------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Sellafield and La Hague study avail.
U.S., China to Lock Horns on Missile Proliferation
Claims public denied information on uranium mine
India, Pakistan Leaders Could End Stand-Off in Jan.
Pakistan Accuses India of More Kashmir Firing
China Announces 2005 Space Plans
Secret Soviet atomic cities fuel nuclear nightmares
Colorado
Nuclear weapons workers, survivors can file claims
The Bush administration revival of atomic power.

MILITARY
No escape
Taliban Holds Militiamen's Families Hostage
Bomb Remnants Increase War's Toll
U.S. Hits Caves in bin Laden Hunt; Battle Rages in North
Taliban May Have 500 Tanks in Kandahar
Lives Spared, Targets Destroyed
Tribunal Will Hear Milosevic Case
FBI Scientist Explains Anthrax Delay
Anthrax myths and facts
U.S. Hunting Antiviral Drug to Use in Case of Smallpox
Fighter Pilots Days May Be Numbered
Chinese help Taliban
DEA forges foreign alliances to combat spread of Ecstasy
Opium production resumes
Turkish, Iraqi movement
Deadly Israeli Rockets in West Bank
South Korea Launches Missile in Its First Test Since Last Year
Activists oppose anti-terrorist bill
Russia Ready to Boost NATO Ties, but Not Join
First U.S. Planes Arrive at Bulgaria Bourgas Base
Russia Urges Radical Changes in NATO Ties
NATO Plan Offers Russia Equal Voice on Some Policies
Bin Laden Now a Target in Arab Media
The defeat of militant Islam
Puerto Rican strikes
China Announces 2005 Space Plans
Cyberspace Seen as Potential Battleground
Attacks at Hubs Could Disrupt Phone Lines
Special forces get free rein
Afghan Roots Keep Adviser Firmly in the Inner Circle
Ugly Duckling Turns Out to Be Formidable in the Air

ENERGY AND OTHER
French watchdog approves hydro, waste power prices
Germany over-supports renewable energy - economist
24 Cow Clones, All Normal, Are Reported by Scientists
India to destroy illegally grown GM crops
New Chile copper plant for rock-eating bacteria

POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI Is Building a 'Magic Lantern'
Law allows U.S. to fight hackers
Inquiries Into Failures of Intelligence Community
Breaking Law or Principles to Give Information to U.S.
REMOTE VIEWING

ACTIVISTS
Man Sets Himself Afire in Ill. Mall



-------- NUCLEAR

Sellafield and La Hague study avail.

Fri, 23 Nov 2001
From: "Peter Diehl" <uranium@t-online.de>
http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/00-17-01_en.pdf (1.1MB PDF)

The European Parliament finally published the study on Sellafield and La Hague commissioned by STOA to WISE-Paris:

Possible Toxic Effects from the Nuclear Reprocessing Plants at Sellafield (UK) and Cap de la Hague (France), Nov. 2001

--------

U.S., China to Lock Horns on Missile Proliferation

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-china-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - The U.S.-led war on terrorism has lent urgency to American efforts to curb Chinese sales of weapons of mass destruction, but bilateral talks planned for next week appear unlikely to break a deadlock on non-proliferation.

The dispute is one of the most sensitive issues simmering beneath the surface of a newfound friendship based on China's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The United States is hoping the September 11 attacks on U.S. soil will encourage Beijing to abide by a deal not to transfer missile technology to nations Washington calls ``rogue states'' or ``state sponsors of terrorism,'' according to U.S. officials.

``In our view, the ball's in their court,'' said one U.S. official, who declined to be identified. ``It's up to them to do what's necessary to resume full implementation of the arrangement on their side.''

``They can see the new kind of world we're all in, the new kind of relationship they can have with the U.S.,'' he added. ''The ability of that relationship to reach its full extent is going to be limited by this missile problem if it's not resolved.''

SANCTIONS ON CHINA

The two sides struck a deal a year ago under which China pledged not to help any country develop ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and the United States agreed to resume processing licenses for space cooperation.

But Washington has accused Beijing of violating the deal and in September imposed sanctions on a Chinese firm it said exported missile parts to Pakistan. China denies breaking the agreement and wants the sanctions lifted and the licenses issued.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya will meet U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton in Washington on November 30 to try to resolve the impasse, the U.S. official told Reuters.

``We have nothing new to add,'' a spokesman from the Arms Control Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry told Reuters.

``China's stand on arms control is clear and we have repeated it on many occasions.''

U.S. officials highlighted Chinese sales of missile technology to countries including Pakistan and Iran before September 11 as a key issue in the bilateral relationship.

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT KNOWLEDGE

But Washington is expected to drive an even harder line now to stop such technology falling into the hands of countries on a State Department list of ``state sponsors of terrorism.''

``Our hope is that September 11 will make it more understandable to the Chinese side why it is we think these issues are so important and why it is they need to take the necessary steps,'' the official said.

Beijing argues that Chinese firms are either doing so without government knowledge or exporting technology not covered by the agreement with the United States.

U.S. officials have been urging China to draw up a list of materials covered by the agreement to avoid future ambiguities.

Some Beijing-based diplomats say China was planning to produce the list when U.S President Bush met President Jiang Zemin for the first time in Shanghai in October. Beijing decided otherwise when the sanctions were imposed, they say.

The U.S. official admitted next week's talks alone were unlikely to resolve the stalemate.

``Historically, it's taken some number of months to get from a low point like sanctions and then getting up out of the hole and making forward progress again.''

-------- australia

Claims public denied information on uranium mine

Fri, 23 Nov 2001
Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/australia/sa/port/regport-23nov2001-5.htm

It is claimed the public is being denied access to critical environmental information on the Honeymoon uranium mine in the state's north because of commercial secrecy.

Having gained environmental approval, the mine now needs the approval of the Federal Resources Minister and South Australia's Minerals and Energy Minister before it can operate.

But State Shadow Environment Minister, John Hill, says he has been informed crucial information is being withheld which should be released publicly before any decision is made.

"There's information relating to the in-situ leaching process and I gather that that information hasn't been put on the public record," he said.

"I understand the Government and the company has said that's commercial in confidence, but since that's critical to the whole issue about whether or not it's damaging to the environment I think it's reasonable that that information should be made available to the public."

A spokesman for the State Minerals Minister, Wayne Matthew, says all information relating to the environmental impact of the mine is on the public record.

-------- india / pakistan

India, Pakistan Leaders Could End Stand-Off in Jan.

Yahoo News
Friday November 23
By Sanjeev Miglani
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011123/wl/india_pakistan_dc_1.html

NEW DELHI - The leaders of India and Pakistan could meet on the margins of a regional conference in Kathmandu in early January to end a tense standoff between the nuclear-capable neighbors, officials said on Friday.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will travel to Kathmandu for the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) starting on January 4.

``It's a small gathering, it would seem most likely they will meet,'' said an Indian foreign ministry official who did not want to be identified.

He said the holding of the SAARC summit which last met in July 1998 was itself a signal. The SAARC summit was set for November 1999 but was postponed at India's request after a military coup in Pakistan brought Musharraf to power.

The Indian foreign ministry has consistently said talks with Pakistan are futile until it halts support to Islamic militants fighting in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said bilateral talks had taken place in earlier SAARC summit meetings, but did not elaborate on the prospect of such a dialogue in Kathmandu.

``India-Pakistan talks: yes, no, maybe,'' said a headline in the Hindu newspaper summing up the diplomatic stalemate.

Vajpayee turned down suggestions for a meeting with Musharraf on the edges of a U.N. General Assembly session earlier this month, saying it was not necessary to meet in New York.

The two leaders met for two days in the northern Indian town of Agra in July, but the summit collapsed over the five decade-old dispute in Kashmir.

Islamabad insisted the talks must focus on the row in the Himalayan region. But New Delhi, which considers the territory to be an integral part of the country, said the two sides must also discuss nuclear security, trade and cultural exchange.

``It's not that we were trying to avoid a meeting, we think there should be something constructive coming out of the meeting instead of re-stating old positions,'' another top government official said.

``Whether it wishes or not, India will at some stage have to negotiate with Pakistan,'' former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh said in parliament this week.

Tensions between the nuclear rivals have been rising in recent weeks, despite the two nations lining up behind the U.S.-led coalition to hunt down militants in neighboring Afghanistan.

The seven-nation SAARC has been in a limbo because of the tensions between India and Pakistan, its two most powerful members. The others in the group are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

---

Pakistan Accuses India of More Kashmir Firing

Yahoo News
Friday November 23
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011123/wl/pakistan_india_dc_3.html

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan accused the Indian army on Friday for the second day running of ``unprovoked heavy firing'' across a military control line in disputed Kashmir, which killed a woman and wounded three other civilians.

A military statement said the Indians used medium and field artillery, heavy mortars, heavy machine guns and small arms in Thursday's attacks in Lipa Valley and the Aliabad sector that ''resulted in casualties to innocent civilians.''

``The Pakistan army retaliated by targeting the Indian army posts, forcing them to stop firing on innocent civilians,'' it said.

On Thursday, Islamabad accused the Indian army of launching similar attacks in Neelum Valley and Aliabad sectors the day before, saying those attacks killed a woman and wounded at least 10 other civilians on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control, which stands between the armies of the two nuclear rivals.

But an Indian army spokesman in Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian-ruled part of the Himalayan region, blamed Pakistani soldiers for starting that artillery duel.

Police said on Friday three children were killed in Indian Kashmir and six adults wounded in Thursday's incident.

Both countries often accuse each other of cross-border firing in Kashmir, over which they have fought two of their three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.

But tensions have risen in recent weeks with the two sides accusing each other of moving troops closer to the border.

India rules about 45 percent and Pakistan a little more than a third of the Himalayan region, the remainder of which is held by China.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of sponsoring a 12-year-old separatist Muslim revolt in Indian-ruled Kashmir. Pakistan denies the charge, saying it only gives moral and political support to Kashmiri ``freedom fighters.''

-------- missile defense

China Announces 2005 Space Plans

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-China-Space.html?searchpv=aponline

BEIJING (AP) -- Citing military concerns and saying space exploration will become ``as essential as electricity,'' China announced plans to send a man into space by 2005 and, eventually, head for the moon.

China also will launch three satellites next year to monitor weather, study oceans and search for resources on earth, the official China Daily newspaper said Friday.

Senior officials said China's presence in space and its developing space program -- long a secretive affair, but also an endeavor that the government has framed as a symbol of national prestige -- will be well-established within three years.

``China has put the plan for developing the industry on the table,'' the China Daily quoted Sun Laiyan, vice director of the China National Space Administration, as saying Thursday.

The newspaper gave no details about the moon-shot and no firm date for manned spaceflight, other than ``before 2005.'' Space Administration spokesman Liu Xiaohong, reached by phone Friday, would not elaborate on China's plans.

But the official Xinhua News Agency, citing the head of the Space Administration, last month said the moon probe was part of China's ``struggle for a more important place in the world space science field.''

``For mankind in the 21st century, space application will become as essential as electricity and oil in the 19th century,'' the China Daily quoted Liang Sili, a space scientist, as saying.

He said more unmanned tests were needed before a manned launch. ``We must be sure that the astronauts are 100 percent safe in outer space,'' Liang was quoted as saying.

Like the United States in the 1960s, China has used the prospect of reaching for the stars as a motivating force for patriotism. Xinhua earlier this year praised lunar exploration as having an ``immeasurable usefulness to raising national prestige and inspiring the nationalistic spirit.''

China successfully launched unmanned Shenzhou, or ``Sacred Vessel,'' spacecraft on Long March rockets in 1999 and this year -- pushing forward Chinese plans to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to have launched manned vessels.

While building its space programs, China is also concerned that space could become an expensive battleground in any future conflict. Beijing is especially unhappy with U.S. plans to build systems to shield the United States from missile attack.

``Some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space, not peacefully exploring,'' the China Daily quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry official Huang Huikang, who has worked with other nations' space programs, as saying.

``Another arms race in outer space has begun since 1998, and we should be watchful,'' Huang said.

-------- russia

Secret Soviet atomic cities fuel nuclear nightmares

Friday, November 23, 2001
By Clara Ferreira-Marques,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11232001/reu_45655.asp

MOSCOW - Russia's nuclear cities were once elite centers of military research hidden in dark corners of the Soviet Union, fenced off from the outside world and painted out of ordinary road maps.

Now, their underpaid specialists fuel Western nightmares of nuclear leaks, thefts, and terrorism. Tales of suitcases filled with weapons-grade uranium are more often fiction than fact, experts say. But the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan has boosted demand for weapons of mass destruction - and the marketability of the brain power to operate them.

"One of our biggest problems is the brain-drain, and we know many scientists have left the closed cities,'' defense analyst Alexander Pikayev said. "Fortunately we know they left for the West and Israel, but if the (global) situation continues to develop in this way, we cannot rule out that they will move to other states.''

Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in September's hijacked airliner attacks on America, says he possesses nuclear and chemical weapons, a claim Russian leader Vladimir Putin has cast doubt on.

Moreover, analysts argue, drastic cuts to programs funding the cities' conversion to civilian life could upset an already delicate balance.

"How could a group or a country fabricate a nuclear or radiological device out of materials they have acquired?'' asked Jon Wolfstahl, a Washington-based associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "I don't think they can produce a very small compact nuclear weapon without a lot of assistance, which raises the important question: Are we doing enough to protect or prevent Russian nuclear experts from providing that assistance?''

POST COLD WAR CHALLENGES

The Nuclear Cities Initiative, announced in March 1998, was a concrete step toward addressing Russia's post-Cold War nuclear challenges and intended to promote conversion in the dozen or so nuclear cities through private investment and development.

In its three pilot cities, the initiative opened business development and computer centers and funded training on career changes and city leadership.

But the cash attributed to the initiative by the U.S. government has dwindled, sliding to an all-time low of around $6 million planned for 2002 from a peak of $30 million.

"The risk of a brain-drain is quite real and unfortunately it can grow, given that some U.S. programs like the Nuclear Cities Initiative have been cut back,'' Pikayev said.

During Soviet rule, security concerns kept the closed cities off the map, hiding them under the names of postboxes in nearby towns - Cheliabinsk-70, Tomsk-7 - their interior unknown even to neighboring villages. In return, their inhabitants lived lives of relative luxury. The sealed enclaves tucked away in Russia's most remote regions were home not only to the heart of Russia's nuclear weapons industry but also to chemical and biological research.

The closed cities are still out of bounds for foreigners, but many are slowly beginning fresh, civilian lives with new names, new purposes, and the right to a spot on the map. And some say life in these cities - showered with privileges at the height of the Soviet arms drive but forgotten in the breakup of the Soviet Union - is now little different from that in the rest of Russia.

SIBERIAN CITY

"The situation in our closed cities, particularly in MinAtom (Atomic Energy Ministry) cities, is getting better,'' said Dmitry Kovchegin, an analyst with the Moscow-based Center for Policy Studies in Russia. "I was in (the Siberian city of) Tomsk and I spoke to people from the chemical combine just one day after Sept. 11, and they said there is no human leakage from their city,'' he said. Instead of leaving for better-paid jobs abroad, students were competing to get positions at the plant, he said.

But others say there is still little to celebrate. Valentin Tikhonov, a sociologist affiliated to the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a survey of five nuclear cities showing that 62 percent of employees earn less than $50 a month. Unofficial figures place the wages of top nuclear workers at between $100-$300.

The lifeline, experts say, is private initiative and foreign investment. Wolfstahl quotes Intel as an example. The world's largest computer chip maker has a software and microchip design center in Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16). "You no longer need to have large factories or mass migration of individuals to take advantage of their talent,'' he said.

But there is little to keep foreign investors interested: Obtaining a simple authorization to visit any of the closed cities (military or otherwise) can take up to two months. And security following the Sept. 11 attacks has only increased the obstacles.

"The Russian government could do more - maybe one thing is to give (the cities) a more open status,'' Kovchegin said, adding regional leaders keen to cash in taxes from the cities, which still enjoy tax perks, are stepping up pressure on Moscow.

Will the closer friendship between Russia and the West lead to a brighter outlook for these cities? "I would like to believe the good relationship between Russia and the West would help us decide what to do with these cities,'' Pikayev said. "But at the same time it would help if the Americans raised their assistance.''

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

-------- colorado

Colorado

States
USA Today
01/11/23
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Denver - A federal judge has awarded $43.3 million to 25 people who claimed they were exposed to radiation poisoning from the Cotter Corp. uranium mine near Canon City. District Judge Zita Weinshienk issued the judgment in favor of the past or current residents of Lincoln Park. A Cotter executive said the decision would be appealed.

-------- nebraska

Nuclear weapons workers, survivors can file claims

November 23, 2001,
Nebraska Journal Star
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=4863&date=20011123&past=

U.S. Department of Labor representatives will be in Lincoln Monday to speak to nuclear weapons workers or their survivors who may be eligible for benefits.

Workers can get help filling out claim forms at the open-door session, which will begin with a 9 a.m. presentation at the Federal Building, Suite 287, 100 Centennial Mall North.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act went into effect July 31. It provides $150,000 in lump-sum compensation, as well as related medical expenses, to workers who are seriously ill because they were exposed to beryllium, silica or radiation while working for the Department of Energy, its contractors or subcontractors in the nuclear weapons industry.

It also provides benefits to some survivors and $50,000 in lump-sum payments and medical expenses to some uranium workers.

-------- us nuc politics

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH - mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY - mailto:vice.president@whitehouse.gov
FIRST LADY LAURA BUSH - mailto:first.lady@whitehouse.gov
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE DENNIS HASTERT - mailto:speaker@mail.house.gov
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER TOM DASCHLE - mailto:tom_daschle@daschle.senate.gov
SENATE MINORITY LEADER TRENT LOTT - mailto:senatorlott@lott.senate.gov

---

The Bush administration is pushing ahead with a full-scale revival of atomic power.

Karl Grossman,
Hartford Advocate, published first in E Magazine
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/nukes.html

The last time anyone ordered a new nuclear power plant in the United States was in 1978, but if you think that means nukes are dead forever, guess again. The Bush administration and the nuclear industry are making an intense push to revive nuclear power in the U.S. "It's like reviving Frankenstein -- this is the sequel," says Robert Alvarez, executive director of the Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR) Foundation and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation.

Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) uses another word when describing the administration's work. Says D'Arrigo: "It's the push to relapse."

Ever since the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl shattered public trust in atomic power, advocates in government and industry have been laying the groundwork for a nuclear energy comeback. An unbridled drive has started under George W. Bush in what "may be the most ardently pro-nuclear power presidency in U.S. history," says Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based NIRS.

The Bush administration's stance is aggressive, and it minimizes the dangers of nuclear power. As Bush's secretary of treasury, Paul O'Neill, told The Wall Street Journal, "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear power really is good."

In Bed with the Industry

The Bush administration struck a close working relationship with the nuclear industry well before taking office. The administration's energy "transition" advisers included Joseph Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which describes itself as "the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry," J. Bennett Johnston, who as a U.S. senator was a leading pro-nuclear power figure in Congress and who now runs a consulting firm that assists the nuclear industry, Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, former head of the American Nuclear Energy Council (forerunner of NEI) and a reported "Bush buddy" going back to their days together at Yale, and representatives of four nuclear utilities. There were no advisers representing renewable energy or environmental organizations.

Two weeks after being sworn in, Bush set up a "National Energy Policy Development Group" and appointed as its chairman Vice President Dick Cheney. Its members included O'Neill and other top administration officials. Ten weeks after it was organized, the group issued a report declaring its support for "the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy." The plan would substantially increase the use of nuclear power both by building new nuclear power plants -- many to be constructed on existing nuclear plant sites -- and extending the 40-year licenses of currently operating plants each by another 20 years.

"Many U.S. nuclear plant sites were designed to host four to six reactors, and most operate only two or three; many sites across the country could host additional plants," says the energy policy group's report. "Building new generators on existing sites avoids many complex issues associated with building plants on new sites." It could also greatly amplify the impacts of an accident, notes Paul Gunter, head of NIRS' Reactor Watchdog Project. If one nuclear plant in a cluster of facilities undergoes a catastrophic accident, there is the potential, says Gunter, for a "cascading loss amplifying the release of radiation."

According to the policy report, "Many nuclear utilities are planning to extend the operating license of existing plants by 20 years," and "the licensing of as many as 90 percent of the currently operating nuclear plants may be renewed." There are 103 nuclear plants now in the U.S. They are, on average, 19 years old. Of the longevity of nuclear plants, "No one foresaw them running for more than 40 years," says Alvarez of STAR, who was also senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy from 1993 to 1999. The effects of intense radioactive bombardment, especially on metals, have been seen as limiting the operating life of nuclear plants. And then there's the standard deterioration that occurs when any machine gets old. "These reactors are just like old machines, but they are ultra-hazardous," says Alvarez. By pushing their operating span to 60 years, he says, "disaster is being invited."

