------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Safeguarding Uranium
Osama plot revealed
Consultative Exercise on Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters
Lockheed, TRW Win U.S. Satellite Contract
Experts inspect troubled Czech nuclear plant
Government Reviving Ties to Scientists
This is not a test
Spent nuclear fuel vulnerable to attack - US lawmaker

MILITARY
Moving Toward A Police State or Have We Arrived?
Bombings kill 1,000 around Kunduz: Report
In caves, along border, search for bin Laden goes on
Several Taliban units agree to a surrender deal
No one controls Afghanistan
Nations discuss postwar aid for Afghanistan
No deal on Taliban surrender
Afghans Block Britain's Plan for Big Force
Foreign Fighters in Kunduz Left Out of Surrender Talks
Nerve gas find at camp
Investigators Liken Anthrax in Leahy Letter to That Sent to Daschle
Connecticut Woman Has Inhalation Anthrax
Crackdown on Bioterror Claims
U.S. sees Saddam as priority, cites biological weapons
U.S. fingers Iran, Iraq as germ warfare talks begin
War Boosts Popularity Of Satellite Telephones
Conneticut
India Says Pakistan Remains 'Source of Terrorism'
Today's News Quiz
Pressing for a Mideast Cease-Fire
WORLD - Are Americans getting the full picture?
Delaware
Support overwhelms Adopt-A-Sailor program
22,000 feet above NYC, F-16s keep wary eye out
4 Commanders Seek Staff Role for the F.B.I.
The Secret Warrior Gen. Wayne Downing

ENERGY AND OTHER
Montana
Danish Elsam mulls wind farms in Poland, Greece
Suncor forms venture with Spanish wind power firm
Scientists look north for alternative energy sources
Kentucky

POLICE / PRISONERS
Bush Defends Order For Military Tribunals
Is President Bush's Executive Order Legal?
In War, It's Power to the President
President signs aviation security bill
Too few police, too many bases
States: Alabama, Maine, Maryland
Missouri
More False I.D. Charges
Indictment by Spanish Judge Portrays a Secret Terror Cell

ACTIVISTS
California
Jeff Bridges cooks up an end to hunger in America
Afghan Women Gather for Faltering First March
Demand Integrity in the Yucca Mountain Project!



-------- NUCLEAR

Safeguarding Uranium

New York Times
November 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/L20URAN.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:

Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Chuck Hagel are right to say financing should be "drastically increased" for programs aimed at keeping weapons-grade uranium and plutonium in the former Soviet Union out of terrorists' hands (Op-Ed, Nov. 13).

The Bush administration's budget now calls for cutting funds to those very programs: $40 million from the Pentagon's cooperative threat reduction program and $100 million from the Energy Department's nonproliferation programs.

One hopes it will not take another catastrophic attack for the administration to get its priorities straight on this matter.

MARTIN MALIN Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 13, 2001 The writer is program director of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

----

Osama plot revealed:
How he got the bomb

November 20, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011120-878328.htm

Osama bin Laden is not a Georgetown hostess's dream of the extra man for a dinner party, but he may be the man to invite to your next snipe hunt.

Rifling through discarded papers in abandoned Taliban safe houses in Kabul is all the rage among American and British reporters who followed the Northern Alliance into town, and a reporter for the London Times appeared to have struck the mother lode.

In a dispatch from Kabul, he described documents which he said appeared to be instructions on how to build "a Nagasaki-type atomic bomb." This discovery quickly fueled speculation that al Qaeda had assembled a nuclear-weapons factory in the heart of downtown Kabul.

"The vernacular quickly spun out of my comprehension," cabled the correspondent, describing his find and his difficulty deciphering it. "But there were phrases through the mass of chemical symbols and physics jargon that anyone could understand, including notes on how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass producing a nuclear chain reaction and eventually a thermo-nuclear reaction."

This was certainly enough to curl the beard (or burqa) of almost anyone, and, after the BBC followed up with footage of someone reading the notes, analysts in Washington and London felt compelled to say they were skeptical that Osama had actually assembled such a device.

But someone always has to ruin a good story, or, in this case, to make a good story better. What Osama and his rocket scientists and particle-beam physicists apparently were working from, visible in the television footage, was a publication of the University Physical Society at the University of Wisconsin, in turn taken from the Journal of Irreproducible Results - Volume 25/Number 4, 1979 - titled "How to Make an Atomic Bomb, a Construction Project." The full text fell into our hands late yesterday. (Actually, the full text fell from the printer attached to a computer plugged into rotten.com, but we like the way phrases like "fell into our hands late yesterday" sound.) What Osama and his men fell into was a snipe hunt, a snipe hunt of 21 years ago, or what the Wall Street Journal calls "monkeyfishing."

These are the relevant excerpts of the instructions from the Journal of Irreproducible Results on how to make a Nagasaki-type bomb:

"First, obtain about 50 pounds (110 kg) of weapons grade Plutonium at your local supplier perhaps the Junior Achievement in your neighborhood.

2. Please remember that Plutonium is somewhat dangerous. Wash your hands with soap and water after handling the material, and don't allow your children or pets to play in it. Any leftover Plutonium dust is excellent as an insect repellant. You may wish to keep the substance in a lead box if you can find one in your local junk yard, but an old coffee can will do nicely.

3. Fashion together a metal enclosure to house the device. Most common varieties of sheet metal can be bent to disguise this enclosure as, for example, a briefcase, a lunch pail, or a Buick. Do not use tinfoil.

4. Arrange the Plutonium into two hemispherical shapes, separated by about 4 cm. Use rubber cement to hold the Plutonium dust together.

5. Now get about 100 pounds (220 kg) of trinitrotoleune (TNT). Gelignite is much better, but messier to work with

6. Pack the TNT around the hemisphere arrangement constructed in step 4. If you can find gelignite, feel free to use TNT packed in with Playdo or any modeling clay.

7. Enclose the structure from step 6 into the enclosure made in step 3. Use a strong glue such as 'Crazy Glue'

8. To detonate the device, obtain a radio controlled (RC) servo mechanism, as found in RC model airplanes and cars detonator caps can be found in the electrical supply section of your local supermarket. We recommend the 'Blast-O-Matic' brand because they are no deposit-no return.

9. Now hide the completed device from neighbors and children The hall closet or under the kitchen sink will be perfectly suitable.

10. Now you are the proud owner of a working thermonuclear device. It is a great ice-breaker at parties, and in a pinch can be used for national defense."

Some discovery. The good guys are closing in on Osama and his cave and it is not clear that Osama and his team of highly paid mullahs actually assembled a mighty Muslim bomb. He is reported to have fled with several of his wives, though it is not clear, either, why a man who thinks he's about to receive 72 virgins, untouched by human hands, would take wives with him. But if some of the virgins turn out to be reconditioned Beirut hookers, he could consult Volume 26 of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, "in which we learn how to clone your neighbor's wife Common kitchen utensils will be all you need.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

-------- britain

CERRIE - Consultative Exercise on Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters

From: "Nuclear Free Local Authorities" <nfznsc@gn.apc.org>
Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:36:19 +0000

Dear All

The first meeting of the Consultative Exercise on Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), chaired by COMARE's chair, Prof Bryan Bridges, takes place in early December and a note from meetings will be posted on the DEFRA Website after each meeting.

This refers to radiation inside the body not outside for example inhaled or ingested radioactive material.

I am helping the CERRIE Secretary, Ian Fairlie, collate a list of email addresses of people who would like to be alerted when new information goes onto the Website. Please return this E-Mail with if you want to go onto the list.

Thank you Clare Frisby

Michael Meacher's press release issued at end of July about CERRIE is pasted below and attached as a word file for your information:

31 July 2001
Michael Meacher Announces New Review Of Radiation Risk Models

Environment Minister Michael Meacher today announced that the Government's independent advisory Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) has been asked to establish a new broad based working group to review the risks associated with internal radiation emitters and the need for further research. Membership of the working group will be announced soon and its remit will be "To consider the present risk models for radiation and health that apply to exposure to radiation from internal radionuclides in the light of recent studies and any further research that might be needed."

The working group is the outcome of recent discussions between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health and COMARE about the best way to evaluate the risks from radiation to ensure that the most valid risk models are used in radiation protection. The Working Group will produce and publish a report that will be considered by COMARE who will then advise the Government.

Michael Meacher, Environment Minister, said:

"There are significant differences of view among experts about the precise impacts of the internal ingestion of radionuclides and these need to be resolved. "This new Working Group will reach across all parties in the debate on risks of radiation, to assess the impact and reach a consensus on whether the current risk models continue to be valid."

Professor Bridges, Chairman of COMARE welcomed the exercise. He said:

"The Government has recently given Chairmen of Scientific Advisory Committees the responsibility of ensuring that all views are heard and taken into account when Committees formulate their advice. The risk from internal radioactivity is an area where, despite broad international consensus, there are several dissenting and sometimes mutually opposed viewpoints.

"The working group will provide a real challenge to the holders of all viewpoints to argue their case and try and reach agreement. COMARE regards this as an important consultative exercise and will be listening carefully to the proceedings."

Notes for editors

1. The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) was established in November 1985 in response to the final recommendation of the report of the Independent Advisory Group chaired by Sir Douglas Black (Black, 1984). The Black Advisory Group had been commissioned by the Minister of Health in 1983 to investigate reports of a high incidence of leukaemia occurring in young people living in the village of Seascale, 3 km from the Sellafield nuclear site and the suggestion that there might be an association between the leukaemia incidence and the radioactive discharges from Sellafield. COMARE is an independent expert advisory committee with members chosen for their medical and scientific expertise and recruited from Universities and Research Institutes. Members are appointed by the Chief Medical Officer, but the Committee advises all Government Departments not just the Health Departments. The Committee offers Government independent medical and scientific advice on the health effects of ionising and non-ionising radiation in the environment, whether natural or man-made. COMARE's terms of reference are "to assess and advise Government and the devolved authorities on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation in the environment and to assess the adequacy of the available data and the need for further research".

2. Radionuclides are radioactive elements, some occur naturally but others are produced in processes such as nuclear power generation. People may be exposed to radiation from external sources, however radionuclides can also be ingested and inhaled.

3. Estimates of risks from radiation exposure are based mainly on the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These survivors include large numbers of men and women of all ages, who received a wide range of radiation doses and whose health has been studied over many years. The risk estimates also incorporate information from some groups of people who received radiation for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes; for example, those exposed to diagnostic x-rays in the womb. The atomic bomb survivors and some of the medically-exposed groups were exposed to external sources of radiation. To estimate risks for internal exposures due to intakes of radionuclides, doses are usually calculated to various parts of the body and combined with information on risks from the studies of external exposure. However, for some types of cancer, risk estimates are based directly on studies of people exposed internally to radionuclides. For example: lung cancer from studies of uranium miners who inhaled radon; liver cancer from studies of patients injected with Thorotrast, an x-ray contrast medium that contained thorium; and bone cancer from studies of patients and dial painters exposed to radium.

Nuclear Free Local Authorities Secretariat
Manchester City Council
PO Box 463 Town Hall
Manchester M60 3NY UK
Tel: + 44 161 234 3244
Fax: + 44 161 234 3379
Web Site: http://www.gn.apc.org/nfznsc/

-------- business

Lockheed, TRW Win U.S. Satellite Contract

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55676-2001Nov19?language=printer

Two of the country's largest government contractors, Lockheed Martin Corp. and TRW Inc., will build the next generation of secured satellite systems under an Air Force contract worth more than $2.6 billion.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems and TRW Space and Electronics will launch satellites beginning in 2006 that advance the military's communications capabilities in wartime scenarios. For example, while many submarines currently use low-frequency systems such as Morse code to transmit information, the new satellites will quickly transmit detailed maps and large data documents.

The system will deliver "the coverage, capacity, connectivity and flexibility needed to provide unprecedented levels of assured communications . . . for our armed forces," Jeff Harris, president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said in statement.

The Advanced Extremely High Frequency Program (known as Advanced EHF) will eventually replace the military's Milstar program, which suffered a setback in 1999 when one of its $800 million satellites didn't reach orbit. That has left the global communications system vulnerable to gaps in coverage, similar to the gaps customers sometimes find in cellular telephone service.

The Milstar program also was criticized by the General Accounting Office as outdated and inefficient. In fact, the program was designed by Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, TRW and Boeing Co. during the Cold War to withstand the radiation from a nuclear blast. "Milstar was designed for a world that no longer exists," said John Pike, director of the nonprofit think tank GlobalSecurity.org.

In comparison, virtually the same contractors are now being commissioned to build the Advanced EHF. The new system will help U.S. forces securely swap real-time video, battlefield maps, targeting data and other tactical military communications. The new system can still withstand a nuclear blast but will have a wider bandwidth that will allow it to transmit substantially more data.

Still, the Advanced EHF system has suffered its own delays. The program was originally expected to begin launching satellites in 2004, but the military requested more technological capabilities, which delayed the start to 2006, Lockheed Martin said.

As the first two satellites launch, the U.S. Air Force will analyze alternatives for rest of the program, which may include launching three more satellites, a Lockheed Martin spokesman said.

Last week, Boeing withdrew from the program, which has been in the works for nearly 10 years. Boeing was to build a segment of the program's electronics, but it said in a statement that its share of the contract shrank while "the technical and financial risks we were being asked to take on this challenging program were disproportionate to our role."

"Ultimately, our decision has allowed the team to reduce their price by eliminating one of the program offices and enabled them to get within the fixed-price structure," the company said in a statement. TRW will take over Boeing's responsibilities on the project.

-------- czech republic

Experts inspect troubled Czech nuclear plant

Tuesday, November 20, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11202001/ap_czech_45627.asp

PRAGUE, Czech Republic-- An 11-member international group of nuclear experts launched a weeklong inspection of the troubled Temelin plant Monday, officials said.

"This mission is aimed to boost safety in the final stages of the plant's construction," said David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna-based international watchdog conducting the inspection.

The Temelin plant, located just 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of the Austrian border, has been a source of friction between the Czech Republic and nuclear-free Austria for more than a year.

The IAEA is set to inspect implementation of safety recommendations outlined in the agency's 1996 report.

"We will have a week of talks and finally a walkdown of the entire plant," Kyd said.

According to the plant's spokesman, Milan Nebesar, the inspection team includes experts from France, Germany, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria as well as an Austrian representative with observer status.

Drawing bitter protests from neighboring Austria, power generation testing started last year, but the plant was shut down several times because of technical problems.

It is currently down after an oil pump leak was discovered on Oct. 31, but officials said testing would be renewed shortly.

"We plan to start up the plant by the end of the week," Nebesar said.

In Austria, the Temelin reactor has been in the news for weeks, largely because each political party seems to have its own agenda on the issue.

Efforts last week by the four parties in parliament to reach a common stand on Temelin ended in failure because the far-right Freedom Party, which is in the government alongside Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's Austrian People's Party, insisted on vetoing the Czech Republic's admission to the European Union in 2004 unless Temelin is shut down.

However, Schuessel has rejected such a boycott, and it is yet unclear what the government will do to arrive at a joint position. There has been even talk of Schuessel's Cabinet falling apart over the issue.

Meanwhile, about 25 activists of the environmental groups Global 2000 and Greenpeace staged a sit-in at People's Party headquarters in downtown Vienna, displaying a "Stop Temelin" placard and other slogans.

"We must prevent it (the People's Party) from betraying the anti-nuclear fight of the Austrian population," said activist Jens Karg of Global 2000.

Reports from Brussels suggest the Austrian government cannot expect any support from other EU member countries in its opposition to Temelin, a Soviet-type nuclear plant upgraded with Western technology.

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

Government Reviving Ties to Scientists

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/science/20ADVI.html?searchpv=nytToday

Anew sense of urgency about terrorism has prompted the Bush administration to try to repair federal relations with the nation's scientific elite - ties forged during the cold war that shriveled with the demise of the communist threat as advisory panels went out of existence and agencies dropped scientists in droves.

A main focus is the National Academies of the United States, which are perhaps the world's most prestigious scientific organizations. They have been asked to rally not only their own 5,000 members but the nation's other scientists as well. Last week, the academies ran a private meeting to help federal officials better protect the mail from anthrax, and have recently begun advising the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well.

"We need to understand what ideas are out there," said Dr. John H. Marburger III, president Bush's science adviser and former director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. "And we need to let the intellectual community know what is needed from our perspective."

Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb, a Harvard physicist, who is helping to direct a new academies panel on antiterror technologies, said the developing bond between science and government promised to rejuvenate the partnership that built the atomic bomb, landed American astronauts on the moon, won the cold war and cured many diseases.

"Our model is before World War II and after," Dr. Branscomb said. "It could be a turning point." He said the whole scientific enterprise of the country might need to be different now that suicide jets and germ attacks had driven home the reality of new kinds of terrorism.

The new focus of federal officials is welcome news to the academies, made up of the National Academy of Engineering; the Institute of Medicine; the National Research Council, which carries out detailed studies; and the National Academies of Sciences, the oldest of the groups, founded by Congress at the height of the Civil War to advise the government "upon any subject of science or art."

Government officials "are recognizing that they need help, and that's a step forward," said William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering.

In a sense, the administration is taking small steps toward conditions that prevailed during the cold war, when the government financed much of the nation's basic scientific work. For obtaining technical guidance, many departments and intelligence agencies had their own science staffs, and Congress could seek advice from its Office of Technology Assessment, which became known for its detailed reports on topics as diverse as oil deep underground and weapons in space.

With the end of the cold war, though, demand for scientific advice fell. The changing atmosphere was exemplified by the fate of the Office of Technology Assessment, which in 1995 was abolished after more than two decades of existence. Experts judge the Clinton administration, despite good intentions, especially as voiced by Vice President Al Gore, as just adequate in fighting the reduction trends.

With the Bush administration, scientists complained it was leaving key advisory jobs unfilled and generally paying only perfunctory notice to the nation's research agenda.

All that changed on Sept. 11. Now, the government is scrambling to get wide-ranging advice from the academies on outwitting terrorists and better protecting Americans from threats of germ, computer, chemical and nuclear attack.

Teaming with Dr. Branscomb to run the academy's antiterror panel is Dr. Richard D. Klausner, a molecular biologist who directed the National Cancer Institute for six years before leaving in September after the terror attacks.

The White House is "very interested in reaching out and getting input," Dr. Klausner said. "The science communities have a lot they must do, giving the best possible advice. So many things are going on. Our hope is to synthesize and integrate."

Among the Bush administration bodies seeking academy advice is a little-known task force called the Technology Support Working Group, which identifies promising ways to fight terrorism and provides money to develop them. The task force was founded in 1986 and has representatives from the C.I.A., F.B.I., Secret Service and Departments of State, Energy and Defense; it has never before asked the National Academies for help, officials said.

Now, though, it is seeking guidance on making devices that can peer through walls and buildings to recognize bombs or bodies. Another aim is to develop ways to protect computer networks, electrical power grids and other vital systems. Still another goal is to find improved ways to sense, track and eliminate biological and chemical arms.

Dr. E. William Colglazier, executive officer of the National Academies, said another administration body, which he would not name, was seeking help from social scientists to better "understand the motivations of terrorist groups and the things they value."

He said the National Academies were becoming a "science broker" to the White House and the wider government in a time of crisis. In doing so, he said, they are setting aside their usual practice of convening expert panels to deliberate for months and then produce detailed reports. Instead, they are identifying scientists who can do quick studies and run expert meetings on short notice.

Dr. Marburger, the presidential science adviser, said a major function of the academies and their members at the nation's universities would be to help evaluate hundreds and even thousands of ideas pouring in from around the globe about how to thwart terrorism.

"There's not enough expertise in agencies to deal with them in a timely fashion," he said.

A more basic challenge, Dr. Marburger added, will be helping the government to brainstorm to make sure it was "covering everything you need to do to protect yourself" against terrorism. "That's obviously a key element in providing maximum protection," he said.

Some leading scientists question whether the Bush administration's quick embrace of the elite will be deep or effective. Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a top physicist who has advised Washington for decades, said the sheer size of government today reduced the influence of outsiders.

"It was easier in World War II because there wasn't a standing bureaucracy," Dr. Garwin said. "Now we have such a big defense infrastructure. People are going to argue, `That's my turf!' It's going to be extremely difficult."

Complicating things, trends in research financing have widened the rift between top science and Washington. In decades past, the government was the major source of money for basic research, giving it ready access to the best scientific minds. But now it is private industry that pays for most of the nation's science, making it harder for Washington to reach the intelligentsia.

Perhaps hardest of all, most science analysts fault the Bush administration as getting off to a very slow start with science, saying the White House showed little enthusiasm for research spending or getting sound guidance on science policy.

"Bush took longer than any other president to appoint a science adviser since the office was created in the Eisenhower administration," said Matthew G. Bunn, assistant director of the science, technology and public policy program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

He added that when Dr. Marburger was appointed, it was not as assistant to the president, as his predecessors had been, but simply as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As a result, the science adviser is now lower on the White House pecking order. The Bush administration also dropped two of the adviser's four Senate-confirmed associate directors (for the environment and national security), leaving ones for science and technology.

Mr. Bunn said he believed the Bush administration had shown no interest in making the science adviser a serious player in policy formulation, limiting his influence in the war against terrorism.

Dr. Marburger, who was not confirmed as science adviser until Oct. 23, said such criticism was unfair.

"There is a certain value in symbolism," he said. "But I'm more interested in performance." He added that he had suffered no loss of influence with President Bush or in policy development. Such complaints, he said, "reflect an unrealistic view of how things get done in Washington."

Experts agree that the Bush administration's new love of science and the academies builds on an early reliance on the elite institutions for help with specific problems, as when the White House sought out advice on climate change early this year.

But it remains to be seen whether the administration will act on the science advice it is beginning to seek out. For instance, the White House recently asked for $202 million in the 2002 budget, down from $271 million in 2001, to help Russia make its nuclear weapons more secure. Critics see such cuts as potentially abetting the rise of nuclear terrorism. "There's a mismatch between the rhetoric on reducing the nuclear threat and the budget," said Dr. Frank von Hipple, a physicist who advised the Clinton White House and now teaches science policy at Princeton.

But Dr. Marburger, the science adviser, while calling such financing a good investment, said it had to be weighed against competing demands emerging in the overall antiterror war.

"That's one among many things you need to think about," Dr. Marburger said of the Russian aid program, adding that lots of other challenges were more immediate. No one, he said, should underestimate the power of science to address many of these challenges by engaging in simple, quick, smart analysis.

"That," he said, "is appropriate to the urgency of these issues."

-------

This is not a test

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
November/December 2001 Vol. 57, No. 6, pp. 50-51
By Stephen I. Schwartz
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2001/nd01/nd01schwartz.html

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. government implemented emergency plans that until then had been envisioned for use only in the event of an all-out nuclear war.

