NUCLEAR
Civilian nuclear plants might get military role
BUSH ADMN. URGED TO USE NEUTRON BOMB
Father of Neutron Bomb: Use It on Osama
Security Around Nuclear Reactors Up
Japan Tightens Security at Nuclear Plants
Divers Attach Cables on Kursk
Science Group Says Nuclear Safeguards Inadequate
Plane flew close to nuclear plant in Vt
House Bill Aimed at Whistleblowers
Senate effort to add nuclear weapons funds dropped
Senate Approves $345B Defense Bill
MILITARY
12-Year-Olds Take Up Arms Against Taliban
Russia, Iran sign weapons agreement
Taiwan Wants to Buy U.S. Destroyers
4 Named in Croatia War Crimes Case
Troops Protect Anthrax Vaccine
Army Tightens Security at Nation's 8 Chemical Arms Depots
Official: US To Miss Weapon Deadline
Iran issues warning over airspace
Text of NATO Article 5
Musharraf backs king as option to Taliban
Governor: Navy Should Leave Vieques
Pentagon to focus on defense of U.S. soil
New Blueprint for Military
ENERGY AND OTHER
White House gas
Vaccine Preservative Still in Doubt
POLICE / PRISONERS
House Bill Would Expand Federal Detention Powers
NEW INTELLIGENCE LEGISLATION STRIKES TOO CLOSE TO HOME
Spy blunder - Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files
Report Presses for Information Sharing
Terrorist group likely on the move
ACTIVISTS
Can the NY Times Count -- or Quote -- Peace Activists?
-------- NUCLEAR
Civilian nuclear plants might get military role
U.S. plan for making bomb material tritium reverses earlier policies
10/02/2001
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS
The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/response/stories/485677_tritium_02met..html
The United States, which for decades has urged other countries not to use commercial nuclear power plants as factories for nuclear bomb materials, is taking steps to do just that.
The Bush administration - continuing a project begun under President Bill Clinton - in recent weeks has advanced a plan to use one or more commercial nuclear plant reactors in Tennessee to produce tritium, a radioactive substance that boosts the power of nuclear weapons.
It would be the first time that the United States, the world's first and strongest nuclear power, has made civilian nuclear plants part of the vast complex that produces and maintains the nuclear arsenal.
U.S. officials have said they need new tritium, which the government has not produced since an outmoded federal facility closed in 1988, to restore old weapons and make new ones. They say that security at the first nuclear power plant designated for the project - the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar plant, 10 miles south of Spring City, Tenn. - will keep the material safe.
But critics say abandoning the long-standing separation of commercial and military nuclear programs could encourage other countries to do the same - putting weapons in more hands, increasing the risk of nuclear theft and terrorism, and destroying international confidence in nuclear-weapons treaties.
Security concerns have increased since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, with nuclear facilities on heightened alert against possible terrorist assaults.
"Pakistan has nuclear weapons now, and North Korea, Iraq and Iran are on the edge of that decision," said physicist Kenneth Bergeron, who spent 25 years at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., researching reactor safety and tritium production for the federal laboratory that researches national security.
"They might just say that if the United States is doing this, then the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is history," said Dr. Bergeron, who retired in 1999.
Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that produces and maintains nuclear weapons, did not respond to interview requests over the past several days. A spokesman left a message after the close of business Monday, saying he would not be available to discuss the project until later in the week.
Federal officials have maintained that folding commercial nuclear power plants into the nuclear weapons business would not threaten world stability. In a 1998 report to Congress, the Energy Department said that concerns about whether the tritium proposal would spread nuclear weapons technology abroad were "manageable."
Starting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program to promote nonmilitary nuclear technology, eight successive presidents said that blurring the line between civilian and military nuclear uses was a bad idea because it might hasten the global spread of nuclear weapons.
The United States encouraged other countries to follow the American example and not combine civilian nuclear energy and nuclear weapons programs.
In late 1998, however, the Clinton administration reversed that policy, announcing that the supply of new tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons would come from commercial nuclear reactors in Tennessee. The other option, which Energy Secretary Bill Richardson rejected as too expensive, was to build a new facility for defense use only.
Since then, federal agencies have worked to implement that decision, issuing bid requests and breaking ground on a new facility to extract the tritium at the Energy Department's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Most recently, the TVA, a federally owned commercial utility, asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Aug. 20 for a license amendment that would let the Watts Bar plant start producing tritium for bombs along with power for its customers.
The TVA's two-reactor Sequoyah plant, nine miles northeast of Chattanooga, also could become a tritium factory.
Rejected plan
Under the plan that the government rejected, the tritium would have been produced at a new facility in South Carolina designed just for that purpose, with state-of-the-art safety features.
Tritium is necessary to boost a conventional nuclear bomb into a much more powerful hydrogen bomb. Every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal uses tritium. But because the gas decays at a rate of 5.5 percent per year, older weapons eventually must have new supplies added. New weapons also require tritium.
Recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety reviews of TVA's Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants have given them generally good marks, but critics say the unusual design of the TVA reactors makes them inherently inferior.
Dr. Bergeron said he worries that national security and Energy Department budgetary priorities, not reactor safety, will become paramount at Watts Bar and Sequoyah.
"We're adding a mission to these TVA plants," he said. "It's a conflict of interest. I worry about people looking the other way. I worry about the [Energy Department] cutting corners."
TVA officials did not respond to interview requests.
Mark Padovan, project manager for the NRC's review of the plan, said nuclear regulators will ask only narrow technical questions. Under an agreement with the Energy Department, the NRC will not raise any questions about the broader policy questions involving dual-use technology.
But opponents say such questions are crucial. They say that the spread of technology for producing tritium in nuclear power plants could help fledgling nuclear powers build more dangerous bombs.
"We know that Pakistan is trying to boost its weapons," Dr. Bergeron said. "India is probably doing it, too. This accelerates that process."
A "boosted" bomb can be lighter and smaller, he said, making it easier to transport and deliver - or steal.
It's also true that terrorists might steal an old, poorly guarded weapon and obtain tritium and boost it," Dr. Bergeron said.
----
Re: BUSH ADMN. URGED TO USE NEUTRON BOMB
There are three types of nuclear weapons
From: "Dr. H. D. Sharma" <hdsharma@golden.net>
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 18:03:22 -0400
I have gathered the following information about the neutron bomb. There are three types of nuclear weapons.
The first one is assembled by putting together a few kilograms of fissionable or fissile material within as short a period as possible -- (within some microseconds if possible). This can be achieved by using chemical devices, i.e., imploding several small amounts (subcritical amounts) into a small volume inside the bomb. Several subcritical amounts when fired into a small volume, exceed critcal mass and thus fissile material (U-235 or Plutonium-239) fissions with neutrons. Each fission of either U-235 or Pu-235 nucleus induced by a neutron, produces two radioactive fission products and on the average 2.5 neutrons with the evolution of a large amount of energy. It is an uncontrolled chain reaction and thus a fraction of fissile material is fissioned. Fission products that are produed along with enormous amount of energy, disperse in the environment. This type of bomb was dropped n Hiroshima and on Nagasaki.
The second one (commonly known as hydrogen bomb) consists of an atom bomb with deuterium and tritium compounds like lithium deuteride etc. Fission bomb is first triggered so that temperature in the assembly is raised to several million degrees (between 10 -100 million degrees). At these high temperatures deuterium and tritium start reacting with each other to form a helium atom and 14.6- MeV neutron. As you can see that it produces a stable atom of helium and a fast-moving neutron. This neutron can react with other atoms in the environment. For example, it can react with nitrogen-14 to give carbon-14.(a radioactive isotope of carbon). One can produce additional number of radioisotopes as well. In short, in addition to fission products we also have neutron-induced radioisotopes. These are also dispersed along with enormous amount of energy in the environment. This types of bomb has been tested by many nations in South Pacific and in Siberia from 1952 to 1963. Generally, a hydrogen bomb is 100 to 1000 times more distructive than a fission bomb.
The third kind (neutron bomb) is similar to the hydrogen bomb. The difference is that it is detonated at high altitudes so that neutrons can travel to ground level and destroy life. Of course, some neutrons do react with other material and produce radioisotopes. The fission bomb is kept as small as one can assemble and the amount of tritium and deuterium is kept large. Once the fission bomb raises the temperature so as to initiate tritium-deuterium (D-T) reaction, the fusion energy evolved in the D-T reaction keeps the temperature high for a longer duration and thus keeps the reaction going for relatively a longer time. 14.6-MeV neutrons shoot out in all direction. They can be deflected to some extent toward the earth. Human life is destroyed by neutrons over a certain area under the bomb. As the distance becomes longer between the spot where the bomb is detonated and the ground, the neutron flux also reduces. 14.6-Mev neutrons fly to all directions. The ones that are directed toward the sky and are not deflected, do not harm humans or cause property damage. It is not as distructive as the hydrogen bomb but it is false notion that there is very little radioactivity associated with it. It is descrbed as 'not a dirty bomb'. However, it is also a dirty bomb.
There are good reasons why neutron bomb should not be used.
(1) Fission products are produced when the fusion reaction (reaction between deutron and tritium) is induced). These fission products will evantually come down to the earth along with rain etc. over a period of three years and thus get into the food-chain. That will result in higher incidence of cancer in the population on the globe.
(2) There is a treaty banning detonation of bombs in our atmosphere. If the Super power (USA) uses the bomb for killing "terrorists", other countries will follow her example. USA will not have any moral authority to ask other countries to ban the production or the use of neutron bombs.
(3) Multitudes of nuclear reactions can be initiated by a flux of 14.6 MeV neutrons and thus some radioactivity will be induced in the materials. It cannot be stated that there will be no induced radioactivity produced in the surface area below the place the neutron bomb is detonated.
I find it very difficult to believe that President Bush is entertaining the use of neutron bombs. It was a relief to know that for the last thirty eight years we could take for granted that super powers would not deploy nuclear weapons. Now we hear that President Bush is considering such suggestions. Use of any nuclear weapons poses a grave risk to (bio-life) human beings here on the earth. It must be understood that exposure to radiation leaves insult to biolife.
I am still trying to get some more information on this type of devices. Let us hope cool heads will prevail and neutron bombs will never be deployed in any kind of conflict. Hari Sharma.
---
Father of Neutron Bomb: Use It on Osama
Wes Vernon
Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2001
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/24/100538.shtml
WASHINGTON - Top officials in the Bush administration and in Congress have been urged to use a small neutron bomb to wipe out Osama bin Laden in a quick first strike in the war on terrorism.
Sam Cohen, the scientist who invented the neutron bomb, has outlined for these officials his plan to 'do in' the Taliban and terrorist Osama bin Laden, and do it quickly.
That, says Cohen, would go right to the core of the terrorist threat and at the same time satisfy the typically American impatience.
The neutron bomb has a limited blast and causes little collateral damage or lasting radioactivity while killing its intended targets.
"My offhand guess is that the majority of Americans couldn't care less how we 'do in' the Taliban and bin Laden and company, provided we get it done and [quickly]," he told NewsMax.com in a phone interview from his West Coast home.
Cohen, whose views were often accepted by President Reagan, agrees with President Bush regarding the need for the American people to resolve to hunker down for the long term.
The global terrorist threat is indeed "going to go on for years," Cohen agrees, but he is telling policy-makers in Washington, "the name of the game right now is Afghanistan [and] bin Laden."
What we need, he says, is a quick, highly visible strike to begin that war - one that Americans can see now. That, he believes, would stiffen the public's resolve for the future. The president has already told Americans that the war itself won't be quick and easy and could take years.