New Nukes?

The Bush administration's policy also supports "advanced" nuclear power plants--supposedly new-and-improved nukes. "Advanced reactor technology promises to improve nuclear safety," the national energy group's report says. One example the report provides is "the gas-cooled, pebble bed reactor, which has inherent safety features." In fact, says Gunter, the pebble bed reactor is not new; it's just "old wine in a new bottle." It's a hybrid of the gas-cooled, high-temperature design that "has appeared and been rejected in England, Germany and the U.S." And far from being "inherently safe," a reactor of similar design, a THTR300 in Germany's Ruhr Valley, spewed out substantial amounts of radioactivity in a 1986 accident, which led to its permanent closure.

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that the pebble bed reactor uses blocks of graphite to slow neutron action, although "graphite is a form of carbon, which can ignite in a reactor fire. It was the graphite that kept burning at Chernobyl for 10 days, releasing much of the radiation," he says.

Also, the pebble bed would produce 10 times more high-level waste per amount of electricity generated as compared to existing plants, says Lochbaum, who worked in the nuclear power industry for 17 years and became a whistle-blower before coming to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Further, Exelon, the builder of the pebble bed reactor, wants five such units operated from a single control room, which is a dubious proposition, says Lochbaum. He also notes that the pebble bed systems' designers "reduced costs by eliminating a key safety feature -- the reactor containment building."

Lochbaum and Gunter dispute the "inherent safety" claim made for the pebble bed reactor and the three reactor designs that have been certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as "advanced"--Westinghouse's AP-600, ABB Combustion Engineering's System 80+ and General Electric's Advanced Boiling Water Reactor. "Like all nuclear plants, they are inherently dangerous," says Lochbaum.

Moreover, the Bush National Energy Policy, with its reliance on more nuclear power and greater fossil fuel generation, comes at a time when safe, clean, renewable energy sources have arrived. The need is for broad-scale implementation. Wind power, solar energy, hydrogen fuel technologies including fuel cells, among other renewable energy sources, are more than ready after years of dramatic advances. Coupled with energy efficiency, they can be tapped and widely used.

A coalition of renewable, safe-energy advocates says of the National Energy Policy: "The Bush/Cheney administration is recklessly promoting the building of new nuclear plants to address an energy crisis that in large part is being manufactured by the energy corporations that will benefit from building new power plants. We believe that instead of promoting dangerous and dirty forms of energy, the United States should be a world leader in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. But the Bush administration is not to be turned around. As Cheney, in one speech, said of nuclear power, "If we are serious about environmental protection, then we must seriously question the wisdom of backing away from what is, as a matter of record, a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source."

Or, as he declared in another speech, "We're now at about 20 percent of our electricity being generated by nuclear. We'd like to increase that."

Not surprisingly, the nuclear power industry stands solidly alongside President Bush. Says Nuclear Energy Institute President Colvin, "The administration's support for nuclear power as a proven energy technology that protects our air quality is a tremendously positive development for our nation. ... The industry looks forward to working with the White House and Congress to make this long-term vision a reality."

Pushing Ahead

To fast track its vision of our radioactive future, the Bush administration advocates a "one-step" licensing process for nuclear plants already in place. It was part of an Energy Policy Act bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress in 1992 and signed into law by the former President George Bush. "One-step" licensing allows the NRC to hold a single hearing for a "combined construction and operating license." No longer can nuclear plant projects be slowed down or stopped at a separate operating license proceeding, at which evidence of construction defects can be revealed. As The New York Times described the passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, "Nuclear power lobbyists called the bill their biggest victory in Congress since the Three Mile Island accident."

That Energy Policy Act was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress. As NIRS reported in its Nuclear Monitor in 1992: "As the bill wound its way through the Senate and House, the nuclear industry won nearly every vote that mattered, proving that Congress remains captive to industry lobbying and political contributions over public opinion."

That remains the situation today. Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program documents how the NEI regularly showers Congress -- including members of both major parties -- with political contributions. And when the nuclear industry gives, members of Congress act, notes Public Citizen, which charts the record of politicians on key nuclear issues. Likewise, nuclear industry money pours into presidential campaigns.

The Republican Bush-Cheney posture on nuclear power is hard line, but that doesn't mean the Democratic alternative was (or is) much different. The NEI's website includes a page of "Endorsements of Nuclear Energy," and among those quoted are Al Gore: "Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world's energy supply," he reportedly said in a speech at the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev in 1998. And Gore's former running mate, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, is quoted as saying at a Senate hearing in 1998: "I am a supporter of nuclear energy. I believe it can be part of the solution to solving the world's energy, environment and global warming problems."

Basically, there is a difference in degrees and rhetoric between the politicians from the major parties, says Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. And "the Clinton administration is by no means blameless" in the push to revive the moribund nuclear industry, she says, especially because of its support for development of "advanced" nuclear plants.

The Bush National Energy Policy says that because of "one-step" licensing, which it terms the "reformed licensing process," getting new nuclear plants built and operating will now be streamlined. And, to make sure public involvement is minimal in the process, the NRC is now seeking to undo the public's right to formal trial-type hearings on nuclear plant licensing. It plans to "deformalize" the hearings by eliminating due process procedures.

Documents would be restricted to what the NRC staff and company deem relevant. Instead of cross-examining witnesses, interested parties will have to submit written questions as suggestions for the NRC's presiding officers to ask at their discretion at a hearing. Says Mariotte, "The administration should learn from Seattle, Prague and Quebec that when people are shut out of public policy processes, the streets are their only alternative."

Redefining Safety

Also to help in a nuclear power comeback is the effort to alter the standards for radiation exposure. As more and more has been learned about radioactivity, the realization has come that any amount can be dangerous, that there is no "safe" level. This is called the "linear no-threshold theory," and it has been adopted by the NRC and other U.S. government agencies.

Now nuclear advocates in government and industry want to alter the standards premised on a contention that low doses of radiation are not so bad after all. They are "engaged in an all-out assault on radiation protection standards," says D'Arrigo. There is even interest in a long-rejected notion called "hormesis," which claims that a little radiation is good for people and helps exercise the immune system. The instrument for this change is a new Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which is to make recommendations to the federal government. "The only way to convince the public that additional radiation is acceptable is to put together a skewed panel to try to convince us that more radiation is fine," says D'Arrigo. The new BEIR panel, she says, is thus stacked with high-level radiation advocates.

Nuclear waste is another obstacle the nuclear proponents in government and industry are seeking to get around. "If we don't deal with the waste problem," acknowledged Cheney in a speech, "then my guess is we won't get the investment in new facilities in the nuclear arena. ... It's within our grasp as a government, of the executive and the legislative branches, to move forward, to get the issue addressed and get it off the table so that utilities are prepared to invest in nuclear."

How is this being done? For high-level nuclear waste, there are the drives to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as well as Utah's Skull Valley Goshute Reservation and possibly other Native American reservations, as nuclear waste repositories. For what is considered low-level waste, the strategy is to "recycle" it -- to smelt metals down and incorporate irradiated material into consumer items. "The plan is to put it into frying pans, belt buckles, cribs, zippers -- to parcel it out into everyday commerce," explains D'Arrigo.

The huge problem with Yucca Mountain, which the government began exploring as a repository in the 1980s, is that it is on or near 32 earthquake faults and has a "history and prospects of volcanoes and a likelihood of flooding and leakage," says D'Arrigo. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is still seeking to "ram through" Yucca Mountain, says Mariotte. Resistance from people in Nevada and their elected representatives is so far blocking the scheme.

In 1997, tribal leaders of the Goshute Indian reservation "leased land to a private group of electrical utilities for the temporary storage of 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel," according to the Goshute's website. But some members of the tribe are fighting the deal in court, demanding to know who got what for what. Utah government officials are also challenging the arrangement. Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt says, "We intend to leave no stone unturned to make sure this waste does not come to Utah. The state's authority and responsibility to protect its citizens and the environment is clear."

But clear to advocates in government and the nuclear industry is that working with ostensibly sovereign American Indian reservations is a way to unload atomic garbage. Critics describe it as a new form of environmental racism -- "nuclear racism" -- seeking to take advantage of the poverty of Native Americans. The drive to "recycle" nuclear waste has been percolating for years. In 1980, the NRC first proposed that irradiated metal scrap could be converted, stressing that "radioactive waste burial costs could be avoided, [and] the resulting use of smelted scrap could be made into any number of consumer or capital equipment products such as automobiles, appliances, furniture, utensils, personal items and coins." Some thought the push for radioactive quarters and hot Pontiacs was too crazy to be true.

But now the scheme is coming down the pike full-speed with the DOE, Department of Transportation and the NRC moving to facilitate the "recycling of contaminated metal and other radioactive wastes," as the DOE recently announced. Says D'Arrigo: "Bush wants more nuclear power, and we are being told we'll have to do our part by accepting atomic waste in our daily use items."

Those behind the nuclear push are moving to extend a key piece of U.S. law that facilitated the nuclear power industry in the first place: the Price-Anderson Act. This law drastically limits the amount of money people can collect as a result of a nuclear power plant disaster.

It was originally enacted in 1957 after nervous utilities and insurance companies balked at building nuclear power plants. "The potential for catastrophe is apparently many times as great as anything previously known in industry," said Herbert W. Yount, vice president of Liberty Mutual Insurance, before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, from which Price-Anderson emerged. The committee was part of the earliest promotion for a nuclear establishment of government and corporations that had grown out of the World War II-era Manhattan Project. With the war over, nuclear scientists, government bureaucrats and corporate contractors involved in the Manhattan Project -- like Westinghouse and GE -- sought to perpetuate their nuclear activities through electricity generation.

In what was supposed to be a temporary measure to boost the nuclear power industry, the Price-Anderson Act passed, limiting liability in the event of a nuclear plant accident to $560 million, with the federal government paying the first $500 million. Although it was supposed to last for only 10 years, Price-Anderson has been repeatedly extended. Now the Bush administration and the atomic industry are seeking to use it as a financial umbrella for the push to revive nuclear power.

"The renewal of Price-Anderson is only to build new reactors," says Mariotte. "That's the issue. Existing nuclear plants are covered by the present law."

The Bush administration and nuclear industry are proposing that the current liability limit of $9 billion be extended for another 10 years. The initial $560 million cap rose through the years to, in recent years, $9 billion. Still, notes Alvarez, this is all just a fraction of what the NRC itself has concluded would be the financial consequences of a nuclear plant accident. Those figures are contained in a 1982 report prepared for the NRC by the DOE's Sandia National Laboratories entitled Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences for U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. It calculates (in 1980s dollars) costs as a result of a nuclear plant disaster as high as $314 billion at the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant north of New York City and $174 billion for the Millstone 3 nuclear plant in Connecticut. The report projects "early fatalities"with figures as high as 100,000 dead for the Salem 1 nuclear plant in New Jersey and 72,000 dead for the Peach Bottom 2 nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

What are the chances of such a disaster occurring? In 1985, the NRC was asked by a House oversight committee chaired by Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) to determine the probability of a "severe core melt accident" for reactors now operating and those expected to operate during the next 20 years. The NRC concluded: "The crude cumulative probability of such an accident would be 45 percent."

That disaster has not come--yet. And "luck" is the only reason it hasn't, says Lochbaum. But the drive to revive nuclear power, if it succeeds, will push that luck and increase the danger from every aspect of the nuclear power chain, from mining and milling to transportation, fuel enrichment, fabrication and actual reactor operation. The legacy will inevitably increase the "routine" emissions of radioactivity and atomic waste management in perpetuity.

For more information contact: Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, (202) 588-1000, www.citizen.org/cmep; Nuclear Information and Resource Service, (202) 328-0002, www.nirs.org; Union of Concerned Scientists, (617) 547-5552, www.ucsusa.org.

Karl Grossman, a George Polk Award-winning journalist, teaches investigative and environmental reporting at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. This article originally appeared in E The Environmental Magazine www.emagazine.com.

Photos: Aren't Nukes Swell? http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes.jpg http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes_blast.jpg http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes_energy.gif http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes_rad.gif http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes_biohaz.gif http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/images/nukes_nuke.gif


-------- MILITARY

No escape

November 23, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-9543924.htm

Intelligence sources tell us Osama bin Laden has run out of places outside Afghanistan where any country and group would welcome him.

His best hope is Somalia, the east African, warlord-infested country that was so grateful for American food aid in 1993 that it killed 18 U.S. service members.

The sources say bin Laden has built a large al Qaeda operation in Somalia, complete with infrastructure and caches of arms.

"They have been setting up there for a long time," said a senior Bush administration official. "They have some alternative positions."

Whether bin Laden could hide for long in Somalia, Iran, Sudan or any other rogue regime is doubtful, sources tell us, so he is likely to stay put in Afghanistan and fight to the death.

It was in Somalia that bin Laden henchman Mohammed Atef came to prominence. He traveled from Sudan to Somalia in 1993 and taught the locals to wage guerrilla war on American GIs. Last week, eight years later, the U.S. military finally paid him back. Payment came in the form of two, 2,000-pound bombs that hit a command center south of Kabul, killing Atef and other al Qaeda terrorists.

Contingency plan

Defense officials tell us the Pentagon recently drew up new contingency plans to expand military operations now under way in Afghanistan to Somalia and Sudan - two likely places bin Laden and al Qaeda terrorists might go to after their sanctuaries in Afghanistan disappear.

The officials said Somalia is the most immediate place where military attacks might take place. Recent intelligence reports have indicated that arms and equipment are continuing to flow into southern Somalia, where a new al Qaeda base is believed to be taking shape.

The military operations would be similar to the current campaign in Afghanistan - a combination of air strikes and missile attacks and special operations commandos on the ground.

-------- afghanistan

Taliban Holds Militiamen's Families Hostage
Strategy Designed to Prevent Troops in Kandahar From Surrendering or Defecting

By Kamran Khan
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3526-2001Nov22?language=printer

KARACHI, Pakistan, Nov. 22 -- Three Pakistani militants just returned from Afghanistan said today that Taliban zealots and their foreign comrades, determined to fight to the finish, have detained the wives and children of hundreds of Afghan fighters in Kandahar to prevent them from surrendering or fleeing.

In an interview, the three said fighters' families are held in three heavily guarded residential compounds in Kandahar while their husbands and fathers are forced to swear on the Koran never to let opposition or U.S. forces enter the southwestern Afghan city, one of only two remaining in Taliban hands.

The three Pakistani fighters described the families' detentions as part of what one called "a reign of terror" inside Kandahar by Taliban leaders and their Arab partners from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. There was no way to confirm their account, although other travelers from the besieged city also have spoken of the determination of the most radical Taliban fighters and Arab associates, along with tension between them and Afghan fighters thinking of surrender.

Disillusioned, the three Pakistanis said they walked for four days through desert and hills to escape Kandahar and sneak back across the Pakistani border, in a trip that began last Friday and ended with a bus ride to Karachi on Wednesday. "We made a grave mistake by going there," said Abul Kalam, a 23-year-old dropout from the University of Karachi.

Recruited by a religious organization that preaches holy war against the United States as an Islamic obligation, Kalam and his two friends began their jihad, or holy war, in Afghanistan just days before U.S. airstrikes started on Oct. 7. Kalam and Rasheed Ahmed, 22, another University of Karachi dropout, were already committed fighters, along with Khalilullah, a 20-year-old graduate student at Karachi's S.M. Science College.

In early 1998, all three were trained in guerrilla warfare by Arab experts at a camp near the eastern Afghan town of Khost, they said. And all three said they had experience fighting the Indian army in the disputed province of Kashmir. Last month, they joined with what Pakistani security officials described as thousands of other Pakistanis, most of them from the Pashtun-dominated tribal border areas, who streamed into Afghanistan in response to pleas from religious leaders to join the Taliban's battle.

"It was not the day and night American bombings, but the reign of terror unleashed by Arab fighters against unarmed Kandaharis that forced us to secretly abandon our security post near the ruined cantonment of the city," said Kalam. "God was kind to make me realize that it was sheer distortion of the concept of jihad."

All three said they decided to return to Karachi once they saw Arabs and some Taliban militia leaders forcing hundreds of fighters to take security positions at various locations in the city by confining their wives and children to three residential compounds near Kandahar's Chowk Maidan district.

"Mullah Omar lieutenants and Arabs have told these Taliban that they would only be allowed to meet their wives and children once the war is over," said Ahmed, referring to the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. "Jihad doesn't allow us to force Muslims to fight by holding their families as hostage."

Rasheed said that soon after reaching Kandahar on Oct. 5, he was posted at one of these residential complexes by his commander, a former Pakistani army captain.

"From the beginning I was suspicious that this complex of about 70 houses had no adult male population, yet it was guarded to an extent that even the children were not allowed to wander outside the complex," he said. "Later some of the children and my fellow Arab guards told me that the families would only meet their adult male members once the infidel America is defeated."

Rasheed said that because he showed some sympathy toward the confined women and children, he was moved to a security post near the Kandahar cantonment. Kalam said he had been assigned to a security post at a complex of 90 houses reserved for women and children about a 10-minute drive from downtown Kandahar.

"I was horrified to learn how Arabs stormed the houses of common Taliban to segregate women and children from the adult male members two days before the U.S. strikes," said Kalam.

"A paranoia that every second man in Kandahar is providing information to Americans has gripped Arab guerrillas," said Khalilullah.

He said he immediately decided to join his friends in their return journey to Karachi when last Friday he saw an Arab firing squad of three people killing a 16-year-old boy for carrying a toy pager that the Arabs mistook for a spy gadget.

Khalilullah said he was present at a gathering of about 200 Taliban two weeks ago during which several Arabs passed the Koran from one man to the next, asking them to swear an oath that they would fight to the death before allowing any foreign army to enter Kandahar.

Khalilullah was assigned to a mobile security team headed by an Arab, who openly spoke of his frustration at not being able to return to Egypt. Khalilullah said the Arab commander, known as Abu Furqan, told him, "You can go back to Pakistan, but I have no travel document. They will send me to gallows once they spot me in Cairo, the city of my birth."

Khalilullah said that while he and two colleagues were extremely lucky in making a safe journey from Kandahar to Karachi, thousands of Pakistani fighters are still in Afghanistan in the Taliban-held cities of Kandahar in the south and Kunduz in the north.

Some would like to leave, he said, but many others plan to stay until the end.

----

CASUALTIES
Bomb Remnants Increase War's Toll

November 23, 2001
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/asia/23BOMB.html

GHALEH SHAFER, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 - Most children in Afghanistan, lacking toys, play with what they find. In this tiny, dusty village, they have been finding pieces of a cluster bomb.

Three children were injured this week, and one teenager was killed, when they picked up undetonated remnants of a bomb dropped by American planes about a month ago. The bomb's initial impact killed 12 people, most from the same extended family. The village mourned, thinking it had seen the worst.

But workers from the Organization for Mine and Afghan Rehabilitation knew better. They are reluctant veterans of detonating unexploded ordinance - thanks to the millions of land mines in this country - and each morning they find and detonate a bomb's pieces. An explosion sounds every few minutes, the signal that one more threat has been neutralized.

But the detonators are finding themselves in a race against children's curiosity - and their hunger. The pieces of the bomb are yellow, the same color as the packages of food rations dropped by American planes this week. And while the Pentagon has said it plans to change the color of the food packets from yellow to blue to avoid confusion, it has not yet done so. So it was that 10-year-old Mohebolah Seraj went out to collect wood for his family, and thought he had happened upon a food packet.

He picked it up and lost three fingers in an explosion. Doctors say he will probably lose his whole hand. "It wouldn't matter if my daughter lost a hand," his mother, Sardar Seraj, said, weeping. "But my son was supposed to help support us."

She said that she cried and told the doctors not to cut off her son's whole hand. "But the doctors say it's impossible not to."

Mr. Seraj and her eight children are refugees from the drought-stricken Ghor Province. Now they live in one room in this village. Mrs. Seraj said she was so poor that she could not even afford a taxi to the hospital in Herat, so she walked the two or three miles.

The hospital where her son is being cared for is a grim place, lacking power and basic sanitation. In one room lay Muhammad Ayoub, a 20-year-old who was in the house when the cluster bomb initially landed. He lost a leg and his eyesight, and his face was severely disfigured. He moaned in agony.

Down the hall, sharing a room with several adults, lay two cousins, one 9, one 7, who were injured on Tuesday when they picked up an unexploded bomb while playing. Their grandmother nervously watched over them, but said she thought that they would be fine.

Hospital officials said that a 16-year-old had been decapitated on Wednesday after he picked up a piece of the bomb.