The most dramatic of these was the decision by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all non-military aircraft in U.S. airspace (or in transit to the United States). At 9:25 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, all aircraft nationwide not already in the air were grounded, and those in the air were ordered to return to where the flight originated or to land at a nearby airport. By 2:07 p.m., all domestic aircraft were on the ground and by 5:30 p.m., all international flights were either on U.S. or Canadian soil. All commercial flights remained grounded until September 13, and significant restrictions on small, general aviation aircraft remained in place at the time this issue went to press.

The plan under which this order was implemented is known as Security Control of Air Traffic and Navigation Aids, or Scatana. Developed in the 1960s, Scatana was originally intended to clear the skies following confirmed warnings of an attack by the Soviet Union. This would have provided unrestricted airspace for U.S. bomber aircraft and missiles, as well as air defense interceptor aircraft, emergency airborne command posts, and associated support aircraft like refueling tankers. Until September 11, 2001, Scatana had never been fully implemented, although it was partially activated by accident during a 1979 false alarm at NORAD.

According to Defense Week, NORAD issued a "notice to airmen" implementing a modified version of Scatana approximately five hours after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Although all civilian aircraft were grounded, ground navigation aids were not turned off (as they would have been during a nuclear attack), allowing airliners to safely navigate to their new and unexpected destinations.

Also activated in full for the first time on September 11 were plans for ensuring "Continuity of Government," or CoG. Shortly after watching the attacks in New York City on a television in his White House office, Vice President Dick Cheney was evacuated by the Secret Service to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a hardened bunker buried beneath the East Wing of the White House. Once there (along with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, and a few other staff members), Cheney used a secure telephone to contact President George W. Bush, who was in Sarasota, Florida, visiting a school. As Cheney told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press on September 16, in his conversation with the president he "strongly urge[d] him to delay his return" because of fears that Washington, D.C. was going to be attacked (those fears were compounded by a telephone call to the Secret Service indicating that Air Force One was an intended target).

Bush subsequently boarded Air Force One and took to the air as officials scrambled to ascertain what was happening. At one point, the Secret Service considered sending him to NORAD's headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado. After touching down briefly at Barksdale Air Force Base near Bossier City, Louisiana (site of the U.S. Strategic Command's alternate underground command post), to deliver a hastily prepared statement, the president headed to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, communicating with Cheney, military leaders, and the National Security Council via secure teleconference and videoconference links from Stratcom's primary underground command post, before eventually returning to Washington, D.C. in the evening.

It is probable that Stratcom's fleet of airborne command posts, including those based near Omaha nicknamed "Looking Glass," were placed under increased security and that preparations were made to make them airborne. It is also likely that the president's specially shielded and outfitted airborne command post, known as the National Airborne Operations Center or NAOC (code-named "Night Watch"), was also readied (it is normally kept on 15-minute ground alert). Indeed, the president's diversion to Omaha suggests that officials were at least contemplating moving him from Air Force One to NAOC where he could, if necessary, remain aloft for as long as 72 hours while directing a military response.

From the White House bunker, Cheney ordered the evacuation of everyone designated as a successor to the president, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Cong. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois; the president pro tempore of the Senate, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia; and the entire Cabinet (except Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who remained at the Pentagon), as well as the rest of the congressional leadership. The Secret Service tried at least twice to convince Cheney to evacuate as well, "but I didn't want to leave the node that we'd established there in terms of having all this capability tied together by communications . . . and if I'd left . . . all of that would have been broken down . . . so I thought it was appropriate for me to stay there in the White House."

Hastert, and presumably most if not all the others who were in the Washington, D.C. area, were picked up at designated assembly points by Marine Corps helicopters kept ready for that purpose. They were transported to "a secure facility," most likely the Federal Emergency Management Agency's bunker known as the High Point Special Facility, inside Mount Weather near Berryville, Virginia, 48 miles (approximately 20 minutes by air) from Washington. (Senior officials who happened to be away from Washington would have been taken to one or more of the many emergency relocation sites located throughout the country. According to a former official from the White House Military Office, by 1980 there were reportedly more than 75 such facilities.) The underground complex at Mount Weather, which was built over four years at a cost of more than $1 billion and opened in 1958, contains an estimated 600,000 square feet of floor space. The facility, which was designed to accommodate several thousand people, includes a hospital, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, an emergency power plant, a radio and television studio, a direct link to the White House, storage tanks capable of holding 500,000 gallons of water, and a crematorium. The only previous time High Point was fully activated was November 9, 1965, during a major power blackout across much of the northeast United States.

Alternatively, some or all of these officials may have been sent to Site R, officially known as the Alternate Joint Communications Center. Since 1953, Site R has served as the backup Pentagon, with more than 700,000 square feet of floor space, sophisticated computer and communications equipment, and room for more than 3,000 people. Located inside Raven Rock Mountain about six miles north of Camp David on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, Site R continued to operate as a major CoG facility even as other facilities were mothballed in the 1990s. As recently as 1997, it had more than 500 military and civilian personnel reportedly working there (although not on round-the-clock shifts, which ended in February 1992).

During the Cold War, every federal agency had its own emergency relocation site for use during and after a nuclear war. Senior officials at the Treasury Department apparently worked from their site on September 11 and it is likely officials from other departments did as well.

Fear and uncertainty about the terrorists' plans, the whereabouts of any accomplices, and ongoing concerns about the safety of the president in Washington, D.C., led Vice President Cheney to spend his evenings and perhaps some days of the remainder of that week at the presidential retreat at Camp David, where there is also a secure, if rather austere, underground shelter. At least one television report suggested Cheney was also spending time at Site R during this tense period, a wholly plausible scenario. Even as late as September 20, when President Bush ventured to Capitol Hill to address the nation, security concerns kept Cheney away, reportedly the first time a vice president has not appeared with a president before a joint session of Congress (Senator Byrd took his seat on the dais). House majority leader Richard Armey, Republican of Texas, also skipped the event at the request of security officials.

How well all of this worked is as yet unknown and is, in any event, highly classified. While there are still regular emergency evacuation drills for designated senior officials, and although the White House Communications Agency and FEMA still track the location of each duly designated presidential successor, there were almost certainly a few problems locating everyone and getting all the equipment and communications links up and running.

While the CoG plans evidently worked well, the mass evacuations of all federal government buildings and many private office buildings in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and elsewhere created massive traffic jams, bringing traffic in some areas to a standstill for hours. This demonstrated once and for all the utter unreality and futility of civil defense plans devised by government officials, who from the 1950s through the 1980s promoted orderly citywide evacuations to the countryside as the best means of defense against a nuclear attack.

Stephen I. Schwartz is publisher of the Bulletin and executive director of the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science. He is the editor and co-author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (1998).

-------- us nuc waste

Spent nuclear fuel vulnerable to attack - US lawmaker

Chris Baltimore,
Reuters:
20/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13376/story.htm

WASHINGTON - A U.S. lawmaker yesterday warned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that depleted radioactive fuel stored at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants is "extremely vulnerable" to attack.

Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, warned in a letter to NRC Chairman Richard Meserve that an aircraft attack on spent nuclear fuel depots could release the same amount of radiation as a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb.

"These facilities are extremely vulnerable and yet the consequences of a terrorist attack ... could release enough radioactive material to make entire communities uninhabitable for years," Markey said in a statement.

U.S. nuclear plants have come under increased scrutiny since the deadly Sept. 11 attacks, in which hijackers crashed airliners into the the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Some state governors have ordered National Guard troops to guard nuclear plants as an extra precaution.

Markey asked the agency to analyze the impact that a potential fire, caused by the crash of a Boeing 757 or Boeing 767 carrying over 20,000 gallons of fuel, would have on spent fuel stored at a nuclear plant

A previous letter from the agency to Markey said an airplane crash into spent fuel casks would have "minimal" consequences, Markey wrote. But that judgment was based on about 200 gallons of burning fuel, not the amount carried by a freshly fueled commercial jet, he wrote.

Nuclear power plants use radioactive fuel rods to produce steam within a generator, which creates electricity.

Once the rods are depleted, they must be removed and new ones installed. Old rods are still radioactive, and are usually stored on the secured grounds of operating nuclear plants.

Markey specifically referenced a proposed spent fuel storage facility in Skull Valley, Utah.

About 40,000 metric tons of nuclear waste would be "concentrated in one location ... that will be easily visible from the air and from a nearby road" and could be vulnerable to attack, he warned.

The lawmaker's 10-page letter contained a series of questions on nuclear safety. Markey gave no deadline for the agency to respond.

Government and private industry officials say all nuclear power plants have been on high alert since the Sept. 11 attacks and have adopted stricter security measures.


-------- MILITARY

Moving Toward A Police State or Have We Arrived?
Secret Military Tribunals, Mass Arrests and Disappearances, Wiretapping & Torture

by Michael Ratner
HumanRightsNow.org
November 20, 2001
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ratner1.html

I live a few blocks from the World Trade Center. In New York, we are still mourning the loss of so many after the attacks on our city. We want to arrest and punish the terrorists, eliminate the terrorist network and prevent future attacks. But the government's declared war on terrorism, and many of the anti-terrorism measures, include a curtailment of freedom and constitutional rights that have many of us very worried.

I wrote the above paragraph and much of the article that follows toward the end of October. At that time, the repressive machinery then being put into effect was already terrifying. Since that time the situation has gotten unimaginably worse; rights that we thought embedded in the constitution and protected by international law are in serious jeopardy or have already been eliminated. It is no exaggeration to say we are moving toward a police state. In this atmosphere, we should take nothing for granted. We will not be protected, nor will the courts, the congress, or the many liberals who are gleefully jumping on the bandwagon of repression guarantee our rights. We have no choice but too make our voices be heard; it is time to stand and be counted on the side of justice and against the antediluvian forces that have much of our country in a stranglehold.

The domestic consequences of the war on terrorism include massive arrests and interrogation of immigrants, the possible use of torture to obtain information, the creation of a special new cabinet office of Homeland Security and the passage of legislation granting intelligence and law enforcement agencies much broader powers to intrude into the private lives of Americans. Recent new initiatives -- the wiretapping of attorney-client conversations and military commissions to try suspected terrorists -- undermine core constitutional protections and are reminiscent of inquisitorial practices.

Although it is not discussed in this article, the war on terrorism also means pervasive government and media censorship of information, the silencing of dissent, and widespread ethnic and religious profiling of Muslims, Arabs and Asian people. It means creating a climate of fear where one suspects one's neighbors and people are afraid to speak out.

The claimed necessity for this war at home is problematic. The legislation and other governmental actions are premised on the belief that the intelligence agencies failed to stop the September 11th attack because they lacked the spying capability to find and arrest the conspirators. Yet, neither the government nor the agencies have demonstrated that this is the reason.

This war at home gives Americans a false sense of security, allowing us to believe that tighter borders, vastly empowered intelligence agencies, and increased surveillance will stop terrorism. The United States is not yet a police state. However, even a police state could not stop terrorists intent on doing us harm. In addition, the fantasy of Fortress America keeps us from examining the root causes of terrorism, and the consequences of decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Unless some of the grievances against the United States are studied and addressed, terrorism will continue.

MILITARY COMMISSIONS: THE PERUVIAN OPTION

On November 13, President Bush signed an executive order establishing military commissions or tribunals to try suspected terrorists. Under this order non-citizens, whether from the United States or elsewhere, accused of aiding international terrorism, at the discretion of the President, can be tried before one of these commissions. These are not court-martials, which provide far more protections. The divergence from constitutional protections the executive order allows are breathtaking. Attorney General Ashcroft has explicitly stated that terrorists do not deserve constitutional protections. These are "courts" of conviction and not of justice.

The Secretary of Defense will appoint the judges, most likely military officers, who will decide both questions of law and fact. Unlike federal judges who are appointed for life, these officers will have little independence and every reason to decide in favor of the prosecution. Normal rules of evidence, which provide some assurance of reliability, will not apply. Hearsay and even evidence obtained from torture will apparently be admissible. This is particularly frightening in light of the intimations from U.S. officials that torture of suspects may be an option. Rules of evidence help insure the innocent are spared, but also that law enforcement authorities adhere to what we thought were evolving standards of a civilized society.

Unanimity among the judges is not required even to impose the death penalty. Suspects will not have free choice of attorneys. The only appeal from a conviction will be to the President or the Secretary of Defense. Incredibly, the entire process, including execution, can be conducted in secret and the trials can be held anywhere the Secretary of Defense decides. A trial might occur on an aircraft carrier and the body of the executed "buried" at sea. The President is literally getting away with murder.

Surprisingly, a number of prestigious law professors (e.g. Lawrence Tribe and Ruth Wedgwood) have accepted and even argued in favor of these tribunals. The primary claim is that it might be necessary to disclose classified information in order to obtain convictions. This is a pretext. There are procedures for handling classified information in federal courts as was done in the trial of those convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. It certainly does not provide a reason for sending suspects into a "justice" system akin to that which the US condemned in Peru. The 1993 trials also demonstrate that these trials can be held in federal courts.

Trials before military commissions will not be trusted in either the Muslim world or elsewhere. Nor should they. They will be viewed as what they are -- "kangaroo courts." How much better to demonstrate to the world that the guilty have been apprehended and fairly convicted. A better solution would be for the US to go to the U.N. and have the UN establish a special court for the trials. Judges from different legal systems including that of the US, Muslim and civil law countries could constitute such a court.

WIRETAPPING ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS

At the heart of the effective assistance of counsel is the right of a criminal defendant to a lawyer with whom he or she can communicate candidly and freely without fear that the government is overhearing confidential communications. This right is fundamental to the adversary system of justice in the Untied States. When the government overhears these conversations, a defendant's right to a defense is compromised.

Now, with the stroke of pen, Attorney General Ashcroft, has eliminated the attorney-client privilege and will wiretap privileged communications when he thinks there is "reasonable suspicion to believe" that an "inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further facilitate act of violence or terrorism." He says that approximately one hundred such suspects and their attorneys may be subject to the order. He claims the legal authority to do so without court order; in other words without the approval and finding by a neutral magistrate that attorney-client communications are facilitating criminal conduct. This is utter lawlessness by our country's top law enforcement officer and is flatly unconstitutional. This wiretapping of attorney-client communications has already begun.

THE NEW LEGAL REGIME

The government has established a tripartite plan in its efforts to eradicate terrorism in the United States. President Bush has created a new cabinet-level Homeland Security Office; the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating thousands of individuals and groups and making hundreds of arrests; and Congress is enacting new laws that will grant the FBI and other intelligence agencies vast new powers to wiretap and spy on people in the United States.

THE OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY

On September 20th President Bush announced the creation of the Homeland Security Office, charged with gathering intelligence, coordinating anti-terrorism efforts and taking precautions to prevent and respond to terrorism. It is not yet known how this office will function, but it will most likely try to centralize the powers of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies -- a difficult, if not impossible, job -- among some 40 bickering agencies. Those concerned with its establishment are worried that it will become a super spy agency and, as its very name implies, that the military will play a role in domestic law enforcement.

FBI INVESTIGATIONS AND ARRESTS

The FBI has always done more than chase criminals; like the Central Intelligence Agency it has long considered itself the protector of US ideology. Those who have opposed government policies -- whether civil rights workers, anti-Vietnam war protesters, opponents of the covert Reagan-era wars or cultural dissidents -- have repeatedly been surveyed and had their activities disrupted by the FBI.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attack, Attorney General John Ashcroft focused on non-citizens, whether permanent residents, students, temporary workers or tourists. Normally, an alien can only be held for 48 hours prior to the filing of charges. Ashcroft's new regulation allowed arrested aliens to be held without any charges for a "reasonable time," presumably months or longer. (See below for new legislation regarding detention of immigrants.)

The FBI began massive detentions and investigations of individuals suspected of terrorist connections, almost all of them non-citizens of Middle Eastern descent; over 1,100 have been arrested. Many were held for days without access to lawyers or knowledge of the charges against them; many are still in detention. Few, if any, have been proven to have a connection with the September 11 attacks and remain in jail despite having been cleared. In some cases, people were arrested merely for being from a country like Pakistan and having expired student visas. Stories of mistreatment of such detainees are not uncommon.

Apparently, some of those arrested are not willing to talk to the FBI, although they have been offered shorter jail sentences, jobs, money and new identities. Astonishingly, the FBI and the Department of Justice are discussing methods to force them to talk, which include "using drugs or pressure tactics such as those employed by the Israeli interrogators." The accurate term to describe these tactics is torture. Our government wants to torture people to make them talk. There is resistance to this even from law enforcement officials. One former FBI Chief of Counter-Terrorism, said in an October New York Newsday article, "Torture goes against every grain in my body. Chances are you are going to get the wrong person and risk damage or killing them."

As torture is illegal in the United States and under international law, US officials risk lawsuits by such practices. For this reason, they have suggested having another country do their dirty work; they want to extradite the suspects to allied countries where security services threaten family members and use torture. It would be difficult to imagine a more ominous signal of the repressive period we are facing. The FBI is also currently investigating groups it claims are linked to terrorism -- among them pacifist groups such as the US chapter of Women in Black, which holds vigils to protest violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The FBI has threatened to force members of Women in Black to either talk about their group or go to jail. As one of the group's members said, "If the FBI cannot or will not distinguish between groups who collude in hatred and terrorism, and peace activists who struggle in the full light of day against all forms of terrorism we are in serious trouble."

Unfortunately, the FBI does not make that distinction. We are facing not only the roundup of thousands on flimsy suspicions, but also an all-out investigation of dissent in the United States.

THE NEW ANTI-TERRORIST LEGISLATION

Congress has passed and President Bush has signed sweeping new anti-terrorist legislation, the USA Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), aimed at both aliens and citizens. The legislation met more opposition than one might expect in these difficult times. A National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom of over 120 groups ranging from the right to the left opposed the worst aspects of the proposed new law. They succeeded in making minor modifications, but the most troubling provisions remain, and are described below:

Rights of Aliens

Prior to the legislation, anti-terrorist laws passed in the wake of the 1996 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma had already given the government wide powers to arrest, detain and deport aliens based upon secret evidence -- evidence that neither the alien nor his attorney could view or refute. The current proposed legislation makes it even worse for aliens.

First, the law would permit "mandatory detention" of aliens certified by the attorney general as "suspected terrorists." These could include aliens involved in barroom brawls or those who have provided only humanitarian assistance to organizations disfavored by the United States. Once certified in this way, an alien could be imprisoned indefinitely with no real opportunity for court challenge. Until now, such "preventive detention" was believed to be flatly unconstitutional.

Second, current law permits deportation of aliens who support terrorist activity; the proposed law would make aliens deportable for almost any association with a "terrorist organization." Although this change seems to have a certain surface plausibility, it represents a dangerous erosion of Americans' constitutionally protected rights of association. "Terrorist organization" is a broad and open-ended term that could include liberation groups such as the Irish Republican Army, the African National Congress, or civic groups that have ever engaged in any violent activity, such as Greenpeace. An alien who gives only medical or humanitarian aid to similar groups, or simply supports their political message in a material way could be jailed indefinitely.

More Powers to the FBI and CIA

A key element in the new law is the wide expansion of wiretapping. In the United States wiretapping is permitted, but generally only when there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and a judge signs a special wiretapping order that contains limited time periods, the numbers of the telephones wiretapped and the type of conversations that can be overheard.

In 1978, an exception was made to these strict requirements, permitting wiretapping to be carried out to gather intelligence information about foreign governments and foreign terrorist organizations. A secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was established that could approve such wiretaps without requiring the government to show evidence of criminal conduct. In doing so the constitutional protections necessary when investigating crimes could be bypassed. The secret court is little more than a rubber stamp for wiretapping requests by the spy agencies. It has authorized over 13,000 wiretaps in its 22-year existence, approximately a thousand last year, and has apparently never denied a request.

Under the new law, the same secret court will have the power to authorize wiretaps and secret searches of homes in criminal cases -- not just to gather foreign intelligence. The FBI will be able to wiretap individuals and organizations without meeting the stringent requirements of the Constitution. The law will authorize the secret court to permit roving wiretaps of any phones, computers or cell phones that might possibly be used by a suspect. Widespread reading of e-mail will be allowed, even before the recipient opens it. Thousands of conversations will be listened to or read that have nothing to do with the suspect or any crime.

The new legislation is filled with many other expansions of investigative and prosecutorial power, including wider use of undercover agents to infiltrate organizations, longer jail sentences and lifetime supervision for some who have served their sentences, more crimes that can receive the death penalty and longer statutes of limitations for prosecuting crimes. Another provision of the new bill makes it a crime for a person to fail to notify the FBI if he or she has "reasonable grounds to believe" that someone is about to commit a terrorist offense. The language of this provision is so vague that anyone, however innocent, with any connection to anyone suspected of being a terrorist can be prosecuted. We will all need to become spies to protect ourselves and the subjects of our spying, at least for now, will be those from the Mid East.

The New Crime of Domestic Terrorism

The act creates a number of new crimes. One of the most threatening to dissent and those who oppose government policies is the crime of "domestic terrorism." It is loosely defined as acts that are dangerous to human life, violate criminal law and "appear to be intended" to intimidate or coerce a civilian population" or "influence the policy of a government by intimidation of coercion." Under this definition, a protest demonstration that blocked a street and prevented an ambulance from getting by could be deemed domestic terrorism. Likewise, the demonstrations in Seattle against the WTO could fit within the definition. This was an unnecessary addition to the criminal code; there are already plenty of laws making such civil disobedience criminal without labeling such time honored protest as terrorist and imposing severe prison sentences.

Overall, the new legislation represents one of the most sweeping assaults on liberties in the last 50 years. It is unlikely to make us more secure; it is certain to make us less free.

It is common for governments to reach for draconian law enforcement solutions in times of war or national crisis. It has happened often in the United States and elsewhere. We should learn from historical example: times of hysteria, of war, and of instability are not the times to rush to enact new laws that curtail our freedoms and grant more authority to the government and its intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

The US government has conceptualized the war against terrorism as a permanent war, a war without boundaries. Terrorism is frightening to all of us, but it's equally chilling to think that in the name of antiterrorism our government is willing to suspend constitutional freedoms permanently as well.

Michael Ratner is an international human rights lawyer and vice-president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He has brought numerous suits against the illegal use of military force by the United States Government and specializes in opposing government spying. Mr. Ratner teaches International Human Rights Litigation at Columbia Law School, and is the author of The Pinochet Papers, International Human Rights Litigation in US Courts, and Che Guevara and the FBI.

-------- afghanistan

Bombings kill 1,000 around Kunduz: Report

The Times of India Online
November 20, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=592689913

ISLAMABAD: More than 1,000 people were killed by US airstrikes around the Taliban-held city of Kunduz over the weekend, a newspaper here reported Monday, quoting a militia commander.

