------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Musharraf: India Provokes Instability
Bush Adviser Says Russia Is Warming to U.S. ABM Tests
Sabotage at Three Mile Island?
Small business owners won't want to miss Hanford vendor forum
MILITARY
Waging a Deadly Stalemate on Afghanistan's Front Line
Macedonia may be a 'second front'
Anthrax search expands in U.S.
Soviet Defector Works to Defend Against Weapons He Helped Design
Scottish `Anthrax Island' Begets Hype
Israel Halts Pullout of Troops From Bethlehem
Militia halted at Afghan border
Allies Preparing for Long Fight as Taliban Dig In
Airstrikes On Kabul Intensify
British Official Says Airstrikes May Pause for Ramadan
McCain: Send More U.S. Ground Troops
OTHER
Chinese to Permit U.N. Probe Into Allegations of Torture
Anti-Terror Tools Include High-Tech
CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions
'The Brother': The Informer
Cole Suspect Turned Over By Pakistan
Tools to Fight Terror. All Suggestions Welcome.
What's So Complex About It?
ACTIVISTS
Be Brave, Americans - from a Japanese good friend
On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor
It's Simple. It's Not So Simple
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india/pakistan
Musharraf: India Provokes Instability
Sun, Oct 28 4:03 PM EST
By AMIR ZIA,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/011028/16/int-pakistan-india
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf accused India on Sunday of threatening regional peace and trying to dominate South Asia.
The two countries have accused one another of taking advantage of the turmoil in Afghanistan to strengthen their positions in Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both.
"Since Sept. 11, India has tried to escalate tension," Musharraf told a news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Musharraf said India has engaged in "massive shelling" of Pakistani positions in Kashmir.
The shelling began earlier this month, and Pakistan has responded in kind. The two-way artillery barrage ended a 10-month peace on the cease-fire line dividing the province.
"India's military action and rhetoric should be the cause of concern for the international community," Musharraf said. "It could have incalculable consequences to the entire region."
Hindu-dominated India accuses Pakistan of supporting Islamic militants in India's part of Kashmir, its only Muslim majority state. The guerrillas are waging a secessionist war to merge the state of Jammu-Kashmir with Muslim Pakistan or declare independence. Pakistan denies the charge.
Schroeder said Germany wants the two countries to resume peace talks. The last round - a summit in July between Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the Indian city of Agra - collapsed over Kashmir.
Musharraf said Pakistan is ready to resume talks. India has said it won't hold talks with Pakistan until it stops providing support to Muslim militants.
"Unfortunately, persistent Indian hostility against Pakistan and its continued military occupation and massive repression of the Kashmiri people ... threaten peace in South Asia," Musharraf said.
On Oct. 1, a suicide bomb attack on the Jammu-Kashmir state legislature killed 40 people. Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility, only to deny it later.
The two nuclear powers have fought two wars over Kashmir since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
-------- missile defense
Bush Adviser Says Russia Is Warming to U.S. ABM Tests
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/28MISS.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, says Russia's leaders are becoming persuaded that the administration's plans to test a missile defense system are "not actually a threat" to Moscow.
Ms. Rice's assessment of the negotiations with Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, marks the first time that an administration official of her rank has suggested that Russia is dropping its objections to the Pentagon's proposed testing regime.
In an interview on Friday before leaving for Camp David with President Bush, Ms. Rice said that months of consultations were now "bearing fruit." She declined, however, to go into any detail about the outlines of the deal on missile defense taking shape in advance of President Putin's arrival here in a little over two weeks.
Interviews with several other administration officials indicated that they are now working on an assumption that Russia may agree to permit the tests - and that Mr. Bush, in turn, will postpone any decision on abandoning the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia views as a cornerstone of arms control.
The president has often called the treaty a relic of the Cold War, an outdated and even dangerous accord that prevents the United States from strengthening national defense.
But his declaration of war on global terror after Sept. 11 now requires that he stay on good terms with Mr. Putin, and with European allies who largely share Russia's view that the ABM treaty should be preserved.
Ms. Rice presented what she views as the latest development not as a pragmatic quid pro quo with the Russians, but as an American breakthrough in the administration's constant efforts to change the Kremlin's mind about the plans for missile defense.
"I think that the Russians are beginning to see that what we've said all along is true: that the near-term program for missile defense, which is really a testing and evaluation program, is not actually a threat to them," Ms. Rice said.
Ms. Rice stepped around questions about the meaning of Mr. Putin's comments last weekend in Shanghai, where he saw President Bush and announced that "we can reach agreements."
His statement was widely interpreted as meaning that he expected to reach at least a partial deal during his trip here, which will include a visit to Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex.
But Ms. Rice added that the administration had now reviewed its testing plans for the antimissile system several times with Russian officials, from President Bush's personal discussions with Mr. Putin to numerous talks between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his Russian counterpart, Sergei B. Ivanov, and others.
"And I think that all the time that was spent in the consultations between Don and Ivanov, and when the Russians came here, and we laid out to them what's in the missile defense program, is bearing fruit," she said. "I think they've gone back and crunched it and sort of looked at it with a calculated military eye and said, `O.K., the Americans are right. There isn't a threat.' "
Speaking in her corner office in the West Wing, Ms. Rice revealed no anxiety about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban's survival skills or the spread of anthrax around New York and Washington.
It was still unclear what price the Russians might extract in return for their agreement to allow the testing - or to overlook a treaty violation during an American test phase. Nor is it certain that a deal will be reached; Secretary of State Colin L. Powell still has to meet with his Russian counterpart before Mr. Putin's visit.
But if Mr. Bush strikes a deal that lets the Pentagon move forward on its schedule of tests, both sides will have grounds to claim success.
If Mr. Bush can go ahead with the testing, he can tell missile defense advocates in the Republican Party that he reached an accord that allows them to move into the project's next phase. Mr. Bush is also hoping to demonstrate that over time he can convince Mr. Putin that the whole treaty should be scrapped.
As with any new weapons system, especially one as complex and uncertain as missile defense, a lengthy test and evaluation is required before any possible deployment.
Mr. Putin, for his part, can argue to his constituents that he stopped Mr. Bush from walking away from the ABM Treaty, which the Russian leader and a vast majority of his military and political establishment view as the foundation of arms control.
The Russians have insisted that the ABM treaty is "unconditionally linked" to other arms control pacts, especially those limiting offensive arms.
Administration officials said they were still examining whether a protocol or exchange of notes would be sufficient to secure an agreement allowing the Defense Department to proceed with a broad, accelerated testing program. Any amendment to the treaty would require the Senate's formal approval, which missile defense advocates in the administration argue would slow the test schedule. But many in the Senate will demand a voice in any lesser alteration to the treaty.
Until Mr. Rumsfeld on Thursday announced the delay and alteration of three missile defense tracking tests, the United States risked complaints that it would be violating the treaty as early as this week. In the run-up to the Bush-Putin meeting, those in the administration who had advocated swift withdrawal from the treaty have fallen noticeably quiet. They had argued that security interests could be secured only by invoking America's right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty following a six-month notification, with or without Russia's blessing.
"The goal is still to find an acceptable arrangement with Russia to move beyond the treaty or to get out of it," said one administration official. "This could take a variety of different forms. We have always been open to the form."
Several administration officials confirmed that they had seen movement from the Russians toward an agreement to allow American missile defense tests outside the current treaty limits, and that some sort of deal is a distinct possibility when the presidents meet next month.
But one official cautioned that Mr. Bush's national security team was still drafting its negotiating plan, and that the outcome of the talks was far from certain.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- pennsylvania
Sabotage at Three Mile Island?
Investigators suspected sabotage at Three Mile Island
tmia.com
http://www.tmia.com/tmisab.html
There is evidence to suggest that sabotage played a role in the "accident" at Three Mile Island. (This publication details only the evidence that has been documented by official government or NRC investigations.) Several days before the emergency, an unannounced NRC inspection of the plant's physical protection discovered access control infractions. Previous announced inspections found TMI to be in compliance with regulations. At the time of the accident, Three Mile Island was not required to enforce the then new "two-man rule." The two-man rule was designed to prevent a worker from being alone in vital areas. Additionally, TMI had not met the deadline for other newly required security upgrades.
In the first moments of the accident, emergency feedwater was prevented from entering the system because the "emergency feedwater valves" were closed. Indicator lights on a control room panel should have alerted the operators that these valves were closed. The two lights were hidden from view by a maintenance tag that was covering them. The valves are supposed to stay open so that emergency pumps can deliver water to the steam generators if the normal circulation is interrupted. The steam generators remove enormous amounts of heat from the reactor. Without feedwater, the steam generators boiled dry within two minutes. The temperature and pressure soared inside the reactor vessel.
The licensee's internal investigation did not consider intentional closure. The NRC Office of Inspection and Enforcement reasoned that it would take a monumental effort to interview each of the more than 750 people who had access to the emergency feedwater valves. The NRC claimed its investigators from the Office of Inspection and Enforcement were sensitive to any evidence of sabotage. But there is some disturbing and eye-opening evidence that wasn't criminally investigated. In fact, the NRC never even discovered the initiating event.
THE INITIAL PROBLEM
The accident started at exactly 4:00:37am on March 28, 1979. This was precisely to the minute of the one year anniversary of start-up or what is known as criticality. This aroused suspicions of worker celebrations involving drinking. The workers testified that they had their normal coffee and doughnuts only.
The trouble started somewhere in the condensate polisher system. Some unknown event caused the polisher outlet valves to close. There are several ways that a saboteur could have made this happen without being detected by plant telemetry or subsequent investigations.
The NRC Office of Investigation and Enforcement hypothesized that the initial failure was a result of a stuck-open check valve allowing water to pass into an instrument control air line and thereby cause the condensate polisher outlet valves to close. The investigators tried to duplicate this condition to test their theory. Despite pouring 15 gallons of water into this line, they could not cause the valves to shut. But, this remained the best guess as to what the first failure might have been. Because the NRC believed that the accident could have been averted at several points if human errors weren't committed, they were satisfied with not knowing the initiating event. Still, the investigators did conclude, "The problems encountered with the condensate system and condenser vacuum significantly detracted the operator's attention from the accident."
Then in the first seconds of the accident, a condensate polisher pump failure was followed by the immediate shutdown of its paired pump. The NRC investigators reported that a "wiring error" caused this second pump to quit when the first one had. A criminal investigator never assumes that an error is "only an error."
A broken air line in the condensate polisher system was ignored by NRC investigators who believed that air was prevented from leaking out by the actuation of another automatic valve. But, at least one worker testified that he had heard the broken line blowing air during the emergency. The licensee claimed that the air line was broken by a water hammer which caused equipment to shift two or three feet. (A water hammer is a sudden pressure change or a slug of water like the one that can rattle your household pipes when turning off a water faucet.) The NRC investigators reported that based on their visual inspection, the air line movement was not as great as the licensee claimed. The cause was never determined or considered necessary.
An hour into the accident, workers needed to re-establish water circulation by opening a bypass valve. The handwheel was missing from this important valve. A search for the handwheel delayed bypassing the condensate polisher system where the failed pumps were located.
The radiological releases began when a safety valve on top of the reactor failed to close. This valve opened to relieve the rapidly increasing pressure. Control room operators did not know that the Pilot Operated Relief Valve (PORV) was still open because the telemetry system was improperly engineered. The operators were fooled by a panel light which only indicated that an electrical signal had been sent to close the valve and not its actual status. Thousands of gallons of water in the form of steam spilled out of the reactor in what is known as a loss of coolant accident. For a short while the contamination was contained inside the reactor building. Although these valves had failed before at other plants, the PORV at Three Mile Island has yet to be inspected. A TMI engineer who believes that the valve simply failed said that sabotage could not be dismissed.
(Eighteen months before the TMI accident, the reactor at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio started going out of control in what was actually a precursor to the Three Mile Island emergency. The PORV stuck open and operators struggled to understand the situation. Another design problem caused confusion about the water level inside the reactor. This problem reoccurred at TMI since both reactors were designed by Babcock & Wilcox. Davis-Besse was operating at only 9 percent compared to 97 percent at TMI when the troubles began. The Davis-Besse operators were able to return the plant to a safe condition. Afterwards, an investigation of the reactor revealed that an electrical relay had been removed from the PORV. Someone suggested sabotage. The reactor manufacturer finally decided that the relay was probably "borrowed" for usage in another part of the plant since it was compatible with several systems.)
The highly radioactive water steaming out of the TMI reactor would normally be pumped into an immense holding tank inside the reactor building. For some unknown reason the valve for this sump pump had been switched so that the contaminated water was transferred into the auxiliary building. From here the radioactivity was released to the environs through open vents.
INADEQUATE INVESTIGATION
In June 1979, an NRC special review group conceded that the NRC investigators of the TMI accident had "no training in investigative techniques or knowledge of the laws of evidence or criminal procedures." The NRC investigators did not have the authority to administer oaths and felt that the quality of the information they had obtained would have been enhanced if oaths were given. The NRC actually did have the authority to administer oaths and didn't appear to know this until after the interviews were conducted.
The report also said:
".... a trained investigator should have been dispatched with the initial response team to organize and retain portions of the supportive evidence (notes, logs, etc.) which were lost during the initial days of the accident."
Additionally, the review group found that the NRC investigation was hindered by the delay of receiving transcripts of worker interviews
(Also noteworthy is that the control room alarm printer fell behind by almost two hours. The printer was designed to store alarms in its memory until they can be printed. So many alarms were going off in the early stages of the emergency that the control room operators had to dump the stored alarms to get to the current ones. The information was forever lost.)
A technical investigator for the President's Commission on the accident questioned the adequacy and efforts of the Office of Inspection and Enforcement. Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators had not even arrived at the plant until two weeks had passed. He also questioned the licensee's internal investigation.
The President's Commission obtained an internal TMI memo which had been written ten months before the accident. It said, "It's time to really do something on this problem before a very serious accident occurs. If the polishers take themselves off line at any high power level the resulting damage could be very significant."
The Chief Counsel for the President's Commission requested the licensee to examine its personnel files for "any person who might have long-standing grievances against the company." This was requested specifically as an attempt to discover workers who might have had incentive to close the emergency feedwater valves. Interrogation of the five workers who were identified by the company was considered.
On August 7, 1979 the President's Commission requested the FBI to determine the feasibility of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the closed valves. The President's Commission had the authority to ask for assistance from any Executive agency and by vote had decided that the FBI was needed. But, the FBI went right back to the NRC which informed them that human errors and equipment failures were to blame for the accident; therefore, an investigation was not necessary.
An encrypted telegram sent by the FBI to the White House Situation Room around April 6, 1979 informed the President that sabotage was not responsible for the accident according to the NRC's Harold Denton. There was no reasonable way for Denton to have drawn this conclusion. The telegram which is now in the National Archives is labeled "encrypted for transmission purposes only." Portions of it are blacked-out even though it has been unclassified.
On August 15, 1979 the President's Commission asked NASA to perform an inspection of the condensate polisher system. Three Mile Island did not even have the "as built" technical drawings needed for a proper inspection. How could the NRC inspectors have done a thorough job without these? The fact was that they didn't. Investigators from NASA's Office of Flight Assurance found wires that were disconnected at five of the eight polisher panels. Operating and engineering personnel didn't know when or why they were disconnected. They also noted that an instrument air valve on the back of the polishing system control panel permits the air to be shut off and thus cause the outlet valves to close. Paul Leventhal, co-director of the US Senate investigation of the Three Mile Island accident (now director of The Nuclear Control Institute ), wanted to perform a special sabotage investigation. "The initiating event was always so mysterious in that so little was known about it," Leventhal divulged in an interview. "I wanted to hire someone like a former FBI agent to do an investigation but the Minority co-director objected."
Just four days into the accident, the FBI had already announced that sabotage was ruled out and the investigation was closed. Maybe they were trying to quiet the fears of the public which had just seen the new film "The China Syndrome." (Some people actually wrote to the NRC accusing Hollywood of a sick publicity stunt.) In actuality, the FBI was planning to meet with confidential sources who believed that sabotage was to blame. An openly public source was Pennsylvania State Representative Joseph Zeller.
Both the Senate and President's Commission investigations were called off the hunt and instructed that a criminal investigation was not their responsibility. It is not entirely unusual for a valve or switch to be in the wrong position, but this many "errors" should have been investigated for criminal activity.
Soon after the emergency, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory concluded: "There was very little protection against insider sabotage. ...There was very little or no control of the whereabouts of people inside the vital area; so it cannot be said that sabotage to the auxiliary feedwater system was impossible."
and
"...some vital area doors that should have been locked or guarded were found to be open and unguarded. Actually, there was very poor protection against the sabotage actions of the insider."
and
"The conclusion can be drawn that the protection against the activities of an insider is still inadequate at TMI..." And an embarrassing incident did happen several months after the TMI accident when a newspaper reporter was hired as a security guard. He told of entering the control room unchallenged (only armed guards were permitted access). There was no lock on the door and a piece of clothesline hung where the doorknob should have been. A college textbook used this incident as an example of poor security. The book cited the reporter's headline -- "Three Mile Island: It's a Paradise Island for the Saboteur." General Public Utilities sought an injunction to block publication of the article on the grounds that it could compromise national security.