Back in the village, the family members who survived the bomb's initial explosion crowded in one room, refugees just feet from their own homes. One house was destroyed when the bomb fell; other homes that were damaged were deemed unsafe to return to until the mine experts finish their work.

Bashahmad Ahmadi, 25, who was at home when the bomb hit, saw three people die. "Suddenly I felt very hot, then I didn't feel anything." He has had surgery on his foot, but still walks with a crutch. His father, a teacher, was killed by the bomb, as were the husbands of three of his mothers' sisters. His mother has 10 children and 5 grandchildren.

Crutch or not, he must now find a way to support them all.

---

THE FRONTS
U.S. Hits Caves in bin Laden Hunt; Battle Rages in North

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/asia/23MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - The American military continued its systematic hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan by working down a target list of cave networks where Osama bin Laden is suspected to be hiding, officials said today.

They dropped guided missiles, a giant bomb and more copies of leaflets offering a $25 million bounty. In the latest attacks, the American military has particularly targeted areas south of Kandahar, the largest Taliban stronghold still resisting opposition forces.

In Kunduz, the other heavy concentration of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, heavy fighting broke out along the front lines there today even as a senior Northern Alliance leader said that Taliban officials had agreed to surrender the city encircled by his forces.

The leader, Gen. Rashid Dostum, said he had reached the agreement after two days of talks, and that Taliban soldiers would begin handing over their weapons and start leaving the city as early as Saturday.

But the fighting, the worst since the siege of Kunduz began 10 days ago, suggested that the Taliban leaders who had been negotiating a surrender might not have full control over their forces, or even be able to agree among themselves.

American special operations forces are providing advice to the Northern Alliance, but a senior Pentagon official emphasized today that they are not playing a central role in the negotiations - except to reinforce the Bush administration's position that Al Qaeda fighters who surrender must be taken as prisoners of war, and not granted safe passage to freedom.

"What we care about is that Al Qaeda and Taliban are not capable of continuing to do what they've been doing," the official said.

The Pentagon is working through a target list of possible bin Laden hideouts, most of which are caves, though some buildings are included. The targets have been designated by aerial surveillance, human intelligence on the ground, or from the files of Russia's secret service, which inherited the archives of the Soviet Union's disastrous, decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, officials said.

One senior military officer said that it would be a misinterpretation of the bombing campaign to say that ordnance was being dropped in an attempt to force Mr. bin Laden into a certain set of known refuges for attack.

"But we are trying to deliberately push back his perimeter, shrink the area where he can move," the officer said. Said another military officer: "When we hit the caves, we are trying to kill as many of the enemy as we can while denying bin Laden another place he can hide."

As hundreds of Marine Corps ground troops remained poised aboard ships in the Arabian Sea, awaiting possible orders to set up a temporary base inside Afghanistan for staging raids, a senior Defense Department official said that high- level discussions were under way over whether Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the war in Afghanistan, would move his headquarters to the region.

"There has been some consideration," the official said today. "But we are not yet close to a decision."

The United States Central Command, located at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., oversees American military operations from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. A senior military officer said that setting up a forward command headquarters in the region would indicate that General Franks was anticipating a complicated phase of ground missions in Afghanistan requiring that he be closer to the action - or that the next front in the terror war would also be in the region.

Inside the Afghan war zone that opened on Oct. 7, American combat planes struck for the second day in a row outside Jalalabad, where bands of Taliban roam with highway robbers in an area only nominally under opposition control. Two target zones were struck north and east of Jalalabad on Wednesday, the Pentagon said in its daily update of the previous 24 hours of bombing.

Today two targets were struck south and west of the city in an area where American intelligence officers have placed an Al Qaeda training camp and a laboratory suspected of work on chemical weapons, a military official said.

A 15,000-pound bomb effective for killing and terrifying troops - the BLU-82 "daisy cutter" - was dropped south of the Kandahar stronghold on Wednesday, a United States Central Command spokesman said today.

The bomb, the largest conventional explosive in the American arsenal, is designed to explode three feet above the ground, sending a devastating wave of fire and blast several hundred yards to kill troops, flatten trees, knock over structures and demoralize those beyond the immediate impact zone.

Its mission is to attack troops in the field or in trenches, not subterranean cave and tunnel complexes. While American special operations forces receive training in storming caves, that is not the Pentagon's preferred method, either.

"Our specialized approach to caves and tunnels is to put 500-pound bombs in the entrance," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Defense Department and military officials refuse to discuss possible future ground operations, but the broad outline for the potential role of marines now in the region has been well publicized. The 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units are poised aboard amphibious assault ships afloat in the North Arabian Sea, each with 2,200 people and including an infantry battalion of 600 to 800 combat troops, an aircraft squadron and support personnel.

For ground combat, the infantry battalion can travel with its own artillery and light armored vehicles. Four types of helicopters can accompany the battalion, as well as Harrier attack jets.

The units are designed to operate for up to 30 days, for example setting up a temporary base inside Afghanistan from which they could mount quick-strike missions.

Perhaps most telling is that the pair of Marine Expeditionary Units are both not only trained for conventional ground combat but also certified for special operations, Pentagon officials said.

"They are Special-Operations-capable units," said Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, at a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday.

He noted that the smaller numbers of Special Operations forces now on the ground in Afghanistan - said by officials to number about 300 - would be complemented by the arrival of larger numbers of marines.

"Your marines would be more in an `area coverage' and they would be capable of providing not only terminal guidance to our aircraft but, in fact, on closing with and killing the enemy," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

Military officials point out that the marines could also sweep buildings thought to be used as hiding places by Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders if they were in an urban area where civilians would be endangered by bombing. And they can help secure routes for delivering aid.

In the hunt for Mr. bin Laden, hundreds of thousands of wanted posters have been dropped in leaflet form this week, offering a reward of $25 million for information leading to Mr. bin Laden and his captain, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Pentagon officials say the leaflets have been dropped between Kandahar and Jalalabad, in a corridor where Mr. bin Laden has been known to find haven. But other leaflet drops have been ordered over Kabul and Kunduz.

"We want to get the point across that this isn't over, that we're still looking for bin Laden and senior members of Al Qaeda, too," a Pentagon official said.

---

Taliban May Have 500 Tanks in Kandahar - Ex - Commander

By REUTERS
November 23, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-afghan-kandahar.html

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Taliban troops defending their embattled stronghold of Kandahar may have 500 tanks and would defend the ancient southern Afghan city to their last breath, said a former commander who recently escaped the city.

Mullah Bismillah, in charge until two weeks ago of a Taliban ammunition depot in Kandahar, said Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and his hardcore fighters were waiting for the start of the ground war.

``They have all kinds of weapons and ammunition to defend themselves. If there is a ground attack by America, they will fight,'' Bismillah told Reuters on Thursday evening.

Bismillah fled Kandahar for the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in early November because of heavy U.S. bombing, and because he said he did not believe in sacrificing his life for Saudi-born Islamic radical Osama bin Laden.

``As far as tanks and ammunition are concerned, I myself saw 500-600 tanks in Kandahar city,'' he said.

He said some tanks positioned in the mountains around Kandahar had been destroyed by U.S. air strikes.

Up to two weeks ago, the bombings had killed or injured some 200 Taliban troops, he said, but added that the city's defenders still had considerable firepower.

``Inshallah (God Willing), we will be able to fight back if there is a ground attack. They will be fighting for as long as they are alive. There will be a bloodbath.''

LAST STAND

Mullah Omar and his fundamentalist Islamic movement have been driven back to Kandahar, the city where they launched their conquest of most of Afghanistan seven years ago, and about three surrounding provinces after two weeks of lightning advances by the opposition Northern Alliance.

The Northern Alliance's military victories came after the United States launched air strikes against the Taliban on October 7 in retaliation for harboring bin Laden, Washington's chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

With Kunduz, the Taliban's last foothold in the north of the country expected to fall or surrender, the ancient walled city of Kandahar in the south looks set to be Mullah Omar's last stand.

Bismillah said the fighters protecting Mullah Omar were not ''Arabs,'' or foreign fighters, but rather the troops and commanders who have stood by him since he began his military sweep of Afghanistan in late 1994.

He said they numbered ``in the thousands.''

The whereabouts of bin Laden, and the scores of Arab, Chechen and Pakistani Islamic radicals who have been drawn to his cause, were unknown, he said.

But he said he believed bin Laden's bases and camps had all been destroyed in the U.S. air offensive.

Several opposition leaders from south Afghanistan's ethnic Pashtun tribes, such as former Kandahar mujahideen governor Gul Agha, have been negotiating with their kinsmen in the Taliban to surrender Kandahar peacefully.

But Bismillah said the Taliban were unlikely to do so.

``They cannot surrender to those people,'' he said. ``They started their jihad (holy war) because of those people. There is no possibility that they will surrender to them.''

----

Lives Spared, Targets Destroyed
Stealth Mission by U.S. Special Forces Hits Supply Line on Taliban Turf

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3644-2001Nov22?language=printer

TUNGI, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 -- Stopping their Humvees behind a sand dune, the U.S. Special Forces unit crept up to the six sleeping truckers without a sound or a glint of light. Some of the truckers were jolted awake with rifle barrels poked in their necks. Others were yanked out of their cabs by their feet.

Within seconds, they were handcuffed with plastic restraints and escorted to the Humvees, where one of the soldiers barked orders into a helmet-mounted microphone while another accused the truckers of hauling oil "to help terrorists."

Less than 10 minutes later, two helicopters descended from the moonless sky and fired rockets at the trucks -- two diesel tankers and a flatbed loaded with 85 barrels of gasoline and kerosene -- setting off a searing explosion that catapulted some of the oil drums hundreds of feet into the air.

The operation, which was described in detail today by two of the truckers, occurred last Friday near Tungi village in the central part of Kandahar province, less than 10 miles from the border with Pakistan and only about 50 miles southwest of the city of Kandahar, one of the Taliban's last two strongholds.

The location of the attack and the accounts of witnesses provide a rare first-hand account of covert U.S. military activity in southern Afghanistan, illustrating the Pentagon's new emphasis on cutting off Taliban supply lines and the extent to which U.S. soldiers are attempting to minimize civilian casualties.

Although the Pentagon has acknowledged that several hundred Special Forces personnel are in Afghanistan, the presence of those units near the Pakistani border suggests U.S. ground troops are now active in a wide swath of southern Afghanistan. On Wednesday, the Pentagon showed a video of another tanker blasted apart by a U.S. warplane on a road west of Kandahar.

The increasing role of special operations units is part of a new phase of America's war in this country. With most of the north in the hands of opposition groups, the Pentagon has shifted its focus to targeting small groups of Taliban leaders and members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, who are hunkering down in the south.

Today a Taliban commander in the border town of Spin Boldak permitted an American reporter and three Pakistani journalists to visit the site of the attack without Taliban guards. [The Taliban today ordered the departure from Afghanistan of more than 100 international journalists it had allowed to visit Spin Boldak for three days.]

The Pakistani owner of the three trucks said that more than a dozen other oil tankers have been attacked by U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan over the past 10 days. In most cases, he said, the drivers had been removed before the trucks were hit.

Plastic hand restraints were found in the sand next to the charred carcasses of the three trucks as well as near another burned-out tanker just a few miles down the dirt road upon which the three trucks were traveling. Pieces of lead shrapnel that appeared to have come from a rocket also were scattered about near the vehicles.

Fear and Darkness

The three trucks set out from Iran on Nov. 12, plying a rutted, dirt road between the Iranian border and Spin Boldak that is a favorite route of smugglers. This is how much of Afghanistan's heroin is shipped out -- and how oil, electronic goods and other commodities are shipped in.

Normally the journey to Spin Boldak takes about three days. But since the war started, truckers do not drive at night, afraid that their headlights might invite an airstrike.

Now the daylight trip takes five to six days. And in an often futile attempt at camouflage, drivers have started to cover the tops of their brightly colored trucks with tree branches and scrub brush.

The three truckers, hauling about $5,500 worth of fuel in each vehicle, took similar precautions. On Friday night, they stopped at dusk, for safety but also to pray. It was the first night of Ramadan, the start of the Muslim fasting month.

A few hours later, they were fast asleep. Habibullah, the driver of the lead truck, the flatbed, was in his cab. Abdullah and Shahzada, the drivers of the two tankers, along with their three assistants, were sleeping on the soft, brown sand between the trucks.

"The next thing I can remember is a gun poking into my neck and a man's knees on my chest," Abdullah said.

Habibullah panicked. "I first thought they were bandits," he said. "I thought they were going to kill me."

When he opened his eyes, Abdullah said he initially could not see much because there was no moonlight.

He said he was quickly handcuffed with plastic restraints and hauled off toward a nearby sand dune. As he was being escorted to the soldiers' vehicles -- his description matched that of a Humvee -- he said he caught sight of six commandos on the ground, each holding onto a trucker.

Abdullah and Habibullah, both of whom use only one name, provided descriptions of equipment on the soldiers that are common to Special Forces units: night-vision goggles, bulletproof chest plates and helmet-mounted radio microphones.

"Their glasses were green and glittering," Abdullah said. "And they kept talking on the radio."

After taking the men to the top of the sand dune, one of the soldiers began questioning the truckers in what Habibullah called "very bad Persian."

"He said, 'Who are you?' " Abdullah said. "We said we are drivers. These are our trucks. We are taking fuel from Iran."

"But they said, 'No, these trucks belong to terrorists and you are providing help to terrorists,' " he said.

Abdullah said the soldiers then marched them up another sand dune that was several hundred feet from the trucks. "They told us, 'Don't try to run. We're going to hit your tankers,' " he said.

While the Persian-speaking soldier was conversing with the truckers, Abdullah said another one was talking on his radio. The others kept their guns trained on the truckers, he said.

Less than 10 minutes later, the two truckers said they heard the whump-whump of approaching helicopters. Their lights were off, and with no moon, they were invisible to those on the ground, Habibullah said.

"We started to panic," he said. "We couldn't understand what was going on."

Then, without warning, the helicopters unleashed a barrage of rockets at the trucks, the drivers said. Habibullah's truck was the first to explode, sending oil barrels shooting into the air. The tankers were hit moments later, emitting a massive fireball and a wave of intense heat that nearly knocked the drivers over.

"I've never seen an explosion that big," Abdullah said. "It was so bright, it was like daytime."

After the fire began to subside, two of the soldiers pulled knives from their belts and cut off the truckers' hand restraints. The Persian speaker told a man hauling kindling with a tractor, who also had been sleeping nearby, to take the truckers to the nearest village.

Then, without saying another word, the truckers said, the soldiers got back in their Humvees and sped off toward the south.

Oil for 'Common People'

Acrid smoke still lingered in the air at the desolate turnoff where the trucks had been hit. Charred oil barrels, their tops blown off and their sides distended, lay sprinkled about like shattered aluminum cans. Nothing was left of the trucks except mangled metal.

The plastic hand restraints were scattered on the second dune. There were also tire tracks in the area and pocked footprints in the sand, from what appeared to be rubber-soled boots. "Afghans don't have shoes like that," said Abdullah, 32, a chatty man with a pointy black beard.

Akhtar Mohammed, the owner of the trucks, said he cannot understand why his vehicles were targeted. The oil, he insisted, was destined for "common people" in Spin Boldak, although he did acknowledge that some of it likely would have been sent to Kandahar and some of it smuggled into Pakistan.

"In the name of Osama and the Taliban, they are just penalizing the common people," he growled as he examined the wreckage. "This is cruel and excessive. It's farmers and ordinary people who buy our oil, not the Taliban."

He said he cannot afford to replace the Russian-built trucks, which cost about $13,000 apiece. That means Abdullah, Habibullah, Shahzada and their assistants will be out of work, he said.

"How will they feed their families now?" he asked. "What is the point of this?"

Abdullah said he is grateful to be alive, but he is not about to thank the U.S. soldiers for extracting him before firing upon his truck.

"It's because of the grace of Allah," he said, "that we are alive today."

-------- balkans

Tribunal Will Hear Milosevic Case

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
Associated Press Writer
NOVEMBER 23, 14:39 EST
http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=warcrimes

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal said Friday it will try Slobodan Milosevic for genocide in Bosnia, linking him for the first time in court to the murder of thousands of non-Serbs and the displacement of a quarter million people.

Judge Richard May approved the third indictment against the former Yugoslav president, confirming that years of investigation had produced enough evidence to put him on trial for mankind's worst crime.

Prosecutors charged the 60-year-old defendant with criminal responsibility for the ``widespread killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats'' during the 3 1/2 -year Bosnian war.

The latest indictment lists dozens of execution sites, detention facilities and the locations of more than 8,600 murders across Bosnia.

It charges Milosevic with 29 counts, including genocide, complicity to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war - every crime in the tribunal's statute.

Milosevic, extradited to U.N. custody on June 28, now faces a total of 66 charges of war crimes spanning nearly a decade of conflict in the Balkans. He had been accused of 32 counts of war crimes in Croatia and five in Kosovo, but the Bosnia indictment is the first to include genocide.

He could face life imprisonment if found guilty of any charge.

To convict Milosevic of genocide, prosecutors must prove he acted with the ``intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.'' Those acts include murder, inflicting living conditions designed to eliminate a group, preventing births or transferring children from one group to another.

Milosevic will be asked to plead to the charges in mid-December, court officials said.

Judges are expected to grant a prosecution motion to join the Bosnia indictment with the two other cases, making it likely the ousted leader will go on trial in the spring.

Milosevic ``participated in a joint criminal enterprise'' seeking to permanently remove the majority of non-Serbs from large areas of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the indictment says.

It includes responsibility for the murder of more than 7,000 Muslims at the U.N.-declared protected zone of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were held at more than 50 detention centers in ``inhuman conditions,'' and many were trucked off to execution sites, the charges say. ``The total number of people expelled or imprisoned is estimated at over a quarter million,'' the prosecution said.

The genocide indictment was widely welcomed in Bosnia.

Mirsad Tokaca, head of the Muslim Commission for War Crimes Research, labeled Milosevic ``the creator of all evil that occurred in Bosnia.''

``Mosques and other religious objects as well as libraries and other facilities were destroyed with the aim to erase the entire identity of non-Serb people here,'' he said.

Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, both fugitives under a separate indictment, were named in the Milosevic indictment, as were 15 other leading Serb officials and military officials accused of complicity in genocide.

Milosevic has refused to appoint a defense lawyer, calling the tribunal illegitimate and biased. Last week, the court agreed to allow Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general in the 1960s and a civil rights activist, to be his legal adviser. He will not be allowed to defend the former president in court.

When it starts, the trial could last a year or longer. Prosecutors have lined up hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents accusing Milosevic of ethnic cleansing.

Prosecutors at the Yugoslav tribunal have one genocide conviction so far. Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic was sentenced in August to 46 years imprisonment.

The United Nations' Rwanda war crimes tribunal has convicted eight defendants of genocide, including the country's former prime minister, Jean Kambanda. Five received life sentences.

-------- biological weapons

FBI Scientist Explains Anthrax Delay

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 23, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-FBI-Search.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Following the discovery of an anthrax-laden letter to the Senate majority leader, FBI agents waited nearly a month to search congressional mail for another letter because they needed to minimize health hazards to investigators.

The discovery last week of the second anthrax-contaminated letter -- to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. -- offers a new source of potential clues to the mystery that has baffled the FBI since early October. The Leahy letter sat in a plastic trash bag while investigators painstakingly devised a strategy to protect themselves and the public from potentially deadly anthrax spores.

An FBI microbiologist who spoke to reporters earlier this week on the condition he not be identified explained that the bureau moved as quickly as it could under the circumstances.

The delay angered key members of Congress who were getting little information from the FBI about when or how the search for other anthrax letters would be conducted.

It also slowed investigators searching for the person who mailed the letters, which offer the best clues to unraveling the deadly puzzle. The week before the Leahy letter was found, FBI behavioral scientist Jim Fitzgerald said the FBI still had only 39 handwritten words from the anthrax killer.

``We wish we had more,'' Fitzgerald said.

Once they were assigned the task of going through 630 trash bags full of quarantined congressional mail, it took investigators a week to find a suitable warehouse to facilitate the search of potentially dangerous material, he said. And it took another two weeks to build a containment area inside the suburban Washington facility where investigators could test the mail.

During that time, new cases of anthrax were being discovered, two Washington postal workers and a New York hospital worker were dying of anthrax poisoning, and congressional leaders were demanding to know why the FBI wasn't going through the mail looking for more anthrax.

Two experts have differing assessments of the FBI's timetable.

``I don't think I could have done it quicker,'' said Bill Patrick, the retired chief of the product development division in the former U.S. biological warfare program.

``What the FBI has done here is perfectly reasonable because there are certain things you just can't push up and accelerate,'' said Patrick. ``All those'' precautionary ``steps had to be established before you could look'' for more anthrax.

Another expert took a different view.

