------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
UK's BNFL says study backs MOX nuclear plant
France says nuclear shipments from Germany safe
3 House Members Seek To Block Missile Site
Forest fire threatens Russian nuclear sites
Moscow tests new missile
U.S. Looks at Russian Missile Test
Payments to Begin for Arms Workers Ill From Radiation
The Emerging Nuclear Posture

MILITARY
US role in Indonesian massacres revealed in error
FYROM's ethnic Albanians keep their fingers tight on the trigger
Medical marijuana rules broaden in Canada
A Major Escalation?
Vieques Voters Want the Navy to Leave Now
Vieques voters call for Navy to withdraw
White House Stands Firm on Vieques
The future of warfare - or 'single dumbest' Bush idea?
Pentagon Leaders Debate Readiness and Risk
Congress to Audit Pentagon

OTHER
EnBW says to invest millions of marks in renewables
Rival bills on cloning head for vote in House
Top German Radiation Expert Warns on Cellphones
WTO Chief Pushes New Trade Talks
Mueller Promises to Improve F.B.I.
Hanssen Helped FBI Search for Subversives
CIA Role May Grow in Preventing Terror Attacks


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

UK's BNFL says study backs MOX nuclear plant

UK: July 30, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11813

LONDON - State-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) last week said an independent study backed the economic case for its controversial nuclear mixed oxide plant at Sellafield, northwest England.

But environmental groups opposing the project said the assessment, commissioned by the government, confirmed the plant would lose hundreds of million of pounds.

The study, by consultants Arthur D Little (ADL), said the Sellafield mixed oxide plant (SMP), which has lain idle since its completion in 1997 awaiting approval to start up, would deliver net financial benefits of 216 million pounds.

ADL said the cost of not bringing the plant into operation could run into hundreds of million of pounds, largely due to potential loss of future contracts for THORP, BNFL's nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield.

The SMP is designed to use the plutonium extracted by THORP to make MOX fuel, a combination of plutonium and uranium oxides.

"This clear, independent evidence supports what we have been saying for some time, that SMP has a strong economic justification..." said BNFL in a statement.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOW) said the study showed SMP would lose around 260 million pounds after taking into account the 460-million pound cost of building the plant.

"Today's report confirms the plutonium plant will lose hundreds of millions of pounds," said FOW campaigner Mark Johnston in a statement.

"We consider it would be unlawful for the government to give the plant the go-ahead and it was a scandal it was ever built in the first place," he said.

ADL's evaluation of net benefits from SMP did not include construction costs and the government said last week it had not yet decided whether or not to include the costs in its final assessment of SMP's viability.

FOW in May took the government to court arguing it was acting unlawfully in not allowing the plant's construction costs to be taken into account in economic assessments.

The government invited comments on the ADL report by August 24, 2001.

-------- france

France says nuclear shipments from Germany safe

FRANCE: July 30, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11822

PARIS - French state railways SNCF said last week that trains delivering nuclear waste from Germany were safe after a railway workers' union published a letter in which the French asked the shippers about security guarantees.

An SNCF spokesman, contacted after the Sud Rail union published the letter dated July 19, said the railway had been assured the controversial shipments were safe.

Germany resumed shipping nuclear waste to France's La Hague reprocessing plant early this year after a two-year break sparked off by concerns about safety during the transport.

The shipments, which are due to continue until 2005, regularly bring out anti-nuclear protesters along the tracks on either side of the French-German border.

Declaring the shipments safe, the SNCF spokesman said the railway had been reassured of the precautions taken before the trains carrying the waste leave Germany.

"France and Germany follow the same international norms," he said.

In the letter released to the media last week by Sud Rail, which had obtained a copy of the correspondence, the SNCF asked the French shipper Transnucleaire to assure them that proper precautions were being taken in Germany.

"Please provide a written response as soon as possible so we can respond to concerns raised by trade unions," said the letter, which SNCF did not contest.

Until now, SNCF had always publicly stated safety measures for the shipments were sufficient.

"This episode shows once again how much transparency is lacking in the traffic in nuclear material," Sud Rail said in a statement.

The latest shipment, which was the third since the nuclear waste transport resumed, reached La Hague in northern France several hours late after several protests along its route slowed the train down.

-------- missile defense

3 House Members Seek To Block Missile Site
Pentagon Asked to Halt Work at Alaska Fort

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 30, 2001; Page A02
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3876-2001Jul29.html

Three House Democrats have asked the Defense Department to cancel its plan to clear ground for missile defense facilities at Fort Greely in Alaska next month, arguing that funds have not been appropriated for that purpose in the current fiscal year.

In a letter Friday to the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) and Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.) said the Bush administration cannot build a test facility with five missile silos at Fort Greely using funds that had been earmarked for construction of an earlier, considerably different missile defense plan in the Clinton administration.

If the real purpose in building the test facility is to deploy an "emergency" missile defense system by 2004, the Democrats said, the administration's plan to begin clearing trees at Fort Greely next month would be even more problematic, because such activity would "appear to be on a collision course" with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"We understand the need for major modifications to the ABM Treaty, but we believe that the administration should try in earnest to negotiate these changes [with] Russia before rushing to deployment," the Democrats wrote.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on military construction, sent a similar letter last week to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, signaling the Democrats' intention to use Congress' power of the purse to oppose the administration's ambitious missile defense plans.

Democrats in both houses have expressed deep reservations about the administration's missile defense plans and indicated they might withhold portions of the White House's $8.3 billion budget request for missile defense in fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1.

Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, declined to comment on whether BMDO planned to proceed in Alaska next month. But he said Pentagon officials would respond to the Democratic lawmakers "as soon as possible."

Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials have said they want to construct missile silos at Fort Greely to allow accelerated and more realistic testing of missile defenses. But they have also said the facility could go into operation as an "emergency" missile defense site by 2004, if ground-based missile interceptors prove reliable in tests and a threat arises that makes deployment a necessity.

Those officials have promised to send Congress a report today from Pentagon lawyers with an opinion on whether tree clearing and other early phases of construction at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, would constitute a violation of the ABM Treaty, which prohibits development of a nationwide missile shield.

Skelton, Spratt and Dicks -- senior members of the Armed Services, Appropriations and Budget committees -- questioned "the haste" to start construction "when there is so little to gain."

They said further flight tests of interceptor missiles from Alaska would be necessary before even an emergency deployment decision. "[B]ut missiles are unlikely to be test-fired from Fort Greely because the booster stages would fall on populated areas," they said. "Given these facts, we simply do not think the department has made the case for deployment."

Their criticism echoed a recent critique of the Bush administration's plans by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which concluded that Fort Greely would be of little use as either a test site or an emergency missile defense base.

The only place in Alaska from which test missiles could be fired is Kodiak Island, about 500 miles from Fort Greely, the scientific group said.

As for deployment of an emergency capability at Fort Greely, the scientists said, even upgraded radar systems in Alaska would not be able to distinguish incoming warheads from decoys.

A recent BMDO briefing paper, however, does not rule out the possibility of test launches from Fort Greely. "Although the missiles would fly over land in violation of current flight test safety restrictions," the document states, "BMDO continues to investigate the possibility of actual missile launch from Fort Greely as part of the testing process."

By building five interceptors and all of the associated computer infrastructure, the document said, BMDO would be able "to test the communication between all component parts, and to test for fuels degradation in the arctic environment, as well as to develop and rehearse site activation . . . training and maintenance."

Lehner, BMDO's spokesman, said the primary purpose of the Fort Greely site would be to determine how well missile defense computer systems function in Alaska's harsh climate. Although initial test launches would take place on Kodiak Island, he said, those tests would be controlled by personnel at Greely.

Lehner also noted that Philip Coyle, the Clinton administration's director of testing and evaluation at the Pentagon, recommended test launches of both dummy warheads and interceptors from Kodiak to provide more challenging and realistic trajectories over the Pacific.

On another issue, Lehner confirmed a report scheduled for publication today in Defense Week that during a successful test of a ground-based interceptor over the Pacific this month, the interceptor was aided by a homing beacon in a dummy warhead.

Lehner said the beacon was used to make up for the absence of mid-course radar on the test range, not to improve the test's chance of success. Due to the limited field of a prototype X-band radar on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Lehner said, the kill vehicle needs to be provided with some general sense of where to begin looking for the dummy warhead in space.

-------- russia

Forest fire threatens Russian nuclear sites

RUSSIA: July 30, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11817

MOSCOW - A raging forest fire on the weekend threatened a radioactive waste storage facility and forced the temporary shutdown of a nuclear reactor in southern Russia, local officials said.

Fire experts said the blaze began dangerously close to a storage site for radioactive material in the southern Voronezh region, and quickly took hold in the tinder-box conditions caused by a current heatwave.

Scores of firefighters battled for several hours to extinguish the blaze, which engulfed some 23 hectares (57 acres), as it closed in on the Novovoronezhskaya power plant.

"There was no threat to the nuclear power plant, but there was a threat to the storage facility of radioactive waste which is located nearby," fire chief Vladimir Lozovsky told NTV television.

Nuclear officials said the thick smoke and rise in temperature caused by the forest fire had set off the power plant's safety system. Reactor number five was shut down as a precaution.

Vladimir Rozin, the plant's deputy chief engineer, said that there had been no increase in radioactivity during the incident. The reactor later resumed power production but at reduced levels, state-run ORT television quoted officials as saying.

Fire chiefs said the fire was probably started by careless picnickers.

