------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Navy favors summer salvage of Ehime Maru
Radiation dose from DU can now be measured
DU from the BMJ
The effects of NMD on Chinese strategy
Choice of American Envoy to Moscow
Manhattan Project Website
Preserving the Birthplaces of the Atom Bomb
Help for Nuclear Workers
Ill workers program stays put
Paducah plant may get more cleanup funding
DOE site vicinity not risky
N.M. Winner in Budget Package
RADIATION ILLNESSES WORKERS' ENTITLEMENT
Video showed shadow not crack in Hanford tank
'Leak' really just shadow in Hanford tank
Justice won't handle money for Cold War workers

MILITARY
Mexico's Image Is Buffed and Tarnished With Military Drug Arrests
Our Soldiers May Pay for the Tax Cut

OTHER
First Mercury Poisoning/Vaccine Law Suit
Whitman Calls for Patience on Environmental Policies
A Sick Tribe and a Dump as a Neighbor
Court Clears Plan to Build Power Plants
Nature Meets Artifice, and a Ravine Is Reborn
MAINE: FOOT-AND-MOUTH FEARS
The Exploitation of Man and Beast
Algerian Is Found Guilty of Terrorism
Officers Accused of Lying Face Police Trial
Judge Dismisses Charges in Lodi Health Spa Case
In Assembly, Silence on Verniero's Fate
Fingerprinting's Reliability Draws Growing Court Challenges
MISSISSIPPI: PREPARING FOR SPRING BREAK
A Varied Police Force
Anger Over Flights Grew
Molehill Into Mountain
Bush and Jiang Exchange Drafts of a Letter Stating U.S. Regrets
China's Demand for Apology Is Rooted in Tradition
Algerian Is Found Guilty of Terrorism

ACTIVISTS
São Paulo's 'Roofless' Seize Downtown Buildings


-------- NUCLEAR

Navy favors summer salvage of Ehime Maru
But the environmental assessment will take months

Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Saturday, April 7, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Gregg K. Kakesako Star-Bulletin
http://starbulletin.com/2001/04/07/news/story8.html

Favorable summer weather and sea conditions in the area where the Japanese fishing training ship Ehime Maru sits in 2,003 feet of water nine miles south of Diamond Head point to a possibility of holding salvage operations later this year.

But it will still be another several months before an environmental assessment is completed by the Navy, assisted by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

The Navy said the Army command has extensive experience with environmental issues in Hawaii, including preparing environmental assessments for the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai and the RIMPAC exercises that are held in Hawaiian waters every two years.

At issue is whether raising the 500-ton Ehime Maru would be a danger to the environment since the ship was loaded with another 90,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 3,500 gallons of lube oil.

The Ehime Maru had left Honolulu Harbor at noon Feb. 9 and was struck and sunk by the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville 90 minutes later.

The Navy has said that its overriding concern is whether bringing the Japanese vessel to a shallower depth of about 90 feet near the Honolulu Airport could cause these substances to spill into the ocean, damaging the surrounding coral reefs and marine life when the ship is lifted from the seabed.

Besides the Army, the Navy has been working with the Department of Land and Natural Resources and Department of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Coast Guard and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

During meetings this week, Navy representatives said the months of June through August appear to be best time of year for such a massive salvage operation because of meteorological conditions.

The 190-foot Ehime Maru, from Uwajima Fisheries High School in Ehime prefecture in western Japan, sank after being hit by the 6,080-ton nuclear-powered sub Greeneville. Nine Japanese men and boys were lost at sea.

The families of the nine lost Japanese believe the bodies of their relatives may be still entombed in the Ehime Maru.

A decision by a panel of three U.S. admirals, who took testimony from 33 witnesses over a 212-week period, is expected by the middle of this month.

But it may not until the middle of May before Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, decides the fate of three Greeneville officers and other crewmen.

So far, only Cmdr. Scott Waddle, Greeneville skipper; Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, the sub's executive officer; and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, office of the deck that day, are named parties to the Navy's investigation.

Also at stake is the Navy's distinguished-visitor program, which played host to 16 civilians on Feb. 9.

The Navy has been criticized because the Greeneville's sole mission that day was to entertain the civilians, a violation of military policy.

-------- depleted uranium

Radiation dose from depleted uranium can now be measured

Business Morning Journal
BMJ 2001;322:865
7 April
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7290/865/a

EDITOR In her editorial about depleted uranium McDiarmid agrees that there is no justification for any claims of radiation induced lung cancer and leukaemia in veterans of the Gulf war.1 She makes no mention, however, of how individual radiation doses can be measured in any screening of Gulf war and Balkan veterans.

This is important not only for veterans' peace of mind but also for medicolegal purposes. For due process of law in the courts of the United States and the United Kingdom, where some veterans are currently taking legal action for possible radiation induced illnesses, depleted uranium must first be ruled in before being ruled out if the doses are found to be too low. Global dose estimates or results of mathematical modelling are too inaccurate to be used as dose values for an individual veteran. To date no practical method has been proposed for measuring the expected small doses received by veterans.

I suggest that electron paramagnetic resonance dosimetry using tooth enamel would be an appropriate method. It has already been used after the 1986 accident at Chernobyl for some of the clean-up workers and evacuees from the 30 km exclusion zone.2 Electron paramagnetic resonance dosimetry using tooth enamel has also been used for some of those exposed in the Techa river area and Mayak facility in the eastern Urals, where Soviet nuclear warheads were produced for many years, resulting in widespread contamination. This was reported by a group at the Institute of Metals in Ekaterinburg.3 The research at Ekaterinburg has continued at the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States Department of Commerce in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to which some of the Ekaterinburg scientists have relocated.4

The national institute's group can now measure electron paramagnetic resonance dose estimates down to a level of 20 mSv.2 The institute is organised such that, if requested, it can undertake electron paramagnetic resonance tooth enamel dosimetry for any source, including European veterans. This was confirmed to me by the chief of the ionising radiation division at the institute (B Course, personal communication, 1999). Hence at least one centre can be incorporated into any screening programme for veterans; as the technology becomes more widely available more facilities can be expected to be suitable for this form of low level radiation dosimetry.

Richard F Mould, radiation scientist. Sanderstead, South Croydon, Surrey CR2 0DH richardfmould@hotmail.com

Competing interests: None declared. RFM is not employed as a consultant to the National Institute of Standards and Technology; he only corresponds and exchanges academic papers with the institute. He is a consultant in radiation oncology.

1. McDiarmid MA. Depleted uranium and public health. BMJ 2001; 322: 123-124[Full Text]. (20 January.)

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/ijlink?linkType=FULL&journalCode=bmj&resid=322/7279/123

2. Mould RF. Chernobyl record: the definitive history of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000:158-164.

3. Romanyukha AA, Ignatiev EA, Degteva MO, Kozheurov VP, Wieser A, Jacob P. Radiation doses from the Ural region. Nature 1996; 381: 199-200[Medline].

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/external_ref?access_num=8622759&link_type=MED

4. Desrosiers MF, Romanyukha AA. Technical aspects of the electron paramagnetic resonance method for tooth enamel dosimetry. Biomarkers: medical and workplace applications. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry, 1998:53-64.

-------

DU from the BMJ

From: Dr Chris Busby [mailto:Christo@cato5.demon.co.uk]
(7 April) Letters

Radiation dose from depleted uranium can now be measured
EDITOR
http://bmj.com/math/12pt/normal/mdash.gif

In her editorial about depleted uranium McDiarmid agrees that there is no justification for any claims of radiation induced lung cancer and leukaemia in veterans of the Gulf war.1 She makes no mention, however, of how individual radiation doses can be measured in any screening of Gulf war and Balkan veterans. This is important not only for veterans' peace of mind but also for medicolegal purposes. For due process of law in the courts of the United States and the United Kingdom, where some veterans are currently taking legal action for possible radiation induced illnesses, depleted uranium must first be ruled in before being ruled out if the doses are found to be too low.

Global dose estimates or results of mathematical modelling are too inaccurate to be used as dose values for an individual veteran. To date no practical method has been proposed for measuring the expected small doses received by veterans. I suggest that electron paramagnetic resonance dosimetry using tooth enamel would be an appropriate method. It has already been used after the 1986 accident at Chernobyl for some of the clean-up workers and evacuees from the 30 km exclusion zone.2 Electron paramagnetic resonance dosimetry using tooth enamel has also been used for some of those exposed in the Techa river area and Mayak facility in the eastern Urals, where Soviet nuclear warheads were produced for many years, resulting in widespread contamination. This was reported by a group at the Institute of Metals in Ekaterinburg.3 The research at Ekaterinburg has continued at the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States Department of Commerce in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to which some of the Ekaterinburg scientists have relocated.4 The national Institute's group can now measure electron paramagnetic resonance dose estimates down to a level of 20 mSv.2 The institute is organised such that, if requested, it can undertake electron paramagnetic resonance tooth enamel dosimetry for any source, including European veterans. This was confirmed to me by the chief of the ionising radiation division at the institute (B Course, personal communication, 1999). Hence at least one centre can be incorporated into any screening programme for veterans; as the technology becomes more widely available more facilities can be expected to be suitable for this form of low level radiation dosimetry.

Richard F Mould, radiation scientist. Sanderstead, South Croydon, Surrey CR2 0DH richardfmould@hotmail.com

Competing interests: None declared. RFM is not employed as a consultant to the National Institute of Standards and Technology; he only corresponds and exchanges academic papers with the institute. He is a consultant in radiation oncology.

1. McDiarmid MA. Depleted uranium and public health. BMJ 2001; 322: 123-124 [Full Text]. (20 January.)

2. Mould RF. Chernobyl record: the definitive history of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000:158-164.

3. Romanyukha AA, Ignatiev EA, Degteva MO, Kozheurov VP, Wieser A, Jacob P. Radiation doses from the Ural region. Nature 1996; 381: 199-200[Medline].

4. Desrosiers MF, Romanyukha AA. Technical aspects of the electron paramagnetic resonance method for tooth enamel dosimetry. Biomarkers: medical and workplace applications. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry, 1998:53-64.

Dear friends

The esr of tooth enamel is not appropriate here as it would only determine average doses to teeth from external and atomic or molecular Uranium compounds in the teeth. They would have got there via an atomic process. Assessing extrenal radiation dose and effect is what got us into this pickle: only the nuclear industry and their friends believe this external nonsense any more. It is the particulate loading of the lymphatic system as measured by the activity of the tracheo bronchial lymph nodes that is the primary covariate of interest. In principle this could be done by sophisticated non invasive gamma spectrometry using Th234 and Pa234 lines or maybe low energy lines from Uranium. Otherwise it is autopsy. The Urine testing may give an indication but the correspondence between the Urine U and TBN U is not safe. My latest information is that a high proportion of Kosovar and Bosnian urine samples show significant DU, but you will have to wait for this result a few weeks. There is more than 15-fold increase in cancer and lymphoma/leukemia in Sarajevo since 1995 (source: cancer registry).

Best wishes Chris

Dr Chris Busby

------ -------- missile defense

The effects of NMD on Chinese strategy

7 March 2001
http://www.janes.com/security/regional_security/news/jir/jir010307_1_n.shtml

Dr Li Bin is associate professor and director of the Arms Control Program, Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

THE PLANNED deployment of the US National Missile Defense (NMD) system is viewed by China as a threat to its national security and a destabilising initiative that may force China to alter plans for the modernisation of its own nuclear arsenal.

How exactly NMD will affect China's nuclear strategy is currently unclear but some judegements can be made based on a quantitative understanding of how China's nuclear deterrent currently works.

China's nuclear forces were developed to defend the country's national security interests against the possibility of nuclear blackmail. Initially, China possessed only a symbolic nuclear deterrence with no real capability to retaliate, but from 1980, when China acquired the ability to launch inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), its deterrence has been based on the quantitative ambiguity of its nuclear force rather than the size of its arsenal.

The two dozen Chinese land-based ICBMs that have been detected and located by US intelligence agencies would have very little chance of surviving a US preemptive nuclear strike. However, because China has neither confirmed nor denied any US estimates of its ICBM strength, it is difficult for the USA to rule out some margin of error. In its current nuclear strategy the possibility of a few undetected Chinese ICBMs being launched in retaliation is considered enough to deter the USA from attempting a pre-emptive nuclear strike against China. Thus, it is the uncertainty of US estimates, rather than the total number of Chinese ICBMs, that is directly relevant to the credibility of Chinese deterrence in its current form.

Now, however, China is about to enter a new stage of nuclear development, in which it aims to acquire a deterrent capability that does not rely on uncertainty to be effective. In this stage, no matter how well the USA measures the total number of Chinese nuclear weapons, at least a few Chinese ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) would survive a US pre-emptive strike and could be used to retaliate. This improvement in China's deterrent capability is designed to avoid any uncertainty in external perceptions of its ability to retaliate to a pre-emptive strike.

To achieve its aim, China can either increase the quantity or raise the survivability of its nuclear arsenal.

Table 1 shows that if China does not improve the survivability of its missiles, beyond placing them in hardened silos, it will require a large expansion of its arsenal. If, on the other hand, China successfully develops mobile ICBMs or SLBMs, it needs very little, if any, increase in its long-range nuclear force.

Reports indicate that the size of the Chinese long-range nuclear arsenal has remained stable over the last two decades and that China is working on mobile ICBMs. This suggests that China has chosen to pursue survivability rather than expansion. If there is no deployment of a US NMD system, this is likely to remain the case. It is predictable, stable, and will increase Chinese security without increasing the perception of a Chinese threat in other countries. However, NMD deployment would force China to consider adopting approaches that would help defeat that defence and this would introduce much greater uncertainty into the direction of its modernisation programme.

According to its current plan, the USA will deploy NMD in several phases. In the first development phase, sometimes referred to as Capability One (C1), it will deploy one hundred interceptors in Alaska, upgrade existing early warning radars, and deploy a new X-band tracking radar. The goal of this phase is said to be to defend against an attack by a few tens of missiles with, at best, simple countermeasures. It is noteworthy that the C1 system was originally designed to have twenty interceptors and to deal with a few ICBMs. Its proposed size and capability was subsequently enlarged to its current level.

In later phases, the USA plans to deploy more radars, low-orbit and high-orbit missile-tracking satellites, more interceptors and would add a new launch site. The stated goals of these phases are to defend against a few tens of missiles with complex countermeasures.

The number of missiles the C1 system is intended to defend against is comparable to the reported size of the whole Chinese ICBM force and is obviously larger than the number of Chinese retaliatory ICBMs. Thus, even a very thin NMD system with very few interceptors would pose a serious threat to China's retaliatory capability.

No matter how the US government clarifies its intentions in deploying NMD, many Americans still believe that a NMD designed for 'rogue states' would have an inherent capability to defend against Chinese ICBMs. China fears that if the USA believes that a first nuclear strike plus a NMD system could render impotent China's nuclear retaliatory capability, the USA might become less cautious during any crisis involving China.

NMD deployment would therefore disturb the strategic stability between China and the USA and increase the risk of conflict.

China's arms control representative, Ambassador Sha Zukang, has said "it is evident that the US NMD will seriously undermine the effectiveness of China's limited nuclear capability from the first day of its deployment. This can not but cause grave concern to China."