-------- washington
Small business owners won't want to miss Hanford vendor forum
Hanford News
Sun, Oct 28, 2001
By Wendy Culverwell Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1028.html
With approximately one-fourth of the work on the massive River Protection Project at Hanford set aside for small businesses, it's time for local business owners to bone up on cleanup plans.
There is a vitrification plant to build, a river corridor to protect, millions of gallons of radioactive waste to process and many engineering challenges to meet.
But first there is a schedule to keep. The clock, though already ticking, gets going in earnest Nov. 15.
That's when the Department of Energy, its lead contractors and the Tri-City Industrial Development Council will hold a daylong symposium to help small business owners learn how they can be part of the $4 billion effort.
The symposium offers would-be business partners a chance to learn more about the project and make face-to-face contact with purchasing officers for the two major contractors, Bechtel National, Inc. and CH2M Hill Hanford Group, Inc.
Bechtel is leading the effort to construct the plant where radioactive tank wastes will be treated; CH2M Hill is responsible for the tank farms and rivershore protection.
The combined effort is called the River Protection Project and it will play out over the next 10 years at the Hanford site.
Even though $1 billion worth of work is set to go to small businesses, size alone won't guarantee work from the government's contractors, said Michael Barrett, Bechtel's contracting director.
"Just your small business status isn't going to get you the job," he said.
Successful businesses should take time to learn about the project, its timelines, what materials will be needed and when.
At a minimum, any small business acting as a supplier or subcontractor must be licensed in Washington state and registered as a federal contractor.
"Understand the project. Understand the timeline of the project," advised Greg Jones, executive officer of DOE's Office of River Protection.
That's why the vendor symposium was set up.
The individual contractors, namely Bechtel, have already held forums for potential vendors.
But DOE and Tri-City business leaders wanted an event that covered the full scope of the tank waste project, from tank farm management to construction of the vitrification plant at the Hanford site's central plateau.
The project will result in 54 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous tank waste being treated at the vitrification plant, where it will be glassified in a process involving extreme heat.
Small businesses can have a role in the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the project.
Carrie Brittain, supplier advocate for Bechtel National, said the company will need businesses that provide construction services as well as materials. Her office regularly refers potential suppliers to Bechtel's Web site, www.ebechtel.com, to learn what steps they must take to become a supplier as well as what bids are coming up.
Visiting the ebechtel.com site is the most important first step a potential business partner can take.
"The biggest problem we have is they don't follow through. We send them to the Web site and they don't go," Brittain said.
Bechtel already uses small businesses for engineering and architectural services, preparation of the construction site, site security and safety supplies. It's looking for a contractor to install a fence around the project as well as a contractor to install a septic system.
Building the vitrification plant will be a massive project that's likely to deplete supplies of certain construction materials and strain the ability of small businesses to supply others.
"We've always encouraged teaming arrangements, especially on the large buys," Brittain said.
At CH2M Hill Hanford Group, or CHG, prospective vendors can register either by setting up a meeting with the vendor advocate, Debbie Bone-Harris, or by visiting its Web site, www. hanford.gov/chgcp/.
Contact names and numbers are listed on the site.
CHG relies on small businesses to supply everything from engineering support and contract estimators to office furniture, paper, pens and other office supplies, said Betty Euteneier, director of contracts and procurements.
Euteneier tells businesses that they must do more than register and wait for a call offering work. Even among registered businesses, competition for government-sponsored work is fierce.
Individual businesses need to study the project, figure out where they fit in, then sell themselves to purchasing officers.
"Do the homework, then come and tell us what you can do," she said.
The Nov. 15 vendor symposium starts with registration at 9 a.m. and continues until 3 p.m.
There will be presentations, a question-and-answer period and a chance to meet buyers.
The program will be held at the Trade, Recreation and Agricultural Center in Pasco.
To register, call Kris Berg at TRIDEC, 735-1000.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Waging a Deadly Stalemate on Afghanistan's Front Line
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/asia/28FIGH.html
MARKAZE FERQE CHIL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 - Peering across a 300-yard wide wasteland of armored personnel carriers, dangling electrical wires and anti-personnel mines, Abdel Sahiq's eyes lit up when he thought he saw something. "There! There!" the 22-year-old Northern Alliance gunner shouted, pointing at three barely discernible figures on the Taliban side of the front line here just north of Kabul.
He fired three loud bursts from his 50- caliber machine gun, but missed. His commander, Mir Afghan, angrily said, "Let me," took hold of the weapon and blasted away. The three figures on the Taliban side of the line, who all appeared to be bearded and wearing turbans, disappeared.
If Northern Alliance soldiers backed by American bombing are to initiate a frontal assault against Kabul, they must somehow breach front lines like the militarily crucial one here. But for years the seemingly impenetrable maze of mine-fields and fortifications has cemented a stalemate preventing either side from advancing.
When American jets continued their bombing here last week, young men with hair triggers on both sides of the front line fired away at the slightest sign of their enemy.
Mr. Sahiq stood in what remains of a movie theater, built here on the grounds of the 108th infantry regiment headquarters, which was thrown up in 1980 in the first year of Soviet occupation. Twenty years later, the theater has no roof and its walls mark the Northern Alliance's forward position here. Mr. Sahiq's machine gun nest is in the stairwell that used to lead to the theater's projection room.
The movie theater is the forward part of a 70-bunker, mile-and-a-half long maze of defenses commanded by Mir Rahman, who says he has 200 men here. Two months ago, Taliban soldiers tried to break these lines, with disastrous results. Alliance soldiers - tipped off to the attack - said they laid down a withering crossfire of mortars, machine guns and mines and contended that more than 150 Taliban soldiers died.
The alliance commander said he was confident that with the help of American bombing, his soldiers could move forward from here, where they have been at a stalemate for two years with Taliban soldiers. "If the U.S. and its allies attack the front lines very strongly for a week or more," he said, "I'm sure it will be very easy."
The dirt mounds where the three Taliban soldiers were seen mark the Taliban side of the line. It is only 300 yards away, but to get there means crossing a field strewn with three types of mines. The first were placed by the Soviets more than 10 years ago. More recently, the Taliban and the alliance have planted their own. This area has changed hands three times in six years. Green grass and purple wildflowers grow in the no- man's land, but there are a few large objects behind which advancing soldiers can hide.
Beyond the initial Taliban front line, there are two other front lines visible from here, according to alliance commanders. Set a mile back from each other, the lines consist of a network of interlinked bunkers and trenches. Behind them are a series of support bases where Taliban tanks and artillery can fire on advancing ground forces.
Initially, the American bombing here focused on the Taliban rear bases. But on Thursday, American planes struck Taliban trenches near the front lines heavily for the first time, something alliance commanders have implored them to do. Mr. Rahman and other alliance commanders say they are eager for the bombing even though it may endanger alliance soldiers posted only a few hundred yards from the Taliban targets.
"I won't say anything if an accident happens," he said.
Mr. Rahman's defenses are responsible for a front line area that stretches a mile and a half from the 108th Regiment headquarters to the western entrance to the sprawling Soviet-built Bagram air base here. The area between the two bases includes Bazaarcha Maidan, a once thriving market district that was home to 3,000 families and is now a ghost town.
One of the most dangerous parts of getting to Mr. Rahman's front line is walking across a 400-yard wide field that separates Bazaarcha Maidan's main street from the Soviet infantry base. Taliban forces hold positions just inside the base, where two abandoned Soviet guard towers and a crumbling wall still stand. Taliban forces recently shot at a group of men as they walked across the field, but missed.
Mr. Rahman's second line is 400 yards behind his first line and runs along what was once Bazaarcha Maidan's main street. The road, a wide boulevard lined with handsome homes, large shops and boysenberry trees, once buzzed with activity.
But through the years, tank tracks have torn up the pavement and mortars have left star-shaped scars in the asphalt. A 50-caliber machine gun sits on a rooftop, blocking any effort to advance toward this area along the tops of nearby buildings.
Mr. Rahman points out the area's strongest defenses - a series of bunkers his soldiers have built along one side of the street. Positioned in front of each cross-street leading to the market, the bunkers are connected by trenches and have turned the wide boulevard into a death zone. Any troops trying to advance here on the ground must approach through alleys where alliance soldiers can fire on them from the bunkers.
Parked across a field that borders the infantry base are an armored personnel carrier and battle tank. The two vehicles and a dozen men serve as a second line behind the alliance soldiers inside the Soviet base. The men are relaxed, but are careful to stand behind the vehicles so they will not be exposed to sniper fire. A small, friendly dog serves as the post's mascot. His name is Palang, or tiger.
Khattar, the 36-year-old commander of the second line, explains that the two sides engage in artillery duels every day from 8 to 10 in the morning and from 4 to 6 at night. Asked why the exchanges start at the same time, he shrugged. "They always start then," he said referring to the Taliban.
On a recent afternoon, like clockwork, the artillery exchange began just after 4 p.m. After Taliban forces fired a few rounds from an anti- aircraft gun toward Northern Alliance forces here, Mr. Rahman ordered a tank to fire back at the Taliban position. The Soviet-built T- 55 tank fired a thunderous round at the Taliban lines, sending a huge plume of smoke rising in the air 200 yards away inside the grounds of the infantry base. The Taliban fired back two more rounds from the anti-aircraft weapon. They then scattered rifle fire around the tank, sending plumes of dust rising from the wall of a building just behind it. No alliance soldiers were hurt.
Khattar insisted that even though the Taliban were returning fire, in most cases firing more rounds than the alliance had, their morale was sinking. "It's getting worse," he said referring to the Taliban morale. "They used to fire more."
Mr. Rahman insists that it is possible for alliance forces to advance through this wasteland. "We have mine-clearing teams," he said. "We know this land."
In advance of an attack, teams of special troops would first enter the no-man's land between forces here and in the darkness begin clearing mines. Special assault units, known here as "zarbati," or "rapid," would then move in and try to slip between Taliban bunkers. "No one ever attacks in front and gets away with it," Mr. Rahman said. "Every time we capture a post, it's from behind."
Alliance commanders have refused to comment on the details of any possible attacks here but insisted that if American heavy bombing of front-line positions continued, alliance forces could advance. "We've taken this land before and we've lost it before," Mr. Rahman said. "We can do it again."
-------- balkans
Macedonia may be a 'second front'
October 28, 2001
By Jury Sigov
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011028-27197341.htm
SKOPJE, Macedonia - Islamic fighters like those trained in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden number about 6,000 in this country a bit larger than New Jersey. They come from many Arab nations, plus Bosnia, Turkey, Ukraine, and even as far away as Tanzania to open a "second front" against infidels.
These mujahideen are equipped not only with sniper rifles and machine guns, but also have mortars and light planes. Are we talking about Afghanistan or Iraq, where American troops might be sent to demolish another terrorist threat?
No, this is Macedonia, a mountainous, land-locked country in the Balkans with a population of about 2 million people that broke away from the Yugoslav federation 10 years ago and now lives in a condition of semiwar, semipeace bordering Albania, Serbia (mostly its Kosovo region), Bulgaria and Greece.
Initially boycotted by Greece, which feared the name "Macedonia" could imply territorial claims on northern Greece, this country waited several years before admission to the United Nations in 1995. As the Balkan wars spread, the United Nations sent a few hundred U.S. and Scandinavian peacekeepers to Macedonia in 1992 - the U.N. Preventive Deployment, or UNPREDEP.
This force was renewed at intervals until 1999, when China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, cast a veto over Skopje's diplomatic recognition of Taiwan - in exchange for several hundred million dollars of aid. This June, Macedonia switched its diplomatic ties from Taipei back to Beijing.
In 1999, the conflict in Kosovo sent 375,000 refugees into northern Macedonia. Early this year, a new conflict broke out here centered on Tetovo and Kumanovo involving some of the Albanian guerrillas who had fought in the Kosovo war. Recently, the ethnic conflict between Macedonians and Albanians has been brought to a shaky halt by a NATO and European Union military presence.
Called Essential Harvest, the NATO force collected thousands of weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia before its mandate expired last month. It has been replaced by a smaller NATO force of 1,000 military policemen in an operation named Amber Fox.
Ethnic Albanians comprise more than 22 percent of Macedonia's population. They are represented in the People's Assembly, the Cabinet (6 ministers), as mayors and heads of local administration. Slavic Macedonians who comprise more than 66 percent of the population, think this is appropriate.
However some radical ethnic Albanians claim Macedonia was historically theirs, and that their Slavic neighbors, now the majority, came to this region long ago as "aliens" from beyond the Carpathian Mountains. In this and other matters, they are supported by Albanians in Albania and Kosovo.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 in New York and Washington, some see a terrorist threat for the United States emerging from the Balkans. Connections between the Albanian Kosovars, Arab mercenaries and mujahideen from Chechnya have been documented by Macedonia.
At the same time, the country lives in a strange atmosphere between "limited peace" and "undeclared war."
When this correspondent sought to visit one of Macedonia's top tourist attractions - Lake Ohrid, Europe's oldest and deepest, covering 138 square miles at an elevation of 2,200 feet in the mountains bordering Albania, and in a cradle of Eastern Orthodox Christianity - the driver took a road though Veles and Bitola, rather than the short way through Tetovo. He said Albanian separatists of the UCK - Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or Kosovo Liberation Army - control that part of Macedonia.
In Skopje, Macedonia's capital of 600,000 inhabitants (totally rebuilt after a 1963 earthquake), the only sign of trouble is a $102 "war zone" surcharge at the airport. The streets are full of carefree people, cafes and bars are open well after midnight, and many residents spend their weekends at Lake Ohrid to relax from the work rhythm of the capital.
But just a 30-minute drive to the north, it is another world. Ethnic Albanian paramilitaries keep infiltrating from Kosovo, and the government says they now control one-sixth of the country's territory. Macedonian police are not allowed to go there, and the government cannot exercise control there. Daily television reports tell of shootings and Slavic Macedonians being driven from their homes by ethnic Albanians.
Albanians say the Macedonians are intruders and that they are just reassereting their rights.
The government rejects this. "Any partition of Macedonia is inadmissible," said Interior Minister Lubcho Boshkovky. "We will not allow Albanians to divide our country and crush our people."
When I spoke to representatives of the Macedonian government, they were unanimous: The problem of Macedonia today is a continuation of the unresolved problem of Kosovo. Being under a NATO protectorate, Kosovo continues to cause enormous humanitarian and refugee strains for all neighboring countries, including Macedonia.
At the same time very few people in Macedonia - either on the streets or at the top levels of government - are optimistic about a quick and soon solution of that crisis.
"The world should understand, that this is a European problem, and the European countries should play a major peace role here," Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski told this reporter in an interview.
"The United States, with all its power, cannot solve this problem, and NATO should be more active in restricting terrorism. Otherwise everybody, including the U.S. will feel the negative impact of the unresolved crisis around our country. If we don't get help to fight terrorism here in the Balkans, tomorrow you may face these terrorists elsewhere."
-------- biological weapons
Anthrax search expands in U.S.
October 28, 2001
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20011028-262220.htm
The search for anthrax spores widened yesterday to include thousands of mailrooms in federal buildings and private businesses throughout the country as physicians came to Washington seeking answers about the dangers of the disease spreading to their communities.
The U.S. Postal Service expanded its testing for contamination to 14 postal facilities in Northern Virginia and Maryland and some 30 other mail-sorting distribution centers along the East Coast and as far west as Arizona. An additional 200 sites nationwide were expected to be picked for random testing for any traces of anthrax.
The Postal Service shut down a post office in Princeton, N.J., yesterday, the second one in that state, after preliminary tests proved positive for a single anthrax spore was found in a colony of several types of bacteria on a mail bin.
About 600 people who picked up mail and packages at the postal processing facility where anthrax was found should take antibiotics, New Jersey health officials said. The recommendation applies mainly to workers from several hundred firms who pick up or drop off mail at the facility.
A Trenton firefighter also was hospitalized yesterday for a possible case of inhalation anthrax.
Samples were taken Friday at the post office, and the FBI and federal health officials took more samples early yesterday, but further test results were not available, said Laura Otterbourg, a spokeswoman for the state Health Department.
In all, officials are testing at between 2,000 and 4,000 sites that receive mail from the Brentwood Road Mail Processing Facility in Northeast - the District's main processing and distribution center - where an anthrax-laced letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was processed earlier this month. Four postal workers became infected with inhalation anthrax, two of whom have died.
So far, the letter sent to Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, is the only one locally known to be laced with anthrax, but authorities feared yesterday there might be other such letters that have not yet been found.
"We don't know if we have cross-contamination from the original Senator Daschle letter or if there is another letter out there that we need to be concerned about," said Lt. Dan Nichols, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police.