--------

Moscow tests new missile

July 30, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010730-13752166.htm

Russia has conducted a test of a long-range missile with a new jet-powered last stage designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

They view the launch as Russia's answer to U.S. plans to deploy a missile-defense system against long-range missiles.

The flight test of the road-mobile SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) took place from a launch site in central Russia two weeks ago. It was tracked to an impact area several thousand miles away on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

U.S. officials said the missile's flight took an unusual path: Its last stage was a high-speed cruise missile that flew within the Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 100,000 feet.

"It looks like the Russians were testing scramjet technology," said one intelligence official.

Citing a policy of not discussing intelligence matters, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke declined to comment on the Russian missile test.

A "scramjet," short for supersonic-combustion ramjet, is a high-powered jet engine capable of reaching speeds of five times the speed of sound Mach 5 or more.

It is lighter than a space-borne re-entry vehicle because it does not need to carry its own oxygen.

Officials familiar with intelligence reports of the SS-25 flight test said it involved firing the road-mobile missile nearly into space and then having its last stage drop down to within the atmosphere and flying at supersonic speed to the Kamchatka impact range.

The SS-25 ballistic missile has three stages and a post-boost vehicle carrying the warhead. It has a maximum range of more than 7,000 miles.

Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which is in charge of all U.S. missile-defense development, said current U.S. systems capable of knocking down cruise missiles are the Patriot PAC-2 and newly deployed PAC-3.

The Navy's ship-launched Standard missile currently deployed on Aegis-equipped warships is also capable of knocking down cruise missiles, Col. Lehner said.

Asked if current systems could knock out a cruise missile traveling at Mach 5, Col. Lehner said: "The PAC-3 can shoot down a Scud, even one that moves at high velocity."

U.S. national missile-defense efforts are currently focused on intercepting long-range missile warheads in space. The Bush administration's successful July 14 interceptor test involved knocking out a dummy warhead 140 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

The Air Force is developing an aircraft-mounted anti-missile laser that is being designed to knock out missiles shortly after launch in the "boost phase" of their flight. It is not known if the airborne laser could be used against high-speed cruise missiles.

Russian leaders, including President Vladmir Putin, have vowed to adopt countermeasures for Moscow's strategic nuclear missile forces if the United States builds a national missile-defense shield.

Mr. Putin said in June -- before his recent agreement with President Bush to discuss scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by linking it to bilateral cuts in nuclear stockpiles -- that one Russian countermeasure would be to load multiple warheads or additional warheads on its current missiles.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in an interview with The Washington Times last week that the Pentagon is working on a research and development program that includes "a variety of ways" to shoot down incoming missiles.

The Pentagon also is in the process of conducting a nuclear posture review to determine how many and what types of strategic forces should be deployed.

Military experts said that in 1995, the Russians unveiled a prototype scramjet-powered missile called GELA. Several ground tests of the missile were carried out and two brief flight tests also were reported in trade publications.

Sven Kraemer, a former White House National Security Council staff specialist on strategic missiles, said he was not aware of the SS-25 scramjet test, but said if it were true it would be an alarming development. It would indicate Russia is continuing to develop advanced strategic weapons.

"If this is true, it demonstrates Russia's intense effort to very significantly upgrade its offensive capabilities even as it is doing the same in its strategic defense investments," Mr. Kraemer said in an interview.

Mr. Kraemer said that in addition to continued development of new strategic weapons, Russia has gone ahead with upgrading its nuclear-armed strategic defense system around Moscow and the construction of deep underground bunkers used to protect leaders and command forces in a nuclear war.

The latest strategic-missile test by Russia is likely to fuel criticism of U.S. aid to Russia for the dismantling of nuclear weapons. Critics of the aid program point out that the money allows Moscow to use its own funds to develop new nuclear arms as it dismantles older ones.

The Bush administration has cut some $100 million from the aid program.

Keith Payne, a missile-defense expert who heads the National Institute for Public Policy, a defense think tank, said any Russian effort to counter U.S. missile defenses with a scramjet missile or other techniques is misguided.

"The missile-defense system we're talking about isn't designed to defeat Russian ICBMs," Mr. Payne said. "If the Russians want to put any countermeasures, I don't really care. It doesn't undermine what we're developing."

The Bush administration has repeatedly said that a national missile defense is aimed at protecting the United States from missile attacks by "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iraq.

Mr. Payne said the scramjet missile may be part of Russia's efforts to develop non-nuclear or conventional precision-guided long-range missiles. "The Russians put a lot of stock in that," he said.

The United States is currently working on its own version of a hypersonic cruise missile that uses scramjet technology and will travel at speeds of Mach 5 or higher.

A scramjet space aircraft is also being developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

--------

U.S. Looks at Russian Missile Test

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Russian test of a long-range missile is getting a close look from the Bush administration to determine if it is part of a program designed to foil a U.S. anti-missile shield.

For intelligence reasons, U.S. officials are reluctant to discuss the test except to say a long-range missile was tested about two weeks ago.

Among the questions under review are whether the missile's flight took an unusual path and whether it carried new technology designed to overcome missile defense schemes being explored by the Bush administration.

Officials were to brief a Senate defense appropriations subcommittee in a closed session Monday on the accelerating U.S. program and the billions of dollars it will cost.

Various options are under consideration, including a land-based system of 100 interceptors that would be based in Alaska and guided by a long-range radar station in the Aleutian Islands.

The Russian missile test was disclosed Monday by The Washington Times, which said a road-mobile SS25 with a new jet-powered last stage was launched from central Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Bush July 22 in Genoa, Italy, agreed to hold talks simultaneously on offensive and defensive weapons.

Bush sent Condoleezza Rice, his assistant for national security, to Moscow to make arrangements for the talks.

She set a timetable for strategic arms talks. Russian specialists are due here next week and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will go to Moscow for parallel talks in late August.

Both Rice and Vladimir Rushailo, head of Russia's National Security Council, said they want to move from confrontation to cooperation.

But Rice said U.S. testing for a missile defense system will go ahead in any event. And Rushailo said Moscow would insist on extended negotiations to try to salvage the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that national missile defenses.

On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry said Rice had not said anything that would cause Russia to temper its opposition to scrapping the 1972 treaty.

Meantime, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer disputed contentions of some Democrats that the administration has no authority to spend money on clearing ground in Alaska for a missile defense station.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer asserted Monday that the administration has authority to spend money on clearing ground in Alaska for a missile defense station.

``Unless Congress speaks otherwise, there is no prohibition on that,'' Fleischer said.

``Imagine all the expenditures the United States government enters into on every given day, whether it's the Department of Defense or any different agency. There is a broader statutory authority for, in this case, promoting the national defense,'' he said. ``Congress does not authorize or appropriate every single penny that is spent, it just has to be for the purpose of those agencies.''

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

Payments to Begin for Arms Workers Ill From Radiation

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/health/30URAN.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, July 29 - Martha Alls, whose father worked at a uranium plant in Paducah, Ky., thought she would never see the day when the government would pay.

But Ms. Alls's mother, Clara Harding, will receive a check for $150,000, possibly as early as Tuesday, in a federal plan to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors.

The United States Department of Labor is running the program, which will officially begin on Tuesday. Elaine L. Chao, the secretary of labor, calls it "an absolute priority."

But the government has not always had that attitude.

Before Joe Harding died of cancer in 1980, his bones were found to contain up to 34,000 times the expected concentration of uranium. Yet while he lived, Mr. Harding was denied compensation because official records showed he was exposed to only small levels of radiation.

The Energy Department has identified 317 sites in the nation that employed more than 650,000 people in jobs related to nuclear weapons during the cold war. The agency at first thought 3,000 to 4,000 workers might receive compensation, but the accuracy of that estimate is unclear.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the program will cost roughly $2 billion over a decade.

Mr. Harding was among those who pressed the Energy Department to acknowledge that workers were getting sick from bomb-making components, and his widow and daughter took up the fight.

The government finally conceded two years ago that many workers who built America's nuclear weapons probably became ill because of exposure to radiation on the job. Congress approved the compensation program last year.

The law provides medical care and $150,000 to sick workers exposed to radiation, which can cause cancer, and silica or beryllium, which can cause lung diseases.

For certain workers at sites that kept poor records, the government will presume that particular cancers linked to radiation were work-related.

-------- us nuc politics

The Emerging Nuclear Posture

By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 30, 2001; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62020-2001Jul27.html

The political tide on missile defenses is turning. With the agreement by Presidents Bush and Putin to develop a new strategic framework and lower nuclear arsenals, the Russian government is softening its opposition, and even Democrats on Capitol Hill are grudgingly donning anti-ballistic missile uniforms.

It is not coincidental, I would argue, that the one international issue that not two weeks ago seemed capable of upsetting stability between the nuclear powers is now the one that is yielding success for the Bush camp. Given how lost the new team is on defense and foreign policy (the White House was required by legislation to submit a "national security strategy" document to Congress by June 19 and has still not produced one), it makes sense that they can be convincing on the one issue they care deeply about.

The real secret of success is that the Bush team is giving Russia a huge hand just where it needs it. The emerging outlines of the administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) proposes unilateral and deep reductions in offensive nuclear forces, with a package of measures to assure Russia, China and U.S. allies that missile defenses are benign. The question is whether the Bush team can truly reform U.S.-Russian relations and be believable as neither threatening nor pro-nuclear.