C.J. Peters, director of the Center for Biodefense at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston, said the FBI's ``overall plan was well-conceived'' but ``there are flexible plastic enclosures that could be set up within two or three days and used to open these bags.''

``We've gotten so wrapped around the axle with concern over anthrax that we may be ignoring the basic principles of biosafety and making all of our movements so excessively cumbersome by over-containment,'' said Peters.

On Oct. 30, the chairman and ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee said it was ``very disturbing'' that the FBI was not yet sorting through quarantined congressional mail more than two weeks after the discovery of an anthrax-laden letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Amid the complaints, a construction project was under way at the warehouse as engineers monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency put up walls, sealed the area with plastic and created a ``negative pressure room.'' High-efficiency machines were used to vacuum all particulates from the air inside the room.

The room was engineered to always have low air pressure so that any anthrax particles would stay inside the trash bags.

Investigators poked the first trash bag with a swab on Nov. 10, a Saturday. Five teams of workers completed the swabs on more than 600 bags. Results from the Naval Medical Research Center showed some 50 bags contained anthrax. So investigators used another test to find the ``hot'' bags that might reveal an anthrax-laden letter.

One test showed 100 spores of anthrax, one showed 300 spores and another had 20,000 to 23,000 spores. Authorities believe that 8,000 to 10,000 spores are enough to cause inhalation anthrax, the most deadly form of the disease. That ``sort of put a red flag on that bag,'' the microbiologist said. Investigators found the Leahy letter in that bag late last Friday.

It was taped around all the edges and was loaded with so much anthrax that ``you could feel the powder inside,'' said the microbiologist. He said there were billions of spores.

Now that the Leahy letter has been found, the FBI still faces more delays as its fingerprint and other forensic experts wait to get access to the letter.

----

Anthrax myths and facts

J. Donald Millar
November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011123-496769.htm

Lost in the pervasive coverage of anthrax bioterrorism is the fact that this disease is neither new nor novel. Lest we forget the Unabomber, even the mode of attack - a weapon delivered by mail - is old hat. Moreover, anthrax has striking parallels to Legionnaire's disease so that the extensive scientific knowledge we have of the latter should can help us in strategic thinking about anthrax.

Anthrax and Legionnaire's disease both:

- Terrify, because in the absence of rapid diagnosis and treatment they kill.

- Produce pneumonia which, though severe, can be treated with available antibiotics

- Are caused by organisms that live in nature, but are encountered by humans as a result of man-made circumstances.

- Are occupational diseases: the exposure that causes infection usually occurs in a workplace.

- While purely environmental in origin, both are acquired by exposure to an agent in the environment not by person-to-person transmission.

- Their most efficient method of control is prevention of exposure to the organism, not treatment afterwards.

In 1976, when Legionnaire's disease appeared in Pennsylvania as a "mystery epidemic," the nation panicked similar to the current anxiety about anthrax, chemical and microbiological bioterrorism - as well as the long-expected epidemic of "swine flu" - were initial hypotheses to explain the phenomenon. These and other theories were systematically ruled out by one of the most intensive investigations in history. Ultimately, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease was isolated, named Legionella, and thoroughly defined.

To be sure, the diseases differ in important aspects: Legionella, the cause of Legionnaire's disease, is a water-borne organism; Bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax, is airborne. Bacillus anthracis forms spores, which are long-lasting and resistant to destruction; Legionella does not form spores, but hides itself in other single-celled organisms, and thus is long-lasting and resistant to destruction.

Another big difference between the two that is relevant is our current situation. Anthrax, though ancient, is not nearly so well-studied as Legionaires' disease. The latter appeared late in the 20th century when medical, epidemiologic, microbiologic, and biochemical sciences were far advanced. We probably know more about Legionnaire's disease and Legionella than any other infectious disease.

Part of what we know about Legionella is what to expect when we test various environments for it. Once Dr. George Morris of the CDC figured out in 1978 how to recover Legionella from the environment, extensive surveys were done of numerous environmental sources. The results left us with a clear understanding of what to expect under normal conditions when we test such settings as office buildings, hospitals, homes, prisons, and even congressional offices. The baseline information enables us to soundly interpret tests done in the crisis of outbreaks.

We have no such understanding of expected findings when we test for the anthrax spore. For example, we have no sound scientific basis on which to interpret a finding of one spore in a sample from an office building, clinic, hospital, or mail sorting operation. Given this lack of understanding of the background, every finding of an anthrax spore fuels the public terror.

We lack such critically needed information because we have not done the necessary peacetime preparation in the form of environmental surveys of various potential exposure settings that would provide the baseline. Because anthrax has been on everybody's top ten list of potential bio-terrorist weapons for years, one may legitimately ask, "Why were these studies not done by those we pay to protect us?" The answer is not insufficient funding of the CDC, as seems to be the recurring theme of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Thompson. No, this is not a funding issue; plenty of money was available for far less important issues. The explanation for failure in preparedness more likely lies in the preoccupation of the Public Health Service's agencies with what I call the "medical model." This phrase describes a way of thinking about disease prevention that focuses attention on the disease rather than on the agent or hazard that causes the disease and the likely circumstances of exposure. In the "medical model," one watches and waits for cases of the disease to come to light ("disease surveillance") and then works backwards to find the hazard and exposures caused of the cases so as to control the hazard and prevent future cases. Operating in the "medical model" tends to produce retroactive thinking and inadequate preparedness for the potential attack.

An alternative model, the "industrial hygiene/engineering model" focuses attention on the causative agent, the hazard ("hazard surveillance"), and the types of exposures necessary for transmission. By controlling the hazard and exposures necessary for transmission, this model hopes to prevent even the first case of disease. Thinking in this mode leads to such proactive measures as environmental surveys to learn the existence and habits of the particular hazard under ordinary circumstances; doing so enables an understanding of the results of our crisis-driven investigations. It appears such proactive surveys were not done for anthrax. Hence, we found ourselves ill-prepared to interpret the environmental investigations done in the crisis; at least temporarily, this enhanced the public's terror.

Weeks, Wagner and Levy in their book, "Preventing Occupational Disease and Injury" explain that the ideal prevention strategy for an environmental problem is an "integrated strategy" combining the strengths of both the "medical" and "industrial hygiene/engineering" models. There is little indication there was ever an "integrated strategy" for anthrax.

As can easily happen with the "medical model," the absence for several years of detected anthrax - not the same as absence of anthrax - seems to have lulled us into ignoring the hazard and disdaining any systematic efforts to define the expected background distribution of anthrax. Now, we must play "catch-up" with little scientific basis for interpreting our testing during the crisis. The fact that anthrax, like Legionnaire's disease, is purely environmental should be good news. Being purely environmental means that anthrax has similarities to any other occupational and environmental disease such as those caused by chemical agents. Many such problems were successfully controlled by application of tried-and-true methods of industrial hygiene and engineering: anticipation, detection, analysis and control. These can as readily be applied to anthrax. However - and this is a big however - doing so will require that our public health leaders think less like doctors and more like industrial hygienists.

A good first step would be to add an outstanding industrial hygienist - there are many - to the staff of the newly created Office of Public Health Preparedness. Moreover, with regard to diseases caused by bioterrorism, our national objective should be to apply integrated prevention strategies capable of preventing the first case as well as those occurring after discovery of the attack.

J. Donald Millar served as director of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health from 1981 to 1993.

----

DRUG RESEARCH
U.S. Hunting Antiviral Drug to Use in Case of Smallpox

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/national/23POXD.html

Government scientists are conducting studies to find out whether any existing antiviral drugs will work against smallpox.

The drugs would be a second line of defense against a smallpox attack in case vaccine, for which the government is placing orders with companies, cannot be manufactured in sufficient quantities quickly enough.

Two promising antiviral candidates have been identified, and one of them, cidofovir, has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, for use against cytomegalovirus, which causes illness in some people with AIDS.

Last month the National Institutes of Health applied to the drug agency for permission to use cidofovir for smallpox on an experimental basis. The company that makes the drug, Gilead Sciences Inc. of Foster City, Calif., could increase production in three to six months, but so far the government has not placed an order, said Dr. William A. Lee, Gilead's vice president for research.

Drugs that might be used against smallpox are hard to test for that purpose: the disease was eradicated in people more than 20 years ago, and no animal is naturally infected with the virus.

Because of bioterrorism concerns, the National Institutes of Health created a program in 1999 to develop smallpox drugs, testing them on animals infected with related viruses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases are also sponsors.

Dr. Donald Smee, a virologist at Utah State University, has screened many compounds for the government's program and, he says, has discovered two promising candidates: cidofovir and a chemical known as S2242, which was made by Aventis Pharma of Frankfurt, but has not been developed as a drug.

Though no one can be sure how cidofovir would work in people with smallpox, its effectiveness against related pox viruses in animals has impressed researchers. Animals given the drug before or shortly after exposure to pox virus survive, whereas untreated animals die.

"All of us investigators feel like it would definitely work," Dr. Smee said, "because the animal results are highly dramatic."

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Senate committee last month that "the animal model data are very impressive," though he noted that the effects in people were unknown.

Dr. Fauci said in an interview that he hoped to learn more about the drug in tests that will determine whether the existing stockpile of smallpox vaccine can be diluted - and so be used to protect more people - without loss of its effectiveness. Some volunteers who receive the diluted vaccine, which is a live pox virus, may come down with disease, and will be treated with cidofovir.

Dr. Arthur Perry, a plastic surgeon who serves on the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, said that as a result of his duties on the board he had become concerned about a smallpox attack, and for the last month had been urging the government to step up research on cidofovir. The drug "could be given to a mass population quickly" if dispensed in aerosol form, Dr. Perry said.

But a spokesman for the government's Office of Emergency Preparedness said there were no plans to buy it. Dr. Fauci said the issue of whether to buy an immediate stockpile was "a policy question that should be open for reasonable discussion."

"There's nothing against stockpiling," he said, "but we'd like to know a little bit more about the drug."

Like many drugs, cidofovir is not perfect. It must be given by injection, although there are hopes of developing the inhalant form; it can cause kidney damage; and at present it costs $700 a dose.

Dr. Lee, the executive for the manufacturer, said the kidney toxicity appeared in AIDS patients who were already weakened, and should be less of a problem in healthy people. Tests with animals, he said, suggest that the aerosol form of the drug would be effective at a fraction of the injected dose and be less toxic. In the animal tests, a single dose of the drug was effective against pox virus for seven days.

-------- business

Fighter Pilots Days May Be Numbered

By Jim Krane
AP Technology Writer
Friday, November 23, 2001; 2:26 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6341-2001Nov23?language=printer

NEW YORK -- The dashing fighter pilot, with his white silk scarf and burnished leather jacket, is among the most celebrated icons of American military lore.

Slowly, however, technology is pushing the fighter pilot out of the cockpit.

"I think his days are numbered," said Glenn Buchan, a RAND defense air power analyst.

In the not too distant future, trained fighter pilots may find themselves sitting at a computer on the ground, controlling an unmanned aircraft - or as many as a half-dozen of them - that may be flying over another continent.

The transformation is already under way.

In Afghanistan, the United States has used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, long a tool of reconnaissance, in an attack role for the first time.

In a few instances, a Predator UAV controlled remotely by CIA personnel on the ground, fired Hellfire missiles as part of air strikes on al-Qaida and Taliban targets. The strikes killed dozens, including al-Qaida military chief Mohammed Atef, U.S. intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity.

"There's no doubt we're going to do more and more of this as time unfolds," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Military experts say advances in sensors, communications, imaging and artificial intelligence will soon allow pilot-less aircraft to do everything a manned aircraft can, at a fraction of the cost and without risking pilots' lives.

The unmanned planes may take over ground attack, and perhaps even dogfighting roles currently performed by planes such as the F-15 and F-18.

"We see no future fighters with humans in them," said Buchan, author of a recent RAND study on UAVs that was just classified by the Air Force.

Although the Pentagon plans to purchase up to 3,000 of its next-generation fighter, Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter, Buchan said RAND found "no compelling reason to have humans on board" certain military aircraft - and often good reason to replace a human with a machine.

"It's not clear that the human's adding anything, and his biological shortcomings limit the capabilities of the aircraft," he said.

The use of drones dates to the early 1960s, when the United States flew them to spy on China and drop leaflets over Vietnam. In the early 1970s, the U.S. military experimented with an armed drone called the Firebee, using it to drop bombs and fire missiles in tests.

Israel may have been the first to use armed drones in a combat ground-attack role, according to research published by the U.S. Air Force. It used drones in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and also sent UAVs to scout Syrian air defenses in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Until it was modified by the CIA, the U.S. Air Force's Predator, a $2.5 million UAV built for spying, wasn't intended to fire missiles.

In January, the Air Force will test-fly the first U.S. drone designed for combat. The Boeing-built UCAV, or Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, is designed to handle one of the most dangerous missions, attacking enemy air defense sites like radar and surface-to-air missile batteries.

The X-45 model UCAV is designed to fly a 650-mile round-trip mission, loitering perhaps a half-hour over a target, and drop 3,000 pounds of guided bombs, said Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher.

If the UCAV's tests go well, some predict the drone will eventually put planes and pilots out of work by stealing some ground attack duties from the forthcoming Joint Strike Fighter.

At $10-$15 million apiece, the X-45 UCAV, without all the expensive human requirements for life-support systems and visual instruments, would cost about a third as much as the $45 million JSF.

The bat-shaped X-45 will be much tougher to shoot down than the General Atomics Predator, a simple propeller-driven plane designed to fly at around 100 mph and no higher than 25,000 feet. A third of the Air Force's 60 Predators have already been lost, mostly downed over Iraq, the Balkans or Afghanistan.

The X-45, by contrast, is jet-engine driven, flies six times as fast as the Predator, at altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet. It is also stealth-capable, meaning it won't be easily tracked by radar. It carries an artificial intelligence-fueled computer that allows it to track, identify and bomb targets on its own - if humans permit, Blecher said.

"At least initially, it would rely on a human in the loop," Blecher said. "But theoretically, you could do it either way. You could pre-program it to drop its weapon when it finds the target, using artificial intelligence."

For Capt. Brad Smith, a proud F-15 fighter pilot who trains at Virginia's Langley Air Force Base, the idea of killing people with a flying robot is beyond the range of acceptable warfare.

"I don't like the idea at all. You always want to have a human being involved in the decision to take another human being's life," said Smith, 29, of Tulsa, Okla.

Smith doubts the UCAV is a viable replacement for a pilot, especially a fighter pilot who engages in air-to-air combat.

"My own two eyeballs looking out of the cockpit is much different than the small field of vision you get from a camera on a computer screen someplace," he said.

-------- china

Chinese help Taliban

November 23, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-9543924.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week that Chinese nationals are among the foreign fighters defending the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. The Pentagon believes the several thousand fighters engaged in fierce combat there are mostly foreign Islamic radicals who would rather fight to the death than surrender. Other foreign forces are said to include Russian Chechens, Pakistanis and Arabs.

Asked about the siege at Kunduz, Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters: "There's Chinese in there, there's Chechens in there, there's Arabs in there, there's al Qaeda in there - any idea that those people should be let loose on any basis at all to leave that country and to go bring terror to other countries and destabilize other countries is unacceptable." No details on the Chinese fighters could be learned.

China's government in the past has said that Muslim Uighurs from western Xinjiang province were trained in bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

China's government has been trying to squelch anti-American displays in China that have included videos, produced with the help of Beijing's state-run media. The state-run press tells Chinese citizens that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States were justified by American "bullying" around the world.

A Taliban commander said in a recent interview with an Urdu-language newspaper that China was providing unspecified support for the Taliban and had maintained contacts with the Islamic movement even after U.S. air strikes had begun.

China's government has bristled at suggestions it is not cooperating in the U.S.-led battle against terrorism.

------- drug war

DEA forges foreign alliances to combat spread of Ecstasy

November 23, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-7028360.htm

The Drug Enforcement Administration has forged a new alliance with law enforcement authorities in Europe and Canada to combat a dramatic rise in the production, availability and use of the "party drug" known as Ecstasy.

Drug agents from the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA or Federal Criminal Investigation Agency in Germany), and representatives from Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Czech Republic attended an international law enforcement conference at the DEA academy in Quantico, Va., this week to discuss Ecstasy trafficking.

The weeklong session focused on rising Ecstasy concerns in Europe, Canada and the United States - including trafficking trends and the augmentation of coordinated plans to stop the trafficking of the drug between Europe and North America.

Ecstasy is the popular name for the stimulant methyldiocymethamphetamine (MDMA), which has hallucinogenic properties. Used by young people at rock concerts, all-night club parties knows as "raves" and at private parties, it is designed to suppress the need to eat, drink or sleep. It can cause loss of consciousness, seizures from heat strokes or heart failure, brain damage and death.

"This conference underscores the importance of international and multiagency cooperation in fighting criminal organizations responsible for distributing hundreds of thousands of MDMA tablets worldwide," said DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson.

Ecstasy was first synthesized in 1912 by a German company to be used as an appetite suppressant. In the 1970s, it was used to facilitate psychotherapy by a small group of therapists in the United States. Illicit use of the drug did not become popular until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ecstasy is frequently used in combination with other drugs.

Clandestine laboratories that produce Ecstasy operate throughout Western Europe, primarily in the Netherlands and Belgium, and they are known to manufacture significant quantities of the drug in tablet, capsule or powder form.

The DEA said that while the vast majority of Ecstasy consumed domestically is produced in Europe, a limited number of laboratories operate in the United States. In addition, in recent years, Israeli organized-crime syndicates, some composed of Russian emigres associated with organized crime in Russia, have forged relationships with Western European traffickers and gained control over a significant share of the European market.

The Israeli syndicates are currently the primary source to U.S. distribution gangs, the DEA said.

DEA officials said overseas trafficking organizations smuggle the drug in shipments of 10,000 or more tablets via express-mail services, couriers aboard commercial airline flights and - more recently - through air-freight shipments from several major European cities to cities in the United States.

The drug is sold in bulk quantities at the midwholesale level in the United States for about $8 per pill. The retail price of Ecstasy sold in clubs in the United States remains steady at between $20 and $30 per pill.

The DEA said Ecstasy traffickers use brand names and logos as marketing tools to distinguish their product from that of competitors. The logos are produced to coincide with holidays or special events. Among the more popular logos are butterflies, lightning bolts and four-leaf clovers.

The National Drug intelligence Center (NDIC), a Justice Department agency assigned to collect strategic domestic counterdrug information, recently warned that the production, availability and use of Ecstasy had increased at an alarming rate, making its potential threat equal to that of cocaine and heroin.

"Of the club drugs, none presents a greater threat than MDMA or ecstasy," said the NDIC in a report in August. "When coupled with the growing involvement of organized-crime groups in production, transportation and distribution, the threat of MDMA potentially equals that of more traditional drugs."

DEA agents and NDIC investigators said the major U.S. distribution cities for Ecstasy are Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Pittsburgh, San Diego and San Francisco, although use of the drug is increasing in suburban communities nationwide.

Mr. Hutchinson recently warned that the use of Ecstasy was rising and many parents of those using the drug were unaware of what was going on at parties and other gatherings where Ecstasy was being used.

"Most parents don't have law enforcement connections. So they don't know what's going on at these functions," he said. "The world of club drugs is a brand new world, particularly for parents who don't keep up on the latest fads in music and lifestyles. And that includes most of us."

----

Opium production resumes

By Scott Baldauf
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011123-23404672.htm

SORKH ROD, Afghanistan - It is planting season in eastern Afghanistan, and a sharecropper named Katib is riding behind two oxen pulling a wooden plow, preparing his field for next year's crop.

A few weeks ago, Katib, who uses only one name, had been planning to plant wheat. But now that the Taliban has gone, and their drugs ban with them, he has changed his mind. He is going back to opium poppies, which will earn him 15 times more money.

"The Taliban told us not to cultivate poppies, so I stopped," says the gray-bearded father of nine. "Absolutely, we were forced to stop, and we were sorry about this. I don't especially like growing poppies, but I was worried about getting food for my stomach."

The fall of the Taliban - almost universally welcomed here - is bad news for international drug controllers who fear the change of government in Kabul will bring a new flood of raw opium and its processed form, heroin, onto world markets.

"The most likely scenario is replanting" of poppies, predicts Thomas Pietschmann, a researcher at the Vienna, Austria-based United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCC). "The chances of getting rid of opium completely were better before September 11th."

International drug officials had been pleasantly surprised by the success of the Taliban's ban on opium production. The authorities slashed production this year by 94 percent, according to surveys by the ODCC.

"It was seen as a historic breakthrough in international drug control," says Kamal Kurspahic, the U.N. agency's spokesman. "Afghanistan traditionally produced 75 percent of the world's opiates, and cutting that out meant we were on the way to real elimination."

