NUCLEAR
Little-Noticed Decision to Privatize America's Uranium
Duck and cover on Star Wars
Chummy 'Bill-Boris' era is already history
Nuclear Fallout Expert Robert List
Boeing contract
Hard diplomatic moves for Chinese checkers
Cuba Abandons Plans for Nuclear Plant
India Says Attack Will Not Deter Kashmir Moves
Six Myths About North Korea
Cancel the Korean Trip
Bush To Keep Engaging N. Korea
Storing nuclear waste may be a nice little earner
Russia dismisses US missile defence plan
Russia Speculates on Bush Relations
Taiwanese Party Seeks to Oust President
Missile project could be worth up to $6 billion for Boeing
Defense system's prospects uncertain
SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT IS MALLINCKRODT'S PACMAN...
Compensation set for ill nuclear workers
Study: Tasks exposed workers to risks
Supporters Help Lee Turn 61 in Freedom
DOE detects source of fluorine leak
THE CLINTON LEGACY

MILITARY
Analysis: Airbus Threat Much Ado About Nothing?
Rebels free 42 Colombian hostages
European Arms Maker May Cut Jobs
U.N. Agrees to Cut Dues Paid by U.S., Easing an Irritant
U.N. gets major overhaul of finances
Aerospace Industry Eyes Dot - Com Demise with Glee
Aides Say Bush Is Taking Time on Defense to Avoid a Stumble

OTHER
Profile in crisis Thirteen Days quietly engrossing
Deregulation Fuels A Crisis in California
Unique Holiday Gifts With Fascinating Stories
Passion for Politics and the Outdoors: Christine Todd Whitman
With the Departure of Whitman, a Low-Key Player Steps in
Conservative Picked for Justice Post; Whitman Chosen to Head E.P.A.
Hong Kong goes high-tech to save turtles
Bush taps Ashcroft, Whitman
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Daily Energy Update
LAPD corruption verdicts overturned

-------- NUCLEAR

Little-Noticed Decision to Privatize America's Uranium Plants Could Destroy Effort to Reduce Russia's Nuclear Arsenal, Author Writes in Latest Milken Institute Review

Yahoo News
Friday December 1, 10:00 am Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/001201/ca_milken_.html

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 1, 2000--What's the worst that can happen when America's national security interests collide with private enterprise's economic interests?

How about nuclear destruction?

That may be putting it too harshly, but not by much, according to Harvard University's Richard Falkenrath, who argues that Congress and the White House have bumbled one of the most important anti-proliferation efforts of the post-cold war era.

In an article in the latest issue of The Milken Institute Review, ``Uranium Blues,'' Falkenrath says the federal government's decision in the early 1990s to privatize its two plants for making commercial nuclear reactor fuel put the interests of making a few bucks for the U.S. Treasury above the need to dismantle post-Soviet Russia's vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Also in this issue of the Institute's quarterly economic journal:

A hard look at the problems the next president faces in trying to deliver on his campaign promise to subsidize prescription drugs for senior citizens.

A defense of globalization as a way of reducing income inequality in developed countries and ending poverty in the poorest ones.

An argument that moderate rates of inflation -- in the area of 2 percent a year -- is not such a bad thing.

A discussion of the renaissance of America's city centers, and how they are rediscovering their pre-industrial role as centers for the arts, entertainment, and the creation of specialized goods and services.

A book excerpt from ``Gun Violence: The Real Costs,'' a new book about the indirect costs of gun violence.

And, of course, we have our regular features: The Charticle, Research F.Y.I., Institute News, a book review, and Mark Alan Stamaty's cartoon, ``Ekinomix.''

The complete magazine may be viewed online at www.milkeninstitute.org.

About the Institute

The Milken Institute is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, non-ideological, independent economic think tank based in Santa Monica, California. The Institute's mission is to explore and explain the dynamics of world economic performance and growth.

Contact:

Milken Institute, Santa Monica Skip Rimer, 310/998-2654 srimer@milken-inst.org

---

Duck and cover on Star Wars

Edmonton Journal
Saturday 23 December 2000
The Edmonton Journal
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion1/stories/001223/5067248.html

In the early years of the Cold War, before even the most patriotic realized the absurdity, "Duck and Cover" was the recommended precaution to take in case of nuclear attack. Well, for Canadian leaders, "Duck and Cover" is perfect advice right now as new Russian and American presidents crank up a phoney confrontation over the proposed U.S. missile defence system.

The summary of the matter is this: The United States matters greatly to us, and the so-called Star Wars initiative matters greatly to the Americans. Unless Canada wishes to waste our entire store of American indulgence in a losing battle, unless this issue is the proverbial Hill To Die On, our government should content itself with quiet, humble expressions of doubt and let the Europeans make the running against it if they wish to do so.

Now, some readers may reasonably object: Idiotic policy that threatens a resumption of the nuclear arms race, or at best, a slowing of disarmament, is the ultimate "hill to die on", especially considering the decrepit, unsecured state of the Russian arsenal. Trouble is, one may also reasonably question any argument that would deny a country its right to the best, most casualty-free defence.

Readers of a historical bent can cite many examples in which bids to increase security with new technology have blown up in the developer's face. The current scheme, for example, is an eerie replay of the paradox Americans faced when they developed uranium-based fission weapons, and then, after the Second World War, the infinitely nastier fusion H-Bomb.

In the short run, the new technology conferred intimidating superiority in the same way that British admirals believed Dreadnought battleships would preserve Britain's "splendid isolation" before 1914. After all, what guarantee could there be that rivals would not seize the discarded advantage? In the long run, however, attempts to get a leg up on security made rivals nervous and competitive -- and we're still far from cleaning up the resulting mess as the 21st century begins.

Ronald Reagan's silly "Star Wars" scheme is different, though. And in the current, down-sized version under consideration, it doesn't even have the one true danger of the original -- the ability to genuinely frighten Moscow.

Simply put, the facts are these:

1. It doesn't work.

2. It isn't likely to work until long after the life expectancy of alleged rogue states such as North Korea.

3. The proposed shield of 250 missiles, supposedly to be deployed by the end of the new decade, would barely dent the Russian deterrent, much less provide the vital guarantee of a 100-per-cent kill rate on incoming warheads.

4. That being the case, the Russians aren't truly upset. Indeed, if Vladimir Putin is only half as skilled at political calculation as his Soviet predecessors, that smirk on his face this week is genuine. So long as he sees no genuine challenge to the Soviet deterrent, it's a perfect fix. Americans back in arms-race mode are the ideal foil to rally the troops, both figuratively and literally, and justify demand for more reform and discipline. The Chechen threat helped put him in power, an American "threat" will help keep him there.

Sure, the threat to disarmament protocols is real. So is the encouragement to nuclear proliferation contained in the U.S. tendency to apply different standards of nuclear behaviour to itself. But prompted by defiance from other quarters -- count on the French, for example -- Washington will eventually figure it out.

In the meantime, disgusted Canadians can console themselves that an impotent Star Wars will be good for the economy, and that they have given the Pentagon no reason to pull back from the vital relationship on establishments such as NORAD -- that we would only have to recreate and pay for by ourselves if they did.

---

Chummy 'Bill-Boris' era is already history

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 23/12/2000
By Craig Nelson in Moscow
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/23/text/world4.html

It sounded like an echo of the Cold War, a new United States president choosing a Russia specialist who speaks fluent Russian as his top foreign policy adviser.

But a decade on, the relationship that dominated global politics for half a century has changed so dramatically that Condoleezza Rice's expertise in Russian affairs figures in only a minor way in the discussion about her appointment as President-elect George W. Bush's national security adviser.

It is a reflection of how far Russia has fallen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The chummy "Bill-Boris" era of relations between the US and Russia is clearly over and the prospects are for a much firmer, cooler attitude between the US and Russia. For most Russians, the warmth has already faded.

According to public opinion polls sponsored by the US State Department, the Russian people's favourable attitude towards America has dropped from nearly 75 per cent in 1993 to less than 50per cent in the first part of 2000.

The pop song Kill the Yankees is a hit among Russian youth and the movie Brat II - which features a baby-faced Russian hit man who travels from New York to Chicago blowing out the brains of Americans - was the big hit of the northern summer.

Grasping the political and cultural changes that have swept Russia in the past 10 years may be the true stumbling block for Mr Bush and prove Ms Rice's biggest teaching task.

Here, the President-elect's experience and intelligence are likely to remain an issue, despite a foreign policy team inherited from his father that includes Ms Rice, Vice-President-elect and former defence secretary Dick Cheney and retired general Colin Powell, Mr Bush's nominated secretary of state.

As diminished as its voice is in world affairs, Russia still has the world's second-largest store of nuclear weapons and a new leader who seems determined to counter the US on the world stage.

Since he took office eight months ago, President Vladimir Putin has set out to block what some senior Kremlin officials believe is a US campaign to build a unipolar world. Moscow has moved to cultivate ties with nations that occupy prominent pedestals in Washington's gallery of rogue states.

Mr Putin has also lobbied European leaders to defeat Mr Bush's foreign policy priority: the construction of a space-based missile defence shield. The system would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, widely touted as the foundation of international arms control.

The result is a US-Russia relationship that is, at the very least, shaky, said Alan Rousso of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

Recent Russian overtures to Washington's enemies have muddied ties. Three days before the November 7 election, the Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, told Washington that Russia would no longer observe a 1995 accord barring conventional arms sales to Iran, listed by the US State Department as a sponsor of international terrorism.

Mr Putin's meeting with President Fidel Castro in Havana last week revives memories of a Cuban-Soviet partnership that tormented Washington for three decades of the Cold War.

Stephen Cohen, author of Failed Crusade, America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia, said the visit was a sign that Russia's pro-US foreign policy, forged when Boris Yeltsin was president during the 1990s, is over.

Mr Bush signalled the end of cosy relations during the recent election campaign, accusing the Clinton Administration of turning a blind eye to official graft in Russia. Ms Rice sealed its demise, saying Mr Bush would end US support for billions of dollars in multilateral bank aid for Moscow.

That firmness will carry over into the new administration, believes Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation. "Rice will be tougher on many issues, including corruption and US national security interests."

The Kremlin appears already to be girding itself, the respected Sevodnya newspaper reported on Tuesday. "In Moscow they've begun talking - in whispers for the time being - about the inevitability of a new Cold War," it said.

Yet analysts suggest it is less a revival of the Cold War than a return to a "cold peace".

Mr Putin's attempts to re-forge an international counterweight to the US are likely to be frustrated by Russia's beleaguered economy, which will provide Mr Bush with a carrot to entice Moscow, if not to accept US policies, then at least not to hinder them.

Mr Putin needs US backing to restructure $US48billion ($86billion) in Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations, so he can ill-afford a protracted row over the latest US version of "Star Wars", Mr Rousso said. "They know there's nothing they can do to stop it. They've resigned themselves to getting the best deal they can get."

While Mr Putin may understand this pragmatism, the Russian public and the anti-American MPs who hold power in the State Duma may not be so amenable.

--------

Nuclear Fallout Expert Robert List

Washington Post
Saturday, December 23, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43446-2000Dec22.html

Robert J. List, 81, a retired federal meteorologist and an expert in tracking radioactive fallout from U.S. and Soviet atmospheric nuclear tests, died of cancer Dec. 22 at his home in Alexandria.

Mr. List began his government career in 1937 with the old U.S. Weather Bureau in Joliet, Ill. He transferred to Washington in 1940 and retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a successor to the Weather Bureau, in 1974.

From 1984 to 1990, he was a volunteer member of the Alexandria Community Services Board, an oversight body that helps organize mental health, developmental disability and substance abuse services. From 1987 to 1990, he served as chairman. From 1987 to 1999, he was the vice chairman of the Alexandria Mental Health Center.

Mr. List was born in Evanston, Ill. During World War II, he was a meteorologist in the Navy and was stationed part of the time in China. After the war, he graduated from the University of Chicago, where he also received a master's degree in meteorology.

In 1949, he edited the Smithsonian Meteorological Tables, a standard reference until its function was taken over by computers. With Lester Machta, he co-authored a chapter, "The Global Pattern of Fallout," that was included in the 1960 book "Fallout."

He testified before Congress on radioactive fallout during hearings that led to the adoption of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

In retirement, Mr. List traveled widely and was active in Democratic Party affairs in Alexandria.

His marriage to Marcella Hynek ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Ernestine List of Alexandria; two children from his first marriage, Margaret Karanjai of Brooklyn, N.Y., and John List of Chevy Chase; two stepchildren, Daniel Katz of Bethesda and Harriet Bachman of Columbia; and nine grandchildren.

-------- business

Boeing contract

Washington Post
December 23, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43472-2000Dec22?language=printer

Boeing has received a contract option to continue as top contractor for the Defense Department on a new ground-based national missile program that could be worth up to $6 billion, the Pentagon announced. The six-year deal extends a three-year contract worth $1.6 billion that Boeing was awarded in 1998 in a competition against a team of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. .

-------- china

Hard diplomatic moves for Chinese checkers

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 23/12/2000
By David Lague, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/23/text/world5.html

A new administration in Washington heralds another round of the great debate in international affairs - what to do about China?

There is probably no greater international challenge for the world's superpower than managing ties with China, a renewed great power with an attitude.

For many students of foreign affairs, the outcome of this emerging rivalry will have a far-reaching impact on peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region well into the 21st century.

During the campaign, George W. Bush bluntly described China as a "strategic competitor", a term that led some analysts to conclude he would take a tougher line with Beijing on arms control, human rights, market access and protecting Taiwan from mainland aggression.

The nomination of the former general Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser confirmed this impression among some Australian experts.

However, Mr Powell appeared to edge away from this position when he said this week that Russia and China were not "potential enemies" but are "nations seeking their way".

This should come as no surprise, because campaign rhetoric on China has a tendency to evaporate when the victorious candidate has to sit down and grapple with the complexity of dealing with an emerging power that holds a deep-seated grudge against the West and Japan.

It was then-candidate Bill Clinton who condemned the "coddling" of dictators and described the Communist Party leadership as the "butchers of Beijing", but it was President Clinton who went to China in 1998 seeking a "strategic partnership" and praising President Jiang Zemin as the "right man" to lead his country.

One thing is certain, there will be plenty of advice.

A host of experts on China will suggest that Beijing should be contained or confronted or something in between.

Others will advise that the Chinese economy, this year expected to grow at 8 per cent, will soon overtake the US and it is in Washington's interests to win the favour of the Chinese leadership and allow US companies to share in this bonanza. Others will insist that China is a paper tiger with an obsolete military and a debt-laden financial system on the edge of a catastrophic meltdown.

Against this background, the first test for President Bush could be his determination to press ahead with National Missile Defence (NMD) and Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) systems. Beijing is vehemently opposed to the US fielding defence systems.

If the US deployed a NMD system, this would seriously undermine the deterrent effect of China's limited stock of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles that can strike targets on the American mainland.

A TMD system has been proposed to protect US troops and Washington's allies in North Asia from the threat of North Korean missiles, but this system would almost certainly cover Taiwan.

For Beijing, this is a dire threat to its primary goal of subjugating Taiwan because, lacking the amphibious capability to invade and hold the island, it is building a threatening missile arsenal along the mainland coast as part of its strategy to compel reunification.

China can be expected to mount a furious diplomatic offensive if Mr Bush goes ahead with the two systems.

The looming confrontation over missile defence underlines how difficult it is for any US administration to deal harmoniously with Beijing while at the same time supporting the de facto independence of democratic and prosperous Taiwan.

Any US administration that abandons support for democratic Taiwan in the face of a bellicose authoritarian mainland would face a furious domestic backlash from the influential Taiwan lobby and many ordinary Americans.

On the other hand, the Beijing leadership and many ordinary Chinese are determined to recover Taiwan and probably prepared to risk war to achieve this if pushed far enough.

So far, US administrations have relied on a doctrine of "strategic ambiguity" where they are deliberately vague about what they would do if Taiwan was attacked.

Some influential analysts are urging Washington to dump this policy in favour of a clear statement that it would defend Taiwan from an unprovoked attack but withhold support if the island declared independence.

-------- cuba

Cuba Abandons Plans for Nuclear Plant

WORLD
Reuters
Wednesday, December 20, 2000 ; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29486-2000Dec19?language=printer

HAVANA -- Cuba said yesterday that it had abandoned plans to complete an unfinished Soviet-designed nuclear power plant that U.S. officials had seen as a potential security risk on their doorstep.