The structure of the NMD system designed for the Clinton Administration is clearly East Asia-oriented. In the C1 phase, the only new missile tracking radar will be deployed on Shemya, an outpost well located to watch missiles from East Asia, including Russian Siberia, North Korea, and China. The only NMD launch site in the C1 and C2 phases would be in Central Alaska, which is much closer to East Asia than the Middle East or European part of Russia. This geographical structure provides more time and less required defence range for the interceptors in defending against missiles from East Asia than from other places in the world. This may help the USA take a strategy of 'shoot-look-shoot' in defending against missiles from East Asia. This strategy could raise the kill probability of the NMD system and allow it to operate more efficiently. Thus, the East Asia focused structure of the NMD system could leave the USA with a strong impression that missiles from East Asia would have little chance to penetrate US defences.

The intention behind NMD is also a concern to China. As the relations between North and South Korea are improving, the voices in the USA calling for aiming the NMD at China are getting stronger. This will cause serious concerns in China and the Chinese will have to explore possible responses in their nuclear development if the USA decides to deploy NMD.

China is now using its diplomatic resources to influence the USA on NMD deployment. The hope is that the USA will take China's security concerns seriously when it considers NMD deployment. If not, China will seek to develop other approaches in order to maintain the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrence. Any such approaches would need to meet four fundamental requirements.

Above all, the direction of future developments must be feasible in helping defeat the US NMD. Judging the feasibility of proposed approaches is difficult because the Ballistic Missile Defense Organisation (BMDO) has declared that the NMD system would be able to defeat simple and complicated countermeasures as its development proceeds and it is not clear how it would do this based on the proposed technology. Also, although the technology involved in the NMD plan proposed by the Clinton Administration was clear, the plan may change under the Bush administration. Furthermore, China needs to worry about any scientific surprises in NMD development. Finally, different organisations in the Chinese defence industry may have different assessments of the feasibility of different approaches. Due to this kind of uncertainty, the Chinese government may want to pursue more than one set of approaches in case one does not work.

Some of the Chinese approaches should be visible to the USA so that they will know that their NMD system will not be able to counter China's retaliatory capability.

Since the Chinese government's priorities lie in economic development, it is important that nuclear modernisation does not become a financial burden. Hence affordability will be a central consideration.

It is also important that the chosen course to modernisation should not increase the perception of China as a threat to other countries. China is now in the process of participating more fully in the international community and it needs a peaceful environment for its economic development. China would prefer moderate approaches while avoiding others that would have greater negative consequences in arms control or that would lead to new tensions.

In addition to these key requirements, there are some additional factors that could also influence the Chinese government's decision.

- Decision makers will prefer approaches that are compatible with each other. However, decision makers may want to see some competition among incompatible approaches in the early part of the development process. Therefore, incompatible approaches may not be excluded in the early Chinese plans.

- Some precautionary approaches are also needed. The BMDO declares that NMD will defeat simple and complicated countermeasures in different development phases. It is not clear how the current NMD technology will do this. So the Chinese would have to worry about some possible scientific surprises. Also some people in the USA are pushing for stronger missile defences or even a revival of part of the Space Defense Initiative (SDI) programme, thus China may want to make some technical preparations to deal with a stronger missile defence.

There are four possible approaches to defeating NMD. The first aims to overwhelm the defence by building more ICBMs, placing multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) on existing ICBMs to multiply the number of warheads; releasing decoys from the missiles; or dispersing chaff to fool the sensors on interceptors.

The second aims to lower the observability of warheads by applying radar or Infrared stealth technology.

The third group creates a rivalry between the warheads and the interceptors during flight by making warheads maneuvre or through other means.

The fourth raises the survivability of ICBMs by deploying mobile ICBMs and/or SLBMs; building a missile defence; or putting nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

If China aims to overwhelm NMD by developing more warheads, the size of its retaliatory force should be larger than the sum of the number of warheads intercepted by the defence and the number of warheads that can produce 'intolerable damage'. Here we assume that two interceptors are used to kill one warhead, so that a C1 system with 100 interceptors is able to kill 50 warheads.

Table 2 gives the number of warheads China needs to overwhelm C1 or C2 systems. This suggests that it is not economic or efficient for China to enlarge its silo-based nuclear force in response to NMD deployment. It would be a more sensible option for China to overwhelm NMD with fully mobile ICBMs or very survivable SLBMs when these technologies are ready.

A key problem here is the timing. If China goes for a strategy of overwhelming NMD with an enlarged nuclear force, it will need to develop mobile ICBMs or SLBMs before the USA finishes the deployment of NMD. This may not be feasible and thus China might need to revert to a massive expansion of its ICBM arsenal.

Enlarging its nuclear forces could damage China's international reputation and could involve a significant financial burden. It might also require the production of additional fissile materials for new warheads, especially if China chooses to add silo-based ICBMs. If China needs to keep the option of such a build-up open this would make it reluctant to join a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

Although the costs could be large, the build-up option cannot be ruled out. It is mathematically simple to understand and certain to work and thus, in Chinese debate, would win some support from non-technical people. Another advantage is that the build-up would be visible to the outside world and would therefore help discourage any first strike against China.

An efficient way to enlarge a nuclear force is to 'MIRV' missiles. However, for China, MIRVing its silo-based ICBMs is not a good idea because its nuclear force is much smaller than Russia's. MIRVing the survivable ICBMs could be better, but this depends on whether the technology is mature.

Some Chinese articles mention multiple-warheads being used as countermeasures and these probably refer to missiles with one real warhead plus many decoys. As discussed in a report made by US scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Massachussets Institute of Technology (UCS/MIT), the proposed NMD sensors cannot differentiate real warheads from decoys during the mid-course of flight.

The development of such technology is within China's capabilities. This means that the deployment of decoys is a much more efficient and simple way than the use of MIRVs for China to defeat the NMD system.

Stealth technology can be used to make warheads less observable. For example, the radar reflection of a warhead can be reduced by putting the warhead in a reentry vehicle with a pointed cone-sphere shape or painting the reentry vehicle with radar absorbing materials. This countermeasure is based on fairly uncomplicated technology and can reduce the effectiveness of the defence. Another stealth technology, which is discussed in the UCS/MIT report, is to reduce the infrared radiation of the warhead by cooling its skin. This countermeasure is also based on achievable technology and can help defeat the defence.

The only countermeasure so far mentioned by the Chinese defence industry is the use of a maneuvring warhead.

The maneuvre capability of the warhead should be comparable to that of the interceptor, so the warhead needs to detect the approaching interceptor and start its maneuvre at an appropriate time; otherwise, the warhead needs to carry a lot of fuel so that it can maneuvre continuously. Either option is a challenge to warhead designers. The first requires very capable sensors on the warhead that can search approaching interceptors from all possible directions, while the latter needs a considerable reduction in the weight of the nuclear device so that the re-entry vehicle can carry additional fuel and an engine.

To match the maneuvre capability of the interceptor, the warhead may also need a new design to tolerate off-axis accelerations during maneuvres. This may require new nuclear tests and therefore create difficulties for China in ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Raising the survivability of Chinese nuclear weapons cannot directly defeat NMD, however, it can make some other approaches much more effective and efficient. For example, China would need many fewer nuclear warheads to overwhelm NMD if China can deploy survivable ICBMs rather than silo-based ICBMs. In any case it is the main goal of Chinese nuclear modernisation to build a survivable mobile and/or sea-based nuclear force.

Some point missile defences protecting missile silos may also help raise the survivability of Chinese ICBMs. However, the technology is very challenging and the cost is very high.

Another approach to increasing nuclear weapon survivability is to put Chinese nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. In this case, China would need to launch its nuclear weapons after it detects a nuclear attack but before incoming nuclear weapons arrive. This strategy is called "launch on warning" and was cited as a reason for not fearing an NMD system by American negotiators in their consultations with Russia over the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. This approach requires advanced and reliable early-warning systems, which China does not, as yet, possess.

All these approaches and maybe some others are being considered by Chinese decision makers. Deciding on a particular course of action will be difficult because of the many factors that need to be taken into consideration, and the uncertainty involved means that the future development of Chinese nuclear deterrent is highly unpredictable.

Some of the approaches that the Chinese government will need to consider are likely to cause problems for Chinese participation in arms control. For example, China may need some additional fissile material if it needs to build more nuclear weapons, especially silo-based ICBMs.

Even if China does not opt for a build-up strategy it will be difficult for China to accept a FMCT that puts a ceiling on the size of the Chinese nuclear force and loses China an option for countering NMD.

In China, there have been some arguments that China lost too much in signing the CTBT. If some Chinese feel that more nuclear tests are required to develop countermeasures like the maneuvring warhead discussed above, voices opposing the CTBT would certainly become stronger in China.

In the non-proliferation arena, China would become less interested in legally incorporating the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and its annexes into its export control law if the USA does not echo China's concern over NMD. The USA would become less influential in dissuading China to cut its co-operation with some countries if China believes that such co-operation is consistent with existing international law. In the area of nuclear disarmament, the NMD will also become a new and serious obstacle that blocks China from considering joining global nuclear reduction efforts.

Dr Li Bin will be speaking at the forthcoming Jane's Missile Proliferation 2001 Conference, 12-13 November 2001, in Edinburgh, UK. Go to conference.janes.com

-------- russia

Choice of American Envoy to Moscow Awaits Decision on Hard or Soft Line

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, April 7, 2001
Patrick E. Tyler New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/16169.htm

MOSCOW In the first weeks of the Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell recommended to President George W. Bush that the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, Alexander Vershbow, become the next ambassador to Russia, administration officials say.

And though Mr. Bush has since sent to the Senate nominations for ambassadorial posts in Britain, France, Japan, Canada, India and the Bahamas - and on Wednesday nominated envoys to Malta and Jamaica - Mr. Vershbow's nomination remains uncertain as the administration continues to debate whether to pursue a harder line toward President Vladimir Putin.

White House and State Department officials would not comment this week on the recommendation.

"This is a personnel matter for the White House," said the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher.

But other officials said that the delay in making a decision on Mr. Vershbow's nomination might reflect the unresolved policy discussions under way, and perhaps a decision to downgrade Russia's status in the administration's foreign policy calculations.

"This is usually one of the most important political decisions made at the outset of a new administration," a Russia specialist said. "It seems that they are sending a signal to Russia."

Several specialists fear that the Bush administration no longer sees a vital American interest in being deeply involved - as the Clinton administration was - in Russia's post-Cold-War evolution, especially as Mr. Putin pursues policies at home and abroad that rankle Washington.

The contrast between Mr. Bush and his predecessor already is apparent.

When President Bill Clinton arrived in office, he asked one of his closest advisers on Russia policy, Strobe Talbott, to take the Moscow ambassador's post, but Mr. Talbott declined in favor of a senior State Department job focused on Russia and the former Soviet world.

Mr. Clinton then turned to Thomas Pickering, a seasoned career diplomat who had served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and dispatched him to Moscow at a time when President Boris Yeltsin was struggling to consolidate democratic forces in Russia against a tenacious opposition of nationalists and Communists.

Mr. Pickering served until 1996 and was replaced by James Collins, a career Foreign Service specialist on Russia whose tour ends this summer.

Russia no longer is a battleground between Communists and democrats, but the post-Soviet legacy has left Mr. Putin with an inheritance of thousands of nuclear weapons, 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, a weak economy, heavy debts, a bloody secessionist conflict in Chechnya and many other problems for which he is seeking either Western assistance or understanding and cooperation.

As ambassador to NATO, Mr. Vershbow at times clashed with Russian civilian and military leaders angry over NATO's expansion eastward and the alliance's military intervention in the Balkans in 1999.

He has also been a consistent advocate of American plans to put up an anti-missile shield over the United States.

In a radio interview in Moscow in October 1999, Mr. Vershbow used the arguments of the Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, who died in 1989, to persuade a Russian audience of the logic of missile defenses.

Mr. Sakharov was a nuclear physicist by profession and Mr. Vershbow recounted that he once argued that Washington and Moscow would someday be able to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals, but would still need "limited means" to defend themselves against nations that acquired weapons of mass destruction. "So Russia should be listening to Sakharov," Mr. Vershbow told the radio audience.

A 1974 graduate of Yale University, Mr. Vershbow served from 1979 to 1981 at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and during the Reagan and first Bush administrations he was director of the Office of Soviet Union Affairs.

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

Manhattan Project Website

Sat, 7 Apr 2001
Manhattan Project
Volume II - Issue 2
March and April 2001 Newsletter
http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/NL/NL-04-01.htm

This newsletter is sponsored by the Society for the Historical Preservation of the Manhattan Project (http://www.manhattanprojectmemorial.org and the Children of the Manhattan Project (http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org )

We have begun our ambitious project to add loads of new content to the site. We are preparing a long term project plan and this will be included in our next newsletter. For this newsletter, we have added the following new content:

Women Pioneers in Science
This new section includes photos and biographies of eight outstanding women scientists whose work greatly impacted the successful outcome of the Manhattan Project. Although only two directly worked on the project, all made extraordinary achievements in nuclear science. Anyone interested in the history of atomic energy needs to read how these women overcame unbelievable obstacles to excel in their field.

New Dedication Page
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Anyone cognizant of the history of the Manhattan Project realizes few people could have achieved the success demonstrated by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Also, perhaps no one in American history was more maligned by his own government than J. Robert Oppenheimer.

"In the Shadow of Los Alamos - 'The Selected Writings of Edith Warner'" We have included an excerpt from the soon to be published book by Northern New Mexico's own Patrick Burns. More on this in our next newsletter.

Site Additions & Enhancements - Next 60 Days

Several new additions and enhancements will be made to the web site in the next 60 days. Following is a tentative list of some of the more major ones planned:

Several new documents and photos relating to Los Alamos will be added.

Phase I of our Oak Ridge section will be implemented.

Our sister site, http://www.manhattanprojectmemorial.org will be completely re-done with a new color scheme and content.

Our new Student and Instructor  Education section will be completed.

We will launch our new Message Board Community.

-
Veteran Search and the Memorial Site

We must not lose sight that our primary focus has always been and will continue to be the Manhattan Project Veteran. We have several initiatives started that should improve our success in locating veterans.

If anyone has information on any of the following veterans, please contact us.

a) Dr. Rose Mooney; Professor at Newcomb College then to Los Alamos b) Dr. Joseph Morris; Prof. at Tulane; then to Los Alamos c) Grover H. Catt; 509th Composite Group d) Dr. Arthur Hughes; Prof. at Washington Univ.; St. Louis e) Edward Robert Beckendorf; Probably Los Alamos f) John Frank Boling; Civilian employee; Oak Ridge g) Paul Gilham Lowe; With Manhattan Project; unsure location h) John Westerling; Chemical engineer; SED; Los Alamos

Quote of the Month...

Sometime in 1943, General Groves, while visiting the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory which was at work separating U235 by electromagnetic means, attempted to spur Ernest O. Lawrence (the director of the lab) on by saying to him, "You know, Doctor Lawrence, your reputation is at stake here". Later that evening over cocktails, Lawrence (who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1939) turned and said to Groves, "You know, General, my reputation has been made; but yours is at stake here." Groves did not respond. Story related by Edward Teller, who was present at meeting.

Question of the Month...

First, the question from our last newsletter: One prominent member of the Manhattan Project was known "unofficially" as "His Nibs". Who was this person? We received only 2 replies.

The correct answer: Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves

This Month's Question: What was the MAUD Committee?

Did You Know?...