About 68 tons of letters from the District were being trucked to a plant in Lima, Ohio, to be decontaminated with electron beams typically used to sterilize hospital equipment.
The Postal Service has signed a $40 million contract to buy eight electron-beam devices to sanitize mail. The equipment will be used first in Washington.
Another suspicious letter turned up in Florida yesterday, when a letter on its way to Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's office in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., started seeping white powder in the local post office. The letter, which was handwritten and had no return address, was sent to an FBI lab in Miami to be tested for anthrax.
Mr. Daschle said yesterday Americans should not allow the anthrax scare to interfere with their lives.
"We cannot be paralyzed by our anger or slowed by our sadness," Mr. Daschle said in the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address. "We need to identify the weaknesses in our system of confronting bioterrorism so that we can protect our people."
There are 14 confirmed anthrax infections nationwide, including the two Brentwood employees and one State Department mailroom employee who have inhalation anthrax, the most serious form of the disease. Three local men are in serious condition at local hospitals.
Three persons - a Florida photo editor and the two other Brentwood employees - have died. Joseph Curseen Jr., of Clinton, Md., was buried yesterday.
A total of 23 Postal Service workers are hospitalized for "suspicious symptoms," but anthrax has not been confirmed, officials said yesterday.
Mailroom workers from some 300 federal agencies and 22 businesses that get their mail from the contaminated Brentwood facility began preventive treatment this weekend at different makeshift treatment centers in Northern Virginia and at D.C. General Hospital.
One of the treatment sites was at the Fairfax County Government Center in Fairfax County, where workers turned out to get screened and, if necessary, get treatment. By midafternoon, 42 persons were given medicine, said Kathy Simmons, a Fairfax County information officer.
Police and health experts continued to search for any further anthrax spores in congressional facilities and postal centers in the region. The Ford and Longworth House Office Buildings and the Hart Senate Office Building remained closed, as did the mailroom in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The Hart-Dirksen garage was scheduled to reopen tomorrow.
Officials said yesterday anthrax spores found in three congressional offices in Longworth late Friday were low level.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta warned that thousands more mailroom workers nationwide will need to begin taking preventive antibiotics. "It could be an astronomical number," said Patrick Meehan, a CDC spokesman.
Dr. Ivan Walks, director of the D.C. Health Department, said as of last night more than 10,000 postal workers and private mailroom handlers in the Washington area had been placed on either 10-day or 60-day supplies of antibiotics since Oct. 21, when a Brentwood postal employee was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.
Dr. Walks said the total also includes the nine Supreme Court justices, who began taking the antibiotic doxycycline on Friday after spores were found on an air filter in the court's off-site mailing facility that afternoon.
As a result of the discovery, the court tomorrow will temporarily relocate to the ceremonial courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals on Constitution Avenue NW, where it is scheduled to hear two cases. The justices may also choose to use that courtroom for oral arguments Tuesday and Wednesday until testing is completed.
The high court is more dependent on mail than other courts. Although lawyers often use Federal Express or other courier services to file paperwork, much of the court's official business arrives by U.S. mail because the official Postal Service postmark is virtually the only acceptable proof that papers were filed on time when a document arrives after a deadline. Documents sent by any other method must arrive before a filing deadline.
Dr. Walks also said yesterday city health officials have ordered some postal workers who were initially given a 10-day supply earlier to come back and get enough for 50 more days because their mailrooms had tested positive for anthrax since they began treatment.
"The 10-day supply doesn't mean that's all a person needs," Dr. Walks told The Washington Times. "We will be calling those people who we feel need more antibiotics."
The D.C. Health Department has begun prescribing doxycycline instead of Cipro, mostly because it has fewer side effects. Even Mayor Anthony A. Williams, who has been taking Cipro because he visited two post offices Oct. 19, complained of the side effects, including stomach ache and heartburn.
Besides Brentwood, other mailrooms and processing centers that tested positive for spores locally include the L Street post office in Southwest, which serves zip code 20024, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Off-site mail facilities that had traces of anthrax also include those for the CIA and the White House.
Fearful that anthrax could spread, doctors from across the country met at a downtown hotel yesterday afternoon with Dr. Walks to seek advice on how to handle things if the disease reaches their communities.
A doctor from St. Louis, William H. Hughes, wanted to know whether the country's public health system had enough resources to handle an outbreak. Roland Pattillo, a doctor from Atlanta, said he was concerned about the negative psychological effects since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare.
Dr. Walks told the physicians with the National Medical Association they need to have an emergency response plan in place if anthrax is found in their community. He also said health experts are learning more about anthrax and its effects on a daily basis.
"People can't smell it or see it and don't know they have it until sometime later, so this is scary stuff," Dr. Walks said at the meeting. "Nobody was an expert on anthrax three weeks ago. So we can't point our finger at anyone on what did or did not happen a week ago. We only point fingers at those who are putting anthrax in our mail."
• Frank J. Murray and Joyce Howard Price contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
AMERICAN JOURNAL
Soviet Defector Works to Defend Against Weapons He Helped Design
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/national/28JOUR.html?searchpv=nytToday
MANASSAS, Va., Oct. 25 - Before he defected to America, Dr. Ken Alibek was the Soviet Union's ranking expert in turning anthrax and a dozen other killer germs into biological weapons. Their power to terrorize is only now fully dawning here in his picture-perfect suburban neighborhood.
"That was my life," says Dr. Alibek, busy now with an entirely different role in which his expertise in doomsday germs is being devoted, in effect, to undoing his own past.
Dr. Alibek, the former deputy chief of the Soviets' vast Biopreparat biological arsenal, is now an American citizen. He is president of Hadron Advanced Biosystems, a private research company that seeks to develop broad respiratory resistance to the full range of evolving biological weapons, not just the anthrax scare now consuming Americans.
"My neighbors are too polite to ask me a lot of questions, but they know what I do for a living," says Dr. Alibek, who is raising his family in a new home here and spending long days at his research laboratory at nearby George Mason University.
If they were less polite, the neighbors would find Dr. Alibek, a 51-year- old physician and microbiologist, a walking treasure of information for these days of home-front terrorism.
Worried about your mail?
Dr. Alibek gently smiles and says that, no, zapping it in the microwave oven will not help. But steam-ironing letters under a thin piece of fabric will do the job. "You need moisture along with high temperature," says Dr. Alibek, who only mentions such anecdotal defenses to calm people so they may grasp the long-term threats beyond the current anxiety.
"If this craziness with Cipro continues, in about two years we're going to have a huge number of new bacteria with powerful resistance to antibiotics," he warns. He insists that his four children avoid antibiotics, since they are far from endangered like the postal workers who had close contact with terrorist mail.
"Antibiotics should be the last resort," Dr. Alibek says, alarmed at the blanket demand for Cipro. "It's part of the panic, chasing each new immediate threat but never thinking several steps ahead."
Rather than focusing on a new vaccine for each threat, the doctor has his research company reaching for broad innovations that he says ideally will "enhance the mucosal immunity of the respiratory tract against 10 or 20 lethal doses of the great majority of biological weapons agents."
Dr. Alibek says he was more optimistic three or four years ago when he testified on Capitol Hill about the need for concerted scientific and organizational preparations for biological terrorism.
"So we'd talk about biological weapons, then have lunch and the sun is shining, things are peaceful, nobody's attacking New York," he recalls in describing the fickleness of the political agenda. "And soon people are obsessed next with missile defense systems."
Dr. Alibek is once more busy taking the commuter highway 30 miles eastward to the nation's capital for fresh consultations, although mostly with Pentagon officers rather than with the administration's new array of homeland defense appointees. Thus far, he regrets, the government's approach to the bioterrorism threat seems "a matter of multivoiced disharmony," filled with confusion and contradictory information that he cannot fathom as scientist or citizen.
Beyond boosting popular confidence in government, Dr. Alibek prescribes a stronger blending of the best science and management to face what he says will be a very long- term threat of bioterrorism.
"People worry now about anthrax and smallpox, but there are many other agents and threats out there," he cautions. He concedes the "unbelievably effective" psychological victory of the bioterrorists thus far. But he emphasizes the need to transfer the energy of initial panic into a force of greater preparation throughout the nation.
If his neighbors were to ask, Dr. Alibek knows what he would tell them, "What's important for people to understand is that anthrax is not the end of the story; it's just the beginning of it."
Articles in this series are reporting on places around the country as they adapt to life after the terror attacks and to the prospect of war.
--------
Scottish `Anthrax Island' Begets Hype
October 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Anthrax-Island.html?searchpv=aponline
GRUINARD BAY, Scotland (AP) -- It was here on this fern-covered island that British scientists first harnessed the deadly power of anthrax, wiping out herds of sheep with microbe-packed bombs in one of the more obscure episodes of World War II.
Sixty years later, as terrorists menace the United States with anthrax-laced letters, people are rediscovering the unique history of Scotland's uninhabited ``Anthrax Island'' -- mostly from a distance.
Years after using the 520-acre Gruinard Island as a biological firing range in 1942, the government sterilized it with 280 tons of formaldehyde and declared it safe to visit in 1990. But until a month ago, few ever did.
``It's used as a grazing island for sheep. A local farmer takes his flock over by boat every summer,'' said Jane Richardson, who runs the only post office, shop and gas station for the 300-odd residents of Laide, the nearest village a half-mile from the wind-swept, humpbacked island.
Now scores of British and foreign journalists make the 700-mile journey from London to Gruinard, pronounced ``grin-yard.''
The Guardian newspaper of London, parodying the media's interest, said the island ``provides a fertile nesting environment for a migrant population of London-based journalists desperate for a new angle on the war against terrorism.''
Poking fun at a rival publication, the newspaper wrote: ``Large, strange patches of lime-green vegetation struck fear into the heart of a Daily Telegraph reporter apparently unacquainted with the concept of moss.''
The main beneficiary of the media invasion, it seems, has been local fisherman Fred Wiseman, a brawny wisecracker who charges journalists $700 for the hop offshore.
On the island, visitors can see rabbit holes, a shepherd's long-abandoned stone cottage and views back across Gruinard Bay and to the snowcapped Highlands beyond. Despite the history of Anthrax on the island, legions of rabbits and a couple of rare white-tailed eagles are thriving.
Most locals say they've never been on the island -- not because they're afraid, but because there's no reason to go.
``There's nothing there,'' said Jill McClean, a recent English immigrant who stopped into Richardson's shop for some horsefeed. ``So why take the chance?''
But the new visitors aren't taking any chances either.
Wiseman said some British journalists donned elaborate biological warfare suits when they traveled to the island. Hotel owner Frances Oates showed off two tabloid reports, one picturing a reporter in a gas mask, another headlined ``Secret Stash of Deadly Soil'' and claiming that Scottish terrorists had supplied Osama bin Laden with scoops of dirt from the island.
The northwest Scottish coast, with its mountainous terrain and deep harbors, played an important role in the war against Nazi Germany. After the war, it remained highly militarized as a refueling point for nuclear submarines and training grounds for NATO troops.
Signs from Britain's Ministry of Defense and NATO still warn passers-by to stay out of several areas. The roar of passing Royal Air Force fighter-bombers, concealed by gray October skies, shatter the rural silence.
In 1941, Britain bought Gruinard Island from its owner for the equivalent of $2,500 for use by Porton Down, Britain's secret center for biological research. The isle was christened Base X.
The following year, scientists packed anthrax-laced gruel into a variety of explosive devices and detonated them around sheep confined in boxes. The sheep died and were buried on the island. The key discovery was that anthrax survived the heat of explosions and was far more lethal than existing chemical weapons.
Anthrax apparently spread to the mainland in 1943 from a sheep carcass that floated across from the island, killing seven cows, two horses, three cats and more than 20 sheep, government records indicate. No humans were reported killed, and the spread was contained.
The government, which didn't reveal its germ-warfare tests until 1947, wrongly presumed that the anthrax would die off on its own. In 1979, scientists discovered anthrax spores still deep in the soil. For the first time, the government erected warning signs on the shoreline.
Scientists used 30 miles of perforated hoses to soak the topsoil in formaldehyde diluted with seawater, eradicating anthrax from the island.
Now the warning signs have become conversation pieces in hotel lobbies and bars, and there is no trace of the disinfecting operation on the island.
``Lovely fields of bluebells cover the island every spring,'' said the caretaker, a lanky Englishman with a mud-splattered Land Rover, knee-high boots and hunting rifle at the ready. Talking to a reporter only on condition that he not be identified, the caretaker said he visits the island every few weeks but spends most of his time hunting deer.
``I'm not afraid in the remotest of getting anthrax. Nobody here has ever come down with it, so I don't see why anyone ever would,'' he said. ``I'd say there's more chance of a hind (deer) shooting back at me.''
-------- israel
Israel Halts Pullout of Troops From Bethlehem
Officials Blame Shots Fired On Jerusalem Neighborhood
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 28, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63396-2001Oct27.html
BETHLEHEM, West Bank, Oct. 27 -- The meeting between Palestinian political leaders and commanders of a main Palestinian armed faction was breaking up in disarray. People could not agree on how to respond to news they'd just received: Israel would not pull its forces out of this tense and battered town today, as it promised on Friday.
"If the Israelis shoot at us, what do you want us to do?" asked a skeptical Palestinian rifleman dressed in black, as he headed for the exit of the municipal building on Bethlehem's Manger Square, where the men had gathered.
Salah Tamari, a Palestinian legislator and former guerrilla commander, implored: "Save your ammunition and keep watch." Seeing that the militiaman was unconvinced, he quickly added, "Shoot only if an infantryman approaches you on foot."
With so many people eager to keep on with the gunfire, it's no easy task to craft a deal that will hold and take Israeli troops out of Bethlehem and the neighboring town of Beit Jala. The canceled withdrawal was supposed to begin closing out Israel's 10-day-old incursion into Palestinian territory, the bloodiest and most convulsive episode in the year-long battle between Israel and the Palestinians.
A painstakingly negotiated cease-fire and withdrawal arrangement broke down, the Israelis said, because someone shot from Bethlehem into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and hit an apartment. Israel said it would reconsider whether to depart during the next 24 hours.
For the Bush administration, the breakdown represents yet another blow to its wish to get this conflict off the world stage while the United States pursues a war on terrorism, beginning with the assault in Afghanistan. The continued combat here inflames anti-American passions among many Muslims, making it difficult to maintain any semblance of a truly global coalition.
Israel had demanded a total truce before the pullout from Bethlehem, and withdrawals from five other West Bank towns were to be scheduled only if Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat handed over suspects in the assassination of the right-wing Israeli tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, rounded up suspected "terrorists" and kept the peace.
A visit to Bethlehem today demonstrated that on both sides of the conflict, parties appear to be willing to jeopardize the cease-fire to make minor military points.
In early evening, word reached the town that Israel was delaying the pullout, which was originally scheduled for 7 p.m., until 1 a.m.
The announcement set off a heavy round of fire from Bethlehem after two hours of quiet. One Palestinian official said the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was responsible for the shooting. The PFLP has taken responsibility for Zeevi's murder, and since then, Arafat's Palestinian Authority has been arresting PFLP militants but not handing them over to the Israelis.
In the afternoon, Israeli commandos attempted an armed maneuver that threatened to blow the lid off any cease-fire.
Seven sharpshooters had taken positions inside the eight-story Talal Sidr Building on a main street near the town's center. Evidently, they had sneaked in overnight. But when several Talal Sidr tenants arrived in the building in the morning -- the streets of Bethlehem had come alive in anticipation of a withdrawal -- the surprised visitors were secretly taken prisoner.
Resident Farid Atrash entered the building unawares to visit his law office. Inside, soldiers armed with rifles in hand and grenades on their belts pushed him into a second-floor closet along with two other men who were already captive. Four others were soon thrust in.
"It was frightening. What's this if not terrorism?" said Atrash in an interview.
One tenant spied the Israelis before entering, ran away and tipped off local Palestinian security forces. A firefight broke out. The prisoners cowered at the sound of the guns. "We screamed,'Unlock us!' " Atrash said.
Israeli tanks and armored cars roared to the scene. After negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian area commanders, the detainees were released. The commandos, some of them masked, loaded their rifles, ammunition boxes and barbed wire onto the armored cars and left. The harrowing affair ended at 3:30 p.m., just 3 1/2 hours before the original hour of the scheduled withdrawal.
An Israeli military spokesman said the commandos were on a special "anti-terrorist" mission, and were not going to stay long. The civilian arrivals were kept on a low floor "for their safety." The soldiers inspected the captives' documents to make sure they weren't wanted, and temporarily took their mobile phones away to keep them from revealing the operation.
It was in this kind of atmosphere that the Palestinian political leaders tried to persuade skeptical Palestinian militia commanders to refrain from firing. More than 40 Palestinians, including about a dozen civilians, have been killed in 10 days of fighting.