The commander, Mulla Fazil, told the daily Dawn by satellite phone that heavy pounding from the air had killed some 800 people in the Kunduz area in northern Afghanistan and 250 in nearby Khanabad district.

Fazil gave the air attacks as the chief reason for a decision by the Taliban to surrender Kunduz if the handover to the victorious Northern Alliance forces could be conducted under UN supervision.

With thousands of Taliban troops backed by hardcore Chechen, Arab and Pakistani loyalists making a stand at Kunduz, US 52 bombers and fighters have intensified their attacks in recent days. (AFP)

------

In caves, along border, search for bin Laden goes on

USA Today
11/20/2001
By Jonathan Weisman and Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/binladen-search.htm

His hiding places are shrinking, the forces pursuing him are growing stronger, and the Taliban militia that harbored him have lost control of Afghanistan. But Osama bin Laden is still proving to be an elusive foe who may not be captured for some time to come, Pentagon officials warn. "As enemy leaders become fewer and fewer, that does not necessarily mean that the task will become easier," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday. "People can hide in caves for long periods." The hunt for the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington is part cat-and-mouse game and part brute force.

Hundreds of special operations forces are sealing escape routes, gathering intelligence and helping Afghan fighters search caves and tunnels for bin Laden. As many as 1,600 combat-ready Marines are expected to soon join 300 to 500 special operations forces already on the battlefield to bolster the hunt.

But even with some 2,000 U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan, the search for bin Laden would still be akin to hunting for a needle in a haystack, says Michael Vickers, a former special operations forces officer and CIA operative who is now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. U.S. ground forces still must rely on southern Afghan tribesmen to do the cave-to-cave searches.

"Adding a thousand troops here, a thousand troops there won't make a real difference," he says. "The key is the southern opposition" to the Taliban.

Several defense officials say they believe air power will ultimately kill the Saudi exile and the other leaders of his al-Qaeda terrorist network. There is no reason to risk U.S. casualties in risky cave-to-cave searches unless President Bush was bent on capturing bin Laden alive, one senior Pentagon official said. But, the official added, the president is not.

That explains why so many of the daily airstrikes are aimed at crushing bin Laden or trapping him underground by pummeling cave and tunnel complexes. F-15 fighter-bombers are pounding cave openings and limestone rock formations with 5,000-pound, GBU-28 bunker buster bombs and 2,000-pound, AGM-130 missiles.

Unmanned Predator drones, many of them operated by the CIA, hover over head, sometimes firing Hellfire anti-tank missiles, sometimes "painting" buildings and bunkers with laser beams that guide bombs to their targets. Last week, a Predator above the capital, Kabul, guided the bomb that killed bin Laden's military chief, Muhammad Atef.

The Air Force is also hoping to rush 50 to 70 warplanes to a Soviet-built airfield in Tajikistan. Also, defense officials say Air Force engineers are scouting out several airstrips in Afghanistan for a new base for commando operations.

The biggest fear now is that bin Laden could shave his beard, cut his hair and slip out of Afghanistan, intelligence officials in Pakistan say. The remnants of al-Qaeda are already trying to sneak into Pakistan.

Pakistani guards at the Chaman border crossing near Quetta detained three Yemeni women and their two children trying to cross into Pakistan last Saturday, U.S. officials say. The three women claimed their Arab husbands had been killed in the U.S. bombing as they fled south from Kabul, the officials say. But the women wore expensive head-to-toe coverings, called burqas, believed to be from Saudi Arabia. They were interrogated for any possible links to bin Laden or al-Qaeda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that he believes bin Laden still is in Afghanistan, an opinion shared by other senior Bush administration officials.

The problem for bin Laden is that he has nowhere to go, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said. Nations that might have welcomed him in the past - Libya, Sudan and Iraq - now want nothing to do with him because they don't want to incur the military wrath of the United States.

"I can't imagine any nation in the world that would harbor him," Wolfowitz said.

Powell added: "I don't think this fellow is going to be welcome anywhere. He is an outcast. He is a murderer, he's a terrorist. ... He is on the run. And we will get him."

Weisman reported from Washington and Kelley from Islamabad, Pakistan

------

Several Taliban units agree to a surrender deal

USA Today
11/20/2001
By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/surrender.htm

Thousands of trapped Taliban fighters in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, under heavy pressure from U.S. bombing, have tentatively agreed to surrender, a commander of the opposition Northern Alliance said Monday. Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum told the BBC that the agreement had been reached in a telephone call with Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander in the city, one of two remaining enclaves in Afghanistan occupied by Taliban forces. In exchange, Dadullah's Afghan troops would be allowed safe passage from the town, Dostum said. But he added he had rejected Dadullah's demand that the amnesty also extend to foreign fighters who have taken the side of the Taliban. That issue could remain a stumbling block to a surrender deal.

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, acknowledged that the forces cornered in Kunduz were negotiating to give themselves up to the United Nations. Estimates of the number of fighters there varied wildly, from a few thousand to Zaeef's figure of 24,000.

The Taliban troops remained under heavy bombardment Monday from U.S. warplanes and from artillery and rockets of the Northern Alliance.

Refugees reported that hard-line, foreign Taliban fighters - mostly Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens - were using death threats to stop Afghan comrades from surrendering. One report said up to 300 fighters were believed shot by the hard-liners in recent days.

Similar talks were going on about the fate of Taliban forces occupying Kandahar, their stronghold in the southern part of the country. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States opposed safe-passage deals for terrorists or for Taliban leader Mohammad Omar.

Asked what would happen if Omar struck a safe-passage deal, Rumsfeld said: "If the thrust of that question is would we knowingly allow him to get out of Kandahar, the answer is no, we would not."

He said he would do everything possible to prevent such a deal for al-Qaeda supporters. "My hope is that they would be killed or taken prisoner," he said at the Pentagon.

President Bush said rooting the Taliban out of their last strongholds could be time-consuming.

"The degree of difficulty is increasing as we work hard to achieve our objectives," he told reporters at the White House. "The American people must know it may take longer than some anticipate."

In other developments:

- Four journalists were apparently killed as they tried to make their way in a convoy along a road leading from Pakistan to Kabul. They included a cameraman and photographer for the Reuters news agency, and Spanish and Italian newspaper reporters. It was unclear whether the ambush was related to the war, or whether they were victims of bandits.

- A conference bringing together all Afghan factions to work toward a new government was set to begin on Saturday in Germany.

Contributing: Gary Strauss in Islamabad, Pakistan

---

No one controls Afghanistan

USA Today
11/20/2001
By Tim Friend and Thor Valdmanis, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/control-usat.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Northern Alliance says it controls up to 85% of this country, a stunning reversal from just 10 days ago, when Taliban forces laid claim to at least that much territory. But in truth, Afghanistan is now a chaotic country where no one group or person is in charge and gun-toting "armies" loyal to local warlords are patrolling cities, provinces and regions. In many places, those armies are basically rival gangs. Their presence is a major reason Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places on the planet, even though the U.S.-led bombing campaign has been significantly scaled back since the Taliban gave up most of its territory.

The apparent killings Monday of four journalists - none of them American - underscore the dangers in this now largely lawless nation. The journalists were traveling in a four-truck convoy of foreign correspondents from Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border, toward Kabul. Six armed men stopped the two front vehicles and demanded that the four get out and follow them into the mountains.

A translator and a driver accompanying the group escaped after begging for their lives. The translator reported to local alliance commanders that the four reporters were marched behind a hill near a narrow gorge and that he later heard gunshots.

One of the journalists was reporter Maria Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra. Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero told reporters in Brussels that the four are dead and that their bodies had been found. The other three were Julio Fuentes of Spain's El Mundo newspaper, Australian TV cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari. Burton and Haidari were working for the Reuters news service.

Reporters here are always at risk. "It's not like Kosovo or other wars," says Tom Carew, a former British Special Air Service officer in Afghanistan who now runs a survival school in Belgium. "It's fluid and you can suddenly find yourself in a very dangerous situation." Unlike when covering professional soldiers, who understand the role of the media, "it's more like being with a load of (soccer) hooligans."

Journalists are especially in danger because it's well known in Afghanistan that many of them are carrying thousands of dollars in cash. They need lots of money to pay for transportation, lodging, food and other necessities in a country where credit cards are of no use. It wasn't known late Monday whether the four journalists were targets of robbers or Taliban forces seeking a measure of revenge against Western reporters.

But what's happening to journalists is by no means the only sign of the Wild West nature of life in Afghanistan.

For foreigners, the differences start at the nation's border. At a crossing from Tajikistan, for example, passports are stamped in a mud-walled hut lit by a single kerosene lamp. Outside, young men wearing baggy, ragged fatigues and carrying Russian-built assault rifles stand guard. Drivers of barely running four-wheel-drive vehicles offer rides to the nearest towns, at prices running into the hundreds of dollars.

The only remotely safe way to travel is as part of a convoy, ostensibly protected by troops loyal to the alliance. But even then, a 50-mile journey through northern Afghanistan can take 6 hours or more because roads are little more than bomb-scarred ruts and land mines are a constant danger.

Convoys must stop at night to avoid running into roving gangs of local soldiers who may be part of the alliance but who also look for opportunities to plunder. A convoy last week that was making its way from northern Afghanistan to Kabul came to a halt at dusk. It was reported that the village ahead was controlled by a local warlord. His 300 soldiers were known to have robbed such processions, just as outlaws in the American West once held up trains.

In many cities reported to have been taken over by alliance forces, "control" remains elusive. Taloqan, a city in the north that the Taliban gave up last week, was still dangerous days after that militia's troops supposedly left. Some were still hiding inside the town. Gunbattles continued into last weekend.

In Kabul, though Taliban forces have reportedly fled well to the south, nerves remain on edge. Armed men, all saying they are alliance fighters, are everywhere. Monday, after a minor traffic accident caused a truck's tire to blow out, several of those soldiers opened fire on the driver. They thought he had fired a shot and might be a Taliban fighter. There was no word of his fate.

The simple answer to why Afghanistan is lawless now, of course, is that there is no government. The Taliban, which took effective control in 1996, is in tatters.

But the forces churning the country are more complicated than that simple answer implies.

The alliance is in reality a confederation of many warlords who have shifted allegiances several times in recent years - from the communists who ran Afghanistan in the '70s to the Soviets in the early '80s and then to mujahedin guerrillas.

To further complicate matters, most of the alliance's leaders are from northern Afghanistan and are not Pashtun, the country's largest ethnic group. Pashtuns are predominantly southern.

So the alliance leaders' interests don't always agree either with one another or with those of Pashtun tribal leaders. And all the leaders want to maintain control over "their" territory.

International efforts to forge a plan for a new government are still in the early stages. A meeting tentatively set for this weekend in Germany of representatives from Afghanistan's various ethnic groups could kick-start that process.

Throw into the mix decades of fighting and the bitterness it engenders, and chaos is inevitable. So is danger.

"Obviously, citizens need to be cautious in a country that has seen 23 years of war and has thousands of weapons unaccounted for in the hands of Taliban and other Taliban splinter groups," says Hashmatullah Moslih, a deputy in the alliance's foreign ministry. Left unsaid: the fact that there are thousands of weapons in the hands of other fighters as well.

Contributing: Gary Strauss in Islamabad, Pakistan; Vivienne Walt in Quetta, Pakistan; and Steven Komarow in Dushanbe, Tajikistan

------

Nations discuss postwar aid for Afghanistan

USA Today
11/20/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/afghan-aid.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Twenty-one nations and the European Union assembled Tuesday at the State Department to consider a massive assistance program for postwar Afghanistan. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched the conference with a pep talk. He said reconstruction must begin quickly, as areas of the South Asian country are freed from the Taliban control.

"We must act as fast as we can," Powell said. "We must act as soon as possible."

President Bush committed $320 million in assistance to Afghanistan last month, even as U.S. bombers were blasting Taliban targets in retribution for refusal to surrender Osama bin Laden and dismantle his al-Qa'eda terrorism network.

Powell said the onset of winter underscores a need for prompt relief for refugees and others in need.

"We do not yet know how much money or other forms of rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance will be needed from the international community," he said.

With a war on and the country unsettled, a comprehensive assessment of needs is not possible, he said.

Japan co-sponsored the meeting with the United States. The media were barred from listening to the discussion.

On another front, Richard Perle urged the Bush administration to use troops, bombers, dissidents and opposition forces to destroy President Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.

Perle, a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, said Iraq should be the next target after the Taliban is defeated because "it poses the greatest threat to the United States."

There is evidence linking Saddam to the al-Qa'eda organization, Perle said in a breakfast with reporters, and "the only way to deal with Saddam Hussein is to destroy his regime."

He said the United States would not need much support from other Arab countries. Whatever they might say officially about a U.S. attack, "there will be dancing in the streets" when Saddam is overthrown, Perle said.

His defeat will serve as notice to other nations that support terrorism that they may be targeted, as well, Perle said.

He is a member of a defense policy board that offers advice to the Bush administration. But Perle said he was speaking for himself.

------

No deal on Taliban surrender

November 20, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011120-84189184.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday there will be no deals to protect Taliban leaders or foreign terrorists fighting in Afghanistan.

"The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "Nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners."

Mr. Rumsfeld said he hopes the several thousand foreign terrorists and others engaged in fierce fighting near the northern city of Kunduz will not be allowed to escape.

"The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner."

U.S. warplanes yesterday conducted strike missions against Taliban positions in northern and southern Afghanistan on the 44th day of the bombing campaign.

President Bush, meanwhile, said the United States and its allies are closing in on terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

"We're hunting him down," Mr. Bush told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. "He runs and he hides, but as we've seen repeatedly, the noose is beginning to narrow, the net is getting tighter."

U.S. and British special forces commandos yesterday continued the search for bin Laden, believed to be in the southern part of the country.

Mr. Rumsfeld said a reward of $25 million has been offered to anyone who helps capture bin Laden and other terrorists in Afghanistan. He said several hundred U.S. Special Forces troops are on the ground as part of the hunt for bin Laden - chief suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

A Northern Alliance spokesman in neighboring Tajikistan said forces stopped shelling the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters near Kunduz yesterday in an effort to negotiate the surrender of the surrounded Taliban units.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said U.S. warplanes on Sunday carried out 138 attack sorties in a round-the-clock campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The discussions between the Taliban and Northern Alliance forces came amid reports that the pro-Taliban fighters were killing their own in an attempt to prevent defections or surrenders.

"Every day the Northern Alliance reinforces its siege of Kunduz. The alliance is trying to carry out talks with the Taliban in Kunduz, so that they will lay down their weapons and surrender," Ariyonfard Shamsulkhak, press attache at the Northern Alliance Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, told the Associated Press.

"If the Taliban do not lay down their weapons, then the fighting will begin. There is no other way out. And then, unfortunately, another city will be sacked," Mr. Shamsulkhak said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said discussions for a surrender of Taliban forces are continuing in Afghanistan, but the United States hopes "they will not engage in negotiations that would provide for the release of al Qaeda forces; that would provide for the release of foreign nationals, non-Afghans, leaving the country and destabilizing neighboring countries, which is not your first choice either."

Asked if the opposition forces in the south reached a deal that would allow Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to leave his base in Kandahar, Mr. Rumsfeld stated bluntly: "If the thrust of that question is would we knowingly allow him to get out of Kandahar, the answer is, no we would not." Mr. Rumsfeld said fighting between southern tribes and Taliban forces in Kandahar is "still a standoff."

"There are southern tribes that are applying pressure and engaged in discussions and there is firing and the coalition forces have provided some air support," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States hopes its large rewards and use of special operations commandos will lead to the capture of al Qaeda leaders.

"Our hope is that the dual incentive of helping to free that country from a very repressive regime and to get the foreigners in the al Qaeda out of there, coupled with substantial monetary rewards, will incentivize a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves, looking for the bad folks," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Without large numbers of troops on the ground, the United States cannot accept surrendering forces, Mr. Rumsfeld said. "If people try to, we are declining," he said.

The defense secretary cautioned reporters that the battle to defeat the terrorists and their supporters was not over and would be long and difficult.

"I also want to emphasize that as enemy leaders become fewer and fewer, it does not necessarily mean that the task will become easier," he said. "People can hide in caves for long periods, and this will take time."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the commandos have helped aircraft locate targets, reported on enemy troops and blockaded roads in the search for fleeing Taliban leaders and al Qaeda leaders.

"The war on terrorism is still in its early stages," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Perseverance and will and patience and sacrifice is going to be required in the months ahead, and while the nature of what's taking place is changing, it is going to be no less difficult."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the CIA also has been working closely with military officials in Afghanistan.

----

Afghans Block Britain's Plan for Big Force

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/international/asia/20FORC.html

LONDON, Nov. 19 - Prime Minister Tony Blair's much publicized plan to dispatch thousands of British troops to Afghanistan has been put off as diplomats and Afghan leaders wrangle over the future of the country.

On Thursday, about 100 commandos from Britain's Special Boat Service flew into the Bagram air base and established a bridgehead at the sprawling airfield north of Kabul. Top British officials indicated that it was just the beginning of a substantial force that would provide security in areas the Taliban had abandoned.

But no sooner did the British forces arrive than the Northern Alliance indicated that they were not invited. The British commandos were allowed to stay. But the expected reinforcements have yet to be sent, transforming the troops from a vanguard to a lonely garrison, one that is being eyed suspiciously by the Afghans it was intended to help.

Alastair Campbell, Mr. Blair's director of communications, insisted that the British plans had not gone awry. But he acknowledged that the question of how to secure the peace had been caught up in the thorny issue of Afghanistan's future government.

"All these things are related," Mr. Campbell said in an interview. "Things are bound to look and feel a bit ragged for a time."

British and American officials sought to dispel reports that they had differences over the British plan. Still, the Bush administration was circumspect about London's plans for a stabilization force.

Asked if Washington believed that thousands of British forces were needed soon to stabilize the situation in northern Afghanistan, a State Department spokesman said only, "We appreciate the important role contributed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom in the campaign against terrorism."

The issue of security has been a difficult one for some time. The problem is not that there is no plan; rather it is that there is an abundance of them.

In recent weeks, there have been proposals for an all-Afghan security force. That is the favorite option of the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, but one which even Mr. Brahimi acknowledges is not practical in the short run. There has also been discussion of an all-Islamic security force, but little action to make it a reality.

Britain and France, for their part, clearly think that a substantial Western military presence is necessary to keep order, a view endorsed by some aid organizations nervous about operating in territory that is controlled by rival warlords or, in some cases, not controlled at all.

British officials say Mr. Blair would never have gone public with his proposal if it did not have the support of President Bush. Mr. Campbell said that Washington was in charge of the military strategy and that it was up to the United States to decide how and when to use the more than 4,000 British forces that London is offering for a security force. "There is not a delay or a hold," Mr. Campbell said. "What there is is a commitment by the British government being outlined."

Still, last week senior British officials indicated that a deployment was imminent. Clare Short, Britain's top official for international assistance, said on Thursday that the situation in Afghanistan was so urgent that British forces needed to start deploying there "in days."

That day, the British commandos moved into Bagram, a sprawling air base 22 miles north of Kabul, which was built by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan. The move raised expectations of a sizable British deployment but soon sputtered to a halt, confounding military experts and embarrassing the British government.

It was not clear whether the delay reflected a fundamental rethinking of the troops' mission or was simply a tactical adjustment that would allow issues to be settled about the post-Taliban government before international troops were deployed. While British officials say there was agreement at the highest levels of the British and American governments, Bush administration officials have not always spoken with one voice.

While a senior administration official said today that there would be some role for British and French forces in northern Afghanistan, a Pentagon official suggested last week that they might not be needed.

The Northern Alliance has made no secret of its concerns. It is plainly skeptical about the idea of a large international peacekeeping force, though it says there might be a role for foreign troops in providing relief assistance.

Critics say the alliance fears that a peacekeeping force might dilute its authority over the capital and therefore diminish its negotiating leverage with other anti-Taliban groups in the coming talks about the coalition that will govern Afghanistan. Alliance officials, however, insist that the issue is sovereignty and that Afghans are not eager to see the deployment of foreign troops on their soil.

Steven Evans, Britain's new representative in Afghanistan, said today that some headway was being made on the issue, but clearly tensions remain. "The indication is that progress is being made in discussions with the Northern Alliance, but you have to understand the alliance is not one coherent group," Mr. Evans said.

Haron Amin, the Northern Alliance's envoy to Washington, said that if international forces were to be deployed, their duties must be spelled out in advance and the move must be coordinated with the United Nations and the Northern Alliance.

If there is any confusion, he suggested, it was caused by the British who sent commandos to Bagram without advance notice. "Initially, they made a mistake which created some apprehension," he said.

------

Foreign Fighters in Kunduz Left Out of Surrender Talks

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/international/asia/20CND-KUNDUZ.html

TALIQAN, Afghanistan, Nov. 20 - Leaders of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance were poised to strike a deal today at the expense of thousands of foreign fighters trapped in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan.

The leaders began arriving tonight in Emam Sahib, a town about 30 miles north of here, for negotiations on the fate of the Taliban fighters in the besieged city. The Northern Alliance general in charge in northeastern Afghanistan, Daoud Khan, said thousands of Afghan Taliban soldiers in Kunduz appeared willing to surrender. A senior Taliban leader was said to be on his way to Mazar-i-Sharif to talk to commanders there.

But shut out of the talks are the non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban, thousands of men from Pakistan and other Muslim countries who retreated to Kunduz as the Northern Alliance rolled through northern Afghanistan. General Khan said the foreigners, who refugees say have executed hundreds of Afghan Taliban trying to surrender, are not even being told of the negotiations.

"We are not speaking for the foreigners," General Khan said at his headquarters here in Taliqan. "They have no part in the negotiations."

Today's developments raised the prospect of a bloody end to the siege of Kunduz, which began last week when the Northern Alliance cut off all roads leading out of the city. According to refugees, foreign Taliban fighters have vowed to fight to the death. They are apparently so distrustful of their Afghan counterparts that they have barred them from many parts of the city and the front lines.

The prospects for an evacuation seem slim. General Khan said he would consider allowing a United Nations-sponsored evacuation of the foreign fighters, but he has not asked for one. United Nations officials said today that they had been contacted by representatives of the Taliban about a possible evacuation, but these officials said they did not have the means to carry one out. They urged the forces surrounding the city to respect the conventions of war regarding humane treatment of the defeated.

Earlier this week, Red Cross officials scouring the battlefield outside Kabul found the bodies of 30 men, believed to be foreigners fighting for the Taliban, of whom at least half had apparently been executed.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ruled out any measure that would allow Kunduz's defenders to escape.

"It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan - the Al Qaeda and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban - if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts," he said. "It would be most unfortunate."