Prices reflected that change. A kilo of raw opium that had cost $30 at the time of the 2000 harvest cost $300 this year, and as stockpiles dwindled, the price rose to $700 in early September.

After September 11, however, prices crashed to $90 as dealers unloaded their stocks to hold cash in the face of the coming crisis.

With the planting season under way, many farmers in Nangarhar province, a traditional center of the opium trade, are returning to a crop that has always offered them more financial security, even though most devout Muslim Afghans wouldn't touch the stuff themselves.

Some Afghans say the Taliban itself earned money from the opium trade, from the Islamic system of taxation of farmers called zaqat. Under zaqat, Islamic rulers earn 1/40th of the value of whatever crop is planted. Some rogue officials are also rumored to have been directly involved in the stockpiling and sale of opium, earning an estimated $30 million a year.

Nonetheless, the new authorities are unlikely to try to do much to discourage farmers from returning to widespread poppy cultivation, say experts here.

"You will never find people who will ban poppies like the Taliban did," says Shamsul Haq, a drug-control officer from nearby Jalalabad who has worked with both mujahideen and Taliban governments. "It was unbelievable ... but I don't think it will happen again under the new government."

Mujahideen officials dispute this. "One hundred percent we will control opium planting, and we will not let it occur," says Hazrat Ali, the mujahideen's new law-and-order minister for Nangarhar province. "Not all people in the drug trade are necessarily making money. They are wanting to get out of this business."

But the mujahideen's track record is not convincing. Warlords have always funded their fiefdoms through opium sales, and this year, while the Taliban was almost eliminating poppy cultivation in the areas they controlled, the Northern Alliance authorities allowed a threefold increase in poppy growing in their small zone.

Ultimately, they accounted for more than 83 percent of all the land under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, according to ODCC figures.

"Ninety percent of the people depend on poppies, from laborers and farmers to sharecroppers, traders, traffickers, and big buyers," said Mr. Haq, the local drug-control officer. "There is nothing else in the country, no factories, no industry. This is the only income for people. "This year's season will be a big harvest," he said.

-------- iraq

Turkish, Iraqi movement

November 23, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-9543924.htm

U.S. intelligence agencies have detected the mobilization of some 10,000 Turkish troops on the northern border of Iraq. Officials tell us Turkish forces are ready to begin large-scale military attacks on terrorists camps used by the Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PPK, in northern Iraq.

Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu was asked by reporters last week whether Turkish troops had moved south into Iraq and he replied, "Turkish troops have not entered Mosul. We have no such information." Mosul is located about 50 miles south of the border with Turkey.

Iraq, meanwhile, is conducting its own military operations on the ground in northern Iraq against Kurdish opposition groups, although the exact nature of the action is not known. U.S. intelligence agencies detected Iraqi ground force movements in northern Iraq last week.

-------- israel / palestine

Deadly Israeli Rockets in West Bank

By Mohammed Daragmeh
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 23, 2001; 9:32 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7490-2001Nov23?language=printer

NABLUS, West Bank -- An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at a van in the West Bank on Friday, killing a leader of the Islamic militant Hamas group along with his deputy and another Hamas activist, officials said.

Mahmoud Abu Hanoud was head of Hamas' military wing and was high on Israel's most-wanted list, Hamas officials said. The group declared three days of mourning and called for a general strike throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday as a mark of protest.

Hamas officials initially denied that Abu Hanoud had been hit, but later acknowledged his death.

Also killed was the Hamas leader's deputy, Ayman Hashaykah, and Hashaykah's brother, a lower-ranking Hamas activist.

Their bodies were identified by Palestinian hospital officials, who said they had not yet identified any remains as those of Abu Hanoud.

The Israeli military refused to comment. Earlier reports from Israeli army radio and Palestinian officials said two Hamas members were killed in the attack but did not include Abu Hanoud among them.

The attack occurred on road between Nablus and the town of Jenin. Earlier, Israeli security forces had gone on alert after receiving intelligence that three armed Palestinians were on their way to carry out an attack inside Israel, they said. It was not known if the alert and the attack on the Hamas trio were connected.

The three Hamas members were among seven Palestinians killed Friday, making it the deadliest day since Oct. 26, when 10 died in clashes with the Israeli military.

Israeli troops shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian while dispersing stone throwers in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Khan Younis, where a day earlier five boys had been killed by what Palestinian police said was a bomb planted by Israeli forces. There were growing demands in Israel that the military make swift disclosure of its investigation into the deaths.

Also in Gaza, a Palestinian taxi driver was killed and three of his seven passengers were wounded when the vehicle came under Israel fire. Two of the wounded were critically hurt with head injuries, doctors said.

The army said troops opened fire at the car fearing it contained attackers after the driver approached an army post after dark and ignored orders to halt.

They said the car had previously twice driven toward the post, then turned back before approaching for a third time.

Near the West Bank town of Nablus, two Palestinians were killed when a bomb they were trying to plant near a road used by Israeli motorists blew up prematurely, Palestinian security officials said.

Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said the killing of the Hamas activists just a day after the deaths of the Gaza schoolchildren, suggested a deliberate attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sabotage a new American push to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I think he wants to make the American effort fail and it is an attempt to push the Palestinians to react," he said.

In recent months, Israel has killed some 50 militants it suspected of involvement in bombing and shooting attacks on Israelis. More than a dozen bystanders have also died in such targeted killings. The United States has condemned the practice.

In the Gaza Strip, thousands joined the funeral procession for the five boys killed in Thursday's blast. The victims ranged in age from seven to 14 and all members of the same clan.

After the funeral, about 200 Palestinians marched toward the nearby Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, throwing stones at the fence. Israeli troops fired stun grenades and live rounds, killing a 15-year-old boy, doctors said. The army said it fired warning shots in the air, and did not see anyone being hit.

Palestinians fired a mortar shell at Neve Dekalim, damaging a house but causing no casualties.

The Palestinian police chief in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaida, said the boys appeared to have been killed by a bomb planted by Israeli forces, who had been seen operating in the area the night before the blast.

"Shrapnel we collected from the area shows that the explosion was caused by an explosive device," he said. "Our investigation continues, but it looks as if the device was booby-trapped and when one the children kicked it, it exploded."

Israel's defense minister said the blast was being investigated and expressed regret over the deaths. Israel officials refused to comment further pending the results of the inquiry, but two Israeli newspapers quoted army officers as saying that Israeli troops trying to thwart Palestinian sniper squads had recently operated in the area of the explosion.

Opposition leader Yossi Sarid called for the army to present the full facts of the case by the beginning of next week and for stern action to be taken if improper conduct is discovered.

"Somebody high up in the army will have to pay with his head," Sarid told Israeli television. "Children killed, whether on our side or theirs, is not something that can be passed over."

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo called on the United States and Europe to press Israel to pull its troops back from Palestinian population centers.

Two U.S. mediators, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, are to arrive in the region next week.

They are to press the two sides to implement accords already agreed on - a truce negotiated last May by CIA director George Tenet, and the April report of an international commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell with a formula for restarting peace talks.

Zinni, appointed special adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is expected to remain in the area to shepherd the negotiations.

-------- korea

South Korea Launches Missile in Its First Test Since Last Year

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/asia/23KORE.html?searchpv=nytToday

SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 22 - South Korea announced today that it had test-fired a missile that was believed by defense analysts to have the capability of landing almost anywhere in North Korea.

The missile fell harmlessly in the Yellow Sea off South Korea's west coast after having traveled only 62 miles, well below the 187-mile limit set by the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime that South Korea joined in March after years of negotiations with the United States.

The Defense Ministry waited several hours before announcing the test - the first since last year - and in a circumspect statement it said only that the missile "fell on a designated place in the several minutes after its firing."

The timing of the test raised the question of whether the South was deliberately sending a signal to North Korea that it was prepared for any increased threat following the failure of talks between ministers from the two Koreas last week and months of heightened tension.

The talks broke down after South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, refused to yield to the North's demand that Seoul cancel a military alert called after the United States began bombing in Afghanistan on Oct. 7.

The Defense Ministry's Agency for Defense Development, which is responsible for developing and test- firing what it envisions as a new generation of missiles, has long argued that it had to be able to test missiles to ensure their effectiveness. Defense officials have argued that they need missiles to match those of North Korea, which exports shorter-range missiles around the world, and which alarmed the United States, Europe and Japan by test-firing a long-range missile in August 1998 that soared over Japan before falling into the Pacific Ocean.

Pyongyang agreed in 1999 to suspend tests of the long-range missiles, and has extended that moratorium through August 2003.

South Korea's Defense Ministry took pains to state that Washington had been informed of today's test, and that the exercise was in accordance with "military regulations between the United States and Korea."

The missile was launched from a site about 125 miles south of Seoul at a target about 30 miles to the west of the Byongsan Peninsula on the west coast, according to Yonhap, the semiofficial South Korean news agency. "Its impact on the target was confirmed," Yonhap reported.

South Korea has test-fired missiles a number of times, and American officials have long suspected that the missiles were capable of going farther than they traveled in the tests. Washington, concerned that South Korean missile development would increase tensions between the North and South, has opposed the program.

It was only after lengthy negotiations that the United States agreed last year to remove a restriction that had limited Seoul's testing to a range of no more than 110 miles.

--------

Activists oppose anti-terrorist bill

By Jong-Heon Lee
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/23112001-053445-8709r.htm

South Korea's civic activists on Friday voiced strong opposition to a proposed anti-terrorist bill that would grant the country's spy agency and the military the authority to inspect key public facilities.

In a news conference, representatives from Korea's 65 civic groups blasted the draft that allows the National Intelligence Service to tap telephone lines for an extended period and examine bank accounts without a warrant, as part of anti-terrorist activities.

The proposed bill also allows the military to enforce law and order at civilian facilities without formally imposing martial law if the country comes under terrorist attacks.

The civic leaders said the draft does not define "terrorist acts" succinctly, which may tempt the intelligence agency to create definitions to suit its own purposes.

"The bill aims at extending the power and influence of the NIS, not at curbing terror," they said in a joint statement. "Infringement of human rights and due process is likely to occur if the NIS is given unlimited power."

The intelligence agency recently announced a draft of the Terrorism Prevention Act, which, if passed, will empower it to take various measures to prevent and investigate acts of terror.

The agency has also decided to set up an anti-terrorist center that would coordinate the country's anti-terrorist activities, such as the collection of information, investigation and prevention of attacks and the maintenance of public security.

It said the measures were part of efforts to prepare the country against terrorism ahead of the World Cup soccer finals and Asian Games to be held in the country next year. The two international sports events are considered a potential target for terrorism.

South Korea's 650,000-strong military, along with 130,000-member police, has been under high alert since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. South Korea is the United States' key Asian ally with 37,000 American troops stationed there.

-------- nato

Russia Ready to Boost NATO Ties, but Not Join

Friday November 23
By Jon Boyle
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011123/wl/nato_russia_dc_7.html

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin told NATO's secretary-general on Friday Russia was ready to match the alliance's desire to boost ties, but did not seek to join the military pact or have a veto right over its activities.

``On the one hand, Russia is not standing in the queue to join NATO, but on the other hand, is ready to develop relations as far as the North Atlantic alliance is prepared for this,'' Putin told NATO chief George Robertson in the Kremlin.

Robertson told reporters that the alliance and Russia would study with ``some urgency'' a British plan to allow Russia to join a new body and discuss certain security issues with NATO's 19 members on a basis of equality -- a long-standing Russian goal.

On Thursday, Robertson, a former British defense secretary, told Reuters that it was ``implied'' Moscow would have a veto right in a new 20-member body. NATO sources say it was expected the body would discuss pre-defined topics like terrorism as well as ``soft'' security areas such as peacekeeping and responding to civil emergencies.

After meeting the Kremlin leader, Robertson said ``he (Putin) said this was not some back-door method of Russia getting membership of NATO, and he already ruled out going in the front door.''

Putin had told him that Russia was not trying to ``slow down or neutralize the work that NATO does, nor was it a way in which Russia would seek to have a veto on what NATO was doing,'' Robertson added.

EQUAL RIGHTS

Russia, which despite its economic woes of the past decade remains a nuclear superpower, has been pressing for a dialogue of equals with NATO.

It complains the current ``19 plus 1'' format usually sees the NATO allies ranged against Moscow. Under Blair's proposal, a 20-strong Russia-North Atlantic Council would reach decisions on specific topics by consensus -- giving Moscow a de facto veto.

``If we want to make that move, it would be a momentous change. Therefore, we have to prepare with some care but also with some speed,'' Robertson said on Friday.

``There are clear attractions'' of moving from the ``19 plus 1'' format to a format of 20, he added.

The idea seems to have gone down well in Moscow. Vladimir Rushailo, secretary of Russia's Security Council, said after meeting Robertson on Friday that ``soon we'll move from a '19 plus 1' format to that of 20 equals.'' But he echoed Putin's words that Russia was not seeking to meddle in NATO's internal affairs.

The two sides should broaden cooperation in the fight against terrorism, organized crime, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, peacekeeping operations and responding to emergencies, Rushailo said.

RUSSIA IN FROM THE COLD

Putin has been a vocal supporter of the fight against terrorism launched following September 11 attacks on the United States, and Robertson said Russia-NATO ties should reflect that.

Putin has made integrating Russia into Western institutions a top priority, despite strong reservations among Russia's military and parts of the foreign policy establishment.

However, many obstacles remain within Russia and the Atlantic alliance. Many practical difficulties remain and the new format has yet to be endorsed by NATO states. In addition, it is unclear how widely Blair has canvassed his ideas.

In a further sign of warming ties, Robertson made clear on Thursday that the West had re-evaluated Russia's two-year campaign in secessionist Chechnya since September 11.

``We may disagree with the means Russia has chosen in the handling of that conflict...but we have certainly come to see the scourge of terrorism in Chechnya with different eyes.''

Putin says Russia is fighting in Chechnya the same international terrorism that attacked the United States.

---

First U.S. Planes Arrive at Bulgaria Bourgas Base

By REUTERS
November 23, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-bulgaria-airbase.html

SOFIA (Reuters) - U.S. forces began using an airbase near the southeastern town of Bourgas on the Black Sea on Friday as part of Washington's military campaign against Afghanistan, Bulgaria said.

Foreign Minister Solomon Passy and U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria Richard Miles arrived at Bourgas Airport on board a U.S. aircraft coming from Britain which had stopped briefly in the capital Sofia, state news agency BTA reported.

A Bourgas airport official told Reuters by telephone that another U.S. plane, a transport aircraft, has also landed by 2 p.m. (7 a.m. EST) on Friday.

``The government agreed that U.S. transport planes would be stationed at the international airport of Bourgas and around 150 personnel servicing the planes will be accommodated in the nearby base of Sarafovo,'' a foreign ministry statement said earlier on Friday.

They are the first foreign forces to be stationed in the small Balkan state since Russian troops left Bulgaria in 1946 after entering the country in 1944 during World War Two.

The U.S. aircraft were transport cisterns which will refuel in the air other U.S. planes taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom. They will buy fuel from the nearby oil refinery, Lukoil Neftochim Bourgas, it said.

The U.S. planes would not fly across Bulgaria's territory and the refueling will take place in the region of Caspian Sea, Passy was quoted by state radio as saying.

Operation Enduring Freedom was launched by Washington on October 7 in retaliation for the attacks against U.S. cities on September 11 which killed some 4,500 people.

NATO-aspirant Bulgaria, which is hoping for an invitation to join the alliance next year, decided earlier in November to grant a U.S. request to use its airspace and airbases.

----

Russia Urges Radical Changes in NATO Ties

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nato-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Senior Russian officials called on Friday for radical changes in Moscow's relations with NATO, after talks with its Secretary-General George Robertson on plans that could give Russia a long sought veto in NATO affairs.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Vladimir Rushailo, secretary of Russia's Security Council, were noticeably upbeat about future ties with Russia's erstwhile Cold War foe, saying relations were moving to a new level.

Russia and NATO ``clearly have the political will to undertake far-reaching steps to give a fundamentally new quality to our cooperation,'' Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying after meeting Robertson.

The NATO secretary-general told Reuters on Thursday that the two sides were discussing plans for closer security ties that could imply a Moscow veto in some cases.

``That's one of the implications,'' Robertson said when asked whether the new proposals would effectively hand Russia a veto in NATO affairs.

``It would depend on the subject matter as well...but we're not at that stage yet. We're exploring it, and that is one of the implications that would have to be weighed up.''

A plan put forward by British Prime Minister Tony Blair envisages inviting Russia to join the alliance's 19 members in the NATO council chamber to discuss specific topics on the basis of equality.

The new Russia-North Atlantic Council would take decisions on a consensus basis. The current Russia-NATO arrangement usually sees the NATO 19 ranged against Russia, a set up Moscow complains asks it to rubber stamp decisions already taken.

RUSSIA SEIZES ON CHANGES

Rushailo seized on Robertson's comments, saying ``soon we will move from '19 plus 1' format to that of 20 equals.'' But he stressed Russia did not plan to meddle in all alliance affairs.

``Defense issues are an internal matter for the alliance, and NATO itself must define the parameters of its own policies,'' Interfax quoted him as saying.

``However, the main thing for us at this stage is the broadening of cooperation in the security field, that is the fight against new threats.''

These included terrorism, organized crime, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and cooperation in peacekeeping operations and responding to emergencies, he said.

Robertson was quoted as saying the two sides needed to seek creative solutions in terms of format and content to define their future relations.

Robertson was later to meet President Vladimir Putin, who has made integrating Russia into Western institutions a top priority, despite strong reservations among Russia's military and parts of the foreign policy establishment.

Putin insists that Russia, which remains a nuclear superpower, be treated with respect. ``Russia doesn't intend to stand in line for NATO membership,'' he said on Thursday after meeting foreign policy lawmakers.

SEA CHANGE

Robertson said the new relationship now being defined by the two sides marked a ``sea-change,'' although the new format has yet to be endorsed by the alliance and it remains unclear how widely Blair has canvassed his ideas.

General Harald Kujat, elected chairman of NATO's Military Committee this week, dismissed Blair's plan, saying there were already provisions for cooperation between the alliance and Russia. ``For the time being we should fill these out before we consider creating new structures,'' he said.

In a further sign of warming ties, Robertson made clear on Thursday that the West had re-evaluated Russia's two-year campaign in secessionist Chechnya since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

``We may disagree with the means Russia has chosen in the handling of that conflict...but we have certainly come to see the scourge of terrorism in Chechnya with different eyes.''

Putin says Russia is fighting in Chechnya the same international terrorism that attacked the United States.

---

NATO Plan Offers Russia Equal Voice on Some Policies

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/europe/23NATO.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, Nov. 22 - The NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, proposed today to give Russia equal status with the alliance's 19 permanent members in devising and executing some policies, a change that probably would bring Moscow into the center of NATO deliberations on terrorism and other issues.

The proposal, which Lord Robertson said has the support of President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and other NATO leaders, implies that Russia would have veto power over certain alliance decisions, he said.

Offered to the Kremlin in the first of two days of talks here on Russia- NATO relations, the plan promises a fundamental shift in behavior for the 52-year-old organization, which was founded after World War II specifically to contain the military power of the Soviet Union.

It also holds the promise that Russia, now as for centuries before the Soviet period a power with no fixed orientation in the world's power structure, will move at last toward full partnership with Western democracies, as President Vladimir V. Putin has advocated.

White House today declined to comment on the proposal. Instead, a spokesman referred to remarks by Mr. Bush last week after a meeting with Mr. Putin in which Mr. Bush called for Russia to move closer to Europe.

"We will work together with NATO and NATO members to build new avenues of cooperation and consultation between Russia and NATO," Mr. Bush said then. "NATO members and Russia are increasingly allied against terrorism, regional instability and other threats of our age, and NATO must reflect this alliance."

But a State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker, spoke more directly to the proposal, saying, "Obviously, we think there's an important opportunity to recast Russia's relationship with NATO."

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and Moscow's subsequent partnership with Washington in fighting terror seem to have revolutionized the relationship between Russia and the West.

Mr. Putin said bluntly today at a meeting of Russian Parliament leaders that skeptics were "deeply deluded" if they believed that the rapprochement between Russia and the West was a tactical ploy intended to gain Russia some short-term advantage.

"To a significant extent, it is caused by the changes in the world - not by our wishes, but by the fact that the world has changed," he said. "And one cannot but take this into account. On the contrary, one has to take this into account."

Today, Lord Robertson said the proposal he outlined would require major shifts in attitude by both Russia and the West if it was to work. "But if it works," he said, "it is obviously a huge change, a sea change in the way in which we do business."

It also could diminish, if not end outright, the single biggest sticking point in relations between Russia and the West, Moscow's dogged opposition to NATO's plans to expand into the Baltics, bringing the alliance more decisively to Russia's borders.