Tamari, the Palestinian legislator, and Kamel Hmeid, the political head of the local Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, met with commanders of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Brigade to argue that the cease-fire ought to be observed. Fatah is the largest political-military organization in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"The people are tired and the situation is deteriorating," Hmeid said. "We are weak, and political work must take precedence over military operations."
Tamari told the Palestinian fighters that their side had secured a promise from the Israelis to end their "liquidation" policy of killing Palestinian political and military leaders. "They want to kill all of us," he said. "They want to finish Arafat, or send him into exile. Thanks to your work, this has been prevented. We have to be strong and not provoke anyone."
Just then word arrived that the Ayda refugee camp at Bethlehem's north entrance was under fire.
"The Israelis are liars," called out one mustachioed combatant.
"We are paying for a weak agreement with our lives," murmured another rifle-toting participant.
"We are on a long march," responded Bethlehem Gov. Mohammed Madani. We can't consume our strength on confrontation."
The riflemen left with Tamari's advice of "save your ammunition" echoing in one ear and the sound of gunfire in the other.
Intermittent shooting continued in Bethlehem from about 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Palestinians fired individual bursts toward Israeli positions, the Israelis shot large-caliber bullets toward Bethlehem University. Firing tapered off as the evening wore on. A police jeep roamed the dark and vacant streets of Beit Jala, blue lights flashing atop its roof display, the Palestinians said, in an effort to show observant Israelis that they were on patrol and holding fire.
-------- pakistan
Militia halted at Afghan border
October 28, 2001
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011028-5251248.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani border guards stopped several thousand Pakistani volunteers armed with machine guns and rocket launchers as they attempted to cross into Afghanistan to fight against the United States.
Radical Pakistani cleric Sufi Mohammed led his followers in a convoy of hundreds of pickup trucks that wound its way beneath mountain peaks to a little-used border crossing north of Peshawar.
"Jihad had become an obligation for each and every Muslim after the United States attack on Afghanistan," Mr. Mohammed told reporters before joining the convoy.
Wearing black turbans and carrying their guns and winter robes, they chanted "death to America" and "long live Osama" as they approached the border.
Pakistani authorities sent reinforcements to the border to continue blocking the ragtag militia. If prevented from entering Afghanistan en masse, the men have the option of breaking up into small groups and infiltrating through unmanned mountain border passes.
Mr. Mohammed leads a radical Islamic party that advocates imposing Taliban-style rules on Pakistan, such as ones banning music and movies. Yesterday's standoff underscored the dilemma facing Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a military ruler who continues to back the U.S.-led war on terrorism in a nation where the airs strikes on Afghanistan have becoming increasingly unpopular.
Gen. Musharraf has struggled to contain anti-American militancy following the Oct. 7 onset of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, especially in areas near the Afghan border. Islamist leaders have been placed under house arrest and prevented from traveling.
Gen. Musharraf voiced concern yesterday over the duration of the U.S. air strikes.
"There is concern, not only in the Islamic world but the entire world at the civilian casualties and the miseries that civilians are being put through," Gen. Mr. Musharraf said.
The volunteers, virtually all from Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, carried assault rifles on their shoulders and rode with machine guns, rocket launchers and other weapons, many of which had been kept in their homes since the days of crossing the border to fight Soviet troops.
Pakistanis in the area speak the same language and share ethnic links with much of Afghanistan. Hundreds of tribes straddle the border, where people continue to pass freely back and forth as they have for centuries.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have turned down other offers by Pakistani tribal leaders to send fighters, telling them to wait until U.S. ground troops arrive.
Though the military threat from yesterday's event appeared minimal, it was the latest in a spate of bad news for the U.S. effort to force the Taliban from power and eliminate bin Laden, who is believed responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States.
On Friday, the Taliban captured and executed former anti-Soviet fighter Abdul Haq, who was attempting to persuade Afghan tribal leaders to turn against the Taliban.
Mr. Haq's family said the Taliban had agreed to return the body, and he was to be buried today in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Yesterday, the Taliban claimed it had captured and executed 15 soldiers, including five commanders from the opposition Northern Alliance. Alliance officials denied anyone was missing.
Alliance forces have been unable to advance on the capital of Kabul or the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif despite U.S. air strikes on front-line Taliban troops.
U.S. jets continued to pound Taliban targets yesterday, hammering hills on Kabul's northern edge toward the airport. They also struck front-line targets about 30 miles northeast of Kabul, where Taliban troops face off against the Northern Alliance. Witnesses in Kabul and with the Northern Alliance called yesterday's bombing the most intense of the war, so far.
Britain's Sky News television reported one of the U.S. missiles went awry and struck a village behind anti-Taliban opposition lines. A family of 10 was missing and 20 persons, all but one civilians, were injured, Sky News reported.
Back in Pakistan, militants blocked the main highway into western China - a portion of the fabled Silk Road - with boulders and they planted land mines along its shoulders, the Associated Press reported.
Traffic along the 750-mile Karakoram Highway, a major trade link between Pakistan and China, has all but stopped since the Sept. 11 attacks.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers began a three-day visit to refugee camps near the Pakistan border yesterday. U.N. officials are warning of catastrophic hunger and disease if Western aid is unable to get through this winter.
-------- u.s.
Allies Preparing for Long Fight as Taliban Dig In
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/asia/28STRA.html
LONDON, Oct. 27 - Stung by the stubborn resilience of the Taliban, senior American and British officials are bracing themselves for a military campaign in Afghanistan that promises to be more prolonged and difficult than they hoped as recently as early October.
After proclaiming that American air strikes had "eviscerated" Taliban forces, Pentagon briefers are now trying to prepare the American public for a long haul by describing the Taliban as battle-hardened survivors.
To hear the United States' most important military allies speak, the hope is not to wrap up the fighting before the Muslim holiday of Ramadan begins in mid-November but to try to prevail before Ramadan 2002.
"It is the most difficult operation ever undertaken by this country post-Korea," Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of the British Defense Staff, warned his nation on Friday. "It may not be the most dangerous because we are not facing an enemy like the Iraqi Army, but it is the most difficult in terms of the objectives we've set ourselves."
Certainly, almost three weeks of American and British strikes have achieved some results. American warplanes have command of the skies - at least when they fly at high altitudes, out of the range of the Taliban's antiaircraft guns and shoulder-fired missiles.
According to the Pentagon, the Taliban's Air Force is no more. Taliban command centers have been pulverized. Barracks and ammunition dumps have been blasted and many channels of communication sundered. Major camps at which Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda network trained terrorists, abandoned at the start of the military campaign, have been leveled.
Those successes have made it easier for Americans - and now, potentially, the British - to venture on the ground as United States Special Forces did for several hours last week. But none of this has produced decisive results. The road to victory may be long and full of pitfalls, as the allies and the Taliban each try to turn time to their advantage.
American and British senior officials still assert that they will prevail and seem intent on sticking with their plan. It calls for constant bombing raids to wear down the Taliban. Commando raids will be used to capture or kill Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders if and when the allies receive good intelligence on their movement. They can also be used to gather intelligence, as the American special forces did in their raid last week.
"I believe that what we should try to do is not let them think that we are going to give up and go away or lighten up," Admiral Boyce said in an interview. "The squeeze will carry on until the people of the country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed."
While the Taliban may be a rudimentary fighting force, their political strategy appears calculated. Their aim is not to challenge directly the vastly superior American and British military forces.
According to reports from people who have recently left Afghanistan, Taliban troops are digging in and hiding out in civilian neighborhoods to elude American bombs.
At the same time, they are trying to use the Americans' bombing errors - like the mistaken attack on the Red Cross complex in Kabul on Friday, the second errant strike on the site - to stir up support for themselves in the Islamic world. Waging war against the Taliban would be far more difficult if objections in the Muslim world deprived the United States of access to bases in Pakistan and in the Persian Gulf.
This makes the diplomatic efforts to hold together the American-led coalition against terror as important as the military action itself.
Even in its most optimistic moments, the Bush Administration was careful not to promise an easy war. Still, there are indications that the conflict is turning out to be more difficult than expected.
At the start of the military campaign, Mr. Rumsfeld quipped that the air raids were going so well that American and British forces were running out of targets in Afghanistan. Nobody talks that way at the Pentagon now.
"I am a bit surprised at how doggedly they're hanging on to their - to power," Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week, referring to the Taliban.
A senior Republican senator said the Bush Administration had underestimated their foe. "They exuded a confident attitude that this would all be over quickly," he said. "They underestimated the Taliban. They felt the Afghan people so abhorred the religious extremism that they would rise up against them. But these people, the Taliban, have a grip."
To be sure, the military problem is inherently difficult.
Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the United States and Britain have only very limited access to bases in the region, a constraint that has led the United States Army's Special Operations forces use an aircraft carrier as a floating base, a model that Britain announced on Friday that its Royal Marines will copy.
In contrast to the strategy in the gulf war, Washington and London have all but ruled out the insertion of a major ground army to take the fight to the Taliban. The idea is to avoid the mistakes the Soviet Union made in Afghanistan and the political repercussions in the Islamic world of a Western occupation. But the lack of a large number of ground troops - even supposing that they could function well in Afghanistan's rugged terrain and negotiate the shifting loyalties of its warlords - limits Washington's options.
The Taliban are no traditional adversaries. In a country that is now in its 23rd consecutive year of war, they are not even a government in the conventional sense. Their control of almost all of Afghanistan - slivers of territory are still under the sway of the rebel Northern Alliance - cannot be loosened by bombing telephone exchanges and knocking out state television, as was done in Yugoslavia in the 1999 war over Kosovo.
In addition, the Americans' potential proxy force in the north, the Northern Alliance, seems less than accomplished and is drawn from ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras - minorities that are unacceptable to the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group.
The lack of effective allies in the south was graphically illustrated by the capture and execution on Friday of Abdul Haq, the Pashtun guerrilla leader. The Central Intelligence Agency did not support him because they thought his efforts were too quixotic, but the agency has failed to find an alternative standard-bearer.
"This is not like Kosovo," Admiral Boyce said in the interview. "It's not like Desert Storm where you had very clearly defined phases and relatively straightforward objectives. This is a much more murky area in which to work, obviously because the prime element is not actually visible - Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda - in the same way that Milosevic and the Serbs were or the Iraqis were. This is something much more intangible."
Still, the difficult nature of the campaign has sparked the first serious criticism of the Western powers' strategy and tactics, including some from experts who support the idea of military action.
"I cannot say who has the strategic initiative in this conflict," said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "This is learning the hard way. It is starting to look as if they are bombing and bombing and bombing just because it is what they know how to do."
Mr. Heisbourg said the United States was wrong to defer bombing the Taliban front lines north of Kabul, a move that is widely interpreted as a step to keep the Northern Alliance from advancing on the capital and thus to satisfy Pakistan, a needed American ally which opposes any Northern Alliance government in Kabul. Pakistan seeks a broad coalition government with a hefty role for Pashtuns, who also have a strong presence in Pakistan.
The early seizure of Kabul, Mr. Heisbourg asserted, would have undermined the Taliban's legitimacy and given Washington a tangible strategic gain.
Some Bush Administration officials disagree, fearing that the capture of Kabul by the Northern Alliance would encourage Pashtuns to rally around the Taliban.
These officials argue that it would make more sense for the Northern Alliance to attack to the west to seize Mazar-i-Sharif, a strategic crossroads in northern Afghanistan, and Herat, the main city in western Afghanistan, which is on the main routes into Iran, a Shiite Muslim- ruled country firmly at odds with the Sunni Muslim Taliban.
In the last week, as Washington casts around for ways to step up the military pressure, it has begun to strike Taliban forces in the north, today carrying out the heaviest attacks ever.
In any military campaign, there is a lot of second-guessing. There were critics who said that NATO could not win its 1999 war with Yugoslavia, but after 78 days of bombing it did.
American and British officials say they will succeed this time as well, especially since the campaign has become a litmus test of the West's ability to fight terrorism. But nobody can say exactly how or exactly when.
--------
Airstrikes On Kabul Intensify
Bomb Misses Mark, Killing Villagers
By William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 28, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63250-2001Oct27.html
JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 -- U.S. warplanes hit Taliban positions in Kabul and on the front lines north of the capital with the heaviest airstrikes yet in the three-week-old bombing campaign, sending huge fireballs into the sky and triggering bursts of Taliban mortar and rocket fire against the opposition Northern Alliance.
At least one U.S. bomb went astray, hitting a village in Northern Alliance territory less than two miles from the front lines, according to photographers at the scene. Ten people were reported killed and 25 wounded when the bomb landed in the village of Ghanikhel in Kapisa province as night fell.
Earlier, bombs struck a military compound across from the long-abandoned U.S. Embassy in Kabul and an ammunition depot on the eastern edge of the city, creating bright red explosions. Airstrikes also reportedly hit targets in the southern and central parts of the capital. Taliban fighters roamed the streets in pickup trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns, putting up token resistance to the bombing.
Starting shortly after dawn and continuing into the evening, wave after wave of U.S. jets pounded the Taliban front-line trenches and gun emplacements that border the strategic Bagram air base 25 miles north of Kabul, preventing its use by the Northern Alliance. The airstrikes drew paltry antiaircraft fire from Taliban positions. But the hard-line Islamic movement retaliated by opening fire on the alliance's front line on the northern side of the base, once the largest in Afghanistan and the landing zone for Soviet troops during their 1979 invasion.
"This is the heaviest day of air attacks on this front so far," a Northern Alliance commander, who identified himself as Mustafa, told reporters.
A senior U.S. military officer confirmed that targeting of Taliban forces north of Kabul had been intensified in support of the Northern Alliance rebels. He said that a larger number of B-1 and B-52 bombers had participated in the latest raids.
While bombing intensified in northern Afghanistan, Pakistan's intelligence service raised questions about the effectiveness of earlier bombing in southern and eastern parts of the country, according to a senior government official. In its first comprehensive assessment of the U.S. bombing operation, the intelligence service has delivered a report to the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, concluding that the U.S.-led military campaign has not succeeded in diminishing the Taliban's morale or its support in those regions, the official said.
In northwestern Pakistan, more than 5,000 people left the village of Temergarah in buses and trucks this morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war against the United States, news services reported.
Hundreds were reported crossing into Afghanistan over rugged mountains this evening, Pakistani border police said. Organizers said similar-size groups were massing in other towns across North-West Frontier Province, an enclave of ethnic Pashtuns with ties to -- and deep feelings for -- neighboring Afghanistan.
The pounding U.S. military assault on and around Kabul came a day after the Taliban reported that it had captured and executed a renowned Afghan guerrilla commander, Abdul Haq, and two of his companions after they entered eastern Afghanistan from Pakistan to enlist Pashtun tribal leaders in efforts to create a post-Taliban government.
The reported executions dealt a serious blow to those efforts, limiting the options of anti-Taliban forces in recruiting prominent Pashtuns for the proposed new government. The Taliban is dominated by Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, while the Northern Alliance consists mainly of Tajiks and other ethnic minorities.
The Taliban alleged that Abdul Haq was on an espionage mission for the CIA and British intelligence, a claim denied by his brother,Haji Qadir, former governor of the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad who is now a senior Northern Alliance official. Qadir said his brother, who lost a foot in a land-mine explosion while fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, entered the country on his own to contact fellow Afghans.
Burhanuddin Rabbani, the political head of the Northern Alliance and president of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996, today denounced Abdul Haq's execution. Rabbani arrived in the Panjshir Valley, an alliance stronghold in northern Afghanistan, to hold talks with alliance leaders on their political and military strategy. Rabbani called the killing a tragic event for Afghanistan that showed the "cruelty" of the Taliban.
In Rome, Mustapha Zahir, the grandson of and spokesman for exiled king Mohammed Zahir Shah, also lamented the execution, saying, "Afghanistan has lost one of its finest and greatest sons."
The alliance postponed a planned meeting in Turkey with representatives of the king this weekend to discuss a future government, in part because of the reported execution of Abdul Haq.
The results of the airstrikes against Taliban front-line positions today were not immediately known, but Northern Alliance commanders welcomed the stepped-up campaign and said they hoped it would extend to other fronts.
Khodadad Urfani, the commander of ethnic Hazara fighters allied with the Northern Alliance in the Bamian area, said U.S. bombing had started there two days ago and had greatly boosted the morale of his beleaguered force, which has been largely cut off from resupply.
He said the U.S. raids had targeted Taliban munitions depots, equipment and soldiers just behind the front lines in Bamian, where the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist statues earlier this year.
Urfani said the bombing was about "50 percent effective" because the U.S. jets had hit mountaintop targets, but had not been able to strike equipment the Taliban has stored in caves below.
He said he has not had any contact with U.S. military personnel who have made several visits to this area to discuss bombing targets with Northern Alliance commanders.
Around the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, where fighters from the Hazara ethnic group have joined ethnic Uzbeks under Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum in battles against the Taliban, the city's defenses have been stiffened by the participation of fundamentalist Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and Uzbeks on the Taliban side, Urfani said.