Cuban officials were quoted by state media as saying that President Fidel Castro's government had given up on the idea of resuscitating the Juragua plant, in the central province of Cienfuegos, because it was not economically viable.

"There is no sense in finishing the electro-nuclear plant," said Osvaldo Martinez, a senior official who heads the National Assembly's economic committee.

Despite speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit last week would help revive the nuclear plant through a joint venture, local officials told the Moscow delegation they were not interested.

Work on the first of two planned Soviet-designed pressurized water reactors at Juragua started in the early 1980s, but was halted by Havana in 1992 because Moscow could no longer support the project following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

-------- india / pakistan

India Says Attack Will Not Deter Kashmir Moves

Reuters
December 23, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-a.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's government said on Saturday it would not be deterred from its peace overtures in Kashmir by a Muslim guerrilla attack that left three people dead at the capital's 17th century Red Fort.

Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla group claimed responsibility for Friday's stunning raid at an army camp inside the fort, which happened just two days after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee extended a month-long truce against separatist fighters in disputed Kashmir.

``...there are some people, organizations, powers who want to sabotage the cease-fire and any such effort,'' India's junior Home Minister I.D. Swamy told private news channel Star News, referring to the attack.

``It will have no effect on the cease-fire, it will not affect our determination,'' Swamy said.

Two gunmen opened fire at the historic Mughal fort, on the edge of the Indian capital's old town, late on Friday before shattering light bulbs and fleeing in the darkness. They killed a soldier, an army barber and a civilian worker for the army.

Senior police official Ajay Chadha told Reuters that security officers searched the Red Fort area through the night, but could not find the assailants.

``Red alert has been sounded in the city to beef up security,'' Chadha said.

ATTACKS THREATENED

In Pakistan, the spokesman of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a hard-line group fighting for Kashmir's secession from India, told Reuters that the group planned more attacks.

``This is our first operation against an Indian military operation inside India,'' Abu Osama said in a reference to India's states outside the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir.

``If the Indian army does not stop its atrocities in Kashmir and does not pull out from there... We will continue to strike Indian army's headquarters, camps and other military installations,'' a separate Lashkar-e-Taiba statement said.

The indiscriminate firing in the Indian capital was unprecedented in the 11-year-old Kashmir rebellion since violence has rarely spilled over the borders of the strife-torn Himalayan region.

The attackers were said to be members of a suicide squad, or so-called fidayeen, typical of those who often strike in Hindu India's only Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.

More than 30,000 people have died in the insurgency in the province over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Ten people were killed in a militant attack and shootouts on Saturday.

Part of the Red Fort built by Mughal emperor Shajahan is normally open to tourists during the day, but was closed on Saturday. The rest serves as a garrison for a battalion of at least 1,000 members of the army's Rajputana Rifles.

Friday night's raid, believed to have been carried out with AK-47 assault rifles, began when a sound and light show for tourists on the nation's history was in progress, Star News channel reported.

Attackers struck at three different places inside the fort at around 9:40 p.m. (11:10 EST) during a party attended by the families of army personnel.

On Wednesday, Vajpayee extended a suspension of hostilities against guerrillas in Kashmir for four more weeks beyond the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Militant groups rejected the extension of India's first-ever cease-fire in Kashmir, but Pakistan responded by announcing a partial pull-back of its troops from the frontier dividing the two nuclear weapons-capable rivals in the mountainous region.

The confidence-building measures, though marked by lingering suspicions and punctuated by unrelenting militant attacks, have raised hopes that India and Pakistan could soon resume a peace dialogue that was stalled last year by the outbreak of fighting on the snow-capped heights of the Indian-ruled Kashmir.

Four members of the pro-India Ikhwan militant group and a policeman were killed in Kashmir on Saturday when attackers opened fire on their vehicle. Five other people, including a policeman and a militant, were killed in separate shootouts, police said.

-------- korea

Six Myths About North Korea

By Leon V. Sigal
Saturday, December 23, 2000 ; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43436-2000Dec22?language=printer

A visit to Pyongyang by President Clinton in the coming days can greatly benefit American security by sealing a deal to shut down North Korea's missile program. He deserves bipartisan support. Critics who decry the visit are wrongly perpetuating six myths that have impeded negotiations with Pyongyang.

Myth 1 is that Washington is yielding to blackmail in dealing with Pyongyang. North Korea's threats have been widely misconstrued. For the past decade, Pyongyang has been playing tit-for-tat, not blackmail. It has cooperated when Washington cooperated and retaliated when Washington reneged. President Clinton has learned what his critics have not -- that reciprocity works in bargaining with Pyongyang.

Myth 2 is that the United States is giving North Korea what it wants without getting anything in return. In fact, the October 1994 Agreed Framework shut down North Korean nuclear plants that could have generated enough plutonium to make at least 60 nuclear warheads by now. In last month's talks with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Pyongyang, North Korea's Kim Jong II offered not only to halt all missile exports but also to freeze all testing, production, and deployment of his No-Dong and Taepo-Dong missiles and eventually eliminate them. He is also ready for talks to reduce his artillery, tanks and troops. Those talks can defuse the armed standoff in Korea that nearly led to war in June 1994. Pyongyang wants to put its troops to more productive use, but can do so only if Seoul and Washington reciprocate. Talks cannot begin in earnest until the allies work out a common negotiating position.

Myth 3 is that Pyongyang's aim in these talks is to get all U.S. troops out of Korea. Pyongyang has been telling Washington since 1992 that so long as the United States remains its enemy, U.S. troops are a threat and must go -- but once the relationship is no longer hostile, U.S. troops in Korea could remain in a new role, that of peacekeepers, while still allied with the South.

Myth 4 is that Pyongyang's emergence from self-imposed isolation this year was a sudden change of heart -- a deathbed conversion. In fact, North Korea has tried to reach out to the United States, South Korea and Japan since the late 1980s -- well before its economic decline and famine -- in hopes of ending its lifelong enmity with all three. Suspicious of Pyongyang's intent and determined to keep it isolated in hopes of compelling it to stop nuclear-arming, Washington initially impeded Seoul and Tokyo from improving ties. It also discouraged Israel, Italy and other countries from normalizing diplomatic relations.

Myth 5 is that until Pyongyang reforms its economy, aiding it will be wasteful. Yet aid is a small price to pay for achieving U.S. security goals and a tool for changing North Korea. Sure, the North's economy is so depressed that any aid or investment would help it revive -- reform or no reform -- but outside assistance will also bring potential agents of change into North Korea, so long as they play by its rules. Washington will get nowhere by insisting that Pyongyang open up or pass Econ 101 first.

Myth 6 is that Pyongyang is desperately trying to extort money to forestall economic collapse. In return for giving up missile exports, tests, production and deployment, Pyongyang does seek compensation in the form of aid and investment from the outside, including having another country launch its satellites. Its primary concern, however, is security. It sees an end to enmity with Washington as the only way to ensure that. That is why it wants President Clinton to come to Pyongyang now and why he should go.

The writer is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council.

----

Cancel the Korean Trip

San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, December 23, 2000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/23/ED19328.DTL

NO DOUBT, President Clinton would like to embellish his legacy with a string of bright accomplishments during his final days in office. But he should reject making any trip to North Korea, even to celebrate a deal mothballing Pyongyang's missile development programs and putting a going-out-of-business sign on its export of missile technology.

That's a worthy goal in the slow-but-steady rapprochement between our two countries, but it can be achieved without the president lending his -- and our --credibility to the ruthless, authoritarian regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

No American president has ever traveled to North Korea. For good reason. Some 37,000 American troops are still stationed near the border between the two Koreas a half century after fighting ended. The United States lists North Korea as an outlaw nation that aids and abets terrorism around the globe.

North Korea's 22 million people are among the poorest and hungriest anywhere, and their lives are tightly controlled. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called it one of "the least-free nations on Earth."

"There is little, if any, respect for global norms of human or civil rights," she said after returning from an October trip there.

Six years ago, North Korea agreed to dismantle a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor in exchange for new, safer plants. Last year, it suspended missile testing. And the permafrost of its relations with South Korea has begun to thaw.

These are all important steps, and further progress should be encouraged. But Clinton shouldn't allow himself to be used as a propaganda tool, especially when ordinary North Koreans must survive in one of the harshest police states on Earth.

Kim Jong Il needs the United States more than it needs him. If he is sincere, a photo op with Clinton won't make the difference. What will are the economic and diplomatic benefits that flow from a missile deal and other North Korean moves to join the world community.

---

Bush To Keep Engaging N. Korea

Associated Press
December 23, 2000 Filed at 12:36 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-Bush.html

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- In early October, a top North Korean envoy toured the 18th-century mansion of George Washington in Mount Vernon, Va. Soon after, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dined with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, the North's capital.

Such symbolic gestures of U.S.-North Korean rapprochement after decades of hostility are likely to be scarce in the early stages of the administration of President-elect Bush.

The Republican will preserve President Clinton's basic policy of engaging North Korea, but they may demand more proof from Pyongyang that it is serious about peacemaking, analysts said.

``I think we can expect a Korea and in particular a North Korea policy that to begin with insists upon much more reciprocity,'' said Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Communist, totalitarian North Korea is one of the world's poorest nations. Between 1994 and 1996, the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc trade partners plus a series of natural disasters at home led to widespread starvation that ended up killing more than 220,000 people.

The situation began to improve in 1998-99, thanks to better harvests and food aid from countries such as the United States. And in the past year, traditionally closed-off North Korea has made inroads in relations with the West and with South Korea, with which it has had an uneasy truce since the 1950-53 Korean War.

But wary of Pyongyang's military menace and its totalitarian control over its people, Washington and Seoul wonder about the motives for Kim Jong Il's overtures to the world.

Is he really intent on ending the conflict on the divided Korean peninsula? Or is he simply trying to guarantee his regime's survival by collecting foreign aid in exchange for a few conciliatory gestures?

South Korea has engaged in regular dialogue with North Korea since their leaders held a summit in June. But the military standoff along the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries remains intact.

Clinton is still said to be considering a trip to North Korea, which grew accustomed to dealing with his Democratic administration during his eight years in power.

Now Pyongyang officials must get to know a new set of Washington players who might be tougher on North Korea. They could include Richard Armitage, former assistant secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, former undersecretary of defense for policy.

``Washington may slow the speed and level of engagement with North Korea, depending on the North's response and reciprocity,'' said Kim Sung-han of the Institute for National Security and Foreign Affairs, a research center at the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

Despite the traditionally hawkish stance of Republicans, some differences with Democrats on North Korea policy may be only rhetorical. For example, Bush is unlikely to tamper with the numbers of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

``Neither side wants to go back to the old hostility,'' said Park Joon-young, a politics professor at Ewha Women's University in Seoul. ``You will still see the same big picture. But the procedure might be different.''

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, have said they do not expect changes in Washington's basic policy of reducing the threat of war on the Korean peninsula and engaging North Korea.

But Bush's support for a U.S. missile defense system could upset the North Koreans, who have demanded billions of dollars as a payoff in exchange for stopping missile exports.

Pyongyang has also said in talks with U.S. officials that in exchange for ending or constraining its domestic production of missiles, it would require international assistance in launching North Korean satellites.

-------- russia

Storing nuclear waste may be a nice little earner

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 23/12/2000
By John Daniszewski in Moscow
Los Angeles Times
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/23/text/world10.html

Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, has given preliminary backing to a potentially important hard-currency earner for the cash-strapped former superpower: storing other countries' nuclear waste.

But a senior United States official said on Thursday that Washington might withhold support for the plan if it is not satisfied with certain aspects of Russian nuclear policy, such as its involvement in building nuclear power stations in Iran.

Members of the Duma on Thursday approved plans by the Ministry of Atomic Affairs to allow Russia to take in thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from European and Asian countries.

The proposal has the backing of many experts in the nuclear nonproliferation movement, who see it as a logical way for Russia to raise billions of dollars needed to finance the clean-up of contaminated nuclear zones and to build a safe, deep underground repository for spent fuel.

Because building and maintaining nuclear waste storage facilities is politically sensitive in many countries, the ministry estimates Russia could earn $US20 billion ($38 billion) in the next 10 years by offering to become an international nuclear waste repository. If the plan is to go ahead, however, it would first have to win US approval, experts say, as most of the spent nuclear fuel would originate in America, and the US Government has the contractual right to approve or disapprove of its transfer and use.

One condition would be that none of its spent fuel is reprocessed.

Another major issue is Iran. For years the US has been trying to persuade Russia to pull out of a deal to help Iran build nuclear power stations, which it fears could be used for the development of nuclear weapons.

The package of amendments involving the waste-storage project passed the enthusiastic members of the Duma 320-30, with eight abstentions and very little debate.

Two more votes are necessary for the final passage, and the project must be approved by parliament's upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin.

But the proposal has outraged Russian and international environmental groups. Greenpeace argues that Russia has an abysmal record of handling its own nuclear materials and therefore should not be given the job of maintaining waste from other countries.

It also says there is the danger of accidents during the transfer of materials to Russia from other countries.

---

Russia dismisses US missile defence plan

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This Bulletin: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 21:39 ADST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-23dec2000-65.htm

Russia has dismissed plans by the incoming Republican administration in the United States to develop a national missile defence system.

The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Sergeyev, says the plans is driven by a desire to strategically dominate the world.

He says the perceived threat to the United States of a missile attack from a so-called rogue nation, such as Iran or North Korea, is not realistic.

Mr Sergeyev says the development of such a defence shield would mean modifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a change Russia would not accept.

------

Russia Speculates on Bush Relations

Yahoo News
Saturday December 23
By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001223/wl/russia_bush_1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Bush.html

MOSCOW (AP) - The era of jovial bear-hugging between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin is over. Under their successors George W. Bush (news - web sites) and Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), U.S.-Russian relations are likely to be stiffer but more pragmatic in the post-Cold War world.

Key sticking points will remain. Russia deeply fears U.S. plans for a national missile defense and expanding NATO (news - web sites), and resents U.S. global dominance. Russia wants to sell arms to Iran and strengthen ties with states that America shuns, such as North Korea (news - web sites), Iraq and Libya.

In Russia, Bush faces a nation immeasurably weakened over the past decade, but one that still has a formidable nuclear arsenal, vast oil reserves and considerable regional influence. Putin is ready to exploit those to resurrect some of Russia's international clout.

In Bush, Russian officials expect a firm but predictable leader. They foresee heightened tensions over arms control but hope his administration will be less interventionist in hot spots around the globe.

``The Bush policy will be more realistic, and not have any softness toward Russia,'' said Vladimir Novikov, research fellow at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies. ``They will not be adversaries, but will not try to be allies either.''

Bush's pick for national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) - who served Bush's father as an expert on the Soviet Union - has called Clinton's policy toward Russia too ``romantic'' and too eager to intervene abroad on humanitarian grounds.

She has been particularly critical of U.S. missions in the Balkans - a region where Russia feels it holds special influence. Moscow has cheered Bush's recent suggestion that the United States should pull out of the Balkans altogether.

``The Republican world view is clearer and more understandable for today's Moscow, since the Republicans as a whole are not inclined as much as the Democrats to push their version of 'universal human values' on the world,'' the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote.

Suspicion and disillusionment have largely replaced Russians' admiration for America since the early 1990s. They see little good from U.S. aid and advice championed by Clinton and Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites). And they blame flawed market reforms for poverty and corruption that have blossomed since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Chummy post-Soviet U.S-Russian relations began turning sour in the last years of Yeltsin's tenure, as he increasingly accused Washington of unwarranted interference in world affairs. Putin, who was elected this spring, has echoed those concerns, but is seen as more stable and pragmatic in his criticism than his capricious predecessor.

Moscow fiercely opposed the U.S.-led NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia last year, and it has bristled at U.S. protests over Russia's war in Chechnya and U.S. criticism that the Kremlin is pressuring independent media.

``People have hope that Republicans will not care how Russia acts on Chechnya, on human rights,'' said Liliya Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office.

Though Russia has restored ties with NATO since the bombing of Yugoslavia, Putin remains deeply wary of the alliance's expansion, which Russia hopes Bush will slow or halt. Putin questions why, with the Cold War over, the West needs a military alliance with no apparent enemy other than Russia.

Recognizing how weak and broke the Russian military is, Putin has vowed to slash troop numbers and wants even deeper cuts in nuclear weapons than previously proposed.

Bush said during the campaign that he backs further nuclear weapons reductions, but he is determined to push ahead with a missile defense system. The plans were initiated under Clinton and strongly opposed by Russia, which says they violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and will threaten a new arms race.