Russia now has an advisory role on NATO policy as part of a joint permanent council, but it has no say in the alliance's deliberations. Until recently, the Kremlin has argued that NATO remains oriented toward containing Russia and that the joint permanent council - 19-plus-one, in diplomatic shorthand - too often functions as 19 against one.

Not six months ago, the relationship between the two sides was so frosty that Russia boycotted NATO's spring parliamentary assembly, protesting plans to expand the alliance into the Baltic states.

Last week, Mr. Putin came close to calling that a dead issue. "Russia is prepared to broaden its cooperation with the alliance," he said after meeting with Mr. Bush in Washington. "If we change the quality of Russia-NATO relations, the issues of NATO expansion will cease to matter."

At a news conference, Lord Robertson described a proposed appendage to NATO, a "Russia-North Atlantic Council," in which Russia would hold equal status with NATO's 19 permanent members "on occasion, perhaps on specific subjects."

On those issues, he said, Russia "would be part of the same compromising trade-offs, give and take, that is involved in day-to-day NATO business. That is how we do business at 19."

Asked by the Reuters news agency if the new proposals would in effect hand Russia a veto in NATO affairs, Lord Robertson said, "That's one of the implications."

"It would depend on the subject matter as well," he told Reuters. "We're exploring it, and that is one of the implications that would have to be weighed up."

Lord Robertson emphasized that Russia would acquire equality, but also responsibility and organization if it became part of forming a NATO consensus in some policy areas. "That is why I say a new attitude is going to be required on both sides if this is going to work," he said.

He indicated that the proposal was the same one that was outlined in vague terms last week in a letter to NATO members and Russia by Prime Minister Blair. He said that four other proposals existed as well, but that all involved what he termed radical changes in NATO dealings with Russia.

Today, Lord Robertson said the range of issues on which Russia would have equal status with NATO members remained to be decided. But beside the obvious need to coordinate antiterrorist activities, he said, "there are issues like proliferation, theater missile defense, some of the practical military cooperation areas where we've been involved in in the past that might be candidates."

Russian officials have previously suggested that the two sides also could work jointly to combat organized crime and drug trafficking.

Mr. Blair's proposal would include Russia in developing and executing strategies against terrorism and arms proliferation and for peacekeeping, among other issues. All three problems are rapidly becoming central to the alliance's post- Soviet mission.

A senior American diplomat here said on Monday that Washington generally agreed with Mr. Blair's outline and was "very keen" on giving Russia a larger operational role in the alliance.

Russia's defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, who met with Mr. Robertson today, said the two sides were on the verge of reopening a NATO military liaison office in Moscow that was abruptly shut in 1999 after NATO began the air war against Yugoslavia, then a close ally of Russia.

Western leaders increasingly say a Russia without a stake in NATO threatens to remain permanently suspicious of Western intentions and less willing to join in common causes, like the antiterrorism war, where its help is crucial.

What remains very much in doubt is how much change NATO members will accept - and how much the Russian body politic, particularly the military, can digest in one gulp.

"What changed radically on Sept. 11 was the complete disappearance of Russia as a threat to Europe - it's completely gone," Aleksandr Rahr, a scholar of Russian-European affairs at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said in an interview. "Even people who don't like Russia have to admit now that it's safe; it's stable to have Russia in the alliance."

For its part, the Kremlin has said it highly esteems the British proposal. One leading Russian analyst, Andrei Fyodorov of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, called it a start.

"It's reasonable in one way: today there are a number of areas where Russia and NATO can act together, not sit at a table, but act together," he said. "It might be the first step forward."

Of all the unresolved cold war issues that have plagued relations between the West and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the question of NATO's role has been the most explosive and the most persistent.

It is also the issue Mr. Putin has harped on most often in his dealings with Western leaders, arguing that Russia can never fully see itself as a friend and partner of Western democracies until the old anti-Soviet alliance begins treating Moscow as an equal.

NATO's war against Yugoslavia represented a major plunge backward in relations between the alliance and Russia. Both average Russians and the government's elite saw the war, which was begun without extensively consulting Moscow, as an attempt to humiliate an old enemy. Some called it the start of a new campaign by the victorious West to subdue Russia itself.

At his news conference today, Lord Robertson sounded almost like Mr. Putin in arguing that the current NATO approach to Russia is outmoded in a world facing new threats.

"In the past," he said, "we were divided by walls and by fences and by ideology and by armies. Today the threats to the Russian people are very similar, if not exactly the same as the threats to the people in the NATO countries and the West. The international terrorists have gone global. So why should we all be dealing with things as individual nations?"

"Migration, refugee flows make borders a complete nonsense," he added. "So why do we pretend that tanks and infantry formations are going to give any country or any group of countries a total insurance?"

Both sides have raised the prospect that Russia might eventually join NATO, but both the financial and political barriers to membership would seem to put that option years, perhaps decades, away unless NATO admission rules are changed. Mr. Putin said this week that Russia did not seek NATO membership now.

-------- propaganda wars

Bin Laden Now a Target in Arab Media
Criticism Emerges as Scholars Emphasize Distance From 'Distortion of Religion'

By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3706-2001Nov22?language=printer

A cartoon this week showed fugitive Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden inside a dark cave "somewhere in Afghanistan," using a flute to charm a mushroom cloud out of a basket, as a serpent recoiled in horror. The cartoon represented one of the first alarms in the official media of Saudi Arabia and Egypt about the fervid support bin Laden attracts.

The cartoon, by Lebanese Mahmoud Kahil in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, and an opinion piece in Egypt's semi-official Al Ahram yesterday, mark a belated reaction to the threat presented by Islamic extremists and an effort by Islamic scholars to set the record straight on the distance between their religion and terrorism.

The Al Ahram article, by Nabil Luka Bibawi, a professor of criminal law, cited extensive passages from the Koran preaching religious tolerance and prohibiting attacks against innocent non-Muslims, calling them attacks against the prophet Muhammad and God.

"Terrorists don't know the methods of rational, calm debate . . . terrorists impose darkness on the climate of the intellect because they try to force their backward ideas on public opinion under the veil of religious correctness," Bibawi wrote. "They construe religious thought to suit their political objectives to reach power." He accused such extremists of "disfiguring religious tolerance with insane acts.

"There can be no worse distortion of religion than that. If world Zionism spent billions of dollars to tarnish the image of Islam, it will not accomplish what the terrorists have done with their actions and words."

In a series of editorials in the Arab press and even on the occasional talk show on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, there has been a clear effort to discredit bin Laden in religious terms and shed light on his criminal bent, political aspirations and pretensions of piety. The delicate and narrow Islamic dictates on who has the right to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, are being laid bare to viewers and readers, indicating bin Laden and his associates lack the theological authority they claim.

"While Osama bin Laden and his followers claim to have lofty ideals, they have forgotten that it is their leader's own words which now point the way to damnation," wrote Jamal Khashoggi, the deputy editor of Arab News, in an undated online commentary offering the Saudi perspective on the war against terror. Referring to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, sanctioning the killing of U.S. and British citizens and military personnel because of their support for Israel, Khashoggi pointed out: "There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa. . . . With bin Laden's religious upbringing, he should know that only the most knowledgeable Islamic scholars have the right to issue fatwas.

"It seems that bin Laden has become a revolutionary in a world of his own imagination. He would not hesitate to break any taboo. How did he come to create this fantasyland of terror?"

This initial chorus, however, does not mean that the scrutiny of U.S. actions is waning. With Taliban fighters and their Arab, Pakistani and Chechen sympathizers besieged by the Northern Alliance in Kunduz, some columnists cautioned against what they called a "green light" from the United States to kill so-called Afghan Arabs. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's comments that he would prefer bin Laden and his followers to be killed rather than captured received top billing in front-page news stories and commentaries yesterday.

Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, a columnist in the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat newspaper, wrote that the Northern Alliance could not claim -- as the Americans do -- that their war is not against Arabs or Muslims. "This is the filthy dramatic end to the jihad story for the sake of liberating Afghanistan," he wrote, noting that the alliance was no different from the Taliban militia in its cruelty and lack of respect for prisoners of war.

Badrakhan insinuated that the alliance has been "encouraged and incited by the Americans" to deal with the Arabs, Pakistanis and others in Afghanistan. The conduct of the alliance cannot be understood as the trespasses of individuals, but as the outcome of clear instructions from its commanders, he added. "No one ever had any illusions that any war could be moral. Neither were the attacks against New York and Washington moral, nor is the response to these attacks supposed to be moral," the columnist said.

The alliance has forgotten how such "shameful" targeting of Arabs and Muslims is going to enrage entire populations and governments that have offered a lot in the past to Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld has forgotten that his president is saying the aim behind the war is to bring the terrorists to justice, Badrakhan said.

--------

The defeat of militant Islam

Daniel Pipes
November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011123-69551992.htm

Early on Nov. 9, the Taliban regime ruled almost 95 percent of Afghanistan. Ten days later it controlled just 15 percent of the country. Key to this quick disintegration was the fact that, awed by American air power, many Taliban soldiers switched sides to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance. According to one analyst, "Defections, even in mid-battle, are proving key to the rapid collapse across Afghanistan of the formerly ruling Taliban militia."

This development fits into a larger pattern; thanks to American muscle, Afghans now look at militant Islam as a losing proposition. Nor are they alone; Muslims around the world sense the same shift. If militant Islam achieved its greatest victory ever on September 11, by Nov. 9 (when the Taliban lost their first major city) the demise of this murderous movement may have begun.

"Pakistani holy warriors are deserting Taliban ranks and streaming home in large numbers," reported the Associated Press last Friday. In the streets of Peshawar, we learn, "portraits of Osama bin Laden go unsold. Here where it counts, just across the Khyber Pass from the heartland of Afghanistan, the Taliban mystique is waning."

Just a few weeks ago, large crowds of militant Islamic men filled Peshawar's narrow streets, especially on Fridays, listening to vitriolic attacks on the United States and Israel, burning effigies of George W. Bush, and perhaps clashing with the riot police. This last Friday, however, things went very differently in Peshawar. Much smaller and quieter crowds heard more sober speeches. No effigy was set on fire and one observer described the few policemen as looking like "a bunch of old friends on an afternoon stroll."

The Arabic-speaking countries show a similar trend. Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, notes that in the first week after the U.S. airstrikes began on Oct. 7, nine anti-American demonstrations took place. The second week saw three of them, the third week one, the fourth week, two. "Then - nothing," observes Mr. Indyk. "The Arab street is quiet." And so too in the further reaches of the Muslim world - Indonesia, India, Nigeria - where the supercharged protests of September are distant memories.

American military success has also encouraged the authorities to crack down. In China, the government prohibited the selling of badges celebrating Osama bin Laden ("I am bin Laden. Who should I fear?") only after the U.S. victories began. Similarly, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia admonished religious leaders to be careful and responsible in their statements ("weigh each word before saying it") after he saw that Washington meant business. Likewise, the Egyptian government has moved more aggressively against its militant Islamic elements.

This change in mood results from the change in American behavior. For two decades - since Ayatollah Khomeini reached power in Iran in 1979 spouting "Death to America" - U.S. embassies, planes, ships, and barracks have been assaulted, leading to hundreds of American deaths.

In the face of this, Washington hardly responded. And, as Muslims watched militant Islam inflict one defeat after another on the far more powerful United States, they increasingly concluded that America, for all its resources, was tired and soft. They watched with awe as the audacity of militant Islam increased, culminating with bin Laden's declaration of jihad against the entire Western world and the Taliban leader calling for nothing less than the "extinction of America."

The attacks of September 11 were expected to take a major step toward extinguishing America by demoralizing the population and leading to civil unrest, perhaps starting a sequence of events that would lead to the U.S. government's collapse.

Instead, more than 4,000 deaths served as a rousing call to arms. Just two months later, the deployment of American might has reduced the prospects of militant Islam.

The pattern is clear: So long as Americans submitted passively to murderous attacks by militant Islam, this movement gained support among Muslims. When Americans finally fought militant Islam, its appeal quickly diminished.

Victory on the battlefield, in other words, has not only the obvious advantage of protecting the United States, but also the important side-effect of lancing the anti-American boil that spawned those attacks in the first place.

The implication is clear: There is no substitute for victory. The U.S. government must continue the war on terror by weakening militant Islam everywhere it exists, from Afghanistan to Atlanta.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum.

-------- puerto rico

Puerto Rican strikes

November 23, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-9543924.htm

It didn't take long for Puerto Rican politicians to start a campaign against the resumption of live-fire training on Vieques.

Hours after The Washington Times disclosed last week that two military chiefs want real bullets to fly on the Puerto Rican island, local politicians were lobbying lawmakers to oppose it.

And even before the letter was publicly disclosed, Puerto Rican Gov. Sila Calderon was on the phone to Navy Secretary Gordon England.

She asked him to refuse the impending request from Gen. James Jones, the Marine Corps commandant, and Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations.

The two wrote Mr. England in a private letter that, because of the open-ended war on terrorism, the next battle group to head to the Persian Gulf region should be allowed to use real munitions on Vieques to ensure its readiness levels are at a peak.

"We respectfully request support of a wartime modification of current practice to sanction the use of live ordnance during combined arms training exercises prior to deployment," the two officers wrote to Mr. England.

After speaking to Mr. England by phone, Mrs. Calderon repeated her opposition in a "Dear Mr. Secretary" letter.

"I am disturbed that commandant of the Marine Corps and the chief of naval operations have requested permission to use live fire in its training on Vieques for a limited period next January," she wrote. "All Puerto Ricans support the U.S. military in their war efforts in these dangerous times. Nevertheless, most Viequenses would consider any use of live fire on Vieques a breach of the presidential directives. Such a decision could inflame passions among protesters and create a very sensitive situation for all concerned."

President Bill Clinton ended live ordnance on Vieques in response to local complaints that the four-decade practice was a health hazard. President Bush, courting the Puerto Rican vote for fellow Republicans, announced the Navy must leave in 2003. The Navy is searching for East Coast alternatives.

-------- space

China Announces 2005 Space Plans

By Ted Anthony
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5210-2001Nov23?language=printer

BEIJING -- Citing military concerns and saying space exploration will become "as essential as electricity," China announced plans to send a man into space by 2005 and, eventually, head for the moon.

China also will launch three satellites next year to monitor weather, study oceans and search for resources on earth, the official China Daily newspaper said Friday.

Senior officials said China's presence in space and its developing space program - long a secretive affair, but also an endeavor that the government has framed as a symbol of national prestige - will be well-established within three years.

"China has put the plan for developing the industry on the table," the China Daily quoted Sun Laiyan, vice director of the China National Space Administration, as saying Thursday.

The newspaper gave no details about the moon-shot and no firm date for manned spaceflight, other than "before 2005." Space Administration spokesman Liu Xiaohong, reached by phone Friday, would not elaborate on China's plans.

But the official Xinhua News Agency, citing the head of the Space Administration, last month said the moon probe was part of China's "struggle for a more important place in the world space science field."

"For mankind in the 21st century, space application will become as essential as electricity and oil in the 19th century," the China Daily quoted Liang Sili, a space scientist, as saying.

He said more unmanned tests were needed before a manned launch. "We must be sure that the astronauts are 100 percent safe in outer space," Liang was quoted as saying.

Like the United States in the 1960s, China has used the prospect of reaching for the stars as a motivating force for patriotism. Xinhua earlier this year praised lunar exploration as having an "immeasurable usefulness to raising national prestige and inspiring the nationalistic spirit."

China successfully launched unmanned Shenzhou, or "Sacred Vessel," spacecraft on Long March rockets in 1999 and this year - pushing forward Chinese plans to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to have launched manned vessels.

While building its space programs, China is also concerned that space could become an expensive battleground in any future conflict. Beijing is especially unhappy with U.S. plans to build systems to shield the United States from missile attack.

"Some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space, not peacefully exploring," the China Daily quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry official Huang Huikang, who has worked with other nations' space programs, as saying.

"Another arms race in outer space has begun since 1998, and we should be watchful," Huang said.

-------- terrorism

THE COMPUTER NETWORKS
Cyberspace Seen as Potential Battleground

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/technology/23CYBE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Government officials are warning that cyberattacks are likely as retribution for the United States campaign in Afghanistan, and at the same time, computer security experts are seeing increasingly numerous and more powerful attacks from traditional hackers.

So far, most technologically proficient attackers are hackers or insiders with no terrorist intent, while the terrorists are not yet very proficient, Frank J. Cilluffo, an expert on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said during Congressional testimony in October. But, calling cybersecurity the "gaping hole" in the nation's infrastructure defense plans, he said, "It is only a matter of time before the convergence of bad guys and good stuff occurs."

"While bin Laden may have his finger on the trigger," he added, "his grandson might have his finger on the mouse."

Such warnings are not new. The President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, formed during the Clinton administration, said in a 1997 report that "our dependence on the information and communications infrastructure has created new cyber-vulnerabilities, which we are only starting to understand." Electronic transfers of money, distribution of electrical power, the responses of emergency services and military command and control are at risk, that report said.

President Clinton responded by starting such initiatives as the National Infrastructure Protection Center, an organization within the F.B.I. that works with law enforcement agencies and private companies to make systems like the nation's computer networks more secure.

The early alerts were often dismissed as scaremongering. Dorothy E. Denning, a Georgetown University professor of computer science, said she was a skeptic until Sept. 11. "Now I feel a little bit more humbled," she said. "You don't know what will surprise us next."

Soon after the terrorist attacks, President Bush named Richard Clarke, the Clinton administration's counterterrorism czar, as special adviser for cyberspace security. In an interview earlier this month, Mr. Clarke said the Bush administration was organizing its counterterrorism efforts "in a single strategy with people rowing in the same direction." He has his work cut out for him: Congressional investigators announced recently that two-thirds of federal agencies failed a governmentwide test of computer security.

Cyberterrorism is unlikely to be the sole thrust of a terrorist attack, said Jeffrey A. Hunker, dean of the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University and a former National Security Council official. Instead, hacking would be used to further complicate matters, perhaps by taking down key computers in financial or communications industries, after a bombing. He places cybertools in a different category from nuclear, biological or chemical "weapons of mass destruction," which would directly cause injury or death. Cyberthreats, instead, are considered weapons of mass disruption.

Up to now, most computer attacks could more accurately be defined as "weapons of mass annoyance," as when intruders commit acts of vandalism against Web sites. Last month, the National Infrastructure Protection Center issued a warning that such "cyberprotests," including attacks on Web sites, were likely.

Computer security experts, however, warn that they have begun seeing evidence of increasingly potent attacks by hackers. One of the forms of computer attack that is hardest to defend against, denial of service attacks, is becoming more common and more disruptive. In a denial of service attack, one computer is programmed to flood another with junk messages that slow down the machine's performance and block legitimate users.

On Oct. 22, the federally financed CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University published a memorandum outlining the nature of the new, brawnier attacks, including attacks that focus on computers running Microsoft (news/quote)'s Windows operating systems, which have proved more vulnerable to attack than machines running the Unix operating system.

Attackers have also employed new "worms," like the recent Nimda, which transmits destructive activity from computer to computer with greater efficiency and power than ever before by combining several kinds of attacks. Increasingly, these programs are being aimed at routers, which direct traffic throughout the Internet. The effects of these denial of service attacks "are causing greater collateral damage," warned Kevin J. Houle, a researcher at the center.

No computer on the Internet is immune from denial of service attacks, said Paul A. Vixie, a security expert who spoke at a meeting of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers earlier this month in Marina Del Rey, Calif., not even crucial machines that direct Web surfers to sites, including the 13 "root" servers and the 10 top-level domain servers. "The only thing that keeps a given server on the air on any particular day is that no teenager with a $300 computer is angry enough at that server's operators to feel like punishing them," he said in an e-mail interview.

Security experts who monitor attempts at computer intrusion say that other new tools and tricks are coming into use in that arena as well. In recent weeks, computer security experts have come to believe that malicious hackers have developed tools to take over computers using the Unix operating system through a vulnerability in a nearly ubiquitous computer communications protocol known as SSH.

Those experts say that they find the SSH flaw especially worrisome because it could provide a hacker who successfully attacks it unrestricted access to a computer. An intruder could gain access to machines linked to the compromised computer, could destroy all of the data on the machine or could use it to carry out denial of service attacks. "It's pretty nasty," said Dan Ingevaldson, a security researcher at ISS, a major vendor of security software and service.

The weakness in SSH has been identified since early this year, and many system administrators have fixed the problem with patches, but until recently the theoretical vulnerability had not been subjected to actual attack. Recently, however, security experts have noticed a sharp increase in probes by outsiders of a specific spot in their network known as Port 22 - the part of the system that SSH uses - presumably to see which machines are still open to attack. "They wouldn't be doing the scanning if it wasn't paying off for them," said Kevin L. Poulsen, editorial director of a SecurityFocus, a company that provides computer security information.