But he said he received information that a U.S. air raid dealt a heavy blow to the Taliban yesterday when 400 of the movement's fighters were killed in the bombing of a convoy on its way from Mazar-e Sharif to a village in the Zahreh district. It was not immediately possible to confirm the report.
The senior defense official in Washington said U.S. warplanes had struck two "large concentrations" of Taliban forces on Friday. But the official had no information on whether either of them fit Urbani's description.
Staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.
---------
British Official Says Airstrikes May Pause for Ramadan
October 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Britain.html
LONDON (AP) -- A pause in military strikes in Afghanistan for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is ``being considered'' though past wars among Islamic countries have not had such cease-fires, Britain's foreign secretary said Sunday.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the Allies were sensitive to the religious implications of continuing the campaign during Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.
A halt to military action ``is being considered, but I have to say that if you look at the history of warfare in Islamic countries ... there have not been pauses during Ramadan.'' He cited the 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran and the 1979-89 Soviet war in Afghanistan.
His comments on a British Broadcasting Corp. talk show came as Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to assure the nation the U.S.-led war was morally defensible.
Pakistan and other Muslim nations backing the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terror network have expressed increasing unease about the prospect of war during Ramadan.
But a delay would cost the Allies considerable momentum at a critical time. By the end of the holy month, the harsh Afghan winter will have set in, limiting air and ground operations.
Top U.S. officials have said Washington is prepared to keep up the fight through Ramadan, if necessary.
British officials warned Saturday that the war would not be easy or painless, but Blair said he was confident of victory.
``Whatever our faults, Britain is a very moral nation with a strong sense of right and wrong, and that moral fiber will defeat the fanaticism of the terrorists and their supporters,'' the prime minister said.
After announcing Friday that British Marines are being put in position for attacks against the Taliban, the government and military have spent the weekend cautioning that the campaign could drag on for years.
``This kind of military action may last indefinitely,'' Straw said.
As reports of civilian casualties mount along with questions over the effectiveness of the air campaign, Straw said the government was at pains to remind Britons why the conflict was happening -- and what gains had been made.
``We have broken up the terrorist camps. People seem to forget about that. They are inoperable,'' he said. ``One of the objectives we have set has happened.''
The foreign secretary denied Iraqi claims that military objectives have expanded to include action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
``The only military action on the agenda is in Afghanistan,'' Straw said, adding that there was not ``an explicit military aim'' to remove the Taliban from power although a new Afghan regime appeared inevitable.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper as saying ``it is just a matter of time'' before Britain and the United States attack his country under the pretext of a war on terrorism.
--------
McCain: Send More U.S. Ground Troops
October 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John McCain said Sunday that America must unleash ``all the might of United States military power,'' including large numbers of ground troops, to prevail in Afghanistan. Bush administration officials said the Taliban is being weakened, but warned Americans must be prepared for a drawn-out conflict.
Some 100 airborne Rangers and other special ground troops struck a Taliban-controlled airfield and a residence of a Taliban leader earlier this month, but McCain said that's not enough. He called for a ``very, very significant'' force large enough to capture and hold territory.
``I think what we're going to have to put in (is) numbers of forces that are capable of maintaining a base for a period of time, relatively short, so they can branch out and move into certain areas where we believe that the Taliban and al-Qaida's networks are located,'' the Arizona Republican said on CBS's ``Face the Nation.''
``It's going to take a very big effort and probably casualties will be involved and it won't be accomplished through air power alone,'' he said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he agreed with McCain that large numbers of ground troops may be needed. And Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said if President Bush ``comes to the conclusion that it's going to take that or something like that in order to get these people and to get this network torn down, I would support it.''
Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were noncommittal when asked about significant ground forces. ``Let's not go there yet,'' Card said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''
McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Bush's 2000 rival for the GOP presidential nomination, has warned that undue restraint by the U.S. military and allies was emboldening Taliban fighters.
Considerations such as civilian deaths from U.S. bombing and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that begins in mid-November must be ``secondary to the job at hand, which is to wipe out nests of terrorism,'' he said.
Card defended the intensity of the military attacks by the United States and Britain. ``We're not holding back at all,'' he said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``We'll do what we have to do to win.''
Rumsfeld indicated the military campaign would not stop for Ramadan, saying the Taliban themselves have fought during the religious holiday. ``There is nothing in that religion that suggests that conflicts have to stop during Ramadan,'' he said.
McCain brushed aside concerns that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan could prove to be a quagmire, as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, warned last week.
``The Vietnam War never had the wholehearted support of the American people, and in fact, as it went on, fewer and fewer Americans not only didn't support it but actively opposed it,'' he said. ``I think Americans have been impacted in a dramatic way, and I think the American people's patience and their support is very deep and very permanent.''
Card and Rumseld sought to assure Americans that gains are being made even though the Taliban remain firmly in power and Osama bin Laden has yet to be found. The Bush administration also was dealing with a two-pronged public relations setback: 13 reported civilian casualties from U.S. attacks Sunday and the capture and execution of Taliban opposition leader Abdul Haq.
In back-to-back TV interviews, Card emphasized Americans need to be ready for a protracted struggle, using the word ``long'' six times to describe it. ``It could take years,'' he said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''
``This is going to be one where we require patience and persistence, and this president will be persistent,'' he said on Fox.
Card backed off of the Pentagon's assertion Oct. 16 that the combat power of the Taliban has been ``eviscerated,'' saying instead it has been ``disrupted.'' He also pointed to signs of progress.
``We've certainly taken out most of the significant targets in Afghanistan with our superior military force, and we'll be working with the ground forces to make sure that we can rout the Taliban out so that we can get to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden,'' he said.
Rumsfeld said steady bombing has forced Taliban fighters to shift positions, providing U.S. bombers ``additional targeting opportunities.'' He also rejected claims that the United States is not providing adequate help for Northern Alliance forces opposing the Taliban.
-------- OTHER
-------- human rights
Chinese to Permit U.N. Probe Into Allegations of Torture
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 28, 2001; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63327-2001Oct27.html
BEIJING, Oct. 27 -- China has agreed to let a United Nations investigator conduct an independent probe into allegations that its police and prison officials routinely engage in torture, European diplomats said today.
But it was unclear whether Beijing would meet past U.N. demands for unrestricted access to its vast network of prisons and labor camps.
Chinese officials made the surprise offer during talks Thursday with a human rights delegation from the European Union. They said the U.N. special rapporteur on torture could conduct a fact-finding visit by the end of the year, and they did not set any conditions or ground rules for the visit, diplomats said.
China made a similar offer two years ago, but the visit was scrapped because the government refused to go along with the usual U.N. conditions for unmonitored prisoner interviews and unannounced visits to detention centers and police stations.
Beijing may be issuing another invitation to the United Nations, in part because the U.N.'s current representative on torture, Nigel Rodley, is scheduled to step down next month.
In eight years on the job, Rodley developed a reputation for refusing to compromise on his demands for unfettered access to prisoners. The Chinese government may hope his successor will feel differently.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
European diplomats said they hoped China was trying to improve its human rights image by working more closely with the United Nations.
During the talks this week, Chinese officials also said they were thinking about allowing a U.N. probe of religious intolerance and other visits by U.N. human rights officials.
The signals come at a time when China is seeking to improve relations with the United States, and less than a week after President Bush met for the first time with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The two leaders pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
"I think it's a breakthrough," said Rita De Bruyne, a senior diplomat from Belgium, which holds the rotating European Union presidency. "We have been trying to get the special rapporteur for torture in here for quite a while, and China had always said no. So we're making progress."
During the talks with the European delegation, China also provided detailed information about 35 of the 47 political prisoners that the Europeans had inquired about, a much better response than in past years, De Bruyne said. But she said the delegation made no progress on other major issues, including China's frequent use of the death penalty, its crackdown on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and its treatment of ethnic minorities.
-------- police / prisoners
Anti-Terror Tools Include High-Tech
By TED BRIDIS,
Associated Press Writer
Sunday October 28 2:02 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011028/pl/attacks_tech_tools_1.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's pursuit of terrorists is relying heavily on sophisticated technology, from software that automatically translates foreign communications on the Internet to a device that secretly captures every keystroke a suspect makes on his computer.
President Bush signed new anti-terrorism legislation Friday that enabled law enforcement to rely on these tools more freely, and the Justice Department immediately sent instructions to prosecutors.
``A new era in America's fight against terrorism ... is about to begin,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft pledged.
Over the weekend, top Justice lawyers in Washington e-mailed the most cyber-savvy federal prosecutors around the country, describing in more than 30 printed pages how they can use the government's high-tech tools in new ways.
The e-mail, reviewed by The Associated Press, outlines new guidelines, for example, for operating the FBI's Carnivore computers, which capture suspects' e-mails in ways that require only perfunctory approval by a judge.
Another section says that in rare cases police can now secretly search a person's house without telling the homeowner for up to three months.
During one of these so-called ``sneak and peek'' searches, authorities would secretly implant a hidden ``key-logger'' device. The FBI acknowledged making five such secret searches before it installed its snooping device in a recent gambling investigation.
The key-logger, hidden inside a computer, secretly records everything a suspect types on it. The device lets authorities capture passwords to unscramble data files in otherwise-unbreakable codes.
Bush said this weekend that new anti-terrorism laws were needed because modern terrorists ``operate by highly sophisticated methods and technologies.'' The U.S. government has its own share of gee-whiz gadgetry - enough for a season of ``Mission: Impossible.''
The CIA is rushing to teach its computers how to better translate Arabic under a young program it calls ``Fluent.'' Custom-written software scours foreign Web sites and displays information in English back to analysts. The program already understands at least nine languages, including Russian, French and Japanese.
Another CIA breakthrough is ``Oasis,'' technology that listens to worldwide television and radio broadcasts and transcribes detailed reports for analysts.
Oasis currently misinterprets about one in every five words and has difficulty recognizing colloquial Arabic, but the system is improving, said Larry Fairchild, head of the CIA's year-old Office of Advanced Information Technology.
In a demonstration earlier this year at CIA headquarters, Fairchild showed early plans for ``CIA Live!,'' which lets CIA experts send instant messages and collaborate on reports and maps across the agency's ultra-secure computer networks.
The FBI and police in Boston and Miami, Fla., are using powerful software called ``dTective'' from Ocean Systems Co. of Burtonsville, Md., to trace financial transactions linked to last month's terrorist attacks against New York and Washington.
The software, which runs on highly specialized, $25,000 equipment from Avid Technology Inc., dramatically improves grainy video from surveillance cameras at banks or automated teller machines. It can enhance images, for example, that were nearly unusable because of bad lighting.
``Sometimes we're amazed at the quality of the image,'' said Dorothy Stout, a top specialist at Veridian Corp. in Oakton, Va., who teaches police how to use the video system. Other tools help her rebuild videotapes that have been burned, cut into pieces or thrown into a lake. ``It's quite time-consuming,'' she said.
At U.S. computer-crime labs, including a cutting-edge Defense Department facility near Baltimore, technicians rebuild smashed disk drives from computers.
They also use sophisticated commercial software, called ``Encase,'' which can recover deleted computer files and search for incriminating documents on a seized computer.
Experts are hard at work in the FBI's headquarters in Washington, using Encase and other tools to examine computers seized after the Sept. 11 attacks.
-------- spying
CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions
Administration Believes Restraints Do Not Bar Singling Out Individual Terrorists
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 28, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63203-2001Oct27.html
Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al Qaeda, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s.
Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant of authority to hunt and kill U.S. enemies at its discretion, knowledgeable sources said. But the agency is willing and believes itself able to take the lives of terrorists designated by the president.
Clinton authorized covert lethal force against al Qaeda beginning in 1998, and The Washington Post reported last Sunday that Bush has signed a more encompassing intelligence "finding" that calls for attacks on newly identified weaknesses in Osama bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure.
Bush's directive broadens the class of potential targets beyond bin Laden and his immediate circle of operational planners, and also beyond the present boundaries of the fight in Afghanistan, officials said.But it also holds the potential to target violence more narrowly than its precedents of the past 25 years because previous findings did not permit explicit planning for the death of an individual.
Bush and his national security Cabinet have been plain about their intention to find and kill bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader the administration blames for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The public face of that campaign is a conventional war in Afghanistan using uniformed troops. Yet inside the CIA and elsewhere in government, according to sources, much of the debate turns on the scope of a targeted killing campaign. How wide should the government draw the circle around bin Laden? And in which countries -- among the 40 or so where al Qaeda is believed to operate -- may such efforts be attempted?
Though there are differences on those matters, some officials observed that the agency is surprisingly undivided in its willingness to undertake the mission.
"There's nothing involved in this operation that isn't being debated by somebody somewhere, but our responsibilities are pretty clear to those who have the top secret code-word clearance and the need to know," said a senior intelligence official.
Botched assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s, and their airing in congressional hearings in 1974, left deep scars on the CIA. Executive orders signed by three presidents since, beginning Feb. 18, 1976, were interpreted until recently as forbidding clandestine acts of targeted killing.
It is significant that the directive Bush signed last month took the form of a presidential finding. As defined in the Hughes-Ryan amendment of 1974 and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, a finding concerns only the use of appropriated funds for covert action by intelligence agencies. The military chain of command uses separate legal instruments called operations orders, numbered sequentially and prefixed by year.
As officials debate the new finding, the new consensus position, according to a participant in the discussions, is that "we should use all the weapons at our disposal." He likened targeted killings to "clipping toenails" because al Qaeda is capable of growing a new cohort of leaders. "It won't solve the whole problem, but it's part of the solution."
The CIA's Directorate of Operations, which runs the clandestine service, is mindful of a traumatizing past in which assassination attempts in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East were blamed on rogue agents when they failed. The agency is determined to leave no room this time for "plausible denial" of responsibility on the part of the president and the agency's top management. That does not mean that operations will be publicly proclaimed, one source said, but that the paper trail inside government must begin undeniably with "the political leadership."
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, remembered commonly as the Church committee, reported on Nov. 20, 1975, that plots against five foreign leaders under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were deliberately organized in terms "so ambiguous that it is difficult to be certain at what levels assassination activity was known and authorized."
"The important thing is that the accountability chain is clear," said John C. Gannon, who retired in June as deputy director of central intelligence, the agency's second-ranking position, in comments that mirrored those of colleagues who declined to be named. "I would want the president's guidance to be as clear as it could be, including the names of individuals. You've got to have the political levels behind you so the intelligence officers are not left hanging."
With explicit authority, he said, "I think the case officers are capable [of targeted killing] and would follow instructions, and would, I think, have the capability of succeeding."
National security officials noted that the White House and at least three executive departments already maintain lists in which terrorists are singled out by name. Executive Order 12947, signed by Clinton on Jan. 23, 1995, introduced a legal category of "specially designated terrorists." The list is maintained and amended by the secretary of state and by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Most recently the FBI named 22 men on Oct. 10 as its "most wanted terrorists," of whom 13 are linked to al Qaeda.
One view, apparently a minority position but one expressed in private recently by two senior managers in the Directorate of Operations, is that the clandestine service should target not only commanders but also financiers of al Qaeda. "You have to go after the Gucci guys, the guys who write the checks," said one person reflecting that view. It is easier to find financiers, he said, and killing them would have dramatic impact because they are not commonly prepared to die for their cause.
"You can make the case that getting the funding people would have a tremendously chilling effect" on al Qaeda's capacity to raise and move money, acknowledged Frederick P. Hitz, who was inspector general of the CIA from 1990 to 1998 and is not generally in favor of targeted killing.
Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.), who introduced a "Terrorist Elimination Act" eight months before the Sept. 11 attacks, said fundraisers are legitimate targets for death. "Under traditional terms of war, those who assist belligerents are belligerents," he said.
A more common view among those willing to discuss the matter was that any list of terrorists marked for death will likely be short.
"Some of these guys are potential recruitment targets to be debriefed," one case officer noted. Many others are in countries in which local circumstances make the political risks of covert homicide very high. The case officer said that opinions will certainly be "more split in the directorate the farther you get away from bin Laden."
If Bush has drawn up such a list, it is among the most closely held secrets of government. It could not be learned whether names have been proposed to him by the clandestine service, or whether he has signed orders that would amount to individual death warrants.
Spokesmen for the White House and the CIA declined to comment for this article. But the administration has laid down a public record that offers further evidence of the agency's new authority.
On Sept. 17, after Bush remarked that bin Laden is "wanted dead or alive," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Executive Order 12333, signed Dec. 4, 1981, by President Ronald Reagan, remains in effect. Like its counterparts under Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Executive Orders 11905 and 12306, the directive forbids assassination but does not define the term. Fleischer declined four times to interpret the text. "I'm going to just repeat my words and others will figure out the exact implications of them, but it does not inhibit the nation's ability to act in self-defense," he said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking Oct. 15, went slightly further.
"It is certainly within the president's power to direct that, in our self-defense, we take this battle to the terrorists and that means to the leadership and command and control capabilities of terrorist networks," he said.