"I don't think they're going to be very tolerant of a prolonged [ground war,]" argues the scientist. He cites Korea and Vietnam as examples of the limits of America's patience.
At the same time, Cohen points to the 1991 Desert Storm as an example of an air war of short duration that did not do the job, given that Saddam Hussein remains in office today, as powerful as ever, plus the fact that resulting civilian deaths in that conflict vastly outnumbered military casualties. Hardy consistent with the first President Bush's vow to wage "a Christian war," in Cohen's view.
As a solution that would be both quick and effective, the author of "Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb" proposes reconfiguring Minuteman missiles. Remove the thermonuclear "big bang" component (hundreds of kilotons). Once that is done, these weapons could be deployed to target the hideouts of terrorists in Afghanistan.
Cohen says his sources tell him the U.S. has "fair intelligence" on the Taliban and "where their units and training camps are spread around."
The problem with "bombing the hell out of them" is that "we don't know where these guys are, and they're nobody's fool" and now that they know they're under attack, "they're going to be on the move." They will "burrow and bury themselves" while continuing their training exercises.
To counteract this requires, first, the "element of surprise."
Secondly, there will be a need for a weapon that imposes "mass destruction" that is carefully targeted.
Each Minuteman missile has three warheads. The thermonuclear component could be defused, while keeping the "trigger" at the kiloton level. "A kiloton bomb would do approximately the same amount of harm" as the hijacked airliners did to the World Trade Center Building.
"We hit them unannounced. All the president has to do is punch a button to put the plan into operation, and [these reconfigured kiloton bombs] can be retargeted practically within minutes." Ridding the weapons of the thermonuclear component can be done "within days," Cohen argues.
Further, they would take "considerably less than a half-hour" to reach their destinations. The "kiloton fission" would be a "deadly force," with a radius of about two-thirds of a mile "towards killing people who are exposed." That would be about a square mile, which "ought to cover the area of a training camp." The radioactive fallout would be relatively limited in terms of immediate death and death from prolonged effects.
The neutron bomb stockpile was eliminated after the Gulf War. The weapon had the potential for destroying humans without destroying property. Peace activists around the world had denounced it for that reason.
In fact, Cohen noted, in contrast to his famous invention, the kiloton bomb could destroy property. Also, whereas the neutron bomb can produce widespread radioactive fallout, the bomb he advocates for a quick strike in the current war is more carefully targeted.
Cohen's plan is known to have elicited a very positive reaction in some Washington quarters. Where it goes from there has yet to be determined.
-------- japan
Security Around Nuclear Reactors Up
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Japan.html?searchpv=aponline
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's coast guard has started 24-hour patrols of nuclear reactors to prevent terrorist attacks like those in New York and Washington, an official said Tuesday.
The coast guard has dispatched ships, airplanes and helicopters around the clock to guard the 17 Japanese nuclear reactors in coastal regions, spokesman Yoichi Toda said, adding that police were also increasing vigilance.
Officials have worried about the possibility of further attacks after terrorists hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
In the past, security around the plants was commonly increased only during anti-nuclear protests or shipments of plutonium, Toda said.
The expanded patrols, which began Friday, came amid concern that enemies of the United States may also target Japan, one of Washington's most important allies and a major staging point for U.S. military actions.
---
Japan Tightens Security at Nuclear Plants
October 02, 2001
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=worldnews&StoryID=257549#
TOKYO - Japan's coastguard service said on Tuesday it had taken unprecedented steps to tighten security at nuclear reactors around the country in response to last month's devastating attacks on the United States.
A spokesman for the Maritime Safety Agency said undisclosed numbers of coastguard patrol vessels had been mobilized in waters near the country's 51 nuclear reactors on a round-the-clock mission to guard against possible "terrorist attacks." "We had done nothing like this before the terrorist attacks on September 11," the spokesman said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last week called for tighter security at nuclear reactors, most of which are on the coast.
Japanese officials have voiced fears that the country's reactors could become targets of terror attacks.
Trade Minster Takeo Hiranuma, whose ministry is in charge of energy policy, plans to hold drills later this year on the northern island of Hokkaido on how to respond to attacks.
"It is difficult to deal with attacks by trained terrorists," he told reporters last week.
Resource-poor Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors which provide a third of the nation's power supply. Japan imports almost all its crude oil, 80 percent or more of which comes from the Middle East.
Nuclear power is being pushed as the solution to Japan's energy needs, but a series of accidents and mishaps has heightened public concern over its safety.
The memory of Japan's worst nuclear accident in 1999, which killed two plant workers, is still in peoples' minds.
Hundreds of workers, nearby residents and emergency personnel were exposed to radiation when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was triggered at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo.
-------- russia
Divers Attach Cables on Kursk
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html?searchpv=aponline
MOSCOW (AP) -- Divers crawled along the sunken Kursk nuclear submarine Tuesday, attaching cables lowered from a gigantic barge that is expected to hoist the submarine to the surface later this week.
Late Monday, divers reached the Kursk, lying 356 feet below the Barents Sea, and took about 12 hours to attach the first two of 26 lifting cables, said Russian Northern Fleet spokesman Capt. Vladimir Navrotsky.
With the seas calming down, the task of raising the sunken submarine is expected to accelerate, Navrotsky said. ``The weather has just begun to create normal conditions for the work,'' he said in remarks carried by Russian television.
It will take divers from two to two-and-half days to attach all 26 cables, Navrotsky said. After that, lifting the submarine out of the sea will take about 12 hours, unless weather conditions turn foul.
The lifting was originally set for Sept. 15, but it has been repeatedly delayed because of storms and technical difficulties.
The Dutch Mammoet-Smit International consortium, working on a $65 million contract from the Russian government, was concerned that a storm raging in the area over the last few days might have knocked the Giant 4 barge off of its position over the Kursk.
But after divers hooked the first cables to the nuclear submarine, it was clear that the barge had remained in the right place. Being in the right position over the Kursk is essential for the computer-controlled lifting operation, Navrotsky said.
The Kursk exploded and sank during naval exercises in the Barents Sea in August 2000, killing the entire 118-man crew. Russian officials want to raise the submarine to try to solve the mystery of its sinking and to remove any potential environmental threats from its twin nuclear reactors.
The Dutch consortium sawed off the Kursk's forward section, fearing it could break up and jeopardize the lifting. The Navy says it will try to lift fragments of the bow next year.
After being raised, the Kursk will be clamped under the barge and towed to a dry dock near the port of Murmansk, where the Navy will remove the remains of the crew and 22 Granit cruise missiles. The Navy will later dismantle the submarine and its nuclear reactors.
Navrotsky said Tuesday that the Navy will thoroughly monitor the submarine's condition before putting it in dock to make sure it does not leak any radiation. Officials have repeatedly said the Kursk reactors are safely encased in steel containers and that it will not pose any danger.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Science Group Says Nuclear Safeguards Inadequate
Chris Knap
The Orange County Register, Calif.
Knight Ridder/Tribune
October 02, 2001
http://199.97.97.163/IMDS%PMAKRT0%read%/home/content/users/imds/feeds/knightridder/2001/10/02/krtbn/0000-0269-OC-NUCLEAR
Oct. 2--The nation's 104 nuclear power plants are not adequately protected against modern terrorist threats, leaving thousands of Americans downwind of the reactors facing risk, a scientist group said Monday.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a Massachusetts lobbying group which opposes nuclear weapons but not nuclear power, warned that outdated Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules do not require power plants to be protected against attacks by aircraft, boats or trucks.
"To date, the NRC has assumed that U.S. nuclear reactors are so secure that sabotage would not be attempted. That assumption, if ever proven wrong, provides little protection to Americans living downwind of the target," says the report, which was written by nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum.
The scientists cite NRC documents showing that half of the nuclear power plants tested against a mock invasion force in the last ten years failed to keep intruders from critical areas where they could have damaged equipment so that toxic radiation was released into the atmosphere.
San Onofre Nuclear Power Station did better than many other plants, NRC documents show, but investigators found weaknesses that could have resulted in the loss of equipment critical to nuclear safety.
Alan Madison, chief of the NRC's safeguards oversight program, said Monday that the commission is reviewing all security regulations and may revise them to better reflect current threats.
The UCS is not alone in voicing security concerns. In a letter to the NRC two weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, urged the commission to rethink its "misguided" efforts to cede security and safety decisions to nuclear plant owners.
-------- vermont
Plane flew close to nuclear plant in Vt.
By Raphael Lewis,
Boston Globe Staff,
10/2/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/275/metro/Plane_flew_close_to_nuclear_plant_in_Vt_+.shtml
n unidentified plane swooped close to the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station on Sept. 13, but fighter jets sent to intercept the aircraft never found it, Governor Howard Dean disclosed yesterday.
Dean reported the incident as he joined a growing number of lawmakers from across the nation who have called on the federal government to create no-fly zones around all 103 nuclear plants in the United States, warning they are now easy targets for airborne terrorist attacks.
''We need to cordon off these facilities,'' Dean said in an interview.
The small mystery plane - one of the few that took to the skies in the hours after an unprecedented, nationwide grounding of all commercial flights - flew so low that several residents near the Vernon, Vt., reactor called 911, Dean said.
Fearful that the plane's pilot was tied to the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., two days earlier, officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and NORAD sent at least two fighter jets to find the aircraft, but the jets never sighted it, Dean said. FAA officials in Boston confirmed its existence on radar, he added.
State Police have since interviewed several airfield operators in the area, said Ed von Turkovich, who heads up Vermont's Emergency Management Agency. But so far, they have been unable to determine who was flying the plane, and why, at 10:30 p.m. on a night when the nation feared a second terrorist attack, the pilot chose such an ill-advised flight path.
Dean added that he was in full support of all the measures President Bush has taken so far to ensure the safety of Americans, but said they had not gone far enough.
''Other things must be done,'' Dean said.
Yesterday, Dean sent a letter to FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, Tom Ridge, the newly appointed director of homeland defense, and several other officials, requesting that no-fly zones be established. Absent that, he said, the FAA should require all small aircraft to file flight plans with air traffic control centers so their movements can be better tracked.
Currently, the FAA does not require pilots of small aircraft to file flight plans.
William Shumann, an FAA spokesman, said the agency was still discussing what measures to take, if any, to keep pilots from flying near and around nuclear plants.
Last week, the FAA issued an advisory asking pilots to steer well clear of nuclear reactors, as well as conventional power plants, refineries, dams, and other sensitive facilities. But Shumann acknowledged that the advisory carried no powers of enforcement, or penalties.
''It's guidance, basically,'' he said.
On Sept. 22, residents of Plymouth were unnerved when the pilot of a small plane circled the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station several times. Authorities later interviewed the pilot and determined he was simply curious, said state Senator Therese Murray, a Plymouth Democrat who has also urged the federal government to establish no-fly zones around nuclear plants.
Murray said she has yet to get a response from the FAA.
As for requiring pilots of small aircraft in Vermont to file flight plans, Shumann said such a move was highly unlikely.
''We would have to do that everywhere in the country, or at least in the lower 48 [states],'' he said. ''And that would probably get many in the general aviation community extremely upset ... We encourage pilots to file flight plans, but it is not a requirement of the FAA that they do that.''
Last week, the FAA grounded the nation's crop-dusters as investigators tried to determine whether terrorists contemplated using such planes to spread chemical or biological weapons.
The FAA continues to bar small aircraft lacking two-way radios and altitude-reporting transponders from flying within 20 nautical miles of the nation's busiest airports, including Logan International in Boston.
Shumann said the creation of no-fly zones around nuclear plants, which would be similar to zones the FAA created for stadiums hosting sports events, could have a potential downside.