Blacks who worked at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project years were forced to live separately from the white work force. They lived in an area known as the "Colored Hutment".

Final Message

Again, we wish to thank all of you for your continued support and interest in preserving the historical importance of the Manhattan Project. We have over 250 on our e-mail list and are adding to it every month.

We are always eager for new content for both our newsletter and web site. The interest amongst our young people is growing by leaps and bounds. Anything that you can contribute would be greatly appreciated.

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

Preserving the Birthplaces of the Atom Bomb

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/national/07ATOM.html

RICHLAND, Wash. - B Reactor rises above the desolate plain here, a windowless, dilapidated and ominous landmark of the nuclear age.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which surrounds the reactor, has the country's greatest concentration of radioactive wastes, in underground tanks that have been leaking for decades. Because of the contamination, the byproduct of 50 years of nuclear- weapons production, the government allows only occasional visitors here, and nobody younger than 18.

Yet this unlikely structure, a crucible of the Manhattan Project, may become a national landmark. The Energy Department, at the behest of Congress, is studying the feasibility of decontaminating and preserving B Reactor, and perhaps one day opening it to the public.

The effort reflects the growing realization among government officials and preservationists that the remnants of the earliest days of the atomic age and the cold war are in danger of disappearing. The concern has intensified in recent years as the Energy Department has dismantled deteriorating buildings at Hanford, in southeastern Washington; Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and other sites around the country where scientists and engineers once raced to plan, build and detonate the atomic bomb. Many of the buildings are contaminated, and most have been off-limits for decades.

"The department realized that if no one stepped in, we would essentially eliminate the physical property of the Manhattan Project," said Dr. F. G. Gosling, the Energy Department's chief historian.

Nations traditionally make monuments of their grandest and most glorious places. The campaign for B Reactor, which opened in 1944 under the supervision of the physicist Enrico Fermi, reflects a growing willingness to also protect historic sites that evoke unpleasant and painful memories, and in some cases are actually hazardous.

"The atomic bomb was one of the most significant events of the 20th century, and these are the historic sites associated with it," said John M. Fowler, executive director of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal agency that monitors government properties.

"People don't think about these places in the kind of historical terms they think about Gettysburg. But we have to make decisions now that will determine whether these buildings continue to exist."

In a report for the Energy Department, the council recently recommended designating eight Manhattan Project sites, including B Reactor, as national landmarks. They also include the site in Los Alamos where components for the first atomic bombs were assembled; a fragment of the building in Oak Ridge that provided uranium isotopes for the Hiroshima bomb, and the Trinity site, south of Albuquerque, where on July 16, 1945, the atomic age began in a blast so bright it was said to have reflected off the moon.

Several potential landmarks are still contaminated. Of those, only the B Reactor, which made plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb, is being proposed for eventual year-round tourism. A few sites have already been preserved and made public, including the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, which was built as a smaller pilot plant for Hanford, and the Trinity site in Alamogordo, N.M., which allows visitors twice a year, on the first Saturday in April and October.

But not until now has the Energy Department taken a coordinated approach to preserving atomic sites.

"I don't want the country to forget what it took to win a war and what this community gave up to win it," said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who secured $950,000 from Congress last year for the department to make B Reactor safe enough for cleanup workers, and to study the feasibility of converting it to a museum.

She envisions a place "kind of like the Holocaust Museum," she said. "It's not a place to enjoy a day, but where you learn what can happen."

Keith A. Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland office, which oversees Hanford, said he thought it would be possible to eliminate airborne contamination at B Reactor, one step in making it safe for tourism. Doug Sherwood, Hanford project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency, said the reactor could be made safe for strictly controlled public access, but noted that some might find the cost prohibitive. "There's quite an interest in preserving this facility," he said, but added, "It's a big job and possibly one we should not undertake."

He estimated that it could cost $10 million to make B Reactor museum-ready, beyond the costs of the current cleanup of the Hanford reservation, which are expected to total many billions of dollars in the next few decades.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, cautioned that talk about a B Reactor museum was premature until the cleanup was finished.

"I don't see how you can justify spending federal funds to preserve a facility at Hanford and elsewhere, where close communities are still at risk," he said. Hanford is about 25 miles from the Oregon border, upstream on the Columbia River.

Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said, "We know that sites and workers played an important part of history that should endure," but that no decision had been made on which sites to save.

Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," supports maintaining at least some of what he calls "the physical reality of that time."

"Many people think that the Manhattan Project was 30 people building a bomb at Los Alamos," he added, "but it was 150,000 - an effort comparable at the time to the race to the moon. It's our past. Not to preserve it is to censor it."

Behind the push for preservation is a growing interest in atomic tourism. On the Web, atomictourist.com directs atom-age buffs to places like the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which contains the Trinity site, and EBR1, an experimental breeder reactor outside Arco, Idaho.

At the Greenbrier Resort in Warm Springs, W.Va., nearly 200,000 visitors have paid up to $25 to tour the ultimate Strangelovian relic: the cavernous cold war bunker built to shelter members of Congress from a nuclear attack. This summer, the Smithsonian Institution is offering a tour of Manhattan Project landmarks in New Mexico, including the High Bay building, a ramshackle structure where key components for the Trinity device and the Nagasaki bomb were assembled. Ellen Bradbury, who is leading the Smithsonian tour, calls High Bay "the Manhattan Project equivalent of the Silicon Valley garage."

The most compelling landmarks may be the Manhattan Project towns themselves.

Like Richland and Los Alamos, Oak Ridge was a once top-secret creation of the government, omitted from maps until 1949. Today, visitors can take "atomic train" trips that start at the old guard station and offer scenic views of the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Building, an engineering marvel that sprawls over 44 acres. The advisory council suggests saving a fragment of K-25, the Roosevelt Cell, which was intended as a viewing platform for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a watchdog group, noted that K-25 still contains hazardous waste and 23 miles of contaminated pipeline. A wiser commemoration, he said, would be "a green field and a marker."

Obstacles to preservation are even more formidable at Hanford. Sixty- eight of its 177 underground tanks are assumed to have leaked. Experts say that much of the Hanford Reservation's 560 square miles can never be made clean enough for unrestricted access, but some say parts of it could be.

The move to save B Reactor, which has been idle since 1968, has been spearheaded by the local B Reactor Museum Association, many of whose members worked at Hanford. They are hoping for regular tours of the reactor's face, a looming panel of antique nozzles and tubes, as well as the brass-knobbed control room, whose "you are there" quality is intact, as if Fermi had just gotten up from his chair.

For now, Hanford is something of a nuclear cemetery. The Army Corps of Engineers was drawn to this high desert land because of its remoteness and its proximity to the Columbia River, with water for cooling reactors, and sand and gravel banks for making concrete. In February 1943, the government gave residents of the towns of White Bluff and Hanford 28 days to move out. The towns' remnants are still here, including the shell of the old Hanford High School, reachable only with security clearance down crumbling four-lane roads - some now leading nowhere - built for the Manhattan Project.

Members of the B Reactor Museum Association recall its shroud of secrecy in the 1940's. "We didn't talk about reactors, we talked about `the unit,'" said Roger Rohrbacher, 80, who was an engineer at B Reactor. "We didn't talk about plutonium, we talked about `the product.'"

Many of them want to honor the technological achievements of Hanford as well as the suffering it brought.

"When you're standing in front of the reactor you realize this is what humans can do if pushed to the limit," said Gene Weisskopf, president of the association. "It's a great place to contemplate war."

---

Help for Nuclear Workers

Washington Post
Saturday, April 7, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52402-2001Apr7?language=printer

LATE LAST YEAR Congress agreed to compensate workers who became ill from exposure to toxic substances in the plants that built nuclear weapons. The action was overdue. For too many years the government had resisted claims from workers who through the Cold War built and tested the nuclear arsenal. It seemed justice was at last on the way. But now questions have popped up over implementation.

Congress put $60 million into the Labor Department's budget to set up the program, which will provide lump-sum payments and medical benefits for covered workers. President Clinton signed an executive order to get work underway, putting Labor in charge. Now Labor Secretary Elaine Chao wants to move the effort to the Justice Department, which administers an older program that provides lump-sum payments to people who were involved in uranium mining or exposed to radiation from nuclear tests. Secretary Chao argued that another nuclear compensation program would be duplicative and that building expertise at Labor to handle the claims would cause delays.

This jurisdictional fight was waged last year and settled the right way. Justice has been handling one-time payments and processing many fewer each year than are expected under the new program. Labor is best placed to administer ongoing medical claims, as it already does for the black lung program and federal employees' compensation program, among others. Everybody involved, including Secretary Chao, says the only concern is how to best take care of affected workers. The way to do that is stop playing hot potato with this program and get on with it.

-------

Ill workers program stays put
Labor to remain in charge of plan

Evansville Courier & Press
04/07/01
By KATHERINE RIZZO Associated Press writer
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200104/07+program040701_news.html+20010407

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has decided against giving the Justice Department control of a benefit program for sick nuclear workers, a senator who represents some of the ailing workers said Friday.

"We got an assurance from the White House that they are not going to transfer it there," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Bingaman was one of the authors of the new entitlement program which, later this year, is supposed to start offering $150,000 and lifetime medical care to Cold War-era workers exposed to risky levels of radiation, silica or beryllium.

He was among many worker advocates on Capitol Hill who strenuously objected when the White House circulated a proposed executive order transferring the new program from the Labor Department to the Justice Department.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao insisted her department was not the one best suited for the job. She was backed by three influential congressmen: House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, who heads the committee that oversees the Labor Department.

But Bingaman had a few tricks up his sleeve. Without publicly revealing his strategy, he blocked pending nominations to Labor Department posts.

The senator said he didn't even know the names of the nominees whose confirmation he threatened to sidetrack, but let the White House know he "didn't want to go forward with any nominations there in the Department of Labor until we got some assurance that this wouldn't be going to Justice, where the history of efforts like this has been miserable."

The Justice Department runs a program that gives one-time payments to former uranium miners and people who lived downwind of nuclear test blasts. But the program's small staff and lack of branch offices were two of the reasons the new program's authors didn't want Justice to run it.

Lowell "Pete" Strader, legislative director for the union that represents workers at 11 sites in the nuclear weapons complex, welcomed Bingaman's announcement. "We take that as wonderful news," said Strader. "We knew Justice wasn't prepared to handle the program."

Bingaman said the White House is "still uncertain what exactly will be done with the program to make it work, but they are committed to making it work."

The toll-free information line is 1-877-447-9756.

-------- kentucky

Paducah plant may get more cleanup funding
Senate backs $1 billion boost for DOE sites

Courier-Journal
By James R. Carroll, The Courier-Journal
Saturday, April 7, 2001
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/04/07/ke040701s9506.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Senate has passed a budget resolution calling for a $1 billion spending increase on environmental cleanup at Department of Energy facilities, including the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.

The spending boost was proposed by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and a handful of other senators and was added to the Senate budget resolution, a blueprint for federal spending in fiscal 2002. The resolution is separate from the appropriations bill, which will be considered later.

The $1 billion addition to the Energy Department's environmental management program would bring total spending nationwide to $6.6 billion. No amount was specified for radioactive and hazardous chemical contamination at the Paducah plant, where $90 million is being spent this year on cleanup.

On Monday, the Energy Department is expected to release the details of its budget proposals for fiscal 2002, a package that may include a cut in cleanup spending. Kentucky lawmakers learned in February that the White House's Office of Management and Budget was recommending a $400 million reduction in spending on environmental and health hazards at Energy Department facilities around the country.

McConnell, fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning and Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Republican who represents Kentucky's 1st District -- which includes the Paducah plant -- met with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on March 12 to make their case against cutting the cleanup budget. Whitfield said afterward that Abraham was ''receptive'' but made no commitments.

In a statement released yesterday, McConnell said he proposed the budget resolution amendment, which was passed Thursday night, because removing the ''environmental nightmare'' at Paducah ''remains a top priority for me.''

The plant, where uranium was processed for use in nuclear weapons during the Cold War, has a variety of radiation and chemical contaminants. McConnell has told Abraham he would use ''every tool at my disposal to secure the resources needed to continue cleanup at the Paducah facility.''

Other Senate sponsors of the proposal to increase cleanup spending were Michael Crapo and Larry Craig, both Idaho Republicans, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both Washington Democrats, and Oregon Republican Gordon Smith.

Whitfield and House colleagues from other states with contaminated sites have told Abraham that any cuts delaying cleanup will increase longterm costs to taxpayers, make dealing with environmental hazards more difficult and expose the federal government to lawsuits from the states.

The sprawling Paducah facility is fouled by radioactive plutonium, technetium, neptunium and uranium, as well as by chemicals such as PCBs, trichloroethylene and beryllium. The site stores tons of contaminated scrap metal, cylinders of spent uranium, dioxin-contaminated soil and radioactive waste.

An investigation by The CourierJournal last year found that surface and underground water, soil, plants and animals around the facility show evidence of contamination. Current and former workers are being tested for potential job-related health problems.

Sen. Mitch McConnnell said in a statement that removing the ''environmental nightmare'' at Paducah is a top priority.

---

DOE site vicinity not risky: agency Lawsuits filed in Paducah claim past and current exposure to neighbors.
The report admits some danger in the past.

The Paducah Sun
Saturday, April 07, 2001
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11138.htm

Despite multibillion-dollar lawsuits alleging the contrary, a federal health agency says environmental exposure around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant poses "no apparent public health hazard."

A new report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says that while people in the area may be exposed to hazardous substances, "those substances are not at levels which would cause illness."

The report says past groundwater exposure to lead and the cleaning solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) threatened children who routinely drank from four residential wells near the plant. But those wells are no longer used, so the contamination "should not pose a hazard in the future unless new wells are drilled," the report said.

Exposure to vinyl chloride, possibly created when TCE breaks down in groundwater, and to large quantities of airborne uranium and hydrogen fluoride during past accidental releases from the plant are "indeterminate public health hazards" because data are not available to assess the risk, the agency said.

The findings disagree with arguments made in federal lawsuits filed in Paducah two years ago, claiming past and current exposure to workers and the public. Since then, the Department of Energy, which owns the plant, has admitted former practices that may have threatened workers and the public.

TCE, widely used at the plant for many years, has contaminated huge amounts of groundwater beneath the facility, and traces were found in a few residential wells in 1991. As a precaution, the Energy Department has replaced about 100 wells with city water around the plant.

The plant enriches uranium for use in nuclear fuel. DOE reports say tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas were released from process buildings during the first few decades of operation, although releases are minuscule now. Hazardous uranium and hydrogen fluoride are contained in the gaseous releases.

Federal law mandated the public assessment because the plant is a Superfund site. An agency news release said the work reviewed chemical and radioactive materials, their known health effects and potential pathways to humans, and community reports of injuries, disease and death.

The agency said the reports will be available starting about next Friday at the Paducah Public Library, Paducah Community College library, Metropolis Public Library and Murray State University's Waterfield Library. The assessment also is available at the agency Web site at www.atsdr.cdc.gov.

A public comment period ends May 14. Written comments should be sent to Chief, Program Evaluation, Records and Information Services Branch, ATSDR, 1600 Clifton Road, NE, Mailstop E-56, Atlanta, GA 30333.

For more information, contact Carol Connell toll-free at 1-888-422-8737 or by e-mail at cconnell@cdc.gov. Callers should refer to the "Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site" and ask to speak to a health assessor in the Division of Health Assessment and Consultation.