Northern Alliance commanders said they were not contemplating a plan in which turncoat Afghan Taliban soldiers inside Kunduz would attack the foreigners. But they reiterated their stark ultimatum to the foreigners: surrender for trial or die. "If they resist, I am sure they will be killed," General Khan said.

Hundreds more Afghan Taliban soldiers defected today to the Northern Alliance. At the same time, reports surfaced that the foreign Taliban fighters had killed Afghans trying to defect. Together, the defections and the reports of massacres conveyed an impression of near-chaos in the ranks of the Taliban in Kunduz.

Northern Alliance leaders said they would wait at least until the end of the week for the negotiations to play out; after that, they said, they would be ready to attack.

Foreigners have made up a large part of the Taliban's army since its inception in 1994. The foreign Taliban are considered to be among the most committed in the movement.

The Northern Alliance says some 20,000 Taliban troops are hunkered down in Kunduz, including as many as 6,000 foreigners. Pentagon officials estimate that about 3,000 Taliban troops are holed up in the city. By either estimate, Kunduz is one of the largest Taliban strongholds left in the country.

General Khan said many Afghan Taliban fighters trapped in Kunduz had asked for safe passage to Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, which is also under attack on all sides. He said he and his commanders were considering the request.

As the siege dragged on, there were signs of deepening division among the Taliban in Kunduz.

Overnight, two Afghan Taliban commanders walked across the front lines with about 350 of their troops, handed over their weapons and declared their allegiance to the Northern Alliance. The soldiers and commanders said that the defections were negotiated in secret, and that they came across at night to avoid being shot by foreign Taliban soldiers.

"We left very quietly," said Muhammad Israel, one of the Taliban commanders who came to Taliqan. "If we had left during the day, the foreigners would have killed us."

Commander Israel echoed reports here that foreign Taliban soldiers had carried out several killings of Afghan Taliban troops trying to defect. Refugees and Northern Alliance officials have said that foreign Taliban fighters have killed as many as 450 of their Afghan comrades. Refugees have also reported that more than three dozen young Uzbek and Tajik men were gunned down by foreign fighters who suspected they were trying to cross the front lines.

Northern Alliance commanders added another report to that list today. They said that on Monday, foreign fighters had killed 200 Afghan Taliban at Angurbagh, a village near the Kunduz airport, when the Afghans tried to cross the front lines.

None of the reports could be confirmed.

"All the Afghans are going to defect from the Taliban," said Abdullah Bashir, a Taliban soldier who defected this morning. "The Afghans are tired of fighting. We want to go home."

Indeed, the scene at General Khan's headquarters, where the defecting Taliban soldiers had gathered, seemed more like a homecoming than a place where erstwhile enemies faced off.

Commander Israel said that he and his men were sitting around a fire at sunset on Monday, breaking their Ramadan fast with bowls of chicken soup. They talked about it for a few moments, he said, and then decided it was time to go.

"I got on the radio, talked to General Daoud, and he sent some soldiers over to meet us," he said.

By his own reckoning, Commander Israel's decision to join the Taliban five years ago was made with no more deliberation than if he had been picking out a new turban.

"There was a man I was feuding with who was in the Northern Alliance at the time," he said, "So I decided to go with the Taliban."

Commander Israel said he never identified with the strict Islamic code of the Taliban, and never brutalized civilians the way they did. As an ethnic Tajik, he said he went easy on the locals, who were largely from his own ethnic group.

The locals in Taliqan seemed to sympathize. As the commander strolled around the general's courtyard, an old acquaintance, Nur Ahmed, walked up and embraced him.

"My friend," Mr. Ahmed said, wrapping his arms around Commander Israel. "How have you been?"

-------- biological weapons

Nerve gas find at camp

Tuesday November 20, 2001
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4302535,00.html

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network had been preparing terrorist attacks with the lethal sarin nerve gas before its infrastructure in Afghanistan was destroyed, according to a Spanish journalist who found phials marked as containing the gas at a camp outside Jalalabad.

El Mundo correspondent Julio Fuentes, who was last night reported dead after a convoy of journalists was attacked on the road to Kabul, found 300 of the phials at an abandoned al-Qaida base known as Farm Hada, 20 km south of Jalalabad.

His report, published yesterday, stated that they were in boxes of 10 which bore, in Russian cyrillic script, the words "SARIN/V-GAS". The phials were about seven centimetres long and contained a clear, yellowish liquid.

The Farm Hada base had been abandoned in a rush and was strewn with empty test tube racks, landmines, grenades and artillery shells.

Sarin gas was used by the Aum Supreme Truth cult in its attack on Tokyo's underground rail system in March 1995.

That attack killed 12 people and left nearly 1,000 ill.

----

THE INQUIRY
Investigators Liken Anthrax in Leahy Letter to That Sent to Daschle

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/politics/20INQU.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - A plastic bag holding the sealed letter sent to Senator Patrick J. Leahy was so contaminated that federal investigators strongly suspect that the anthrax is comparable to the highly refined material sent last month to Senator Tom Daschle, law enforcement officials said today.

Scientists for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in interviews today that a sample taken late last week from the bag showed the presence of 23,000 anthrax spores. This, the scientists said, was roughly three orders of magnitude more spores than found in samples from any of the other 600 bags of mail the bureau examined before isolating the letter to Senator Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

One F.B.I. microbiologist said that this number of spores equated to more than two lethal doses of inhalation anthrax - making the bag itself highly dangerous.

Law enforcement officials disclosed their findings today in a broad discussion of an intensive week's work that resulted in the discovery last Friday of the Leahy letter among some 280 barrels containing 600 plastic bags of quarantined, unopened mail destined for Capitol Hill and now stored in a warehouse outside Washington. The officials described how dozens of specially trained F.B.I. and Environmental Protection Agency officials sorted and sampled the bags and their contents, isolating those that tested positive for anthrax.

Postal investigators said the letter also provided clues about the route it followed in the postal system. Daniel Mihalko, a spokesman for the postal inspectors branch of the postal service, said tonight that an optical reader misread the hand-written 20510 ZIP code for the Capitol as 20520, which serves the State Department.

"The one was made in such a way with a serif on the bottom that it was read by the optical character reader as a 2," Mr. Mihalko said. He said the agency assumes the letter was sent to the State Department, which could explain how that agency's mail system became contaminated and a worker there contracted inhalation anthrax.

Until today, the F.B.I. had not even confirmed that the Leahy letter contained anthrax, let alone the possibility that the material was comparable to the Daschle letter's finely milled particles, which wafted through the air and spread quickly in the Hart Senate office building after the envelope was opened in the office of Senator Daschle, the Democratic leader, on Oct. 15.

In a statement issued today, the F.B.I. said that "from the outside, the Leahy letter appears virtually identical" to the Daschle letter.

One official called the effort that led to the discovery of the Leahy letter a "large and unique operation." He said it was based on a study plan, or protocol, specifically devised for a dangerous and new situation.

"We had no idea if we would get positive hits or if everything we tested would be hot," one scientist said.

"We had never done anything quite like this before," another official said.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. and the United States Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., have devised an elaborate new plan for analyzing the sealed Leahy letter - evidence that they consider the best clue yet as to who might have leveled the attack of anthrax-tainted letters against senators and news organizations.

The plan, which officials said was completed earlier today, is the result of intensive consultations among anthrax and forensics experts from throughout the world who quietly assembled in Washington this weekend to discuss how best to extract all the forensic clues from the Leahy letter.

Maj. Gen. John Parker, the commander of the Fort Detrick laboratory, said in an interview that the protocol was "coordinated' with the F.B.I. and "carefully plans the analysis of the newly discovered letter."

Both the Army laboratory and the F.B.I. are eager to avoid the lack of coordination that produced last month's conflicting assessments from two separate laboratories of the potency and characteristics of the Daschle anthrax.

Another law enforcement official said that scientists from the F.B.I. and the Fort Detrick laboratory would begin analyzing the Leahy letter "side by side" on Tuesday.

Though neither General Parker nor law enforcement officials would discuss the tests that were planned, some experts said the letter would certainly be closely checked for forensic evidence, like fingerprints or DNA, and its contents subjected to many of the same tests done on the anthrax sent to Senator Daschle.

"From a forensic standpoint," said a law enforcement official, the discovery of the sealed Leahy letter is "our best opportunity to date" to solve a case that has so far baffled investigators. At least 17 people have been infected with anthrax in either its inhalation or skin form; four people have died. An additional 30,000 people have been put on antibiotics.

Investigators today also reported finding trace amounts of anthrax in the mailroom of the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Prisons, said a spokeswoman, Traci Billingsley. The mail room has been sealed off, she said. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had detected "scant contamination."

During the seven-day search that ended with the discovery of the Leahy letter, about 6 of the 600 bags of mail were found to contain what officials said were moderately high concentrations of anthrax - from about 100 spores to 300 spores.

One bag had a huge anthrax spore count compared with the others. Investigators carefully carried the bag to a specially enclosed room and emptied the letters into a closed biological safety cabinet kept clean by air flows and special seals.

An official said that the investigators worked in teams of two: a "clean" investigator who did not handle contaminated material and a "dirty" investigator who handled the bags and contaminated letters.

It was about 5 p.m. on Friday when an agent found the letter. It was encased in plastic tape.

An F.B.I. microbiologist who was standing outside the room looking in through a window recalled the scene. "I saw someone's hands go up in the air," he said. He was unable to hear any words from the agent, who was wearing a respirator. "They were looking for a letter that looked just like the others, and there it was."

After the discovery of the contaminated letter to Mr. Daschle on Oct. 15, the mail to Capitol Hill had been set aside in the plastic bags that were then packed into 286 drums. At an undisclosed site, F.B.I. agents and Environmental Protection Agency employees constructed a large room sealed in plastic to handle potentially contaminated material.

The air flow into and out of the room was filtered and carefully monitored. Outside the work floor was a decontamination area kept free of microbes. Each investigator involved in the search for the letter was offered antibiotics. Those who worked in the "hot zone" were required to take them. Their clothing was checked for anthrax when they left the work area.

The tests progressed slowly. Investigators cut a small hole in each plastic bag, swabbing the inside to locate anthrax spores. The initial testing turned up the roughly six bags that showed traces of anthrax.

"We took all the bags we considered hot and narrowed it down," the official said.

"This was a large operation," said one official, "the largest hazardous material investigation of its kind in the F.B.I.'s history."

---

THE DISEASE
Connecticut Woman Has Inhalation Anthrax

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Connecticut.html

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- An elderly woman who lives on her own in the farm country of southwestern Connecticut has inhalation anthrax, according to initial test results disclosed Tuesday.

The patient, who is in her 90s, was hospitalized in critical condition, Gov. John Rowland said. He said more test results were pending and there was no indication of a criminal act.

The woman tested positive for the more deadly inhaled form of the disease in five separate tests conducted by the Department of Public Health and Griffin Hospital in Derby, Rowland said.

More tests were being conducted by experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Results are expected Wednesday.

``Testing by the CDC could prove negative,'' Rowland said.

Rowland said the woman lives in Oxford, a rural community of about 9,800 people 30 miles southwest of Hartford. She was originally treated for pneumonia and admitted Friday to the Derby hospital after being brought in by a family member, said the hospital's president, Patrick Charmel.

``It's difficult to explain how the person contracted anthrax,'' Rowland said. ``There is no evidence they contracted the disease as a result of a criminal act.''

The FBI and state police have secured the woman's home and are conducting a criminal investigation, Rowland said. The woman lives by herself and has a limited routine.

Nationwide, four people have died and 13 have been sickened by anthrax since early October. It's the first case of inhaled anthrax since a New York City hospital employee died Oct. 31.

Joxel Garcia, the state health commissioner, said the state received positive tests from the hospital Monday and immediately began conducting its own investigation.

Rowland said there was no indication the woman is related to any government official or had any public activity that would cause her to be a target of terrorism.

``I continue to say that Connecticut has never been a (target) of attack from any terrorist,'' Rowland said. ``We still can't determine it's a terrorist attack. It could be an accident.''

Still, Derby Mayor Marc Garofalo said the city sent its emergency response team to the hospital immediately after he learned of the case Tuesday evening.

``We want to assure the public that the city and all its resources are standing by,'' he said.

------

Crackdown on Bioterror Claims
FTC Warns Operators of Sites Selling Dietary Supplements

Washington Post
By Bill Brubaker Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page E11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55734-2001Nov19?language=printer

The Federal Trade Commission yesterday warned about 40 operators of Web sites to stop making what it called false claims that dietary supplements can prevent, treat or cure anthrax, smallpox and other health hazards.

The warnings followed a massive "Internet surf" by the FTC, Food and Drug Administration and state attorneys general in more than 30 states, including Maryland and Virginia.

J. Howard Beales III, the FTC's director of consumer protection, said the probe found more than 200 Web sites marketing bioterrorism-related products, including gas masks, protective suits, mail sterilizers, homeopathic remedies and biohazard test kits, in addition to dietary supplements.

"We started right after September 11, both monitoring complaints and organizing a surf of the Internet to look for all the different ways people might try to take advantage of the September 11 tragedy to make money," Beales said in an interview.

"We found claims that a variety of dietary supplements like colloidal silver or zinc mineral water or oregano oil would be remedies for anthrax or other biological agents. So far as we know there's no scientific evidence whatsoever that even suggests those kinds of claims might be true."

The FTC announcement, which does not identify any Web sties, came four days after the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered three publicly traded companies to stop issuing false press releases "to exploit the public's anxiety over bioterrorism."

One Florida company made false claims that it had technologies capable of killing anthrax in mail and packages, the SEC said. The company also promoted a purported remedy for anthrax contamination of food, water and mail.

In e-mails sent out yesterday, the FTC instructed about 40 site operators to remove misleading claims from the Web.

"We're going to follow up," Beales said. "We asked them for a response telling us what they did within seven days. We will look to see how the sites have changed. And if they haven't changed we'll take law enforcement action."

Web sites are subject to state or federal prosecution for making false marketing claims, he said.

Beales recalled a recent FTC case against an Internet company touting colloidal silver, a dietary supplement. At the time, the company claimed it was a "cure-all . . . for 650 different diseases," he said.

"After September 11, it was 651."

The FTC said five trade associations representing the dietary-supplement industry support the government contention that "there is no scientific basis for the promotion of dietary supplements as a treatment for anthrax."

----

U.S. sees Saddam as priority, cites biological weapons

By Alexander G. Higgins
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 20, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011120-70377512.htm

GENEVA - The United States yesterday said Saddam Hussein's drive to develop offensive biological weapons was "beyond dispute," laying out a case that could make Iraq the next front in President Bush's global war on terrorism.

"The United States strongly suspects that Iraq has taken advantage of three years of no U.N. inspections to improve all phases of its offensive biological weapons program," said Mr. Bolton, who was in Geneva for an international conference to review a proposed treaty on biological weapons. "The existence of Iraq's program is beyond dispute."

In addition to Iraq, Mr. Bolton said Washington strongly suspects that North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan also are seeking to develop germ-warfare programs.

But he refused to say whether any of the named states have assisted Afghanistan-based Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in his reported quest for biological weapons.

Mr. Bolton's comments were the latest in an escalating series of remarks recently by senior Bush administration officials singling out Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The administration has been internally divided over whether to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, on Sunday left open the possibility that Iraq could become a target in Mr. Bush's war on terrorism.

"We do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that [Saddam Hussein] is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction," she said.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, lumped Iraq with bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization as critical to the international network of "terrorist-sponsoring states."

"There is no question but that there has been a good deal of interaction" among these groups, Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told the official INA news agency yesterday that Iraq "was capable of standing up to the challenges posed by the United States in a bid to undermine [Iraq´s] security and weaken its resolve."

The Iraqi newspaper Babel, which is run by Saddam's elder son Uday, said that the failure so far of the U.S.-led campaign to capture bin Laden increased the chances Washington would go after Iraq.

Iraq "will be the focus of attention of the U.S. administration, as will be Syria, Somalia and Sudan," the paper theorized.

In Geneva, Mr. Bolton told the 144 nations that have signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention that the United States finds North Korea's biological weapons program "extremely disturbing."

He said the United States believes that North Korea has a dedicated, national-level effort to achieve a biological weapons capability and that it has "developed and produced and may have weaponized" biological agents.

He also said the United States was "quite concerned" about Iran, Libya, Syria and Sudan, all of which appeared to have biological weapons programs.

Mr. Bolton said the United States knows "that Osama bin Laden considers obtaining weapons of mass destruction to be a sacred duty and wants to use them against the United States."

"We are concerned that he could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state," he added.

But he said the United States was "not prepared to comment whether rogue states may have assisted" bin Laden in the plan.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Iranian ambassador to the conference, said the accusation that his country was developing biological weapons is "unjustified and baseless."

The United States, which has rejected a legally binding inspection plan under the treaty, said it would rather set up a mechanism under which the U.N. secretary-general would order inspections when violations are suspected.

Other countries, including Japan, said the binding commitment is necessary if the treaty is to be effective.

American officials in July rejected more than six years of negotiations on enforcement measures of the 1972 treaty, arguing they were ineffective.

Mr. Bolton was speaking at the start of a three-week meeting in Geneva planned as a review of the agreement. He was presenting to other countries the new U.S. approach since the United States has come under an anthrax attack.

The emergence of anthrax-tainted letters in the United States in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attack has thrust the issue of biological warfare into the spotlight.

Mr. Bush has demanded that all 144 countries that have signed the treaty enact "strict national criminal legislation" against violations of the treaty and apply strict extradition requirements.

----

U.S. fingers Iran, Iraq as germ warfare talks begin

Tuesday, November 20, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11202001/reu_germ_45626.asp

GENEVA--Washington accused Iraq, North Korea and probably Iran on Monday of violating a ban on biological weapons at the start of a conference designed to beef up an international treaty outlawing germ warfare.

With the United States reeling from anthrax attacks that followed the September 11 plane hijackings, John Bolton, U.S. Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, said the first step was to ensure existing rules were obeyed.

"I plan to name names. Prior to September 11, some would have avoided this approach. The world has changed, however, and so must our business-as-usual approach," he told the opening session of the three-week conference.

Besides the three countries -- all signatories of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) -- Bolton said that Syria and Libya might also be in a position to produce small quantities of germ weapons, while Sudan had expressed strong interest in developing a program.

Syria and Sudan have not signed the 30-year-old pact.

The fifth review conference of the Convention had been due to examine a proposed new protocol intended to make it easier to verify whether states were cheating on the treaty, which prohibits the making or stockpiling of biological weapons.

Arms control treaties of the 1990s banning chemical arms and underground nuclear tests have strict inspection regimes, but the biological weapons pact lacks any verification mechanism.

But the United States rejected the plan at a preparatory meeting in July, arguing that it would have opened its military and industrial research centers to prying foreign eyes while not giving guarantees that other nations were playing by the rules.

Although the United States was heavily criticized for blocking the protocol, the result of more than five years of negotiations, Bolton said the plan would have been ineffective.

"Countries that joined the BWC and then ignored their commitments and certain non-state actors would never have been hampered by the protocol," he said.

CONCERNED ABOUT IRAN

Bolton said Iraq had "developed, produced and stockpiled biological warfare agents and weapons" despite signing the treaty.

"We are also quite concerned about Iran, which the United States believes probably has produced and weaponized BW (biological weapons) agents in violation of the Convention," he added.

Washington has made alternative proposals for tightening the Convention, including a call to member states to impose severe penalties on anybody involved in violating the treaty. It also wants extradition to be made easier.

Other measures would involve empowering the United Nations secretary-general to order inspections of sites when there is suspicion that the treaty may have been broken.

But conference sources said the charges against Iran and the others -- all of which deny them -- could harden attitudes at the meeting, making it more difficult to seal an accord on further action against the menace of germ weaponry.

First-day speakers, including China, Russia and Canada, stressed their support for a multilateral, legally binding treaty commitment rather than the individualist approach favored by the United States.

Some non-governmental organizations accuse Washington of yielding to its bio-technology industry which feared intrusive inspections be used to poach industrial secrets.

In a message to the conference, U.N. chief Kofi Annan said that the September suicide plane attacks in the United States and the discovery of anthrax in U.S. mail highlighted the need for an accord to make the anti-germ warfare rules stronger.

Four people have died of anthrax in the U.S. scare.

-------- business

War Boosts Popularity Of Satellite Telephones

By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55317-2001Nov19?language=printer

Ismael Khan, a Northern Alliance commander who heads an army of 4,000, was preparing to dislodge a group of Taliban fighters from the strategically important city of Herat last week when his satellite phone rang. It was a journalist calling, wanting to confirm a rumor that Kahn was about to enter the city.

Three minutes later, the Reuters reporter posted his scoop that Kahn, also known as "the Lion of Herat," was set to retake his hometown.

Andrew Marshall, a Reuters staff writer who roams some of the world's most remote regions for the wire service, said a new generation of relatively small, lightweight satellite phones has allowed him to report stories in ways that would have been too cumbersome to manage just five years ago.

"In the days before [handheld] satellite phones, Afghanistan would have been a black hole for news," Marshall said.

Stories of such successes are drawing new interest to an industry better known for its bankruptcies than its technological successes. Long considered an expensive, bulky alternative to land-based wireless service, satellite phones are enjoying something of a renaissance since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 and amid the war that followed.

Satellite phone retailers report a sharp uptick in business from journalists and humanitarian groups preparing to travel to Afghanistan. They also are hearing from local governments that want to establish a backup to local wired and wireless networks, after seeing those systems get damaged or clogged with calls during and immediately after the attacks. The military was already one of the satellite phone industry's biggest customers.

But analysts say it is far too early to tell whether the new demand for satellite phones will rescue an industry buffeted by financial troubles.

Just last week, Globalstar LP, one of the two main providers of handheld satellite phones, announced it would be filing for bankruptcy protection after struggling for months to restructure debt related to its $3.3 billion in start-up costs. Its main rival, Iridium Satellite LLC, had to shut down commercial service for a year. It emerged from bankruptcy last year after a group of investors acquired assets once valued at $5.5 billion for just $25 million.

Hershel Shosteck, a Wheaton-based industry analyst, said the financial difficulties suffered by Iridium and other companies were caused by a classic case of "tech-tosterone," a term he uses for investors and engineers who allow their new technology to get ahead of their business models.

Early backers, including established players such as Motorola Inc., failed a decade ago to anticipate how popular cellular phones would become by the end of the 20th century, according to Shosteck. Widespread deployment of less expensive and more reliable mobile phone service to all but the most remote and undeveloped areas of the world has left companies such as Iridium and Globalstar with a core customer base of only about 80,000 people, Shosteck estimated.

Gino Picasso, Iridium's chief executive, said the Arlington-based company needs at least 60,000 customers to break even; the previous owners once predicted they would sign up 500,000 subscribers in their first year. Picasso declined to disclose how many customers Iridium had lined up so far, but said there should be more than enough demand for the service.