Observers expect Bush foreign policy advisers to resist major aid to Russia, but with the Russian economy buoyed by high oil prices, Moscow is less desperate for help. Putin wants Western investment instead, and has pushed through tax reforms and pro-market policies that he hopes will attract it.

Russia is hoping a more isolationist Bush will be less eager to aid neighboring nations that border the Caspian Sea, where U.S. and Russian companies have been jockeying for access to rich oil reserves. Russia considers the region, which includes former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia, its strategic backyard.

In some areas, Bush's Washington and Moscow are expected to cooperate. Both oppose Afghanistan's ruling Taliban and are using their power in the U.N. Security Council to press for tougher sanctions.

-------- taiwan

Taiwanese Party Seeks to Oust President

Associated Press
December 23, 2000 Filed at 4:02 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Politics.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Despite lackluster public support, Taiwan's main opposition party has introduced a motion to oust President Chen Shui-bian, accusing him of overstepping his legal power by scrapping a nuclear power plant.

The impeachment motion will not be put to an immediate vote because the opposition wants to give Chen another chance to rein in his power and end a standoff with the legislature, opposition Nationalist Party officials said Saturday.

The Nationalists' half-century rule in Taiwan ended when they lost the presidency to Chen in March, but they still control the legislature. They have contemplated trying to impeach Chen since last month, when his new government canceled a partially built nuclear power plant approved earlier by the legislature.

The Nationalist Party approved the $5.4 billion plant in 1980 when it controlled the presidency. But Chen's government decided that finishing the project would be irresponsible, primarily because the island could not store the waste.

The impeachment motion was introduced Friday. If it were to come to a vote, a two-thirds majority in the 221-seat legislature would be required to approve impeachment. That would pave the way for an islandwide referendum in which more than 50 percent of Taiwan's voters must participate.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Missile project could be worth up to $6 billion for Boeing

Seattle Times
Business & Technology : Saturday, December 23, 2000
By Bloomberg News
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=bizboeing23&date=20001223

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Boeing has received a contract option to continue as top contractor for the U.S. Defense Department on a new ground-based national missile program that could be worth up to $6 billion, the Pentagon announced yesterday.

The six-year contract extends work Boeing won in April 1998 when it was awarded a three-year deal worth $1.6 billion in competition against a team of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The contract expanded to $2.3 billion, which includes about $125 million of cost overruns caused by schedule delays and technical problems.

The Pentagon said the total value of the extension could be worth up to $13 billion if all contract options are exercised.

The contract marks an upbeat ending to a rough year in missile defense for Boeing, the No. 2 U.S. defense contractor. It was docked half of its $42 million in potential bonuses this summer because of flawed management and cost overruns on the project. Boeing also replaced its missile-defense program manager and had technical problems developing the booster rockets that will be used to propel warheads into space against incoming enemy ballistic missiles.

Boeing also forfeited $2 million in bonus fees this year for being as much as four months late delivering software used to perform ground simulations of the system.

------

Defense system's prospects uncertain
Boeing hopes project can gain momentum during Bush's term

Akron Beacon Journal
Saturday, December 23, 2000, in the Akron Beacon Journal.
BY JOHN WRIGHT BridgeNews
http://www.ohio.com/bj/business/docs/017339.htm

SEATTLE: Colin Powell, appointed by George W. Bush as Secretary of State in his incoming administration, has promised to pursue the national missile defense strategy, for which Boeing is the lead contractor.

The key question is whether the nation can afford a system that some estimates have placed at $100 billion. Will it really protect citizens? Would it siphon money from other programs? Can it be pursued if Bush seeks a tax cut?

Powell -- a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- last weekend described the proposed national missile defense system as ``an essential part of our strategic force system.''

Outgoing President Bill Clinton postponed a decision on deployment until the next administration, because of a lack of data after the failure of recent system tests.

The plan's backers see it as the best way to shield the United States from missile attacks by so-called rogue states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. They believe the possibility of attack on the United States by long-range ballistic missiles is a real and growing threat. They say besides recognized nuclear powers, numerous other countries have ballistic missiles. Some of those countries are believed to be working on weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical or biological.

The program's purpose is to develop and potentially deploy an effective system that detects, tracks and destroys incoming missiles before they enter our atmosphere.

``We are going to move forward'' with it after discussing U.S. plans with other nations, Powell said. ``We have to spend time with other nations in the world that possess strategic offensive weapons and do not yet understand our thinking in respect to national missile defense.''

Powell's position on the issue, however, might be less important than that of the incoming defense secretary. Washington observers are waiting to see whom Bush appoints. The program may depend on how hard the new Pentagon chief is willing to push it.

Boeing hopes the program advances beyond development to actual deployment.

``The current ground-based national missile defense architecture provides the necessary infrastructure for evolving to a fully integrated future (missile defense) architecture that could include sea, air and space-based elements. No system exists today to counter this growing threat, and the current ground-based design provides a near-term response that can be deployed as soon as directed,'' a company statement said.

The plan no doubt would benefit Boeing workers and shareholders, but there are questions about whether it is necessary. China and Russia have warned against deploying the system, saying it violates the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Would they or other nations be tempted to build weapons that could circumvent the defense system, such as an array of decoys? Some European allies fear a new arms race.

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., looks at Powell's remarks as a trial balloon to test the support of the public and Congress. If a big tax cut is sought, there might not be enough money for the defense plan.

``If Bush really wants to pursue his across-the-board tax cut, it robs him of the ability to make a decision'' about missile defense, said George Behan, an aide to Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash.

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

WARNING: SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT IS MALLINCKRODT'S PACMAN...

From: easlavin@aol.com
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 11:23:22 EST

AND HE MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH! IMHO, available data strongly suggests that Senator John Ashcroft is the Senator from Mallinckrodt, Inc., the St. Louis FUSRAP site polluter and longtime AEC/DOE contractor, which reportedly exposed workers to risks they were never informed of at the time. Senator John Ashcroft has received tens of thousands of dollars of contributions from Mallinckrodt's PAC. Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show that only a handful of corporate PACs have been as generous with him as Mallinckrodt, Inc. (and that Mallinckrodt has given him more than any other politician). Other DOE contractors and Fortune 500 companies have also strongly supported Ashcroft in the past. If he were to be confirmed by his Senate colleagues (considered likely), count on an Attorney General Ashcroft to support DOE's position on discretionary function exemption and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and to try his darndest to protect DOE and its contractors from indictments and lawsuits. He may also try to limit compensation of sick workers and residents and to weasel out of filling in the right details in the 106th Congress' and President Clinton's "placeholder called Hope." As they say in East Tennessee, Attorney General designate John Ashcroft "bears watching." Now lets see who Bush names as Labor Secretary.....

With kindest regards, Ed Slavin

-------- california

Compensation set for ill nuclear workers

From: magnu96196@aol.com
Sat, 23 Dec 2000 11:15:35 EST
http://search.newschoice.com/GPC_StoryDisplay.asp?story=d:\index\newsarchives\angar\loc\20001222\592053_a8bs122.txt


Compensation set for ill nuclear workers

December 22, 2000
By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER

LIVERMORE -- Three federal agencies will join in a program to compensate nuclear weapons workers and families of deceased workers for work-related illnesses.

President Clinton issued an executive order this month putting into action a Congress-approved illness compensation act.

The order stipulates that the Energy Department, Labor Department and Health and Human Services Department will carry out the program.

"We've come a long way since I apologized on behalf of the government last year," said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "This is one of the most meaningful new federal programs in decades, impacting the lives of thousands of Americans."

He said the executive order "ensures that the compensation program will remain on course for years to come."

Richardson reversed decades of Energy Department denials last year when he acknowledged that nuclear weapons work may have caused illnesses and deaths.

Under the compensation program, a worker suffering from work-caused illnesses could receive a one-time payment of $150,000 or medical expenses for life.

The families of workers who died from exposure to toxins in the workplace would be eligible to receive the lump-sum payment.

Radiation exposure and berylliosis, a respiratory disease directly linked to exposure to beryllium, a lightweight metal, are among the illnesses covered by the compensation act.

The Labor Department will help to determine eligibility requirements and adjudicate claims for the program, and the Health and Human Services Department will provide scientific analyses for the program.

Also, the executive order called for a Worker Assistance Program that will help workers apply for benefits if they are suffering from illnesses not covered in the act.

And the Energy Department must publish a list of facilities where workers may have been exposed to illness-causing toxins while working for the department, the order states.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is engaged in a beryllium-screening program, funded by the Energy Department, to identify any former employees who may be at risk of developing berylliosis.

Dr. Jim Seward, medical director at Livermore Lab, said that 3,000 letters have been sent to former employees so far and 600 have indicated an interest in being tested for beryllium exposure. Of that number, 300 already have been screened, and three former workers have positive tests, meaning they may be at risk of contracting the disease.

"We need additional medical testing to find out if they do have a beryllium related (illness)," Seward said.

One former lab worker who was diagnosed with berylliosis died of lung cancer.

While other Energy Department sites have received special funding to perform other specific health screenings for former employees, Livermore Lab "does not have such a program at this point," he added.

-------- kentucky

Study: Tasks exposed workers to risks

From: magnu96196@aol.com
Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:15:07 EST
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/00/12/01461303.shtml?Element_ID=14613
03

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Department of Energy report concluded that Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant employees had been exposed to potentially hazardous conditions from top secret work performed for outside government agencies.

The study released yesterday by DOE examined the plant's secret "Work for Others" program, conducted from the early 1950s to 1986. Under the program, agencies like NASA, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense borrowed Paducah manpower to conduct classified tasks. The report's findings came largely from classified nuclear weapons documents and interviews with former workers.

For 50 years the plant enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants. In 1999 three employees filed a lawsuit alleging contamination and conditions were worse than had been disclosed by former operators.

The plant has contaminated soil, water and plant and animal life on and around the facility. A cleanup is under way.

The work detailed in the report included recovery of precious metals from retired and damaged nuclear weapons, assembly of lunar landing parts and parts for missile systems.

Employees often worked with lead, beryllium and cobalt, and the use of protective clothing and masks wasnâ€(tm)t always enforced, said Dale Jackson, director of the Uranium Management Division at Oak Ridge.

Jackson said in a phone conference call yesterday that as the understanding of hazardous materials improved, so too did the use of protective clothing.

-------- new mexico

Supporters Help Lee Turn 61 in Freedom
Year Ago, Los Alamos Scientist Was in Jail Wen Ho Lee, who pleaded guilty to mishandling sensitive nuclear data last fall, circulates at a party held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City, Calif. (AP)

Washington Post
Saturday, December 23, 2000; Page A02
By Liz Garone Special to The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42027-2000Dec22.html

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- When Wen Ho Lee turned 60 in solitary confinement a year ago, he celebrated with a gift cookie from a prison guard. The Taiwanese American scientist's 61st birthday was a much more lavish affair, as he dined on roast beef and cake with 500 friends and supporters at a party Thursday night at a Silicon Valley hotel.

"I had a difficult time when I was in jail. However, it's all over," a smiling Lee told reporters in a brief statement before the party, which celebrated both birthday and homecoming. "Today, I don't remember all the difficult time of the last year, and I'm very happy now."

Lee was accompanied by his defense attorney, Mark Holscher, and his daughter, Alberta Lee. "It's just a very special time for us right now," she said tearfully. "It will be the first totally normal Christmas my family has had in years."

Lee was indicted Dec. 10, 1999, on 59 felony counts of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets during his tenure as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Though initially suspected of spying for China, he was never charged with espionage and has sworn that he never passed secrets to any unauthorized person.

On Sept. 13, after spending nine months in jail awaiting trial, Lee walked out of federal court in New Mexico with a complicated plea bargain and an apology from the judge. He pleaded guilty to a single count of illegally copying nuclear data from the lab's classified computer system to unsecured tapes, and he was sentenced to the time he had served. The other 58 counts were dropped.

The first time 77-year-old Kent Dedrick heard about Lee was when he saw him on television last year. "I said to myself, 'That guy's telling the truth,' " recalled Dedrick, a retired physicist and ardent Lee supporter. "I was hooked. I just couldn't leave it alone."

Dedrick, who serves on the steering committee for the Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund and who wrote to Lee while he was in jail, met him for the first time at the party Thursday. "It felt so good just to shake his hand," said Dedrick, who lives in Sacramento. "I'm really happy for him."

Nine Asian American groups sponsored the party. Although there was a $30 charge for admission, Dedrick and other organizers said the event was not advertised as a fundraiser because most or all of the receipts would go to cover expenses.

Dewey Seeto, a San Francisco economist, brought his wife and four children to the party after learning about it on the Internet. "It's a chance for our kids to be aware and conscious of what's going on around them in a low-key environment," said Seeto. "It's kind of like a civics lesson and a learning experience as well."

For Emily Kuo, a high school senior, the party offered a glimpse of the man whose case she has been following for more than a year. "When I heard he was released, I wanted to cry. It was just such a great feeling," said Kuo, who brought three friends.

Lee's attorneys have sued the U.S. government, alleging that privacy statutes were violated when Lee was identified as an espionage suspect and confidential job-related information was leaked to the press last year. Lee is writing about his experience and the book is slated for publication next year.

-------- tennessee

DOE detects source of fluorine leak

To: doewatch@egroups.com, Downwinders@onelist.com
Sat, 23 Dec 2000 00:05:38 EST

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

THE CLINTON LEGACY
Striking Strengths, Glaring Shortcomings

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23CLIN-SWING.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON - For eight years, Bill Clinton has been the bright sun and the bleak moon of American politics, embodying much of the best and the worst of his times. Even as he prepares to leave office after two tumultuous terms, he remains near the center of the collective consciousness.

In countless ways, Mr. Clinton has been the unavoidable man.

He exploited the daily rhythms of popular culture to redefine his office; he nudged the political culture to the center to reshape the Democratic Party; he rode the unbroken growth of the national economy to high approval ratings; and he helped foster the flowering of the information age, even as it amplified his flaws. He presided over a period of rapid change, in the world and in the presidency itself. He kept his office relevant and carried his country along on a wild ride.

The first president born after World War II, the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, the first to lead in a post-cold-war world, Mr. Clinton also became the first elected president to be impeached, over his deceptions about an affair with a White House intern half his age.

He polarized the electorate like no president since Richard M. Nixon, and he left a trail of disappointed friends and former aides, some of whom feel betrayed, and others who barely speak to him now.

But in the face of a citizenry skeptical of government action at home and wary of commitment abroad, Mr. Clinton managed to shape a new kind of limited executive activism that kept the presidency in the thick of things, whether in modest domestic initiatives or efforts to promote peace and trade around the world. Without ever winning a majority of the popular vote, and despite the huge failure of his effort to overhaul the nation's health care system, he still helped bring the federal budget into balance for the first time in a generation and signed a major restructuring of the welfare laws.

Throughout his tenure, voters consistently said they did not particularly trust Mr. Clinton personally, but they trusted him to look out for their interests, and his job approval ratings seemed to rise with his legal bills. He used surpassing gifts of innate empathy to find a new presidential style of relating to the public, and to forge an extraordinary connection with ordinary Americans, especially minorities. If the Constitution had not barred him from running again, polls suggest he might well be preparing for a third term.

"I believe that Clinton is the best tactical politician, certainly of my lifetime," said no less a cold-eyed critic than the president's old nemesis, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "I don't think he's F.D.R.'s peer, but if you just measure his ability to figure out, `O.K., this will buy me the next six months,' he does that better than anybody I've seen, and at a lower cost generally."

In a recent Oval Office interview, Mr. Clinton ranged over his tenure, expounding on the global economy, elaborating on his efforts to find a "third way" between the politics of left and right, reflecting on his personal and policy failures and, once or twice, attacking his critics.

"My whole view of the world is that we're in a new aspect of human affairs," Mr. Clinton said, in a response to a question about the impact of the Internet that quickly expanded to address broader themes.

"Nobody's got a pointer on the truth, nobody is totally right, and we need to be doing more listening to each other and trying to find common ground."

Of course, Mr. Clinton's own parsing of the truth infuriated a large segment of the populace, and his short-term legacy may well be the most closely contested presidential election in more than a century, its legal machinations and 24-hour-a-day tactical cut-and-thrust constituting the pitch-perfect coda to his often rancorous political era.

But Mr. Clinton is also likely to be recalled as the president who presided over - some will say helped spark - one of the greatest surges in prosperity and innovation in American history, and who helped make the transition from the standoff of the cold war to an era in which American influence was unchallenged. Indeed, the question was no longer whether the nation was in decline relative to Asia and Europe but whether it could manage the resentments its sweeping influence engendered.