''By doing that, you pinpoint the exact location of every nuclear plant in the country,'' he said. ''Maybe the terrorist could figure that out on his own, but maybe he couldn't.''
Officials with NORAD, which stands for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, declined to comment on specifics of the Sept. 13 incident in Vermont, including where the fighter jets left from. However, they did acknowledge that such attempts to intercept unknown aircraft have happened ''on numerous occasions'' since Sept. 11.
''We have worked very closely with the FAA to scramble on any unknown aircraft, I can say that,'' said NORAD spokesman Captain Ed Thomas.
-------- us nuc politics
House Bill Aimed at Whistleblowers
Tuesday October 2, 2001
From: DSNurse@aol.com
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers hope a bill under consideration in the House will provide more protection for federal whistleblowers.
The bill would require federal agencies to annually report to Congress on discrimination lawsuits filed against them and order agencies held liable for harassing or discriminating against an employee to pay the employee's legal costs. Agencies would also have to inform their employees about protection laws.
``Just like the private sector, federal agencies must be held accountable,'' said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (news - web sites).
Sensenbrenner said the legislation stemmed from reports lawmakers received from Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) scientists last year that they had been targets of reprisals after questioning agency policies.
Further investigation showed a problem throughout the federal government, Sensenbrenner said, citing increasing complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging retaliation or discrimination.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (news - bio - voting record), D-Texas, said, ``The federal government must be the national role model. The legislation ... demands that agencies be held accountable for their misdeeds.''
The bill is H.R. 169.
Text of the bill can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov
----
Senate effort to add nuclear weapons funds dropped
From: David Culp <david@fcnl.org>
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001
An effort by several Senators to add over $300 million to the nuclear weapons budget was dropped today (Tuesday, October 2).
Senators Pete Domenici (NM), Harry Reid (NV), and Jeff Bingaman (NM) had filed an amendment to increase the nuclear weapons budget of the Energy Department by $339 million. They had hoped to offer the measure as a floor amendment to the defense authorization bill.
However, opposition by several Senators, especially Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (MI), led Sen. Domenici to drop his effort on the last day of floor debate.
The Bush administration requested $5.30 billion for the nuclear weapons activities budget at the Energy Department for fiscal year 2002, which began October 1. The budget funds the work of the Los Alamos (NM), Sandia (NM), and Lawrence Livermore (CA) nuclear weapons labs. It also funds a half dozen nuclear weapons production sites scattered across the country and the Nevada Test Site. These facilities are used to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
None of these funds are for nonproliferation programs, such as such as the "Nunn-Lugar" threat reduction initiative--to safely and securely dismantle and dispose of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the U.S., Russia, and elsewhere.
Earlier this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended spending $5.45 billion for the nuclear weapons account, higher than the Bush administration's request. Sen. Domenici was seeking to boost that by $339 million.
Some Senators have been suggesting that the U.S. should develop new nuclear weapons, especially a "mini-nuke." While this amendment did not specifically authorize development of a new nuclear weapon, it would have been a significant increase for the nuclear weapons budget.
Much of the credit for this victory goes to the national and local organizations that organized telephone calls to Senators opposing the amendment.
David Culp, Legislative Representative Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers) 245 Second Street, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002-5795 Tel: (202) 547-6000, ext. 146 Toll free: (800) 630-1330, ext. 146 Fax: (202) 547-6019 E-mail: david@fcnl.org Web site: www.fcnl.org
----
Senate Approves $345B Defense Bill
Tue, Oct 02
By CAROLYN SKORNECK,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/printstory/news/ap/011002/17/news-defense-spending
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate approved its $345 billion defense spending bill without a dissenting vote Tuesday after dispensing with Republican objections that had stymied progress for a week as the nation geared up for war.
The vote was 99-0 for the bill that authorizes money for the Defense Department and the military work of the Energy Department for fiscal 2002, which began Monday.
"The men and women in the military should be able to count on us in normal times, and surely they ought to be able to count on us in these emergency times. And I believe very firmly that this bill does exactly that," Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told the Senate.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., alluded to some tough negotiations on missile defense and other issues when he said, "We had some hard decisions to make, and I think that we made them basically together." The bipartisan compromises were "done in a spirit to get this bill up and passed," said Armed Services' top Republican.
The only senator who did not vote was 98-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who fainted earlier Tuesday as he sat at his desk on the Senate floor. He was taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Just hours before the Senate endorsed the bill, it voted by a surprising 100-0 to quash delays caused by GOP efforts to attach to the defense measure both the Bush administration's energy package and a separate prison industry provision.
The roadblocks became apparent Sept. 25, as the House passed its $343 billion defense bill by a vote of 398-17, and the demands had not been amenable to compromise.
Levin, D-Mich., said he feared the problems could kill the bill. "That would be a horrendous message to send" to the military and the nation, he said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned the Senate that it was risking its reputation as well as the bipartisan comity that has marked its efforts since the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington.
"I'm worried that in a few minutes, the Senate may undo all that good work of the past three weeks, and bring an end to the bipartisan cooperation that has distinguished this institution, and give the public a reason to be ashamed of us," McCain said. He called the defense bill "the most important legislation we will pass since Sept. 11."
The unanimous vote to bypass the delays, when only 60 votes were needed, came after dozens of Republicans trooped into the chamber from a meeting in the office of Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
"I thought when it finally came down to it, the Republicans would not filibuster a bill of this import in terms of national unity and supporting our forces," Levin said.
Levin blamed the delay primarily on the determination by some Republicans to open to oil drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, part of the energy package being pushed by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. The separate issue of prison industries, pushed by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, was resolved with a compromise accepted by voice vote Tuesday.
So sure was Levin of getting the bill done that he was looking ahead to problems likely to arise when House and Senate conferees meet to resolve differences in the two bills.
The biggest problem, he said, will be base closures, even though President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have pushed repeatedly for them.
"It's going to be a very, very difficult effort in the House," Levin said. "We're going to need the president and the secretary of defense to really weigh in on this issue."
The Democrat-led Senate bill would allow for a round of base closures, in 2003. An independent commission would select the bases to be closed or realigned, and Congress and the president would be able only to accept or reject the entire list.
In contrast, the Republican-led House's bill omitted base closures in an effort to derail the idea, despite the support of the Republican administration.
Some base-closure opponents cited the terror attacks as a reason to keep all bases open. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon leaders have told Congress they need the savings from base closures even more now.
The Senate bill's final amendment attempted to correct the military ballot problem that surfaced last November in Florida. Offered by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., it would prohibit states from disqualifying military men and women from voting based on postmarks, addresses and witness signatures, among other things.
The Senate's $345 billion measure is $1.3 billion over Bush's request, but the House-Senate conference is expected to limit it to $343 billion.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
AN AFGHAN PORTRAIT
12-Year-Olds Take Up Arms Against Taliban
New York Times
October 2, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/international/asia/02SOLD.html
RAHMONKHEL, Afghanistan, Oct. 1 - The commander of the anti- Taliban Northern Alliance here, a small man with a graying beard, did not hesitate when asked the age of his youngest soldier.
"He is 12," the officer said, pointing at a skinny boy nearby. "He fought last year when he was 11."
The boy, who gave his name as Lalsaid, said going off to war at such a young age did not faze him. "Our enemy attacked us," Lalsaid said. "I had to join."
The Afghan opposition forces that the United States is supporting in its campaign against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban governors who are sheltering him include a deposed octogenarian king in exile in Rome and the Northern Alliance's jostling collection of tribal leaders, self-styled warlords and boys like Lalsaid.
What joins them is their resistance to the militant Islamic Taliban militia, which took control of the capital, Kabul, in 1996 and now controls most of Afghanistan. But the poverty, ethnic divisions and opportunism that afflict the country suggest that toppling the Taliban alone may not be enough to bring about stability. Meanwhile, the seemingly endless civil war has ensnared hundreds of young soldiers.
Lalsaid said he could not remember a time when there was peace in Afghanistan. He was born in 1989, the year of the Soviets withdrew. His father and uncle, he said, were killed by the Taliban last year.
Officials with the Northern Alliance say their soldiers have to be at least 18. But in an afternoon in this village five miles from the front, baby-faced soldiers kept strolling by, carrying automatic rifles. The commander, who gave his name as Sarballan, said boys were being enlisted out of desperation. Refugees who have been fleeing Kabul have report that the Taliban have also been conscripting boys.
"There has been a revolution in our country for the last 20 years," Sarballan said. "Because of the times, we have to take the young people and send them to war."
Lalsaid, the 12-year-old, defended his military record. In his four or five days of combat, he said, he had fired his weapon but could not see what had happened. He did not know whether he had killed anyone.
As he spoke, a 16-year-old, Abdul, moved down the road with a Kalashnikov rifle on his shoulder. Abdul said he had started fighting at 13, when his village was attacked. "We had to defend our line," he said.
If the fighting ever stopped, he said, "I will pursue an education." He added that he hoped to become a doctor, an engineer or a teacher.
If the fighting continues, however, the careers of some commanders in the alliance suggest a different outcome.
Thirty miles away in Gulbahar, a middle-age man covered in sweat and with his chest heaving pulled a cart loaded with wood as three boys pushed from behind. As he strained, a Japanese-built pickup passed, carrying young warlords who have become the elite of this region.
Like other civil wars in the post- cold-war era, Afghanistan's has involved a handful of local leaders in an impoverished country fighting over resources and power. If there is a constant to the tumultuous history during the last 20 years or so, it is that there seem to be no limits to the opportunism of the leaders or the suffering of the people.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries. The average life expectancy is 43 for men and 44 for women. Seventy percent of the population is illiterate, and in 20 years of warfare, 1.5 million people have died.
The villages in this northern region are dominated by men who who took up arms as teenagers to fight Soviet invaders in the 1980's and have since acquired small fiefs.
"I started fighting at 15 against the Soviets," said Shawali, a Northern Alliance commander in a town several miles away. At 30, he oversees 200 soldiers and is considered an influential figure.
Then there are the ethnic divisions. It is widely believed that the southern-based Pashtun, the largest ethnic group and one that dominates the Taliban, would not accept a government led by Tajiks, the major group in the Northern Alliance. Winning the support of the Pashtun elite is considered central to hastening the fall of the Taliban, and American diplomats and Northern Alliance officials say they have stepped up contacts with Pashtun leaders.
Mohammad Zahir Shah, the 86- year-old Afghan king who was toppled in 1973, has been suggested as an interim leader, in part because he is a Pashtun.
At the same time, northern leaders have quietly warned that if they find the makeup of an interim government unacceptable, some of them may continue fighting.
The warlords who are fighting together in the Northern Alliance illustrate the ethnic undertones of the conflict. A report by Human Rights Watch in the summer also warned that the fighting was taking on a growing ethnic tone. Gen. Rashid Dostum, who recently rejoined the alliance, leads a force made up primarily of another ethnic minority, Uzbeks. Yet another group, headed by Muhammad Karim Khalili, is predominantly made up of ethnic Hazaras.
But ethnic lines in Afghanistan are not set in stone. Warlords have a long record of being bought and quickly switching sides.
One northern general, Abdul Malik Pahlawan, switched sides and pledged allegiance to the Taliban in 1997. After 3,000 Taliban soldiers had entered Mazar-i-Sharif, the general switched sides again, and the 3,000 Taliban troops were killed by ethnic Hazaras. When the Taliban retook the city a year later, they killed 2,000 Hazara civilians in revenge.