-------- new mexico

N.M. Winner in Budget Package

Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, April 7, 2001
By Michael Coleman Journal Washington Bureau
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/298710news04-07-01.htm

WASHINGTON - Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., couldn't seem to quit smiling on Friday after the Senate approved a budget resolution that paves the way for a $1.28 trillion tax cut and numerous projects in New Mexico.

Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, steered the budget to final passage Friday after five days of floor debate. He said the final budget resolution contains tax relief for all Americans and important protections for New Mexico.

"Most of the major programs in New Mexico - Social Security, Medicare, education and national defense, including the labs - are pretty well taken of," Domenici said in an interview after the vote.

He said his job this year was "much harder" than usual because of the 50-50 Senate split, but he praised the 65-35 vote as unusually bipartisan. Last year, the Senate approved the budget resolution on a 51-45 vote.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., voted against the resolution on Friday. He said the budget contained some good provisions for New Mexico, but he voted against it because he thought the tax cut is too large and will consume money needed for child health insurance and public education. "It will keep us from doing what we need to do to expand health-care coverage for the uninsured," Bingaman said in an interview. "It also will constrain our ability to do what we should in education."

The budget resolution is a broad spending blueprint and does not lock in appropriation levels.

Congressional appropriators will begin to attach specific price tags to federal programs in the coming months. President Bush will release his budget Monday.

Some New Mexico-related items contained in the resolution approved by the Senate on Friday include:

$6.1 billion for nuclear weapons maintenance at the Department of Energy labs at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories;

$3.2 billion for civilian science research at DOE labs;

$5.1 billion for the National Science Foundation, a $674 million increase over the current year budget. The NSF is integral to the Very Large Array and other space-related programs in New Mexico;

$710 million to compensate uranium miners made sick by their work on behalf of the federal government during the Cold War;

$30 million to compensate New Mexico counties that face lost tax revenues because of federal land ownership in those counties;

$4 billion for the federal low-income heating assistance program.

-------- ohio

RADIATION ILLNESSES WORKERS' ENTITLEMENT NOT HEADED TO JUSTICE

The Columbus Dispatch Online Archival Article
Saturday, April 7, 2001
By Katherine Rizzo
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has decided against giving the Justice Department control of a benefit program for sick nuclear workers, a senator who represents some of the ailing workers said yesterday.

"We got an assurance from the White House that they are not going to transfer it there,'' said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Bingaman was one of the authors of the new entitlement program, which starting later this year will offer $150,000 and lifetime medical care to Cold War-era workers exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium. Several hundred workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, could be included.

Several lawmakers, including Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and Ohio Sen. George V. Voinovich, strenuously objected to a proposal to transfer the program from the Labor Department to the Justice Department.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao insisted her department was not the one best-suited for the job.

The Justice Department runs a program that gives one-time payments to former uranium miners and people who lived downwind of nuclear test blasts who became sick because of exposure.

Its small claims staff and lack of branch claims offices were two of the reasons the new program's authors said they preferred it to be run by the Labor Department.

Bingaman said the administration had not decided whether the Labor Department would head the new program.

The new program is for people who contracted cancer or lung disease because of exposure while working with radioactive materials.

-------- washington

Video showed shadow not crack in Hanford tank

Hanford News
Sat, Apr 7, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0407-2.html

A shadow, not a crack, lurks on the interior of the concrete dome of Hanford's huge underground radioactive waste storage Tank C-107, Hanford engineers concluded.

Last month, a routine video camera check on the interior of central Hanford's single-shell Tank C-107 showed a strange line on the dome that might have been a crack.

It is a somewhat straight, although slightly wiggly line stretching 20 to 30 feet from the dome's edge to one of the pipes sticking through the dome to the surface.

No crack has shown up so far in any of central Hanford's 177 underground tanks that hold 53 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes.

Experts did not see any signs of leaks or of a weakened dome in Tank C-107 other than the mysterious line.

The worst-case scenario would be the dome cracking and collapsing into the 257,000 gallons of radioactive sludge at the tank's bottom.

"The age of this 54-year-old tank and the potential harm to the environment and public health and safety required us to take a very conservative approach to this potential situation," said Harry Boston, manager of the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection, in a press release Friday.

Engineers studied the mystery line and concluded it is a shadow cast from an irregular ridge of concrete protruding slightly from the dome.

This dome will be routinely checked in the future as a precaution, according to DOE.

------

'Leak' really just shadow in Hanford tank

Seattle Times
Saturday, April 07, 2001
By The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=hanford07m&date=20010407

RICHLAND - That shadowy something inside a Hanford nuclear-waste storage tank is not a crack but a shadow, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded yesterday.

Officials had been concerned about the integrity of the tank, which contains wastes left over from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Engineers concluded the image picked up by cameras inside Tank C-107 was a shadow cast by irregular concrete on the surface of the tank's ceiling. The tank has not leaked.

"The age of this 54-year-old tank and the potential harm to the environment and public health and safety required us to take a very conservative approach to this potential situation," said Harry Boston, manager of the Energy Department's Office of River Protection.

Last month, a video camera picked up the feature during routine sampling inside the 530,000-gallon tank, which contains about 257,000 gallons of radioactive sludge.

The tank is one of 149 single-shell tanks constructed at Hanford in the early 1940s for temporary waste storage. Although Tank C-107 is considered sound, 67 of the single-shell tanks have leaked.

---

Senator told Justice won't handle money for Cold War workers

Hanford News
Sat, Apr 7, 2001
By The Associated Press and the Herald staff
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0407-1.html

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has decided against giving the Justice Department control of a benefit program for sick nuclear workers at Hanford and other Department of Energy sites, a senator who represents some of the ailing workers said Friday.

"We got an assurance from the White House that they are not going to transfer it there," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Bingaman was one of the authors of the new entitlement program, which later this year is supposed to start offering money and lifetime medical care to Cold War-era workers exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium.

He was among many worker advocates on Capitol Hill who strenuously objected when the White House circulated a proposed executive order transferring the new program from the Labor Department to the Justice Department.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote a letter opposing the transfer of the program, and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said he was concerned a switch to the Justice Department would cause a delay.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao insisted her department was not the one best suited for the job. She got backing from three influential congressmen, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, who heads the committee that oversees the Labor Department.

But Bingaman also played some quiet hardball.

Without publicly revealing his strategy, he used his right under Senate rules to block pending nominations to Labor Department posts.

The senator said he didn't even know the names of the nominees whose confirmation he threatened to sidetrack, but let the White House know he "didn't want to go forward with any nominations there in the Department of Labor until we got some assurance that this wouldn't be going to Justice, where the history of efforts like this has been miserable."

"We take that as wonderful news," said Lowell "Pete" Strader, legislative director for the union that represents workers at 11 sites in the nuclear weapons complex. "We knew Justice wasn't prepared to handle the program."

Bingaman said discussions had not been completed and the administration had not decided whether the Labor Department or some other agency would head the new program.

"They are still uncertain what exactly will be done with the program to make it work, but they are committed to making it work," the senator said. "They will meet with us here when Congress returns after this recess to let us know what their plan is."

The new program is for workers who contracted cancer or lung disease because of exposure while on the payrolls of private companies that did work for the bomb program. Some worked on federal property, others at factories that had government contracts.

The Energy Department preliminarily identified 317 sites in 37 states where exposed workers might qualify for benefits.


-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

Mexico's Image Is Buffed and Tarnished With Military Drug Arrests

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07MEXI.html

MEXICO CITY, April 6 - The government of President Vicente Fox has made its first important drug arrests since taking power five months ago. Unfortunately for Mexican drug enforcement, the three men arrested were an Army brigadier general, a captain and a lieutenant.

Brig. Gen. Ricardo Martínez, who commanded the 21st Motorized Cavalry Regiment based in Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, and his aides, Capt. Pedro Maya and Lt. Javier Quevedo, were imprisoned late Thursday at a military base in Mexico City. The three officers are charged with having provided protection from arrest in return for payoffs from cocaine and marijuana traffickers operating along the gulf coast. They face sentences of up to 40 years if convicted on drugs and weapons charges.

The Mexican government made the army its front-line force in the drug war in 1996, after two decades in which drug barons had thoroughly corrupted state and federal police forces. But the power of drug money over military officers has marred the army's role from the start. General Martínez is the sixth Mexican general jailed on charges of being in the pay of the drug lords since 1997.

General Martínez and his aides were arrested a week after 21 suspects, charged with playing roles in what once was a major cocaine trafficking organization known as the gulf cartel, were arrested in the gulf coast state of Tamaulipas. The office of Mexico's secretary of defense said the three officers were accused of providing "protection to drug traffickers" from that same group.

In August, Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, who had just retired from the army, and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, a counterinsurgency expert with a reputation for repression and torture, were arrested on charges that they took bribes to protect members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix drug gang. And in 1997, Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, then the chief of all of Mexico's antidrug efforts, was arrested and later convicted of protecting drug traffickers.

President Fox had promised to withdraw the military from the drug war. The Constitution bars the military from any role other than national defense. But Mr. Fox changed his mind after taking office.

The drug cartels have delivered telephone death threats in the past few months to Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Ricardo Clemente Vega, and his family, the general said publicly this week. General Vega said he believed that the threats were the result of continuing investigations into the links between military officers and some of Mexico's largest drug organizations.

Today, President Fox, visiting Colombia and its president, Andrés Pastrana, said the two nations would join forces against cocaine trafficking, and he called the arrests of the military men in Mexico a small but significant sign of progress.

"Actions like this one, in which a general was arrested," Mr. Fox said, will "generate confidence, and we will continue with them."

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

Our Soldiers May Pay for the Tax Cut

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By JOE LIEBERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/opinion/07LIEB.html

WASHINGTON -- What's the quickest way to turn a hawk into a dove? The answer seems to be: Cut its taxes.

For the better part of the past decade, Republican hawks have been arguing for a major build-up in military spending, often attacking the Clinton administration for underfunding our armed forces. But now, hardly a sound is heard from these hawks about President Bush's plans, as reflected in the Republicans' budget resolution, to hold almost all of the defense budget next year and for the rest of the decade at the same levels President Clinton had planned.

What happened to the purported readiness crisis that Mr. Bush decried during the campaign last fall? What has changed? Nothing, and that's the problem. The tax plan that Mr. Bush first proposed 15 months ago in the New Hampshire presidential primary remains the same, despite the fact that it is now impossible for him to keep his promises to the military.

The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan anti-deficit group, says the president's tax plan could cost $2.3 trillion over 10 years. The Senate voted yesterday for a somewhat smaller tax cut, but the president remains wedded to his original proposal. That means the budget doesn't add up today or leave enough money for our military needs tomorrow. In the administration's new budgetary calculation, it seems joint filers trump the Joint Chiefs.

Although our military remains the strongest fighting force in the world, it does have some serious immediate and long-term needs. And if we don't act now to ensure we can meet those needs, we will put our security at risk. That is not just my assessment, but the opinion of every leader at the Pentagon and independent defense expert I have talked to, not to mention Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

We need to spend more now on spare parts, ammunition and training; our military personnel also need immediate increases to improve substandard housing and health care. If we don't meet these urgent needs, the Pentagon will be forced to play a shell game, moving money from other critical programs to avoid cutting back on training, parts and pay. Instead, President Bush should quickly send Congress a request for a supplemental appropriation for our military.

For the long term, we are told to wait for the completion of a strategic review, conducted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, before any more money is committed to defense. That, too, is wrong.

We may not yet know exactly what programs we will want to finance, or exactly how much additional money we will need, but we do know that transforming our military will not be less expensive than keeping our current military.

On Wednesday, Mary Landrieu and several other Democratic senators proposed reducing President Bush's tax cut to allow us to increase defense spending. We wanted to add a total of $100 billion - a sensible sum for defense over the next decade. Regrettably, the amendment lost 52-47, with 49 Republicans and three Democrats voting against it. Voting for it were 46 Democrats and John McCain.

If the Bush tax cut or anything similar passes, there will simply not be enough money in the next decade for the spending that will be necessary to provide for our common defense. If that happens, America and all of us who are its citizens will suffer.

Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, is a United States senator from Connecticut. He serves on the Armed Services Committee.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

First Mercury Poisoning/Vaccine Law Suit Filed March 23, 2001

mercola.com
04/07/01
http://www.mercola.com/2001/apr/7/vaccine_mercury.htm

The law firm of Waters & Kraus, LLP, based in Dallas, Texas, announced that it has filed the first known civil case alleging that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, used recently in more than 30 childhood vaccines, has caused mercury poisoning in many children. Counter, et al v. Abbott Laboratories, et al, (Cause No. GN 100866, 200th District Court - Travis County, Texas).

The symptoms of mercury poisoning are, in many cases, identical to the symptoms of autism, although the suit does not allege that all persons suffering from the symptoms of autism do so as a result of mercury poisoning. However, many children suffering from mercury poisoning have been previously diagnosed with autism due to the similarity of symptoms.

Children have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury from the vaccines that exceed threshold safety levels that have been established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

In many instances, children carry unmistakable evidence of mercury poisoning and the symptoms of mercury poisoning were first manifested after receiving vaccines tainted by thimerosal. In many cases, children exhibited normal neurological and other developmental patterns until such time as the cumulative dose of mercury caused irreparable damage to both the neurological and the general developmental process. For example, many children had developed language and other skills that were later lost as the result of the cumulative exposure to mercury.

Thimerosal is a mercury-based additive.

Mercury has been known to be hazardous for literally hundreds of years, and its dangers have been well known and documented during all times when the defendants manufactured and/or sold mercury-containing pediatric vaccine products.

Waters & Kraus anticipates that a significant number of individual cases against the vaccine industry will be filed in the near future. The firm anticipates investigating and prosecuting individual claims throughout the United States, in conjunction with the following firms and others:

Evert & Weathersby, LLP - Atlanta, Georgia Dogan & Wilkinson, PLLC - Pascagoula, Mississippi Doran & Murphy, LLP - Buffalo, New York Leach, Schwarz & Strassberg - Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania Jones, Martin, Parris & Tessener Law Offices, PLLC - Raleigh, North Carolina

Additional inquiries should be addressed to Melissa Miles at Waters & Kraus (Dallas), (214) 357-6244 or miles@awpk.com.

Potential claimants should call Claire Bothwell at Waters & Kraus (California), (562) 436-8833 or bothwell@awpk.com

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

If you know anyone who has been damaged by vaccines you might want to forward them this information.

---

Whitman Calls for Patience on Environmental Policies

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/politics/07WHIT.html

WASHINGTON, April 6 - Under fire for a Bush administration seen as hostile to the environment, Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued a plea for patience today, saying critics had been too quick to denounce early decisions.

On global warming and arsenic in drinking water, the two areas in which reversals by the White House have attracted the most criticism, Mrs. Whitman said the administration was working hard to develop better, more balanced policies than those that had been set aside.

But in her first address to a major environmental organization, Mrs. Whitman met with considerable skepticism. After she left the podium, the head of the National Wildlife Federation, which has a bipartisan, middle-of-the-road reputation, appealed to her "to call a truce in what is beginning to look like a war on the environment."

"We can't stand idly by and watch what is beginning to look like a cascade of efforts to roll back progress on the environment," said Mark Van Putten, the president of the wildlife federation, which had not joined other environmental groups in their criticism of the administration.