At home, he learned to use his bully pulpit, and the power of the executive order, liberally, remaking workplace rules and cordoning off millions of acres as national monuments to block logging and other businesses.

"All the dramatics and high and low comedy and conflicts of the last eight years have tended to obscure this central and serious fact: that Clinton may well be remembered not for the booming economy and not even impeachment, but for the new role for the president and the government that he articulated," said his former chief speechwriter, Michael Waldman.

"He tried to govern in the grand style in the first two years of his term, passing big programs and rallying the public with big speeches." Mr. Waldman said. "And it just didn't work. He had to find a way to be president that was much more in keeping with the smaller but still active government the country would tolerate right now."

For most of his tenure, Mr. Clinton presided over a hostile Republican Congress, and it was from this defensive posture that he operated most successfully. He co-opted the Republicans' longstanding political advantage on issues from crime to the economy to welfare, and even, for a time, on morality and values. His critics in both parties derided the approach as mere tactical positioning, reflecting Mr. Clinton's determination to win and keep power more than any core convictions. But he described this approach as the essence of his governing philosophy.

"A lot of people criticized me at the time," Mr. Clinton said in the interview, referring to the 1992 campaign, in which he first outlined these views. "They said, `Well, he doesn't have a foot in either camp. Therefore, he must not have any convictions.'

"But that's not where I saw it at all," he said. "For example, I didn't think we could have an economic policy that would work unless we both got rid of the deficit and invested more in education and science and technology. I didn't think we could have a welfare reform policy that worked unless we both required people to work, and then rewarded work.

"I thought we had to find a way to clean up the environment and preserve it and improve the economy," he added. "I didn't think we could have a crime policy that would work unless we had more police and more prevention."

Mr. Clinton's achievements in these spheres were real. But they were undercut to a degree that only history can ultimately settle by the spectacular public disclosure of his personal flaws, and by the political firestorm they fueled.

"In many ways, this is a tale of two presidencies," said Leon E. Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff and budget director. "One, obviously brilliant and extremely capable, with the ability to help produce the greatest economy in the history of this country and to focus on major domestic priorities and, in effect, protect peace in the world.

"And the other is the darker side," Mr. Panetta said, "the one that made a terrible human mistake that will forever shadow that other presidency. Every person who's occupied that office has had their strengths and their weaknesses, and the prayer of the country is that their strengths will always be foremost. But in fact, their weaknesses are there, and part of the person, and we may think those weaknesses can be controlled, but time and time again, we've seen they can't be."

Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor and onetime friend whom Mr. Clinton nominated to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, then dropped in a controversy over her legal writings, also said his record would be mixed.

"President Clinton has been extremely effective in the symbolic presidency, a talented politician, a gifted communicator," she said. "He has staged his presidency in a way that meets the needs of the information economy, a public sphere dominated by visual images, personality and sound bites. If we define effective as a president who can live in that world and survive and communicate some of his dearly cherished views, he has been effective.

"If we are speaking about a leader who has identified fundamental problems that people don't really know how to deal with, he has been ineffective," Professor Guinier added. "He has not identified that vision and has not moved people toward it. He is someone who truly had enormous talent but also had a few flaws, Achilles' heels that just held him captive."

In the end, Professor Guinier said, Mr. Clinton "became more consumed with winning than leading," and was "such a good politician that he began to believe that in winning he was actually leading."

Another old friend, Peter B. Edelman, who resigned as an assistant secretary of health and human services over Mr. Clinton's decision to sign the 1996 welfare law, said simply, "I hold him to a high standard, because he is a very intelligent man, and he has not lived up to the standard that is appropriate to him."

High intelligence, and great resilience in the aftermath of missteps, have been Mr. Clinton's hallmarks. Mr. Gingrich recalled that as long ago as 1993, at a White House ceremony, the president had said to him, "You know, I'm like that clown you had when you were a kid, and there's sand in the bottom: You knock it down and it comes back up."

"He said, `I'm not pretty, but I always come back up,' " Mr. Gingrich added.

Mr. Clinton took, and gave himself, no shortage of knocks. Even his aides like to joke that he served not two terms but four.

The first was his troubled first two years, culminating in the failure of his health care plan and the Republican takeover of Congress. The second was his comeback from that defeat, culminating in his successful standoff with the Republicans over the budget, the passage of the welfare bill and his re-election in 1996. The third was the scandal over his affair with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent impeachment for lying about it under oath. And the fourth was a denouement of ambivalence and opportunities lost, punctuated by a successful military intervention in Kosovo, that ended in last month's electoral dead heat between his handpicked successor and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

First elected with just 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race, Mr. Clinton faced criticism from his first day in office from opponents who regarded his presidency as illegitimate. The passage, by a single vote in the summer of 1993, of a package of measures to reduce the federal budget deficit was the major achievement of Mr. Clinton's first year in office, and it helped pave the way for the biggest success he claimed for his tenure: a booming economy.

But the 1994 failure of his effort, led by his wife, Hillary, to overhaul the nation's health care system overshadowed almost everything else about his first two years, and led the Republicans to reclaim majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Even now, Mr. Clinton identifies that as his biggest policy failure.

"I suppose on a policy front, that certainly ranks right up there. I wish we'd gotten, I wish we'd been able to do more," he said.

"The reason is we didn't have the money to," Mr. Clinton added. "If you want to provide health insurance, universal health insurance, there's only two ways to do it. It's not rocket science. You've either got to require the employers to offer the health insurance and then give them a little financial, a tax break to the people who have a hard time providing it, or you have to pay for it with tax money."

Because the administration had just raised taxes to help reduce the deficit, he said, there was no appetite for raising them further, and the economy was not strong enough to persuade Congress to impose employer-mandated health insurance payments in the face of business opposition.

The administration also took criticism for the overall size of the plan and for drafting it largely in secret.

"That was my mistake," Mr. Clinton said of the whole matter. "I've always thought my wife took too big a hit on that. I asked her to come up with a universal plan that maintained private health providers. And there aren't any other options and neither option, frankly, in 1994, was politically doable in that Congress, and maybe not in the country by the time the interest groups got through mangling on it. So that was my mistake, and it's one I have to live with, like all my other mistakes."

But Mr. Clinton resolved never to be caught again in the mistake of trying to make the country swallow programs more ambitious than it wanted. With the help of Dick Morris, his astute, politically nimble consultant, Mr. Clinton found a way to exploit the political center on issues from food- safety regulations to school uniforms to 48- hour hospital stays for new mothers.

Many such moves he could make on his own, without Congressional approval. No issue seemed too minor to attract his attention, as he tried to attract the nation's. His speechwriter, Mr. Waldman, said the staff calculated that in a typical noncrisis year, Mr. Clinton made about 550 speeches, while Ronald Reagan had made 320 and Harry S. Truman 88.

That was in part because of a sea change in the postmodern role of the presidency. Mr. Clinton became the first president to live in a relentless real-time media culture that magnified his every mistake. His most mundane utterance might be carried live on cable and the Internet from the Rose Garden, even as the major broadcast television networks often balked at giving him the time to address the nation that his predecessors routinely claimed.

Early in his term, Mr. Clinton's aides were unnerved to realize, in airports or other public settings, that people barely seemed to notice if the president was on television because they were so used to seeing him interviewed. So his public appearances became more tightly structured, each one seen as an opportunity to make a point Mr. Clinton wanted to make.

To a degree that often seemed to surprise everybody but Mr. Clinton, the strategy worked. In 1995, he gave the longest State of the Union address on record - an hour and a half. Pundits were scathing, but the public loved it. Mr. Clinton seized the mantle of fiscal responsibility from the Republicans, and by the fall, just a year after they had swept to victory in the 1994 midterm elections, Mr. Clinton had his opponents on the defensive as he prevailed in two government shutdowns prompted by a standoff over the Republicans' budget proposals.

Ken Burns, the documentary maker, described Mr. Clinton as "someone who has moved us from one kind of world to another." And so he has, from a world in which the Internet was barely a force in American life when he first ran for president to one in which the instantaneous reality of cyberspace affects every aspect of daily life.

Mr. Clinton, by virtue of his relative youth, and the generational shift embodied in his election, also moved the presidency from card files to e-mail messages and from a certain parental reserve to a more accessible image: commander in chief as older sibling.

From his saxophone and shades to his MTV answer about boxers or briefs, Mr. Clinton made the modern presidency more understandable and approachable, and eliminated a substantial measure of the distance that had insulated the office and its occupants.

His television skills were so obvious that becoming host of a TV interview program has loomed as a potentially serious post- presidential career option. But there was a cost, and a darker side, to that familiarity.

Well before taking office, and then while in office, Mr. Clinton became grist for a seemingly endless series of tattletale memoirs, tabloid gossip, Internet screeds, late- night sex-and-cheeseburger jokes, and even a best-selling novel and movie, "Primary Colors," whose hero was a thinly veiled portrayal of him. A recent episode of the television drama "Law & Order" featured a murder suspect who had failed to confess to the police that he was having an affair with the dead woman. When prosecutors called that a sign of guilt, the defense lawyer exploded: "He conveniently omitted having sex with a woman other than his wife? Now where have we heard that before?"

Mr. Clinton has said he is not sure it is such a bad thing for the president to be seen as human. In an interview this year with the author of "Primary Colors," Joe Klein of The New Yorker, he said, "We need to demystify the job. It is a job."

But Mr. Clinton has also complained that he was forced to govern in the face of opposition far more implacable than that confronted by most of his predecessors, and in the face of a culture of investigation that has seemed to overtake Washington in the last decade.

There is some truth in that. Years of investigation into the failed Arkansas real estate investment known as Whitewater - intensified early in Mr. Clinton's first term by the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a deputy White House counsel - and other associated inquiries never produced clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons, though several former associates were convicted of various crimes.

Mr. Clinton was all too aware that intense scrutiny was part of the price of politics, and that the old rules had changed; after all, aides have said, he decided against running for president in 1988 partly out of concern that reports of dalliances with other women might undo him. So when the Lewinsky scandal became public a year into his second term, as a result of his testimony in a sexual harassment lawsuit dating to his days as governor of Arkansas, even aides under few illusions about the president's weaknesses were dumbfounded.

"That is the most inexplicable element of his presidency," said Michael D. McCurry, the former White House press secretary, who, after leaving his post, said in an interview with the BBC that in hindsight, he had to question Mr. Clinton's fitness for office. "I mean, what could he have been thinking, and why?"

"I'm reasonably well convinced that he fully understood the burden of the office," Mr. McCurry said. "I don't know enough about psychology to know what it is, but something in the back of the mind said, `I'm just not worthy of this, or maybe I'm not up to this.' It's some kind of insecurity, I guess."

For more than a year, a president steeped in the lore of his office, minutely versed on the strengths and weaknesses of his predecessors and consumed with his own potential legacy, was all but paralyzed. At one point in the late summer of 1998, after he had acknowledged first to a grand jury, then to the public, offering misleading answers about the Lewinsky affair under oath, even a couple of his top advisers thought his presidency was over.

But Mr. Clinton also displayed a profound ability to compartmentalize his problems. Just a week after the scandal erupted in January 1998, he delivered a State of the Union address that crystallized his determination to use the projected federal budget surplus to "save Social Security first," a political goal that has dominated all policy discussion on the subject since. He took a more active role in foreign policy, the major arena in which he could act unilaterally.

And Mr. Clinton's approval ratings remained high, which only infuriated his critics further.

David Schippers, the Chicago lawyer who served as chief investigative counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during impeachment, voted for Mr. Clinton in both presidential elections. But during the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Schippers became one of the sharpest Clinton critics, distressed at the president's evasions and the legal rulings they helped prompt, including a Supreme Court decision that Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify about those they protect.

"As a president, give the devil his due," Mr. Schippers said. "The people were happy with him, and he spun the Congress like they were a bunch of rag dolls. I stand in awe of his political abilities."

At 54, Mr. Clinton will be the youngest former president since Theodore Roosevelt, and from his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and an office in New York, he said he expects to "be a good citizen of our country and have a positive impact around the world," using Jimmy Carter as a model.

"Bill Clinton's legacy isn't over; it's only midstream," said the historian Douglas Brinkley.

As he leaves office, Mr. Clinton's troubles are not over, either. He faces a mountain of legal bills, the threat of disbarment in Arkansas and even the specter of a possible perjury indictment by the last Whitewater independent counsel, Robert W. Ray.

"The fight over his presidency after it is over will be as vocal and vigorous as it was during it," said Rahm Emanuel, a former senior adviser who has remained fiercely loyal to Mr. Clinton.

Throughout the turmoil of his career, Mr. Clinton's greatest personal and political resource has been a relentless optimism - a force that ranges from ebullience to weary resignation - allowing him to press on when others would give up.

George Stephanopoulos, his former close aide who broke with him over the Lewinsky affair, wrote in his memoir of the White House: "I came to see how Clinton's shamelessness is a key to his political success, how his capacity for denial is tied to the optimism that is his greatest political strength. He exploits the weaknesses of himself and those around him masterfully, but he taps his and their talents as well."

Mr. Clinton has lived more lives than most politicians ever dream of having, and skirted more deaths, only to rise again. Indeed, asked to describe his single best campaign event, Mr. Clinton did not hesitate to point to "that moment in that hot building in Dover, N.H., in '92" when, as he put it, "I knew I wasn't going to die."

At that moment, of course, much of the smart money thought Mr. Clinton was already dead, dispatched by tabloid reports of his affair with a lounge singer named Gennifer Flowers and reports in more serious publications about his efforts to avoid the draft and his subsequent efforts to blur and evade that truth. In New Hampshire that night, he ad-libbed a speech telling voters that if they would stick with him, he would stick by them, "until the last dog dies."

It has been convenient in recent years to describe Mr. Clinton as a tragic figure, a hero brought low by his foreordained flaws. But it seems just as plausible now to regard him, in Shakespearean terms, as a comic figure, who endures all manner of slips and humiliations to remain alive and standing, smiling, on stage at journey's end.

To be sure, a raw and wounded bitterness lingers just beneath Mr. Clinton's skin. Asked if the nation could have enjoyed the best of him without also enduring the worst, the president at first demurred. "Oh, that's a judgment for somebody else to make," he said tightly.

Then Mr. Clinton wheeled on his questioners. He sharply criticized The New York Times's coverage of the Whitewater affair, and the case of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist accused of mishandling nuclear secrets, then declared, "I wish we could have had the great New York Times without that," adding, "But we couldn't."

Finally, he said, "The American people will have to make that judgment."

Mr. Clinton said he might someday make a stab at describing what the personal crisis that precipitated the political crisis of impeachment had meant to him.

"I might," he said. "Most people have no idea about what, personally, I've gone through for the last couple of years, and I might do that. But I did the right thing not to do it, at this point, because the people hired me to do a job, and I got up every day and did it."

Mr. Clinton, though, has also been lucky, as he readily acknowledges.

"The price I paid for my personal mistake was, believe it or not, more than anything else a profound personal price," he said. "I'm glad that I saved my family. I'm glad that my life is happy and in good shape, and I'm glad my country is still in good shape."

On a fund-raising trip to California last fall, Mr. Clinton met a baby girl whose tiny fingers reached out to clutch at his own big hands. "Look at her," he said then. "She's holding on. That's 90 percent of life, just holding on."

<a name="military"></a>
-------- MILITARY

Analysis: Airbus Threat Much Ado About Nothing?

Reuters
December 23, 2000 Filed at 1:06 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-arms-europe-dc.html?pagewanted=all

PARIS (Reuters) - The United States may have spoiled a truly jumbo party in Toulouse, France this week, but will it go further and risk a nasty transatlantic trade dispute as well?

The answer, say industry executives and experts on this side of the Atlantic, is probably not.

The echo of a deftly timed warning on Monday by President Clinton, who took European government's to task for their funding of Toulouse-based plane maker Airbus Industries ambitious A380 superjumbo jet, may take some time to die down.

After all, that warning marred the launch of what is Europe's most ambitious civil aircraft project since the Concorde over a quarter century ago.

Tough talk aside, however, the United States and Europe appear to be heading down a path of closer industrial ties in the aerospace arena -- a trend which, experts say, the new administration in Washington is unlikely to reverse.

Advisers to President-elect George W. Bush have been vocal in their advocacy of free trade and a more independent European approach to defense.

And while this rhetoric has created some discomfort in European capitals, analysts say a corollary of a less interventionist U.S. policy may well be a desire to foster closer ties between European and U.S. aerospace firms with a view to boosting the EU's own capabilities.