"I can hardly believe we can't find 60,000 people on a worldwide basis," Picasso said.

A company based in the United Arab Emirates, Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Co., competes for customers throughout the Middle East and Asia. Competition for customers worldwide will grow more heated in 2003 when ICO Global Communications, another handheld-satellite-phone company, launches its service.

Satellite phones are not priced to compete directly with regular mobile phones. Individual units, which are slightly smaller than World War II-era walkie- talkies, are priced at more than $1,000 and airtime can cost as much as $1.49 per minute. Monthly bills can add up to several thousand dollars. For advanced services, which include the transmission of video and sound, fees are often more than $7 a minute, generating monthly charges of up to $40,000.

Despite the costs, the technology is alluring to certain global travelers and others who work in isolated areas beyond the reach of traditional telephone networks.

The satellite phone first gained popularity during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when some broadcasters stationed in Kuwait used them to send words and pictures home. Since then, satellite kits capable of sending text, sound and video have shrank from the size of a steamer trunk to the dimensions of a laptop computer. Globalstar and Iridium offer handsets that are even smaller.

One of the reasons Iridium and Globalstar can offer smaller handsets is that the satellites the phones must reach are much closer to Earth than in previous systems. The two companies maintain constellations of dozens of satellites orbiting the planet several times a day at an altitude of less than a 1,000 miles.

The original satellite phones had to be larger because they needed to send calls to satellites 22,000 miles above the planet. With the old system, there was also a longer delay between when a call was sent and when it was received, because of the greater distance the data had to travel.

An Inmarsat phone is about the size of a laptop computer, but it is capable of transmiting a higher volume of data -- even moving video images -- making it a more desireable option for television broadcasters and others.

For some world travelers, the low-orbit system of Iridium and Globalstar has proved to be problematic.

J. Michael Fay carried an Iridium phone during his 1,200-mile trek across central Africa for the National Geographic Society. It turned out the phone had difficulty picking up a signal through thick forest canopy. Iridium's service, like others, depends on a line-of-sight connection between the phone and the satellite, making any obstructions a potential problem. Indoor conversations would be difficult enough but Fay found that the satellites would pass by small holes in the foliage so quickly that even outdoors he was limited to conversations of just a few minutes -- or none at all.

Fortunately for Fay, his porters carried a more powerful Inmarsat system as a backup. Fay's sleek Iridium phone is now on display at the National Geographic Society's exhibition hall with an accompanying explanation that it stopped working partway through the trek.

In addition to land-based subscribers, both Iridium and Globalstar plan to branch out into the nautical market dominated by Inmarsat. Globalstar recently announced a contract to put a phone on each ship in the Italian navy and Iridium unveiled a new device that can provide service on airplanes.

Shosteck and other analysts say the companies have about seven years to build a money-making business before it is time to launch a second generation of satellites.

But business is going to have to improve quite a bit for satellite phone retailers such as Jim McKinley, the owner of Nashville-based Outfitters Satellite Inc.

Until Sept. 11, most of McKinley's customers were bush pilots, missionaries and a few wealthy executives heading out on exotic fishing trips or safaris. But since the terrorist attacks in the United States, McKinley has been signing up about 100 new customers a month -- almost a 75 percent increase in business.

McKinley is pleased with the business, but he has his doubts about satellite phones becoming widely accepted, largely because of their higher operating expense compared with regular cellular phones.

"You would not be using one if you have any choice," McKinley said.

-------- drug war

Connecticut

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Bridgeport - A federal appeals court has rejected a bid by two brothers serving time for the double murder of a boy and his mother to overturn their convictions for drug trafficking. Adrian and Russell Peeler Jr. were also convicted of state charges stemming from the ambush killings. The 8-year-old boy was to have testified against Russell Peeler in a murder trial.

-------- india / pakistan

India Says Pakistan Remains 'Source of Terrorism'

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-india-pakistan.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India accused Pakistan on Tuesday of being the main ``source of terrorism'' on its soil and said there had been no change in the attitude of its nuclear foe despite the global war on terrorism.

Home (interior) Minister L.K. Advani told parliament the world must start realizing India's concerns about Pakistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

``We've driven home the point that so far as India is concerned, our western neighbor (Pakistan) has been the principle source of terrorism,'' he said.

``Despite Pakistan considering itself to be part of the international coalition (against terrorism), there's no change in its attitude toward India or Jammu and Kashmir (state),'' he said.

India accuses Pakistan of fomenting the 12-year-old bloody revolt against its rule in the northern Muslim-majority state, and has sought sanctions on countries that sponsor terrorism.

Islamabad says it gives only moral, not military aid, to guerrillas in Kashmir which is claimed by both countries.

At the same time Advani reiterated that India had no plans to attack across the military cease-fire dividing the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.

He said Indian soldiers did not cross the border known as the Line of Control (LoC) even during the conflict on the peaks of the Kargil district in Kashmir that nearly tipped the two countries into war two years ago.

``When Kargil was happening, the government was under pressure to retaliate by going across the Line of Control,'' he said.

``The government...thought without crossing the LoC we will prevail. We succeeded then. I believe now also without doing anything more we'll win this war against terrorism.''

At the same time, he said, he was aware of pressures for India to take action, noting that more Indian soldiers ``have died in this proxy war than in three wars with Pakistan.''

Advani said there had been no fall in guerrilla violence in Kashmir since September 11 but said security forces had scored big successes in recent months in combating militants.

He also said that there was a possibility more Muslim fighters may enter Kashmir from Pakistan as the Taliban regime crumbles in Afghanistan under the U.S.-led military onslaught.

---

Today's News Quiz

November 20, 2001
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/20FRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW DELHI -- So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time's up - you lose.

Answer: India. That's right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia. Which brings up another question that I've been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don't hear about Indian Muslims - who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land - blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?

Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.

"I'll give you a quiz question: Which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India," remarked M. J. Akbar, the Muslim editor of Asian Age, a national Indian English-language daily funded by non-Muslim Indians. "I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for the economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That's why a growing Muslim middle class here is moving up and, generally, doesn't manifest the strands of deep anger you find in many non-democratic Muslim states."

In other words, for all the talk about Islam and Islamic rage, the real issue is: Islam in what context? Where Islam is imbedded in authoritarian societies it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest, because religion and the mosque are the only places people can organize against autocratic leaders. And when those leaders are seen as being propped up by America, America also becomes the target of Muslim rage.

But where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India's presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India's supreme court. The architect of India's missile program, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim. The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi's biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban in Kandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs.

Followed Bangladesh lately? It has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. Over the last 10 years, though, without the world noticing, Bangladesh has had three democratic transfers of power, in two of which - are you ready? - Muslim women were elected prime ministers. Result: All the economic and social indicators in Bangladesh have been pointing upward lately, and Bangladeshis are not preoccupied hating America. Meanwhile in Pakistan, trapped in the circle of bin Ladenism - military dictatorship, poverty and anti-modernist Islamic schools, all reinforcing each other - the social indicators are all pointing down and hostility to America is rife.

Hello? Hello? There's a message here: It's democracy, stupid! Those who argue that we needn't press for democracy in Arab-Muslim states, and can rely on repressive regimes, have it all wrong. If we cut off every other avenue for non-revolutionary social change, pressure for change will burst out anyway - as Muslim rage and anti-Americanism.

If America wants to break the bin Laden circles across the Arab-Muslim world, then, "it needs to find role models that are succeeding as pluralistic, democratic, modernizing societies, like India - which is constantly being challenged by religious extremists of all hues - and support them," argues Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper.

So true. For Muslim societies to achieve their full potential today, democracy may not be sufficient, but it sure is necessary. And we, and they, fool ourselves to think otherwise.

-------- israel

Pressing for a Mideast Cease-Fire

New York Times
November 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/20TUE1.html

Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a timely new initiative yesterday to revive stalled Middle East peace efforts. Greater American activism is justified by the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to move forward on their own and by the changed international conditions created by the war against terrorism. While obstacles to progress are daunting, strong engagement by the Bush administration can help overcome them.

As President Bush did earlier this month, Mr. Powell held out the vision of an eventual state of Palestine living peacefully alongside Israel. He bluntly reminded Palestinian leaders, however, that movement toward such a peace could proceed only if Israelis were able to live their lives free of terrorism as well as war. Reinforcing this point, he called on Yasir Arafat to produce not just declarations but actions to prevent attacks against Israelis and prosecute those responsible for them.

The practical path back to the negotiating table was outlined earlier this year by a commission headed by former Senator George Mitchell. It outlined steps both sides needed to take, including stronger Palestinian moves against violence and an end to all new Israeli settlement activity. These proposals were broadly accepted by both sides and remain the central element of American policy.

Little has come of them because of the inability to achieve a lasting cease-fire. Both sides are responsible for this failure, though Mr. Arafat's failures have been the more egregious. He has repeatedly issued calls for ending the violence and then has either failed to back them up with actions or has undermined them with inflammatory rhetoric. In recent weeks he has once again indicated that he is ready to make a real effort to rein in Palestinian terrorist groups. These suggestions should be tested, as Mr. Powell is now about to do.

Washington's top Mideast diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, will soon begin consultations with Israelis and Palestinian leaders. In addition, Mr. Powell has appointed Gen. Anthony Zinni, who recently retired as American military commander in the region, to be his special envoy charged with helping the two sides achieve a cease- fire. Mr. Powell put it well yesterday when he said: "Get that cease-fire in place and other things can start to happen. Without that cease-fire, we are still trapped in the quicksand of hatred."

The Bush administration initially sought to minimize American involvement in the Mideast conflict. It began moving away from that unrealistic position before Sept. 11, as the threat of uncontrolled violence and regional war increased. Since then, the war against terrorism has given Washington added incentive to play a more active role in Mideast diplomacy. Some worry that Israel could be asked to sacrifice legitimate security interests to the needs of the antiterror coalition. Mr. Powell's words provide reassurance it will not.

-------- propaganda

WORLD - Are Americans getting the full picture?

November 18, 2001,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/18/world/world2.html
Photo: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/18/graphics/wld_horses.jpg

A picture released by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shows special forces troops riding mules alongside Northern Alliance militiamen (fourth and sixth from right). Critics claim the US press has become too reliant on information from official sources, such as photos of special operations and air attacks. Photo: AFP

Jingoistic, sugar-coated, superficial - those are just some of the criticisms levelled at US television networks' coverage of the conflict in Afghanistan in recent days - and not just by the foreign competition.

Columnists for newspapers as diverse as the conservative Wall Street Journal and the liberal New York Times have deplored what they describe as the networks' shallow and soft-focus reporting.

The Journal's Tunku Varadarajan has attacked the superficial analysis offered by CNN's "parachute" journalists, while the Times' Caryn James lamented US television's knee-jerk pandering to the public mood.

Weighing into the US cable stations and networks for their "myopic view", James criticised editors for caving into patriotism "rather than informing viewers of the complex, sometimes harsh realities they need to know".

"If a priority of America's war on terror is holding a global coalition together, it helps to know, without sugar-coating, what the rest of the globe is thinking," she wrote.

At a media industry conference this week in Barcelona, Spain, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC's) news chief said he was startled by the contrast between US and European small-screen coverage of the 40-day-old war.

"It's like watching two different wars," said Tony Burman, executive director of Canada's national public broadcaster.

"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has focused very much on the humanitarian issues in the region ... the human dimension", while NBC, ABC and CBS had anchored their reports "almost exclusively" around Pentagon briefings, he explained.

"There seems to be a real reluctance on the part of the US television media to dwell on the human impact," he said.

Burman also noted that the "uncritical, hyper-patriotic" reporting differed remarkably little between the three national networks, who he felt were all toeing the administration line.

"They're in lockstep with the administration ... and there's no distinction between the networks, which is unusual in a competitive environment."

Bill Wheatley, vice president of NBC News, brushed aside the accusations.

"(Our) coverage of the war isn't slanted in any way," he said. "Our focus, quite properly, has been on the American war effort and that's what our viewers expect."

US television coverage needed to be seen in the context of September 11 and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon which claimed some 4,500 lives, he pointed out.

As for objectivity and balance: "We haven't shied away from dealing with the fact that there has been collateral damage ... and not everything in the war has gone well," said Wheatley.

Nevertheless, some dissatisfied viewers are turning to foreign media, notably the BBC, the CBC and Qatar-based Arabic channel Al-Jazeera for their information.

One of those is Claire Namenko, a 53-year-old antiques dealer, who lives in Detroit, Michigan, a city not far from the US-Canadian border where many Americans can receive Canadian channels that carry CBC programming.

"It's more complete ... more objective," she said, explaining her preference for the CBC.

"You hear more about what the rest of the world thinks about the war, and you get fewer soundbites from US officials."

There's no way to judge whether the US audience for the CBC or BBC has increased since September 11, because neither channel qualifies for ratings in the US.

But both broadcasters claim to have picked up viewers, around September 11 and then again with the beginning of the US-led air campaign against Afghanistan.

Another 26 small US channels have signed up for BBC's daily half-hour news program since September 11, and the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, is selling its war expertise in an advertising campaign featured in Newsweek, Time and the New York Times magazine among others, according to BBC Worldwide spokesman Josh Weinberg.

The message?

"There are 191 countries in the world. How many does your news cover?"

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

Delaware

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

St. Georges - State officials and the Army Corps of Engineers have agreed on plans to remove lead from contaminated properties near the St. Georges Bridge. Analysis of soil samples from 73 homes showed 37 properties had lead levels exceeding federal and state safety standards. Corps officials said they're acting with urgency but don't consider it a crisis.

---

Support overwhelms Adopt-A-Sailor program

USA Today
11/20/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/adopt.htm

NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (AP) - So many families were hungry to play host to Navy recruits for Thanksgiving dinner that the Adopt-a-Sailor program ran out of seamen and had to close two days early. "It was like Ticketmaster at playoff time," said Lt. Cmdr. John Wallach, spokesman for the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, about 35 miles north of Chicago. Even though the Navy stopped taking applications last Wednesday, volunteers continued calling and sending e-mails.

The response is unparalleled in the more than 50 years of the program, said Lt. Brian Nowak of the Recruit Training Command.

"We think recent events have prompted people to make the requests," he said.

The 4,142 eligible recruits will have Thanksgiving dinner with families or in large groups at VFWs, American Legion posts and businesses.

Olga and Jim Ward won assignment of two sailors for dinner, but it took them two days of calling jammed telephone lines.

"We want to show our appreciation to these men and women," Olga Ward said. "They should know that what they're doing is a big deal, especially now."

To be eligible to leave for Thanksgiving dinner, recruits are required to have finished at least half of their nine-week training.

"It feels good to have people taking care of you. I'm very excited about it," said Seaman Recruit Johana Saavedra, 23, of New York City. "I think it's going to be great to meet new people and get to know people from Chicago."

---

22,000 feet above NYC, F-16s keep wary eye out

USA Today
11/20/2001
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovtue.htm

OVER MANHATTAN - Lt. Col. Brian "Spyder" Webster banks his F-16 fighter jet into a left turn and dips the wing slightly to give a clearer view of the city below. "You see that big, empty space in Manhattan, where there's nothing there?" he says as a trace of bitterness slips through over the roar of the jet's engine. "That's where the World Trade Center was." From that distance, the spot looks like a gaping hole amid the skyscrapers. Webster, a member of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, is a vital part of America's new reality. He is flying patrol as part of Operation Noble Eagle, the federal government's effort to protect the homeland in its war on terrorism.

I'm sitting behind him, getting an up-close look at one of the pilots charged with keeping our skies safe, and at the awesome $20 million machine he uses. Webster, who's also an American Airlines pilot, is one of about 35,000 guardsmen and reservists mobilized since Sept. 11 to defend the homeland. His job is to fly air sovereignty missions for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.

This is his job. But it's personal, too.

Webster was close friends with the captain and three crewmembers of the hijacked American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon. "I would be doing this regardless," he says. "But that adds meaning to what I'm doing."

What he's doing this afternoon, along with two other fully armed F-16s from his unit, is patrolling the skies over New York. For the next 4 hours, they will check out potential threats around the city and be available for instant response to any emergency.

They would respond, for instance, if terrorists hijack another passenger aircraft and try to use it as a missile. Webster knows he could be ordered to shoot down a commercial airliner, possibly even one being flown by someone he knows.

Could he do it? Yes, he says, but only because he knows the order would come after higher-ups had determined for certain that the plane poses a threat. "You have to do what you have to do," says Webster, 47.

F-16 pilots on NORAD missions usually fly alone. Journalists are being invited along on some flights in two-seater training jets to give the public a sense of how the military is guarding the homeland.

It can be jarring for non-pilots. As we hurtle down the runway at the Atlantic City, N.J. airport, Webster calls out our speed: "100 knots ... Leveling off at 250 knots ... 300 ... 350 ... 400 ... Here we go!"

We climb almost straight up into a crystal blue sky, leaving the ground with a breathtaking whoosh that plasters us against the seatbacks and activates our anti-gravity suits.

We leap from the runway to 7,000 feet in about 14 seconds. Think of the most daunting roller coaster ride you've ever taken, multiply that by 10, and you get an inkling of what takeoff was like.

Just as we reach the top of that climb, Webster spins the jet into a half-roll - turning the plane 180 degrees so we were upside down - and then spins it back. This is to maintain positive G-forces for blood circulation.

"You OK there?" he asks.

"Yep," I lie. My stomach is doing somersaults. I had wisely not eaten or drunk anything in over 8 hours, but I still worried I would need both of the air sickness bags they had given me.

Shortly after reaching 7,000 feet, we join the other two F-16s that took off before us. The mission commander, Maj. Terry "Blaster" Ford, 41, orders a safety check. He flies his jet beneath that of First Lt. Al "Moe" Danza, 30, and then they reverse positions. They do that "to make sure everything they took off with is still there," Webster says.

After making a wide vector over the ocean to avoid other air traffic, we reach speeds of .9 Mach on the way from Atlantic City, where the 177th is based, to New York, Webster says. "That's .9 times the speed of sound," or more than 600 mph.

Now, we're making a 30-mile loop over New York City, 22,000 feet up. Webster explains fighters are assigned a block of airspace over the city and have to stay in it to avoid other aircraft.

"We're here in the event they need us," he says. "Our reaction time is immediate. It's not like when you're on alert, and you have to go out, get in an airplane, start up, taxi out and take off. We're already up, and as a result, we can respond to anything we need to."

People on the ground are often unaware of the F-16s' presence high above. Depending on cloud cover and the jets' altitude, it is sometimes possible to "catch a glimpse or maybe hear one," says an Air National Guard spokesman.

Looking inward for threat

Air National Guard pilots from units across the nation are flying similar missions every day, on guard against potential threats to the continental USA. Pilots in F-15s and F-16s fly patterns 24-7 over New York and Washington, and randomly over about a dozen other urban areas.

They operate under NORAD, the nation's air defense command housed in the granite depths of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Its radars encircle North America, facing away from the continent. After all, aircraft taking off from the USA or Canada would be considered friendly.

"In the past, we were looking outward for threats, whether it was Soviet bear bombers, the equivalent of our B-52s, or nuclear-capable bombers that can fly anywhere in the world," says Lt. Brian Patton, a spokesman for the 177th Fighter Wing. "We were always looking outward. Now, we're thinking of something from within that could be a threat."

After Sept. 11, the military deployed mobile radars to look at the United States and Canada.

The 177th Fighter Wing, which dates back to 1917, is assigned 1,025 personnel and a budget this year of $39.6 million. The unit has 17 F-16Cs assigned to missions over New York and Washington, Patton says. The jets are capable of speeds over Mach 2 - about 1,500 miles per hour.

About an hour after the Sept. 11 attacks, the 177th got orders to send up F-16s. "It took about 90 minutes to get airplanes armed and in the air," says Lt. Col. Roger Pharo, another unit spokesman. "Citizen-airmen just started coming in on their own. Normally, there are about 300 full-time people here. By the end of that day, we had 600 people here."

Since then, pilots from the unit - whose motto is "To fly, to fight, to win" - have flown more than 550 combat air patrol missions over New York and Washington.

Sanitizing the airspace

I'm strapped and buckled into a narrow space crammed full of levers, knobs and dials. I'm wearing a helmet with a shaded visor and an oxygen mask. I'm also wearing earplugs, a torso harness that connects me to my seat and parachute, gloves, a borrowed flight suit and boots, and an anti-gravity suit over the lower half of my body.

The anti-gravity suit, which resembles a pair of olive green chaps, belts at the waist and encircles the legs. Its purpose is to prevent blood from draining from the head and upper body into the lower extremities. This could cause a pilot to pass out.

The anti-gravity suit contains a sensor triggered by sensors in the jet. It inflates when the jet reaches 2 Gs, inflicting twice the force of gravity onto a human body. The suit then squeezes the legs and thighs much like the inflatable cuff used to test your blood pressure.

Capt. Ronald Frank, one of two flight surgeons at the 177th, explains all this while he gives me a pre-flight physical. After I fill out a questionnaire, he checks my eyes, ears, blood pressure, lungs and heart. Then he warns me about spatial disorientation and motion sickness. He teaches me how to tense my leg and thigh muscles to force blood upward in case the anti-gravity suit fails.

"I'm just letting you know the worst-case scenario," he says.

Worst-case scenarios are Jason Gioconda's specialty. He's a staff sergeant at the 177th, and his job is survival training. He teaches pilots how to get out of jets when things go badly and how to improve their chances of staying alive if they do.

Gioconda, 25, from nearby Absecon, N.J., spends about 3 hours - part of it in a simulator - teaching me everything from climbing into the F-16 to untangling parachute lines to climbing into a life raft if we bail out over water.

It seems a lot to learn so quickly. But then Gioconda tells me how to pull the "eject" lever. That really focuses the mind. For the rest of my life, I'll remember: Grasp the handle with both hands, keeping the elbows tucked close to the body, and lift by bending the elbows.

Gioconda reassures me that the pilots of the 177th almost never have to eject. "We've lost just six since 1966," he says.

Once he's satisfied that I could probably get out of the jet without destroying it or myself, Webster and I join Ford and Danza for a mission briefing. Ford explains that the mission today is to "sanitize," or patrol, the airspace over New York. "Hopefully, this is just going to be a boring mission for us," he explains.

Then, it's time to go. We climb up a ladder and cram into the jet. Gioconda makes sure I'm strapped in, then stuffs two clear plastic bags under a strap on my left thigh. "Just in case," he says, grinning.

The last time Webster flew combat missions - prior to Sept. 11 - was last November and December. He flew nine missions over Iraq, enforcing the U.S. military's "no-fly" zones. That made sense to him.

Flying over New York City in a fully armed fighter jet is harder to grasp, he says. Still, he does it, two or three times a week.