Despite the history and divisions, some people here are optimistic. Muhammad Hassan, 30, a trader in this dazzlingly beautiful but crushingly poor northern area, said ethnic tensions were not a problem for him. Mr. Hassan, a Pashtun, said he was comfortable living in territory controlled by the Northern Alliance and was happily married to a Tajik. When his children are asked their ethnicity, he answered, "They say, `We are Afghan.' "
In Mr. Hassan's village, the road that leads in is wide enough for three automobiles. Mulberry trees planted decades ago line its edges. But just beyond on one side stands a Soviet-built howitzer. On the other side stands a rocket launcher.
Back in Rahmonkhel, teenagers continue to gird for war.
A 15-year-old, Ezmeray, said he had been fighting for a year. Someday he wants to become a doctor, he said, but that lies somewhere in the future. His motivation for volunteering was simple.
"My father was killed by the Taliban," he said. "And I want to take revenge with this gun."
A provisional commander, Fazil Ahmed Azimi, lamented the persistent war and the boys' fate. "It's been three decades of our people going backward in terms of education," he said. "We have young boys that are more familiar with a gun than with school."
-------- arms sales
Russia, Iran sign weapons agreement
USA TODAY
10/02/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/10/02/russia-iran.htm
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia and Iran signed a framework agreement on new weapons deliveries Tuesday, burying a six-year-old secret deal between Washington and Moscow to deny arms supplies to Tehran.
The defense ministers of the two nations also expressed solidarity in supporting Afghanistan's opposition northern alliance, which is fighting the ruling Taliban militia.
Both nations insist, however, on United Nations approval for any military retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States. Afghanistan, where suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is based, is expected to be a target.
"If this were within the framework of the international community and in the framework of the United Nations, then, of course, we would support such action," Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
But Shamkhani cautioned against establishing what he called double standards. A decision on fighting terrorism can be made only "in a healthy society that is not under the influence of superpowers," he said, referring to the United States. As for Israel, Shamkhani called it "a university of terrorism" under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tutelage.
Shamkhani arrived in Moscow on Monday for a five-day visit to formalize an arms accord outlined during Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's March visit to the Russian capital.
Moscow's agreement in March to provide $7 billion worth of weapons to Iran over the next several years canceled a secret 1995 agreement between former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and then U.S. Vice President Gore to end Russian arms shipments to Iran by the end of 1999.
The United States said Iran, which allegedly sponsors terrorism, should not be provided with arms. The United States and Israel are also concerned that improving military ties between Russia and Iran could lead to the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Shamkhani expressed appreciation to Moscow on Tuesday for helping put an end to the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement.
"We must express words of gratitude for that," he was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Ivanov stressed the framework agreement signed Tuesday was similar to many weapons supply accords that Moscow has concluded.
"This agreement is not secret, it complies with all the norms and standards of international law," he said, according to Interfax. He also said it would allow Russia to provide only defensive weapons to Iran.
The weapons deals expected to be negotiated during Shamkhani's visit are believed to be worth $300 million annually. According to Russian media, Tehran is especially interested in acquiring long-range S-300 air defense missiles to protect the Bushehr nuclear power plant and other strategic facilities, medium-range Buk M1 and Tor M1 air defense missiles, and Su-27 fighter jets.
Iran also would like to buy supersonic Yakhont anti-ship missiles, which have a range of 186 miles, Iskander-E tactical ground-to-ground missiles with a range of 174 miles, and 550 BMP-3 armored infantry vehicles.
ITAR-Tass quoted unidentified sources in the Russian military industry as saying Iran wants to outfit units on the 577-mile Iranian-Afghan border with Russian defense equipment. The system would help Iran stop the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan through its territory.
"Today our cooperation is becoming more urgent. The situation prompts that," Shamkhani was quoted as saying by Interfax.
-------- asia
Taiwan Wants to Buy U.S. Destroyers
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-US-Warships.html?searchpv=aponline
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's military said Tuesday it wants to buy four destroyers from the United States, warships that could greatly complicate any plans China might have to blockade or invade the island.
The military has spent months debating whether to buy the Kidd-class destroyers, decommissioned by the U.S. Navy about three years ago. Some lawmakers have opposed the deal, arguing the vessels are designed for oceangoing combat missions, not the coastal fighting Taiwan would likely engage in with China.
But Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Suey-sheng told reporters Tuesday the military decided the guided-missile destroyers would ``meet the battle needs'' of the navy, which has been desperate to expand its small, aging fleet.
The military's next step is to get lawmakers and the government to endorse the purchase.
Erich Shih, an editor at Defence International magazine in Taiwan, said getting the legislature's support shouldn't be difficult.
Shih agreed the destroyers would be more useful than smaller vessels in stopping a Chinese naval blockade, especially in the South China Sea, the Taiwanese navy's most vulnerable area.
``You need to carry powerful weapons, and these weapons are very large. You need a big destroyer, like a Kidd-class destroyer,'' Shih said.
The Kidd-class deal might be Taiwan's only opportunity to purchase quality destroyers. Earlier this year, the Taiwanese wanted to buy U.S.-made Aegis-equipped destroyers, but the United States -- the only nation that sells advanced weapons to Taiwan -- wouldn't approve the deal.
Instead of selling the Aegis-equipped ships -- the most sophisticated destroyers in the U.S. fleet -- Washington offered the Taiwanese the Kidd-class ships, which many naval experts deemed to be the best guided-missile destroyers in the world before the advent of the Aegis-equipped ships in the late 1980s.
One of the most attractive selling points for the Taiwanese is that the Kidd-class ships -- with a relatively low price of $200 million per vessel -- could be refurbished and delivered to Taiwan within three years.
The Kidd-class ships are sometimes referred to as the ``Ayatollah class'' because they were originally built for the Shah of Iran. Before the ships could be delivered to Iran, the Shah was overthrown in 1979, so the Navy kept the vessels.
Designed to simultaneously battle aircraft, submarines and ships, the Kidd-class destroyers could greatly complicate any plans China might have to blockade or invade Taiwan. The two sides split amid civil war 52 years ago, and China has threatened to retake the island. In recent years, the Chinese have been buying advanced planes and warships in a rapid buildup that has alarmed the Taiwanese.
The order would include the USS Kidd and USS Scott, which have been docked at a Navy facility for inactive ships in Philadelphia. The other two ships are the USS Callahan and the USS Chandler, which have been docked in Bremerton, Wash.
-------- balkans
4 Named in Croatia War Crimes Case
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Crimes-Croatia.html
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Tuesday disclosed the names of four former officers from Serbia and Montenegro wanted in the destruction of the ancient town of Dubrovnik during the Croatian war. The court complained Yugoslav federal authorities are refusing to arrest them.
The former Yugoslav army and naval officers are accused of murder, plunder and the destruction of nearly 70 percent of the 17th century town in an attempt to splinter off Dubrovnik and merge it with a ``greater'' Serbia.
The bombardment began after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, setting off a decade of war in the Balkans.
Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said she delivered the officers' indictment to Yugoslav authorities in February.
``The Prosecutor deplores the refusal of the Yugoslav federal authorities to cooperate with the tribunal,'' she said in her toughest statement since they surrendered former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in June.
Del Ponte ordered the indictment unsealed Monday, the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Dubrovnik siege, saying there was no point keeping it secret in view of Yugoslavia's refusal to carry out its obligations under international law.
The indictment identifies the officers as General Pavle Strugar, 68, Admiral Miodrag Jokic, 66, Admiral Milan Zec, 58, and Captain Vladimir Kovacevic, 40.
During the siege that lasted until early December 1991, about 1,000 artillery shells rained on the ancient town from the hills of Montenegro and from naval ships in the Adriatic. Dubrovnik had just 670 defenders facing as many as 35,000 army troops.
The indictment said at least 43 civilians were killed and 563 buildings destroyed or damaged in the Old Town, formerly a U.N. World Heritage Site.
From the sea, the assault was led by Jokic and his right-hand man Zec, both Montenegrins. Zec later became commander of the Yugoslav navy where he remained until Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, relieved him of his command last January.
Kovacevic, also known as ``Rambo,'' was later accused by the Montenegrin pro-Western government as member of a ``Belgrade terrorist group'' allegedly sent to the capital, Podgorica, to ``destabilize'' the government. He is believed to be in hiding.
The other suspects dropped out of sight several years ago.
-------- biological weapons
Troops Protect Anthrax Vaccine
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Anthrax.html
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Armed soldiers from the Michigan National Guard were on duty Tuesday outside the nation's only producer of the anthrax vaccine.
``It makes me more nervous, seeing all the security around. But I think it's necessary,'' said Roseann Marlatt, 43, who works for a state agency across the street from BioPort Corp.
BioPort produces a vaccine to fight anthrax, a bacterium that could be made into a biological weapon. The bacteria kill unprotected people by attacking the lungs; more than 80 percent of those who develop symptoms of infection die. The U.S. military is BioPort's only customer.
BioPort keeps live anthrax bacteria on its campus, but the amount is too small to be of use to terrorists, company officials have said. They say there is no specific terrorist threat against their facility, which employs more than 200 workers.
``However, in light of current national events, appropriate and prudent security measures are being taken,'' the company said in a statement.
BioPort spokeswoman Kim Brennan Root said the Defense Department is beefing up security at other facilities around the country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A spokesman at the Pentagon didn't respond to telephone and electronic messages seeking comment.
Maj. James McCrone, a spokesman for the National Guard, said BioPort is the only private facility with National Guard security in Michigan. He wouldn't say how many soldiers are at the complex or how long they'll be there.
BioPort, which bought the lab from the state in 1998, has wrestled with production problems that have delayed the plan to vaccinate all 2.4 million active and reserve troops.
-------- chemical weapons
THE CHEMICAL STOCKPILE
Army Tightens Security at Nation's 8 Chemical Arms Depots
New York Times
October 2, 2001
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/national/02CHEM.html
ANNISTON, Ala., Oct. 1 - Seven months ago, trying to imagine the worst thing that could happen to a huge stockpile of deadly chemical weapons near here, officials at the Anniston Army Depot pretended that a jetliner had accidentally crashed into one of the bunkers that hold aging rockets packed with nerve gas.
They propped the frame of an old military bomber near one of the igloos, as the steel-and-concrete bunkers are known, and emergency workers wearing protective suits and masks went through the exercise of trying to contain the gas and treat the casualties, participants said.
Today, the possibility of a jet crashing into a chemical stockpile no longer seems as theoretical as it did then. Aware that people living near the nation's eight chemical weapons depots have become much more nervous since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Army has tightened security at them, sending in hundreds of troops to guard the perimeters.
The Army has also imposed strict no-flight zones over each depot, making any aircraft flying nearby an intruder, unless it has military clearance, Army officials said.
"And there are some other measures being taken that I can't discuss with you," said Miguel Morales, a spokesman for the Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Mr. Morales refused to discuss reports from residents near the depots that they had seen military jets patrolling over the depots.
What's important is that the stockpile is safe and secure," he said. "We have added troops to enhance our force protection, but it's not because of an imminent terrorist strike or anything like that. It's just a general precaution in light of what's happened, and it makes everyone on or near the post feel safer."
Army officials have acknowledged that natural disasters or accidents - including jet crashes - could expose many people to the aging chemical weapons, which the Army is slowly destroying. In an interview with The New York Times in June, Lt. Col. Bruce E. Williams, commander of Anniston Chemical Activity, urged the nearby community to accept the $1 billion incinerator recently built on the depot to burn the chemicals because of those dangers.