The tense exchange at a hotel here came as the administration was facing sharper criticism from other environmental groups, one of which has already called for Mrs. Whitman's resignation, and from Congressional Democrats who have urged the White House to reconsider many of its early environmental actions.

The environmental group that has called for Mrs. Whitman's resignation is Friends of the Earth, which endorsed former Vice President Al Gore last fall. The organization said Mrs. Whitman's defense of the administration positions cost her any credibility as a moderate.

Mrs. Whitman, the former New Jersey governor, had advised the White House against its decision to come out against the Kyoto treaty on global warming. But in her address today, and in comments to reporters afterward, she assumed the role of a committed loyalist, saying she "obviously" did not agree with Mr. Van Putten's characterization and offering the most extensive defense to date of the administration's environmental policy making.

Mrs. Whitman told reporters that critics had been exaggerating the impact of "one or two decisions that people might disagree with" while minimizing others generally seen as more favorable to the environment. One of those decisions left in place a Clinton administration rule forcing drastic reductions in emissions of pollutants by buses and big trucks, even though that action had been opposed by the oil industry.

On arsenic, on which the Bush administration abandoned a strict drinking-water standard approved by the Clinton administration, Mrs. Whitman said for the first time that "there's a very good likelihood" that a review now under way might result in a recommendation of an even tougher standard.

On global warming, Mrs. Whitman elaborated on earlier defenses of the administration's decisions to set aside the Kyoto treaty and to reverse a campaign promise to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide. Both actions have been criticized within the United States and abroad.

Mrs. Whitman said President Bush "wants to be proactive on the issue; he wants to move forward."

"But I think you'll agree," she said, "that we are better off moving forward than fighting battles we may have already lost."

Mrs. Whitman's comment was an allusion to the strong sentiment against the Kyoto accord that the Senate expressed in 1997, even before the treaty was signed.

In place of the treaty's approach, which would have required the United States and other industrialized countries to meet strict standards for reductions of emissions of heat- trapping gases, Mrs. Whitman said the administration was seeking to develop an alternative that would emphasize "technology, market- based incentives and other innovative approaches."

Outside the room where Mrs. Whitman spoke, the National Wildlife Federation had posted signs calling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska "too wild to drill," a rallying cry in opposition to another administration policy.

Mrs. Whitman did not explicitly defend the administration's effort to win Congressional approval for oil drilling in the refuge. But she did express frustration at the difficulty the administration faced in coming up with new supplies of energy.

"Nobody wants to drill for oil because of what that might do to the environment," Mrs. Whitman told reporters. "No one wants oil transmission pipelines because they blow up. No one want to talk about nuclear energy. And even windmills kill birds because they're in the flyway."

The administration is facing deadlines that could force decisions on other environmental issues.

By April 17, it must decide whether to leave in place a Clinton administration rule that would sharply lower the threshold for companies that must make public details about their emissions of lead, which can cause severe health problems.

Other policies under review include a reassessment of regulations on dioxin and a plan, approved but not put into effect by the Clinton administration, to regulate emissions of mercury from power plants.

---

A Sick Tribe and a Dump as a Neighbor

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07MOHA.html

ST. REGIS MOHAWK RESERVATION, N.Y. - On this frigid day, on the land where his people have lived for centuries, Paul Thompson is stomping through the snow, offering a tour of the landmarks of his childhood.

Over there is the squiggly cove off the St. Lawrence River, where the walleye pike would run upstream to spawn every April. Down there, on the river bank, his folks would greet the fishermen, peer into their crates and pick out the evening supper - perch, bass, or maybe a sturgeon head for soup.

And there, just beyond the reservation line, where General Motors set up an engine parts factory in the 1950's, was a mound that the Thompson kids foraged in. They plucked scrap metal and sold it in town for extra cash. They burned the wood at home. Before there were water pipes in every house, Mohawks from other parts of the reservation rowed down the river to get oil drums, rinsed them and used them to collect rainwater for bathing. "Recycling," Paul's sister, Marilyn, called it.

That heap turned out to be one of two General Motors waste sites filled with toxic trash, including polychlorinated biphenyls, considered by federal officials to be a probable carcinogen in humans and better known today as PCB's. "That was a gold mine for us," Mr. Thompson said of the dump. Today, he calls it "the bottomless pit."

Thirteen years ago, a crew of men, covered head to toe in white spaceman- like suits, covered it with an impermeable sheath. Mr. Thompson, one of the three tribal chiefs, still carries around pictures of that day. The cap was meant as a temporary remedy. But it remains, a 35-foot-high mound draped in snow.

The plant has been a federal Superfund site since 1984. Under orders from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, General Motors dredged 30 tons of contaminated soil from the St. Lawrence and hauled toxic sludge from lagoons on company property. Federal officials and tribal leaders have urged families on the reservation not to eat the fish, drink the water or breast-feed their babies, and the level of chemicals found in breast milk has decreased in the last several years.

But both waste sites have lain fallow for a long time. And that inaction has now led the state attorney general's office and the Mohawk tribe to threaten to sue General Motors, on the grounds that the dumps "may present an imminent and substantial endangerment" to the well-being of the river, the endangered species that survive in it, and to the roughly 9,000 people here, west of Plattsburgh on the Canadian border.

"They have basically flouted the law for 25 years," charged Christopher A. Amato, deputy chief of the attorney general's environmental bureau. "We were hoping that the E.P.A. would step in and put pressure on the company to clean up quickly, but that unfortunately has not happened."

General Motors officials call the threatened lawsuit inappropriate and meritless. The attorney general has no right to sue, they contend, because G.M. has complied with the federal environmental agency's orders.

E.P.A. officials agree, although they acknowledge that health and environmental risks still exist. "It's a high priority site," said Mary Helen Cervantes, an agency spokeswoman. "We are eager to continue with the clean-up plan."

For nearly a decade, G.M. has wanted to seal the dumps permanently and build a wall to prevent PCB's from further contaminating Indian land. Federal officials have approved that plan, but to build the wall, General Motors needs to get on the reservation, and, G.M. notes, the Mohawks will not allow that.

For their part, the Mohawks insist that the only acceptable solution is to dig out the toxic sludge - from the reservation as well as the factory site - and get rid of it forever.

This lengthy impasse - which the latest legal threat is aimed at breaking - has underscored radically different ways of looking at the natural world. "This is the only place we have, and we're going to be here forever," explained Ken Jock, director of the tribe's environmental division. "Our teachers have told us, when we make a decision we have to look at how it affects the next seven generations. It's a different sense of time."

The Mohawk lifestyle has changed over the decades since the engine parts plant and other factories were built next to the reservation. Hardly anyone fishes anymore. If they eat fish, it is the packaged kind from the supermarket. And no one lives off the land. The cucumbers and white corn that the Thompson clan grew on their farm are long gone.

Paul Thompson, 56, owns a gas station now. There are a couple of pizzerias, a truck stop called the Bear's Den and several convenience stores. Fast-food spots and two mammoth supermarkets are just beyond the reservation.

For more than 25 years, the cove has been contaminated with PCB's. The PCB's got in the fish. Nursing mothers passed on the chemicals to their babies. The PCB's got inside the turtles and the peregrine falcons, and inside the horses that grazed on the grass on the Thompsons' farm.

Scientists from the State University of New York at Albany, who have conducted studies on the Mohawk families, recently concluded that those who ate PCB-laced fish might be more likely to suffer from a thyroid disorder characterized by fatigue, obesity and, in children, developmental delays. The Environmental Protection Agency also says other studies show that these chemicals can cause low birth weights and can compromise immune systems.

At the squat brick Indian health clinic here, the chief physician, Ben Kelly, saw some two dozen patients one day: nearly a fourth had thyroid disease, and 60 percent had diabetes, he said.

Indians nationwide have unusually high rates of diabetes. But here, Dr. Kelly said, he has witnessed a new pattern in their illnesses. Fifteen years ago, when he returned to the reservation from Tufts Medical School, he saw the onset of diabetes in patients in their 50's and 60's. Today, parents drag in their listless teenagers by the ears - only to find diabetes in their blood. Asthma and hypertension are also common, he added.

It is not clear whether or to what extent any of these illnesses can be traced to the PCB's. Diets have changed since he was a child here, Dr. Kelly said, and like other Americans, the Mohawks are nowhere near as physically active as they once were. "Times change, no doubt about it," Dr. Kelly said. "And in this instance, not for the better."

The nurse practitioner at the clinic, Beverly Cook Jackson, takes a larger, blunter view. "Losing our connection to the earth has had a negative impact on our people, and that makes us sick," she said. "It's not just PCB's. But I don't think it helps if you can't even drink your water."

Scientists have concluded that even low levels of PCB exposure here could have caused more serious illnesses than previously detected. "That small relationship we expect to see correlated with reduced I.Q., with poor performance in school, with some abnormality in growth, particularly sexual maturation, and increased susceptibility to certain chronic diseases such as thyroid disease and diabetes," said Dr. David Carpenter, of the public health school at the State University in Albany. "This has adversely affected their health."

The E.P.A. is conducting its own national study of the health effects of PCB's, including on the thyroid.

Today, Mr. Thompson has diabetes. Four of his five siblings have thyroid disorders. His sister Marilyn had her thyroid gland removed when a tumor was discovered there. All six of her children have asthma; two of them have learning disabilities; another suffers from a thyroid condition; a 2-year-old granddaughter was born with a muscle disorder that has affected her motor skills. One family member had 14 miscarriages.

Ms. Thompson, 48, finds it hardest to talk about how PCB's might have seeped into her children's bodies. She nursed all but one of her children. "I just thought my kids would be healthier," she said.

Does she think she could have passed on the poisons to her babies that way? "Now I do," she said flatly. "Then I didn't."

From her window, Ms. Thompson can see the tower of the G.M. plant, just beyond the snow. If she squints, she can almost picture the children as they once foraged through the dump. "When they put the cap on it," she said, "they had their men in white suits. White suits! Our kids are riding on three-wheelers out there and they never even notified us. I ask myself - Why? Because we are just native people? I look at that every day and I get so angry."

A General Motors spokesman, Gerry Holmes, dismisses that notion, and says the company wants to continue its cleanup. Ms. Cervantes, of the E.P.A., credits the company for the progress that has been made so far. "There's absolutely work that needs to be done," she said, "and work that's already been done."

---

Court Clears Plan to Build Power Plants

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. with DIANE CARDWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07POWE.html

A State Supreme Court justice ruled yesterday that the state power authority can continue building several mini-power plants around New York City, determining that state officials did follow environmental laws in choosing locations for the plants, despite a rushed schedule.

The ruling was a setback for environmentalists and neighborhood activists who had sued the Pataki administration. The suit maintained that state officials ran roughshod over state law in their haste to install the turbine plants before the demand for power peaks this summer. Opponents also complain that the plants are being forced exclusively on impoverished neighborhoods.

Today's decision by Justice Lawrence S. Knipel in Brooklyn stood in stark conflict with another decision earlier this week in which a Queens judge said the state should halt work on one of the plants on Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City. That judge gave the two sides five days to work out a court order for him to sign and his ruling will not take effect until then. The losing side in each decision is considering an appeal, which could set the stage for a lengthy legal battle. In the meantime, the New York Power Authority is plowing ahead with construction at all the sites, officials said.

The administration is spending $510 million to build six new, small plants powered by natural gas turbine engines in the city and one on Long Island before June 1. Gov. George E. Pataki and his aides have argued that the generators are necessary to avoid sharp jumps in electricity prices like those last summer, and even possible blackouts.

Environmentalists argued in their suit that the administration had used loopholes in the regulations to avoid a lengthy, public review of the projects that would normally have taken place. For instance, the administration said the turbines, each of which has the capacity to produce 88 megawatts, would only be allowed to produce 79.9 megawatts, because anything above 80 megawatts triggers a more extensive environmental study.

But Justice Knipel rejected every argument the plaintiffs made. He said the environmentalists had "failed to demonstrate" that state officials "abused their discretion or violated any rule of law." In a footnote, Justice Knipel also questioned the ruling by Justice Joseph G. Golia in Queens, asserting that he believed the state had followed its own laws in that case as well.

It was unclear yesterday how the two decisions would affect each other. If both are appealed, the Second Department of the Appellate Division, under whose jurisdiction the cases fall, might choose to rule on all the plants at once. Or a panel of appeals judges could consider the Queens plant separately.

A spokesman for the power authority said Justice Knipel's decision would bolster an appeal of the Queens ruling and would clear the way for construction to continue.

"It's a victory and a relief to be able to move forward so we can keep the lights on for the people of New York City," the spokesman, Michael Petralia, said.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani also lauded the decision. In recent days, he has spoken out against the opponents of the plants and urged their swift construction. During his weekly radio address yesterday morning, the mayor warned that people's lives would be at stake if the plants were not built and a blackout occurred.

"People actually die," Mr. Giuliani said. "You have a risk to human life. So we should not allow that."

Lawyers for the environmentalists and neighborhood advocates said they were studying yesterday's decision to find a basis for appeal. Several opponents of the plants expressed disappointment in the judge's ruling.

"We are saddened by the entire process that brought us here," said Gail Suchman, a lawyer with the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which represented the plaintiffs. "The decision sends a message the process can be manipulated and maneuvered to ram projects through, particularly in low income communities or communities of color."

The Pataki administration and the power authority have been arguing that the city will face a 397-megawatt shortage this summer unless the turbines, which can produce 407 megawatts, are built.

Few experts on the city's power grid believe there will be blackouts this summer even if the plants are not built, but most agree that electricity prices will rise suddenly. Private developers have proposed several much larger new plants, many well over 1,000 megawatts, but the first of those will not go on line for at least three years.

The power authority is proposing 11 turbines at the six sites that would burn natural gas, among the cleanest of fuels. The turbines are to be housed in windowless metal buildings with tall smokestacks. Two of the plants are being built in the South Bronx. The others are to be built in Williamsburg and Sunset Park, in Brooklyn and in Rosebank on Staten Island. The Long Island plant is being constructed in Islip.

Last November, the power authority convinced a state board that oversees the choice of power plants that it did not need to do a full environmental impact statement - a comprehensive review required by state law for most large construction projects - because the turbines would produce less than 80 megawatts. Such a review would have taken months, jeopardizing the administration's plan to have the plants running by June. As a result, the plants were approved relatively quickly after only four public hearings last December and without extensive studies of their impact on the environment.

"They ran straight through the environmental review process and public participation process," said Jason K. Babbie of the New York Public Interest Research Group, one of the plaintiffs. "People felt like they had these plants jammed down their throats and they did."

Mr. Babbie argued that had the administration spent the $510 million on conservation programs instead of on the plants, there would be no looming power shortages.

The plants have become a sensitive political issue in the city, with the mayor urging their construction and Democratic borough presidents carving out more populist positions. Claire Shulman, the Queens borough president, has sided with opponents. The Brooklyn borough president, Howard Golden, said yesterday that he remained "very concerned about the lack of a proper environmental review for all sites selected."

The Bronx borough president, Fernando Ferrer, a Democrat who is running for mayor, expressed outrage yesterday at the decision. "When it comes to building a new multiscreen Cineplex or Disney Store, they roll out the red carpet in Midtown Manhattan," Mr. Ferrer said in a statement. "But when the power authority needs to construct new generators that could foul the air with dangerous toxins, the state immediately looks to black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the outer boroughs."