Whether such operations are within the agency's competence, or consistent with a culture that its employees describe as deeply risk averse, is another question.
Hitz, who supervised wide-ranging internal reviews of the lapses of the clandestine service, said he doubts the agency is prepared for orders to kill.
"After fifty-plus years, the CIA is an organization of bureaucrats," Hitz said. "This is not what intelligence officers do. They're not trained for it. And the intermediary stuff is what went to hell in times past. If you go out and hire a bunch of brass knuckles types . . . it strikes me that throws in the hopper all the things we learned about this bit of business in the Church committee investigations."
The Church committee, for example, exposed eight distinct plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro's life from 1960 to 1965, some of them comically inept. One effort, strongly resonant in the context of recent events, contaminated a box of Castro's favorite cigars with botulinum toxin in February 1961. Another laid plans to place an exploding seashell at Castro's customary skin-diving venue; still another infected a wet suit with poison fungus and proposed that U.S. negotiator James B. Donovan present it to the Cuban leader as a gift.
Today the Directorate of Operations retains a "special activities" branch, but case officers who retired recently said it has had neither status nor funding in recent years. "The paramilitary part of the directorate has atrophied," one case officer said.
Senior officials said the president's finding directs new forms of cooperation between the CIA and uniformed military commando units. Some knowledgeable sources said it is also possible that the instruments of targeted killings will be foreign agents, the CIA's term for nonemployees who act on its behalf. That is controversial, because it involves risks of betrayal and conflicting agendas on the part of the agents, but it is also seen in parts of the agency as advantageous.
"As a force multiplier," one source said, "we can use Jordanians and Sudanese and Egyptians that are willing to do this for us."
The legal basis for Bush's order is perhaps its least controversial aspect, at least among government lawyers who have studied the question.
Since the late Clinton administration, executive branch lawyers have held that the president's inherent authority to use lethal force -- under Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution -- permits an order to kill an individual enemy of the United States in self-defense.
In 1998, an interagency group led by then-Assistant Attorney General Randy Moss produced a highly classified memo of law on assassination. The group concluded that recent presidents -- from Reagan in Libya to Bush in Iraq -- had been needlessly cautious in ordering broad attacks against enemy headquarters if their real objective was to kill an individual leader. Because executive orders are entirely at the discretion of the president, they wrote, a president may issue contrary directives at will and need not make public that he has done so.
Under customary international law and Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, according to those familiar with the memo, taking the life of a terrorist to preempt an imminent or continuing threat of attack is analogous to self-defense against conventional attack.
That interpretationwon out over a proposal by Walter Dellinger, Moss's predecessor, who wanted to amend Executive Order 12333. Dellinger proposed to forbid assassination "without the prior written express authorization of the president." Presidential "findings" on lethal force, he said, were too often drafted overbroadly simply "to avoid calling what we're doing 'assassination.' "
The Bush administration's update of that analysis is strengthened by the Joint Resolution of Congress of Sept. 14, which gave the president authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against "persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."
The prospect of extrajudicial killings by the U.S. government is a departure from one of the touchstone intelligence restraints of the post-Vietnam era. It inspires strong qualms among some of those who have thought about it professionally.
"In my heart I am often for assassination, but in my head not," said Anthony Lake, Clinton's first national security adviser, reaching back toan Italian Renaissance family notorious for murder and fratricide for an analogy. "Until you can show me the firewall between those whose deaths you're positive would save a large number of lives, and those about whom you're not positive, then I think you're on a slippery slope to becoming the Borgias."
Staff researchers Mary Lou White and Margaret Smith contributed to this report.
--------
'The Brother': The Informer
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By DAVID OSHINSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/books/review/28OSHINST.html?searchpv=nytToday
ON Sept. 3, 1949, a United States plane near the Siberian coast picked up traces of a radioactive cloud drifting toward the Pacific Northwest. Three weeks later, President Harry S. Truman told America that the Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb. The announcement shocked a nation that had come to view its nuclear monopoly as the ultimate defense against Communist aggression. In Manhattan, an obscure machinist, soon to be famous, took the Russian achievement in stride. ''It never occurred to me to say anything like 'I helped them do it,' '' David Greenglass recalled. ''What the hell, I mean it was something in my past.''
''The Brother,'' by Sam Roberts, an editor at The New York Times , is an absorbing account of the Rosenberg atomic spy drama seen through the eyes of Greenglass, a co-conspirator and key government witness, whose testimony helped send his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband, Julius, to the electric chair in 1953. Thirty years later, a book by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, ''The Rosenberg File,'' rekindled national interest in the case. Intrigued by its major findings -- Julius was deeply involved in espionage; Ethel knew but played a minor role -- Roberts tracked down Greenglass, who had disappeared following his release from prison in 1960. Eventually the two men struck a deal: Roberts would retain complete control over the book he planned to write; Greenglass would ''speak fully'' in return for a share of the profits.
Some may shudder at the thought of enriching a convicted spy who informed on his family. As Woody Allen's character in the film ''Crimes and Misdemeanors'' muses about an odious relative: ''I love him like a brother -- David Greenglass.'' My own view is that the new information contained in the 50 hours of interviews with Greenglass is worth the price of collaboration.
The best source for ''The Brother,'' aside from Greenglass, is the recently declassified Venona Project, an American spy operation that decoded Soviet intelligence traffic during World War II. Historians have already used Venona to show the crucial role played by the American Communist Party in aiding the Russian espionage machine. Exhibit A is the Rosenberg spy ring.
Julius lived and breathed the Communist cause. Born and educated in Manhattan, he ranked near the bottom of his engineering class at City College, where radical politics consumed much of his time. After graduating in 1939, he married Ethel Greenglass, a fellow Communist, and took a job with the Army Signal Corps. Code named ''Liberal'' by Soviet intelligence, Julius began working with the K.G.B. in 1942. His supervisor, Aleksandr Feklisov, said Julius thought of himself as an ''omnipotent recruiter'' and was a bold risk-taker. On one occasion, Julius astonished Feklisov by stealing a highly sensitive proximity fuse from a private contractor. In 1960, Feklisov says, an advanced version of that fuse was employed to shoot down the American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers.
Pure chance brought David Greenglass to Los Alamos, N.M., site of the Manhattan Project, in 1944. He had joined the Young Communist League as a teenager -- mostly, it appears, to please his doting sister and her boyfriend. ''Julius and Ethel were true believers,'' Roberts writes. ''David truly didn't believe in much.'' A poor student, Greenglass left college after flunking all six of his technical courses. He married Ruth Printz in 1942, was drafted a year later and wound up working at Los Alamos in a machine shop.
When Julius learned the news, he persuaded a rather willing Ruth Greenglass to talk to her husband about supplying some important ''technical information.'' David agreed, of course, and Roberts provides a brilliant description of his Los Alamos adventure. There was no reason for Greenglass to rifle desks at night; all he needed was chutzpah and a sharp pencil. From an engineer, he supposedly ''learned details about the trigger mechanism'' around the plutonium heart of the bomb. From a mathematician, it seems, he discovered the proper amount of plutonium required ''to produce a critical mass.'' Amazingly, Greenglass made no attempt to hide his Communist views. Why didn't anyone become suspicious? ''Apparently,'' Roberts says, ''they considered David too stupid and too outspoken to be a spy.''
In June 1945, a Soviet courier named Harry Gold met Greenglass in New Mexico to pick up the first installment of stolen material. David handed Gold an envelope filled with sketches of a high-explosive lens mold and a list of potential recruits for Russian espionage. Gold gave David $500. ''I felt there should've been more,'' Greenglass complained to Roberts, ''but somebody gives me money, I take it.''
A few months later, Ruth and David visited the Rosenberg apartment in New York. Exactly what happened there, Roberts writes, would soon become a matter of life and death. When David was arrested by the F.B.I. in June 1950, he admitted passing atomic secrets to Julius during that visit. But he refused to implicate Ethel, claiming she was unaware of the transaction. David stuck to that story for weeks -- until Ruth Greenglass, who had not been arrested, told the F.B.I. that Ethel had taken an active role by typing up David's handwritten notes. Faced with this discrepancy, David quickly corroborated Ruth's version of events. The government got its smoking gun. Ruth Greenglass escaped prosecution.
Julius was then arrested. When he refused to cooperate, Roberts asserts, the government indicted Ethel as a means of pressuring him to confess. Virtually the entire case against her was based on the belated recollections of Ruth and David Greenglass about the notes she was said to have typed in 1945.
The trial, Roberts says, could hardly have gone worse. It occurred during the Korean War, when anti-Communist feelings were intense. The Rosenbergs faced a Jewish judge, Irving Kaufman, and Jewish prosecutors, Irving Saypol and Roy Cohn, who were determined to show that Jews could be extra hard on traitors. The defense lawyers were passionate but inept, and the defendants damaged their credibility by taking the Fifth Amendment when asked about their political views.
Ethel Rosenberg, the loving mother of two small boys, appeared stoic and cold. Caught between the accusations of her brother and blind loyalty to her husband, she performed dismally on the stand. What remained with the jurors was the prosecutor's vivid summation: the vision of Ethel at the typewriter, striking the keys, ''blow by blow, against her own country in the interest of the Soviets.''
More damage was done, Roberts contends, by the government's policy of keeping the Venona cables secret. Through Venona, ''prosecutors might have constructed convincing cases that apportioned blame more fairly,'' freeing Ethel from her husband's fatal embrace. But the government would not make Venona public, on the ground that its disclosure would alert the Soviets that their code had been broken. The strategy, instead, was to pressure the Rosenbergs until they cracked and named others -- a strategy that misjudged the couple's iron will.
Found guilty, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Morton Sobell, a co-conspirator, got 30 years, and David Greenglass 15. After numerous appeals, the Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953. In the moments following Julius's death, the prison rabbi begged Ethel to save herself for her children's sake. ''No,'' she said, ''I have no names to give. I'm innocent.''
In the end, Roberts convincingly supports the key findings of Radosh and Milton. Julius Rosenberg was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. The Russians would have built the bomb without him -- other atomic spies, including Klaus Fuchs, provided more valuable information -- but Julius may have saved them time. Ethel knew about her husband's clandestine activities, and probably approved, but there is no solid evidence linking her to a spy ring. The government understood its case against her was weak -- so weak that a death-house memorandum, prepared by the prosecutors if Julius should confess, had this question attached: ''Was your wife cognizant of your activities?''
In one of his interviews with Roberts, Greenglass talked about the fateful choice before him in 1950: your sister or your wife. ''I told them the story and left her out of it, right? But my wife put her in it. So what am I gonna do, call my wife a liar? My wife is my wife. I mean, I don't sleep with my sister, you know.'' A half-century later, he's still a family man.
David Oshinsky, author of ''A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy,'' is a visiting professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin.
-------- terrorism
Cole Suspect Turned Over By Pakistan
By Kamran Khan and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 28, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63400-2001Oct27.html
KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct. 27 -- A Yemeni microbiology student wanted in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole was secretly handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistan's intelligence agency early Friday, Pakistani government sources said today.
Pakistani officials said the student, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, 27, is an active member of the al Qaeda terrorist organization, which is run by Osama bin Laden, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Mohammed's arrest by Pakistani intelligence officers and handover to U.S. authorities -- which bypassed the usual extradition and deportation procedures -- was the result of a broad investigation by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials into the activities of Arab students who are suspected of having ties to al Qaeda, the sources said. In recent weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have engaged in unprecedented collaboration to identify potential al Qaeda members operating in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi, the country's largest city and its commercial capital.
Mohammed is the first person captured outside Yemen in connection with the October 2000 bombing of the Cole as it refueled in the port of Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 others aboard the destroyer were injured when suicide bombers pulled alongside in a skiff and detonated their explosives.
Yemeni officials have arrested eight people in connection with the bombing, although they have not yet been put on trial.
The arrest of Mohammed, whom one Pakistani official called "a solid al Qaeda asset," could provide one of the most direct connections between bin Laden and the Cole bombing. U.S. officials have linked bin Laden to the attack but have not announced a definitive relationship.
Pakistani intelligence officials said their U.S. counterparts provided them with few details about Mohammed's suspected involvement in the Cole bombing.
U.S. officials in Pakistan would not comment on the matter today and in Washington, a senior FBI official declined to comment. Another senior U.S. official said he was unaware of anyone turned over by the Pakistanis over the past two days now in U.S. custody. "If it's a rendition to the U.S., there is at least one [FBI] person there for the legal niceties. There are renditions going on all over the world all the time lately."
The official said that if there were insufficient evidence for U.S. law enforcement officials to hold suspects for crimes against U.S. citizens, "there may be other places where they are wanted and we just help get them there."
Mohammed arrived in Pakistan in 1993 from Taiz, Yemen, to study microbiology at the University of Karachi, said Iftikhar Maqvi, the university's foreign student adviser. But in 1996, he was asked to leave after failing to qualify for the honors program in which he had enrolled, Maqvi said.
Later that year, Mohammed was arrested by Pakistani authorities in connection with the November 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, sources said. He was released without being charged. Ayman Zawahiri, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and a close associate of bin Laden, was convicted in absentia in Pakistan for involvement in the bombing.
Pakistani officials regarded the embassy bombing, which killed 15 people and occurred five days after an explosion at a Saudi communications center, as part of a plot by an unidentified group to destabilize moderate Muslim countries. Pakistani officials now believe the bombing was one of the first terrorist acts carried out by al Qaeda, which was just beginning to gel as a terrorist network.
Pakistani officials said they do not know what Mohammed did between 1996 and 1999, when he re-enrolled at the university.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistani intelligence agents started checking on university students of Arab descent. When Mohammed's teachers were asked about his whereabouts, they said he had not been seen on campus since late August. Becoming suspicious, agents waited outside his small rented apartment in Karachi and nabbed him when he returned this week.
Mohammed was handed over to U.S. authorities under highly secretive circumstances. According to Pakistani sources and a security official at Karachi International Airport, he was brought to a little-used section of the airfield in a rented white Toyota sedan by masked agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Mohammed was handed over to several U.S. officials who arrived aboard a Gulfstream V jet, witnesses and officials said. Pakistani officials said there were no formal deportation or extradition proceedings. The plane's destination was not known.
Although the handover took only a few minutes, the jet attracted airport workers' attention because an airport official initially refused to let the plane depart without paying landing fees, witnesses and officials said. Pakistani intelligence officials interceded, saying their agency would cover the costs.
Pakistani officials said they are investigating other Arab students at the University of Karachi for al Qaeda connections. The inquiry, which has been an open secret on the campus, has resulted in more than 100 Arab students leaving the university and returning home, a university official said.
Government sources said today that they had detained two other Yemeni students at the university because of suspected al Qaeda links. The sources said the two also were connected to Mohammed.
Intelligence officials believe Pakistan has served as a key transit country for Afghan-based extremists as well as a base of operations for them because it has a communications, transportation and financial infrastructure that Afghanistan lacks. Pakistan's intelligence agency officials also have had long-standing links with the Taliban, which has harbored bin Laden and many of his operatives since 1996.
In recent years, several terrorists wanted by the United States have been apprehended in Pakistan. Ramzi Yousef, the convicted ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was arrested at a Pakistani boarding house financed by bin Laden. Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, a Jordanian who was recently convicted in New York for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, was detained when he arrived in Karachi on the day of the bombings. And Mir Amal Kansi, who was convicted of the 1993 shooting outside CIA headquarters in Langley, was picked up in Pakistan.
Chandrasekaran reported from Islamabad.
--------
WORD FOR WORD
Tools to Fight Terror. All Suggestions Welcome.
New York Times
October 28, 2001
By SCOTT VEALE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/weekinreview/28WORD.html?searchpv=nytToday
DEPENDING on how you look at it, the news last week that the Pentagon was formally soliciting outside ideas for fighting terrorism was either a sign that the defense industry's best and brightest are being enlisted in the war effort or an admission that the military might be a bit desperate.
In its 24-page "broad agency announcement" to contractors, the Pentagon said it was seeking proposals for new technologies that could be deployed in the next 12 to 18 months to "help in combating terrorism, defeating difficult targets, conducting protracted operations in remote areas and developing countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction." Included are guidelines for the design of a wide range of high-tech gizmos, from surveillance software to portable polygraph machines and lightweight personal armor.
Whether business as usual or a cry for help, the document offers a window into the mindset of today's techno-warriors and a wish list of weapons they dream of rolling out in their antiterror campaign. Excerpts follow.
The document sets out a three-stage process for evaluating proposals:
Phase I will consist of the solicitation, receipt and evaluation of a one-page Summary Quad Chart (viewgraph). Phase II will consist of a solicitation of a White Paper (not to exceed 12 pages) from responders with qualifying Quad Chart evaluations. The White Paper shall include supporting information for data submitted in the summary Quad Chart and shall summarize the problem/threat addressed, provide a more detailed proposed solution/approach, identify deliverables, describe work to be performed, describe the offeror's expertise to effect the proposed solution and present estimated costs and schedule. Phase III will consist of a solicitation of a full proposal (not to exceed 50 pages) resulting from favorable White Paper evaluations. . . .