Emerging Partnership

Everyone, including Moscow, is aware that Russia can't possibly hope to compete - let alone keep up - with the United States any more on nuclear forces. Within seven to eight years, analysts say, Russia will not have more than 1,500 strategic warheads deployed. Even if Russia decided to actively thwart the terms of START II and keep multiple warheads on its land-based missiles, it could still only deploy about 2,500-2,800 weapons, most of which would be completely obsolete by the end of the decade. Only one significant intercontinental system, the SS-27 missile, is in production, to replace a deteriorating force that was never designed for longevity. The Bush administration is doing an enormous favor for Moscow by allowing an accelerated timetable of reductions.

Last week in Moscow, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, offered Russia a schedule to begin discussing both a new nuclear framework for defenses, and reductions. "We should be ready to move to a system of security more in accordance with our new emerging partnership with Russia," she said. As Rice sees it, "we don't see the need for a treaty regime here .... We would really rather do something that looks more like defense planning talks, ... not arms control negotiations, but consultations and discussions."

In a Nuclear Phase

The outlines of those talks are being set in the NPR, which is starting to gel inside the Pentagon around a set of phased deep reductions accompanied by a new articulation of U.S. deterrence policy, and a package of confidence building measures intended to assure Russia and China, and communicate U.S. resolve to the rest of the world. The nuclear posture review has a three phase design and time frame,according to a number of experts involved in the process.

The first phase, essentially awaiting Rumsfeld approval this week, according to Defense Department sources, ties together piecemeal decisions already made and committed under the START Treaties. This includes retirement of 50 Peacekeeper "MX" missiles with 500 warheads, placement of single MX warheads on Minuteman III missiles, and reducing the Trident submarine fleet from 18 to 14 boats.

This first set, experts say, is "doable" without any change in national guidance, that is, the Top Secret Presidential directive to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Strategic Command which specifies what U.S. nuclear forces must be prepared to do in crisis and war. "Though maybe not as innovative as a lot of people would like," one insider says, it is the whole package that should be evaluated. He sees the phased concept as an "orderly" approach to deep reductions: "go down, pause, keep insurance and a hedge, constantly posture yourself to be able to go down lower."

The second phase would be to unilaterally reduce further to some 2,000 warheads. This would be done through "downloading" the number of warheads on submarines, and reducing the day-to-day nuclear committed force, including potentially reducing the level of alert. At this stage, a new national policy would kick in: Sufficiency in strategic nuclear forces would be defined as a "core deterrent," with a "robust adaptive capability" to quickly plan for the use of nuclear weapons in response to virtually any contingency, and an ability to build-up, including restarting nuclear testing, were U.S. relations with Russia or China demand it. A new capability would be developed in the form of new "tailored" nuclear weapons to attack hardened and deeply buried targets. A retired officer intimately involved with targeting over the years says that there are somewhere on the order of 100 or more of these bunkers outside of Russia and China, bunkers that planners worry provides a sanctuary for rogue nations, thereby suggesting to them that they might be able to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons with impunity.

In the third phase, seen as possible by the end of the decade, forces would decline to 1,000-1,500 warheads, with still lower numbers of missile warheads, and bombers transformed into "dual capable" airplanes like fighters, released from most of the day-to-day requirement to prepare for nuclear war. Though the cuts are anticipated to be unilateral, all along the way, the United States would take Russia's pulse to gauge its response, and it would undertake a number of new cooperative measures with Moscow. "As we reduce our strategic forces to [these] lower levels," commander of Strategic Command Admiral Richard Mies told Congress on July 11, certain things become more important even than numbers: "transparency, irreversibility, production capacity, aggregate warhead inventories and verifiability."

Insiders stress that unlike the early Clinton administration, when political appointees moved to eliminate land-based intercontinental missiles (ICBMs) in the 1994 NPR, the Bush team is completely committed to the U.S. missile force. "Do we want to have a posture where with 13 weapons, Russia could decapitate this country?" a former nuclear planner asks. The view in the NPR is that ICBMs are stabilizing. "He has to hold all of those silos at risk," the planner says.

Needed for What?

Is this the "totally different approach" that insiders claim it is? The central nuclear war plan, the SIOP, would not be eliminated as some would like to see, but the current nuclear warfighting requirement would be redefined as maintenance of a far smaller survivable U.S. force tasked just to hold "core targets" at risk, backed up by the "hedge."

"We need to escape from the inertia that has kept the concept of mutually assured destruction as the centerpiece of our strategic relationship with Russia," Under Secretary of State John Bolton said on Capitol Hill earlier this month. Easier said than done. When ICBMs are justified as sponges to soak up a Russian strike of hundreds or thousands of warheads, it should be pretty clear that despite the reasonableness of the Bush plan, throwing away old nuclear weapons may be a lot easier than abandoning nuclear war thinking.

It was Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney who said at the end of the Cold War that "you don't throw away your winter coat on the first warm day of spring." Many of the "hedges" and pro-nuclear facets of the emerging posture - the ability to upload missiles with more warheads when Russia's forces are deteriorating, building new bunker busting warheads, moving to quietly develop a new ICBM, and, of course, emerging national missile defenses that could be seen as the final component of a U.S.first strike - are likely to invoke coat wearers in Russia to wonder just what it is we have on underneath. The reductions, hedges, and cooperative measures may for all of the reasons Adm. Mies refers to about transparency, require formal understandings for all of this to work. This will be particularly difficult for the new team to pull off convincingly, given that another thing the Bush administration seems to believe is that treaties are bad.

-------- MILITARY

-------- asia

US role in Indonesian massacres revealed in error

The Times (UK)
MONDAY JULY 30 2001
FROM MICHAEL EVANS IN WASHINGTON
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001261111,00.html

THE American Government is trying to claw back copies of a book that reveals US links to Sixties anti-communist death squads in Indonesia.

Copies of the declassified history were prematurely distributed to libraries around the world. It contains details of how the US Embassy in Indonesia supplied names of members of the Communist PKI party which backed President Sukarno, the founding father of the republic, to the Indonesian security forces. Those forces massacred more than 100,000 people.

As a result of the revolt backed by the United States, which funded a secret armyinspired anti-communist group called Kap-Gestapu, President Sukarno was overthrown in 1967 and replaced by the dictator President Suharto. The late President Sukarno's daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, became Indonesia's new leader last week after President Abdurrahman Wahid was voted out of office.

Aware of the embarrassment that publication of the history of America's covert support for the late President Sukarno's enemies could now prove to be, the State Department, the CIA and other agencies decided to delay releasing the book.

However, the Government Printing Office (GPO) had begun distributing copies before the State Department had reached the decision. Not only were libraries around the world stocking up with microfiche copies, but the National Security Archive, a private Washington-based group specialising in publishing declassified documents, put a copy on its website.

A spokesman at the National Security Archive said that the CIA, as well as officials at the State Department, were now trying to suppress publication, even though documents included in the book had been officially declassified in 1998.

A spokesman for the CIA told The Washington Post: "The notion that the CIA has unilaterally blocked the release is simply not the case. We work closely with the State Department on these matters. All of us are intent on complying with the law, while at the same time protecting classified information that, if disclosed, could be damaging to us."

A GPO spokesman said that it was trying to get back the books on orders from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

A State Department official said that preparations had begun earlier in the year for release of the history and the printing office had mistakenly begun distributing it before an "internal process" of review was completed.

Among the revelations in the history is a cable in August 1966 from Marshall Green, the American Ambassador in Indonesia. In the cable he reported that a list of top Communist leaders prepared by the embassy "is apparently being used by Indonesian security authorities who seem to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership at the time".

-------- balkans

FYROM's ethnic Albanians keep their fingers tight on the trigger
Rebels say they want peace but are ready for war if demands are not met

ATHENS, MONDAY, JULY 30, 2001
KATHIMERINI English Edition (Greece)
By Alexandre Peyrille
Agence France-Presse
http://www.ekathimerini.com/news/content.asp?id=93159

NIKUSTAK, FYROM (AFP) - Ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) say they want peace talks between the Skopje government and Albanian politicians to succeed so they can end their five-month insurgency which has brought the Balkan country to the brink of civil war. But they say they are ready to resume fighting if their demands are not met at the negotiating table.

"I really hope that the political process will succeed and in this case we will be ready to lay down our arms immediately. But if they want war, they will have it," a rebel, Commander Hoxha, told AFP yesterday.

"Nobody wants war here," said another, Commander Sokoli, from the "113 Ismet Jashari-Kumanova" brigade's base in Lipkovo. "We have our political representatives and if there is a political solution, we will obey orders," said Sokoli, who has been involved in the insurgency since the first shots were fired in February.

All six brigades, the self-styled National Liberation Army (NLA) claims it has operating in FYROM, say they want to leave space for the peace process to work. Internationally-brokered peace talks between Skopje and ethnic Albanian political leaders resumed on Saturday, after the rebels withdrew from key positions in the northwest of the country under an accord with the NATO transatlantic military alliance on Thursday.

The rebels say they are fighting for greater rights for the Albanian minority. The talks, in the southern town of Ohrid, far from the fighting, are focusing on demands that Albanian be made into an official language, alongside Slav-Macedonian, as well as the establishment of an independent ethnic Albanian police force in certain areas.

Sokoli said that rebels would be vigilant to ensure that any deal would be respected, saying a previous agreement, which had prompted rebels to pull out of Aracinovo near Skopje, had not been respected by the government side.