"Those M-55 rockets are extremely fragile munitions," Colonel Williams said then. "We think we can continue to store them safely, but you can't escape the fact that if there were a one-in-a-million earthquake, or lightning strike, or a 747 crashing on an igloo, the damage would dwarf the worst-case thing that could ever happen at the incinerator. The only real protection I can offer this community is to destroy this stockpile, and destroy it quickly."
Colonel Williams would not discuss the subject today, but a spokeswoman said the training scenario envisioned that a falling jetliner would hit only one igloo and release its plume of gas. (The depot has 1,300 igloos, but only 155 contain chemical weapons, making it difficult for an attacker to know where to strike.) She said the number of casualties would depend on the contents of the igloo and the strength of the wind.
The extra security at the depot meant that a visitor could not get close enough to determine what protections had been added in recent days. But nearby residents and officials said they were grateful for the extra troops. Though they remained nervous, many believed that the Sept. 11 attacks had reduced the hesitance around Anniston to begin burning the chemicals, now scheduled to start in late spring.
"What I'm hearing now is, Let's get rid of that stuff as quickly as possible," said Mayor Chip Howell, who appeared this morning at the opening of a new restaurant downtown. "That jet crash scenario doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore."
David Stephenson, the owner of the new restaurant, The Crossing, said the possibility of a terrorist strike against the depot had been a constant topic of conversation in town.
"People have been very concerned," he said. "But I think the extra security will make people more comfortable."
Similar precautions are being taken at the other chemical depots. About 100 soldiers from Fort Carson, Colo., were sent to the Deseret Chemical Depot near Tooele, Utah, which stored about 44 percent of the nation's chemical weapons until it began burning them in 1996. A similar contingent was sent to the Blue Grass Army Depot, near Richmond, Ky., and to five other depots.
But the Anniston depot, which holds 7 percent of the stockpile, or 2,254 tons of gas, has the largest nearby population of any depot. Many residents have been concerned for years about the dangers of incineration. Critics, citing the Army's own planning documents, say the deadline of 2007 for disposing all the chemicals at the depots is unlikely to be met, and the General Accounting Office, an agency of Congress, recently criticized the Army for leaving thousands of residents at high risk in case of an accident.
Emergency officials in Calhoun County, which includes Anniston, have unsuccessfully sought 35,000 protective breathing hoods from the Army, and say they have been besieged with requests for gas masks from residents since Sept. 11. But they have no masks, and neither do local surplus stores.
"I'm glad they've got troops out there now, but there's only so much they can do to defend against a plane crash or a rocket attack," said James Eli Henderson, a county commissioner who once worked at the Army depot. "But in the meantime, our sheriff can't even get protective suits for his department from the government. And if anyone's going to need one, it's those guys."
----------
Official: US To Miss Weapon Deadline
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Chemical-Weapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States probably will miss a 2007 treaty deadline for destroying chemical weapons stockpiles, and the cost of getting rid of them will be $9 billion more than expected, a Pentagon official told lawmakers Tuesday.
In a meeting with three Alabama lawmakers, E.C. ``Pete'' Aldridge Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said he altered the completion schedule for at least four of eight incineration sites to answer safety concerns from surrounding residents.
Last spring, an internal Army memo revealed doubts on whether the deadline could be met and concluded that it could require up to 11 extra years to destroy all of the weapons. At the time, Pentagon officials dismissed that as a worst-case scenario.
Aldridge assured Alabama's lawmakers that neither the start date nor the end date for burning weapons in Anniston, Ala., would take precedent over safety. He planned to give similar assurances to lawmakers from the other seven states that house stockpiles.
The Associated Press has learned that Anniston would finish last under the new schedule, with mid-2009 now an optimistic goal. Sites in Pine Bluff, Ark.; Umatilla, Ore.; and Newport, Ind. will also miss the deadline, and a completion date hasn't been determined for Blue Grass, Ky., and Pueblo, Colo. Only Aberdeen, Md., and Tooele, Utah, which has already begun burning, remain on track to beat the treaty deadline.
Aldridge also said the cost of incineration is now estimated at $24 billion, up from the $15 billion originally projected.
``We've adjusted both the schedule and program cost to what I think is the highest confidence I can provide,'' Aldridge said after the meeting. ``It's my personal commitment now that I believe this is what the program calls for.''
The Army has stockpiled nearly 30,000 tons of the deadly chemicals, which had been scheduled to be destroyed by 2007 as part of an international chemical weapons treaty. Internal Army documents have raised doubt on whether that deadline could be met, but this is the first time Pentagon officials have acknowledged a delay.
According to an internal memo from Aldridge dated Sept. 26, the delays in completion should not affect the start date for any of the burning, although Aldridge acknowledged Tuesday that was still possible. There also are no immediate plans to delay an interim 2004 deadline for destroying 45 percent of the stockpiles.
Anniston, home to a $1 billion incinerator that will burn the aging chemicals at its Army depot, is expected to start trial burns in April. However, a General Account Office report released in August concluded that community, along with the Kentucky and Indiana sites, don't have adequate emergency preparedness standards in place.
The Alabama meeting, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 11 but canceled after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, was attended by Republican Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions and Rep. Bob Riley. Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat, joined by teleconference.
``An arbitrary timeline shouldn't override any safety concerns,'' said Riley, who represents Anniston. ``Safety has to come first. The timetable for the ultimate destruction should come later.''
The lawmakers said they were pleased by what they were hearing from Aldridge, who took over the job in May, after Pentagon officials had expressed plans to meet the treaty deadline.
-------- iran
Iran issues warning over airspace
October 2, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011002-8462428.htm
Iran said yesterday that it would "confront" any U.S. warplanes that fly over its territory as part of any military strike against neighboring Afghanistan, one more illustration of Tehran's conflicted response to last month's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Defense Minister Adm. Ali Shamkhani, speaking to reporters in Tehran on the eve of a five-day visit to Russia, gave the most explicit notice to date that Iran will not take part in any U.S.-led retaliatory strike against Afghanistan, which the Bush administration accuses of harboring the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Asked what would happen if U.S. planes ventured over Iranian airspace, Adm. Shamkhani warned that "mistakes cannot be repeated."
"If it is repeated, it means it is planned and we will confront them, we will defend our airspace," the defense minister said.
The U.S. effort to assemble a global anti-terrorism coalition has only intensified the deep rifts within the Iranian government between centrists supporting President Mohammed Khatami and conservative hard-liners who look to supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.
Sharing a 560-mile border with Afghanistan and harboring some 1.5 million Afghan refugees within its borders, Iran's support - or neutrality - in any U.S. military response could prove critical.
But Tehran has sent out mixed signals almost since the day of the attack, reflecting deep suspicions in Iran both of the United States and of the fundamentalist Taliban regime that rules Afghanistan.
"There are clearly two schools of thought at war here about how to respond," said Jonathan Kessler, executive editor of the bimonthly Middle East Insight, which tracks developments in the region.
"The moderates clearly saw the terrorist strikes as an opportunity in U.S.-Iranian relations, while others saw them as a threat," he said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell welcomed President Khatami's quick condemnation of the attacks.
A similar message of condolence from the mayor of Tehran to New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is believed to be the first direct communication between public officials of the two countries since diplomatic ties were severed following the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw traveled to Tehran last week to discuss the crisis - the first visit by a British foreign minister to Iran since the revolution.
And analysts note that Iran and the United States share a surprising number of interests in the struggle.
Iran's Shi'ite Muslim religious leadership has long been hostile to the Sunni Taliban regime and to Osama bin Laden, the Afghanistan-based Saudi financier identified by U.S. officials as their prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Tehran fears that instability in Afghanistan could produce both a flood of new refugees across the border and a power vacuum that regional rivals such as Pakistan and Russia could exploit.
Iran has also long supported the Northern Alliance, a coalition of armed Afghan opposition groups that could play a major role in American operations against either the Taliban or the bin Laden network.
Adm. Shamkhani yesterday confirmed for the first time that Iran has supplied the Northern Alliance with weapons and logistical support in the fight against the Taliban.
Balanced against those factors are a still-deep distrust of the United States, resentment against economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed by Washington, and fears that the Bush administration will broaden the anti-terrorism campaign to target armed groups Tehran has long backed in the Palestinian struggle against Israel.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak over the weekend, warned the United States against any military action that could inflame public opinion across the Arab world.
"The situation is extremely sensitive and any wrong move could lead to a clash of civilizations," he said.
Ayatollah Khamanei issued a blistering attack on the United States Thursday in definitively ruling out any Iranian military role in a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan or any other Muslim nation, calling for the United Nations to take the lead in the terrorism fight.
But even the hard-liners have been studiously vague about what level of U.N. approval they would require before military action was taken.
After a hesitant early reaction, Tehran has engaged in a flurry of recent diplomacy, seeking a united Arab response in advance of the Oct. 10 summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Qatar.
-------- nato
Text of NATO Article 5
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Attacks-Article-5.html
Text of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which was fully invoked Tuesday after a briefing by U.S. officials on the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington:
The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually, and in concert with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.
-------- pakistan
Musharraf backs king as option to Taliban
October 2, 2001
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011002-568753.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Pervez Musharraf backed a plan yesterday to invite Afghanistan's exiled king to move to Pakistan and convene a tribal council as an alternative to Taliban rule, a former Pakistani president said yesterday.
Farooq Leghari, who served as Pakistan's president from 1993 to 1997, said he presented the plan to Gen. Musharraf, who "enthusiastically endorsed" it.
"The president told me he would give instructions immediately that it be explained to the United States as a matter requiring urgent consideration," Mr. Leghari told The Washington Times.
The former president spoke just hours after exiled King Mohammad Zahir Shah and representatives of the opposition Northern Alliance agreed to a framework for a new government that would take control of Kabul if the Taliban was ousted.
The agreement, reached at the king's villa outside Rome, by the end of October would convene a "loya jirga," or traditional council of 120 senior Muslim clerics, tribal leaders and elders to elect a transitional government.
At the time of the announcement, it was assumed such a meeting would take place in Rome, with no apparent thought given to the council taking place in Pakistan.
The United States wants Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia to hand over exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who repeatedly has been named as the prime suspect in the hunt for the terrorist mastermind behind the airline hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington last month.
U.S. officials lately have warmed to the idea of King Zahir Shah - a constitutional monarch ousted in a 1973 coup - as a unifying figure in a post-Taliban government.
"The loya jirga is fine, and we would certainly support it if that's what the Afghan factions decide they want to do," a senior Bush administration official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The comments also appear to reflect a growing view within the administration that the Taliban has to go if it continues to shelter bin Laden.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who had said the ouster of the Taliban was not a U.S. objective, told CBS yesterday: "If the Taliban doesn't realize [protecting bin Laden] could cause a great deal of difficulty, that might lead to their own demise."
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar repeatedly has snubbed U.S. demands for bin Laden, who has lived in Afghanistan since 1996 as a "guest."
On Sunday, Mullah Omar said the United States lacked the courage to attack, even as tens of thousands of American troops deployed in the region as part of an effort to capture or kill bin Laden.
Yesterday, Mullah Omar derided efforts to bring the former king into an alliance with opposition forces.
"They want to impose the Zahir Shah regime on us," Mullah Omar said in a broadcast on Taliban-run Kabul radio and monitored in the Pakistani capital.
"God willing, I'm sure America cannot do that."
The White House issued a statement yesterday saying it "is not going to get in the business of choosing who rules Afghanistan," but it "will assist those who are seeking a peaceful and economically developed Afghanistan that does not engage in terrorism."
Mr. Leghari, the former Pakistani president who now heads a small, nonreligious political party, told The Times that the plan to invite the king to Pakistan would "obviate the U.S. urge to put its diplomatic chips on the Northern Alliance to the exclusion of other political forces."