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Nature Meets Artifice, and a Ravine Is Reborn

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By BARBARA STEWART
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07RAVI.html

The trees are bare now and the Prospect Park Ravine, a replica of the forested landscape found in the Adirondacks, is a study in soft browns, greens and ochres.

But soon it will be lush and bright with flowering shrubs again, as it was envisioned by its creators, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

Four years ago, the ravine was closed to the public; it was in a state of devastation, and the 90-acre forest surrounding it was dying.

But today, after a $6 million renovation, the 20-acre winding waterway is re-opening. Once again it lives up to Olmsted's description: it takes "an irregular course, with numerous small rapids, shoots and eddies, among rocks and ferns."

"The illusion is that it goes on and on," said Christian Zimmerman, the lead landscape designer in the restoration. "The water bodies are very small, but they're designed so you never see them all at once. They bend around corners, out of sight."

Olmsted and Vaux designed the ravine as the spine of Prospect Park. Brooklyn residents like to say the designers learned from their earlier mistakes; Olmsted and Vaux both thought Prospect Park was superior to Central Park.

Olmsted had toured the Yosemite mountains and Vaux had toured the Adirondacks, and they wanted to give Prospect Park a bit of mountainous, forested landscape.

"They wanted to convey a sense of enlarged freedom and an ability to get away from the city elements," said Tupper Thomas, the Prospect Park administrator. "They wanted a happy, placid place."

"In the summer," she said, "you feel so deep in the woods, you think you couldn't possibly find your way out."

During the last century, the ravine lost much of its luster. Silt filled the stream. Towering phragmite reeds choked the pools. The boulders lining the gorge collapsed, turning it into a huge mudhole. The log shelters and bridges fell. In the 1960's, officials cleared the underbrush as a crime-fighting measure, Ms. Thomas said.

But the clearances devastated the forest and waterways. The steep slopes eroded, dumping dirt into the pools. Trees could no longer absorb oxygen and nutrients from the compacted soil. The stream was reduced to a thin, muddy trickle.

During the renovation, 12,000 cubic yards of sediment were removed from the main pool alone. Workers dug six feet underground to remove the roots of the phragmites. Each boulder was numbered and placed in its original spot. Seeds of native plants and shrubs were collected in New Jersey and Staten Island. Vast amounts of vegetation were planted: 193,221 vines, ferns, grasses and wildflowers; 10,671 shrubs; 29,714 aquatic plants; and 9,381 trees. Water lilies, papyrus and bullrushes were planted in the pools, and red and sugar maples, white pines, and red and white oak were added to the forest. The invasive plants that Olmsted and Vaux used were avoided.

The renovation was work in bulk, but it was meticulous in adhering to the design. The original plans had been lost, so the designers used photographs from the Brooklyn Library, the Library of Congress, local residents, and from Olmsted's home, Fairstead, in Brookline, Mass.

The result looks like natural wilderness. But, Ms. Thomas admitted, "The whole water system is completely fake." The water, from the city system, can be turned up, down or shut off.

Visitors may tour the ravine on weekends from 1 to 5 p.m., although some sections will be fenced off until 2010.

The next project is a multimillion-dollar renovation of the rest of the forest. The Brooklyn borough president, Howard Golden, contributed money for the ravine's renovation, but the Prospect Park Alliance is trying to raise money for the forest. Like the ravine, the forest looks like natural wilderness but is man-made.

"Although we cannot have wild mountain gorges, for instance, on the park," Olmsted wrote, "we may have rugged ravines shaded with trees, and made picturesque with shrubs, the form and arrangement of which remind us of mountain scenery."

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New York Times
April 7, 2001
National Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/national/07BRFS.html

MAINE: FOOT-AND-MOUTH FEARS There have been no reports that the foot-and- mouth disease causing havoc in Europe has reached the United States, but the Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook is taking no chances. It is closing to the public this summer, though it will still sell dairy products from its store. The farm would normally receive about 100,000 visitors, among them families attracted to its petting zoo. Other Maine farms are considering similar measures, but Smiling Hill is apparently the first to decide to withdraw its welcome mat for fear of foot-and-mouth disease. Carey Goldberg (NYT)

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The Exploitation of Man and Beast

New York Times
April 7, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/opinion/L07DUCK.html

To the Editor:
Re "No Days Off at Foie Gras Farm" (news article, April 2):

It should come as no surprise that a company that mistreats ducks also mistreats its Mexican immigrant work force. Feeder complaints that "the conditions for the workers are crueler than the conditions for the ducks" at the Hudson Valley Foie Gras farm should be seen as a call for better conditions for both humans and animals.

Many grocery chains and international airlines have stopped supporting the foie gras business. Intensive farming practices like those used by foie gras producers are the same types of abuses that have led to agricultural disasters like E. coli epidemics, mad cow disease and Europe's current foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Despite New York farmers' protestations, there is a rapidly growing, increasingly profitable market for healthy food products that do not promote animal cruelty or worker oppression. BOB CHORUSH Seattle, April 4, 2001

•To the Editor:

I find it astonishing that the quality and quantity of the foie gras at Hudson Valley Foie Gras is more important than the quality of its workers' lives (news article, April 2). The farm owners worry about profits and the ducks' stress, yet the children of the farm workers are missing critical time with their parents, upsetting the family and potentially harming the children.

People are and should always be more important than profits. Instead of making $10 million a year, perhaps Hudson Valley Foie Gras could make do with $9 million and give their workers one simple day of rest a week, which should be every worker's right. Sadly, it seems that the owners worry more about the stress of their moneymaking ducks than that of their hard-working employees. ALLISON MITCHALL Brooklyn, April 2, 2001

•To the Editor:
Re "No Days Off at Foie Gras Farm" (news article, April 2):

There are no "days off" for the ducks, either. I would hope that exposure to such cruelty could open workers' eyes to what they and the animals have in common.

WENDY LOCHNER Sayville, N.Y., April 3, 2001

-------- police

Officers Accused of Lying Face Police Trial

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By KEVIN FLYNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07LIVO.html

Police officials have filed disciplinary charges against two officers who are accused of lying under oath to help a fellow officer, Francis X. Livoti, cover up his role in the 1994 choking death of Anthony Baez.

The charges were based on testimony the officers, Mario Erotokritou and Anthony Farnan, gave as defense witnesses at Mr. Livoti's 1998 federal trial, at which he was convicted of violating Mr. Baez's civil rights.

Both officers testified that on the night Mr. Baez died, he had been moving under his own power after he was handcuffed. But in fact, according to the disciplinary charges, Mr. Baez was already unconscious at that point, and lying on the ground outside his Bronx home. Officer Farnan also testified that he saw an unidentified civilian holding Mr. Baez's legs down, an account the department considers fiction.

Mr. Baez was asphyxiated when Officer Livoti used a chokehold to arrest him after a football that Mr. Baez had been tossing with his brothers hit a police car several times.

Federal prosecutors had considered criminal charges against the officers but decided last June that they did not have sufficient evidence, police officials said. The case was referred to the Police Department, where the standard of proof in administrative trials is lower than it is in criminal proceedings.

Officers Erotokritou and Farnan face possible dismissal from the force if they are found guilty of the charges, which were filed last month and were first reported yesterday in The Daily News.

Susan M. Karten, a lawyer for the Baez family, said that the disciplinary action, while gratifying, could have been pursued years ago. "I am appalled that they have been able to stay on the force this long," she said.

Stephen C. Worth and Stuart London, the lawyers for the officers, said the decision by federal prosecutors to forgo a criminal case is a clear signal that their clients had not lied.

But, said Mr. Worth, who represents Officer Erotokritou, "The effect of the department's action is to create a chilling effect on other cops who want to come forward and give relevant testimony."

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Judge Dismisses Charges in Lodi Health Spa Case

New York Times
April 7, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07BAR.html

HACKENSACK, N.J., April 6 - At the request of the Bergen County prosecutor, a state judge dismissed charges today against a police lieutenant and a former employee of a Lodi, N.J., health spa. The ex-employee had been accused of falsely reporting prostitution there, and the lieutenant of assaulting the owner.

The prosecutor, William H. Schmidt, had said his office determined that federal officials fabricated the charges to protect the owner, who may have been acting as an F.B.I. informer. The owner was charged last week with promoting prostitution after a raid on his Ultima Spa, which followed an investigation by Mr. Schmidt's office.

Today, after Judge Sybil Moses of State Superior Court ordered the complaints dismissed, lawyers for the employee, Millie Nevin, and the officer, Lt. Vincent Caruso, said their clients were considering filing wrongful prosecution suits, but were not sure whom to name. Lieutenant Caruso also said that he would seek $250,000 in back pay and benefits for the time he was suspended.

In a rare court appearance, Mr. Schmidt told Judge Moses that the complaints were baseless and had been signed by the Lodi police as a result of pressure from an F.B.I. agent in consultation with an assistant United States attorney.

The United States attorney for New Jersey, Robert J. Cleary, has denied Mr. Schmidt's allegations. The matter has been referred to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Mayor Gary Poparozzi of Lodi said that Lieutenant Caruso would soon be reinstated, and that his back pay would be discussed at a Borough Council meeting on Monday. But he added that the borough would fight any wrongful-prosecution suits.

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In Assembly, Silence on Verniero's Fate

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/nyregion/07TROO.html

TRENTON, April 6 - Now that Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco has raised the prospect of impeachment, the focus of the effort to remove Justice Peter G. Verniero from the State Supreme Court has turned to the State Assembly, where any such proceeding would have to begin.

But the silence that Assembly leaders have maintained as the Senate Judiciary Committee has investigated Justice Verniero's handling of racial profiling when he was state attorney general only deepened today. The Assembly's Republican leadership kept its distance from the issue, which has obsessed many senators for the last month.

On Wednesday, the Senate committee called for Mr. Verniero's resignation, saying that in his 1999 confirmation hearings for the bench, he misled the panel about when he became aware that racial profiling by state troopers was taking place. Mr. DiFrancesco added his voice to the chorus on Thursday, adding that if Justice Verniero continued to refuse to step down, he would push for censure by the State Senate. The acting governor said that impeachment was also an option.

But any move by the Assembly to impeach Justice Verniero will rest with Jack Collins, the Assembly speaker and briefly considered a rival of Mr. DiFrancesco's for the Republican nomination in next fall's gubernatorial election. Mr. Collins, who announced that he would not run, today showed no evidence of being in a hurry to get involved in deciding Justice Verniero's fate.

"It's probably going to be awhile before he makes a public comment," said Chuck Leitgeb, Mr. Collins's spokesman.

That seemed to be the position of other Assembly Republican leaders.

"I can tell you right now, he does not have any comment," said the receptionist at the office of Paul DiGaetano, the Assembly majority leader.

"He's away until Sunday," said a receptionist for David C. Russo, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, which would be likely to play a role in any impeachment effort.

Justice Verniero, who has six years left on his term before he comes up for reappointment, remained defiant today, as his lawyer defended his testimony. "Justice Verniero testified truthfully and to the best of his ability at every appearance before the committee," said the lawyer, Robert A. Mintz.

In the absence of clear signals from the Republican Assembly leadership, it remained for outside analysts to divine where the chamber's interests in the case lie.

"It does appear, from what I've read, that there isn't a lot of sentiment on the Republican side of the Assembly to undertake this process," said Carl Golden, who was chief of communications for the former governor, Christie Whitman, Mr. Verniero's political patron, and who remains one of his few outspoken supporters.

Cliff Zukin, director of the Star- Ledger/Eagleton Poll at Rutgers University, said that while senators may be angry with Justice Verniero because they believe he misled them, the Assembly has no corresponding motivation to get involved.

For one thing, he said, poll after poll has showed that while blacks have become increasingly distressed about evidence of racial profiling, whites, who make up nearly three- quarters of the population, are largely indifferent. And Republicans showed the lowest level of concern.

"So I don't think anybody in the Assembly is terribly anxious to get into this," Mr. Zukin said. "It is not a winning situation because the only good they would get from impeaching Verniero would be from blacks, who aren't going to vote for them anyway. All it would do is create a huge distraction about highlighting the failures of a Republican administration just when all of them are up for re-election."

There is also the matter of timing. The two-year statute of limitations on misdeeds in office runs out for Mr. Verniero on May 15, the second anniversary of his stepping down as attorney general. The Assembly is scheduled to reconvene for committee hearings only on May 3, with the next voting session coming a week after that.

Since the chief accusation is that Mr. Verniero misled interrogators at his confirmation hearings for the bench, some senators have speculated that any charges could be attached to his term as a justice. But Albert Porroni, executive director of the Office of Legislative Services and the Legislature's chief counsel, said that would not work.

"The New Jersey Constitution is clear that impeachment applies to misdemeanors in office," he said. "So I believe that even if the nominee were to perjure himself before a committee which is considering his nomination, it would not be an impeachable offense."

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Fingerprinting's Reliability Draws Growing Court Challenges

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By ANDY NEWMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/national/07PRIN.html

In the long history of forensic science, prosecutors have found few weapons more powerful than the fingerprint. The whorls, arches, ridges and loops left on a surface by the skin's oil have long been considered virtually unassailable evidence tying a person to a crime.

But now, the reliability of crime-scene fingerprint identification is being challenged. In courts around the nation, defense lawyers are using evidence of fingerprinting's fallibility to try to get it declared inadmissible under standards set by the Supreme Court to keep unproven "junk science" out of courtrooms.

The accuracy of making identifications from dusted or latent prints, which are often smudged, distorted or fragmentary, has never been scientifically tested. And while fingerprint examiners are trained to testify only to "absolute certainty" about their work, defense lawyers point out that examiners do make mistakes, that training standards vary widely and that most examiners have either failed or never taken the main certification test.

Trial judges have rejected the dozen challenges filed since 1999, holding that fingerprinting, which has been accepted since 1911, has proved its reliability in the courtroom. And few prosecutors are even aware of the challenges.

But the government is taking the issue seriously enough to solicit the first studies to validate crime-scene print identification and set standard procedures for examinations.

Defense lawyers who have brought challenges said they had in some cases secured favorable plea deals or prompted prosecutors to withdraw fingerprint evidence.

Edward J. Imwinkelried, a leading expert on forensic science who has worked with prosecutors and defense lawyers, said there was a "very good possibility" that the challenges would lead judges to instruct juries that a fingerprint analyst was not a scientist offering exact conclusions but an expert giving an opinion.

That, said Mr. Imwinkelried, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, "could conceivably be an important weapon in the hands of defense counsel, because you've got a widespread public perception that fingerprint testimony is infallible."

The door to scrutiny of fingerprinting was opened by two United States Supreme Court decisions that changed the rules governing expert testimony. In two product liability suits - Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals in 1993 and Kumho Tire Company v. Carmichael in 1999 - the Supreme Court declared that federal judges must determine the reliability of expert testimony before admitting it. About two dozen state court systems have followed suit. Judges have already limited the use of handwriting analysis after reliability challenges.

In 1999, Robert Epstein, a federal public defender in Philadelphia, made the first effort to have fingerprint identification declared inadmissible under the Daubert standards. His pretrial motion, in a case involving a man accused of driving the getaway car in a robbery, was denied by Judge J. Curtis Joyner of Federal District Court. But Mr. Epstein's tactic has nevertheless been widely imitated.