On Friday another commander, Gjini, told AFP the ethnic Albanian rebels had so far used only 50 to 60 percent of their military potential. The ongoing peace talks had been postponed for a day to relocate them to the south of the country because of security fears and concerns that the rebel withdrawal from key positions had not been completed. However, the rebels also claim that they are ready to attack the capital Skopje and are present in the towns southwest of Ohrid, where the peace talks are being held, Bitola, Struga and Debar.

-------- drug war

Medical marijuana rules broaden in Canada

USA Today
07/30/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/30/medmarijuana.htm

TORONTO (AP) - Canadians suffering from terminal illnesses and chronic conditions such as arthritis can legally grow and smoke marijuana, or designate someone else to grow it for them, under regulations that take effect Monday.

The new rules are part of the first system in the world that includes a government-approved and paid-for supply of marijuana, now being grown in a former mine in northern Manitoba.

The rules will expand the number of people beyond the 292 in the country currently exempted from federal drug laws that make it a criminal offense to grow and use marijuana.

While some in Canada complain the new regulations create bureaucratic hurdles and put doctors in the unsettling role of prescribing something they know little about, the Canadian system looks wonderful to U.S. medical marijuana advocates battling a zero-tolerance attitude.

"We're kind of envious of Canadians having the luxury of complaining about the minutiae of the program," said Chuck Thomas of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project. "It seems like a reasonable system."

Eight U.S. states have taken some kind of step toward permitting the medicinal use of marijuana: California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada and Colorado. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled earlier this year that there is no exception in federal law for people to use marijuana, so even people with state medical-exemptions could face arrest if they do.

North of the border in the country that is the biggest U.S. trade partner, attitudes are different. Justice Minister Anne McLellan said the issue of decriminalizing marijuana should be studied, and the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to consider a challenge against the constitutionality of criminal marijuana laws.

The new health regulations were drawn up after a court ruling last year that gave the government until July 31 to create a way for people requiring marijuana for medicinal purposes to legally obtain it.

The new rules permit drug possession for the terminally ill with a prognosis of death within one year; those with symptoms associated with specific serious medical conditions; and those with other medical conditions who have statements from two doctors saying conventional treatments have not worked. Eligible patients include those with severe arthritis, cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

More than 500 new applications are pending, and more are expected, according to the federal health ministry.

The Canadian Medical Association, which represents tens of thousands of doctors, opposes the new regulations because they make physicians responsible for prescribing a substance that lacks significant clinical research on its effects. Without the cooperation of doctors, patients cannot get medical marijuana exemptions.

Under the regulations, people can grow and possess marijuana for medical needs, or name someone to grow it for them, including the government.

In Flin Flon, Manitoba, a mining town hundreds of miles north of the U.S. border, Prairie Plant Systems is growing marijuana in a former copper mine under a government contract worth more than $3.5 million.

It expects the first harvest this fall of marijuana that will be supplied by the government to eligible patients and used for research on therapeutic effects. Company head Brent Zettl uses the same techniques that were used to grow berries and roses in the tapped-out mine beneath Trout Lake.

In town, a novelty store has sold 6,000 T-shirts bearing a new slogan for Flin Flon - Marijuana Growing Capital of Canada.

-------- iraq

A Major Escalation?

CBS Worldwide Inc.
July 30, 2001
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,303391-412,00.shtml

WASHINGTON, Reports Of Iraqi Missile Fired At U.S. Plane In Saudi Airspace Several Recent Attempts To Shoot Down U.S. Planes In No-Fly Zone Pentagon Weighs Major Strike As Saddam Becomes More Aggressive

(CBS) The crew of an AWACS radar plane orbiting over Saudi Arabia has reported seeing an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile fired into Saudi airspace, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

U.S. intelligence has yet to confirm the crew's visual sighting of the missile, which was 200 miles away, but firing into Saudi airspace would mark a major escalation in the air war between the U.S. and Iraq.

The AWACS, with its crew of 25, is a fat target, which is why it operates well back from the Iraqi border. The plane was never in danger but even an unsuccessful attempt would mark the first time the Iraqis have actually fired on an AWACS and would mean they have moved anti-aircraft missiles right down to the border with Saudi Arabia.

Saddam Hussein is clearly becoming more aggressive in his attempts to shoot down an American aircraft. The Pentagon is drawing up plans for a major strike against Iraq's air defense network, but officials are concerned such a strike could end up hurting the U.S. more than Iraq.

"There would be tremendous resentment, in part because there's a lot of frustration with U.S. foreign policy at the moment. It's all tied to the Palestinian question," said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert.

In the Arab world, the United States is seen as partly responsible for the continuing violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

"They believe Israel is to blame and they believe the U.S. is not stopping it," Telhami said.

Israeli strikes against Palestinians make it harder to launch U.S. strikes against Iraq.

"The frustration on the Palestinian issue is translated into sympathy toward Iraq in part as a way of defying the U.S.," explained Telhami.

Meanwhile, Iraq said its anti-aircraft defenses fired at Western planes patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone Monday. The Iraqi New Agency said the incident took place at 9:40 a.m. local time (1:40 a.m. EDT) and involved planes flying from Saudi Arabia. It did not report any casualties.

It was unclear if the jets involved were American or British. Three other recent incidents have all involved U.S. aircraft.

Two Iraqi warplanes Thursday flew 40 miles into the southern no-fly zone in an apparent attempt to shoot down an unmanned American reconnaissance drone, but the Iraqi planes retreated without firing a shot.

In an incident Wednesday, the Pentagon said Iraq fired a missile at a U-2 surveillance plane. Iraq denied it.

Earlier this month, a Navy Hawkeye radar plane orbiting over Kuwait reported seeing a missile fired at it.

The incidents have stoked tension between Washington and Baghdad.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said Sunday Saddam was on the U.S. "radar scope" and that the Bush administration would use military force against Baghdad in a "more resolute manner" than in the past. President Bush, reacting to the U-2 incident last week, said it proved Saddam was "still a menace."

Baghdad replied by saying it was capable of achieving a "final victory" over the United States.

In the end, the U.S. will do what it has to do to protect its pilots patrolling the no-fly zones over Iraq. Losing just one plane would be a disaster for the U.S. policy of containing Saddam. But launching the kind of strike it takes to protect those pilots could turn out to be a set back for that very same policy.

A leading Iraqi newspaper said Iraq could defeat any U.S. attack. "The Iraqis ... now have the capability, power and will to contain any new aggression and foil its aims," the ruling Baath party newspaper al-Thawra said.

Indeed, the U-2 incident signaled that Iraqis have modified some of their missiles, adding extra fuel to extend their range. And the moves against surveillance planes suggest a new strategy on Iraq's part: targeting the higher-flying spy planes rather than nimbler combat jets.

After so many years of patrolling, U.S. aircraft have inevitably fallen into an operating pattern that the Iraqis can try to anticipate, launching unguided missiles at where they think an American plane should be.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi troops were ousted from Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition, Iraq has been banned from using all aircraft, including helicopters, in the zones set up by Western powers to protect minority Kurds and Shi'ites from attack by Saddam's forces.

Last February the U.S. hit a network of air defense radar and command centers on the outskirts of Baghdad. The strike was unpopular with America's Arab allies and was not very effective, since many of the precision guided weapons missed their targets. Iraq has already rebuilt most of the network.

-------- puerto rico

Vieques Voters Want the Navy to Leave Now

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/national/30CND-VIEQUES.html

VIEQUES, P.R., July 30 -- In a symbolic but emotional victory, residents here voted Sunday by more than two to one in favor of demanding the immediate departure of the United States Navy from this small Puerto Rican island, whose eastern tip has been used for mock invasions, bombing runs and target practice for more than six decades. But the White House reiterated today that there will not be an immediate departure.

Opponents of the Navy garnered 68 percent of the vote in the nonbinding referendum, which drew 80.6 percent of the island's 5,893 registered voters. Thirty percent of the voters favored letting the military stay indefinitely, and 1.7 percent of the voters favored the Navy staying only until 2003.

Gov. Sila María Calderón, who has advocated the Navy's immediate exit and pushed for the referendum, said she would send the results of the vote to President Bush and Congressional leaders.

"The people of Vieques made their decision and spoke clearly," she said. "This is the people speaking with a united voice."

The victory for the anti-Navy movement was greeted with cheers in the town square as hundreds of residents pumped their fists in the air and hugged one another. Others mixed quick prayers with jubilant cries for the Navy to leave. The church bell tolled and cars blew their horns.

"Let the Navy pack their bags and go right now," shouted Lydia Gerena Corsino. "If they let me on the base, I'll even help them pack. Out with the Navy, Vieques is ours."

But after the results were announced, the Navy said it would continue its training, due to resume on Vieques on Wednesday. "The outcome of this referendum will have no impact on the Navy or our focus," said Lt. Cmdr. Kate Mueller, a Navy spokeswoman in Washington.

The White House reinforced the Navy's position today. "The Navy made a decision; the President supports that decision, which basically says that we need to balance the needs of our military preparedness and training with the needs of the Puerto Rican people," Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, told The Associated Press.

The referendum is legally nonbinding, but it is widely seen as an unequivocal message of self-determination to Congress and Mr. Bush. Ultimately, any decision on the Navy's presence here rests with the United States government. But many of the voters who went to the polls today said the referendum was a necessary step.

"Some people said that it did not matter, but we want to send the message of what we think," said Naomi Félix, a teacher who voted for the Navy's immediate withdrawal. "As a people, this has great significance. Washington will know what we want and will pay attention."