Webster, a native of Manchester, Tenn., started flying F-15 fighter jets 22 years ago. "I have never gotten tired of it," he says. "I remember taking off at 6 in the morning at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. It was an absolutely beautiful morning. And it dawned on me that they were paying me to do this. I would do this for free - I just wouldn't do as much of it as I do now."

As we fly into the New York area, he points out last week's crash site of American Airlines Flight 587 in Queens. Webster also knew the pilot of Flight 587. "It's been a hard couple of months," he says. "It really has."

One key factor for fighter jets is being able to refuel in mid-air. "You can never let the gas get too low," Webster explains. "Otherwise, you don't have enough fuel to respond if you have to go somewhere."

So we gas up. There's a huge tanker plane from the New Hampshire Air National Guard lumbering above us. It's flying the same pattern we are over New York, but more slowly.

We slow down and drift within about 30 feet of the tanker. An airman in the belly of the tanker lowers a boom into a receptacle on the F-16 and transfers 3,000-4,000 pounds of jet fuel. We're so close, I can see the airman's face.

NYC to Washington: 18 minutes

After a couple of passes over New York, Webster and I head to Washington. This is not an everyday shuttle: We get there in about 18 minutes. "If I'd been in a hurry, we'd have been here a lot sooner," Webster says. He explains that he's not allowed to fly the jet at supersonic speeds over land unless he's "going after a bad guy."

We make a quick pass around the city at 17,000 feet, skirting restricted air space over the Capitol. Webster points out the Washington Monument and then says: "That's the White House. Not many people get this view."

As we head back to base, we see other F-16s on patrol.

The jet's control stick doesn't actually move. Instead, it senses how the pilot wants to move the stick and feeds that information into the jet's computer. The stick is very, very sensitive. I know because Webster lets me "input" commands on the way back: He tells me to pull the stick hard to the left. I do. We go into another half-roll.

As we approach Atlantic City, Webster asks if I want to see a couple more maneuvers. No, thanks, I tell him. I've seen about enough.

"OK," he says. "We'll just do a passenger jet-type landing."

Yes. When we taxi to a stop and he lifts the canopy, I proudly show him the two empty airsickness bags.

------

4 Commanders Seek Staff Role for the F.B.I.

New York Times
November 20, 2001
THE MILITARY
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/national/20COMM.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The military's four major regional commanders have asked that F.B.I. and Treasury Department agents be assigned to their staffs to improve coordination between the military and civilian agencies in the global war against terrorism, Pentagon and administration officials say.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has prodded his top combat commanders to think more creatively about fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and beyond, and has promised to give them the resources they need.

In response, these commanders asked last month for F.B.I. and Treasury Department liaison officers to be assigned to their staffs, which have long included personnel from intelligence agencies and the State Department. These agents could help speed interrogation of suspected terrorists detained by the military and coordinate the effort to freeze terrorists' bank accounts.

The idea has powerful supporters, including Mr. Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it is also meeting some resistance.

The regional commanders in chief, known as Cincs, who are responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and South Asia, have over the years accumulated such broad military and diplomatic powers in their slices of the globe that some in Washington now call them modern proconsuls, after the ancient Roman military officials who exercised great autonomy from the central government.

Some administration officials, including top aides to Mr. Rumsfeld, say that assigning F.B.I. and Treasury agents might expand the Cincs' (pronounced sinks) power and ultimately undercut the defense secretary's authority. This new enlarged group of liaison officers would be a miniature Washington-style bureaucracy that would report to the Cincs and their parent agencies.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. and Treasury department are wary about giving up any of their experts.

"This is something to be mindful of," a Pentagon official said. "How do you do this and make sure that decision makers in Washington, and the secretary of defense, are properly connected to the activities of the Cincs?"

The chain of command runs from the regional commanders to the defense secretary to the president.

So what seemed like a simple request to help cut bureaucratic delays for commanders as many as 10 time zones away from Washington, has ignited a spirited dialogue inside the Pentagon and within the administration about how to give the regional chiefs more tools to wage an unconventional war without giving them too much more power, officials said.

"There's some debate about this," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged last week in a speech at a Washington conference attended by diplomats and military officers. "But we're looking at assigning liaison officers from different agencies to the staffs of the combatant commands. They want that kind of cooperation."

American soldiers in Bosnia, for example, detained suspected terrorists but experienced delays waiting for F.B.I. agents to interrogate the suspects because of cumbersome procedures followed by the military and the Justice Department, the F.B.I.'s parent agency, a military official said.

Had an F.B.I. liaison officer been assigned to the military's European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, the official said, that agent could have cut through the red tape and the interrogations could have been set up much faster.

Mr. Rumsfeld has said the campaign against terrorism will require American intelligence, financial and law enforcement agencies to work more closely with the military to deny terrorists any support or haven.

In Washington, this approach of bringing all instruments of national power to bear under one roof seems to be working. Federal agencies are sharing liaison officers with each other and opening up new lines of communication.

The F.B.I., for instance, now has a representative on the crisis-action team for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We are sharing information, we're sharing people, and we're sharing resources like never before, and we need to push this new level of cooperation now to the theaters as well," General Myers said in his speech last week. "We do it pretty well inside the Beltway. We can do it a lot better outside the Beltway, with the combatant commands."

Under the new plan, the regional commanders would form what General Myers called joint interagency coordinating groups, in effect task forces mirroring the functions of the main agencies in Washington.

On its face, the request appeared modest: maybe one or two agents to each command from the F.B.I., Treasury Department and possibly other federal agencies.

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the Pacific Command, and Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, the head of the European Command, have been especially forceful in advocating the change, military officials said.

With long experience in Washington, the two are expert in the bureaucratic wrangling that often grips the capital. Admiral Blair served on the staffs of the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Ralston was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before assuming the European command.

"It would provide a more efficient response from across the region and our farthest embassies to Washington," Lt. Col. Stephen Barger, a spokesman for the Pacific Command, said.

The United States Southern Command, which oversees a region that encompasses 32 countries from its headquarters in Miami, already has extensive ties with law enforcement agencies as part of an antidrug mission that dates to the 1980's. The command's Joint Interagency Task Force, based in Key West, Fla., also has representatives from many Central and South American countries.

Some resistance from the federal agencies is predictable. The F.B.I. and Treasury are both strapped for experts, officials say. "We're aware of the proposal, and it will be given appropriate consideration," an F.B.I. spokesman, Steven Berry, said.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Tasia Scolinos, said she could not discuss the specific request, but said the Treasury "looked forward to sharing our expertise with all government entities engaged in the fight against terrorism."

Even some of Mr. Rumsfeld's top aides are skeptical about the plan.

"The Cincs are offering up a lot of ideas, and this is just one of them," said one senior aide, who has questions about the proposal. The aide said the Cincs would probably get more assistance, but not necessarily in the way they requested.

Military officials overseas expressed exasperation at the delay in dealing with the commanders' request. "In the end, if they say no, it's not catastrophic," one said. "It'll just take us longer" to do what is needed.

---

The Secret Warrior Gen. Wayne Downing,
From West Point to White House

By Richard Leiby
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55417-2001Nov19?language=printer

The West Point pep rally is going full bore: band music, a bonfire, bellicose chants of "Beat Navy, Beat Navy." Helicopters swoop in ferrying Army Rangers, the lightning-fast troops famed for leaping into hostile territory.

For this annual display of fighting spirit before the Army-Navy game, elite units often roll in to impress the wide-eyed cadets. Tonight the Rangers will show off their "fast rope training," dropping 80 feet from the sky like human smart bombs, amid simulated artillery blasts.

It's November 1995, and this rally will radiate in West Point legend. Wayne Allan Downing, Class of '62, is part of the camouflaged fast-rope squad. The crowd explodes when the four-star general later reveals himself in the spotlight. Though headed for retirement, the old warrior still has it. Rangers lead the way.

- - -

Wayne Downing is the most famous terrorism fighter you've never heard of. Less than a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, he shelved his semi-retirement to coordinate the nation's far-flung campaign "to detect, disrupt and destroy global terrorist organizations and those who support them," as the White House put it. He has the president's ear -- but whatever he's saying is not for public consumption. Even the size of his staff has been deemed a national security secret.

As a young Ranger, Downing, now 61, learned to stalk the enemy at night and capture rattlesnakes for food. In 34 years he rose through the ranks to command all special operations troops, including the clandestine Delta Force commandos whose close-quarter tactics are vital in places like Afghanistan. Battle-tested in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf, Downing is revered among the elite soldiers who call themselves "the quiet professionals."

He reports to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. He has more experience with terrorism than either of them. His unwieldy title is national director and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. Those who admire Downing would suggest a more concise one: the president's secret weapon.

"They brought him in because he knows how to get things done," says L. Paul Bremer, the State Department's ambassador at large for counterterrorism during the Reagan administration. "The bureaucracy very often needs a very good kick in the pants. He's going to have to crack some heads together."

"He has a tremendous network," says former Defense Intelligence Agency director James R. Clapper Jr. "I am kind of the president of the Wayne Downing Fan Club."

"He is an icon in the special operations world," says Andrew Levene, a former Ranger sergeant who served under Downing's command. "He is the consummate warrior. He is the guy who will say, 'We have to hunt these people down and kill 'em.' "

"If you called Central Casting you couldn't find a better person to fill this job," says Jim Kimsey, Downing's friend for more than 40 years. A fellow West Point grad and Ranger, Kimsey left the Army after eight years and went on to co-found America Online.

"Wayne stuck it out, thank God for us all," he says, "and went on to be our head snake eater."

A Prescient Warning

Downing would not grant an interview. "He doesn't want publicity and in fact he's trying to avoid it," says a spokesman for the National Security Council.

"He's been that way all his life," says his mother, Eileen Downing. "Very close-mouthed. He would say, 'To keep a secret you don't tell one other person, Mother.' "

But for brief periods he has ventured into the limelight, usually to sound the alarm about terrorism. Since leaving the Army in 1996, he has served on task forces investigating how terrorists operate and urging heightened security.

"They and their state sponsors have begun an undeclared war on the United States," he wrote in an August 1996 review of the truck-bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 and wounded hundreds more. "They must be seen as 'soldiers' employing different means of achieving their political and military goals. They wear uniforms we cannot recognize and use tactics that we find repugnant and cowardly . . . Fanatics will be prepared to sacrifice their lives to achieve their goals."

Downing also war-gamed a scenario that exposed America's vulnerability to chemical and biological attacks. It foresaw terrorists releasing chemical agents with crop-dusting planes. Carl Stiner, a fellow retired general, recalled that he and Downing delivered their findings to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 1997.

On Sept. 12, 2001, Downing was on ABC, explaining to viewers of "Nightline" the notion of "asymmetric" warfare: These foes, though small in number, knew exactly how to exploit the weaknesses of the strongest nation on Earth. "The paradigm has changed," he said. "And this isn't going to be over in a month or two months or six months. But this may well take years."

ABC quickly signed him up as an on-air consultant. These days Downing wears his gray hair slightly longer than when he was a West Point plebe; on camera he looked a bit uncomfortable, his neck tightly cinched in a button-down shirt. But his authority was obvious.

"We're going to find out where they are," he said of the perpetrators. "And then we're going to go get them."

It was no saber-rattling act. He made it sound like his destiny.

Downing once was courted for the job of White House drug czar, but friends say he felt that was an unwinnable war. He later vowed he wouldn't return to the government unless there were a national emergency. He preferred to stay in Colorado, enjoying the fishing and skiing, the time with his wife and grandkids. He also had enough land for four hefty Labradors.

But on Oct. 9, he reenlisted for public service, leaving the army of TV talking heads and giving up his seat on the board of an Australian high-tech weapons firm, Metal Storm, which boasts of inventing a gun that can fire a million rounds a minute. And he put aside another of his passions: serving as military adviser to a group of Iraqi dissidents who have been hoping for years to depose dictator Saddam Hussein.

He was no longer interested in media attention. He spoke for a minute and a half at the news conference announcing his White House post before concluding, "It's going to be a tough fight, but we will prevail. Thank you very much."

Then he exited to the shadows.

Living History

As a boy in Peoria, Ill., Downing was steeped in tales of military heroism. His mother would read to him from the newspaper about the progress of the war against Germany and Japan. He listened to radio reports. "He knew where everybody was and who commanded them. He was totally fascinated by the military stuff," recalls Eileen Downing, now 80.

Though very young, Wayne had a compelling reason to pay attention: His father was fighting his way across Europe. Pfc. Francis Wayne "Bud" Downing served in the storied 9th Armored Division, which on March 7, 1945, crossed the Rhine via a railroad bridge at Remagen, ushering the American juggernaut into the heart of the German Reich.

In Peoria and elsewhere, the headlines surged with optimism: Hitler would soon be finished. "The war is over, I tell you," one general assured his colleagues. "The war is over."

On March 27, Wayne's father participated in a night attack to liberate a camp full of starving POWs near Limburg. The unit suffered heavy casualties -- including 25-year-old Pfc. Downing -- in what was its last major engagement of World War II.

He was buried in the Netherlands. His son was not yet 5.

Raising Wayne and his two younger sisters, Eileen Downing insisted on discipline and structure -- regular churchgoing and mealtimes. "We did all the same things just like when a father came home in the evening," she recalls. "Except there was no father."

Survivor benefits barely kept the family fed. "You had pennies in your hand at the end of the month," she says.

Across the street lived Joe Powers, sent home after being wounded in the 101st Airborne. "He'd be sitting on his swing on his porch, looking forlorn because there weren't any other young men around," says Eileen Downing. She sent her boy over to talk with Joe.

"They became best friends. He was Wayne's hero. He came home one day and said, 'I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to jump out of airplanes, just like Joe.' "

At 17, Wayne won automatic nomination to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as the son of a deceased veteran. He still had to meet the academic and physical qualifications for appointment, which he did.

As a young company commander in Vietnam, Downing distinguished himself in combat and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. "The word is hero. Sure he's a hero," says a friend who asked that his name not be used. "That was a bloody, bloody time frame. He basically could have won a lot of Purple Hearts -- he got shot at a lot."

But Downing never talked about his wounds. He'd rather tell jokes and remember the esprit de corps, and whatever passed for good times. Friends say he took his work very seriously but he never took himself too seriously.

"We were all immediately captivated by him," recalls Gen. William "Buck" Kernan, a company commander when Downing headed the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the late 1970s. "He came in very young-looking, probably one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the Army at the time."

But Bill Lind, a defense specialist on the staff of then-Sen. Gary Hart, wasn't impressed when he went to Fort Lewis to observe the Rangers. He told Downing the training was too rigid, as if combat unfolded according to a script. "That's training for an opera company, not for war," Lind declared.

He expected a fistfight. "Everybody who goes to visit the Rangers always says they're great. Here's a civilian who tells them they're full of crap," Lind says. But Downing was open-minded. "He says, 'Tell me more. What do you think we should be doing?' "

Downing was known for dispensing with formula. "Think like a bank robber" was his oft-quoted admonition.

"He recognized you had to harden yourself mentally and physically and use guile and cunning," says Buck Kernan. "You had to always be ahead of your adversary, you had to anticipate."

Rangers learn to endure hunger and sleep deprivation, to improvise and surprise their enemies. Even today they hew to the standing orders laid down by Maj. Robert Rogers in 1759, not long after he'd organized ragtag colonials to fight in the French and Indian War. Including this one:

"Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet."

Receiving Noriega

There's no shortage of PowerPoint soldiers at the Pentagon, but Downing preferred a hands-on approach. That, along with devotion to the troops, made him a legendary leader. He was based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and then at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where he gained the coveted job of commander in chief of the Special Operations Command.

In the Panama invasion just before Christmas 1989, Downing oversaw the toppling of Manuel Noriega. The dictator, wanted in this country on drug charges, had holed up in the Papal Nunciature in Panama City for 11 days, then sent out a request: He wanted to surrender wearing his general's uniform. The Americans retrieved one, and Noriega surrendered in the middle of the street -- to Downing himself.

During the Gulf War, hundreds of commandos working for Downing infiltrated Iraq to find the Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein was lobbing at Israel. Rick Atkinson's book "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War," reports that Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf had to warn Downing not to get carried away and go behind enemy lines himself.

"You work for me, you son of a bitch," Schwarzkopf told Downing. "If you personally go into Iraq, I'm going to relieve you."

"You don't have to tell me that," Downing shot back.

"I know you," said Schwarzkopf. "I don't want you going across that border and getting yourself captured or killed. One, because it's an embarrassment, and two, because you know too much."

How effective were Downing's secret Scud hunters? The CIA has never confirmed that any of the weapons were destroyed. But retired Gen. Carl Stiner credits the commandos with demobilizing the missiles, calling Downing the man who "shut down the Scuds. . . . He contributed immeasurably to the success of that war."

In October 1993, Downing was running the Special Operations Command in Tampa when 18 American soldiers died during the disastrous effort to capture warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in Mogadishu, Somalia. The four-star general, as chronicled in Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down," briefly spoke with the on-the-ground commander, Maj. Gen. William Garrison, but backed off, believing "the last thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk jockey 13,000 miles away looking over his shoulder."

Garrison took full responsibility for the outcome of the battle and it destroyed his career. Within days, Downing arrived in Mogadishu to check on the troops, "as any good commander would," says a friend. A Somali militia was still shelling. A mortar round hit the Rangers' airfield encampment, killing one soldier and seriously wounding a dozen others.

That mortar almost killed Downing. "It was really close," the friend says.

Basic Training

March 2001: A cadre of Iraqi rebels descend on a training camp in Texas. For five days they fire pistols, shotguns and Kalashnikov rifles, and otherwise hone their combat and self-defense skills.

They are bitter foes of Saddam Hussein. Members of the Iraqi National Congress, they dream of the day when they can march triumphantly into Baghdad as a liberation army.

Their mentor -- and biggest cheerleader -- is Wayne Downing.

"This is the first time they are being trained to do anything on this level," the former general tells a United Press International reporter. But to Downing the weapons course, paid for by the United States, is a "drop in the bucket." What the dissidents really need, he says, is training on "antitank weapons, machine guns, rockets, that sort of thing."

Downing has supported an insurrection in Iraq for several years, arguing that Hussein's regime could be toppled if only America had the guts to arm and support the Iraqi National Congress, a rebel coalition based in London. Calling on influential lawmakers, Downing helped win passage in 1998 of the Iraq Liberation Act, which set aside nearly $100 million for military weaponry and training for anti-Hussein warriors.

The idea of overthrowing Hussein had wide political support and endorsements from people like Donald Rumsfeld, but was never fully embraced by the Clinton White House. Some national security experts and military analysts consider Downing's military plan half-baked: a potential replay of the Bay of Pigs bloodbath in Cuba.

"I have had visits from the opposition groups, trying to convince me that 1,000 men, armed, placed into Iraq, would have the entire regime toppled; the regular army would fold," retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, told a Senate hearing last year. Zinni clearly didn't buy it.

"Be careful," he said. "Bay of Pigs could turn into Bay of Goats."

Plotting Payback

Classical music fills the posh office. Jim Kimsey speaks quietly, even when he's talking about killing.

White-haired and chiseled, Kimsey cuts a dashing figure at 62, much like Downing, the fellow Ranger he calls his kindred soul. A billionaire thanks to his business acumen, Kimsey today runs a philanthropic foundation within sight of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where his old buddy works.

He has offered Downing his views on hunting down Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. The politicians and war planners need to act more like their enemy, Kimsey advised.

"I told Wayne, 'I'm going to send all these guys [in charge] a copy of 'The Godfather.' . . . You've got to think like the Mafia thinks. No, it isn't going to be fair. You're going to whack 'em at home. You're going to do stuff to their families. You've got to play dirty. You've got to get in bed with dirty people. . . . Wayne knows how to think like that."

Downing, at least publicly, hasn't used the word dirty. Aggressive, yes. Relentless, yes. "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he vowed the day he took the job, "we intend to give these people and those who support them no place to hide."

Those who know Downing presume that he is gathering intelligence, drawing up options, targeting the nests of snakes. Kimsey recites a Ranger slogan: "The night belongs to us." Whatever happens, he promises with a smile, "You're never gonna hear about it."


------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Montana

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Helena - Supporters of a ballot initiative for the public to buy hydroelectric dams owned by PPL Montana submitted their proposal to state officials. They tout it as a way to help Montanans get affordable power. If they receive approval, supporters can begin to gather signatures to put the measure on the November 2002 ballot.

---

Danish Elsam mulls wind farms in Poland, Greece

Reuters:
21/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13391

SKAERBECK - Denmark's largest power company Elsam is looking abroad, in particular at Poland and Greece, for expansion of environmentally-friendly activities such as wind power.

"Following last year's merger, restructuring and improved profit, we think it's time to take the next step and go international with green energy," Elsam Chief Executive Officer Peter Hoestgaard-Jensen told Reuters in an interview.

Elsam is a merger of power stations in west Denmark and was created last year as a response to the upcoming opening of the Danish electricity market, which will take off by 2003.

Elsam operates six power stations in west Denmark, fuelled by coal, oil, gas and biomass, generating 3,500 megawatts. In addition the company owns or partly owns 23 smaller power plants plus 455 wind turbines.

"Wind is thriving due to the global targets of CO2 reduction and wind is the most cost-effective kind of alternative energy," he said.

Countries all over the world - apart from the U.S. - have committed themselves to cut emissions of green house gases thought to contribute to global warming.

Elsam is looking for expansion in Britain, Ireland, Greece, Poland and the Baltic countries

In the spring, Elsam got the green light from British property agency, Crown Estate, to develop three offshore 90-megawatt wind farms in cooperation with Shell and Scottish Celt Power off the British coast.

The parks could be operational by 2004 if they secure the necessary approvals from authorities and the local community.

"The project is going according to schedule and we expect to receive the necessary approvals," said Hoestgaard-Jensen. Britain's Ministry of Defence raised objections recently to certain offshore wind farm plans because of fears their whirring turbine blades would interfere with air defence radar systems.

NEXT STOP POLAND

Hoestgaard-Jensen said he went to Poznan, Poland, last week to talk with a Polish electricity firm about a 30 megawatt wind farm in the northern part of the country.

"Before spring next year we will know whether or not to carry on with the project," Hoestgaard-Jensen said.

In Greece the company has set up a joint venture with a local Greek firm to build a 20 megawatt gas-fired power station in the north of the country for 200 million crowns.

The power station still needs the authorities' approval but should be ready by late 2003. Two or three similar projects are in the melting pot, Hoestgaard-Jensen said.

"We are also studying the possibilities for Greek wind power projects. Greece has a lot of windy islands," he said.

Elsam in among forerunners in the Danish development of green energy and next year a 1.7 billion crown offshore wind farm will be operational at Horns Rev in the North Sea off the port of Esbjerg, west Denmark.