While most proposal materials can be submitted over the Internet, the exception for classified information might raise eyebrows:
Classified proposals (up to SECRET) must be appropriately marked, sealed and mailed. . . . Classified documents MUST be mailed and MUST be received by the applicable due date and time. . . .
The first appeal is for ideas to identify and track down suspected terrorists, and to predict their future behavior:
Incorporate Pashtu, Urdu, Farsi, Arabic dialects and other minor Middle Eastern and central/south Asian languages into an existing Automated Speaker Recognition System. Integrate advanced language recognition and change detection algorithms to detect changes and identify language within speech data containing multiple languages, short segments (10-30 seconds) and over degraded channels. . . .
Develop a family of tools for the detection, extraction, storage, transmission, scanning and forensic analysis of computer media, P.D.A.'s [personal digital assistants] and digital audiovisual imagery. . . .
Develop tags/sensors that allow remote monitoring of real/near real-time movement of forces and resources. Both line-of-sight and non- line-of-sight methods are acceptable. Methods may be either passive or active. . . .
Develop improved algorithms for identifying faces from video sequences under unconstrained lighting and pose conditions. . . .
Develop a system to use voice prints to locate . . . and correlate suspected terrorists and their associates. Develop the technology to identify specific foreign language speakers based on a short sample of voice data collected from intelligence, law enforcement or media sources. . . .
Develop a system for tracking a single person through multiple sequential 2-D video images or through multiple cameras in uncontrolled lighting environments.
Develop an integrated information base and a family of data mining tools and analysis aids to assist the analyst and the identification of patterns, trends and models of behavior of terrorist groups and individuals. . . . The system would allow "what if" type modeling of events and behavioral patterns and result in predictive analysis products. . . .
Develop a deception detection device for use with counterterrorism-based structured interviews for passengers of the various modes of transportation. The system should apply known relationships between electrodermal activity and the detection of deception in a polygraph to a portable device. . . .
The Pentagon is also in the market for tools to identify and destroy "highly camouflaged (natural or artificial) or otherwise hidden targets that may house terrorists," and to support military units in the field:
Develop a system to detect, locate and map underground/concealed cavities that may serve as secure havens for terrorists. Applicable methods may include ground penetrating radar, acoustics and unconventional surveillance and reconnaissance.
Develop early warning capability to alert tactical forces of near presence of nonfriendly personnel or vehicles. Included . . . are detection systems that identify electromagnetic emissions or acoustic systems. Systems must be rugged and if remote sensors are used, the sensors must be easily hidden in the terrain.
[Develop] improved situational awareness for assault units, improved accuracy and lethality of weapons, weapons for special situations, and light-weight personal armor that stops both weapons and knife penetration with full body protection.
Develop small, weapons-mounted or hand- held systems that provide full exploitation of the imaging spectrum (optical and thermal) to provide quality images that support targeting and offensive operation in environments obscured by smoke, haze, fog, or darkness. . . .
Develop tools, methods or systems that will allow controlled breaching of objectives in a manner that limits collateral effects to the structure or to personnel in the vicinity of the breach point. Breaching of masonry, structural metallic, or other systems may be addressed. Systems must be man portable and be designed to be consistent with operation by small tactical teams.
Develop high fidelity through-wall imaging capability. System must provide accurate location and number of personnel as well as map out the area being imaged. The system must include a user-friendly display that is easily interpreted by tactical force personnel. The display must be night vision compatible, and be rugged enough to support typical tactical operations scenarios. The system should be man portable and operate on its own power supply, but able to use external power if available.
The final "topic area" is devoted to technology to "monitor, detect and characterize purposely concealed chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear . . . and high-explosive substances," and to neutralize them:
Develop methods to determine if terrorists have worked with weapons of mass destruction. Identify and characterize the chemical and/or physical changes resulting from intermittent less than lethal exposure to chemical warfare nerve, blister, blood and choking agents; radiation from nuclear weapons or potential radiological dispersion devices; and biological warfare agents. . . . Matrices of interest include clothing, hair, skin, blood, bodily wastes, teeth and bone. The chemical and/or physical changes must be sufficiently stable to be detectable days to weeks after the individual's exposure. . . .
Develop an entry point screening system with integrated sensor technology to detect improvised explosive devices . . . and chemical and radiological weapons. Novel detection technology needs to be integrated with existing sensor systems for detecting explosives, chemical and radiological material. . . .
Develop technologies that lead to a standoff explosive detection capability for screening people and vehicles at distances of no less than 20 feet with desired goal of 200 feet.
Develop next generation explosives detectors. Efforts must result in reduced cost and size and have increased duty cycle. . . .
Develop portals that do not require people undergoing screening to remain stationary. This walkthrough capability should provide as a minimum detection rates for explosives of greater than 95 percent with a less than 1 percent false alarm rate. . . .
Develop a miniaturized device to continuously monitor and record data on airborne particulate levels for a period of up to 7 days required (30 days desired). The device shall be small, able to operate autonomously to count, categorize and collect airborne particulate matter. . . .
Develop systems to facilitate the rapid neutralization of Vehicle-Borne explosive, chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological devices. Systems must address the ability to disrupt multiple- threat type vehicles without causing the device to initiate or detonate. Threat vehicles include, but are not limited to, vans, tractor-trailers, fuel tanks, sewage trucks, water tankers, etc. To minimize operator risk, consideration should be given to using remote employment techniques leveraging existing robotic systems to the greatest extent possible. . . .
-------
What's So Complex About It?
By Michael Albert ZNet
Sun, 28 Oct 2001
From: "radtimes" <resist@best.com>
In the past few weeks I have minutely explored, often with Stephen Shalom, multifold concerns about September 11 and the "war on terrorism." With him I have tried to calmly and soberly respond to all kinds of concerns people feel. I recommend doing it. We all need to become adept at rebutting the insanely manipulative media messages that crowd into so many people's minds, and into our own as well. But going straight to the uncomplicated heart of the matter sometimes has merit, too.
The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan is a barbaric assault on defenseless civilians. It threatens a nearly incomprehensible human calamity. It is pursuing abominable goals.
The bombing is not a "just war,' as Richard Falk labels it in The Nation, but a vigilante attack. No, it is not a vigilante attack; it is a vigilante lynch-mob assault writ large. No, it is not even a vigilante lynch mob assault writ large--even vigilante lynch mobs go after only those they think are culprits and not innocent bystanders. The bombing of Afghanistan is a gargantuan repugnance hurled against some of the poorest people on the planet. And this gargantuan repugnance is undertaken not out of sincere if horrendously misguided desires to curtail terrorism--since the bombing undeniably manifests terror and feeds the wellsprings of more terrorism to come--but out of malicious desires to establish a new elite-serving logic of U.S. policy-making via an endless War on Terrorism to replace the defunct Cold War. This is rehashed Reaganism made more cataclysmic than even his dismal mind could conceive.
When people say, but doesn't the U.S. have a right to defend itself? Don't we have to do something?, I understand their hurt, pain, anger, and confusion. But I also have to admit that I want to scream that the U.S. is increasing the likelihood that a million or more souls will suffer fatal starvation. That is not self defense. Doing something does not entail that we be barbaric. We can do something desirable rather than horrific, for example.
Put differently, what kind of thinking sees denying food to humans as self defense, as the only "3something" at our disposal? The answer is thinking like Bush's, thinking like bin Laden's, thinking that treats innocent human lives as chess pieces, as checkers, as tidily winks, in pursuit of its own deadly agendas. Thinking that is willing to rocket a plane into a building to take 6,000 innocent lives, or thinking that is willing to drop bombs into an already devastated country abetting cataclysmic starvation is terrorist thinking. Or, more often in the case of average upset folks, it is thinking that has been systematically denied the most basic information relevant to the issues at hand, and that is too fearful, depressed, angry, or cynical to admit disturbing truths and reason through real options and values.
You think I exaggerate?
Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said October 15, "The bombing has to stop right now. There is a humanitarian emergency." Lest anyone miss the point, he continued, "In winter the lorries cannot go in any more. Millions of Afghans will be unreachable in winter and winter is coming very, very soon." As Reuters reported (and AP carried as well, but not any U.S. newspaper or other major media outlet, as best I can tell), "the United Nations has warned of a catastrophe unless aid can get through for up to seven million Afghans." Ziegler continues, "We must give the (humanitarian) organizations a chance to save the millions of people who are internally displaced (inside Afghanistan)," adding that he was echoing an (essentially unreported) appeal made by U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson a few days earlier, who was in turn echoing reports that go back to before the bombing. Ziegler called the bombing "a catastrophe for humanitarian work." Or in the words of Christian Aid Spokesman Dominic Nutt (quoted in the Scotsman but again in no U.S. papers): "We are beyond the stage where we can sit down and talk about this over tea. If they stop the bombing we can get the food aid in, it's as simple as that. Tony Blair and George Bush have repeatedly said this is a three-stringed offensive--diplomatic, military and humanitarian. Well the diplomatic and military are there but where is the humanitarian? A few planes throwing lunchboxes around over the mountains is laughable." You can look at reports from one AID agency after another, it is all the same story. Impending calamity, stop the bombing.
So what's complicated in all this?
Perhaps someone with a more subtle mind than mine can clarify it for me. But assuming one has the above information at hand, to me it seems to boil down to this. If we bomb (or even just threaten to bomb), they are more likely to starve. If we don't bomb (or threaten to bomb), they are less likely to starve. If we continue bombing, we are telling the innocent civilians who may starve--not thousands but millions of them--you just don't count. Compared to Washington's agenda, you are nothing.
And what is Washington's agenda? Remarkably the stated aim is to get bin Laden and to try him or perhaps just execute him ourselves. We could stop the bombing and have him tried in a third country, the Taliban has noted, but that's not acceptable. So for this minuscule gradation of difference, we are told that Washington is willing to risk 7 million people. Behind the rhetoric, to me the real goals appear to be to delegitimate international law, to establish that Washington will get its way regardless of impediments and that we can and will act unilaterally whenever it suits us--the technical term for which is to ensure that our threats remain "credible"--and to propel a long-term war on terrorism to entrench the most reactionary policies in the U.S. and around the globe, and, along with all that, to terminate bin Laden and others. Risking seven million people's lives for these aims is worse than doing it only for the minuscule gradation of trying bin Laden ourselves rather than having a third country do it, because the additional reasons are all grotesquely negative, supposing such calculus is even manageable by a sane mind.
When I was a kid and first learned about Nazi Germany, like many other kids, I asked how the German population could abide such horrors. I even wondered if maybe Germans were somehow genetically evil or amoral. I have long since understood that Germans weren't different than Brits or Americans or anyone else, though their circumstances were different, but for those who still don't understand mass subservience to vile crimes induced by structural processes of great power and breadth, I have to admit that I mostly just want to shout: Look around, dammit!
We live in a highly advanced country with means of communication that are virtually instantaneous and vastly superior to what the German populace had. We don't have a dictator and brownshirts threatening everyone who dissents. Dissent here can be somewhat unpleasant and may involve some sacrifice and risk, but the price is most often way less than incarceration, much less death. That's fact one. Fact two is that our country is risking murdering a few million civilians in the next few months--every serious commentator knows it, no serious commentator denies it--and we are pursuing that genocidal path on the idiotic or grotesquely racist pretext that by so doing we are reducing terrorism in the world, even as we add millions to the tally of civilians currently terrorized for political purposes and simultaneously breed new hate and desperation that will yield still more terror in the future. Does anyone remember "destroying the city to save it"? What's next? Terrorize the planet to rid it of terrorists? For people of my generation, in the Vietnam War the U.S. killed roughly 2 million Vietnamese over years and years of horrible violation of the norms of justice, liberty, and plain humanity. The utterly incomprehensible truth is that the U.S. could attain that same level of massacre in the next few months, and, whether it happens or not, our leaders, our media moguls and commentators, in fact most of our "intelligentsia" are quite sanguine about doing so.
It is possible, with considerable effort, for the average person to discover that this "war" is potentially genocidal. One can easily get much more background, context, and analysis from ZNet, sure--but of course only one out of roughly every five hundred or one thousand U.S. citizens has ever encountered ZNet--but one can get that single insight, the possibility that genocidal calamity is imminent, even from the NY Times or Washington Post or any major paper that one might read, if one digs deep into it and reads it very carefully, that is. Of course, the fact that such information isn't prime time news in every outlet in the land reveals how supinely our media elevate obedience above truth. Our media pundits are seeing the AID and UN reports and calls for a bombing halt I mentioned above, they are seeing stories about these in newspapers from Scotland to India, of course, and they are simply excluding the information from U.S. communications. Yet even with this massive media obfuscation, which says volumes about our society, how hard is this war to comprehend, supposing one actually tries to comprehend it?
Shortly after September 11 there was a letter in the NYT that a grade school child wrote to the editor, and I paraphrase from memory: "If we attack them aren't we doing to them what they did to us?" This child wasn't a genius, just a normal elementary school student. The Times probably ran the letter to show how cute kids can be, but of course the child was correct, not cute. The real question is why don't more of us see what the child instantly saw, even now, weeks later, with the horror before our eyes?
Yes, a never-ending trumpet beat of patriotism proclaiming U.S. virtues and motives contributes to our blindness. Of course accumulated confusions, augmented daily, cloud our understanding and push the sad facts of potential starvation out of our field of vision. And yes the human capacity for self deception to avoid travail contributes, no doubt, to the process, as does anger and fear. But I suspect most people's blindness is largely due to resignation. The key fact, I suspect, isn't that people don't know about the criminality of U.S. policies, though there is an element of that at work, especially in the more educated classes, to be sure. But even among those carefully groomed to be socially and politically ignorant -- which is to say those who have higher educations -- I think many people do know at some broad level Washington's culpability for crimes, and of those who don't know, many don't in part because they are deceived, sure, but also in part because they are more or less actively avoiding knowing. And in my view the key factor causing this avoidance isn't that people are sublimating comprehension to rationalizations due to cowardly fearing the implications of dissent and wanting to run with the big crowd instead of against it. I think instead that people can find deep resources of courage if they think it will do some good. Witness those firefighters, average folks, running up the stairs of the WTC.
No, to me the biggest impediment to dissenting is that people feel that they can't impact the situation in any useful way. If one has no positive hope, then of course it appears easiest and least painful and even most productive to toe the line and get on with life, trying to ignore the injustices perpetrated by one's country, or to alibi them, or even to claim them to be meritorious, while also trying to do what one can for one's kids and families, where we believe we can have an impact. To admit the horror that our country is producing seems to auger only alienation and tears. Here is one of many examples -- at the end of an email that I got from a young woman as I was finishing writing this essay, the author laments: "I've never had a huge amount of trust in governmental actions. But what I do know is that I have no control over anything. And all I can do is hope."
It follows that the task of those who understand the efficacy of dissent is not only to counter lies and rationalizations by calmly and soberly addressing all kinds of media-induced confusions that people have, but also to demonstrate to people their capacity to make a difference. We have to escort people, and sometimes ourselves too, over the chasms of cynicism and doubt to the productivity of informed confidence.
We do not face, as some would claim, a transformed world turned upside down and inside out. There is no new DNA coursing through us and our major societal institutions are as they were yesterday, last week, and last year. In fact, the main innovation in this month's events is that major violence based in the third world hit for the first time in modern history people in the first world. But the problem of civilians being attacked is all too familiar. And all too often the perpetrator is us, or those we arm and empower, including in this case since bin Laden is a prime example of monstrous blowback. And now the problem is being replicated, writ ever larger, as if by a berserk Xerox machine.
What we have to do is precisely what we would want others to do: oppose barbaric policies with our words and deeds, arouse ever greater numbers of dissenters, and nurture ever greater commitment to dissent, until elites cannot sensibly believe that a "War on Terrorism" will lead to anything but a population thoroughly fed up with and hostile to elites. People all over the world are embarking on this path...we should too.
-------- activists
Be Brave, Americans - from a Japanese good friend
Sun, 28 Oct 2001
From: Yumi Kikuchi <yumik@awa.or.jp>
Dear All,
Jun Hoshikawa is an author of many books and a ecologist who lives in Yakushima island, south of Japan. He lived in the USA and a frequent visitor to the USA, naturally having many American friends. He shared with me what he sent to his American friends knowing he may lose some friends. But I would like to share what he had to say. Do I lose my American friends by sharing Jun's letter? I don't know. I hope not. Time will tell.
Yumi
---
BE BRAVE, AMERICANS! from your friends in Japan
You say it is difficult to dissent with what the US government does right now backed by patriotic support of the majority.
You say it is then inevitable that millions in Afghanistan would certainly die from starvation over the winter for disrupted AID supply.
You say it is nonetheless justifiable to allow this happen in the name of those who suffered on 911.
Yes, it is indeed difficult to resist the social tide. We understand.