President Bush, under heavy political pressure to resolve the Vieques question, has already set the Navy's withdrawal for May 2003, but Governor Calderón had called for Sunday's vote to give Vieques's 9,300 residents a choice they had so far been denied, the option to vote for an immediate and permanent cessation of military training on the island and the immediate departure of the Navy and the return of the Navy's land to Vieques.

The Navy, in a move that angered many here, announced several days ago that it would resume military maneuvers this week no matter the results of the referendum. Damaso Serrano, the mayor of Vieques, said he planned to present Navy commanders with a letter today asking them not to proceed with any exercises.

"We hope the Navy will respond to us," he said. "If they start bombing on Aug. 1, we will make the call we always have for civil disobedience."

In the last three years, since a Puerto Rican security guard, David Sanes, was killed on the firing range by an errant bomb, thousands of protesters have gathered here, in and around the entrance to Camp García, the Navy's main training area, to hold sit-ins and marches and candlelight vigils.

Scores of protesters, including some of the celebrity advocates who have come here in a show of support for the anti-Navy movement, have been arrested for trespassing on the field.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and a host of New York politicians and sympathizers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the labor leader Dennis Rivera and Jacqueline Jackson, the wife of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have all been arrested and jailed for trespassing at Camp García.

Senator Kenneth McClintock, a statehood advocate and minority leader of the Puerto Rican Senate, said it was unrealistic to expect the Navy to leave immediately.

"This vote creates a false expectation among the people," Mr. McClintock said.

The weeks leading up to the vote had been filled with campaigns by both sides, who took to the streets in caravans, posted fliers on lamp posts and cars, and engaged in a battle of flags in Vieques and in San Juan, with Navy supporters planting American flags and anti-Navy groups raising the flags of Puerto Rico and Vieques. Navy supporters said that their opponents had cowed people into siding against the military or keeping quiet.

The pro-Navy residents have cast their opponents as outsiders who were pursuing a radical agenda of independence and have distributed fliers saying that President Fidel Castro of Cuba was behind the anti-Navy forces.

But many voters who cast their lot against the Navy said they only wanted the well-being of their families and community. Navy opponents have long insisted, although the Navy denies it, that the half-century of maneuvers have led to high rates of cancer and other illnesses on Vieques. Medical studies have been inconclusive.

"Two relatives of mine died from cancer," said Patricio Maldonado Caraballo, 80, who voted against the Navy. "We used to have tuberculosis here, not cancer. The pollution from the bombing has bedeviled us."

Those who voted for the Navy's continued presence said they did so as American citizens, out of patriotism and a fear that a rebuke of the Navy would lead to a loss of the federal benefits that Puerto Rico receives as a commonwealth of the United States.

"I have no problem; I'm an American citizen," said Domingo Félix Saldana, a 74-year-old retiree. "I'm a veteran. I have my pension. I have my family. The Navy should stay, but this world is upside down. Who knows what will happen?"

One of the biggest concerns for many who voted against the Navy was the need to revive Vieques's moribund economy. The Navy first took possession of two-thirds of this island in the 1940's when they began using it as a range.

As part of the deal with a former administration, the Navy returned part of the the western end of the island this spring. It has also begun to distribute $100 payments to fishermen whose livelihood is disrupted by the military maneuvers and has announced it will make grants of up to $25,000 available to local businesses.

But such funds are seen as too little and too late for those who have had to leave Vieques to find work on the main island of Puerto Rico, or the neighboring island of Culebra, which itself had been used as a firing range until the 1970's.

"Culebra has accomplished a lot, and they removed the Navy," said William Miró, who works at a factory in Culebra. "They are the example."

Nazario Cruz Viera was guided by a memory he carried as he voted for the Navy to leave immediately: his parents. They defended the island all their lives, Mr. Cruz Viera said, so it was his debt as a son to come out today on his 91st birthday and cast his vote.

"I can tell you the history of this island from beginning to end, and it was better before the Navy came here," he said.

"Before, there were farms and the landowners needed many people to work them. They even gave you a place to live. We had everything. We lacked nothing." He and his parents lived on several farms until the land was sold to the Navy and he moved to town.

"My parents and 12 brothers are all dead," he said, in a voice rich in the tone and vigor of the jíbaros who live off the land.

"This is my duty to my people, my country and my parents."

--------

Vieques voters call for Navy to withdraw
68 percent favor halting U.S. bombing on island; referendum not binding; Hoped to carry 'moral force'

Associated Press
July 30, 2001
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Residents of Vieques voted overwhelmingly yesterday for the U.S. Navy to immediately stop bombing on this Puerto Rican island. The referendum is not binding, but the Puerto Rican government hopes it will influence Washington.

Sixty-eight percent of voters supported an end to the bombing and the Navy's withdrawal from the island, home to its prized Atlantic range. About 30 percent voted for the Navy to stay and resume using live munitions, according to the electoral commission.

President Bush's plan to pull the Navy out of Vieques in 2003 and allow training with inert bombs to continue in the interim mustered less than 2 percent -- 81 votes.

Islanders celebrated what they called "a victory for peace in Vieques" with whoops of joy, blaring car horns, and the waving of Puerto Rican and Vieques flags.

Puerto Rico Gov. Sila M. Calderon has said the results have no legal standing but do carry "moral force" that she hopes will influence the U.S. government.

But after the results were announced, the Navy said it would continue its training, set to resume on Vieques on Wednesday, and keep looking for an alternative for when it leaves the island in 2003.

"The outcome of this referendum, organized by Gov. Sila Calderon, will have no impact on the Navy or our focus," said Lt. Cmdr. Kate Mueller, a Navy spokeswoman based in Washington.

Dozens of people lined up outside polling stations, which opened at 8 a.m. yesterday, and 75 percent of the 5,900 registered voters had cast ballots within four hours, the electoral commission said.

Calderon's referendum was called to give islanders the option of asking for an immediate stop to the bombing that began six decades ago. A federal referendum scheduled for November only allows them to choose between the Bush plan and the Navy remaining indefinitely and resuming live bombing.

"From the time I was old enough to know what they were doing to my island I wanted them to leave," said Candido L. Felix, a carpenter, handyman and mechanic born in 1940, the year the Navy came to Vieques and appropriated two-thirds of the 18-mile-long island.

Felix blamed the Navy exercises for his poverty, Vieques' undeveloped fishing and tourism industries and the resulting split in families whose young members go to the mainland to find work.

"We want peace for Vieques and that means the Navy has to go," said Geraldo Vegerano, a construction worker who has to commute to the neighboring island of Culebra to work.

Decades of simmering resentment over the Navy's presence exploded in anger and protests after civilian guard David Sanes was killed in 1999 by two off-target bombs on the range.

Yesterday, not all of Sanes' family voted to stop the bombing.

"People are afraid to come out here," Maria Sanes, a cousin of the victim, told the pro-Navy rally. "But many of them are going to vote for" the Navy to stay.

The Navy says the Atlantic bombing range, which takes up one-tenth of the island on the eastern tip and is 10 miles from the biggest town, provides essential training that saves lives in combat.

--------

White House Stands Firm on Vieques

JULY 30, 15:22 EDT
Washington Times
By RON FOURNIER AP White House Correspondent
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=puertorico&STORYID=APIS7DIR7PG0&SLUG=BUSH%2dVIEQUES

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is sticking by his plan to gradually phase out bombing exercises on Puerto Rico's Vieques island, despite a local referendum demanding an immediate end.

Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Monday the Pentagon needs time to find a new site for exercises under an agreement in which the Navy will withdraw by May 1, 2003, and continue the training on Vieques with dummy bombs until then.

``The president has always said it's very important to listen to the people of Puerto Rico, and he has,'' Fleischer said. ``The president also believes it's very important to have a seamless transition so that our military can be the best trained it can be so we are prepared for any contingencies around the world, and that's the approach that the president will reflect.''

Nearly 70 percent of voters in Sunday's nonbinding referendum supported an end to the bombing and the Navy's withdrawal from the island. Thirty percent supported the Navy's remaining indefinitely and resuming bombing with live munitions. Only 1.7 percent backed Bush's plan for the Navy to withdraw by May 1, 2003.

Bush's decision to withdraw within two years ``was a recognition of the fact that people of Puerto Rico have concerns on this issue,'' Fleischer said. ``But so, too, is it important to make certain that our military is trained until an alternative is found.''

A legally binding referendum is scheduled for November.

``These matters are not only decided by referendum, but they are decided by a variety of factors that represent a balanced approach, and that's what the president has done here,'' Fleischer said.

Government officials have said the Pentagon will probably need the full two years to make the transition off Vieques.

Bush's decision in June drew criticism from both sides of the issue.

Democrats accused Bush of catering to the growing bloc of Hispanic voters. His top political adviser, Karl Rove, was involved in deliberations that led to Bush's decision.

Republicans in Congress suggest the move could affect military readiness and endanger lives, and possibly set a precedent for other places where there is local opposition to the U.S. military presence.

``The president thinks it's important to listen to the local communities, and he thinks it's important for the United States military to work well with the nations that are hosting us or the localities in this country that have military facilities,'' Fleischer said. ``Very often these communities cherish those military facilities. There may be occasions where they don't and there are some problems, and the president thinks it's very important to work closely with local hosts.

``But it's always a question of balance and working well with local hosts and securing the military needs of our country to have our men and women properly trained so they can deter war,'' he said.