"The plan would include some anti-Mullah Omar Taliban personalities," Mr. Leghari said.
Step one, he explained, would be to invite the king to take up residence less than four miles from the Afghan border in Wazirstan, a part of Pakistan that is populated by a major Pashtun tribe that straddles the mountainous border between the two countries.
There, the king could convene the loya jirga, which would include Pashtun chiefs from both sides of the border.
Such a move, said Mr. Leghari, would enable Gen. Musharraf to sever long-standing ties between Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and the Taliban.
Members of the Taliban militia are drawn from Afghanistan's Pashtun ethnic group, which makes upabout 38 percent of the population.
The Northern Alliance - still the officially recognized government of the country - is made up mainly of Tajiks, the nation's second largest ethnic group representing a quarter of Afghanistan's population of about 25 million.
The presence of the king, who is a Pashtun, would broaden the appeal of a post-Taliban government to Pashtuns and other minorities.
Gen. Musharraf has been loath to concede that Pakistan's policy toward the Taliban is in tatters. His ISI helped establish the Taliban as the rulers of the country but was unable to persuade it to hand over bin Laden.
Mr. Leghari said his plan would allow Gen. Musharraf to formally ditch the Taliban and set a new course designed to align Pakistan to the United States "without any unspoken reservations."
The tribal grand council, said Mr. Leghari, would strengthen the king and give legitimacy to an interim government.
• Distributed by United Press International, for whom Arnaud de Borchgrave is an editor at large. Nicholas Kralev contributed to this report from Washington. Special correspondent Eric J. Lyman contributed to this report from Rome.
-------- puerto rico
Governor: Navy Should Leave Vieques
October 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Vieques.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Puerto Rico's governor insisted Tuesday that the Navy must stop training on its Puerto Rican bombing range no later than 2003, despite a pending House bill that would allow the Navy to stay longer.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Washington, Gov. Sila Calderon said she supports President Bush's decision to quash a November referendum that would ask residents of Vieques island whether the Navy should stay or go.
She also urged that a firm date be set for the Navy's withdrawal. Bush said before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that the training would stop by May 2003.
A House defense bill approved last week, however, would let the Navy stay until a comparable site is found. The House and Senate are to work out a compromise law soon.
Calderon said she sees ``a real threat'' by some in Congress to let the Navy and Marines use Vieques indefinitely. ``This is the real danger that is hanging over Vieques, and for us it's unacceptable,'' she said.
The Navy has bombed the eastern tip of Vieques for six decades, training sailors for conflicts from World War II to the Persian Gulf War. Opponents say the bombardment harms the environment and health of Vieques' 9,100 residents, which the Navy denies.
Calderon said all parties recognize the situation has changed for Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, after last month's terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
``Our position has to be based on a dramatically different reality, which is the national unity against terrorism,'' she said.
In a nonbinding referendum in July, 68 percent of Vieques voters said the Navy should leave immediately.
-------- u.s.
Pentagon to focus on defense of U.S. soil
October 2, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011002-38416168.htm
The Pentagon will put new firepower behind defending America against terrorists and ballistic missiles, while shifting forces to the Pacific to check an ambitious China, says a new framework for military operations released yesterday.
The military's new No. 1 mission: Defend America's soil. The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, says that the Bush administration is "restoring the defense of the United States as the department's primary mission."
And, in a victory for the generals and admirals who fought a bureaucratic battle to save their troops and ships from budget cuts, the new QDR keeps the armed forces at their current sizes.
"So in the end, what we did is we kept moving the pieces around the board, asking ourselves, 'Do we like this picture?'" a senior Defense Department official told reporters at the Pentagon. "And in the end, it came out with the force pretty much where it is now."
The QDR adjusts a two-war capability that has guided the strategy of the armed forces since the end of the Cold War. The new requirement calls for defending American soil, first and foremost, winning one regional war decisively and repelling a foe in another theater.
That "force sizer," as planners call it, is already getting its first test.
The department official declared yesterday that President Bush's war on terrorism is one of those regional conflicts. Mr. Bush has ordered hundreds of warplanes to airfields within striking range of Afghanistan, the hiding place for Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The president has also authorized special-operations troops to be deployed in the region.
"In fact, what we are engaged in now is one of those regional conflicts in which we are bound and determined to win," said the official, signaling U.S. plans to use a substantial amount of firepower, personnel and intelligence assets.
The military today is roughly built around 12 Navy carrier battle groups, 10 active Army divisions, 12 active Air Force fighter wings and three Marine Corps expeditionary forces.
Planners largely completed the QDR before the terrorist attacks, and the official maintained that planners already had identified terrorism as a major threat to national security.
In a forward to the QDR written after the attack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the review "recognizes that it is not enough to plan for large conventional wars in distant theaters. Instead, the United States must identify the capabilities required to deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception, and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives."
The report states that "As the U.S. military increased its ability to project power at long range, adversaries have noted the relative vulnerability of the U.S. homeland."
But the report offers few details on how the job will get done. Officials say National Guardsmen and Reserves will play a large role.
The kamikaze-style attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have thrust the military into new types of missions unimaginable when the QDR study began in June. Air Force jet fighters are flying patrols over major cities, with new rules of engagement on shooting down commercial planes carrying innocent civilians. Army helicopters are monitoring nuclear facilities. National Guardsmen are helping with airport security.
Congress has mandated the submission of a QDR to ensure that the president and his national security team adjust military strategy for a fast-changing world.
Concerning the communist regime in Beijing, the QDR orders the Navy and Air Force to realign forces toward the western Pacific, and for the Marines to conduct more training for Asian operations. The Navy will increase aircraft carrier battle groups in the Pacific, while the Air Force will develop additional plans for basing warplanes in the region.
Said a defense official, "This implements President Bush's campaign rhetoric about viewing China as a competitor and not a partner. China's response to the president's request to the war on terrorism is not sufficient to reduce the department's concern on the rise of China's power."
The Chinese media have quoted two colonels who wrote a book called "Unrestricted Warfare" as saying that the Sept. 11 attacks mark the beginning of America's decline as a superpower.
Mr. Bush ordered Mr. Rumsfeld to begin a top-to-bottom review aimed at transforming the U.S. military in order to prepare for 21st-century threats such as terrorism. The QDR is part of that reassessment. The president has said the Pentagon should look at canceling some major developing weapon systems in favor of more futuristic ones. But the officials indicated that the armed services need new weapons now to replace aging systems worn out during the past two decades. The transformation will, officials said, proceed by infusing weapons that are currently being developed with newer technologies.
The military must also invest in systems that can counter what planners call "anti-access" defenses. These are anti-aircraft and anti-ship weapons designed to keep American forces from gaining access to theaters of war.
The QDR calls for the development of deep-strike weapons, possibly the B-2 long-range bomber. "There's got to be a way in which it's possible for us to reach on a global basis to find the ability to strike where we need to against adversaries," the senior official said.
Some of the report's goals already have surfaced in Mr. Bush's first defense budget, which takes effect in the fiscal year that began yesterday.
He won from Congress a huge boost in spending of more than $8 billion to build defenses against ballistic missiles. Other policies, such as new weapons purchases, will become clear in December when the Pentagon writes a five-year defense budget that takes effect Oct. 1, 2002.
--------
THE PENTAGON
New Blueprint for Military Shifts Priority to U.S. Soil, Revising 2-War Strategy
October 2, 2001
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/national/02DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - The Defense Department sent Congress a sweeping review of strategy today that was strikingly prescient in warning of new terrorist threats on American soil, even as many of its specific findings have been overtaken by the Sept. 11 attacks.
The review, required every four years, "was substantially completed" before Sept. 11, a senior military official said, but was revised to reflect the coordinated terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Its central recommendations - elevating domestic defense to the first of four core military missions, revising the "two-war strategy" and deferring decisions on slashing forces or weapons programs - had been disclosed during a long summer of tense debate within the Pentagon.
When the Quadrennial Defense Review was being drafted, it emphasized increasing the naval presence in Asia and developing plans to station more warplanes along the Pacific rim, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. These policies fit neatly with the urgent deployment of forces since Sept. 11 to carry out what President Bush said would be a prolonged campaign against global terror.
Although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the senior military leadership said all summer that the review would be driven by strategic needs and not budgetary constraints, the central argument had been over the size of the armed forces and what weapons they should have, especially since there was not enough money for everything the services desired.
The question facing the Pentagon as it spent months drafting the review before Sept. 11 was whether America could risk cutting forces now to pay for expensive new weapons the Bush administration says would counter threats it sees emerging in decades to come. Today, the question is how best to spend the extra billions of dollars expected from Congress for the new war on terrorism.
While the 71-page report mostly analyzes traditional military topics, including deterrence and combat operations in small-scale conflicts, it also takes note of the terror strikes.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States came under vicious, bloody attack," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote in an introduction to the report, noting that significant questions about national security would be the subject of another set of reviews due next year.
Even in the priority area of homeland defense, no decision has been made about who will carry out the mission - although a senior military official said it might fall to the National Guard and the reserves. It also remains unclear whether a post for a single combatant commander will be created to manage the Pentagon's domestic security efforts.
In its broadest terms, the review sets four defense policy goals: "assuring allies and friends; dissuading future military competition; deterring threats and coercion against U.S. interests, and if deterrence fails, decisively defeating any adversary."
The review "restores the defense of the United States as the department's primary mission." The Pentagon is also required to fulfill three other core missions, which include having forces at overseas bases to deter aggressors and building forces capable of conducting a limited number of smaller-scale operations.
One of the four core missions was dramatically changed from previous reviews, as the report revises the decade-old requirement to fight and win two regional conflicts virtually at once. Instead, the military must now prepare to fight two regional wars but win decisively only in one - which could include marching all the way to an enemy's capital and toppling the regime - while halting an adversary in the other theater of conflict.
"One of those conflicts could, in fact, be a global terrorism campaign, as opposed to a regional campaign," a senior military official said today. "And, in fact, what we are engaged in now is one of those conflicts that I described a moment ago, in which we are bound and determined to win."
The review concludes with an assessment by the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, who endorses the report but cautions that further analysis of the roles of the National Guard and the reserves is required. He also warns that the military needs more "strategic lift" to move forces long distances.
The new military strategy "will adequately address the current and emerging challenges," General Shelton wrote, but only "if matched with resources over time."
Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, the ranking minority member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that Congress was "absolutely" committed to finding those resources.
He said the new strategic review "clearly lays down a road map whereby our nation must face a changing world and changing threats, some of which we never could have envisioned."
The strategy report earned compliments from one of those who drafted President Clinton's Quadrennial Defense Review four years ago, although it leaves a number of questions unanswered.
"It sounds good, but will it look good in practice?" asked Michele A. Flournoy, a former Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It's a very strong strategy document, but it leaves us waiting for the next shoe to drop."
-------- OTHER
White House gas
October 2, 2001
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011002-20021418.htm
Talk about feeling insecure, here's yesterday's lead-off question posed by a member of the White House press corps to spokesman Ari Fleischer: "Has the president updated his smallpox vaccination? Has he had an anthrax inoculation? And have gas masks been issued in the White House?"
-------- health
FINDINGS
Vaccine Preservative Still in Doubt
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A07
Compiled from reports by the Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55896-2001Oct1.html
Scientists are still unable to determine if there is a link between a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and disorders in children, the National Academy of Sciences said yesterday.
The ingredient, thimerosal, has been removed from most vaccines and the academy said that, despite the lack of proof that it is a hazard, prudence dictates that steps be taken to further reduce its use.