``I cannot see the Bush administration getting overly concerned about the Airbus issue and I understand that even the Boeing legal team is asking the administration to tread cautiously on the matter,'' said Alexandra Ashbourne, analyst at the Center for European Reform in London.

``Transatlantic industrial ties are moving forward through joint ventures and we don't expect any reversal of that.''

RISKS FOR BOEING

At his final U.S.-EU summit on Monday, President Clinton warned the bloc that a new transatlantic trade fight could erupt over government funding for Airbus' superjumbo program.

The warning came only a day before shareholders gave Airbus the green light to begin production of the mammoth 555-seat aircraft which will end the de facto monopoly in large aircraft enjoyed by Boeing, the world's largest civil plane manufacturer and the top U.S. exporter.

Seattle-based Boeing (BA.N), which has yet to receive an order for its A380 competitor -- a 747 derivative dubbed the 747X -- believes European government loans to finance the project violate a 1992 U.S.-EU treaty and a 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement.

A decision to take action against Airbus would fall to the Bush administration, which could file a complaint against the EU in the Geneva-based WTO.

But such a move would carry serious risks for Boeing and the administration, analysts say.

Not only could a trade dispute spark a hostile reaction from Boeing's European clients, but Airbus appears to have a convincing case that Boeing's civil business benefits from the funding its military arm receives from NASA and the Pentagon.

For the Bush administration, already faced with European resistance to its plans for a national missile defensesystem and worries about its commitment to European hotspots like Kosovo, pursuing the case against Airbus could put a severe strain on transatlantic ties.

``Relations could rapidly become quite tense if there was a hardening of the U.S. position on Airbus,'' said Philippe Grasset, Belgium-based editor of a defense newsletter focused on transatlantic relations.

SLOWLY BUT SURELY

While defense relations between the United States and Europe have had their ups and downs in the wake of the EU's decision to proceed with plan's for their own rapid reaction force, industrial relations have been slowly improving.

Earlier this month, French defense electronics group Thales (TCFP.PA) and U.S. missile maker Raytheon (RTNa.N) announced they would pool some of their air defense and radar activities into a jointly owned company.

The venture has been seen as a sign of new-found openness in the United States to cooperation between its home-grown industry and European defense firms.

The Thales-Raytheon agreement came only weeks after U.S. defense officials approved a $1.67 billion acquisition by British defense group BAE Systems (BA.L) of sensitive airborne electronics activities owned by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N).

In just a year, BAE has risen to become one of the Pentagon's top arms suppliers -- a position no foreign-owned company has ever occupied.

Some experts attribute this openness to a handful of key officials in the Clinton Pentagon, including procurement chief Jacques Gansler and former deputy defense secretary John Hamre.

But industry leaders in Europe appear confident that a Bush administration -- with former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and retired General Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in key positions -- will continue to encourage closer ties.

``We have no reason to believe there will be any reversal in policy under a new administration,'' Thales Chairman Denis Ranque told Reuters earlier this month.

-------- colombia

Rebels free 42 Colombian hostages

USA Today
12/23/00- Updated 10:32 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat08.htm

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia (AP) - Armed rebels released 42 Colombian police and soldiers to a government peace envoy on Saturday, giving some of them their first taste of liberty in years and clearing the path for peace talks with the government.

After marching the captives out of a jungle hideout, fighters from the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, released the hostages to government peace envoy Camilo Gomez in the northern village of Convencion, a presidential statement said.

They were to be flown to nearby Bucaramanga, where diplomats, doctors, and family members had gathered to greet them. The ELN was expected to release three other security-force members later.

Hopes soared that the pre-Christmas liberation of the captives would lead to peace talks with Colombia's second-biggest rebel group and end their participation in Colombia's 36-year war.

''It's a good sign. It is an important deed by the ELN which shows their desire for peace,'' said Jorge Martinez of the National Conciliation Commission, a non-governmental mediation group involved in peace initiatives.

The unilateral liberation of the prisoners of war came after Gomez held talks in Havana with ELN commanders. He also reportedly met with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The ELN was formed in the 1960s by disgruntled peasants, leftist priests and radical students who were trained in Cuba. Believed to have some 5,000 combatants, the ELN has suffered heavy military losses in recent years to government troops and an illegal right-wing paramilitary army.

But the ELN remains a constant irritant, blowing up oil pipelines and electrical towers, and carrying out mass kidnappings of civilians for ransom.

Red Cross helicopters stood ready at Bucaramanga's airport to ferry the police and soldiers to freedom after their release in the jungles outside this town.

Doctors, dentists and psychiatrists awaited them on a farm on the outskirts of Bucaramanga. After undergoing checkups, the liberated hostages were to be to be reunited with their families, said police Col. Mauricio Achury.

The government was trying to restrict access to the press amid calls for the handover not to be turned into a media spectacle.

Some of the police and soldiers, captured during combat or rebel raids, have spent as many as three years in captivity.

President Andres Pastrana said the liberation of the 45 captives would be a ''very important'' step and expressed hope it would lead to broad talks.

As an incentive, the ELN has been demanding a demilitarized zone in northern Colombia similar to one Pastrana granted to Colombia's biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

There appeared to be growing momentum that the government would accede, over the objections of many local residents and of the right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

However, the granting of a demilitarized zone to the FARC as a peace incentive has produced no breakthrough in talks. The FARC has been criticized by Colombia, the United States and human rights groups for using the zone to oppress locals residents and to launch attacks elsewhere.

Also Saturday, rightist paramilitaries released three federal prosecutors after holding them for 24 hours.

The prosecutors had been investigating recent kidnappings allegedly committed by AUC members when they were grabbed by armed militia members Friday in the northern town of Mariquita, a spokeswoman for the Public Prosecutor's Office in Tolima state told the Associated Press.

-------- europe

European Arms Maker May Cut Jobs

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/business/23EADS.html

PARIS, Dec. 22 - The European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Company said this week that it might eliminate 1,500 jobs, or about 9 percent of the work force, at its missile and military electronics division to restore it to profits at a time of shrinking military budgets.

The company, which is the largest shareholder in Airbus Industrie and the Continent's largest aerospace company, said it would also sell poorly performing divisions, subcontract out some work now done in-house and make acquisitions to complement existing businesses. Plant closings are also possible, it said.

EADS is accelerating a restructuring after it suffered a first-half loss before interest and taxes of 62 million euros ($57 million) this year.

About 550 jobs could be lost in Germany and 950 in France, mostly in military electronics and administration.

The military and civil systems division had revenue of 3.8 billion euros ($3.48 billion) in 1999, about one-sixth of the group's total.

-------- u.n.

U.N. Agrees to Cut Dues Paid by U.S., Easing an Irritant

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/world/23NATI.html?pagewanted=all

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 22 - After weeks of bitter negotiations, members of the United Nations agreed in principle today to reduce American dues for the first time in more than a quarter century. If accepted by Congress, the deal will remove the primary irritant between the United Nations and Washington just as a new administration prepares to take over.

The immediate reaction in Congress was positive, and diplomats said that only a few details remained to be settled before the General Assembly formally approved the accord.

"This is a tremendous achievement for the United Nations," said Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, who has spent almost all of his 16 months as representative here fighting to get two scales of dues - one for the regular United Nations budget and another for peacekeeping - realigned by 188 other nations. Some of those nations would have to pay substantially more to make up for American cuts.

In Washington, Senator Jesse Helms, the leading Congressional critic of the United Nations, welcomed the development. "I consider it a real leap forward," he said, singling out Mr. Holbrooke for praise.

[Reuters reported on Saturday that members in a General Assembly committee agreed by consensus on a new U.N. budget after a compromise was worked out with South Korea that threatened at the last minute to unravel the deal.

The committee negotiating the budget intended to go shortly to a formal General Assembly session to make the deal official.]

Relations with the United Nations had worsened when a Republican Congress was elected in 1994. By 1995, Congress was actively legislating against American involvement, reducing payments in violation of treaties and demanding that the United Nations reform.

The American debt to the organization mounted to a level nearly twice the annual operating budget. Anger grew among other member nations, which watched Americans expect support for their policies while the organization faltered under the debt.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador, called the deal a "huge breakthrough" and said that if it had not been for Mr. Holbrooke's determination, there might have been "shards on the ground" and no deal.

Mr. Holbrooke changed the terms of the debate, arguing that all nations should have their assessments revisited because the world had changed since payment scales were reviewed in the 1970's and changing economic realities had to be reflected.

The peacekeeping scale of assessment had not been changed since 1973, though periodically the United Nations' regular operating budget had been adjusted. But Mr. Holbrooke did not get everything Congress demanded.

He did win approval of a cut to 22 percent of the United Nations regular budget, from 25 percent. As to other payments for peacekeeping, the American share was cut to 27 percent from 30 percent, but still exceeds the 25 percent level set by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. To make their point, the senators had tied up payment of American debts, which the United Nations calculates at more than $1.3 billion now. Under an agreement that the committee struck with the Clinton administration in 1997, arrears could not be released until the 25 percent level was reached. Two years earlier, Congress passed a law saying the United States would not pay more than 25 percent for peacekeeping. This has added an automatic increase in arrears ever since. That law would have to be repealed.

When the shape of today's deal became apparent last week, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the committee's ranking Democrat, said he would fight for acceptance, despite the shortfall in the peacekeeping budget demand. He said the reduction in regular budget assessments to 22 percent was crucial to the committee.

The final resolution of the General Assembly did not include a European proposal that would have made the continuation of lower American dues conditional on Washington's payment of all arrears by 2003. In any case, Congress and the United Nations disagree on the amount of arrears. But member nations did leave open the possibility of reversing today's decision if there was reason to do so at the next review.

"If things go wrong in the next three years," Mr. Greenstock said, "then the General Assembly will come back to the question."

With the United States and the European Union locked in firm positions, concessions from a variety of nations, many of them prospering, were the key to striking a deal. They included Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Poland and Persian Gulf oil states.

On the regular budget, the United States made the transition to higher assessments easier to swallow by offering to pick up the $34 million that other nations would have to make up during the first year of lower American payments.

The money was made available to the State Department by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, through his United Nations Foundation. In 1997, Mr. Turner stunned the organization with a pledge to give $1 billion over 10 years to a variety of United Nations programs, with emphasis on the environment, health and aid to women and girls in developing nations.

The grant to the State Department is in addition to that $1 billion gift, and had to be made through the State Department because individuals cannot pay a country's dues.

Mr. Holbrooke said today that opposition to United States demands in the United Nations had been fierce for months. "As the year drew to a close, resistance became more and more intense," he said.

Other diplomats said that while many countries would have been willing to reduce American payments even further as a way to weaken the fiscal influence of the United States, they were defiant about making any adjustments under an ultimatum from Congress.

Mr. Greenstock said today that a number of larger developing countries like India and prosperous nations like Canada thought it was "politically unwise to have one power holding such a whip over the U.N." But the Europeans argued that it was naďve to think that the United Nations could readily make up for a large financial gap.

"Into the mix stepped Ted Turner," Mr. Holbrooke said. "Six weeks ago, after I had briefed him and some of his associates on the problem, Turner, with his characteristic combination of vision and energy, and a profound understanding of the leveraging effects of a dramatic bequest, said if the $34 million difference that this amounts to is the make or break, I will contribute that money on a one-time-only basis."

"As the year grew on, country after country passed its national budget, based on the assumption we would still pay 25 percent," Mr. Holbrooke said. "And so countries all over the world came to us and said, we've already budgeted the money, and we can't pick up the extra. So Ted Turner's offer in hand, we began to talk to individual countries and then two days ago the group. Then came the brutal discussion about how to distribute the money."

That slicing of the Turner sweetener was still going on at the last minute today.

In addition to the American reduction, Japan asked for and got a cut of one percentage point, to 19.5 percent of the regular budget. That means that the United Nations will have to find new sources to provide 4 percent of the operating budget. Russia and China voluntarily increased their payments, though marginally. When complicated calculations were made of nations' capacity to pay based on economic strength, Britain, Denmark, Greece and Ireland all saw their regular dues go up, although in total the European Union added only 0.3 percentage points to its bill.

Regular budget assessments form the base for calculating peacekeeping bills, a system that has now become even more complex, by introducing a sliding scale of discounts depending on ability to pay.

A number of countries - among them Israel, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary and Slovenia - voluntarily gave up discounts immediately. Others agreed to give them up in the future.

---

U.N. gets major overhaul of finances

USA Today
12/23/00- Updated 11:24 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat05.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - After a yearlong battle and round-the-clock final negotiations, the General Assembly on Saturday adopted its first major overhaul of U.N. financing in more than two decades, cutting U.S. payments to the world body and shifting most of the shortfall to developing countries with improving economies. Bleary-eyed delegates from 189 countries - many now hoping to make it home for the holidays - wrapped up agreement on the budget reform package after South Korea dropped last-minute demands and the world body resolved issues raised by the Czech Republic, Britain, China and the United States.

The General Assembly promptly approved the new system, passing resolutions for separate budgets for the United Nations' day-to-day operations and its far-flung peacekeeping operations. When assembly president Harri Holkeri of Finland gaveled the session to a close, there was loud applause - and a race to the doors.

''Buried in this complex financial package is the first financial reform of the U.N. regular budget in 28 years and the first time ever for peacekeeping,'' said Richard Holbrooke, the exhausted but jubilant U.S. ambassador. Many credited his lobbying of reluctant and often hostile delegates for the groundbreaking accord.

The last time the U.S. portion of the regular budget was reduced was in 1972, when the ambassador was George Bush, Holbrooke noted.

With a debt to the United Nations now totaling $1.3 billion, the United States has been repeatedly criticized by other countries, including its allies, for not paying its dues. Congress, demanding reform of what some see as a bloated U.N. bureaucracy, has passed legislation requiring that the U.S. share of the budget be substantially reduced before a large chunk of the arrears can be paid.

On Friday, the United States won the battle to reduce its share of the U.N. budget - the centerpiece of the U.N. financing overhaul - after media tycoon Ted Turner offered a $34 million one-time gift. That donation would cover the shortfall the U.S. cut creates in the main U.N. budget in 2001, and was considered crucial to an agreement because almost all countries already have approved what they will spend for next year.

Under the deal, the U.S. share of the administrative budget would drop from 25% to 22% as Congress required. Its share of the peacekeeping budget would be reduced from 31% to around 27% - still more than the 25% Congress demanded, but enough to elate U.S. diplomats.

''We were given a mission nearly impossible by legislative mandate,'' Holbrooke said. ''We end this administration reporting mission substantially accomplished. Now it's up to the new administration and Congress to decide how to proceed.''

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week he might be able to persuade lawmakers to amend the legislation and send a check for $582 million of the arrears even without the full peacekeeping reduction. Biden co-wrote the legislation with Sen. Jesse Helms, the committee's conservative Republican chairman.

''Hopefully it won't be a fight,'' a delighted Biden told The Associated Press. ''It's a great deal. America wins. ... Our standing in the United Nations is improving because of this and our financial obligation is decreasing. That's a win.''

Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the agreement ''the best possible seasonal gift'' for the United Nations, saying it should remove a major source of tension in the world body. ''In particular, we can now look forward to a normal and constructive relationship with the United States administration,'' he said.

''The United Nations now can begin the new century on a firmer financial footing, and we can focus our energies on our true task,'' he said. ''We must now concentrate on responding to the needs and expectations of our peoples.''

But friends and opponents of the United States who spoke before and after the agreement was reached said it is critical that Washington pay its dues in full, on time and without conditions.

The possibility that the lengthy negotiations might fail at the last minute led to a series of pre-dawn high-level calls around the globe and indicated the difficulties especially for the countries that will swallow most of the U.S. cuts: 18 developing nations that have seen their economies grow in recent years, particularly South Korea, Singapore and Brazil.

At the last minute, South Korea - whose payments will see the greatest increase, according to Holbrooke - insisted on a lower percentage and on having its payments reviewed after three years rather than five - demands that could have scuttled a deal.

Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright telephoned South Korean leaders. Also working the phones were Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth, and European leaders, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

Because of the time difference between New York and Seoul, hundreds of diplomats spent more than seven hours sitting in a conference room during the night doing nothing while high-level government officials addressed the South Korean concerns.

Other issues raised by the Czech Republic, Britain, China and the United States also were resolved. The U.N. budgets - based mainly on the capacity to pay - had other ''winners'' and ''losers'' in terms of who will now pay more or less.

Japan received a 1% cut in its regular budget payment, to below 20%, but remains second to the United States. The 15-member European Union, which insisted it would not pick up the U.S. reduction because it already pays more than its share of global GNP, received a very modest increase.