New threats are always emerging, but they can be managed with proper vigilance, said Steve Elgersma, a system administrator for the computer science department at Princeton University. "We get bombarded by port scans and probes from all over the world," he said. "We're aware of them, and they're not getting through."

Most of the cyberworld is in private hands, making a unified defense difficult, said Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah and an early proponent of greater preparedness against computer attacks. "Prudence dictates that we are going to have this kind of problem," he said. "The only question is when, and how seriously."

Mr. Clarke, the cyberterrorism adviser, said that he had already seen a change in industry attitudes since Sept. 11. Interviewed by telephone during a trip to Silicon Valley, he said, "I'm getting a remarkably different perception than I did a year ago" when he was greeted with skepticism. Now high-technology executives are more willing to talk about building and buying more secure technologies, he said. "I think people resonate with that now," he said.

---

THE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
Attacks at Hubs Could Disrupt Phone Lines

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By SIMON ROMERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/technology/23PHON.html

Public safety experts and telecommunications executives are growing increasingly concerned about the possibility of attacks on the telephone system, a century-old network of copper wires and newer fiber optic strands that wind their way through critical but vulnerable hubs.

Most of the concern involves the prospect of physical attacks on the 100 or so most important central offices that route voice calls and Internet traffic. Service for more than 30 million phone lines in the largest cities could be interrupted if such attacks were successful.

Another important concern focuses on cyberattacks that could shut down parts of the public telephone system. And some information warfare experts worry as well about the development of weapons that disrupt communications networks with electromagnetic bursts.

The threats, like those that could take aim at the central office buildings found in every big city, are so obvious that some government officials and phone company executives hesitate to talk about them publicly. Other experts, however, say it is necessary to discuss the issue - but without providing saboteurs a map of where such facilities are.

"We gain nothing by underestimating the sophistication of the bad guys, who are certainly already thinking about these things," said John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "By not talking about such a threat, we're giving them more running room."

The worries about the phone network's exposure to saboteurs have grown since Sept. 11, when the collapse of the World Trade Center caused nearby switching operations in one of the nation's busiest central offices to shut down temporarily.

Verizon Communications, which owns the central office at 140 West Street, said the disruption affected a customer base about the size of Cincinnati, with 300,000 phone lines.

Since then, Verizon has returned service to almost all the customers served by the office, but doubts about the wider network's vulnerability have persisted. The damage done to New York's phone network could have been far worse if more important central offices in Manhattan had been damaged in the attacks.

"The definition of acceptable risk has dramatically changed," said Joseph P. Nacchio, chief executive of Qwest Communications, which provides local and long-distance telephone service.

Carriers like Qwest, which is based in Denver and has extensive operations in the West, and Verizon, the largest phone company on the East Coast, are increasing the number of guards and screening visitors with greater care at busy work sites.

Large telephone companies have also briefed federal officials and member of Congress on threats to the network. But aside from these initial moves, it is not clear what detailed plans, if any, are being considered to protect key parts of the phone network.

The National Communications System, a White House-level organization that coordinates telecommunications preparedness, declined to elaborate on the matter. "As a matter of national security, the N.C.S. does not openly discuss vulnerabilities of networks that may pose a security threat to the nation," said Stephen Barrett, a spokesman.

In fact, it is well known that the phone system's evolution into a network that depends on key routing sites nationwide make changes difficult and expensive. The N.C.S. reported last year that "there is an increasing likelihood that portions of the telecommunications infrastructure may be inappropriately or inadequately secured."

Much of the network's vulnerability has to do with its relative openness, which increased over the last decade as the government required large companies to open their systems to competitors. The N.C.S. cited the increase in the number of companies that provide telecommunications services as one of the main reasons the public telephone network is less secure over all.

To the chagrin of some start-up companies, large local phone companies recently echoed the N.C.S.'s concern. The most vocal of these companies has been Verizon, formed last year by Bell Atlantic's acquisition of the GTE Corporation. In addition to concern about cyberthreats that could be carried out by hackers using a competitor's access to its network, Verizon is worried that saboteurs masquerading as technicians from a competing company could gain access to and damage a large central office.

The organization of the nation's telephone system lends itself to such vulnerability. As the industry was deregulated over the last decade and a half, companies made many changes, like the conversion from analog to digital switching.

But the basic architecture of the system on the local level has hardly changed. Most voice and data traffic is still channeled through central offices, the buildings where copper and fiber-optic cables connect to the rest of the network through bulky switches and data circuits. Many of these buildings were designed to withstand natural disasters like tornadoes or hurricanes. During the cold war, they served as bomb shelters. They were built to be as anonymous as possible, with ample use of concrete and few windows.

Still, few of these structures were built to withstand bombs placed within their premises, where switching equipment is placed within cages or is left in areas open to employees and visiting technicians. A well- placed explosion inside a central office could cripple the service of nearly all of its customers.

Shifting away from a system dependent on central offices would be much more difficult than building greater redundancy into the telephone network, experts say, because it is technically complicated to channel traffic through remote and secure sites that are far removed from busy urban centers. It would also be extremely expensive to build a backup network of central offices, said Scott Heinlein, senior analyst with TeleChoice, a telecommunications consulting company.

"A move toward more decentralization is key, but it's something that will probably happen slowly," said A. Michael Noll of the University of Southern California, an expert on the safety of telecommunications networks.

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

Special forces get free rein

November 23, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011123-81862836.htm

U.S. commandos inside Afghanistan have been given historic autonomy to plan and execute attacks when needed, resulting in "hundreds" of deaths of enemy soldiers, military officials say.

One official described the special-operations forces' (SOF) rules of engagement as an "unrestricted hunting license" for Taliban militia and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist army now in disarray.

Special-operations troops the past two weeks have conducted their first sustained ground combat in Afghanistan. Sources say small teams of Delta Force soldiers, and other commando units, have ambushed the enemy and killed them in small batches.

"From the reports I've seen, they have killed in the hundreds," a senior administration official said. "There have been no deaths on our side."

This official, and others, said in interviews they credit the success to a premium placed on special-operations training the past 20 years. They also praise the freedom granted the units by Gen. Tommy Franks.

Gen. Franks, who as head of U.S. Central Command is directing the war in Afghanistan, is part of the "conventional" Army, and thus suspect in the eyes of hardened covert warriors. But some in the community are applauding the general's willingness to give SOF their loosest rein since the Vietnam War. Then, Army Green Berets infiltrated enemy territory and attacked at will.

Commandos are working in small teams at night in southern Afghanistan, attacking Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers around their stronghold of Kandahar. U.S. commandos can conduct reconnaissance, identify the enemy and plan missions to attack without getting approval from Central Command, officials said.

"You've got to give these guys freedom to plan direct action because the intelligence is so fragile," an administration official said. "In conventional warfare, you can rely on older intelligence of enemy positions because the enemy is not as mobile. In direct action, they're going after people. They have to do their own intelligence and act on it right away. You have to give these guys some slack."

In some cases, soldiers have used sniper fire, taking advantage of stealth and superior night-sight equipment. In other encounters, soldiers used Barret 50-caliber weapons, a heavy sniper rifle that can take out an armored vehicle, or a person, at 1,500 yards.

The administration official said now that hundreds of SOF soldiers are behind enemy lines they must act quickly or lose their prey. "It's only when you operate in country that information becomes minutes old," the official said.

Personnel in the special-operations community say Afghanistan has provided a playing field for SOF specialists to ply two classic trades at once: unconventional warfare and direct action.

In unconventional warfare, Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, have worked with the Northern Alliance and other opposition groups. The U.S. soldiers, trained in indigenous customs and language, give tactical advice, supply arms and bond with commanders who will one day run the country.

In "direct action" carried out by Delta Force and other SOF units, commandos find targets for fighter jets to strike, blow up some targets themselves and conduct hit-and-run raids.

"They're not leaving a footprint," said the administration official. "When these guys do sleep, they sleep on the ground. They don't have a fixed base camp."

Delta Force is under the control of U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), located at Pope Air Force Base, which borders Fort Bragg, N.C., home to Army Special Operations Command. JSOC not only oversees the super-secret Delta anti-terrorism unit, but also the Navy's Seal Team Six. "There are elements of JSOC we don't talk about," an Army officer said.

Under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Del Dailey, JSOC units train in total secrecy. Few outside the units know who they are or what they do. Gen. Dailey, an ex-member of the 800-strong Delta unit, personally briefed President Bush on their missions in Afghanistan before the war began.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Pope and Fort Bragg this week to fire up troops on whose shoulders much of the war's fate now rests. Backed by air power, they must not only kill terrorists, but also help catch, or kill, the two primary al Qaeda leaders: bin Laden and his top aide Ayman al Zawahiri.

While at Fort Bragg, Mr. Rumsfeld credited SOF with turning the war in Afghanistan in the United States' favor.

In the first weeks after the air campaign began Oct. 7, opposition forces made little headway. But once U.S. warriors entered the country in significant numbers and began finding crucial command and troop targets, the Taliban began its retreat.

"The air war enabled the ground war to succeed," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And it turned when we had Special Forces down there to help with the targeting. And God bless them for doing it."

----

Afghan Roots Keep Adviser Firmly in the Inner Circle
Consultant's Policy Influence Goes Back to the Reagan Era

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A41
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3401-2001Nov22?language=printer

Four years ago at a luxury Houston hotel, oil company adviser Zalmay Khalilzad was chatting pleasantly over dinner with leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban regime about their shared enthusiasm for a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal.

Today, Khalilzad works steps from the White House, helping President Bush and his closest advisers in attempts to annihilate those same Afghan officials.

From his perch as a member of the National Security Council and special assistant to the president, the Afghanistan native is one of the most influential voices on Afghan policy.

He is the only White House official to have lived in Afghanistan, and he has a visceral feel for the region's tensions and history. His long-term influence on matters pertaining to Central Asia is made apparent by a photo in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Snapped next door at the White House, it shows President Ronald Reagan and Khalilzad huddled in discussion with an Afghan leader, who at the time was battling to oust the Soviets.

"Zalmay is the ideal man for Afghanistan, because he is an Afghan himself and he's grown up there and knows the country," said Richard Dekmejian, a specialist in Islamic fundamentalism at the University of Southern California and an acquaintance for more than a decade. "He brings firsthand knowledge of the country together with the perspective of a policy expert. He's at the right place."

Since the 1980s -- as a Reagan administration policy planner, a consultant, a Pentagon strategist and a Rand Corp. scholar -- Khalilzad, a U.S. citizen, has been in contact with myriad squabbling Afghan warlords and political leaders.

Over the decades, he has evolved from a Cold War activist, celebrating the retreat of Soviet forces from his homeland, to a more moderate voice, calling for friendly persuasion with the Taliban. Now, he is a hawk urging the Taliban's destruction.

His evolving views are evident in a long string of journal articles, position papers and newspaper columns.

"The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran," Khalilzad wrote four years ago in The Washington Post. "We should . . . be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction. . . . It is time for the United States to reengage" the Taliban.

More recently, though, he began stressing that action against the Taliban "now is essential."

"The danger is growing," he wrote late last year with Daniel Byman of the Rand Corp. in Washington Quarterly, a policy magazine. "Soon the movement will be too strong to turn away from rogue behavior. It will gain more influence with insurgents, terrorists and narcotics traffickers and spread its abusive ideology throughout the region. . . . Alternatives to confrontation have little promise."

Khalilzad was born 50 years ago in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, 70 miles south of the Soviet border. While still young, his family moved to the regional capital of Kabul, where his Pashtun father worked in the government, which was then a monarchy.

"They certainly would have been people among the intellectual elite of the time," said Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "They became Kabuli, the Parisians of Afghanistan: urbane, urbanized people."

Khalilzad's first glimpse of the United States came as a teenager, when he visited this country in a student exchange program run by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker charitable organization, Gouttierre recalled. Khalilzad went home with a passion for American culture, including basketball.

"He saw and played basketball while in the U.S.," said Gouttierre, who coached Khalilzad on a student team. "As it turned out, he was not a great player. I knew then he would be a better intellectual than a basketball player."

After completing high school in Kabul, Khalilzad earned an undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut, followed by a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1979 -- the same year the Soviets invaded his homeland.

For the next decade, Khalilzad was an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, also serving as executive director of the Friends of Afghanistan, a support group for the Afghan mujaheddin then battling the Soviets.

From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad worked at the State Department as a special adviser to the undersecretary of state, consulting on the Iran-Iraq War and on the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He belonged to a small group of policymakers who successfully pressed the Reagan administration to provide arms -- including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles -- to anti-Soviet resistance fighters in Afghanistan.

He then served as undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration while it waged war against Iraq. Later, he worked as a senior political scientist at Rand, a consulting company that performs policy studies for the U.S. military. He directed strategy for Rand's Project Air Force and founded the corporation's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

He also joined the board of the Washington-based Afghanistan Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to raising interest in the country. He became the primary author of a foundation position paper that urged U.S. officials to prod the Taliban and its opposition toward joining forces in a new, broad-based government.

During the mid 1990s, while at the for-profit Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal Corp., a U.S. oil company that hoped to construct gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan. At the time, Unocal held signed business agreements with the Taliban.

In December 1997, Unocal brought top Taliban leaders to the United States to view its operations in Houston. Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for the visiting Taliban delegation. Over dinner, Khalilzad challenged the leaders on their treatment of women, whom the Taliban jailed for failing to cover their faces with veils. His debate with Amir Khan Muttaqi, Taliban minister of culture and information, escalated into a spirited dissection of the precise language of the Koran.

Khalilzad's wife, Cheryl Bernard, is an Austrian writer and feminist whose novels champion women's rights.

Over the years, Khalilzad has written and edited books with such titles as "Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare," "United States and Asia: Toward a New U.S. Strategy and Force Structure" and "Aerospace Power in the 21st Century." He also co-wrote, with his wife, "The Government of God: Iran's Islamic Republic."

After Bush's victory last November, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department. He also counseled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In his current role, he answers directly to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

"He is scholarly, cool. Always a smile. Outgoing," Dekmejian said. "He's not a preacher type, one who goes out there and moves the masses. But he is very good at addressing small groups of people. He is not an arrogant government person. He has an open mind."

Gouttierre said the White House is lucky to have an expert in diplomacy and military affairs who also has a gut-level feel for the politics of Afghanistan.

"He's the right kind of a guy at the right place right now," he said.

----

THE BATTLE
Ugly Duckling Turns Out to Be Formidable in the Air

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/23PRED.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - In the vast armada of sleek jet fighters, helicopter gunships and cruise missiles that have pounded Afghanistan from the air, the unmanned drone known as the Predator is a decidedly ugly duckling.

An ungainly, propeller-driven craft that flies as slowly as 80 miles per hour and is operated by remote control, the RQ-1 Predator has nonetheless proved a formidable weapon as the war enters its most complex phase: the hunt for the leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Just last week, a Predator operated by the Central Intelligence Agency was used to coordinate the surgical strike in which one of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants was killed, administration officials said.

The drone pinpointed the house where a group of senior Al Qaeda officials, including Muhammad Atef, had gathered and relayed live video pictures of the scene to C.I.A. and military officials, who called in strikes from a Navy F/A-18 fighter-bomber. As people fled the building, the Predator opened fire on them with Hellfire missiles. Finally, it circled over the area, assessing the damage.

Military experts say the ability to fly these armed, unmanned drones is a significant advance for search-and-destroy missions on the battlefield. The Predator permits the United States to hit targets as soon as they are sighted, instead of waiting for fighter-bombers to respond.

The use of the armed Predator in counterterrorism was years in the making and came only after a long-running argument between the military and C.I.A. over who should have ultimate authority for firing its twin missiles. That disagreement, officials said, persisted in the months before Sept. 11 and was resolved only after a Predator missed a chance early in the war to attack a convoy that some said included Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

Behind the plane's success in Afghanistan is a story of military procurement that nearly went awry. Israel led the world in developing low-tech drone aircraft in the 1980's. The United States tried to build its own version, but the Army program, a billion-dollar effort with far more complicated, sophisticated equipment, bogged down and was eventually canceled.

For a time, the military bought an Israeli- designed drone known as the Pioneer, while work began in 1994 on a larger, unmanned plane that became the prototype for the Predator, which is controlled by as few as four officers with computer screens and joysticks like those on computer games.

The plane's first significant combat deployment came in 1995 over Bosnia, where it provided sharp images of the battlefield in what the military calls "real time."

"It's like what the movies think war is all about," one American official said, referring to the Predator's impressive ability to both track and strike fleeing targets, capturing the events as they unfold.

Last February, the Predator, which was designed for surveillance, added a lethal capability to match its menacing name. A San Diego company redesigned it to carry the Hellfire missile, an air-to-ground, laser-guided weapon used effectively by Apache helicopter gunships against Iraqi tanks in the Persian Gulf war.

The company, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., could barely contain itself when it issued a news release after a series of test attacks against a tank in the Nevada desert. It quoted Maj. Ray Pry, the Air Force officer who managed the program, who said that a missile fired from about 2,000 feet "struck the tank turret about six inches to the right of dead center, spinning the turret around about 30 degrees."

"It made a gray dent in the turret - just beautiful," he added.

The C.I.A., which was already using the Predators to take pictures of Afghanistan, was a strong advocate of the plan to add missiles, according to an intelligence official. "When we saw how good the images were, we said too bad they are not armed."

As the armed Predators were being completed, an intense discussion emerged over their use. Officials said the C.I.A. was reluctant to make what it viewed as largely military decisions. Pentagon officials were equally reluctant to have final say over attacks against terrorists.

The issue was not settled until after Sept. 11, officials said, with a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. The C.I.A. would have the right to fire on a list of selected terrorist targets. The military would maintain primary responsibility for making targets of other Taliban sites. That accord proved inadequate, officials said.

On Oct. 7 on the first night of the bombing campaign, a Predator spotted a group of vehicles leaving a compound near the airport in Kandahar. Senior military officials said the convoy was so large that intelligence analysts suspected it contained top Al Qaeda or Taliban officials.

The convoy made its way into Kandahar and stopped in front of what one official called a mosque and another identified as a private residence. Under the terms of the original agreement, permission to strike such a sensitive target - in an area where civilian casualties were likely - required not only the approval of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, but also the agreement of senior officials in Washington, military officials said.

The call went out from the Central Command's sophisticated operations center near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to General Franks's command's headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in Washington. Mr. Rumsfeld gave the order to attack, and called President Bush to alert him of the developments, a military official said. By the time approval came back, part of the convoy had driven off.

After this mishap, parts of which were first reported by The New Yorker, the C.I.A. and Pentagon renewed discussions over when, where and how the armed Predators could be used, and a new arrangement was reached, Pentagon officials said. The understanding gives the C.I.A. for the first time the authority to strike beyond a narrow range of counterterrorism targets. Officials said it reflected a new cooperation between the C.I.A. and the military.

While officials declined to say precisely when and how the Predators have been used, intelligence officials said they had fired well over 40 missiles since the war in Afghanistan began. They said they were deployed last month, unsuccessfully, in an effort to rescue Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader, from the Taliban.

The Air Force does not yet have its own armed Predators in Afghanistan, but it is flying unarmed Predators in tandem with AC-130 gunships, which fire cannons and large-caliber machine guns at targets identified by the drones. The shared use of the Predator is part of a broader cooperation between the C.I.A. and Pentagon. The C.I.A.'s special operatives have been working closely with American Special Operations Forces in south Afghanistan to stalk terrorist leaders and help mobilize opposition Pashtun tribes.

Despite the Predator's successes, the military acknowledges that the drone has had problems. An internal Pentagon report completed last month said tests conducted last year found that the Predator performed well only in daylight and in clear weather. It broke down too often, could not stay over targets as long as expected, often lost communication links in the rain and was hard to operate, the report said.

In addition, experts say the Predator has been vulnerable to icing, a condition believed to have contributed to the crash of one of the drones earlier this month in Afghanistan.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

French watchdog approves hydro, waste power prices

Reuters:
23/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13420

LONDON - France's electricity watchdog CRE said yesterday it had approved the government's tariffs for electricity generated from new small hydropower plants, waste incineration and landfill gas.

Prices for electricity generated by incineration and landfill gas range between 30 and 39 centimes (5.2 US cents) per kilowatt hour (kWh) while prices for small-scale hydro vary from 40 to 45 centimes/kWh.

The Commission de Regulation de l'Electricite (CRE) said the prices were reasonable and would not give producers excessive profits.

By law the CRE has to give an opinion on new tariffs but the government does not have to accept its advice.

Recently the government went ahead with its proposals for fixed prices for wind power generation despite advice from the CRE the prices were too expensive and would lead to higher bills for consumers.