Safe Minds, an advocacy group working to reduce children's exposure to mercury, welcomed the report but contended it didn't go far enough. Safe Minds president Sallie Bernard said the group is pleased the report acknowledges the possibility of the preservative being linked to health problems. But she said the group is renewing its call for removal of all childhood vaccines containing thimerosal.
The connection between exposure to high levels of mercury and problems with the nervous system has long been known. While thimerosal contains a different form of mercury than the one that has been implicated in nervous disorders, critics have complained that it also may pose a hazard. Thimerosal was used for many years to prevent bacterial contamination of vaccines. Currently, however, few vaccines given to children in the United States contain the product.
It was never used in vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and polio. However, until recently, some other vaccines on the recommended childhood immunization list used it.
They are now manufactured without thimerosal, but a small number of doses for hepatitis B; diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; and influenza type B with thimerosal may still be on clinic shelves, according to the report by the academy's Institute of Medicine. Molecule Starves Cancerous Tumors
Scientists have developed a molecule that appears to make cancer its own worst enemy.
In laboratory tests on mice, the molecule -- called "icon" -- killed tumors by destroying the blood vessels that feed them. It also caused the cancers to produce copies of icon, which spread through the body and attacked other cancers.
The process eliminated human melanoma and prostate cancers in the tested mice. The first trials in people are planned for next year.
Drugs that inhibit the growth of the blood vessels that feed cancer have received wide attention in recent years, though early results reported last spring showed less promise than had been hoped for.
The new therapy, developed by researchers Alan Garen and Zhiwei Hu at Yale University, takes a different approach, attacking the cells lining the blood vessels in tumors rather than trying to prevent the growth of new blood vessels.
Their findings are reported in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Albert Deisseroth of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego is arranging clinical trials, which he hopes to launch next spring once approval is obtained from the Food and Drug Administration.
-------- police / prisoners
House Bill Would Expand Federal Detention Powers
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55410-2001Oct1.html
House negotiators yesterday agreed to give the government new authority to investigate and detain terrorist suspects, a bipartisan compromise that denied the Bush administration some powers it sought but that was assailed by civil libertarians as a blow to American values.
Under an agreement reached by Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and the ranking Democrat, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), authorities would be able to hold any foreigner suspected of terrorist activity without charges for as long as a week. The anti-terrorism legislation would also expand the government's wiretapping and Internet surveillance powers in terrorism cases.
The 122-page House legislation, dubbed the "Patriot Act," is due to be considered by the committee Wednesday and by the entire House next week.
The House compromise will become a framework for negotiations with the Senate and the administration over an expansion of police powers following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. David Carle, spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), said the Senate and House bills "will largely complement each other."
He said Senate Democrats and Republicans "negotiated through the weekend and are close to an agreement over here."
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, "The administration has been working very closely with members of the House, as well as with Chairman Leahy and others in the Senate who have just jurisdiction over this."
The Bush administration sought new anti-terrorism legislation in the aftermath of the attacks, saying it was necessary because of what Attorney General John D. Ashcroft described as the "clear and present danger" of further terrorist attacks.
The agreement yesterday came as more than 100 members of Congress traveled to New York to view the devastation at the World Trade Center.
In the thorniest matter faced by negotiators, the government would be allowed to detain any foreigners suspected of terrorist activity for up to seven days without filing charges or giving them an opportunity to ask a judge to release them. That would apply both to legal immigrants and those in the country illegally.
After that time, the government would either need to file criminal charges, begin deportation proceedings or release the suspects. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had sought detention powers without any particular time limit.
Even after the seven days, Ashcroft would have power to detain foreigners until they are deported as long as he has "reasonable grounds to believe" that they may be involved in terrorism.
Ashcroft had sought broader language, allowing detention if there was "reason to believe" the person was involved in terrorism. Only the attorney general or the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner would certify such detentions, which could be reviewed by courts.
Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the compromise "a significant improvement" over Ashcroft's request.
But Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, said the compromise was "inadequate" and "confers unprecedented detention authority on the attorney general."
The House compromise would also give the government multiple wiretap powers in terrorism cases so that surveillance would be attached to an individual rather than a particular telephone.
It would also make it easier for law enforcement officials to obtain wiretaps. Under existing law, wiretaps can be obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if the primary purpose for getting the information is intelligence, rather than criminal enforcement. Ashcroft had sought to use the FISA provision if intelligence gathering was merely "a purpose." The proposed House legislation would compromise with "a significant purpose."
The wiretap provision would expire in December 2003; renewing it would require congressional approval.
Law enforcement officials would be able to get court orders allowing them to retrieve records of e-mails and other electronic communications, not just telephone records.
Such orders would not entitle investigators to review the content of e-mails and telephone calls, however, and electronic evidence obtained illegally would be unusable.
The legislation also grants Ashcroft's wish to remove the statute of limitations from a number of terrorism offenses, while increasing maximum penalties for terrorism-related crimes and expanding offenses to include support or expert advice to terrorists.
Those gathering intelligence information would now be allowed to share their information with criminal investigators.
The proposed legislation would drop provisions Ashcroft had sought that would allow certain intelligence information gathered overseas to be admitted in U.S. courts even if the methods used to obtain the information would cause the evidence to be thrown out of court if it had been gathered domestically.
Also removed were Ashcroft provisions that would have allowed authorities to search a suspect's home without notification that they had searched, and provisions allowing the release of student records to authorities.
The committee, while honoring many of the requests Ashcroft made, modified some of those provisions.
The lawmakers backed a list of crimes that Ashcroft wanted characterized as terrorism but added language that such crimes must be "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion or to retaliate against government conduct."
Prosecutors would also have more ability to share grand jury information with other government officials investigating terrorism, but they would need court approval to do so.
Ashcroft would also have expanded ability to obtain business records of suspects, but he would not have the power he sought to do so without going to court first.
To protect civil liberties, the House legislation would create a new inspector general's office in the Justice Department for civil rights and civil liberties; it would be responsible for handling complaints and reporting to Congress.
The proposal would also increase, to $10,000 from $1,000, the damages private citizens could seek from the government for civil liberties violations.
Staff writer John Lancaster contributed to this report.
----
NEW INTELLIGENCE LEGISLATION STRIKES TOO CLOSE TO HOME
From: "LPDC" <lpdc@idir.net>
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 17:53:17 -0500
1. letter from the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
2. sample letter to Congress
3. Press release from the ACLU
Dear Friends,
As you know, the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee had planned to launch a new campaign on Leonard Peltier's birthday, September 12, and that those plans were postponed due to the events of September 11. Since then, we have all been struggling to shake ourselves from the shock and horror of that day. On the behalf of Leonard Peltier and the entire LPDC we wish to express our heartfelt condolences to all of those who lost loved ones and experienced the deeply traumatic fallout of September 11.
In past weeks, we have been closely monitoring legislation being proposed in Washington D.C. in regard to intelligence and law enforcement policy. We are particularly concerned about several components of the new anti-terrorism bill proposed by John Ashcroft. The bill, which is being considered by Congress now, vastly expands federal intelligence and law enforcement authority without demonstrating how such laws would make us safer. Moreover, we fear the bill could mark the beginning of a government trend toward greater secrecy and away from important civil rights protections and open government. As we have seen in the Peltier case, unbridled secrecy among intelligence agencies can result in grave violations of both civil and human rights. Such a trend could prove detrimental to the Peltier case by further restricting access to the thousands of FBI documents still concealed.
The aspects of the bill that we are especially concerned with include: A broader definition of terrorism to include minor, non-violent offenses, with severe penalties; expanded authority to wire tap phones and monitor e-mail communications to be applied not only in terrorist investigations, but in all surveillance; and expanded authority to conduct secret searches in terrorist and non-terrorist investigations (this practice, formally referred to as "black bag jobs" by the FBI, was banned after it was used to secretly search homes and offices of activists in the 60's and 70's). For more information about the bill please read the ACLU press release at the end of this alert.
We want to encourage you to write and call your elected officials and urge them to utilize great caution and scrutiny when considering the new anti-terrorism bill and related legislation. There are already flexible and very broad measures in place which allow law enforcement agencies to effectively collect intelligence. We have been given no explanation as to how new measures would assist anti-terrorism efforts, or further, how our civil rights will be protected should such measures be passed. As Congressman John Conyers stated at a recent hearing, "Past experience has taught us that today's weapon against terrorism may be tomorrow's law against law abiding Americans."
We cannot forget that the FBI once treated Indigenous rights movements seeking basic human rights as terrorists, and proceeded to subject them to undue prosecutions and violence resulting in widespread trauma among Native communities, as well as needless loss of life. During this difficult time we must vigilantly scrutinize measures that could bring about the reoccurrence of such abuses. We must remind officials and the public of examples, like that of Leonard Peltier. We should respond to the horrendous acts of September 11 with clear minds and just measures that will not bring about further harm to innocent people.
Below you will find a sample letter which you are welcome to use or modify should you choose to contact your elected officials, as well as a summary of ACLU's concerns regarding the bill. Thank you.
In Solidarity, LPDC
To call your Senators and Representative:
Capitol Switchboard # 202-224-3121
To write your Senators and Representatives:
The Honorable (full name) United States Senate Washington, DC 20510
and/or
The Honorable (full name) United States House of Representatives Washinton, DC 20515
Dear Senator/Congressman________,
I implore you to consider the new anti-terrorist bill and related legislation with great caution and scrutiny. When the government acts in haste and fear, it can take steps that do not protect our safety, but instead lead to long-term loss of civil rights protections and potential abuses.
There are already flexible and very broad measures in place which allow law enforcement agencies to effectively collect intelligence. We have been given no explanation as to how new measures would assist anti-terrorism efforts, or further, how civil and human rights will be protected should such measures be passed. As Congressman John Conyers stated, "Past experience has taught us that today's weapon against terrorism may be tomorrow's law against law abiding Americans." Mr. Ashcroft himself admits that such changes would not have prevented the tragedy of September 11.
I am especially concerned with aspects of the bill that: broaden the definition of terrorism to include minor offenses with severe penalties; expand already broad phone tap and e-mail monitoring authority; make it easier for law enforcement to carry out secret searches; and allow for long term detainment, as well as deportation of legal immigrants without proper judicial review.
Much of my apprehension stems from my knowledge of the Peltier case and its related history. Mr. Peltier's case is rooted in an era rife with FBI misconduct against traditional Native people aligned with the American Indian Movement (AIM), culminating in Mr. Peltier's wrongful conviction. From 1973-1976, the FBI cooperated with vigilantes on the Pine Ridge Reservation who sought to quash local AIM and traditionalist activity through a campaign of violence and terror, resulting in over 60 murders of traditional people. The FBI also carried out intensive local surveillance, as well as repeated arrests and bad faith legal proceedings against AIM. The FBI had secretly labeled AIM a terrorist organization and internally stated its intent to violate citizens' "privacy and free expression" in order to safeguard society's "right to protect itself against current domestic threats." Instead of protecting society, the FBI subjected the traditional Lakota People and AIM to a three year reign of terror. Some of the legislation being proposed would make it easy for a similar chain of events to reoccur.
While I recognize the need for a re-examination of the ability of law enforcement to protect against terrorists, I believe this re-examination should be conducted carefully, and any new proposals should be narrowly focused on the problems they purport to address. We are all concerned about preventing terrorist attacks in the future, but please don't pass legislation without adequate evaluation.
I look forward to hearing you thoughts on this important matter.