In addition to the oil-rich and newly industrializing countries that will face higher U.N. bills, China will be paying more than 50% more to both the regular and peacekeeping budgets, admittedly from a very low base. Because of its low economic growth, Russia's regular budget contribution would have been cut this year - but Moscow chose to increase its contribution.

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Shadrack Kumalo, whose country heads the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations, said the group was pleased with the result even if some members were paying more - because it was helping the United Nations.

-------- u.s.

Aerospace Industry Eyes Dot - Com Demise with Glee

Reuters
December 23, 2000 Filed at 8:14 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-arms-braindrain-.html?pagewanted=all

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dot-com demise could not have come sooner for America's defense and aerospace industry, whose pool of engineers has dwindled to near crisis levels as science and technology talent jumped ship for tech startups.

While Internet companies fall apart, some defense industry leaders say technical workers are beginning to return, slowing the high rate of attrition and turnover that has worried aerospace executives, legislators and Wall Street.

Still, the problem of depleted talent pools remains serious. U.S. defense contractors have a graying workforce quickly nearing retirement, fewer recruits out of a college population that increasingly opts against studying science, and young technicians eyeing higher wages in other sectors.

``It's still very much a burning platform, this attrition issue,'' said Phil Cheney, vice president of engineering at Raytheon Co. (RTNb.N).

``Now we're getting some people back and in this environment we welcome them back. They're good people,'' said Cheney, who is not related to Dick Cheney, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's running mate. ``But we're not anywhere near where we want to be.''

Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N), which makes communications and information technology systems for surveillance and battle management, said staff turnover has reached 25 percent. Jim Roche, president of the company's Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector, said 12 percent of his employees and 6 percent of managers soon will be eligible to retire.

``We have had difficulty with staffing,'' Roche said at an investors meeting held by Northrop Grumman.

STAFFING SQUEEZE

In 1999, 42 percent of the entire U.S. aerospace workforce was between the ages of 45 and 64, according to data from the Aerospace Industries Association. About 1 percent of the workforce was older than 65.

At the other end of the age spectrum, only 17 percent of the aerospace workforce was between 25 and 34.

``We are aware our workforce is older than usual,'' said James Fetig, spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N), which makes jetfighters and missiles as well as communications and control systems. Fetig noted that as the industry consolidated, senior workers were kept on, contributing to the higher average age of employees.

``If they were all to retire at one time in huge lumps over the next five to 10 years, that would be an issue,'' Fetig said. ''But it's very doubtful.''

Executives at Raytheon, Litton and Northrop Grumman all echoed Fetig's view and industry watchers noted that the retirement issue makes holding on to younger workers more crucial.

Seasoned engineers, and in particular software systems engineers, have been courted by Internet startups, high-tech and software firms touting cutting edge technology development and golden stock options packages.

As stock prices crumbled, some of their employee stock options became worthless, helping decimate Internet companies. Since the first half of 2000, once high-profile Web startups have gone belly up, laying off workers and selling out to larger firms as their stock prices deflated.

That has brought engineers crawling back, executives said.

``With the bursting of the dot-com bubble, we're beginning to see a lot of people coming back,'' said Tim Long, vice president of strategic communications and market development at Litton PRC, the information technology group of military shipbuilder Litton Industries Inc.``People are coming back to companies that have a sense of adult supervision,'' he said.

MISGUIDED YOUTH?

As for the next generation of technical talent, industry executives and human resources departments say recruiting became harder as the number of high school graduates pursuing science degrees tumbled.

The slide began in the 1980s. The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering and engineering technologies fell 16 percent between 1986-1987 and 1991-1992. It dropped another 3 percent between 1991-1992 and 1996-1997, according to the Department of Education's most recent data.

In the 1996-1997 school year, 61,185 bachelor's degrees were awarded in engineering, marking the lowest level since 1975.

``Enrollments at engineering schools have definitely dropped, and meanwhile the requirement for people keeps growing,'' Raytheon's Cheney noted.

As the number of engineering degrees diminished, the popularity of biology, education, health sciences and visual arts jumped, according to the Education Department data.

That has pushed some companies to start recruiting even earlier to encourage high schoolers to take engineering courses and, subsequently, jobs with the nation's defense contractors.

Litton, the largest builder of non-nuclear ships for the U.S. Navy, has coordinated outreach efforts with high schools, particularly in Northern Virginia, to combat its roughly 19 percent to 20 percent turnover rate.

Raytheon, maker of missiles and weapons control systems, said it tries to reach high school and elementary school-age children, giving money through a foundation for science-related education. The company's retirees also have formed a group that tutors students in their local school system.

CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM

With high school recruiting efforts and the trickle of workers returning from dot-com stints, companies are cautiously optimistic about having begun to ease fears of a brain drain threatening the nation's defense technology.

Industry analysts, however, caution against dismissing the issue altogether.

``While the massacre of the dot-coms may have tempered some of the allure of jobs outside of defense, anecdotal evidence suggests that most defense companies will have to manage this issue very tightly,'' Byron Callan, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, said.

``We think that this is a very important issue for the defense and aerospace sector because the cash will not flow and the earnings will not grow without people who can design, develop, produce and support new products and services,'' Callan noted in a recent report.

---

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Aides Say Bush Is Taking Time on Defense to Avoid a Stumble

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23DEFE.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - In slowing his selection of a new secretary of defense, President-elect George W. Bush is trying to avoid repeating two major stumbles by President Clinton at the outset of his administration, Republican officials say.

The first was Mr. Clinton's decision to pick Representative Les Aspin as his secretary of defense. Mr. Aspin was widely viewed as one of Congress's best minds on defense issues. But he proved to be an indecisive and disorganized manager, and he resigned after just 11 months in the job because the president had lost confidence in him.

Mr. Clinton committed his second misstep after just a few weeks in office. Without first building political support for the idea, he proposed abolishing the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military. The bitter debate that followed consumed his administration for months, sidetracking his agenda and diminishing his political capital in Congress and among senior officers.

Republican officials and military analysts say those mistakes seem to be very much on Mr. Bush's mind as he considers the two major contenders to be his secretary of defense. Mr. Bush seemed to acknowledge as much today in responding to questions about the delay.

"I would characterize my search as deliberate," Mr. Bush said. "It's so important that we get it right in the beginning."

One of Mr. Bush's finalists, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and formerly a senior Pentagon official, is widely considered a first-rate intellectual on military matters. But some advisers to Mr. Bush question Mr. Wolfowitz's ability to manage the unruly Pentagon bureaucracy, and they worry that he could be another Les Aspin.

The second major contender, former Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, is close to Republican leaders in the Senate. But he is also a prominent social conservative who led the Republican opposition to Mr. Clinton's proposal to let gays serve openly in the armed forces.

Though Mr. Coats and Mr. Bush both support the current military policy toward homosexuals, known as "Don't ask, don't tell," some Republicans worry that Mr. Coats will become a lightening rod for criticism from gay rights groups. One such group, the Log Cabin Republicans, has been quietly urging Mr. Bush to pick someone other than Mr. Coats. Other groups have vowed to protest more loudly.

Of course, gay rights groups, who have little clout in the Republican Party, come from the opposite end of the political spectrum from the groups that fought Mr. Clinton in 1993. But a controversy over gays in the military could still prove damaging to Mr. Bush, whose mandate is paper thin and who must work with a deeply divided Congress.

"The challenge with Coats is it raises gays in the military too early, which is not what Bush needs," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, and a Bush supporter.

A person familiar with Mr. Coats's situation said today that Mr. Bush raised the issue of gays in the military with Mr. Coats in a 45-minute meeting at the Madison Hotel in Washington this past Monday. Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, a former secretary of defense who is playing a central role in picking the new secretary, was also present.

The person familiar with Mr. Coats's situation said that all three men seemed to be in agreement in supporting the "Don't ask, don't tell" rules, and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not seem worried that Mr. Coats's strong opposition to gay rights in the past would cause serious problems during confirmation hearings.

But while Mr. Bush was clearly leaning toward Mr. Coats before that session, he began to reassess his decision after the meeting, advisers to Mr. Bush said.

Some Republicans think the issue of gays in the military is one reason. "They are concerned that they don't know what Coats will do or say on gay issues," said one defense expert close to the Bush camp.

But other Republican officials said that the reasons Mr. Bush stepped back from Mr. Coats were more complicated, and that Mr. Bush also seemed concerned about the courtly Mr. Coats's ability to stand up to the strong-willed personalities in the Pentagon and the cabinet.

Mr. Bush's advisers say that both Mr. Coats and Mr. Wolfowitz remain in the running.

Still, the Bush team is looking at other potential candidates, Republican officials said. They include Donald B. Rice, a secretary of the Air Force under Mr. Bush's father; Donald H. Rumsfeld, a secretary of defense under Gerald Ford; and Frederick W. Smith, the founder of the Federal Express Corporation, who knows Mr. Bush from their days together at Yale.

-------- OTHER

Profile in crisis Thirteen Days quietly engrossing

Jam Showbiz!
12/23/00
By BRUCE KIRKLAND Toronto Sun
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesReviewsT/thirteendays_kirkland-sun.html

The 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war, is methodically presented in all its terrifying glory in Thirteen Days.

That makes this a worthy and dignified epic.

Under the unadorned direction of veteran Roger Donaldson (Smash Palace and Dante's Peak), the film moves slowly and carefully through the near cataclysmic events of the time. Detail and insight is built piece by piece, like a bricklayer constructing a solid wall of substance and information.

It's a true-life chronicle that is as close to the historical events as a film can possibly be, allowing for dramatic licence and interpretation.

Wisely, David Self's screenplay focuses exclusively on the American perspective without this being the usual rah-rah, flag-waving rant we get in overly patriotic Hollywood films.

We see nothing about the inner workings of government in either the Soviet Union or Cuba, except what is surmised by the American strategists in the U.S. White House.

That lends the film a dramatic tension that could not be generated if the film played more like a see-all-sides documentary. After all, anyone with a history book and a modicum of common sense already knows what happened -- that the Cuban missile crisis did not lead to nuclear war. Thirteen Days examines the whys, the whens, the missteps, the wise decisions.

The cast is outstanding in drawing us inside that drama. In one of his best performances in years, Kevin Costner is the film's singular big-name star. Once you get past his broad New England accent, he is quietly convincing as U.S. presidential advisor Kenneth P. O'Donnell.

Here is our 'everyman' who brings us into the inner sanctum of power. Then, through O'Donnell's family experience, we begin to feel how the threat of nuclear annihilation affected an entire generation of people.

A pair of lesser-known yet high-quality actors steal this picture, however. Canadian-born Bruce Greenwood and American Steven Culp play the Kennedys, John F. and Robert.

For both, this is a career-making turn. Culp is not only robust as the young Bobby, he bears an uncanny resemblance to him that leaves you quivering in your seat. It's a reincarnation.

In Greenwood's case, he does not precisely have the look. But he does something even more impressive and maybe even more amazing. He embodies the spirit of J.F.K.

The Cuban missile crisis might be interpreted as the event that made a world leader out of president Kennedy. In Thirteen Days, we actually see the subtle arc that J.F.K. takes from being just the flashy knight of the new Camelot into becoming a steely-eyed decision-maker who holds the world's fate in his hands and doesn't flinch. Greenwood captures the essence of that dynamic without spelling it out.

If you are looking for the gossipy, salacious version of Kennedy in this movie, forget it. Thirteen Days is far too serious a film for that nonsense. If you are looking for an historical epic ringing with truth and import, here it is.

-------- alternative energy

Deregulation Fuels A Crisis in California

By William Booth Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 23, 2000 ; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42021-2000Dec22?language=printer

LOS ANGELES -- The Wild West atmosphere returned to California's deregulated energy markets yesterday as Wall Street continued to threaten the utilities, the utilities threatened bankruptcy, and consumers were threatened with higher rates and the specter of electricity rationing over the holidays.

The deregulation of California's electricity market, which was supposed to bring cheaper, cleaner power to the state with the world's sixth-largest economy, instead has created a mess that may become the first immediate challenge for the incoming Bush administration, which already is having meetings to address it.

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) spoke this week with President-elect Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Davis and Greenspan are scheduled to meet Tuesday as the state's two largest utilities stagger under $8.1 billion in losses and the possibility of downgraded credit ratings.

But no one denies that skyrocketing wholesale costs are soon to be passed along to consumers, with a 10 percent rate increase likely and steeper increases in the offing.

The high costs and lack of supply also have idled factories and businesses from California to the Pacific Northwest, and are providing the first bump in the smooth political ride Davis has enjoyed while presiding over a state with a huge budget surplus, a booming economy and Democratic control of most of the government.

"We are operating on an emergency basis," said Loretta Lynch, chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission.

On Thursday, the commission met in San Francisco and cleared the way for steep rate increases by the state's biggest utilities. The exact amount will not be known for a week.

Although utilities were encouraged that they may soon see some relief, it may not be enough. And consumer groups are outraged.

In the Pacific Northwest, consumers and industries are already facing higher costs because of the California crisis. In normal years, energy flows south from the Pacific Northwest in the spring and summer, and north from California in the winter. Indeed, California usually ships back twice as much power as it takes from the Northwest, where consumers enjoy some of the cheapest, federally subsidized hydro-electric power in the nation.

It was not supposed to be like this. In 1996, the state, led by Gov. Pete Wilson (R), deregulated the electricity market in California in the hopes that market forces and competition would lead to cheaper prices. Consumers were promised that rates would, in essence, remain frozen until 2002.

But instead of the market saving the day, it has wreaked havoc. No new major power stations have been built, and the energy needs of the state have grown, thanks in part to a robust economy and the power demands of Silicon Valley. Since the summer, the state has experienced frequent energy emergencies that required businesses to curtail power use. Several times, the state narrowly avoided rolling blackouts.

Out-of-state corporations now own the generating stations and are charging prices tens, and sometimes hundreds, of times higher than they did before.

In the brave new world of deregulation, California's big three utilities, which serve about 27 million state customers, buy their electricity for the next day (and sometimes for the next hour) through the Power Exchange, an ersatz commodities market that trades in electrons instead of, say, pork bellies.

The utilities -- Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric -- buy their power from different public and private generators, such as the Houston-based Enron Corp., which, critics say, has made a fortune off California's deregulation.

Enron and others say the price spikes are simply a matter of limited supply and high demand. Critics of the energy-generating companies charge market manipulations. Five investigations have been launched into whether the power generators or middlemen who trade electrons are manipulating the market.

In any event, some spot market electricity prices are up 600 percent. This has put the utility companies, which buy the power and deliver it to homes and businesses, in a vise.

Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric have not been allowed to pass on their higher wholesale electricity costs to consumers because their rates were capped by the 1996 deregulation legislation.

Last week, with the state on the verge of rolling blackouts, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson took the extraordinary step of signing an emergency order that would force out-of-state power producers to supply electricity to California to ease the crunch -- whether they like or not.

Now the utility companies say they are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

The two utilities claim they have lost billions of dollars in uncompensated costs. Wall Street analysts and Standard & Poor's said this week that consumers' rates must rise by as much as 20 percent. The utility companies suggest they could get by with 17 percent increases. The governor and the California Public Utilities Commission are hoping to keep increases at no more than 10 percent.

Meanwhile, news leaked Wednesday that Southern California Edison was telling state officials it might begin to ration electricity to its customers because it has no money to buy more.

Davis, who has warned that the higher prices brought on by deregulation could bring the booming California economy "to its knees," reluctantly told consumers they would need to bear some of the burden of higher energy costs.

Commissioner Carl Wood told reporters that ultimate decision on rate hikes will bring some pain to consumers and utilities alike.

Before they establish how much consumers will pay, the commission will perform an independent audit of the utility companies to justify the rate hikes.

It also must establish that the utility companies have repaid debts from investments made in nuclear and alternative power plants before deregulation. Last summer, the commission agreed that San Diego Gas & Electric had done so and lifted the freeze on rate increases. The utility promptly doubled and tripled consumers' bills, until the Legislature acted to cap the rates.

Consumer groups are now on the war path -- and making their own threats.

If rates skyrocket, they say, they may put a ballot initiative before the voters to reverse deregulation by putting the state in charge of the power system or reregulating entirely.

Either way, there are high political costs for Davis, who has been mentioned as a possible contender for the White House in 2004. As much as consumers are screaming, most observers believe Davis cannot allow the state's utility companies to become insolvent.