-------- space

The future of warfare - or 'single dumbest' Bush idea?

July 30, 2001
Chris Wattie
National Post, with files from news services
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20010730/632106.html

The U.S. military is drawing up plans for a space bomber that could drop precision bombs from a height of more than 100 kilometres while flying 15 times faster than conventional bombers.

Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, last month ordered the Pentagon to look into developing a spacecraft that "would be valuable for conducting rapid global strikes," according to a planning document issued under his name and obtained by The Los Angeles Times.

The bomber would blast off like a long-range missile and travel over its targets at 15 times the speed and 10 times the altitude of current heavy bombers.

The proposed vehicles would be flying so high and fast they would not even need explosives in their bombs. The projectiles would be able to crash through concrete bunkers and into underground missile silos like meteorites through speed and weight alone.

The bomber would be able to strike targets on the other side of the world within minutes and return to its base within an hour-and-a-half. It would also be out of reach of conventional air defence systems.

The idea of a rocket-propelled space bomber has been around in various guises since the 1930s, when Eugen Sanger, an Austrian rocket scientist, urged Adolf Hitler to build an "antipodal bomber" called the Silver Bird that could skip across the edge of the atmosphere to strike New York City.

Hitler was cool to the plan, but the idea of a bomber that could streak in an orbital path around the globe has captivated rocket scientists and science-fiction enthusiasts ever since.

Proponents say the space bomber could be developed quickly by adapting shelved research for the Star Wars system, begun under Ronald Reagan, along with plans for a reusable spacecraft called the X-33, under development by NASA.

Supporters of the space bomber include General Ralph Eberhardt, the head of the U.S. Air Force's Space Command and the man Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to nominate as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Craig Quigley, a spokesman for the Pentagon, is also optimistic, saying "The military couldn't get anything [to a war zone] faster than this. It could be useful in any number of scenarios."

However, the craft could set off a new arms race in the stratosphere and has already drawn criticism as an example of the increasing militarization of space.

Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, has called the plan "the single dumbest thing I've heard from this administration."

European and Asian nations already nervous about the United States's growing lead in military hardware would see the craft as an unsettling new example and raise new questions about American "hegemonism," he predicted.

The Bush administration's plans for military uses of space have been under intense scrutiny because of previous hints about taking a more assertive approach in this area. The proposed craft could easily be adapted to defend U.S. satellites or strike those of enemies, analysts say.

Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials have said the United States, with more satellites than any other country, needs to be able to defend those satellites.

However, the project's supporters deny the craft marks a move to militarize space because its targets would be on Earth and it would not achieve a full orbit.

The Rumsfeld document, a study titled Guidance and Terms of Reference for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, makes no reference to how much such a craft might cost, but analysts say that could be the biggest problem.

PROTOTYPE FOR A "SPACE BOMBER":

The Pentagon's proposed "space bomber" is based on an experimental prototype developed by NASA and Lockheed Martin. The X-33 was designed to take off vertically like a rocket and reach the upper atmosphere without disposable booster rockets. The Pentagon's proposed adaptation would fly 15 times faster and 10 times higher than current heavy bombers.

Flying through the upper atmosphere, the bomber could travel halfway around the world and return to its base in 90 minutes, gliding in to land like an airplane.

LAUNCH SITE: Edwards Air Force Base, California
Source: NASA, Dean Tweed, National Post

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

Pentagon Leaders Debate Readiness and Risk for a Report to Congress

NEWS ANALYSIS
New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THOM SHANKER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/politics/30MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, July 29 - The battle raging within the Pentagon over strategy and budgets, which has become as intense and intemperate as any in recent memory, is much more than the traditional confrontations between the military and the civilian leadership over turf, money and numbers of troops.

It is a debate about risk.

An important and fundamental question is being argued, one that reflects an honest difference in world views between those elected and appointed to oversee national security and those in uniform who carry out their orders on the field of combat. Can America risk cutting its forces now to finance expensive new weapons the Bush administration says would counter the threats it sees emerging in decades to come?

Military commanders say they have a unit of measure for the risk that comes with slashing current readiness, and it is called the body bag. But the Pentagon's new civilian leadership came into office believing that the world today is relatively benign compared with during the cold war, but warning of significant threats over the horizon, for which America had better prepare.

"I think there is some room for some trade-off between tomorrow and the day after tomorrow," Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said in an interview. While declaring that "it's not my goal" to cut troops and weapons, he said it is worth analyzing whether the United States has been "somewhat over insuring" against the current dangers posed by the dual threat of countries like Iraq and North Korea.

"How much of an insurance policy do I want against the sort of Iraq- North Korea combination, versus how much do I want to have 15 years from now against two very different looking opponents, one of whom may be threatening our Navy in dangerous ways and another posing a serious theater nuclear threat?" Mr. Wolfowitz asked.

President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are telling the military that it should put missile defenses and future combat systems above maintaining a force capable of fighting and winning two wars simultaneously. In essence, the administration is saying the military should reduce forces to what is required to win one war decisively and carry out a holding action elsewhere.

But the service chiefs, war-fighting commanders and some career civilian planners say that to carry out the new strategy, they may need more on-the-ground, forward-deployed forces than the administration appears willing to finance now that a tax cut and domestic spending priorities have left a shrinking budget surplus.

The Pentagon is deep into a classified examination, required every four years by Congress, of strategy and budgets that includes determining the future size and shape of the nation's military forces.

But the closed-door debate became so polarized in recent days that responsibility for managing the forces portion of the review was given directly to Mr. Wolfowitz and Gen. Richard B. Myers, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in hopes that their high title and rank would calm the process and break the impasse.

The panels crunching their way through the Quadrennial Defense Review worked this weekend, racing against a Sept. 30 deadline for reporting to Congress. One panel is still grappling with how large a military is required to protect American interests everywhere else in the world while one major war is being fought.

Mr. Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs broke with a decade of American national security strategy by scuttling a requirement that the military be prepared to fight and win two major wars almost simultaneously.

The new strategy was contained in guidelines, or "terms of reference," that described four new core missions: The military must prepare to "win decisively" in one major war; to defend the homeland; to maintain global deployments to deter aggression; and to conduct limited, small- scale contingencies.

The forces panel is still debating what is to be done if a second adversary challenges an America that is already fighting one war somewhere on the globe.

Mr. Rumsfeld and the chiefs tried to help, amending the language of the strategic guidelines to remove a demand that United States forces be ready to "concurrently" carry out the four core missions. Also out was language saying the military must be able to swiftly defeat an enemy with minimum reinforcements.

The tweaked terms of reference provided the guidance, but not the answers.

How likely is it that America would be drawn into two major conflicts at once? Is it enough to simply halt aggression on the second front? What of the territories conquered: Must the adversary be rolled back to the status quo that existed before the war, even if that status quo contributed to the conflict? In the end, does the president need a harsher level of military options to both deter and punish an aggressor, which means forces sufficient to occupy an enemy and even topple a regime?

"We don't like a fair fight," one military officer said. "We want to win, absolutely, and on our terms." Added another: "To deter you have to have a capability to defeat. O.K. People are trying to define what `defeat' means. Is holding the line and returning to the status quo enough? That's what George Bush Sr. did in Kuwait. I think we're evenly divided today over whether just stopping Saddam Hussein was enough."

The Pentagon's civilian leaders and senior officers agree that this year's review has been exceedingly tense, that tempers have flared. And with just two months remaining to complete the work, it may not be possible to say with confidence that this Quadrennial Defense Review will have been subjected to a complete and rigorous analysis.

"Let me be very unequivocal: We will submit the Q.D.R. to the Congress on time," Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week. "Now, that does not mean that that report will say: `We got it all figured out. It's all done.' You've heard Secretary Rumsfeld from here, from the podium, say that the Q.D.R. process may very well reveal areas that need further study, perhaps for many months, to study in the depth of detail that you need to make intelligent decisions."

--------

Congress to Audit Pentagon

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Pentagon-Plastic.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional investigators agreed Monday to conduct a Pentagon-wide audit, looking for potential abuse of the government credit cards that military and civilian defense workers used last year for 10 million purchases totaling $5.5 billion.

Acting at the behest of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., General Accounting Office investigators said they would pursue the department-wide audit after a preliminary probe of two Navy units in Southern California turned up widespread fraud and abuse. The Pentagon inspector general also is investigating potential abuse of the department's 1.8 million credit cards.

Pentagon officials defended the credit card program Monday before a House government reform panel, insisting that any abuses have been more than offset by savings from reducing the paperwork and bureaucracy needed for purchases of less than $2,500.

Vice Admiral Keith Lippert, who last year headed the agency responsible for the Navy and Marine credit card program, said the rate of abuse and misuse of Navy-issued cards is less than half the commercial benchmark of 0.06 percent to 0.09 percent of dollars spent.

``The greatest strength of the system is employee honesty,'' Lippert said. ``The work force is relied upon to properly use the card and to report misuse.''

But the GAO said the two San Diego Navy facilities it examined exercised little control over the $68 million in credit card purchases employees at the two units made last year. The agency said it found numerous questionable purchases, including expensive computer monitors and Palm Pilots that could not be accounted for, as well as gift certificates to Nordstrom and Mary Kay cosmetics.

Capt. Ernest L. Valdes, commander of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, defended the computer purchases but conceded the Navy would have saved money buying them in bulk, rather than with credit cards. He said the cosmetics purchase was made with a stolen credit card.