The Danish power firm is considering changing the ownershsip of the Danish prestige project.

"We are talking to Shell Renewables about Horns Rev. Shell knows a lot about offshore activities and we know about wind. Shell could possibly take a stake in the Horns Rev project, but we still have no clarification on that point," Hoestgaard-Jensen said.

Elsam sells electricity and heat to trading companies and wholesalers. It is wholly owned by Danish electricity distributors and last year produced electricity totalling 12,532 gigawatts.

----

Suncor forms venture with Spanish wind power firm

Reuters:
20/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13375/story.htm

CALGARY, Alberta - Suncor Energy Inc. , Canada's second-biggest oil sands miner, said yesterday it had formed a joint venture with Spain's EHN Group to develop wind power projects in Canada.

Suncor, which has already begun a wind turbine project in the western province of Saskatchewan, said the venture will combine EHN's technical expertise with its own knowledge of the Canadian energy market.

EHN, whose NA Renewable Canada Co. unit will work with Suncor in the venture, to be called SunNar,, is now developing three big wind projects in Spain and Latin America.

The Canadian firm recently announced its SunBridge project, which will eventually produce 11 megawatts of electricity from 17 turbines in southeastern Saskatchewan, was operating with six of the units. Its partner is pipeline company and natural gas distributor Enbridge Inc. .

Suncor is best known for its oil sands mining and synthetic crude operation in northern Alberta, expected to produce as much as 550,000 barrels a day by 2012, up from an expected 225,000 next year.

It said developing renewable energy sources was a key part of its strategy to balance its output of hydrocarbons with the need to take action on climate change.

Suncor shares were up 75 Canadian cents at C$44.00 on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday afternoon.

----

Scientists look north for alternative energy sources

Tuesday, November 20, 2001
By Linda Ashton,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11202001/ap_north_45623.asp

YAKIMA, Wash.--In Canada's Northwest Territories, where the Mackenzie River empties into the Beaufort Sea, scientists are studying a vast deposit of frozen methane as a potential energy source.

Methane hydrates are ice-like substances found in deep ocean sediments and Arctic permafrost that contain methane in a highly concentrated form.

"We're investing in it because of the interest in trying to limit or reduce the amount of reliance that we have on foreign energy sources," said Peter McGrail, a staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, just north of Richland.

PNNL and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are part of an international team of private sector energy and research companies and U.S. and Canadian governmental agencies working on the project at the Mallik Gas Hydrate Research Well.

Hydrates have been found under the tundra in Alaska and Canada, and under the ocean floor off the coast of Oregon, the Carolinas and in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the value of gas hydrates in the United States at 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas, 200 times conventional natural gas resources and reserves in the country.

Come this winter, when the temperature is about 30 degrees below zero in the Arctic, crews at the Mallik well will drill three-fourths of a mile into rock to take core samples of the crystalline hydrates.

The goal is to find a way to produce useable methane gas in a safe and cost-effective way.

Last year, Congress appropriated nearly $50 million for this type of research.

"If only 1 percent of the methane hydrate resource could be made recoverable, the United States could more than double its domestic natural gas resource base," the bill's sponsor, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, said at the time.

Once the core sample is retrieved, it will be shipped to a field lab in the small town of Inuvik before portions are packaged and sent to researchers, McGrail said.

To date, most of the work on gas hydrates has been focused on trying to understand what they are and how they're formed.

This project takes the next step: "How can we go in and produce natural gas from these deposits?" McGrail said.

Methane hydrate looks a lot like ice, a crystal structure of methane gas surrounded by water molecules.

"What we have to do is essentially unfreeze that ice-like structure and get the gas to release," McGrail said.

One of the problems has been a natural Catch-22 -- when efforts are made to thaw the hydrates, the process consumes energy from its surroundings, driving temperatures down and naturally shutting off the release of the gas.

"If you had an oil and gas company with tens of millions of dollars of equipment trying to get the gas out, and then having to sit there and wait -- it might take months -- it would be prohibitively expensive to have that equipment idle," McGrail said.

The key will be finding things that could be injected into the subsurface that would allow the economical recovery of the gas.

Another challenge is to release the gas without turning the soil and sediment into mush, which could threaten heavy equipment sitting above the deposit on the tundra or the ocean floor.

In addition to taking the core samples, the first attempt will be made to actually produce methane gas at the site, by pumping it out, McGrail said.

Next summer, the Ocean Drilling Program, a science and research partnership exploring the structure and evolution of the Earth, will begin drilling at Hydrate Ridge, off the Oregon coast, McGrail said.

The participants in the Mallik project include: the Geological Survey of Canada, Japan National Oil Co., GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, the India National Gas Hydrate Program, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy, which have contributed a combined $22 million for the drilling portion of the project. The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program is contributing $1.3 million.

-------- environment

Kentucky

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Inez - State wildlife officials say Martin County Coal paid $225,000 to replace an estimated 2 million fish killed in last year's massive coal slurry spill. But there's still too much sludge on the creek and river bottoms to allow restocking.

-------- police / prisoners

Bush Defends Order For Military Tribunals
President Hosts Ramadan Iftar Dinner

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55363-2001Nov19?language=printer

President Bush said yesterday that his order allowing foreign terrorism suspects to be tried in military tribunals is "the absolute right thing to do," despite fears expressed by both liberals and conservatives that long-cherished principles of American justice could be compromised.

Bush signed an executive order last week allowing military trials of non-citizens who are members of the al Qaeda terrorist network or who are charged with aiding or committing acts of terrorism, or harboring terrorists. Such tribunals could be held in secret and could require a lower burden of proof for the government than a normal criminal proceeding. Civilians have not been subject to such trials since World War II.

"I need to have that extraordinary option at my fingertips," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting yesterday. "I ought to be able to have that option available should we ever bring one of these al Qaeda members in alive. It's our national interests, it's our national security interests that we have a military tribunal available. It is in the interests of the safety of potential jurors that we have a military tribunal."

Under the terms of the order, Bush will personally decide which cases should be handled by a tribunal. A senior administration official said that during several briefings on the issue, Bush was told that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made those decisions himself, rather than delegating them to the Justice Department or the Pentagon.

"It was the president who said, 'This will be my decision,' " the official said, confirming a report in Newsweek. "As the president, he can take into account all the considerations -- from diplomatic to military to law enforcement to intelligence -- about whether this is the proper method of adjudicating justice."

The official said the tribunal could be used for foreign nationals arrested both within the United States and abroad. Bush said federal officials "will do everything we can to defend the American people within the confines of our Constitution, and that's exactly how we're proceeding."

"These are extraordinary times," Bush said yesterday. "I would remind those who don't understand the decision I made that Franklin Roosevelt made the same decision in World War II. Those were extraordinary times, as well."

Bush's Cabinet meeting featured a presentation by Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who spent last week visiting refugee camps in central Asia. The United States has airlifted 20,000 wool blankets, 100 rolls of plastic sheeting, 200 metric tons of high-energy biscuits and one metric ton of sugar to Turkmenistan for distribution in Afghanistan.

"There are millions of Afghans who were starving prior to September the 11th as a result of drought," Bush said. "Obviously, to complicate matters, there has been a war in that land. And yet, this good nation is doing everything we can to move enormous amounts of food into the areas where people are likely to starve."

Last night, Bush wished "a blessed Ramadan" to 52 Muslim diplomats who came to the State Dining Room for a traditional Iftar dinner, which breaks the daily sunrise-to-sundown fast during Islam's holy month. Bush had refused calls from some Muslim leaders to cease hostilities in Afghanistan during Ramadan, which began Friday.

The guests included the Palestinian National Authority's representative in Washington, Hasan Abdel Rahman, and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bush, who has said he is at war with terrorism, not Islam, said in his dinner remarks that the Koran "has guided billions of believers across the centuries, and those believers built a culture of learning and literature and science."

"All the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements," Bush said. "Ramadan and the upcoming holiday season are a good time for people of different faiths to learn more about each other. And the more we learn, the more we find that many commitments are broadly shared."

After a White House Rose Garden ceremony, Bush had said his message for the dinner would be, "We're a nation of many faiths." Asked if the sentiment was symbolic, he immediately replied, "No -- it's real."

In a continuation of the administration's global campaign to highlight the oppression of Afghan women by the Taliban regime, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building yesterday with a spectrum of women that included Christian radio host Janet Parshall and feminists Eleanor Smeal and Mavis Leno.

Bonnie Erbe, host of PBS's "To the Contrary," said women who usually disagree rose to praise the administration for the campaign. "The Democratic women had to give them credit, because they're doing something very atypical and something that takes a lot of guts," Erbe said.

Today, the White House will release a public service announcement in which the president and first lady Laura Bush encourage volunteer service.

-----

Is President Bush's Executive Order Creating Military Tribunals Legal?

Slate
By Dahlia Lithwick
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058854

Last week, President George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of military tribunals for select terrorists. The order gives the executive the exclusive right to identify, try, and even execute foreign terrorists, without the constitutional or evidentiary protections ordinarily afforded defendants in the United States. Some critics contend the order arrogates congressional law-making authority. Is there a limit to what can legally be done through an executive order, and what are the means to challenge one?

There is no constitutional or statutory authority to promulgate executive orders, although presidents have been issuing them since 1789. The seminal Supreme Court decision in this area, Youngstown v. Sawyer , was handed down in 1952 after President Truman attempted to avert a national steelworkers strike through an executive order that would have allowed the secretary of Commerce to seize and operate most national steel mills. Truman rooted his legal authority to issue the order in various general and "aggregate" constitutional powers vested in the presidency. These included a specific claim that a massive steel strike would threaten national security and that this allowed the president to take over the mills under his "Commander In Chief" authority established by Article II of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court didn't bite, striking down the Truman order as an unconstitutional encroachment on Congress' exclusive law-making authority. The court laid out the rule for executive orders: An executive order must have either direct statutory or constitutional authority. Since Youngstown, executive orders carefully lay out the authority on which they are based. The Bush order attributes its authority to the commander in chief provision of the constitution, the congressional Use of Force Resolution from last September, and two provisions of the U.S. Code concerning the armed forces.

Some scholars contend that absent a formal congressional declaration of war, the president cannot exercise his commander in chief authority, and thus Bush's executive order is unconstitutional under the Youngstown test. The Use of Force resolution is also not the best authority for this order, since Congress explicitly rejected suggested language that would have allowed the president wide latitude to deter future terrorism. Others argue that regardless of what Congress says, we are for all intents and purposes at war. Still others argue that presidential authority to deter terrorism may nevertheless be grounded in various congressional anti-terrorism statutes.

How might Congress challenge the legality of the executive order, which was imposed without discussion or debate only weeks after Congress passed what it believed to be a comprehensive anti-terrorist bill? While Congress has the authority to revoke or de-fund an executive order, it almost never exercises that authority.

Whether or not the order is constitutional will therefore be decided, presumably, by a court, following an attempt by the government to try an alleged terrorist before a military tribunal. This route might be foreclosed by the order itself, which seems to prohibit any judicial review outside the military commission. This attempt to preclude judicial review may itself be unconstitutional, however. After President Roosevelt created military tribunals to try Nazi spies in 1942, the spies appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the court upheld the legality of the Roosevelt order in a case called Ex Parte Quirin, it also upheld the constitutional requirement of judicial review.

Explainer thanks Akhil Reed Amar at Yale Law School and Walter Dellinger at Duke Law School.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

----

In War, It's Power to the President
In Aftermath of Attacks, Bush White House Claims Authority Rivaling FDR's

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55391-2001Nov19?language=printer

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have dramatically accelerated a push by the Bush administration to strengthen presidential powers, giving President Bush a dominance over American government exceeding that of other post-Watergate presidents and rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt's command.

On a wide variety of fronts, the administration has moved to seize power that it has shared with other branches of government. In foreign policy, Bush announced vast cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal but resisted putting the cuts in a treaty -- thereby averting a Senate ratification vote. In domestic policy, the administration proposed reorganizing the Immigration and Naturalization Service without the congressional action lawmakers sought. And in legal policy, the administration seized the judiciary's power as Bush signed an order allowing terrorists to be tried in military tribunals.

Those actions, all taken last week, build on earlier Bush efforts to augment White House power, including initiatives to limit intelligence briefings to members of Congress, take new spending authority from the legislature, and expand the executive branch's power to monitor and detain those it suspects of terrorism.

Presidential power ebbs and flows historically and, by necessity, typically heightens during times of war because of the need for a unifying figure in government. Lyndon B. Johnson gained clout under the Tonkin Gulf resolution, as did Roosevelt during World War II. The War Powers Act and other reforms by Congress to limit presidential power after Watergate made for weaker executives, as did the reduced threat from the Soviet Union.

Now, in the views of many scholars, Bush has restored the "Imperial Presidency," a term Arthur Schlesinger Jr. used to describe Richard M. Nixon's administration in 1973.

"The power President Bush is wielding today is truly breathtaking," said Tim Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the libertarian Cato Institute. "A single individual is going to decide whether the war is expanded to Iraq. A single individual is going to decide how much privacy American citizens are going to retain."

The White House says an increase in presidential power is the correct prescription for a crisis. "The way our nation is set up, and the way the Constitution is written, wartime powers rest fundamentally in the hands of the executive branch," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "It's not uncommon in time of war for a nation's eyes to focus on the executive branch and its ability to conduct the war with strength and speed."

The public -- and Congress -- seem content for Bush to assume as much power as he desires. He had 90 percent approval ratings in polls even before last week's dramatic progress in the Afghanistan campaign, and congressional leaders have mustered little resistance to the administration's bid to increase power in the interests of national security.

Even before Sept. 11, the Bush administration has been looking for ways to reassert presidential prerogatives, particularly in its relationship to Congress -- which some in the administration believe grew too powerful during the Clinton and Reagan years and first Bush administration.

"Every administration resets the balance with Congress as times change," said Fleischer. "When the executive branch gets itself into trouble, the congressional role, particularly the one on the investigative side, grows. The nation grew weary of endless investigations and fishing expeditions."

Thus the administration declined to cooperate with a General Accounting Office probe into Vice President Cheney's energy task force, and cooperated with a Senate request for information on new environmental regulations only after a subpoena threat. Seeking to restore "executive privilege," the administration refused to hand over to Congress many executive papers -- even some from the Clinton administration.

David Walker, a Republican who is director of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said: "There's a feeling of some in the current administration that they want to draw a line in a different spot than previously has been drawn in the separation of powers. As a result of Watergate and the challenges [President Bill] Clinton had, Congress has been much more involved in a range of areas they don't believe are appropriate."

This pattern of consolidating presidential authority has extended to other areas of governance. Bush issued an executive order allowing a sitting president to block release of a predecessor's records, undermining a law Congress passed about such papers. When an open-meeting law prevented Bush's Social Security commission from meeting privately, the group split into two so the law would not apply. In foreign affairs, the administration has shown a distaste for international treaties that require congressional ratification, recently rejecting amendments to the Biological Weapons Convention in favor of actions that wouldn't require legislative approval.

The events of Sept. 11 have accelerated the trend, prompting the administration to pursue an array of new powers to combat terrorism and bolster domestic security.

Bush has opposed Congress granting statutory authority to Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, which has allowed Ridge to refuse congressional requests for him to testify. Bush's Justice Department decided, without the usual waiting period for public comment, that it could listen in on lawyer-client conversations if Attorney General John D. Ashcroft believes it necessary to prevent terrorism; he could do so even if people have not been charged and even in the absence of a court order.

That move followed congressional approval of the USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the government to monitor, search, detain or deport suspects and gives the Justice Department more power to detain immigrants without charges. Also this month, the government stopped saying how many people it has detained related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the counterterrorism campaign overseas, Bush ordered sensitive intelligence briefings to be limited to eight of the 535 members of Congress, leading lawmakers to complain Bush had violated the 1947 National Security Act. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said Bush "put out a public document telling the world he doesn't trust the Congress." The president backed down after lawmakers promised not to leak information.

The administration has had mixed success pursuing more control over fiscal policy. In mid-October, when Bush requested authority for the president, after consulting with the speaker of the House, to extend government funding if Congress could not convene because of a crisis, Congress balked. Lawmakers also objected to an initial administration proposal, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, for what amounted to a blank check from Congress.

As it is, Congress gave the administration $40 billion to spend in response to the attacks with few strings attached. Even so, lawmakers have complained that the administration has not provided, as required, information on how it is spending the money.

Some in the legislative branch, particularly in the opposition party, detect a striking departure in public policy. "There's just a philosophy in the administration that the public doesn't have a right to know, which is counter to the trend of the last 30 years," said Phil Schiliro, staff chief to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee. "Now they can justify it with national security, but that's more for convenience."

Scholars who follow Washington offer say history offers ample precedent for a wartime expansion of presidential power. "Crisis seeks leadership," said Charles O. Jones, a presidential scholar with the University of Wisconsin. "The only question becomes is the White House prepared to accept it and use it effectively. This team has an above-average record so far."

Norman Ornstein, a governmental scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said the growth in presidential power during the first year of the Bush administration exceeds the clout presidents gained in recent wars, comparing it to the free hand Congress and the judiciary gave Roosevelt to fight World War II.

"You always have to worry about people who have this kind of power who don't have the restraint," he said. "I worry about that, but we have such a different kind of threat on the country as a whole that you have to change the way you look at presidential power."

----

President signs aviation security bill
Bush: Law to give Americans greater confidence in flying

CNN
November 20, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TRAVEL/NEWS/11/19/rec.aviation.signing/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saying the legislation offers "permanent and aggressive steps to improve the security of our airways," President Bush signed into law Monday the long-awaited aviation security bill.

"For our airways, there is one supreme priority: security," Bush said.

"The law I will sign should give all Americans greater confidence when they fly," the president said in a signing ceremony at Reagan National Airport accompanied by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

Referring to the financial hardships air carriers have suffered since September 11, Bush said, "A proud industry has been hit hard, but this nation has seen the dedication of our pilots and flight crews. ... I'm confident this industry will grow and prosper."

Under a compromise measure reached Thursday between congressional negotiators and the White House, as many as 28,000 workers screening passengers and baggage will become federal employees within a year. Five airports are to participate in a pilot program in which private contractors will provide security in a test of that option.

"For the first time, airport security will become a direct federal responsibility -- overseen by a new undersecretary of transportation for security," Bush said. "Additional funds will be provided for federal air marshals. A new team of federal security managers, supervisors, law enforcement officers and screeners will ensure that all passengers and carry-on bags are inspected thoroughly and effectively."

The U.S. House of Representatives approved the compromise bill Friday, hours after the Senate passed the bill on a voice vote.

Bush thanked the House and Senate leadership Monday "for their patience on this issue" and "for working hard to make sure this bill came to fruition."

Within three years, airports will have the option to decide whether they want to continue using federal employees or switch to private screeners. The airports can use state or local law enforcement to provide security services.

The measure that Bush signed also calls for stronger cockpit doors on planes and an increased presence of armed federal marshals on flights.

Passengers are to be charged a fee of $2.50 for each leg of a trip -- with a $5 maximum -- to cover costs. The new federal security screening services also will be paid for by the government charging the airlines what they paid for security services from private contractors before September 11 -- an estimated cost of about $700 million.

The measure makes airport security the responsibility of the newly created Transportation Security Administration in the U.S. Transportation Department.

All security screeners are to become federal employees in a transition period lasting one year. But they will not be offered the same civil service protections as other federal employees, according to U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Florida.

Security screeners are to undergo criminal background checks and will have to be U.S. citizens. Ken Quinn, general counsel for the Aviation Security Association, has said that 72 percent of the current screeners at Washington's Dulles International Airport are non-U.S. citizens.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that salaries for security personnel would rise to an average of $35,000 for a screener and $52,000 for supervisors.

The bill has been signed just as the peak holiday season gets under way and more than two months after terrorists used U.S. passenger jets to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The law provides "a new commitment to security in the air," Bush said, "and that's good news as Americans travel" to loved ones and friends for Thanksgiving.

The American Automobile Association, or AAA, predicts that 30 million Thanksgiving travelers -- a record 87 percent of those going on a trip of 50 miles or more -- will choose to drive because of fears of flying after the September 11 attacks. The survey was taken before last week's crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York, so even more people may consider driving.

Here are some other provisions of the aviation security measure:

-- All checked baggage must be screened by explosive detection devices no later than December 31, 2002. Until then, all checked baggage will be inspected by other means, including X-ray, positive passenger matching and/or hand checking.

-- The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System must be used to screen all passengers, instead of just those who check in at the ticket counter.

-- Flight schools must conduct background checks on any non-U.S. citizen who seeks training to operate aircraft more than 12,500 pounds. Flight school employees also must be trained to recognize suspicious activities.

The president also mentioned Monday that bus and train travel would be targeted for security upgrades, but he did not offer any details.

CNN Washington Bureau Correspondents John King, Major Garrett and Kelly Wallace contributed to this report.

---

Too few police, too many bases

USA Today
11/20/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/columnists/wickham/2001-11-20-wickham.htm

Last year, Atlanta had its lowest murder rate in decades. This year, the city's downward trend in homicides and other crimes hit a speed bump the day terrorists crashed hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"Since Sept. 11, Atlanta has experienced a big increase in public safety costs," said Mayor Bill Campbell. "The bill for the additional security we've had to provide at the airport, at public utilities and other possible targets since the terrorist attacks is expected to top $15 million by the end of the year."

The nationwide anti-terrorism alert has forced Atlanta and many other cities to reduce their policing efforts in some neighborhoods, an action that hasn't gone unnoticed by the thugs among us.

"The criminal element understands that police are distracted," Campbell said. "We've not had a spike in crime, but the rate of reduction has slowed."

Homicides and other violent crimes also have risen in many cities following the Sept. 11 attacks. Violent crime in Baltimore and Washington increased in the days following the terrorist assaults as police officials diverted cops from regular patrols to new anti-terrorism duties - and to respond to rampant fears of bio-chemical attacks.

Ironically, this rise in criminal activity comes as the Bush administration has pushed through a 24 % cut in the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant program, a federal program that gave police departments $522 million during the past fiscal year to help with crime-fighting efforts. The amount local law enforcement agencies will receive from this program has been reduced to the $400 million the administration requested for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

Ominous trend

That's bad news for cities such as Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Oakland, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Pittsburgh, all of which have seen their murder rates go up this year. It doesn't matter whether the rise was underway before Sept. 11 or started after police departments began to beef up their anti-terrorism patrols following the terrorist attacks. It will be hard to reverse these increases while demands for cops to help guard against terrorist attacks are increasing.

"We are willing partners in providing the first line of security in this country against terrorism," Campbell said, "but we need help. The money we've had to spend since September to guard against terrorist attacks will probably continue at a heightened level for the foreseeable future."