But remember:
You have blamed the Japanese for fighting you under the totalitarian regime a half century ago and dropped two atomic bombs in the end killing almost instantaneously over 300,000 mostly civilians.
It was very, very difficult at the time even to speak against the Holy War and Emperor as manifest God who led it.
And it must be similarly difficult for people in Afghanistan at the moment to do anything about the decision by Taliban leaders.
Yet you say it is precisely for that reason they are daily bombed and killed, would be starved to death en masse shortly.
You say it is difficult to voice against that to happen.
But, VOICE for earth's sake! Please VOICE now! Be brave! We stand by you.
Unlike the Japanese in the WW2 and the Afghans at present, you have the best democratic institutions and means of most advanced communication.
Please speak up against the needless calamity in the poorest of all nations.
Lest, you would have to recognize perhaps that the atrocities of 911 is justifiable for your inability to veer your national course of action:
Just as you have justified your own attacks of terror elsewhere through history.
Let us voice together to halt the military attacks in Afghanistan immediately to let the AID lifelines reach people in need, IN TIME!
(Despite our prime minister's careless promise to your president, we can't and won't support your military interventions in Afghanistan due to our Peace Constitution that states:
Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of forces as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Here across the Great Sea of Peace we are doing what we can to persuade our government not to abandon this gem of supreme laws in order to blindly follow the orders of your administration.
For we are never to see our reason and law perish under the threat of terrorism.
That would truly be the gravest loss.
Jun Hoshikawa, writer
----
On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor
Los Angeles Times
28 October 2001
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000085915oct28.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation
AMHERST, Mass. -- As never before, their dance cards are full.
Scholars of peace and diplomacy say that with little effort -- and no exaggeration -- they could schedule three speaking engagements per night. Elder statesmen of this country's antiwar movement report a similar surge in demand since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Academics who study terrorism or the Middle East are taking part in teach-ins that generally are packed.
Off campus, the voices of nonviolence are heard in such places as Worcester, a working-class city where a weekly vigil during rush hour draws cheers from passersby.
And in Northampton, where a draft counseling center has opened -- even though, at the moment, there is no military draft.
Any organized campaign to oppose U.S. military force in Afghanistan "is still in the process of taking shape," said Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee in Cambridge. But, he said, momentum is building.
"It's big and it's diverse," Gerson said. "I think it can be described as a peace movement and an antiwar movement and a justice movement."
The energy is evident in increased traffic on the Internet, where new peace sites are complementing existing sources of information about the war. But along with the vast virtual audience, actual crowds are growing.
In longtime centers of peace activity such as Berkeley and Madison, Wis., large demonstrations began before the first bombs were dropped.
But New England, long a focal point for activism, is where much of the antiwar action is unfolding.
The new pacifism feels almost polite, lacking the stridence of earlier generations of American protest. Resistance to the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is thoughtful, reflective. It is tempered by angst, anguish--and most of all, a fundamental abhorrence of what happened to this country when hijackers commandeered four jetliners and killed more than 5,000 people.
The focus still is diffuse; there is no monolithic chorus of dissent. No charismatic leaders have yet stepped forward. And if there is a single defining trait, at present it is a thirst for information.
With foundations in the vast and growing antiglobalization campaign, the evolving peace movement draws on long-standing, traditional organizations and philosophies. Days after Sept. 11, Quaker groups organized the first peace rallies. The War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other old-time pacifist groups are back on the radarscope. Again and again, a well-worn chestnut from Mahatma Ghandi -- "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" -- shows up on handouts and bulletin boards.
"I'm seeing a lot less of the knee-jerk kind of stuff," said Stephen Zunes, a Middle Eastern specialist who directs the peace and justice studies program at the University of San Francisco. "People are concerned, and they oppose the war. But they realize this is a different kind of situation. They need the facts. They want more information."
A recent two-day speaking swing took Zunes from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to Eugene, Ore. His audiences were "big and enthused and agitated, but I think in a more reflective, responsible way than we have seen sometimes."
"Certainly there is passion out there, but it is a responsible passion -- one that has been tempered by the fact that we witnessed this enormous tragedy on Sept. 11."
Boston University history professor Howard Zinn said he has been "besieged" by invitations to speak about terrorism and the war in Afghanistan, with "more requests than I could possibly deal with." At 79, Zinn approaches the stepped-up demand as an eminence grise of the antiwar movement and as a bombardier from World War II.
What he sees, Zinn said, is a massive appetite for information and a resistance effort that is fast churning into action.
"Things are starting earlier now than they did with the Vietnam War," Zinn said. "In the spring of 1965, we had 100 people on the Boston Common. Just a week or so ago, we had 2,000 people at Copley Square. It's starting earlier, and I believe it will grow."
"Immediately after Sept. 11, if you talked about American foreign policy as having anything to do with the problem, people were horrified. It was too close. People thought you were diminishing the tragedy. I think as time passes, it will be easier to think in more long-term ways."
Out here in western Massachusetts, fertile territory for alternative views since the American Revolution, opposition to capitalism and corporate power was already fueling many students.
Right away, said professor Michael Klare, head of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, "protests were organized by students who were already geared up for antiglobalization protests." They have a perspective that makes them distinct from many other undergraduates Klare has encountered in his post-Sept. 11 flurry of speeches and seminars. "Most students don't even have that. They're just bewildered," he said.
But some students--and many nonstudents as well -- crave involvement as a way to stave off feelings of helplessness. Over lunch one recent day, a table full of Hampshire College students talked about how and why they have plunged into action, forming a local branch of a group born at UC Berkeley on Sept. 12: Students for a Peaceful Response.
Their principles of unity, they explained, begin with a condemnation of the attacks of Sept. 11.
From there, said 21-year-old Kai Newkirk of Shepardstown, W.Va., "we have the priority of stopping the mass murder of millions. We have a window of a few weeks."
Sydney Hoover, 17, a freshman from Upper Coe, Md., said she already was involved in an antiglobalization protest aimed at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. After Sept. 11, that effort hastily shifted focus to initiate a campus dialogue with a group called Activating Peace.
The loosely knit group launched nonviolence training seminars and began preparing speakers, Hoover said. With the goal of creating "some kind of visible dissenting presence," they reached out to local high schools and community groups, organized teach-ins and held a daylong walkout at Hampshire, a private school with 1,200 students.
The process unfolding at Hampshire reflects a powerfully American quality, said Dale Bryan of the peace and justice studies program at Tufts University, near Boston.
"This voice that for many represents rancorous discourse actually it is bona fide, genuine American participation," Bryan said. "It is what the country does well, to assemble and participate freely, and we always have. And sometimes it is directed at the government, and the Constitution says, well, sometimes it should be."
For those in "the movement" -- a timeworn sobriquet that the peace effort has clung to -- "this is how it is being realized: in day-to-day, face-to-face, ordinary conversations," Bryan said.
At Lincoln Square in Worcester, an industrial-era city in central Massachusetts, this theory plays out each Tuesday at a street vigil. Mothers, lawyers, clergy, students -- the number stays constant at about 50, though the participants change--stand at a busy intersection. They chant, wave signs, hand out leaflets and often hold conversations with people who come to a stop in their cars.
Out on the street in his suit and tie, Philip Stone, a 47-year-old attorney, said: "I think this is a fairly typical example of the kind of grass-roots peace activity that you will see going on all over the country. This is a location with high visibility, a place where we can demonstrate that there is thoughtful opposition to the policies of the current administration."
Kindergarten teacher Kathleen Connelly Legg, a 45-year-old mother of three, said she never protested during Vietnam and thought hard before showing up at Lincoln Square. She was troubled, Legg said, that "we, as the most powerful nation on Earth, are bombing the most destitute."
Though small, the weekly demonstration will help the seeds of a new peace effort to take root, Legg said.
"It spreads and it spreads as information gets out. I am hoping we are laying the groundwork for something much larger. I am hoping that we get that kind of time."
--------
It's Simple. It's Not So Simple
By Cynthia Peters ZNet
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001
From: "radtimes" <resist@best.com>
Now is the time to be talking to people. Communicating, sharing information, listening -- they are the core of social change, of changing minds, of exchanging rationalizations and cynicism for vision and empowerment.
It's simple, really. A terrible crime is being committed in our name. Millions of dollars worth of bombs are raining down on an already decimated country. Beyond the military terror and destruction, the terror of starvation almost surely awaits millions of Afghans unless the bombing stops and a full-scale aid program gets food in place for the winter. This is a calculated crime against humanity that differs from September 11th only in scale; that is: it is many times larger.
That the U.S. is taking part in the killing of innocent people is not new. What's new is that people are paying attention. Before September 11th, I tried talking to people about the 500,000 Iraqi children dead thanks to the U.S. economic embargo. And people's eyes glazed over. But during these last few weeks, as I've staffed an information table on the main street that runs through my town, I've noticed something else during my conversations with people about the war in Afghanistan, the certainty of mass starvation unless our current trajectory in that country is reversed, the principles of international law, the idea that escalating violence is exactly that and not a form of justice, and the importance of the rule of law over the muscle of vigilantism.
What I've noticed is that the glaze is gone.
People's eyes are opened to the world in a way they weren't before. People are bringing questioning minds to the problem of terrorism and the U.S. role in the Middle East and elsewhere. People are filled with grief, awed by the courage of the rescuers, stunned by what it means to turn a commercial jetliner full of innocent people into a living, breathing bomb. People are curious -- and I mean that -- about exactly how the U.S. has abused its power around the globe, and they are reflecting on the consequences of that abuse.
Many conversations are not that hard. Sometimes, just listening to the words pouring out of someone's mouth helps him or her listen to those words, too, for the first time. Sometimes re-phrasing what you hear, without necessarily making a speech complete with historical facts and figures, is enough to put a crack in the confident parroting of the war defense. Sometimes, just being out on the street with "Justice Not War" flyers is enough to reach the cynic who already understands the misuse of U.S. power but believes there's no point in contesting it.
But not every conversation is so easy. I don't feel good about having some guy towering over me, jabbing the air with his finger, spitting out his passionate belief that, yes, we should kill as many Afghans as possible. It's not just that it's personally threatening, or that it's ethically in line with Osama bin Laden. It's also that it's painful to come face to face with this particular kind of human being.
Heartless retaliation is not limited to this war-mongering type. Consider the educated guy in the corporate suit who speaks in soft tones and has a pained expression on his face as he shrugs off the possibility of millions of starving Afghans with, "Well, we have to get Osama bin Laden somehow, don't we?"
Rather than scream my disbelief back at him, I try calmly repeating his own logic back to him. "So you think it's okay to put millions of Afghans at risk of starvation in order to possibly catch one man?" Then I try to let the pause be. I try not to fill up the silence with more words. I try to let him hear what he's saying. But this is hard to do. I feel a sort of a panic rising up. He is a thinking person, yet he articulated his accord with an obscene and murderous set of policies. I hold down the panic. He backs off a little from his argument. The interaction ends.
Unlike protesters in many countries, I don't risk getting killed or imprisoned when I put up my card table on Centre Street. I'm not worried about getting hurt, and I have a thick enough skin to deal with the hecklers. But dissent has its challenges, such as having reasonable conversations with privileged people who have access to power and knowledge, but who nonetheless are aligning themselves with points of view that will almost surely result in mass murder.
This is where it becomes not-so-simple. I don't like talking to people like that man in the suit. They make me sick. But talking is what we absolutely need to be doing right now. It is the only way to prevent mass murder. In a one-superpower world, the citizens of the superpower are the only force that can control the superpower. It's up to us.
Talking has the added benefit of being the only antidote to the sick feeling. For all the corporate suits, there are many more thoughtful people who pause, look me in the eye, nod their agreement that violence begets violence, say things like, "Thank you for being out here." "I realize I've never quite thought about it that way." "Do you have more information?" "Can I come to your meeting?" "Will you speak at my church?" "Where can I learn more?"
Many people I've met in the last few weeks don't need to hear my analysis. They already know. And they have a lot to teach if we listen. The Vietnam vet challenges me on how we should pressure our government when it is corporations that seem to have so much control. The firefighter tells me that all he hears at work is that the killing should stop. The Haitian man wonders how international legal channels could be made more independent and less influenced by the United States. The three women carrying bibles talk for a long time, first with me and then amongst themselves. The teenager starts off protesting that her parents would disagree with me, but winds up voicing her own views.
Late one night, someone calls from a nearby town. He has our flyer inviting people to a neighborhood anti-war meeting, and he's shocked that I risked putting my name and number out publicly. I get the feeling he's calling partly to see if I'm real, thus making him a little bit less alone. He and his small group are planning on marching the next day in a community-based parade featuring marching bands and civic organizations. They will carry a banner that says, "Our Cry of Grief is not a Cry for War." He is nervous but inspired to hear what we have accomplished so far in our town. The next day, they participate in the parade. "At least a few people cheered on each block," they reported to me later. There are plans now for cross-town pot lucks and meetings.
It strikes me as pathetic, sometimes, how few we are, how far we have to go, how many steps forward, backward and sideways we will have to take. Someone suggested that I give a short talk at the next meeting of her neighborhood crime watch group. But at the last minute, the group, which has put tremendous collective energy into debating the relative merits of stop signs vs. stop lights, relations with police, and all the minutia of orchestrating their security in the three-block radius of their homes, decides that hearing about the war is not relevant. I'm allowed to leave my flyers, but whatever I have to say just "isn't our business," says one participant.
On the one hand, this experience is simply frustrating -- something to be absorbed, learned from, tried again someday perhaps. On the other hand, this experience is not-so-simply rather alarming -- a stark reminder that people will mobilize tremendous resources for immediate concerns, but withold those resources when it comes to contesting a major human rights catastrophe in the making.
It's not hard to grasp the potentially genocidal consequences of current U.S. policy. But it is a bit harder to integrate that understanding into your daily life, and let it affect your actions. How will this knowledge change you? What will it make you question about how you spend your time, what you do with your money, whether you are doing everything in your power to reduce the horror. Maybe before, when you sheltered yourself from this knowledge, you never wondered if it was okay to spend time watching the Yankees' game. Now you are wondering.
And you are looking around at the peace activists and realizing that working in coalition with people to stop a major atrocity can mean aligning yourself with people you don't agree with -- or even who you find personally threatening. Some of the people fighting this war might be the same ones that, in another forum, would be your boss, deny you a living wage, ensure more privileges for the already privileged. Some of your fellow peace activists would be horrified by your sexuality, find you perverse, or wish you out of existence. They may have never learned to listen to women or take people of color seriously. You survey the growing legions of peace activists and wonder if they're the same people who are gentrifying your neighborhood, planting tulips in the park but letting affordable housing go down the drain, never showing up to protest police violence or the gutting of welfare. Working with these people can be alienating, disheartening, downright soul-killing.
Should you do it anyway?
To answer that question, keep in mind that there are ways to ease this necessary work of talking and listening, putting ourselves face-to-face with brutal, merciless or just plain petty thinking, and risking fragile coalitions.
1. Pick the community you can work best in. There is a growing peace movement, but if that is not your political "home," then work elsewhere -- in your neighborhood, your union, your place of worship, your community organization. Don't stop doing the political work you were doing before, but do look for new connections. Now is the time.
2. We should appropriately acknowledge the frustration and alarm that will be part and parcel of organizing work, but we should also be careful not to overstate it. No matter how alarmed we might be by people's denial, people's rejection of a moral stance, people's downright selfishness, nothing compares to the alarm of those at the receiving end of U.S. bombs and U.S. orchestrated starvation. Keep your frustration in perspective.
3. Join others for solidarity, support, shared inspiration, venting opportunities, perspective, and retreat from the challenges. Know that organizing is painstaking work, and you need to create conditions that will allow you to do it for a long time.
4. Know when to walk away. You don't have to talk to everyone. Don't waste time and energy engaging with the person who is going ballistic, but use your energy instead for the many sensible people that have their hearts in the right place but who lack information or support for entertaining alternative points of view.
5. Don't judge every interaction. It may feel like you failed to reach someone, but people's growing consciousness doesn't follow a linear path. They may ignore you, but later privately read the literature you hand out, and this may affect how they read the newspaper the next day. Each step is exactly that, and with others adding their efforts, each step matters more.
6. Finally, pick the work you can do most effectively. If a two-hour tabling stint on your main street leaves you feeling drained, despairing or frightened, then do something else. Write an emergency grant to help pay for all the leaflets and posters. Volunteer to manage the data base for your organization. Set up the web site, collate the articles, moderate the list serve, host the house parties, bring food to the meetings, design the banners, or take part in any of the numerous background activities that are essential to movement building.
Sound simple? It is and it isn't. Each of us, individually, has a responsibility to figure out how we can negotiate the organizing challenges and moral imperatives of the current crisis. Together, our job is to knit our individual abilities into a mass movement that pressures our government to back off from its bloodletting. The not-so-simple problem with this mandate is that it won't be easy. The simple fact, however, is that we must do it anyway.
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!