Grassley said there have been more than 500 known cases of fraud involving military credit cards in the past two years. One bank company, he said, had to write off $59 million in fraudulent debts from military credit cards. He cited one case of a Marine Corps sergeant who ran up a $20,000 bill on his military credit card and then left the service with the bill unpaid.

Both Grassley and Horn urged the Pentagon to begin requiring routine credit checks before allowing employees to have government credit cards.

``The no-credit-check-everybody-gets-a-card policy allows the abusers to rob the bank,'' Grassley said. ``And DOD is backing them up.''

Gregory D. Kurtz, the GAO's director of financial management and assurance, said the Pentagon should begin limiting the number of people with credit cards. At the two Navy units, he said, 36 percent and 16 percent of the employees had military credit cards, compared to no more than 4 percent of the employees at six large defense contractors in Southern California.

``The more cardholders you have, the harder it is to control,'' Kurtz said.

Capt. J.E. Surash, commander of the Navy Public Works Center in San Diego, said the number of center employees with military credit cards has been cut 31 percent since last year. He said new controls also have been put in place that require the cardholder, his supervisor and another official to sign off on each monthly statement before it is paid.

``We did a major overhaul of my command in the fall of 2000,'' Surash said. ``It is much improved over what the GAO saw when they did their review.''

Horn asked the GAO to report back by Nov. 1 on its Pentagon-wide audit. He said he intends to keep up the pressure to ensure that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld lives up to his promise to improve financial accountability at the Pentagon.

``We're not going to just let this drop,'' said Horn.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

EnBW says to invest millions of marks in renewables

GERMANY: July 30, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11819

FRANKFURT - Germany's third biggest utility EnBW said last week it plans to invest "millions of marks" in renewable energy projects.

Renewable energy sources, such as wind, biomass and solar, are seen as environmentally-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels, the burning of which produces carbon dioxide emissions.

"EnBW Kraftwerke AG will in the coming years increase its investment in power production from renewable energy," EnBW said in a statement.

"The company should, through three-figure million (mark) investments in the biomass and wind energy sectors in particular, achieve further emissions reductions and effective climate protection," it added.

The firm is looking at the Schwabian Mountains and the Black Forest as possible sites for wind power plants.

In biomass, EnBW said it has had success at a paper pulp plant in Ulm in partnership with the local municipal utility. A further five large biomass plants are planned in Baden Wuerttemberg, where the utility is based.

As a result of its renewable energy strategy, EnBW targets a one million tonne cut in CO2 emissions in the medium term.

"The economy and lasting ecology are for us not a contradiction, but are ideally joined in the framework of this strategy," said EnBW board member Michael Gassner.

-------- genetics

Rival bills on cloning head for vote in House

07/29/2001 - Updated 09:10 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/july01/2001-07-30-cloning.htm

WASHINGTON - Opponents and supporters of human cloning are headed for a showdown this week in the House of Representatives.

At issue are rival bills, one of which would impose a$1 million fine and 10-year prison term on any scientist who creates a human embryo by cloning. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., also would ban the importation of cloned embryos from the few other countries that permit cloning.

The second bill, sponsored by Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., would ban cloning designed to produce a human baby but would let cloned embryos be created for research purposes.

The Bush administration supports the total ban. Bush's secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, said on Fox News Sunday that permitting cloning for medical research would create a "slippery slope."

Cloning mimics fertilization by transplanting an adult cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed and stimulating it with electricity. The cell divides and creates an embryo with the same genetic makeup of the original cell.

Scientists have cloned mammals, including Dolly the sheep in Scotland in 1997. No examples of a cloned human being are known to exist, though this month, a Massachusetts company announced plans to produce cloned human beings for research from donated cells. Human cloning is banned in 29 European countries; Great Britain permits it for research purposes.

Anti-abortion lawmakers represent the core of support for a cloning ban. They say creating human embryos and then destroying them for research is immoral. The ban has also attracted support from others who say that cloning could lead to commercial "embryo farms," the exploitation of women for their eggs and, ultimately, efforts to change basic characteristics of babies by altering the genetic makeup of embryos.

Supporters of the bill that would permit cloning for medical research say it is necessary for science to reach its full potential.

"Cloning for research purposes (could) open the door to the development of cures ... for unmet medical needs like diabetes, stroke and diseases of aging," says Michael Werner, bioethics counsel for the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "Cloning is the way we can figure out how to turn valuable insights from stem-cell research into products that are transplantable into patients."

Scientists hope to extract stem cells, the all-purpose cells that can grow into any of the body's tissues or organs, from embryos produced by cloning. President Bush is deciding whether to allow federal funding of stem-cell research.

Tissues grown from cloned cells, Werner says, theoretically could be used to replace damaged tissues without being rejected by a body; both would contain the same genetic makeup.

Weldon says most scientific benefits that could be derived from human cloning could also be gotten from cloning animals, which his bill does not forbid.

If a ban is approved by the House, it faces uncertain prospects in the Senate, where a similar proposal died in 1998. Weldon says changes in cloning research since then, including the proposed beginning of commercial cloning in Massachusetts, might cause senators to view cloning more harshly.

Contributing: Kathy Kiely

-------- health

Top German Radiation Expert Warns on Cellphones

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-health-germany-t.html?searchpv=reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's top radiation official said in an interview released on Monday that people, especially children, should minimize their use of mobile phones as a health precaution.

``In general, cellphone calls should be kept as short as possible,'' Wolfram Koenig, head of the Radiation Protection Agency, told the Berliner Zeitung. ``Parents should keep their children away from this technology as much as possible.''

In the interview scheduled for publication on Tuesday, he also advised car drivers to avoid using mobiles completely.

Earlier this year, the U.S. cellular telephone industry came under renewed legal attack in a series of class-action lawsuits claiming that cellphones pose a series of health risks ranging from infections to brain damage.

Most similar previous cases have been dismissed.

Studies published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Medical Association have found no evidence that the phones cause brain tumors in the people who use them.

Koenig said there was no scientific evidence of health risks through cellphones, but he warned of possible hidden risks through thermal and biological effects.

He said science must urgently address whether cellphones could be linked to a series of different illnesses.

-------- imf / world bank

WTO Chief Pushes New Trade Talks

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-WTO-Talks.html

GENEVA (AP) -- Failure to launch a new round of global trade negotiations later this year will undermine the authority of the World Trade Organization and leave poor countries vulnerable, the group's director-general said at a ``reality check'' meeting Monday.

WTO chief Mike Moore told representatives from 142 member states that many nations would ``question the value of the WTO as a forum for negotiation'' if new talks do not take place.

WTO representatives are meeting for two days in Geneva to take a frank look at the chances of fresh trade talks at a high-level conference of ministers in Doha, Qatar, in November.

Trade ministers originally aimed to launch a round of talks during their 1999 meeting in Seattle, but were unable to agree on the content. They want to try again in Doha, but ministers say they will not risk another humiliating failure and insist that the launch be assured before they get there.

Moore said there was ``no better way'' than a new round to ``effectively address the problems of economic slowdown and prevent the further marginalization of many developing countries through the weakening of the multilateral system.''

Failing to start a new round would not stop future talks, he said, but they would take place outside the WTO, ``with those not involved bearing the cost of exclusion.''

However, the diplomat leading preparations for Doha gave a sobering assessment of the chances of reaching agreement on new talks.

Stuart Harbinson of Hong Kong, chairman of the WTO's general council, said in a 10-page report that there were still major areas of contention over what should be included in the agreement to launch a new round of talks.

His report said the thorny issue of the implementation of agreements from the previous round of negotiations -- the Uruguay Round that finished in 1994 -- was holding up progress.

Developing countries say they have not had the benefits they were promised from that round, and insist that such issues be addressed before the start of a new round.

Developed nations say some of the demands are completely new and can only be considered within a round where all countries make concessions to obtain what they want.

Sergio Marchi, Canada's ambassador to the WTO, said Monday that WTO members need to be more accommodating if they want to agree on an agenda for trade talks.

Marchi said representatives from about 15 WTO member states met over the weekend in Annecy, France, to discuss the prospects for a new round of global trade talks.

The Annecy meeting brought together countries that support the launch of a new trade round, including members of the so-called Quad -- the European Union, the United States, Canada and Japan -- as well as Switzerland, Hungary, Thailand, Uruguay and Brazil, he said.

Representatives discussed ``how to reach out and to widen that circle,'' Marchi said, adding that a new round of trade talks was ``doable.''

-------- police / prisoners

Mueller Promises to Improve F.B.I.

New York Times
July 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-FBI-Director.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Mueller, President Bush's choice to head the FBI, told Congress Monday that the nation's premier law enforcement agency will handle itself better under his leadership despite its recent string of high-profile blunders.

``If I have the honor of being confirmed by the Senate, I will make it my highest priority to restore the public's confidence in the FBI -- to re-earn the faith and trust of the American people,'' he said. ``The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve nothing less, and as director I would tolerate nothing less.''

However, Mueller cautioned the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI ``is far from perfect and that the next director faces significant management and administrative challenges.''

But when mistakes are made, he said, the bureau needs to admit it immediately and hold accountable those who are responsible.

Finally, ``Every significant mistake must be examined to determine whether broader reform is necessary,'' he said. ``We must learn from our mistakes or we will be bound to repeat them.''

Mueller will have to deal with a Congress that plans to oversee the FBI a lot more closely than it did in the past, the chairman of the committee said.