-------- environment

Unique Holiday Gifts With Fascinating Stories

Yahoo News
Thursday December 7, 8:55 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: Natural Wonders, Inc.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001207/ca_natural.html

FREMONT, Calif., Dec. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Extraordinary, high-quality gifts are available at Natural Wonders this holiday season that are sure to intrigue all ages and interests. Each exciting gift idea highlighted below can be viewed online at naturalwonders.com.

Our EcoSpheres ($70 - $260) a self-sustaining miniature world of brine shrimp and algae encased in glass that never need feeding, are a true example of space-age science. NASA was researching self-contained communities for space explorers to live in during long-term flight, when a scientist developed a balanced system capable of sustaining plant and animal life. Looking into the future, human colonies living in space will follow the model of the EcoSphere.

A portion of each and every sale from our Panda, Siberian Tiger, Wolf and Dolphin Adoption Kits ($20 ea.) benefits organizations like the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species (CRES), The Rainforest Action Network and others. To date over $3,000,000 has been contributed through Healthy Planet. In addition, customers can support endangered species and habitats when they purchase a World Wildlife Fund Calendar ($12.99).

Take an automated planetary tour with our selection of computerized NexStar Telescopes ($199 and up) by Celestron(TM) -- the smartest, most user-friendly telescope today. Each model represents a sophisticated combination of precision engineering, advanced electronics and exceptional optics. The only simple thing about NexStar is its operation. If the 4,000 object computerized database and automatic alignment capabilities aren't inspiring enough, add to that the easily assembled, quick-release fork arm and you can view the universe at the push of a button. Several models feature the convenience of the GT series computerized GO TO hand control.

Novice space explorers can blast off into the night sky universe right from their computer desktop with the Starry Night Backyard from SPACE.com ($49.95). The software recently received two prestigious Codie Awards (the ``Academy Awards'' of software) for Best School Based Education Product and Best Lifestyle Product. The April 2000 issue of Consumers Digest gave Starry Night Pro one of its Best Buy Awards. ``Starry Night Pro offers outstanding value for its price.''

The Rare Bird Gift Set ($199) from Tasco(TM), includes a pair of 8X40mm RareBird Binoculars that have been approved by the National Audubon Society -- the organization most recognized and respected by America's over 60 million birders. The binoculars feature simple one hand focusing, long eye relief for eyeglass wearers, and close focus for viewing a bird at the windowsill or in a nest far away. In addition, the set includes birding software to help identify birds native to the U.S. and Canada and a National Audubon Society limited edition birding journal.

How about our genuine fossilized Dinosaur Egg ($800) or a Fossilized Fish ($50)? Dinosaur eggs are believed to have been laid in communal nesting groups and fossilized during the Cretaceous Period, 65-135 million years ago. Where else can you find and give a gift that is over 65 million years old?

Curious minds can find answers at Natural Wonders, naturalwonders.com or worldofscience.com, a specialty store with merchandise inspired by nature and science for personal use and gift giving. The company operates 306 stores in 42 states. Call 800-2-WONDER to find the store nearest you or visit our websites at www.naturalwonders.com or www.worldofscience.com for additional company information.

---

WOMAN IN THE NEWS
Passion for Politics and the Outdoors: Christine Todd Whitman

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23WHIT.html?pagewanted=all

TRENTON, Dec. 22 - If she weren't a politician, Christie Whitman once told a biographer, she would have been a rancher somewhere out west.

Between politics and the great outdoors, it is hard to say which is the favorite milieu of Mrs. Whitman, who has combined the two frequently in her seven years as governor of New Jersey. And so her appointment by President-elect George W. Bush as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency might seem a natural fit.

Like the president-elect, Mrs. Whitman is the proud standard-bearer of a line of Republican royalty reaching back nearly a century. Her two grandfathers each served as the party's chief financier in New Jersey; her father steered the state party through its darkest years. At 5, Christie Todd named her dog Ike. At 6, in December 1952, she was taken to meet President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower himself.

So, too, Mrs. Whitman's naturalist streak as governor - from her fondness for canoe trips and bicycle tours to her billion-dollar commitment to preserve open space in the nation's most densely populated state - has its roots in her upbringing at Pontefract, the family farm in the New Jersey hunt country where she still resides, an hour and a half west of New York City.

Yet Governor Whitman's record also suggests that her new position will require a fair amount of adjusting.

She earned her environmental credentials mainly in the area of conservation, which is more the province of the Interior Department, but critics say her administration has also done much to weaken regulations and ease enforcement of pollution standards, which constitute the primary mission of the E.P.A.

Mrs. Whitman's imperial style, too, may make her better suited to being an executive than a coalition builder, and raises questions about how well she will work with Congress and with the White House, which traditionally has closely controlled the environmental agency's policymaking, top personnel appointments and budget. As one of the nation's most powerful governors, she has often angered New Jersey lawmakers, even in her own party, by handing down major policy pronouncements without seeking their input.

While Mr. Bush promised today to elevate the administrator's job to a cabinet position, Mrs. Whitman's appointment to a post no other governor has held also reflects to a degree her fallen star within the party to which she has devoted her life. After winning election in 1993 as the first woman to be New Jersey's governor, she helped revive the Republican moderate wing and was for a time considered a potential presidential candidate herself. But her support for abortion rights, anathema to conservatives, not only ruled out a place on a national ticket but also may have prevented her from taking a more prominent role in Mr. Bush's cabinet.

"She's a quick learner," said former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, a family friend who plucked Mrs. Whitman from a county freeholders board to serve in his cabinet as president of the Board of Public Utilities, her first statewide post, in 1988. "When you get into the E.P.A., you're thrown into a lot of technical problems that she hasn't had to deal with as governor. She'll learn, and I think she'll be quite good. But the important thing is that George Bush listen to her."

Indeed, Governor Whitman's appointment, friends say, is a testament to her strong and mutually respectful friendship with the president-elect. The two, who are both 54, did not get to know each other until she offered to help Mr. Bush on the stump in his 1994 campaign for governor of Texas. But they nonetheless shared much history.

Born Christine Temple Todd on Sept. 26, 1946, in New York, Mrs. Whitman was the youngest child of Eleanor and Webster Todd, for decades New Jersey's most prominent Republican couple. Her maternal grandparents knew Senator Prescott Bush, the president-elect's grandfather, a bond that was reinforced in a second generation; the late Eleanor Todd and Barbara Bush were very good friends, according to Patricia Beard, author of a 1996 biography of Governor Whitman.

The Bush-Whitman relationship was not without its strains, Ms. Beard said. In 1990, Mrs. Whitman, then a longshot challenger to Senator Bill Bradley, felt snubbed by the Bush family, Ms. Beard said: then- President Bush made only a perfunctory campaign appearance with Mrs. Whitman at the Newark airport while traveling to New York.

Nonetheless, in his fall campaign this year and its aftermath, George W. Bush relied heavily on Governor Whitman: she campaigned for him in more than 20 states, served as a Bush spokeswoman at the Democratic convention and on countless television shows, and made a much- photographed pilgrimage to observe the Florida recount.

As administrator of the E.P.A., Mrs. Whitman will oversee a bureaucracy roughly one-third the size of New Jersey's state government, and will be caught between environmental advocates on the left and Mr. Bush and his conservative allies on the right. She seemed to acknowledge that today in accepting Mr. Bush's nomination, citing "the need to strike an appropriate balance between competing interests for the good of all Americans."

To environmentalists, Mrs. Whitman is full of potential, if her record so far is mixed.

Her critics praise Mrs. Whitman for cleaning up thousands of industrial sites in New Jersey, but say she did so in part by easing the requirements for such cleanups. She introduced an ambitious set of water-quality regulations to help rein in suburban sprawl, but her first proposal so lowered pollution standards that the E.P.A. stepped in to reject it. New Jersey was a leader in setting targets for cleaning the air of greenhouse gases, but a contract to build enhanced automobile emissions-inspection stations was a catastrophic failure.

But even her most dogged critics in Trenton say Mrs. Whitman has often proved sympathetic to the environmental cause when she took a direct interest in a divisive issue.

"Christie Whitman as E.P.A. commissioner will be really interesting," said David S. Pringle, a lobbyist for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. "When she has really gotten her hands wet, her policies have been much better for the environment, than when she delegated them. The question is, will Governor Whitman exert herself in a Bush administration, and will President-elect Bush allow her to exert herself to be an effective environmental advocate?"

---

With the Departure of Whitman, a Low-Key Player Steps in

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By ROBERT HANLEY with ANDREW JACOBS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23GOV.html?pagewanted=all

SCOTCH PLAINS, N.J., Dec. 22 - After 25 years as one of New Jersey's most adept behind-the-scenes players, Donald T. DiFrancesco, president of the State Senate, stepped forward today as the governor-in-waiting after Gov. Christie Whitman was selected by President-elect George W. Bush to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

At a news conference at the municipal building in his hometown, Mr. DiFrancesco, a Republican, said he was ready to step into the job he has desired for years and will run for next November, seeking a full term.

Under the provisions of New Jersey's Constitution, he will remain Senate president and be a candidate for governor while serving as acting governor, assuming Mrs. Whitman's selection is confirmed by the United States Senate.

"I know that many in New Jersey have questions about the additional responsibilities that I as Senate president will be taking on as acting governor," he said. "I recognize the historic nature of this event, and I am, quite frankly, humbled to be both a witness and a participant."

Mr. DiFrancesco today hailed Mrs. Whitman's appointment and sketched out his own agenda. Mr. DiFrancesco, who is already running advertisements for his campaign for governor, cited tax cuts, health care and environmental issues as among his priorities.

Mr. DiFrancesco, a moderate, faces a primary challenge from Mayor Bret Schundler of Jersey City, who will run to his right. The Republican nominee is likely to face Mayor James McGreevey of Woodbridge, the Democratic front-runner, in the November election. But Mr. DiFrancesco's political fortunes seem likely to get a boost by his ascension to the governor's office.

At first glance, Mr. DiFrancesco and Mrs. Whitman might appear to share several similarities. As moderate Republicans, both support abortion rights and demonize the state's property taxes and auto insurance rates.

But when Mrs. Whitman agreed to become administrator of the E.P.A. today, she opened the door for a politician who could not be more different from her in most ways. Indeed, Mr. DiFrancesco comes to the governor's office as something of the anti-Whitman.

Unlike Mrs. Whitman, the blue-blooded scion of an immensely wealthy and politically prominent family, Mr. DiFrancesco has a pedigree that is strikingly humble. The son of Italian immigrants, whose father was a carpenter, Mr. DiFrancesco, known around Trenton as Donnie D., lives in a modest home here in the working-class town where he was born and reared. He rarely travels far, opting to spend his summers at the family's Jersey Shore beach house.

Also in contrast to Mrs. Whitman, Mr. DiFrancesco, 56, has made a name as a conciliatory consensus builder who delights in the sport of legislative gamesmanship. He does not punish his opponents, but nudges them with gentle persuasion.

Mrs. Whitman, a forceful speaker, can charm even her most battle-ready enemies. Mr. DiFrancesco, even friends acknowledge, can be a bit of a dud. "He's a nice person, a nice guy to be with," said Thomas H. Kean, the former governor and a longtime friend, offering a description that lawmakers, lobbyists and friends repeated again and again. Tom Wilson, a political consultant who has been offering advice to the Senate president, said Mr. DiFrancesco did not come from the back-slapping, baby-kissing school of politics.

"He's quiet, reserved and has a dry sense of humor," Mr. Wilson said. And unlike Mrs. Whitman, who became a national figure from the time she was elected governor, Mr. DiFrancesco is local to the core.

"He's a regular Jersey guy," Mr. Wilson added, a description, even with appropriate gender adjustment, that would never be directed at Mrs. Whitman.

Being a regular Jersey guy could help Mr. DiFrancesco parlay his stint as chief executive into a four-year job come November. On the other hand, a lack of telegenic charisma could hinder his gubernatorial prospects. Still, the advantages of being an incumbent, most everyone agrees, will go a long way in selling Mr. DiFrancesco to voters.

"By Election Day, everyone except the most apathetic voter will know who he is," said Cliff Zukin, a political science professor at Rutgers. "For one thing, he'll save a lot of money on advertising."

Over the years, Mr. DiFrancesco has displayed considerable political skill. In 1991, when the Republicans gained a majority in the Senate after 18 years out of power, he stealthily seized control from the presumed Republican leader, John H. Dorsey, a hard-edged conservative. The reversal, many say, was something they never expected from the mild-mannered Mr. DiFrancesco.

"It was done swiftly and cleanly," said Steve Salmore, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. Dorsey at the time. "We didn't take him seriously, and Dorsey was totally bowled over."

In 1997, when the Legislature was voting on Mrs. Whitman's $2.7 billion pension bond proposal, Mr. DiFrancesco publicly berated Senator John Scott, who unexpectedly balked on the measure, which many critics derided as a work of irresponsible fiscal gimmickry. "You've got me against a wall," he told Senator Scott that day. Then, injecting an unprintable adjective, he yelled at him to push the voting button.

Mr. Scott pushed the button in support of the proposal.

David A. Norcross, a New Jersey member of the Republican National Committee, said Mr. DiFrancesco had shown that he could get tough when necessary. "He has a relaxed style of leadership and he lets folks have their say, but in the end, most of what he wants to happen happens," he said.

As the Senate's longest-serving president, Mr. DiFrancesco seems to know what he is doing. He has been a State House fixture since 1975, when he was elected to the Assembly, and over the years has pushed through the kinds of legislation that would make a Democrat proud. In 1990, the Family Leave Act that he introduced passed, giving New Jersey workers the right to take three months of unpaid leave to care for a child or for a seriously ill family member. The measure served as a model for the Clinton administration's Family and Medical Leave legislation. He also sponsored a bill to give temporarily disabled workers job security and another measure that entitles plaintiffs to bring a discrimination case before a jury.

Still, some critics say he has a tendency to sacrifice principle when faced with politically unpalatable decisions. At other times, they say, he has conveniently avoided votes that could be used against him in campaigns. Last January, for example, he abstained when the Senate voted to give the Legislature and governor pay raises; last week, he stayed away when the chamber narrowly approved a campaign finance bill that could help him in his bid for governor.

Some Democrats have criticized his decision to stymie a task force that was looking into the state's car inspection debacle, saying he was trying to protect a friend whose engineering firm was being investigated. Richard J. Codey, the Senate minority leader, praised Mr. DiFrancesco's style but criticized his decision to abstain on tough issues.

"He's always been a complete gentleman with me, but he's got to be more forceful, more willing to take a stand," he said. "He has a few months to show that he is a leader."

Mr. Schundler of Jersey City, who is challenging Mr. DiFrancesco for the Republican nomination, was more harsh. "Don is a policy agnostic," he said. "He doesn't have strong convictions or courage and he has no vision."

In an interview at his Scotch Plains district office today, Mr. DiFrancesco defended his low-key leadership style, saying he thought it would suit him as governor and serve the state's diverse population. "You can't make everybody happy, but you can bring people together and play down the unhappiness and play up the positive," he said.

Speaking at his news conference a few minutes later, Mr. DiFrancesco was characteristically self-effacing. He said he had telephoned three former governors and the Assembly speaker, Jack Collins, seeking their guidance. He also promised not to make sweeping staff changes in Trenton. Later, when asked whether he would move into the governor's mansion in Princeton, he turned to his wife and then demurred briefly. No, he said, he will stay in the house he and his wife have occupied since 1967. "I like where I live," he said. "And my sisters wouldn't like me to leave the area."

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Conservative Picked for Justice Post; Whitman Chosen to Head E.P.A.

New York Times
December 23, 2000
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/politics/23BUSH.html?pagewanted=all

AUSTIN, Tex., Dec. 22 - President-elect George W. Bush, ending a fast-paced week of organizing his cabinet, today selected John Ashcroft, one of the Republican Party's leading social conservatives, as the next attorney general.

Mr. Bush described Senator Ashcroft, who was defeated in his bid for re-election last month in Missouri, as "a man of deep conviction" who would be dedicated to "the impartial administration of justice." The conservative views on social issues held by Mr. Ashcroft, who is 58 and the son and grandson of Assembly of God ministers, have been the hallmark of his service as governor and senator. The announcement led some Democrats among Mr. Ashcroft's former Senate colleagues to promise a vigorous examination of his record on abortion, the death penalty and judicial appointments.

Mr. Bush also announced the selection of Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Bush also said he supported upgrading the E.P.A. post to cabinet rank, which would require an act of Congress. If Governor Whitman is confirmed by the Senate, which appears highly likely, she would leave Trenton one year short of completing her eighth year as governor. She is barred from seeking another term, and would be replaced by the president of the state Senate, Donald T. DiFrancesco, a Republican who was already running to succeed her.