Last year, in a burglary case in Montgomery County, Md., where fingerprints were the only evidence, prosecutors offered a 6-year plea agreement on theft charges, rather than the 10 years the defendant was facing for burglary, after the public defender challenged the admissibility of fingerprinting.

"We decided that rather than go through the trouble of doing the motion we would agree to a plea," the prosecutor, Michael Banks, said.

Law enforcement officials recognized soon after the Daubert ruling that fingerprinting could be vulnerable to challenges. In early 1999, the Justice Department's research arm, the National Institute of Justice, started putting together a call for studies to come up with standardized, statistically tested procedures for comparing fingerprints that "produce correct results with acceptable error rates."

In a sign of further concern, the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked the institute in September 1999 "to withhold releasing the fingerprint solicitation until after the Philadelphia trial had ended," according to institute memorandums obtained by Mr. Epstein. The F.B.I. declined to comment on the matter.

The solicitation was released in March 2000, a few weeks after Mr. Epstein's client was convicted. The institute received four proposals but rejected all of them and will start the solicitation process over.

Despite all the publicity DNA testing has received, for now, fingerprints are more useful because they are easier to collect than DNA, forensic experts say. But critics say the profession of fingerprint analysis is not as rigorous as generally believed. On a 1995 proficiency test of 156 examiners conducted with the approval of the International Association of Identification, the profession's certifying organization, one in five examiners made at least one "false positive" identification - linking a mock crime-scene print to the wrong person. Fingerprint experts point out that the error rate was lower on subsequent tests.

The challenges have also attacked the variability in training methods for examiners, pointing out that agencies like the F.B.I. have tougher standards than smaller police departments.

And while the International Association of Identification has a rigorous certifying test, about half the current or would-be examiners who take it fail, without apparent career consequences.

"There's very few employers who will terminate an employee for not passing the test," said Ken Smith, the association's certification chairman. Mr. Smith added that most of the 5,000 examiners in the country have never taken the test.

While fingerprint misidentifications are rarely discovered, they do happen. Richard Jackson was cleared of a murder conviction in Philadelphia in 1999 because three examiners had erroneously matched his prints to those found at the scene. A similar reversal occurred in 1983 in Minnesota. In that case, both the prosecution and defense fingerprint experts mismatched a print to the defendant.

Paul Sarmousakis, the assistant United States attorney who prosecuted Mr. Epstein's client, said that the occasional human error did not invalidate fingerprinting. "Because a doctor misdiagnoses someone, does that make the science of medicine invalid?" Mr. Sarmousakis asked.

But Simon A. Cole, a science historian and the author of a forthcoming book on fingerprinting, said print examiners undermined their legitimacy by claiming absolute certainty, which the International Association of Identification's bylaws require.

"If they want to go in and testify, `I think it's his print and 1 percent of the time I'm wrong,' then that would be more reasonable," Mr. Cole said.

Mr. Epstein said a test conducted by the F.B.I. in his first challenge showed the lack of rigor. After he filed the challenge but before it was heard by the court, the F.B.I. sent the defendant's official prints and the crime-scene prints to 53 law enforcement agencies.

But 8 of the 34 laboratories that responded were unable to find a match for at least one of the two latent prints.

The bureau sent the prints out again, with bigger photographs and red dots marking where it thought the crime-scene prints matched those of the defendant. This time, all the laboratories declared the prints a match.

Mr. Epstein has moved for a new trial. However his motion fares, challenges to fingerprinting are likely to continue.

"Every time the state has a fingerprint that's going to be used as evidence against one of my clients, I'm going to do the same thing over and over again," said B. Michael Mears, the chief public defender for capital cases in Georgia, who brought a fingerprint challenge last year. "And I am going to keep doing it until we win it."

---

New York Times
April 7, 2001
National Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/national/07BRFS.html

160MISSISSIPPI: PREPARING FOR SPRING BREAK Officials in Biloxi and Gulfport began blocking roads and adding law enforcement personnel in anticipation of this weekend's Black Spring Break. Last year, the loosely organized event drew about 30,000 college students and resulted in reports of rowdiness and gridlock. One man was killed in a struggle with the police; his family filed a civil rights lawsuit last year against the City of Gulfport. David Firestone (NYT)

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A Varied Police Force

New York Times
April 7, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/opinion/L07POLI.html

To the Editor:
Re "Diversity and the Police" (editorial, April 5):

The best way for the New York City Police Department to attract qualified candidates of diverse backgrounds is to pay a realistic wage.

The department is one of the lowest salaried police departments in the metropolitan area, yet the city is one of the most expensive places to live. Consequently, it regularly falls short of its recruitment goals. It is also losing veteran patrol officers to suburban departments with better working conditions, cheaper living, and pay scales at least 25 percent higher.

If New York City wants its police to become more progressive and diverse, tinkering with age, civil service or educational requirements is the wrong path to follow. In the 21st century, police recruits, like their counterparts in the private sector, focus solely on the bottom line.

MARTIN W. SCHWARTZ Nanuet, N.Y., April 5, 2001

The writer, a former Yonkers police officer, was an assistant district attorney for Bronx County.

•To the Editor:

I wholeheartedly agree that the New York City Police Department must change its ways (letter, April 5). But if it is to have a future that does not resemble the past, every community in the city must be willing to change as well.

Until blacks, Hispanics and Asians begin to send recruits to the department in numbers commensurate with whites, nothing is going to change, no matter how hard the chain of command tries.

EDWARD GILLIGAN New York, April 5, 2001

-------- spying

Anger Over Flights Grew
In Past Year Proximity Riled China; U.S. Cited Interceptors

Washington Times
Saturday, April 7, 2001; Page A0
By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50994-2001Apr6?language=printer

Tension over U.S. reconnaissance flights along China's borders had been building for almost a year before this week's midair collision, U.S. and Chinese officials said yesterday.

Chinese military officers complained to their American counterparts at a meeting in Honolulu last May that the flights were coming "too close to the coast, and it might cause trouble," a Chinese officer said.

From the Chinese point of view, that warning was "the most important topic" at the meeting, held annually under a 1998 agreement aimed at preventing military accidents and misunderstandings. But the Americans seemed to pay little attention, and "the atmosphere wasn't good," the Chinese officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The senior U.S. military officer at the Honolulu meeting, Marine Lt. Gen. Michael Hagee, yesterday confirmed that account, although he said he thought the tone of the conversation was better than the Chinese officer remembered. Hagee said that when the Chinese raised the issue of electronic surveillance flights, he replied, "It is international airspace, and we have no intention of modifying what we are doing."

That blunt exchange, and the increasing aerial confrontations that followed, suggest that last Sunday's collision between a Navy EP-3E Aries II intelligence-gathering airplane and a Chinese F-8 fighter over the South China Sea was far from a freak accident. Rather, it appears in retrospect to have been the nearly inevitable result of military trends in East Asia.

Over the last several years, Chinese and U.S. forces have been testing each other in the skies and on the high seas, as China flexes new military muscles and the United States seeks to measure them.

In the second half of last year, the U.S. military stepped up its reconnaissance flights, sending planes four or five times a week about 50 miles off the Chinese coast, according to a Chinese military official. He maintained that this was an increase over the years 1997-99, when the average had been about 200 flights annually.

The Chinese response has been to scramble jet fighters to intercept and fly alongside about one out of every three reconnaissance flights, a U.S. Navy official said. In recent months that rate continued, keeping pace with the stepped-up U.S. flights. But there was a key difference, he said: The Chinese jets came closer and closer.

After one fighter came within 30 feet of a U.S. plane on Christmas Day, the United States filed a formal diplomatic protest in Beijing. But the Foreign Ministry officials who received the Dec. 28 complaint appeared to know little about what the Chinese military was doing, one U.S. official said.

"They . . . were surprised at our account of events," he said, suggesting that Chinese military units, or even individual pilots, may have been acting on their own.

Diplomats are now negotiating over the release of the 24 crew members of the American surveillance plane involved in Sunday's collision. One possible resolution may involve the 1998 Maritime Consultative Commission, which was the venue for the Chinese complaints last May, to investigate the cause of the accident.

According to people familiar with his thinking, Adm. Dennis Blair, the U.S. commander in the Pacific, has stepped up surveillance flights partly out of the belief that they have a deterrent value: The more the United States knows about how the Chinese military operates, the less likely the Chinese will be to think they can subdue Tawian with a lightning strike.

"If you know a lot about their air defenses, for example, if it ever comes to a scrap, you can see them, jam them, and stop them," said retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon, a former defense attaché in Beijing who flew P-3 surveillance planes along the Chinese coast in the early 1960s, though never closer than 40 miles, he said.

Back in those days, the United States was also sending pilotless drone aircraft and high-flying U-2 spy planes deep into Chinese airspace. Five U-2s, all piloted by Taiwanese citizens, were knocked down during the 1960s, said Kenneth Allen, a former assistant air attaché in Beijing who is now at the Center for Naval Analyses.

Both the Chinese military official and Americans familiar with U.S. military operations agreed that the U.S. plane involved in Sunday's collision was almost certainly on a routine intelligence-gathering mission near Hainan Island, where it made an emergency landing. There might have been a small military exercise going on along the southern Chinese coast, they said, but certainly there was nothing major.

Experts from both sides also dismissed news reports that the U.S. plane was focused on the operations of new ships that China has acquired from Russia. In addition to buying four Kilo-class submarines, China has purchased two Sovremenny-class destroyers and is expected to buy two more. But all those ships are based well north of Hainan, the Chinese official said.

The basic role of the EP-3s, said a retired Navy expert, is to "fill in the gaps" left by the constellation of U.S. spy satellites that specialize in eavesdropping on telephone and radio conversations and other electronic communications. Satellites cannot be overhead all the time, and planes are useful for catching electronic emissions from smaller military sites as well as from exercises timed to evade satellite surveillance.

"I think they were looking at surface-to-air missile sites, radars, and things on the beach," this expert said, using Navy jargon for coastal areas. "I think this was a routine drill."

Likewise, the Chinese response does not appear to have been unusual, except in how close the jets came to the American plane. Zhao Yu, one of the two Chinese pilots who intercepted the EP-3E, said at a news conference yesterday that it was supposed to be a "routine tracking mission." U.S. officials said the other pilot, Wang Wei, whose plane crashed into the sea after the collision, had been a "hot-dogger" who aggressively tried to intimidate American planes.

Most of the 200 or so U.S. flights a year come out of the U.S. base at Kadena on the Japanese island of Okinawa, with about three-quarters being Navy aircraft and the remainder Air Force RC-135s, the Chinese official said. "Those are realistic figures," said Derek Mitchell, a former head of the Pentagon's China desk.

---

Molehill Into Mountain

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By ANTHONY LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/opinion/07LEWI.html

BOSTON -- There is an iron law of incidents like the collision of Chinese and American aircraft last weekend: If the governments concerned do not settle the matter quickly, hard-line extremists on both sides will gain.

By his handling of the aircraft incident, George W. Bush allowed that iron law to take hold. He was needlessly provocative at first. He and his aides missed the early opportunity to limit the confrontation.

In this as in other such incidents, it may never be clear who was to blame. U.S. sources have insisted that the Chinese fighter planes must have been at fault, because they are so much nimbler than our "lumbering" surveillance plane. But later reports indicated that one of the fighters was flying just below it when the U.S. plane suddenly banked to the left and down.

Right at the start, the urgent need was to head off a blame game and posturing. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Carter, suggested the right formula the other night on the PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, Mr. Brzezinski said, should have "telephoned the Chinese foreign minister and said to him, look, there has been an incident in the air. We don't know precisely what has happened. Let's appoint a joint commission to investigate, and I regret or I'm sorry to hear that your pilot was killed. It's very unfortunate. And our plane is landing on your soil. Please take good care of it and release it as soon as possible."

Instead, we said our plane was sovereign American property that the Chinese should not touch. That was a dubious legal proposition for a plane on Chinese soil. And it was unrealistic, given the fact that when a defector flew a Soviet jet to a U.S. field in 1976, we examined it and indeed took it apart.

Then Mr. Bush called for "the prompt and safe return" of the spy plane and its crew, adding that "failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice and with the express desire of both our countries for better relations." Newspapers called his statement a "demand."

To us, Mr. Bush's language might not seem provocative. But to the Chinese it did - as any informed China watcher would have predicted.

The Chinese government and public remain angry over the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, refusing to believe that it was an accident. For reasons of history - Western colonization - China is highly sensitive to incursions on its territory. China's military is irritated at the U.S. practice of flying spy planes just off the coast.

Moreover, the Chinese government sees George W. Bush as someone who takes sudden unilateral action. His brusque cancellation of negotiations with North Korea was one example, his renunciation of the Kyoto climate protocol another.

The stage was thus set for a prickly Chinese response to the aircraft incident. Beijing demanded an apology, which is not going to happen. Our plane had a right to be there under international law, and it would be quite impossible politically for Mr. Bush to apologize.

In due course Secretary Powell and then Mr. Bush did use the word "regret." And they came to see the importance of keeping American emotions down.

But by then the extremists were loose. American voices demanded that we withdraw China's trade privileges and send vast new arms to Taiwan. In China, hard-liners may want to put the pilot of our plane on trial or take other harsh steps.

There is ample reason to criticize China's Communist government. To take a current example, its arrest of three Chinese-born U.S. residents is an outrage. But that is a different thing from letting the aircraft incident become a harsh confrontation between two great powers.

Both sides evidently want to find a way out now. Each has so much to lose. We do not want an angry China, no longer engaged with us, that sells weapons to "rogue" regimes. China does not want to lose its membership in the World Trade Organization. But can hard-liners, once aroused, be stopped?

The episode should tell the Bush administration something about the dangers of unilateralism. Not just China but our close allies in Europe are furious at the arrogance, as they see it, of such steps as the Kyoto renunciation. In this complex world, unilateral bullying will not work.

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Bush and Jiang Exchange Drafts of a Letter Stating U.S. Regrets

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER with CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07PLAN.html

WASHINGTON, April 6 - Aides to President Bush and President Jiang Zemin today exchanged drafts of a proposed letter from the United States to China that would express regrets for last Sunday's aircraft collision over the South China Sea, initiate an investigation run by Chinese and American military officers, and clear the way toward release of the 24 Americans held in China, according to administration officials and senators briefed on the negotiations.

The letter would bear the signature of Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, the American ambassador to Beijing, rather than that of Mr. Bush. But Mr. Bush was reviewing proposed language today, in hopes that Washington and Beijing can settle on wording that will enable China's leaders to argue that they received an apology and allow American officials to say they got the crew members and the plane out of China without acknowledging any blame for the collision.

American officials warned that the talks could still go awry, and some expressed particular concern about whether conservative leaders of China's military, which is holding the crew in officers' quarters on the island of Hainan, might interfere with a resolution of the standoff.

But this afternoon, Mr. Bush, appearing at a Commerce Department awards ceremony in Virginia, expressed optimism that the talks were moving quickly, and notably omitted his earlier demands that the Chinese release the crew immediately.

American officials were permitted to see the crew for a second time today - this time with no Chinese officials present - and described them as healthy and well cared for, and were receiving catered meals from outside the military installation where they have been detained.

"We're working hard to bring them home through intensive discussions with the Chinese government, and we think we're making progress," Mr. Bush told the gathering of business executives.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the 24 fliers, cryptologists and other specialists were extremely comfortable - words that seemed intended to calm the crew members' families and give General Powell time to work out a diplomatic solution.