Increased crime at home is part of the collateral damage of this nation's war against terrorism.

Criminals are taking advantage of the vacuum created when hard-pressed police departments have to use officers who might otherwise be assigned to high crime areas to beef up airport security or patrol other places that are considered potential targets for terrorist attacks.

Almost a murder a day

Baltimore, which had 261 homicides last year and appeared headed for a big drop in that number this year, had 18 homicides in the first 19 days of October. It's this kind of spike in violent crime that's occurring while attention of police departments has been diverted to guarding against catastrophic terror attack.

The Bush administration has ordered thousands of National Guardsmen to help protect the nation's airports. Now it must find a way to help local police departments fight crime while they take on the additional job of guarding against terrorism.

The president may have to mobilize even more guardsmen to protect static sites so that police officers can get back to the job of patrolling neighborhoods, especially in cities that have recently experienced increased criminal activity.

While the threat of a new terrorist attack is troubling, the rise in homegrown violent crime is just as worrisome for many local officials.

DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.

---

States: Alabama, Maine, Maryland

USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alabama

Birmingham - The Jefferson County Personnel Board upheld the firing of a Birmingham police officer who used a racial slur over the police radio while chasing a burglary suspect. The department praised the decision. However, Sgt. B.A. Treadaway, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said some officers who used the same slur received lesser or no discipline.

Maine

Portland - Police Chief Michael Chitwood said the latest arrest of a motorist with a long history of drunken driving underscores the need for a law to impound vehicles of dangerous drivers. Chitwood said if the city fails to act, he will go to the Legislature. He pointed to this week's arrest of a man with nine drunken driving convictions in the last 10 years.

Maryland

Upper Marlboro - A Prince George's County task force arrested 322 felony suspects during a monthlong sweep to clear a backlog of outstanding warrants, Sheriff Alonzo Black said. He has held two monthlong warrant sweeps each year since taking office in January 1999. The number of outstanding warrants has been reduced since then from 45,000 to 38,000-40,000, he said.

-------- terrorism

Missouri

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Jefferson City - Missouri's top officials began talks in an underground bunker on how best to protect the state from an attack. State security adviser Tim Daniel said the panel recently appointed by Gov. Holden will review the state's readiness and level of security to determine what action should be taken.

------

More False I.D. Charges

New York Times
November 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/national/20ARRE.html

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 19 (AP) - An Indonesian man named in F.B.I. documents as a contact for Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, was arrested today and charged with helping to get false identification for another man listed in the same documents as a contact for Osama bin Laden.

The man, Agus Budiman, appeared before a federal magistrate here in Alexandria, a Washington suburb, on a criminal complaint charging him with helping the suspected contact for Mr. bin Laden, Mohammad Bin Nasser Belfas, obtain a Virginia driver's license.

---

Indictment by Spanish Judge Portrays a Secret Terror Cell

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By SAM DILLON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/international/europe/20SPAI.html

MADRID, Nov. 19 - The suspected leader was a jovial family man who drove his children to school at the mosque and listed himself in the Madrid phone book. The man authorities believe to be his lieutenant seemed a bit moodier to neighbors, wearing dark glasses night and day, but he took part in a tree-planting project at his apartment complex.

There was one loudmouth, a Spaniard who had converted to Islam, let his whiskers grow and in recent weeks liked to hog the bullhorn at demonstrations protesting the war in Afghanistan.

A long indictment by a Spanish investigative judge, which was made public today, illuminates the workings of what the judge charged was a clandestine terror cell whose members, he says, may well have helped to prepare the Sept. 11 attacks. The indictment says there were clear links to an apartment in Germany, where Mohamed Atta, the hijackers' suspected ringleader, lived, and intercepts of phone conversations that indicate preparations for that attack.

In the week since the Spanish police arrested suspected members of the cell, international attention has focused on Spain's role as an apparent staging area for Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization. It is known that Mr. Atta visited the country twice, his second trip last July. In addition, another Spain-based cell thought to have played a central role in an attempt to blow up the American Embassy in Paris was recently dismantled, officials say.

With Europe emerging as a focal point of Islamic militant plots, the document made public here provides the best portrait yet of a Qaeda European cell as it is believed to have taken root over a number of years. The authorities said the eight men who were charged had posed patiently for years as middle-class householders, only occasionally slipping into the shadows to recruit young Muslim fighters for Mr. bin Laden's training camps or to commit crimes to raise money for guns and explosives.

The cell began to take shape in 1994, when a group of radicals sought to take over a mosque in central Madrid in order to impose more fundamentalist teachings, says the judicial order by Judge Baltazar Garzón, which sends the men to prison. The attempt failed when the insurgents squabbled, splitting into rival factions. One coalesced under the leadership of a Palestinian, Anwar Adnan Mohamed Saleh, the order says.

The group, known as the Soldiers of Allah, distributed literature at the mosque about the activities of Muslim militants in Algeria, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Afghanistan, including communiqués issued by Mr. bin Laden. The report says that Mr. Saleh and a Syrian-born associate, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, began to indoctrinate young Muslims who expressed interest in the literature, recruiting several to fight in Bosnia, where Muslims were at war with the Serbs, according to the judge's order.

In 1995, Mr. Saleh left Spain suddenly, moving to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he began to work with the fledgling organization that would become Al Qaeda, moving Muslim militants across the border into Afghanistan for training in the terrorist camps established there by Mr. bin Laden, the document says. In Spain, Mr. Yarkas took charge after Mr. Saleh's departure.

Judge Garzón's account is based in part on years of telephone intercepts by the Spanish authorities. The document makes clear that Spanish intelligence has been watching Mr. Yarkas and listening to him in his interactions with other suspected Al Qaeda operatives around Europe and Asia since at least 1997.

The order says the evidence tying the Madrid cell to the Sept. 11 attacks rests on two elements. Mr. Yarkas's Madrid phone number was found by the German police in the Hamburg apartment believed to have been used by two of the hijackers and several other Islamic terrorists to plot the Sept. 11 attacks, Judge Garzón's order says. It lists among Mr. Yarkas's European "contacts" four of the Hamburg apartment's occupants, including Mr. Atta, who piloted the first plane that hit the World Trade Center.

Judge Garzón also quotes several intercepted phone conversations during August and September in which Mr. Yarkas is said to have conversed in cryptic language with a Qaeda operative identified as Shakur, who is described elsewhere in the document as "a presumed member of the Sept. 11 suicide commandos."

"I've cut off all of my old relationships," the report says Shakur told Mr. Yarkas on Aug. 8. "I've prepared some things that I think you're going to like."

"I'm more at ease psychologically," Shakur told Mr. Yarkas three weeks later, on Aug. 27, according to the judge's order. "In these moments, I'm doing one thing. I'm giving classes, we've entered the field of aviation, and we've even cut the throat of the bird."

Judge Garzón commented on the care with which the two Islamic men, seemingly aware that the authorities could be eavesdropping, addressed each other. "The extreme security measures and the cryptic nature of the conversations suggest, circumstantially, that they are referring to the attacks," the judge said.

If the report is correct, Mr. Yarkas was leading an extraordinary double life. A balding, bearded man of about 40, he married a Spanish woman who converted to Islam and began to cover her hair, his neighbors said in interviews. He bought a fourth-floor condominium in a spacious building populated with architects and civil servants, and listed his name and address in the Madrid phone book. He made it his practice to drive his four children to school at Madrid's largest mosque, his neighbors said.

At the same time, according to the judge's order, Mr. Yarkas stepped up his recruitment of Muslim militants and began to travel widely, making more than 20 trips to Britain since 1996 for meetings with leaders of the Mujahedeen Movement there. He also traveled to Turkey, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Indonesia, Malaysia and Jordan.

Mr. Yarkas adopted as a close lieutenant Jasem Mahboule, an Islamic warrior who fought in Bosnia before settling in Spain and later trained twice in Afghanistan and traveled to Yemen on Al Qaeda business, according to the judge's report. A bearded man who always wore steel-rimmed shaded glasses, he too married a Spanish woman, who converted at his request to Islam, his neighbors said. The couple moved in 1999 into an attractive housing project in southern Madrid, paying minimal rent in a program subsidized by the city government, the neighbors said.

Mr. Mahboule was less gregarious than Mr. Yarkas with neighbors, avoiding sidewalk chit-chat, and to hear some tell it, often allowing his three children to throw trash out the windows. But when the residents of his street collected money to plant a promenade of olive trees facing their homes, he donated money and helped to water the saplings.

In their secret life, according to the document, Mr. Mahboule and Mr. Yarkas were coordinating subordinates, most of them men from Syria and North Africa with legal Spanish immigration status, in an ongoing scheme to purloin credit cards and use them fraudulently to raise funds for Al Qaeda, the judge's order says. The Madrid cell raised thousands of dollars used to finance the recruitment and travel of young Muslims to terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Indonesia.

One recent recruit who trained in Indonesia in July of this year was Luis José Galán González, a 37-year- old Spaniard, the judge's order says. The son of an affluent Madrid family, Mr. Galán converted to Islam more than a decade ago and married a Moroccan woman, according to Spanish press reports. In recent years, he worked as a telephone operator at a package courier company.

Mr. Galán, Mr. Yarkas and Mr. Maboule all prayed regularly at the Islamic Cultural Center, Madrid's largest mosque. Mohamed el Afifi, the mosque's spokesman, said in an interview today that Mr. Yarkas and Mr. Maboule were discreet men who attracted little attention. But Mr. Galán liked to stand out.

"He was a loudmouth, always shouting out his beliefs," Mr. Afifi said.

The Nov. 13 raids in which Spanish antiterrorist police arrested Mr. Yarkas and nine other men in Madrid and an 11th in the southern city of Granada dumbfounded their neighbors and acquaintances.

Guillermo González, a beauty products salesman who lived in Mr. Yarkas's building, had known Mr. Yarkas and his family for six years, and their children were frequent playmates. Mr. Yarkas told his neighbor that he earned his income through buying and selling used cars, and last year sought to buy Mr. González's car, acknowledging amiably that he could only offer a below- market price because his goal was to resell it for a profit.

"I can't express the astonishment I felt," Mr. González said of the moment last Tuesday morning when he descended the stairs in his apartment and found Mr. Yarkas handcuffed, surrounded by Spanish police and his weeping children. Mr. Yarkas avoided his gaze, Mr. González said.

Judge Garzón - who is well- known internationally because of his attempts to have Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, extradited to face trial for human rights crimes - questioned the detainees in a 12-hour hearing that ended early Sunday. The authorities have not identified the defendants' lawyers, but prosecutors told reporters that all of the accused argued their innocence. The judge's order lodged formal charges against Mr. Yarkas and seven of his subordinates, while freeing three others.

The proceedings were secret, and Judge Garzón's order was not filed with a court clerk. But several European news organizations obtained access to it.


-------- activists

California

States
USA Today
01/11/20
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Sebastopol - An environmental group's proposal that residents keep their cars parked one Sunday a month is causing concern among merchants. Advocates say the idea would help clean the air, protect pedestrians and save fuel. Dave Zedrick, who runs a service station, convenience store and car wash, estimates he could lose $60,000 a year.

---

Jeff Bridges cooks up an end to hunger in America

USA Today
11/20/2001
By W. Reed Moran,
Spotlight Health With medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2001-11-21-bridges-hunger.htm

This Thanksgiving most Americans will be enjoying the comforts of friends, family, and a "super-sized" bounty of food. But for millions of others in this country, the balm of even this simple ritual will remain out of reach: They will be going to bed hungry.

Not if actor and activist Jeff Bridges can help it. He's putting money where the mouth is.

"It's almost impossible to imagine that this situation could exist in ours, the most wealthy and generous of nations," says Bridges. "But I'm convinced that once we all become aware of this problem, our same generosity and resources can put a final end to this needless suffering."

Bridges has been a leading advocate for the world's poor and hungry for nearly 20 years. Since 1991, he's worked to draw attention to the growing crisis of hunger in America. Today, Bridges is chairman of Hunger Free America (HFA), a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) and co-founded by End Hunger Network and the Center on Hunger and Poverty.

The goal of Hunger Free America is to effectively end childhood hunger. The first major step toward that end is the recent publication of Cooking Up An End to Childhood Hunger in America - a cookbook in which 62 celebrities share their comments and favorite recipes in a fundraising effort to benefit HFA.

The cookbook and HFA program, sponsored by Unilever Bestfoods, includes five-star and down-home culinary contributions from diverse personalities including Bo Derek, Elizabeth Hurley, Katie Couric, Martin Sheen, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sen. Arlen Specter, Hector Elizondo, Bonnie Raitt, and Erin Brockovich.

Hidden problem

The USA produces enough food for all of its people and much of the rest of the world as well. But because hunger involves silent suffering, it too often goes unrecognized in our daily interactions with others in this land of plenty.

According to the Census Bureau, 30 million Americans live in households that do not have adequate food. Some 12 million of those are children.

Between 1999 and 2000, requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 17% in American cities, with over 60% of requests coming from families with children. Nearly 10% of food recipient households reported that children still missed meals because parents didn't have enough food or enough money to buy food.

Dr. J. Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, reports that the adverse effects of hunger have been shown to be far more serious and insidious than previously thought.

"Except in extreme cases of malnutrition, we used to believe that children's brain function wasn't affected," says Brown. "But now we know that children are literally having their talents and abilities taken away by even mild malnutrition."

Brown explains that when children experience insufficient nutritional or caloric intake, the body responds with a triage system of survival. "The first priority is to provide sufficient energy to keep critical organs alive," says Brown. "If more nutrition is available, it is then allocated to height and weight gain."

The last priority, when children are underfed, is the allocation of scarce food energy to cognitive development. "Hunger is surreptitiously robbing innocent children of their futures," warns Brown.

Research has shown that inadequate food energy intake can jeopardize children's attention, concentration, learning, and other important daily activities. Repeated episodes of malnutrition can lead to cumulative deficits in learning, lower academic achievement, and to long-term emotional, medical, and mental health problems.

But how does this crisis persist in the USA after a decade of unprecedented growth and prosperity?

Brown reports the ironic fact that during the 1960s and 1970s, our nation's leaders nearly ended hunger by creating and expanding federal nutrition initiatives such as Food Stamps, School Lunch, and School Breakfast programs.

But during the recession of the early 1980s, budget cuts and reallocation of resources allowed these successful programs to die on the vine. The result - by 1985, an estimated 20 million Americans suddenly found themselves going hungry on a regular basis. By 1992, that number had grown to 30 million.

Brown says that even the boom of the 1990s wasn't able to reverse the trend. "The paradox of hunger in a wealthy America is partially due to the disparities in economic gains across different segments of the population," he says.

Simply put, the rising economic tide of the 1990s didn't lift all boats. "The bottom 40% of income earners are actually doing less well than they were 20 years ago," says Brown. "Even with legislated increases, the actual purchasing power of the minimum wage has dropped by more than a third over those same two decades."

"Low wages and weak public policies caused the resurgence of this crisis," says Bridges, who currently stars in the film K-Pax. "But Americans cared enough to tackle it before, and the same solutions are there for us to utilize now."

Achievable goal

"We have the knowledge and infrastructure to ensure that no family - and no child - ever goes hungry in this country," says Bridges. "The good news is that programs already in place can solve this problem if they're properly funded."

Brown explains that public policies need to address the problem of access for those in need. For example:

- Food Stamps - Only 65% of intended beneficiaries, mostly children, are current recipients.

- School Breakfast Program - Only reaches one-third of eligible children.

- Summer Food Program - Misses 85% of the children it is designed to help.

Regaining lost ground and reclaiming the future of America's children and their families does take renewed political will, according to Brown. But the economic price is virtually negligible.

"Providing constant adequate nutrition to every person in this country can be achieved at a cost of only one-tenth of one percent of our current budget," says Brown. "And I'm proud to say that when Americans are informed about the depth of this emergency, they are more than willing to come forward."

Brown says that nearly 75% of those polled said that if necessary, they would be willing to pay as much as an additional $100 in taxes annually to eradicate the needless shame and suffering of hunger in this country.

But the actual individual cost of providing nutritional security for all Americans is probably much less. That's why Bridges and others have faith that getting the word out will get the job done.

"Americans care - in times of crisis we've seen that we instinctively pull together," says Bridges. "One of the greatest feelings in the world is knowing that we as individuals can make a difference. Ending hunger in America is a goal that is literally within our grasp."

---

Afghan Women Gather for Faltering First March

New York Times
November 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-afghan-women.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Shedding their head-to-toe burqas, hundreds of women gathered in the Afghan capital on Tuesday to demand their rights after five years of stifling Taliban rule.

On a bright, crisp day in a Kabul suburb, women in leather jackets, skirts and flowered headscarves met to call for the right to work, education for their daughters, and a political voice.

Led by former politician Saraya Parlika, the plan was to march to the United Nations office in the center of city.

But military police of the Northern Alliance, who seized control of Kabul from the Taliban a week ago, said they had been given no warning and postponed the march for a week.

It was a faltering start, but still an important moment for the women who just seven days ago could not leave the house unaccompanied, let alone show their faces.

``They say it was a security problem but we'll do it again next week,'' said Parlika, as men hung out of their apartment windows, amazed at the spectacle beneath.

Former teachers, doctors and civil servants chatted and laughed in the winter sunshine. They had all been sacked from their jobs by the Taliban, who banned women from working in their strict interpretation of Islamic rule.

``I came here to demand an education for my daughter,'' said 43-year-old Roya Sherzad. ``I was a teacher, I am a literate, educated woman, but my daughter has barely been to school.''

The Taliban banned mixed classes and said they did not have the resources to open separate boys' and girls' schools.

Most of the women had similar thoughts on their mind.

``I don't think we are asking for much. We want a government that gives our children an education and allows us to work and live our lives in peace,'' said Shukria, a former administrator.

``I need to support my family. This isn't about politics, it's just about a normal life.''

FINDING A VOICE

But Parlika, chairwoman of the 100-member General Coalition of Women, a human rights organization that has operated in secret since 1996, had more ambitious plans.

``We met yesterday to draw up our short-term agenda,'' she said. ``We decided we should shed our burqas and march to the U.N. to demand our political voice.''

Parlika is pushing for women to be represented at a meeting of Afghan groups to discuss the shape of a future government that the U.N. is working to convene.

But despite the concern to ensure all Afghanistan's ethnic groups are fairly represented in the new government, the rights of women seem to have been left behind.

U.N. special envoy Francesc Vendrell has held meetings in recent days with the exclusively male Northern Alliance and other political leaders, but not with Afghan women.

Even before the Taliban took power, Afghanistan was a male-dominated society.

``Now we have to start the women's struggle all over again,'' said Parlika, a senior member of Afghanistan's communist party in the 1980s, who says she is finished with hard-line politics.

``We need a voice, that is all. We want to be at that meeting.''

---

Demand Integrity in the Yucca Mountain Project!
RADIOACTIVE ROADS AND RAILS ACTION OF THE MONTH

Tue, 20 Nov 2001
From: "Noel Petrie" <NPETRIE@citizen.org>

Background

On November 14, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a supplemental public comment period on the Secretary of Energy's intention to recommend that a nuclear waste dump be developed at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The comment period closes on December 14, 2001.

A 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 directed the DOE to assess the suitability of Yucca Mountain - located about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas - for a proposed nuclear waste repository. 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and the DOE weapons complex would be shipped to the proposed dump, which lies in an earthquake zone and above a freshwater aquifer. Routing projections indicate that high-level radioactive waste shipments would likely pass within half a mile of the homes, schools, and workplaces of 50 million Americans in as many as 45 states en route to Yucca Mountain.

If the Secretary of Energy issues a favorable review of the Yucca Mountain dump proposal, the president will likely refer the recommendation to Congress where the State of Nevada's objections could be overridden by majority vote.

The DOE is required to consider public comments before formally recommending the Yucca Mountain site. The initial comment period, which closed on October 19, was widely criticized as inadequate since several key documents and regulations were not available to the public at that time. In response, the DOE has initiated this supplemental 30-day comment period.

Some supplemental information is now available, but the DOE has still not released the final Environmental Impact Statement for the repository project or specified plans for transporting waste across the country. Concerns about security in light of the new terrorist threat have not been adequately addressed either. The DOE should not be considering a site recommendation with these public health and safety issues unresolved.

Furthermore, a recent report by the DOE Inspector General pointed to a potential conflict of interest that suggests a pro-industry bias within the Yucca Mountain Project. According to the report, the law firm Winston & Strawn, counsel to the DOE's Yucca Mountain Project since 1992, was simultaneously registered as a member of and lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association that advocates in favor of the proposed nuclear waste dump. The public cannot be expected to have confidence in a site recommendation issued by an agency that so obviously fails to maintain impartiality.

Take Action!

Send comments to the DOE urging the Secretary to shelve all site recommendation activities and initiate a thorough review of the causes and consequences of contractor conflict of interest within the Yucca Mountain Project. Be sure to copy your comments to your Members of Congress. See other side for sample letter and addresses.

To receive Radioactive Roads and Rails "Action of the Month" alerts by e-mail, send your name and address to cmep@citizen.org

SAMPLE LETTER to DOE and CONGRESS

Carol Hanlon, DOE Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office (M/S #205) P.O. Box 364629 North Las Vegas, NV 89036-8629 E-mail: YMP_SR@ymp.gov Fax: 1-800-967-0739

Dear Ms. Hanlon:

I am writing to urge Energy Secretary Abraham to abandon the Yucca Mountain Project. The DOE's efforts to revise the Siting Guidelines and rely on "engineered barriers" indicate a dangerous departure from the concept of geologic containment and do not mask the many problems that should disqualify the repository proposal.

At best, the Secretary's consideration of site recommendation is premature. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Sufficiency Review comments make it clear that additional research and analysis are required to substantiate the repository proposal. In addition, the DOE has not yet detailed a scenario for transporting waste to Yucca Mountain, finalized the Environmental Impact Statement, or addressed security concerns in the context of the new terrorist threat.

Furthermore, indications of contractor conflict of interest and pro-industry bias within the Yucca Mountain Project, as reported recently by the agency's own Inspector General, seriously undermine the integrity of the DOE's process. The public cannot be expected to have confidence in a site recommendation issued by an agency that so obviously fails to maintain impartiality.

The DOE should indefinitely shelve all site recommendation activities and initiate a thorough review of the causes and consequences of contractor conflict of interest within the Yucca Mountain Project.

Sincerely, [YOUR NAME] [YOUR ADDRESS]

cc. The Honorable [NAME OF SENATORS] United States Senate* Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable [NAME OF REPRESENTATIVE] United States House of Representatives* Washington, DC 20515

- With some Congressional offices still closed and continuing delays in Capitol mail delivery, it helps to contact district offices, too. For addresses and fax numbers call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 244-3121 or visit www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.


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