Mr. Bush made the announcements today in two appearances with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, who has played a major role in cabinet selections, standing silently by his side. Republican officials said that with the choice of Senator Ashcroft, Mr. Bush was hoping to placate his party's right wing, which has been growing increasingly unhappy with his selection of a number of top officials from the party's moderate wing, including Governor Whitman.

In another move likely to make conservatives a bit happier, Mr. Bush's office announced late today that Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., now a senior executive of Eli Lilly & Company, the pharmaceutical concern, and the former president and chief executive of the conservative Hudson Institute, would be named director of the Office of Management and Budget.

While little known in Washington today, Mr. Daniels once served in the Reagan White House and was a top campaign adviser to Senator Dan Quayle in his bid for the vice presidency. His new job would put him at the center of Mr. Bush's budget battles with Congress.

Of the choices announced today, Mr. Ashcroft's will clearly be the most controversial. His liberal opponents, including abortion-rights groups and anti-death penalty activists, called him a conservative ideologue and said they would work relentlessly to defeat him in the Senate.

But even Senate Democrats with severe reservations about their former colleague say opponents to his nomination will have an uphill battle. There is usually an overwhelming presumption in favor of confirming former members of the Senate, and many Democrats have been surprised at the centrist nature of the cabinet that is taking shape.

"My guess is he'll be confirmed," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democrat from Delaware. "There will be serious reservations about him. But confirming a cabinet appointee, who is supposed to reflect the views of the president, as opposed to a Supreme Court justice, are fundamentally different issues. I would not put John Ashcroft on the court, but unless there's something I'm unaware of, I'd be inclined to vote for him, even though I will have significant questions about his views on civil liberties, civil rights and criminal justice issues."

Mr. Ashcroft was defeated last month in the only race that may have been stranger than the presidential contest itself. His opponent, Gov. Mel Carnahan, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election. But the dead candidate narrowly won the election, after Missouri's new governor, Roger Wilson, had promised to appoint his widow, Jean Carnahan, to his seat.

Mr. Ashcroft gave what was viewed as a gracious concession speech, asking supporters not to contest the close election, and several officials said that would help smooth his confirmation in the Senate.

Mr. Bush was asked about the chorus of criticism of Mr. Ashcroft several hours after the announcement. "I suspect a lot of my nominees are going to encounter tough questioning," Mr. Bush said in the governor's mansion here. "And I am sure he will answer them."

The president-elect also said today that he would ask the Republican Party to elect Gov. James S. Gilmore III of Virginia to head the Republican National Committee, replacing Jim Nicholson.

The announcements today left several questions unanswered before the Christmas holiday, which Mr. Bush plans to spend here, at his ranch near Waco, and on an island off the coast of Florida next week. Among them is the continuing debate among his advisers over the selection of a defense secretary. Mr. Bush was widely expected to name Daniel R. Coats, a former senator from Indiana, another conservative Republican, but he has delayed that selection amid signs that he is continuing to interview other candidates.

Mr. Bush declined to comment on a report in The New York Times on Friday that he had developed reservations about Mr. Coats after meeting him earlier this week in Washington. But he said: "Until I'm absolutely certain that the person I - that we're - the people that I'm talking to is the right person, I'm not going to move."

A senior adviser to Mr. Bush suggested that the selection for the defense post could take awhile. The adviser repeated concerns that the other leading candidate, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former top aide in the Reagan and Bush administrations, while a "brilliant theoretician," was not considered to have the organization skills to tame the vast defense bureaucracy. "We're still looking around," the official said.

Also in limbo is the selection of Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, a strong supporter of the president-elect, for the post of secretary of health and human services. For a while that announcement was expected this week, and it is unclear if it has run into trouble.

Governor Whitman's selection appeared to be one of Mr. Bush's easier decisions. She had widely been touted as a possible vice-presidential running mate for him, and she is clearly eager to get on the national stage as her term runs out. Her main environmental accomplishment in New Jersey was securing funding to preserve a million acres of open space and farmland by 2010. Mr. Bush said she has demonstrated that she goes "beyond the old, central command mind-set that believes that Washington has all the answers."

In brief comments to reporters today - she took no questions - Mrs. Whitman said her guide would be Theodore Roosevelt. She quoted him as saying that while people had a right to use natural resources, "I do not recognize the right to waste them for the generations that come after." She is bound to come under immediate pressure, however, to roll back a raft of environmental regulations that the Clinton administration has imposed, including final pollution control rules that would force drastic reductions in the emissions of buses and trucks over the next decade. Republicans have warned that the rules could result in dangerous shortages and price surges for fuel.

There was little reaction today to the selection of Mr. Daniels. In 1989, he described himself in an op-ed article in The Washington Post as a "carefree consumer" of marijuana and Budweiser until he was arrested in 1970, while in college, for possession of marijuana. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $350.

Mr. Daniels wrote the article because as a political adviser to Senator Quayle he called for strict enforcement of drug laws against even casual users, and described himself as expert on the cost of such use. But the culture of Washington has changed a great deal since that issue came up, and it seems unlikely to become a major issue, Republican officials said.

"I mean, after the past eight years, someone smoking a reefer 30 years ago is not likely to be considered a major event," one Republican adviser to the Bush campaign said.

Mr. Ashcroft is bound to be grilled, however, for his strong views in favor of the death penalty - Mr. Bush said today that he saw no need for a moratorium on the federal death penalty - and for his involvement in the bitter Senate debate in October 1999 over President Clinton's nomination of Justice Ronnie White of the Missouri Supreme Court for a Federal District Court seat.

Senator Ashcroft lobbied hard against the nomination, calling Justice White "pro-criminal and activist," and all too eager to overturn any conviction that would send someone to death row. However, the record showed that as a judge, Justice White, who is black, had voted to affirm the death penalty in 41 of the 59 cases that came before him.

Moreover, in 10 of the 18 cases in which he voted against imposing the death penalty, he was in the company of a unanimous court. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that three of those named to the court by Mr. Ashcroft when he was governor voted to reverse the death penalty a greater percentage of the time than did Justice White.

After the Senate voted to reject the White nomination along strict party lines, by a vote of 54 to 45, President Clinton denounced the action as "a disgraceful act of partisan politics by the Republican majority and creates real doubt on the ability of the Senate to fairly perform its constitutional duty to advise and consent."

Today, Mr. Bush said twice that Mr. Ashcroft's greatest strength was discretion, and that "when he gives me his legal advice, you won't know about it unless I tell you." When reporters asked Mr. Ashcroft a question, Mr. Bush said to him, in a stage whisper: "You're welcome to say something, if you'd like to. Just don't tell them what your advice is."

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Hong Kong goes high-tech to save turtles

USA Today
12/23/00- Updated 07:57 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat02.htm

HONG KONG (AP) - The protection of sea turtles is going high-tech in Hong Kong: Workers are tagging the endangered animals with electronic transmitters to trace their movements, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said Saturday.

''The tagging exercise ... will enable us to identify an individual turtle nesting and help us to estimate the size and nesting habits of the sea turtles that come to Hong Kong,'' said Simon Chan, a conservation officer.

So far, one female turtle has been tagged with a unique code number and address to identify her nesting pattern.

The mother turtle laid 107 eggs at a popular beach in Hong Kong in September, later than the usual nesting season. The eggs were taken for artificial incubation so they wouldn't be disturbed by human activity on the beach, the department said.

Some of the 23 baby turtles hatched last month are now under temporary care at Hong Kong's Ocean Park. When the weather gets warm enough, they will be released into the sea.

The highly endangered green turtle is one of the three species of sea turtles found in Hong Kong waters and the only one known to breed locally. It is listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

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Bush taps Ashcroft, Whitman

USA Today
12/23/00- Updated 06:43 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/bush89.htm

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - President-elect Bush, promising a Justice Department ''guided by principle, not by politics,'' on Friday nominated Sen. John Ashcroft, a staunch conservative, to be attorney general. In a delicate balance, Bush also tapped moderate New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman as environmental chief. In announcing Ashcroft, who was defeated last month as Missouri senator, Bush said, ''He will be faithful to the law, pursuing justice without favor. He will enforce the law and he will follow the truth.'' Several hours later, Bush promoted Whitman, once a rising GOP star, saying, ''She has been able to balance the demands for economic growth and at the same time she supported environmental protection measures.''

Ashcroft, 58, is a former governor and attorney general of Missouri. He was elected to the Senate in 1994, and served on the Judiciary Committee. He lost re-election this year to Gov. Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash some three weeks before Election Day. Carnahan's widow, Jean, has been named to succeed Ashcroft next month.

Ashcroft said at a news conference that political defeat ''brings more than emotion and pain, it brings perspective.''

A favorite of GOP conservatives who had maneuvered against more moderate choices for the Justice Department, Ashcroft said he would ''strive to be a guardian of liberty and equal justice.'' An ardent foe of abortion, Ashcroft said the rule of law ''knows no class, sees no color and bows to no creed,'' and that will be his guideline.

''You have my word that I will administer the Department of Justice with integrity, I will advise your administration with integrity and I will enforce the laws ... with integrity,'' he promised Bush.

Bush said, ''John Ashcroft will perform his duties guided by principle, not by politics.''

Many Republicans have accused Attorney General Janet Reno of playing politics for refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton and Al Gore for alleged campaign fund-raising abuses.

Bush, asked how his department would differ from the Clinton administration, said he didn't want to ''look backwards.'' But he also said Ashcroft will do his job ''in an impartial way, not in a political way.''

Ashcroft and other Cabinet picks require Senate confirmation.

At the Department of Justice, Ashcroft would manage an agency whose budget this year is $21.8 billion. It comprises the FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and federal prosecutors, marshals and prisons, among others.

Bush also named Mitch Daniels, senior vice president of the drug giant Eli Lilly Corp. in Indianapolis, to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Daniels will be responsible for preparing the federal budget and managing spending for all federal agencies.

On the political front, Bush picked Virginia Gov. James Gilmore to head the Republican National Committee.

In a bow to environmentalists, Bush emphasized in naming Whitman that he intended to keep the EPA position at the Cabinet-level, a change first made by President Clinton that some Republicans opposed. He also said he wanted to work with states in imposing environmental policy.

Whitman said she was honored. ''This job will be a challenge,'' added Whitman, who grew up on a horse farm. She said she was looking forward to the challenge of building ''a more prosperous America while meeting our environmental obligations to those who follow us.''

Whitman, 54, a moderate who favors abortion rights, has angered social conservatives. As governor, she has championed open-space preservation in New Jersey and refused to abandon an unpopular auto emissions test designed to reduce air pollution. Her term ends in January 2002.

Conservatives such as television evangelist Pat Robertson had signaled impatience with Bush for looking at moderates for his Cabinet. Robertson said on a Thursday night show, ''The trust is growing thin'' with Bush.

Republicans close to the president-elect said he had decided to put conservatives in key Cabinet jobs, including attorney general, health and human services and defense, partly to please the GOP right.

Bush and Ashcroft, during their news conference, said they saw no grounds for a moratorium on federal executions.

Bush, who oversaw 152 executions as Texas governor, reiterated his support for the death penalty, adding, ''If there's compelling evidence that the system is not swift and sure and just, I will listen.''

A gospel-singing son of a minister, Ashcroft is a solid conservative who doesn't drink, smoke or dance. He supported measures allowing Missourians to carry concealed guns, though he also proposed banning juvenile possession of semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Ashcroft is an ardent opponent of abortion.

Interest groups were quick to criticize Ashcroft.

The Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest gay rights organizations, said Ashcroft's nomination marked ''a frightening halt to the moderate tone'' of earlier Bush nominations.

Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said her group opposes Ashcroft ''very strongly'' and she called him ''a real danger to women's rights.''

Bush, perhaps anticipating attacks, said of Ashcroft, ''There's no question in my mind that this is a person who believes in civil rights for all citizens.''

On other appointments:

Bush was asked about his apparent difficulty in finding a secretary of defense. ''I would characterize my search as deliberate,'' he said. Former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., a conservative long considered a sure-bet to become the Pentagon chief, remains a leading candidate. But Bush has told advisers he needs more time to consider his options. Other candidates include Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage, who both served under Vice President-elect Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary.

Another GOP governor, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, is in line to become Health and Human Services secretary. Senior Republicans in Washington and Wisconsin said Thompson accepted Bush's offer to take the job. However, two senior Bush advisers said the president-elect had not quite closed the deal with Thompson.

Former Rep. Floyd Flake, D-N.Y., said Friday he had withdrawn his name from consideration as education secretary. The development set back Bush's effort to name Democrats to his Cabinet.

Bush again brushed aside White House criticism of his suggestions that there are warning signs of an economic slowdown, saying it is foolish for anyone to suggest that he is trying to talk down economic prospects.

Bush said one way to encourage consumption and enhance consumer confidence ''would be to let the people have some of their own money back.''

''There are clear warning signs, warning signs which will require action in the halls of Congress,'' Bush said in a push for his $1.3 trillion, 10-year tax cut proposal.

---

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Daily Energy Update

Yahoo News
Saturday December 23, 7:34 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
Saturday, December 23, 2000
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/001223/ca_la_dept.html

(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power forecasts a peak energy load today in Los Angeles of 3150 Megawatts (MW) and expects declining loads through the holidays and into the New Year.

DWP has 1,000 MW of uncommitted energy available today.

This energy will be available to California entities such as the Independent System Operator (ISO) or the California Power Exchange (PX) to assist them in meeting their normal and emergency energy needs. No power will be sold outside of the state.

Throughout the energy crisis, DWP has provided surplus energy to California. Yesterday, DWP provided 300MW per hour to the ISO.

DWP has 24 major thermal generating units at eight facilities. Today, fourteen units are operating including all ten base load units. Of the ten units not operating, two units have scheduled major maintenance activities underway; two units are undergoing minor maintenance; and the remaining six units are available for use as the market requires.

Additionally, DWP has 27 hyrdo generating units at thirteen facilities. The output of these units is dependent on stream flows and reservoir levels. Current conditions allow for utilizing about 80% of DWP's hydro-generating capacity.

While electric rate increases are being sought by some utilities in California, Los Angeles city residents continue to enjoy stable rates that have remained unchanged for almost nine years. DWP provides electricity and water to the city's 3.8 million residents.

-------- police

LAPD corruption verdicts overturned

USA Today
12/23/00- Updated 10:24 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssat01.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Three police officers found guilty of corruption in the worst scandal in department history had their convictions tossed out by a judge who said the courts shouldn't remedy the scandal with an unfair verdict.

In a ruling obtained by The Associated Press late Friday, Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor said jurors disclosed in post-trial statements that they had focused on an issue which was never raised in the trial.

Connor threw out the convictions of Los Angeles Police Department Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy, and Officer Michael Buchanan, who were convicted last month of conspiracy and other charges involving framing gang members.

''While recognizing the enormous pressure on the community, on the police force, on the district attorney's office, and on the courts to 'fix' the Rampart scandal, this court is only interested in evaluating the fairness of the proceedings and determining whether justice was done in this case,'' Connor said in her 18-page ruling.

The officers were the first members of the now-defunct Rampart station anti-gang unit to be tried on charges based on the allegations of ex-officer Rafael Perez, who said police beat, robbed, framed and sometimes shot innocent people in the city's tough Rampart neighborhood near downtown.

The ruling reversed the convictions on the basis of jurors discussing the wrong issue and failing to decide a key question - whether two policemen were struck by a vehicle driven by a gang member.

Instead of discussing whether the accident occurred, Connor said the jurors focused on whether any of the injuries rose to the level of ''great bodily injury.''

''While the court cannot and will not presume to guess whether a correction of the errors would result in any different verdict, it most certainly concludes that the verdict in this case cannot stand,'' Connor said.

Defense attorneys said they were elated and hoped the reversals would mark an end to the case. The next court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 16, at which time a new trial could be scheduled.

Harland Braun, who represented Buchanan, said it was ''a relief to have this decision before Christmas. It had been surreal for the officers to stand there and have the jury convict them of something that didn't happen.''

District attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said prosecutors were deeply disappointed with Connor's ruling but had not yet had a chance to analyze it and decide on their next step.

Lead defense attorney Barry Levin, who represented Ortiz, said Connor took her action in the face of enormous community pressure.

''The court's ruling was absolutely just and correct and courageous in light of the controversy and emotion brought about by the prosecution of this case,'' Levin said.

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