State Department officials declined to discuss the letter in detail. But it will put in writing Mr. Bush's and Mr. Powell's statements of regret, and refer to an obscure but suddenly important 1998 agreement between the two countries, the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement. It creates annual meetings where Chinese and American officers can discuss ways to minimize tensions in the Pacific, but it also contains a clause allowing emergency meetings of officers "for the purpose of consulting on specific matters of concern relating to the activities at sea of their respective maritime and air forces."

"The commission is an empty shell, but we can put a motor in it and drive it to the shore," a senior administration official said. "But the hard part of the letter is negotiating the language, and that's still under way."

Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said after being briefed by administration officials that the letter's language was to be agreed upon by both presidents as a "common understanding" of the episode.

"We're moving toward a letter that will contain exchanges of views, first at the level of the ambassador and the foreign minister, but that letter is being reviewed both by our president and the president of China, so it will reflect a common understanding," Mr. Warner said.

He said the letter would include an expression of regret for the loss of life of the Chinese pilot who was trailing the plane, but would not contain a United States apology, as demanded by Beijing. "I would say that the question of an apology is not in any way to be incorporated in the letter," he said.

Mr. Jiang, during a visit to Chile today, said, "I have visited many countries, and I see that when people have an accident, the two groups involved always say `excuse me.'" He spoke in Chinese, but switched into English to say "excuse me."

Tonight, Mr. Bush's advisers were trying to assess whether Mr. Jiang's use of such a casual English phrase indicated that Beijing was gradually backing down from its demand for an explicit apology.

A version of his comments, translated from the English back into Chinese, was published by the official New China News Agency. That version translated "excuse me" as "duibuqi." That is a word with roughly the same meaning that is far more ambiguous and colloquial than the formal, legalistic term "dao qian," which translates as "apology" and implies that the speaker is in some way beholden to the offended party.

Mr. Jiang's comments may also be significant because he characterized the incident as an accident over which each side should excuse the other.

"It puts it in a more of a human context and less of a legalistic and technical one," said John Holden, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. "The door is now open to treating the incident as a matter-of-fact question of common human relations."

The State Department reiterated today its desire to get the plane back, but officials said that now that it was clear the Chinese had had ample time to remove intelligence gear, the crew was the overwhelming priority.

Because of progress in negotiations, plans to replace the diplomats on Hainan today with lower-level officials were put off to at least Sunday and possibly longer, American officials said.

But with the standoff as yet unresolved, four separate groups of lawmakers canceled trips that included visits to China, and a fifth delegation reported that it would visit Beijing next week only if the American crew had been released.

"We would rather have the Chinese diplomatic corps focused on the release of the crew members than meeting and greeting senators," said Christi Harlan, spokeswoman for the Senate Banking Committee. Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas and the committee chairman, will take a group to South Korea next week and decide from there whether to go on to Beijing to meet with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji.

The Aspen Institute had planned to take legislators as well as China scholars on a study trip to Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing. But the visit was canceled after lawmakers concluded the it might send the wrong message.

Senator Don Nickels, Republican of Oklahoma, had planned to leave today on a trade mission to China with business leaders, but wrote on Thursday to the Chinese ambassador, Yang Jiechi, that "I cannot in good conscience lead a trade delegation to China while your government continues to hold an American EP-3 crew against its will."

In an interview that may have been intended to counter American news media reports suggesting the Chinese pilot missing in the crash was reckless and aggressive, the Chinese public was shown a televised interview with the pilot of the second Chinese jet that was tracking the EP-3E before the collision.

In the interview, the pilot, Zhao Yu, wore a blue dress uniform and gave a detailed account of the interception to a reporter from China's Central Television station, saying he and the missing pilot, Wang Wei, were about 1,300 feet away from the American plane when it "swerved suddenly" toward Mr. Wang's jet, making "it impossible for our plane to get out of the way."

He said the American plane had hit the Chinese jet and knocked off its tail. The pilot, Mr. Wang, tried to stabilize his jet but ejected moments later when he lost control of the aircraft. Mr. Zhao said he circled over Mr. Wang's descending parachute to note its position and returned to his base.

"The American plane seriously violated aviation rules and should take the full responsibility for the incident," he said, echoing the government's official account. He noted that the American plane was conducting reconnaissance "on our doorstep" when the accident occurred. "This barbarous act is outrageous," he said.

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China's Demand for Apology Is Rooted in Tradition

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07APOL.html

To the Chinese Communists, extracting an apology, or confession, has long been a favorite technique in dealing with anyone seen as an adversary, especially when the person is in custody, according to several American experts on what is known as thought reform. Beijing's demand for an apology for the spy plane incident, these specialists say, is therefore standard procedure.

The demand for an apology "is consistent with the whole thought-reform ethos, which focuses on confession, self-criticism and apology" before the person can be freed, said Robert J. Lifton, professor of psychology and psychiatry at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Professor Lifton wrote the pioneering examination of the Communists' use of thought reform on coming to power in 1949, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Chinese Brainwashing," first published in 1961. The Chinese Communist emphasis on apology grew out of both the old Confucian tradition of conformity and the Soviet show trials of the 1930's, Professor Lifton and the other experts said.

One of them, Lucian Pye, professor emeritus of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "When the Chinese have the moral high ground, they can be unrelenting in exploiting the situation. It goes back to the Confucian tradition, in which the ruler is morally superior, and therefore when your opponent apologizes it proves they are morally inferior and cannot be the legitimate ruler."

At first, the Communists used thought reform to try to convert millions of former soldiers and officials of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, but they have also used thought reform against dissidents. Merle Goldman, a history professor at Boston University and a specialist on China's treatment of dissidents, said thought reform was "stronger under Mao Zedong, but the remnants remain." Usually the first apology is insufficient, Professor Goldman said, "so they make you do it again and again, to make you say what you did or thought was terrible. You have to be increasingly apologetic."

Professor Goldman says the origins of the Chinese emphasis on apologies lies in the Confucian value system, which stressed the need for "conformity to the views of the patriarchal father, and then to the emperor." He added, "This kind of internalized consensus was the way China was ruled for thousands of years."

When the Chinese originally called for the United States to apologize over the Navy plane, they were saying "Washington must accept their view of what happened," Professor Goldman said.

Professor Lifton said that the American spy plane touched on sensitive Chinese feelings about Western imperialist nations taking advantage of a weakened China in the 19th and early 20th centuries to seize Hong Kong as a colony and carve out several special "treaty ports," like parts of Shanghai. When the Communists came to power, they arrested a number of even those Westerners who had been sympathetic, forcing them to undergo thought reform and confess to having been spies. "It was a way to discredit all Western influence in China," the professor said.

In the current situation, he added, "we would do well to avoid provoking the more suspicious and anti-Western and more thought-reform- minded groups within the regime."

Professor Pye said the plane incident also fed into a long-held "Chinese sense of victimization," of having been the world's greatest nation only to be humiliated in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

"Other countries in Asia have actually had a much worse time, of actually being turned into colonies, like India, Vietnam and the Philippines," he said. "But the Chinese make the most of being mistreated."

Professor Pye suggested that this attitude had its origins in Chinese child-rearing practices, "in which parents shame their children into proper behavior." This has carried over into other areas of society, he said, so people "often find themselves in a game-playing situation, or struggle, in which you prove you are the superior party by shaming the other party."

How, then, would Chinese themselves end a stalemate like the current one?

Professor Pye's answer: "Chinese culture is a bargaining, haggling culture. You are constantly bargaining. You win some, you lose some. And then you come back and bargain some more." This is what seems to have happened in negotiations between Beijing and Washington.

-------- terrorism

Algerian Is Found Guilty of Terrorism

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07TERR.html

LOS ANGELES, April 6 - An Algerian man was convicted today of terrorism for bringing a car loaded with explosives into the United States in what the authorities said was a global plan to bomb buildings at the time of millennium celebrations.

The man, Ahmed Ressam, 33, was found guilty of nine federal charges, including an act of terrorism transcending a national boundary.

His lawyer Michael Filipovic said: "We're obviously disappointed with the results. There will be an appeal."

Sentencing was scheduled for June 28 in Seattle. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 130 years in prison.

It was Mr. Ressam's second conviction of the day. Earlier, in Paris, a French court convicted and sentenced him for belonging to a network of militants.

Mr. Ressam was arrested on Dec. 14, 1999, by United States Customs inspectors at Port Angeles, Wash., after arriving on a ferry from Canada.

Prosecutors said bomb-making materials found in his rental car were intended for attacks on West Coast sites, possibly during millennium celebrations. However, they did not try to prove specific targets.

Mr. Ressam's defense called him an unwitting courier and blamed a co-defendant, Abdelmajid Dahoumane, who is in custody in Algeria and will be tried there on charges of participating in terrorist organizations.

Members of the jury here deliberated for just over 10 hours during two days. When Judge John C. Coughenour of United States District Court polled them to ask if this was their individual decision, each one answered, "Yes."

"You are one of the nicest and most attentive juries I've had in 20 years," the judge told them. "It makes me proud to be an American."

Jurors declined a request to speak to reporters and were taken out the back of the courthouse.

In addition to terrorism, Mr. Ressam was found guilty of placing an explosive in proximity to a ferry terminal, using false identification documents, smuggling, transporting explosives and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony.

The jurors also found that his actions were committed in connection with a crime of violence.

In Paris, Mr. Ressam was given a five-year prison sentence after being tried in absentia. That trial drew a picture of a web of Islamic militants with unclear connections who cross paths around the world. Mr. Ressam was among two dozen people who stood trial. Seventeen were handed sentences of between 6 years and 16 months.

United States officials believe Mr. Ressam was trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and is linked to Osama bin Laden, reportedly the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa. But prosecutors were barred from bringing Mr. bin Laden's name into the trial for lack of proof.

The prosecution did bring in testimony by Abdel Ghani Meskini, an Algerian who was seized in New York after Mr. Ressam's arrest. Mr. Meskini pleaded guilty to conspiracy last month and agreed to cooperate.

Mr. Meskini's testimony pointed to Pakistan as a route to Afghanistan and its training camps, and prosecutors were able to introduce plane tickets showing that Mr. Ressam went to Pakistan in 1998.

Mokhtar Haouari, another Algerian, arrested in Canada after Mr. Ressam's arrest, is awaiting trial in New York.

Mr. Ressam's federal trial was transferred to Los Angeles because of widespread publicity in Washington State.

-------- activists

São Paulo's 'Roofless' Seize Downtown Buildings

New York Times
April 7, 2001
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07BRAZ.html

SÃO PAULO, Brazil, April 1 - For more than a decade, ever since he arrived in this sprawling city of 10.5 million from the poor, drought-ridden northeast, Silvestre Ferreira and his family have been seeking a decent place to live.

A security guard with wages of less than $300 a month, Mr. Ferreira has moved from one rickety shack to another, each worse than the last, as rents and property values have soared.

So six months ago, Mr. Ferreira and his wife and three children took a bold step after their latest eviction. They joined the Movimento dos Sem Teto, the Movement of the Roofless, and with a group of 38 other families moved into a downtown building that had once been the headquarters of a railroad but had in recent years been lying abandoned.

"Our country has a Constitution that guarantees every Brazilian an adequate place to live, but the government hasn't kept its word," said Mr. Ferreira, 30, whose family now lives in a single cramped room in the office building. "What I've learned from being in the Movement of the Roofless is that you should never give up fighting for your rights."

The movement sprang into existence in the late 1990's and has become increasingly active, to the point that any abandoned downtown building is considered a potential target. In coordinated, almost military actions, more than 5,000 poor families have occupied hotels, a movie theater, mansions that once belonged to coffee barons, apartment buildings, government offices and even a hospital.

To ordinary Brazilians, the name, inspiration and tactics of the group evoke those of the country's most powerful and aggressive rural social movement, the Movement of the Landless. "There is no direct connection between us, but they want agrarian reform, and we want urban reform, so there is a certain sympathy of goals," said Manoel Lucimar dos Santos, a leader of the group here.

The seizing of abandoned buildings is merely the most visible manifestation of the increasingly desperate housing situation here in the Southern Hemisphere's largest city. Municipal authorities estimate that at least three million São Paulo residents live in what are called "irregular circumstances." Some private research groups calculate that 50 percent, or more than five million people, reside in illegal quarters.

Some of those participating in invasions of abandoned buildings have come from favelas, precarious squatter settlements on the outskirts of the city where at least two million people live. But most are refugees from illegal boardinghouses called corticos, or beehives, where entire families cram into tiny rooms and share a single bathroom and kitchen.

"We poor folks can't pay three months' rent in advance or find a guarantor," which is required to rent most apartments, said Maria Jaira Coelho Rodrigues, 38, a widow with five children. "So you live from month to month in some squalid room where everything is illegal, which means you have no rights and they throw you out on the street the instant you fall behind on the rent."

Paulo Teixeira, secretary of housing and urban development for the leftist municipal government that took office in January, estimated that São Paulo had a deficit of 600,000 housing units. His department receives a $160 million slice of the city's annual budget of $4 billion to struggle to keep up with population growth and rising expectations.

"We're not going to solve this problem in four years, but we can certainly make some headway," Mr. Teixeira said. "Our priority is to attend to the needs of the poorest and those who are living in areas of greatest risk."

The housing demand is so intense that the poor have been invading the Serra da Cantareira, a mountain range that traditionally formed the city's natural northern boundary. A city study found that in the last decade 143 "clandestine subdivisions" had been established in the area, mostly on steep slopes subject to landslides and floods and without electricity, sewers or water.

Hoping to halt that advance, the city is distributing one million fliers to warn squatters who are contemplating moving to the new settlements to "be careful when you buy a tract," because "later on you can't get ownership title." The city has also set up a toll-free telephone line for calls from citizens who notice new clandestine settlements.

Two previous municipal governments, in contrast, emphasized building large apartment complexes alongside existing favelas. But that form of mass public housing, known as Singapores, because the inspiration came from a mayor's visit there, was available to just a few families and quickly became unpopular because crime groups came to dominate the buildings.

"Once you move into one of those Singapores, you become a hostage to the drug traffickers, not to mention that you have pay rent for as long as you are there without gaining any ownership rights whatsoever," Mr. dos Santos said. "A lot of people have moved back into the favelas, because at least there you are the owner of something."

With entire families occupying a single-room or two-bedroom 1,100- square-foot apartments that are divided among three families, the accommodations in the newly occupied buildings downtown are far from luxurious. But they do offer electricity, water and easy access to subways, medical clinics and schools, all of which appeal to people who say they would otherwise probably be living under bridges.

"Of the 11 years I have lived in São Paulo, this is my best phase," said Catia Carvalho, a 32-year-old mother of three who came here from the poverty-stricken interior of the northeastern state of Bahia. "I've got the kind of comfort here that I've never had in my life before."

Before joining the Roofless Movement, Ms. Carvalho, who has worked as a waitress, teacher and service station attendant, lived in a room whose rent consumed 70 percent of her monthly income of $250. "It's such a relief to be able to save a bit of money and not have to worry about being able to feed my kids," she said.

As for Mr. Ferreira, he has used the money saved since his family moved to the office building to buy a computer on an installment plan, and he is studying data processing. "This may be only one little room," he said, "but it has opened the door to a whole new perspective on life for me."

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