police by protesters, who accuse Haider of being a racist.
The Pope earlier met Haider and a 250-strong delegation from his Austrian province of Carinthia, who came to the Vatican to donate the traditional Christmas tree for St Peter's Square.
At the end of their encounter the Pope indicated to a Vatican official to hand Haider, the governor of Carinthia, and each member of the delegation a copy of his World Peace Day message, which condemns racism and xenophobia.
The clashes took place as Haider and his delegation attended a ceremony in St Peter's Square to light up the Christmas tree, which has been put under 24-hour police guard.
Police pushed back protesters to some 500 meters away, and St Peter's Square remained quiet besides a police helicopter clattering above.
``We want this tree to be a sign of peace and reconciliation,'' Haider said in Italian, standing near the tree.
In the crowd witnessing the ceremony, attended by Cardinal Edmund Szoka representing the Pope, a woman's lone voice shouted: ''People like you should not come here.''
Unprecedented Protest
Protest groups including young communists, Greens and other leftists, Jewish community representatives, gays and World War Two veterans staged demonstrations against Haider.
Around 3,000 people had gathered outside Castel Sant'Angelo, once the refuge of Popes whenever Rome came under siege.
A tense standoff between protesters and police continued for a few hours after the violence, but demonstrators began to disperse at around 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).
Overturned barricades, public toilets and refuse bins, broken glass, rubble and shoes covered one end of the Via della Conciliazione, while the area near the Basilica was packed with armored police vans, discarded riot gear and lingering clouds of tear gas.
Fire officers and city workers began a massive cleanup.
In a mark of their own distaste at Haider's visit, Jewish shopkeepers switched off lights in their shops in Rome.
``Jewish shopkeepers can do what they want, if they want to save electricity, they can do that too,'' Haider told Italian television. Jewish figures said Haider's words were offensive.
Supporters of Italy's extreme-right MS-Fiamma Tricolore party mounted a pro-Haider demonstration but it remained peaceful and later dispersed.
The Vatican had flagged the Austrians' meeting with the Pope as a ``pastoral visit.'' The Pontiff spent four minutes talking privately to Haider and Carinthian bishop Egon Kapellari in a corner of a room in his papal apartments.
Haider, a Roman Catholic, shook hands with the Pope and knelt to kiss the papal ring.
A Vatican official handed out the Pope's World Peace Day message to Haider and other members of the delegation.
``The love for your country is a value to cultivate with all your soul, loving the whole human family together but without those signs... which emerge when the sense of belonging takes on tones of self-exultation and exclusion of diverse peoples and develops into nationalism, racism and xenophobia,'' the Pope says in the message.
-- With additional reporting by Raffaella Malaguti
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Ku Klux Klan Rally in Illinois Erupts in Violence
Yahoo News
Top Stories News Dec 17
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001216/ts/crime_klan_dc_2.html
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Anti-Klan demonstrators clashed with police and pelted white-hooded Ku Klux Klansmen with snowballs on Saturday during a planned march by some 20 members of the hate group in Skokie, a Chicago suburb that is home to many Holocaust survivors.
Police arrested about 10 anti-Klan demonstrators, who witnesses said smashed the windows of at least three squad cars and fought with police. Witnesses said one squad car bolted when trapped by the crowd, causing demonstrators to scatter and then reassemble to rain kicks on the vehicle.
Some of the anti-Klan demonstrators, who numbered in the hundreds, pounced on a few young men declaring their support for the hate group -- one wearing a T-shirt with the word ``Jews'' and a slash through it. One man with a shaved head was kicked to the ground and his face bloodied.
Most of the arrests were for disorderly conduct.
White-robed KKK members, who numbered about 20, were pelted by snowballs along their brief march following a rally held on the steps of a local courthouse. The crowd also threw snowballs at mounted police officers trying to keep the two sides separated, while other officers beat back demonstrators with their nightsticks.
The KKK, a white supremacist group that reviles Jews, blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities, has won the right in the past to march in Skokie. An undetermined number of survivors of World War II Nazi death camps live there.
Some religious groups urged those opposed to the hate group to ignore the Klan rally and instead show up for a unity demonstration on Sunday.
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Today In History
Associated Press
December 17, 2000 Filed at 7:00 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html
Today is Monday, Dec. 18, the 353rd day of 2000. There are 13 days left in the year.
On this date:
One year ago: After living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, Calif., for two years, environmental activist Julia ``Butterfly'' Hill came down, ending her anti-logging protest.
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Greenpeace Wants All Chernobyl Type Plants Shut
"Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Sun, 17 Dec 2000 06:06:02 -0500
LONDON, (Reuters) - Environmentalists Greenpeace said closure of the last working reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine must be followed by shutdowns at similar plants in Russia and Lithuania.
The former Soviet republic is expected on Friday to shut Reactor Number Three at the power station near Kiev, scene of the world's worst nuclear accident in April 1986.
"The closure of Chernobyl's last reactor comes more than 14 years after Reactor Number Four shrouded the world in a radioactive cloud," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, nuclear expert at Greenpeace International.
"We cannot afford to wait another 14 years before the remainder are shut down."
Greenpeace said a dozen other water-cooled reactors of the Chernobyl design located in Russia and Lithuania posed a continuing threat to Europe, as did the region's 200 nuclear reactors of all types which it wants closed.
"The crumbling Chernobyl sarcophagus stands as a testimony to the collapse of the nuclear dream, it is a symbol of the failure of nuclear power," Muenchmeyer said.
The pressure group said three million children require treatment as a result of the disaster, thyroid cancer among adolescents jumped tenfold in affected areas and birth defects and growth problems in children more than doubled in Ukraine.
Greenpeace also renewed its attack on European plans to help fund two replacement nuclear reactors in Ukraine.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development last week agreed a $215 million loan to finance the plants and the European Commission added $585 million to the project on Wednesday.
The EU defended the decision, saying the replacement reactors were the safest of dozens of options studied.
"It is an utterly cynical decision by the EBRD and the European Commission to fund more nuclear reactors in a country which suffers more than all others from the Chernobyl catastrophe," Muenchmeyer said.
Greenpeace has attacked the $1.5 billion plan to furnish the two replacement reactors, quoting a report which showed them to be "highly hazardous."
Muenchmeyer said Ukraine should instead meet its energy capacity needs through renewable energy sources and improving efficiency.
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