``Congress has sometimes followed a hands-off approach about the FBI,'' the Judiciary chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said. ``Until the bureau's problems are solved, we will need a hands-on approach for a while.''

Leahy said he sees three core problems within the FBI: security and computers; management; and the FBI's insular culture. Mueller will have to be willing to work with Congress to help fix all three problems, Leahy said.

``We need to forge a strong and constructive oversight partnership with the leadership at the Department of Justice and the FBI to shape the reforms and find the solutions to make the FBI the premier law enforcement agency that the American people want it to be,'' Leahy said.

Mueller -- nominated by Bush on July 5 -- will have plenty of time to answer questions, because the committee announced that his confirmation hearing will last at least two days.

The committee already has held FBI oversight hearings, and was expected to use Mueller's first appearance before Congress to ask for specific reforms within the FBI, and to set benchmarks for the agency to live up to.

This would be a markedly different confirmation hearing for Mueller than for his predecessor, Louis Freeh. When he came before the Judiciary Committee on July 29, 1993, it was a love fest, with Freeh giving the customary promises to fight crime on all fronts while retaining independence from political influence and increasing the number of minority and female agents.

He was done in three hours and confirmed less than two weeks later.

Barring major controversy during the hearing, Mueller's confirmation also is all but assured by the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., also says he hopes to get a final vote on his nomination by the end of the week.

Mueller, 56, is a no-nonsense Justice Department veteran and former federal prosecutor who has served in senior posts under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Unlike Freeh, who retired two years short of his 10-year term, Mueller has never been an FBI agent.

But his Marine Corps background -- he received the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam -- will enhance his image among agents, many of whom are former Marines, FBI officials said.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the Judiciary Committee's harshest FBI critics, told Mueller that he planned to delve into what he sees as a ``cowboy culture'' within the bureau.

``The FBI is in desperate need of a director who will make drastic changes in the bureau's management culture,'' Grassley said. ``This person must be able to sweep out the culture of arrogance and replace it with a culture dedicated to truth and honorable service to the American people.''

Added Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the committee's top Republican: ``Your record of service to the community and the country is one that anyone would be proud of. There is no doubt that you will need to muster all of your experience, training and character to execute this new assignment.''

The FBI has been under fire for missteps going back years, including the failure to provide thousands of documents to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's lawyers, the Robert Hanssen spy case, the bloody Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge standoffs, its inability to account for all its firearms and computers and the botched investigation of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.

-------- spying

Hanssen Helped FBI Search for Subversives
Spy Was Part of Project Monitoring Americans for Soviet Influence, Files Show

By Jonathan Dann and J. Michael Kennedy
Los Angeles Times
Monday, July 30, 2001; Page A02
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4330-2001Jul29.html

At the same time he was selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union, former FBI special agent Robert P. Hanssen was a key supervisor in a 1980s domestic-spying program questioning the loyalty of U.S. citizens and monitoring their activities, newly obtained FBI documents show.

In this program, federal agents filed reports on teachers, clerics and political activists who were affiliated primarily with liberal causes. FBI domestic spy operations under the Reagan and first Bush administrations came to light a decade ago, prompting congressional rebukes. But the role of confessed traitor Hanssen has not been reported before. The documents also offer some of the richest information to date about FBI domestic surveillance during the 1980s.

Hanssen's initials appear on numerous files among 2,815 pages of formerly classified documents recently obtained under a federal Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly 15 years ago. Former co-workers confirmed his handwriting.

"It's astonishing that the very guy who was going after dissenters was, in fact, working for the Soviets," said Michael Ratner, vice president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-leaning political group that has been monitored by the FBI.

The program, which lasted for more than a decade, monitored peace and anti-nuclear activists and other groups the White House worried could be manipulated by Soviet propaganda. Its stated goal was to uncover Soviet attempts at altering U.S. policy by influencing targeted groups.

As a result, the FBI invested thousands of hours collecting political intelligence even as insider Hanssen was delivering the FBI's most closely held secrets to the KGB.

For example, agents noted the movements of Tobi Trister Gati, who was a guide for Soviet dignitaries visiting the United States in the mid-1980s. She now is an adviser on international affairs for a Washington law firm and was assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research in the Clinton administration.

In another instance, it warned that Philadelphia was ripe for Soviet infiltration because of the city's "decaying industrial base, high blue-collar unemployment, homeless[ness], racial tensions, influential religious community and concentrated liberal academic environment of the region."

An FBI memo signed by Hanssen raised the possibility that Russian agents were seeking the help of U.S. physicians and astronauts for subversive activities in the United States.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a leading critic of Ronald Reagan whose correspondence found its way into the FBI files, called the surveillance effort a "Cold War hangover" and "a waste of time."

But former FBI director William H. Webster, who guided the bureau during the 1980s, said the surveillance was warranted to thwart Soviet spy activity.

Hanssen's former boss, David Major, who is retired from the FBI and works as a counterintelligence consultant, confirmed that Hanssen was "one of a handful of experts" on Soviet political influence operations inside the United States.

Major said Hanssen, who was deputy chief of the FBI's Soviet Analytical Unit from 1987 to 1990, "played a fundamental role in producing the final product. He was significantly involved in the process."

Major added that although Hanssen was not the head of the unit, he often was left in charge when its chief was supervising other matters. In two instances, the documents reveal Hanssen signing off for his boss.

Hanssen declined to be interviewed, and the FBI declined to comment further about the confessed spy's activity within the bureau.

Paul Moore, a former FBI analyst who knew Hanssen for 20 years, shared a car pool with him and considered him a friend. Moore said Hanssen went undetected for so many years because he played the role of the consummate counterintelligence man: "Bob was on the leeward side with all the guns pointing outward to sea. It was set up to catch other people. It takes a Bob Hanssen to catch a Bob Hanssen."

--------

CIA Role May Grow in Preventing Terror Attacks

Monday July 30 2:33 PM ET
Reuters
By Tabassum Zakaria
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010730/pl/crime_spying_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - A U.S. intelligence review is exploring possible new roles for the CIA and other spy agencies in the domestic arena to protect the United States from terrorist attack, a senior intelligence official said.

U.S. intelligence agencies operate overseas and are generally prohibited from having a hand in domestic affairs to ensure a taboo against spying on Americans is not broken. It is not clear yet what new role they might take on.

``We know that we're going to increasingly be a target in this country and we also know that intelligence is going to have a role to play in trying to protect the homeland, protect the continental U.S.'' a senior intelligence official familiar with the review told Reuters.

The official said that ``nobody has worked through the mechanics of how all of that would work,'' but said it was expected that ``one of the things coming out of this review would be some recommendations on how to think differently about the intelligence role in homeland defense.''

President Bush in May ordered a comprehensive review, giving CIA Director George Tenet a ``broad mandate to challenge the status quo and explore new and innovative techniques, systems, practices and processes for foreign intelligence collection, analysis and distribution.''

The review is assessing programs with an eye to being ready to meet future needs by 2015 and could recommend restructuring, the official and intelligence analysts said in recent interviews.

It is being conducted by a panel of government insiders led by Joan Dempsey, deputy director of central intelligence for community management, and a group of outside experts led by Brent Scowcroft, a former White House national security adviser.

CIA ROLE QUESTIONED

The United States has been trying to develop a large-scale emergency plan to deal with any biological, chemical or nuclear attack on U.S. soil. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) is leading a review of America's ability to cope with such an attack.

The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) is generally forbidden to spy on Americans, but can under certain circumstances collect intelligence information on U.S. citizens if they are believed to be involved in espionage or terrorist activities.

The FBI is responsible for handling criminal activity inside U.S. borders and conducted by Americans.

The review was not expected to recommend changing laws that limit the role of U.S. intelligence agencies relative to Americans. ``We wouldn't talk about changing any of that,'' the intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

``But when does homeland defense transition from being (about) criminal activity to being (about) a national security threat? Those are the kinds of issues that I would expect to be coming out of this review,'' the official said.

The review is looking at how to combat threats emerging from diverse directions since the Soviet Union dissolved.

``It reflects this ongoing concern that we are now 11 years after the end of the Cold War and we still haven't seen tremendous response to that alteration in terms of what the intelligence community does,'' said Mark Lowenthal, senior principal at SRA International Inc., a consulting firm.

NEW ESPIONAGE TECHNIQUES

The review also is looking at developing new espionage techniques for collecting foreign secrets.

``It is increasingly true that our capabilities are extremely well known and we have to develop capabilities that aren't well known,'' the U.S. intelligence official said.

The National Security Agency (NSA), which eavesdrops on communications worldwide using spy satellites and listening posts, is an acknowledged problem child -- struggling to keep pace with technological advances from sophisticated encryption to hard-to-tap fiber optics.

``The NSA problem is really the most serious,'' Gregory Treverton, a senior consultant at RAND and former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said.

NSA must operate differently as it becomes harder to capture signals using traditional methods, and rely more on using people ``who will risk their lives to put objects with ears'' close to the targeted signal, Treverton said.

``The understandable culture of secrecy is a huge obstacle,'' he said.

For example In-Q-Tel, a CIA-sponsored venture capital firm that seeks to bring private-sector technological innovations to the intelligence world, has been faced with finding software it likes only to discover that a foreigner was involved in writing it, which threatens its secrecy, Treverton said.

In intelligence analysis, where resources are stretched to cope with the huge volume of incoming information, one solution is to buy outside expertise, the intelligence official said.

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