Sincerely,
-------- spying / agencies
Spy blunder - Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files
David Rose Sunday
September 30, 2001
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,560675,00.html
Security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic repeatedly turned down the chance to acquire a vast intelligence database on Osama bin Laden and more than 200 leading members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network in the years leading up to the 11 September attacks, an Observer investigation has revealed. They were offered thick files, with photographs and detailed biographies of many of his principal cadres, and vital information about al-Qaeda's financial interests in many parts of the globe.
On two separate occasions, they were given an opportunity to extradite or interview key bin Laden operatives who had been arrested in Africa because they appeared to be planning terrorist atrocities.
None of the offers, made regularly from the start of 1995, was taken up. One senior CIA source admitted last night: 'This represents the worst single intelligence failure in this whole terrible business. It is the key to the whole thing right now. It is reasonable to say that had we had this data we may have had a better chance of preventing the attacks.'
He said the blame for the failure lay in the 'irrational hatred' the Clinton administration felt for the source of the proffered intelligence - Sudan, where bin Laden and his leading followers were based from 1992-96. He added that after a slow thaw in relations which began last year, it was only now that the Sudanese information was being properly examined for the first time.
Last weekend, a key meeting took place in London between Walter Kansteiner, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, FBI and CIA representatives, and Yahia Hussien Baviker, the Sudanese intelligence deputy chief. However, although the intelligence channel between Sudan and the United States is now open, and the last UN sanctions against the African state have been removed, The Observer has evidence that a separate offer made by Sudanese agents in Britain to share intelligence with MI6 has been rejected. This follows four years of similar rebuffs.
'If someone from MI6 comes to us and declares himself, the next day he can be in Khartoum,' said a Sudanese government source. 'We have been saying this for years.'
Bin Laden and his cadres came to Sudan in 1992 because at that time it was one of the few Islamic countries where they did not need visas. He used his time there to build a lucrative web of legitimate businesses, and to seed a far-flung financial network - much of which was monitored by the Sudanese.
They also kept his followers under close surveillance. One US source who has seen the files on bin Laden's men in Khartoum said some were 'an inch and a half thick'.
They included photographs, and information on their families, backgrounds and contacts. Most were 'Afghan Arabs', Saudis, Yemenis and Egyptians who had fought with bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
'We know them in detail,' said one Sudanese source. 'We know their leaders, how they implement their policies, how they plan for the future. We have tried to feed this information to American and British intelligence so they can learn how this thing can be tackled.'
In 1996, following intense pressure from Saudi Arabia and the US, Sudan agreed to expel bin Laden and up to 300 of his associates. Sudanese intelligence believed this to be a great mistake.
'There we could keep track of him, read his mail,' the source went on. 'Once we kicked him out and he went to ground in Afghanistan, he couldn't be tracked anywhere.'
The Observer has obtained a copy of a personal memo sent from Sudan to Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, after the murderous 1998 attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. It announces the arrest of two named bin Laden operatives held the day after the bombings after they crossed the Sudanese border from Kenya. They had cited the manager of a Khartoum leather factory owned by bin Laden as a reference for their visas, and were held after they tried to rent a flat overlooking in the US embassy in Khartoum, where they were thought to be planning an attack.
US sources have confirmed that the FBI wished to arrange their immediate extradition. However, Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, forbade it. She had classed Sudan as a 'terrorist state,' and three days later US missiles blasted the al-Shifa medicine factory in Khartoum.
The US wrongly claimed it was owned by bin Laden and making chemical weapons. In fact, it supplied 60 per cent of Sudan's medicines, and had contracts to make vaccines with the UN.
Even then, Sudan held the suspects for a further three weeks, hoping the US would both perform their extradition and take up the offer to examine their bin Laden database. Finally, the two men were deported to Pakistan. Their present whereabouts are unknown.
Last year the CIA and FBI, following four years of Sudanese entreaties, sent a joint investigative team to establish whether Sudan was in fact a sponsor of terrorism. Last May, it gave Sudan a clean bill of health. However, even then, it made no effort to examine the voluminous files on bin Laden.
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Report Presses for Information Sharing
House Panel Suggests Revamping Intelligence
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55479-2001Oct1.html
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has suggested in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that a "fresh look" be taken at restructuring the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, including establishment of a separate clandestine service devoted to human intelligence.
While stressing that it "does not, in any way, lay blame to the dedicated men and women of the U.S. intelligence community" for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the committee wrote that it "believes major changes are necessary" for the nation's $30 billion intelligence community.
"It is a time for the administration to be bold, innovative, and to think 'out of the box,' " the House committee said in its report on the fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill, which was released over the weekend.
The separate human intelligence service, much like MI-6 in Britain, "would combine all Humint [human intelligence] resources under a similar tasking and operating structure," roles now handled primarily by the CIA's directorate of operations with some coordinated Pentagon covert human collection activities.
The panel's chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is himself a former CIA case officer, and the views of the committee are taken seriously in Congress as well as within the intelligence community. The leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), have called for a reexamination of the intelligence structure.
While the Bush administration has begun presidentially ordered internal and external reviews of intelligence, the panel said that "if history serves. . .no major substantive changes will occur after these reviews are completed."
The House committee said that since much of today's intelligence resources focus on military support, "global coverage and predictive, strategic intelligence have suffered as a result."
The panel noted that the intelligence portion of the defense budget declined in the fiscal 2002 request despite the administration's "emphasis on intelligence." Forced to do more with less, human intelligence has been unable to "rebuild our 'eyes and ears' around the globe," the report said. It described as "imperative" the need to increase the number of clandestine case officers and defense attachés around the world.
Another problem cited by the committee is the community's continued failure to share information fully, particularly when it comes to terrorism. "The artificial, but existing barriers to true information-sharing must be overcome."
The need for analysts and case officers with language skills and expertise in foreign areas was repeatedly emphasized by the panel. "At the NSA and CIA, thousands of pieces of data are never analyzed, or are analyzed 'after the fact' because there are too few analysts; even fewer with the necessary language skills," the committee said.
To remedy the situation it called for the CIA and Pentagon to provide bonuses to intelligence employees who are fluent "especially in the languages of the toughest and most important targets, particularly state sponsors and other nations that support terrorism."
Another reorganization proposal suggested by the committee, which it has raised before, calls for creating a single technical collection agency that would control all satellite, ground and air systems, whether intercepting signals, imagery or other data. This structure, the committee said, would "eliminate stovepiping" -- the practice of different agencies and military services having their own collection systems directed at their particular targets.
A companion suggestion was to combine into an all-source analytic agency the analysts who write papers for various agencies within the community. Such a combining of assets would "enhance collaboration and, thus, analysis," the panel said. Today, each agency does much of its own analytic work while joint efforts are produced by various joint centers such as the counterterrorism center at CIA.
Still, the panel's report also gives support to a newly established counterterrorism analysis center at the Defense Intelligence Agency that would focus on threats to U.S. forces.
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Terrorist group likely on the move
October 2, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011002-30798.htm
Terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden have shipped weapons to Somalia, a sign that their al Qaeda group may be moving its operating base out of Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials said.
The shipments were detected by U.S. intelligence agencies over the past two weeks and included small arms, grenade-launchers and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.
The weapons arrived by cargo ship at a secluded port and are believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to have originated in Afghanistan.
"There are indications bin Laden is setting up a new base of operations in Somalia," one official told The Washington Times. A second U.S. official confirmed that weapons have been sent to Islamic terrorist groups.
"We have reason to believe that al Qaeda and other extremist groups have provided some weapons and funding to Somalia," the official said.
The official identified one Somali group getting the arms as al-Ittihad al-Islami, which was described as a "powerful Islamic extremist group."
This official said Somalia is one of several locations to which bin Laden might try to flee, although "we still think he's in Afghanistan."
Other possible havens for the exiled Saudi terrorist leader might include Chechnya, Pakistan or one of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to pinpoint bin Laden's exact location in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said. One location bin Laden was known to frequent is a cave hideout in central Afghanistan, north of the southern city of Kandahar.
President Bush has demanded that the Taliban militia, which rules most of Afghanistan, turn over bin Laden and his terrorist associates and shut down all the training camps for international Islamic extremists.
Pakistan's leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf said yesterday that the Taliban's days appeared numbered because it will not surrender bin Laden. "It appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan," he told the British Broadcasting Corporation from Islamabad.
Bin Laden and al Qaeda are key suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed more than 6,000 people.
The arms shipments were tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies to an undeveloped area of Somalia. The weapons included AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, the officials said.
Al Qaeda, or "the Base," is an Islamic extremist group that is believed to be operating in 50 to 60 nations, stretching from the Philippines to the United States. It is believed to have about 3,500 members.
In addition to the Sept. 11 attacks, the group has been blamed for the October bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa and two bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia.
Intelligence reports of the arms shipments followed other classified reporting in recent days that bin Laden was planning to flee Afghanistan for Somalia.
Officials familiar with the reports said there were signs that associates of bin Laden were in contact with Islamic extremists in Somalia and had discussed moving bin Laden and his family to that country.
Mogadishu, the Somali capital, was the scene of a bloody 1993 battle between U.S. Army Rangers and Somali militiamen that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead. Some of the dead soldiers' bodies were later paraded through the streets of Mogadishu.
U.S. forces had been deployed to the impoverished country as part of a humanitarian operation aimed at providing help to starving Somalis. The U.S. military withdrew from the country after the ambush.
The operation went wrong after the United Nations involved U.S. troops in a hunt for Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid that was part of a larger effort to rebuild the country.
Somalia, like Afghanistan, has no functioning government and thus could be used as a sanctuary for bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Some of the Somali militia that took part in the action were trained by Islamic radicals linked to bin Laden, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Ethiopian government forces conducted military raids in Somalia in 1996 and broke up two terrorist training camps in southwestern Somalia, the official said.
One French news report stated last summer that bin Laden and al Qaeda have been tied to Islamic nongovernmental organizations operating in Somalia. The groups have been helping set up schools. Islamic terrorists from Egypt and Yemen also have been identified in Somalia.
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Can the NY Times Count -- or Quote -- Peace Activists?
F.A.I.R. ACTION ALERT:
October 2, 2001
Reply-To: fair-l-request@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times has downplayed and distorted peace rallies and demonstrations against a military response.
After thousands of anti-war activists gathered in Washington, D.C. on September 29, the Times responded with a 10-sentence story, under the headline "Protesters in Washington Urge Peace with Terrorists." Given that a call for bringing terrorists to justice through non-military means was central to the rallies, the headline is a gross mischaracterization of the protesters' message.
The Times also misreported other basic facts, like the size of the crowd in Washington. The Times estimated that a "few hundred protesters" were on hand, while the official police estimate was 7,000 (Washington Post, 9/30/01). One only had to watch the live coverage on C-SPAN to know the Times was way off.
The next day, the Times ran a slightly longer story about the second day of protests on page B7. The photo that accompanied the story, however, was dominated by a sign held by one of the counter-demonstrators: "Osama thanks fellow cowards for your support."
The rallies held in Washington were not the first time the paper downplayed peace activism. On September 21, the paper reported on the protests that were held on about 150 campuses across the country. But the perspectives of the thousands of students who participated in the day of action were almost entirely absent. Of the 11 students quoted in the article, only one voiced an anti-war opinion. Instead, the article was dominated by students who supported going to war, or those who could not recall seeing any anti-war sentiment on campus.
ACTION: Please call on the New York Times to improve its coverage of the peace movement by including the perspectives of anti-war activists in its reporting about the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
CONTACT: New York Times 229 West 43rd St. New York, NY 10036-3959 mailto:nytnews@nytimes.com Toll free comment line: 1-888-NYT-NEWS
Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org )
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