----

Germany over-supports renewable energy - economist

Reuters
23/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13418

MAINZ, Germany - Germany is too generous in its support of renewable energy since it can already easily meet European Union green power targets, a German energy research institute said.

The EU wants renewables to account for around 22 percent of the region4s total energy mix by 2010 as part of its efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, which are widely linked to climate change.

Germany4s share of that target amounts to 12.5 percent of national energy production.

"Germany will probably reach 12.5 percent as early as 2005, since renewables already account for seven percent of the total fuel mix," Jens Drillisch, economist at Cologne University4s Institute of Energy Ecomonics told Reuters on the sidelines of a Euroforum energy conference.

"So I think the tariffs on electricity generated from renewables that is fed into the grid are too high since Germany will easily meet its target."

Germany's renewable energy law (EEG) encourages producers to invest in renewables, which include photovoltaic (solar), wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal, by allowing them to add a surcharge for such power which is passed onto consumers.

Germany is one of the world4s leading producers of wind-generated electricity - it accounts for 8,000 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity in the global total of 18,000 MW.

The current tariff for wind-powered electricity is 17.8 pfennigs/kilowatt hour, but Drillisch said that does not reflect the true cost of generation.

"The amount of wind energy, for example, is variable according to the weather so the charge should take into account the additional cost of balancing the grid when production is not as predicted," he said.

In this respect, the UK has a better support scheme for wind energy than Germany, he added, since there producers are expected to help meet the cost of unexpected additional network balancing costs.

The EU has said that in 2005 the European Commission may propose a harmonised support mechanism for renewables across member states, which could mean that the EEG is abolished.

"But existing instruments like EEG are allowed a transitional period of seven years after that date, so Germany4s renewables scheme would run until 2012 at least," Drillisch said.

According to the association of German energy consumers, the EEG subsidy on all forms of renewable energy will amount to five 5.0 billion marks ($2.25 billion) in 2005, up from two billion marks last year.

-------- genetics

24 Cow Clones, All Normal, Are Reported by Scientists

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/science/23COWS.html

Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., say they have created 24 cloned cows that are normal in every way, an assertion that challenges the widely held view that cloned animals are prey to a host of defects.

Last spring, leading scientists testified before Congress that cloned animals had so many defects that most died before birth or at it and that the survivors had a variety of problems. Given the high risk of serious defects, they said, it would be immoral to think about cloning humans.

But the scientists at Advanced Cell Technology said 24 cows they cloned had been subjected to every test they could devise and had been shown to be normal.

Scientists who have argued that cloning is unsafe say they remain to be convinced, saying the tests cannot detect subtle abnormalities like mental problems that might afflict human clones. Others say that since most of the cloning efforts resulted in miscarriages or stillbirths and medical problems after birth, the study actually confirms that cloning is dangerous. Most of the clones died.

The company created nearly 500 embryos by cloning; 30 survived to birth, of which 24 grew to adulthood.

The Advanced Cell Technology researchers, led by Dr. Robert P. Lanza, its medical director and vice president of medical and scientific development, are publishing their study on Nov. 30 in Science. But the journal released the paper today because the scientists will be describing their results next week at the National Academy of Sciences. Another company, Infigen, in DeForest, Wis., says it will be reporting similar results at the meeting, on Nov. 27 to 29, called "Defining Science-Based Concerns Associated With Animal Biotechnology."

In its Science paper, the Advanced Cell Technology group reports on clones it created by transferring skin cells from fetal calves into cow eggs whose own genetic material had been removed. The genes from the added cells directed the development of embryos that were clones of the fetuses from which the skin was taken, and the group then transferred those embryos to cows that would serve as surrogate mothers.

Fetal cells are more amenable to cloning than adult cows. But, Dr. Lanza said, the question of whether cloning is safe applies to all cloning, whether it involves fetal, embryonic or adult cells. He said his data showed that the alarms were misguided.

"We ran every medical and scientific test that was available," Dr. Lanza said. "Everything is perfectly normal." He added, however, that the procedure was still not safe enough to use in humans.

Dr. Steen Willadsen, a cloning pioneer in Windermere, Fla., who cloned more than 100 cows from embryo and fetal cells in the 1980's, said that while he did not do detailed biochemical and genetic tests of his clones, those that survived were generally healthy.

"At this point, it does not seem reasonable to maintain, as some have said, that all cloned animals are abnormal," Dr. Willadsen said.

He added that some of the problems that critics cite with cloning - the tendency for calves to be huge and to die shortly after birth - occur when calf embryos are grown in the laboratory and appear not to be caused by cloning itself. But most clones that survive are fine, he said.

Dr. Lanza said his group analyzed the health of its cattle clones because it was worried that Congress would ban all human cloning, not only cloning for reproduction but also cloning to develop cell lines for use as therapies. Advanced Cell Technology has said it wanted to do this so-called therapeutic cloning to create cloned embryos of adult patients from which they could obtain replacement cells. For example, they might be able to grow pancreas cells to treat people with diabetes.

"These anticloning bills were fueled by scientists in our desire to portray human cloning as dangerous and irresponsible," Dr. Lanza said. Now, he added, "it's important to put some science in here, some reality."

But some critics of human cloning say that they are not persuaded by Dr. Lanza's argument that clones can be normal and healthy. Dr. Rudolph Jaenisch, a biology professor at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "You have to define what normal is."

Dr. Jaenisch said he knew of no test that answered that question.

"Subtle changes are very hard to detect," he said, adding that brain function would be of particular concern if anyone tried to clone a human being.

But Dr. Jaenisch added that his worries did not apply to therapeutic cloning. Another critic of human cloning, Dr. Mark E. Westhusin, a cloning researcher at Texas A&M University, said the question was not whether clones that survive to adulthood are normal - it was what happens to those that do not survive or that survive only after a rocky start. With cows, Dr. Westhusin said, the data on clones are consistent.

"Ninety percent will abort," he said. "Most others will have respiratory problems or the early onset of cardiovascular problems. The concerns of pregnancy and the first few days or weeks of life are the concerns at hand."

----

India to destroy illegally grown GM crops

Reuters
23/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13424/story.htm

AHMEDABAD, India - Authorities in India's western Gujarat state have begun procurement of illegally grown gene-engineered cotton from farmers to prevent replanting of the seeds, officials said yesterday.

"We have asked all district collectors to take steps to procure BT cotton reaching markets. We plan to procure BT cotton to the extent possible," P.K Ghosh, principal secretary Forests and Environment in Gujarat, told Reuters.

The government has already procured about 120 tonnes of bacillus thuringiensis (BT) cotton, he said.

Earlier this month, several hundred farmers in Gujarat, the country's largest cotton growing state, were ordered to hand over genetically modified (GM) cotton crops to the government because commercial production of GM crops is illegal.

The discovery of illegal growing of BT cotton had triggered a nation-wide debate among environmentalists and pro-farmer lobbies about the government's stand on commercialisation of GM crops.

India does not allow commercial production of genetically modified crops, but has allowed a few companies to carry out field trials under government supervision.

While green activists have called for a 10-year moratorium on introduction of GM crops, pro-farmer lobbies have questioned the delay in giving a green signal for gene-engineered crops that could multiply yields and reduce input costs.

Farmers in Gujarat planted BT cotton, sold by a private firm, on an estimated 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres).

Ghosh said the cotton procured by the government would be ginned and seeds separated and destroyed.

"The objective behind the exercise is to prevent farmers from using the seeds for sowing next year," he said.

Though India is a leading cotton growing country, the per-hectare yield is only around 300 kg compared with the world average of around 650 kg.

Officials said the government would launch a campaign among the farmers to warn them against possible hazards of planting GM seeds on health and environment.

"We have nothing against GM crops, but as long as it is not legally permitted we have to caution farmers against planting them," Ghosh said.

----

New Chile copper plant for rock-eating bacteria

by Louise Egan,
Reuters
23/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13427

ANTOFAGASTA - Copper mining giants BHP Billiton and Codelco will begin construction in early 2002 of a plant in Chile for the use of bacterial technology that could revolutionize the industry, a company official said.

The two companies formed a joint venture last year to develop bioleaching, in which microscopic rock-eating bugs extract copper from mineral that would otherwise be impossible to treat.

The naturally occurring micro-organisms, which are easily transportable and benign to humans, act as catalysts to dissolve concentrates or sulphide ore.

Cleve Lightfoot, director of technology at the joint venture Alliance Copper Ltd. (ACL), said a feasibility study on the $50 million bioleaching plant was finished last week.

He said Codelco, Chile's state copper mining company, had said it would approve the prototype plant at its Chuquicamata mine in northern Chile. BHP Billiton's board of directors is likely to do so at a meeting this month, he said.

The companies say bioleaching could bring to life some major copper deposits lying untouched in mineral-rich South America.

"In the north of Chile and especially in Peru, there are a lot of ore bodies that have not been developed because there's not a technology up to now to treat them," he said.

"So we are now giving our owners, plus other third parties if they're interested, the chance to go in there and exploit those resources," he told Reuters at a mining seminar in Antofagasta, Chiles copper capital.

Slumping copper prices have recently led some miners to postpone investments in new projects and to curtail production until better times. But Lightfoot said this project was not conditioned on current market conditions.

The plant would work on an experimental basis but would nevertheless produce 20,000 tonnes of cathodes a year starting in 2003.

The two companies have already carried out bioleaching tests at a site in Chuquicamata.

NEW STRAIN OF BACTERIA

Bacterial leaching has been employed for years in gold and copper processing. But the so-called "second generation" thermophile strain used by ACL, is different from those used in the past and can work at much higher temperatures, making extraction easier.

Rivals in Canada and South Africa, which have already commercialized a patent for gold bioleaching, are also working on similar technology for use in base metals.

Lightfoot said ACLs breakthrough in Chile has demonstrated a new economic potential not only for undeveloped deposits but for existing operations as well, where rock now considered waste could be treated. It is applicable only to sulphide copper deposits and not oxides.

"We can unlock additional value out of the low grade material which would normally not be treated and just be put on one side," he said.

The technology is more environmentally-friendly and cuts down on infrastructure costs, he said.

If the prototype plant proves successful and ACL moves on to promote industrial-scale use of the technology, it would target copper deposits with high levels of impurities such as arsenic, which are not economically viable using conventional smelters.

"There are areas within Escondida which could have an opportunity. Chuquicamata is very rich in deposits and there's a great big ore body sitting out there which is full of arsenic which we could treat and which hasn't been exploited yet," Lightfoot said, declining to name the ore body.

Escondida, also in Chile, is the world's largest open-pit copper mine in terms of annual output.

ACL would also seek out sites where existing SX-EW (solvent extraction electrowinning) plants, which produce cathodes, are underused due to dwindling oxide reserves needed to feed the plants.

Chuquicamata is a perfect example of an underused facility. "This is a classic situation. They've got a capital investment which is sitting there not to full capacity...you move in and use that and it cuts down on your investment because you're tying into an existing center," Lightfoot said.

But this technology is not for sale, he explained. ACL would adopt BHP Billiton's strategy of using its technology as a way of gaining ownership in projects where it could be applied rather than patenting and selling the technology for use by others.

-------- police / prisoners

FBI Is Building a 'Magic Lantern'
Software Would Allow Agency to Monitor Computer Use

By Ted Bridis
Associated Press
Friday, November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3371-2001Nov22?language=printer

The FBI is going to new lengths to be sure it can eavesdrop on high-tech communications, secretly building "Magic Lantern" software to monitor computer use.

Separately, the agency is urging phone companies to change their networks for more reliable wiretaps in the digital age.

At a Nov. 6 conference in Tucson -- and in a 32-page follow-up letter sent about two weeks ago -- the FBI told leading telecommunications officials that increasing use of Internet-style data technology to transmit voice calls is frustrating FBI wiretap efforts.

The FBI told companies that it will need access to voice calls sent over data networks within a few hours in some emergency situations and that any interference caused by a wiretap should be imperceptible to avoid tipping off people that their calls are being monitored.

The Magic Lantern technology, part of a broad FBI project called "Cyber Knight," would allow investigators to secretly install over the Internet powerful eavesdropping software that records every keystroke on a person's computer, according to people familiar with the effort.

The FBI envisions one day using Magic Lantern to record the secret key a person might use to scramble messages or computer files with encryption software.

The bureau has been largely frustrated in efforts to break open such messages by trying different unlocking combinations randomly, and officials are increasingly concerned about their ability to read encrypted messages in criminal or terrorist investigations.

The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that it cannot discuss details of its technical surveillance efforts, though it noted that "encryption can pose potentially insurmountable challenges to law enforcement when used in conjunction with communication or plans for executing serious terrorist and criminal acts."

The FBI added that its research is "always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities" and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress.

Magic Lantern would largely resolve an important problem with the FBI's existing monitoring technology, the "key logger system," which in the past has required investigators to sneak into a target's home or business with a "sneak-and-peak warrant" and secretly attach the device to a computer.

In contrast, Magic Lantern could be installed over the Internet by tricking a person into opening an e-mail attachment or by exploiting some of the same weaknesses in popular commercial software that allow hackers to break into computers. It is unclear whether Magic Lantern would transmit keystrokes it records back to the FBI over the Internet or store the information to be seized later in a raid. The existence of Magic Lantern was first disclosed by MSNBC.

"If they are using this kind of program, it would be a highly effective way to bypass any encryption problems," said James E. Gordon, who heads the information technology practice for Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Inc. "Once they have the keys to the kingdom, they have complete access to anything that individual is doing."

At least one company that makes anti-virus software, McAfee.com Corp., contacted the FBI on Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect.

Some experts said Magic Lantern raises important legal questions, such as whether the FBI would need a wiretap order from a U.S. judge to use the technology. The government has previously argued that the FBI can capture a person's computer keystrokes under the authority of a traditional search warrant, which involves less oversight by the courts.

---

Law allows U.S. to fight hackers

ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20011123-10830040.htm

The Justice Department, using the recently approved anti-terrorism law, can now prosecute foreign hackers when they attack computers in their own or other countries outside the United States.

Critics said the change could make the United States the world's Internet policeman and set a precedent that would apply American values to the worldwide network.

Prosecutions can occur if any part of a crime takes place within U.S. borders. A large part of the Internet's communications traffic goes through the United States, even in messages that travel from one foreign country to another.

The new prosecutorial powers, which have no parallel in other nations, troubled one former Justice Department computer-crimes prosecutor.

"It's a massive expansion of U.S. sovereignty," said Mark Rasch, now with the computer-security firm Predictive Systems.

The change was highlighted last month by the Justice Department in its field guidance to federal prosecutors.

"Individuals in foreign countries frequently route communications through the United States, even as they hack from one foreign country to another," the recommendations said. "The amendment creates the option, where appropriate, of prosecuting such criminals in the United States."

The FBI referred questions to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Much of the Internet's message traffic travels through the United States, dependent on American hubs in Virginia and California.

Jessica Marantz of the Internet statistics firm Telegeography said more than 80 percent of Internet access points in Asia, Africa and South America are connected through U.S. cities. Therefore, an e-mail sent between two cities in China probably will travel through the United States - putting its contents under American jurisdiction.

The Justice Department pushed for the legislation as a way to fight terrorism, and American interests overseas could be protected by the change.

But the change in law creates a precedent that could be used to prosecute any computer crime, Mr. Rasch said, from basic data theft to sending pornographic pictures. Current law already allows pornography prosecutions in any jurisdiction the pictures pass through, but this has not yet been applied on an international scale to Internet transmissions.

For example, an owner of a pornography Web site in Sweden might be prosecuted for sending a racy picture to a friend in Norway if the message happened to travel through a computer in Fairfax. In that case, a U.S. prosecutor could try to extradite the sender and prosecute him for breaking Virginia law, using Virginia's standards for obscenity.

"We haven't done that yet, because it's an affront to the way the Internet works," Mr. Rasch said. "But now [with the anti-terror law] we're criminalizing anything that happens over the Internet because traffic passes through the United States."

"What it basically says is that we will impose our values on anything that happens anywhere in the world provided it passes through our borders."

FBI agents complain about the difficulty of computer-crime investigations that almost always venture overseas, requiring time-consuming search warrants at every step and the cooperation of foreign governments. They also are frustrated by offshore pornography and gambling Web sites, accessed by Americans, that are legal in their own countries.

Prosecutors in the Philippines last year had to dismiss charges against a college student suspected of creating the "love bug" virus, which caused billions of dollars in damages worldwide, because they had no applicable law. Under the U.S. anti-terror statute, the suspect could have been tried in America.

"There are still a lot of countries out there without adequate [computer-crime] laws," said Bruce McConnell, who is conducting a survey on international computer laws.

David Sobel, general counsel of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the change is particularly troubling when coupled with powers to send federal agents overseas to abduct and bring back suspects for trial.

"It was enacted under the guise of counterterrorism, but it is in fact applicable to all types of crime."

Earlier this month, the 43-member Council of Europe adopted a cyber-crime treaty to standardize procedures for policing on the Internet. The United States has been invited to sign it.

-------

THE POLITICS OF INTELLIGENCE
Inquiries Into Failures of Intelligence Community Are Put Off Until Next Year

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/politics/23INTE.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - Congressional leaders have agreed to delay until next year any major investigation into the government's failure to prevent the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, citing the need to give the administration time to focus on the war in Afghanistan and the global effort to destroy the Qaeda terrorist network.

The Democratic chairman and the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said they had agreed to forgo an immediate inquiry into the performance of the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who heads the intelligence panel, said in an interview that it would not be appropriate to conduct such an investigation at a time when the government's focus is on prosecuting the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican and vice chairman of the panel, agreed, saying a Congressional investigation now would divert senior intelligence and law enforcement officials from the war on terrorism.

House leaders, including Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have also agreed to wait until next year for such an inquiry, officials said. Mr. Goss could not be reached for comment.

Both senators said they had been in touch with the White House about the issue and said there was now a broad agreement to put off any Sept. 11 inquiry. They added that there had been discussion of a possible inquiry by a blue-ribbon presidential board separate from those expected to be pursued by Congress. A White House spokesman said, however, that it was "premature to speculate" on any plans for a presidential investigation.

Senator Graham said that he believed a wide-ranging investigation was necessary but that it was premature to conduct one now.

"It is very important that there be a thorough and thoughtful investigation, looking at a wide range of issues - intelligence, law enforcement, immigration and domestic preparation," he said. "But just a few weeks after Sept. 11 is not the time to do it."

Senator Shelby added: "We are not going to do it until next year. It has to be well thought out and well prepared to be worthwhile."

In fact, while the schedule has been delayed, there seems little doubt that a major inquest - like those that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - into what went wrong on Sept. 11 is inevitable.

Warren B. Rudman, the former Republican senator who is now the chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, said senior officials in the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies had made it clear that they would like more time before any Sept. 11 post-mortems are begun.

"The agency's and the entire intelligence community's view is that considering what's going on right now, that it would be an enormous demand on the time of their leadership, and it would be a distraction, and I agree with that," Mr. Rudman said.

Mr. Rudman, who was appointed to the advisory board by President Bill Clinton, said the panel had no current plans to conduct an inquiry, even though its main function is oversight of the intelligence community. Mr. Rudman is the only current member on the advisory board, since the Bush administration has not yet filled the vacancies left by the expiration of the terms of other Clinton- era members.

Mr. Rudman is due to be replaced as chairman of the board by Brent Scowcroft, a retired general who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration, but Mr. Scowcroft is so closely identified with the Bush family that Congressional leaders and other officials said it would be difficult for him to conduct an investigation that would be considered objective and credible.

"I would suggest that if the White House does something, it should be a new blue-ribbon commission, with people who are not tied to anybody," Senator Shelby said. "I respect General Scowcroft, but he was tied to the Bush administration."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, said his panel would also not conduct a Sept. 11 investigation until next year. But Mr. Shelby said that was only because the committee had too much other business to conduct first, including a hearing to question Attorney General John Ashcroft about administration actions to give law enforcement officials greater powers in the fight against terrorism.

"Nobody has talked to me about holding off," Mr. Leahy said, "but just mechanically, we can't get to it until next year. But we will look into it."

A no-holds-barred investigation into intelligence lapses could be perilous for Republicans and Democrats alike. If the inquiry focused on why the United States did not take the threat from Osama bin Laden more seriously before Sept. 11, officials from the Bush administration and the Clinton administration could find themselves on the defensive.

The Clinton administration could face questions about its response to the August 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa by Al Qaeda. The Bush administration could face scrutiny for failing to take aggressive action earlier this year against the terror network after the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen.

As a result, leading lawmakers want to avoid hearings that could easily slide into partisan finger- pointing.

"The blame game doesn't fix the problem," said Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the new Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism Homeland Security. "One could argue that not enough was done during the eight Clinton years, and in hindsight of course that's true. But not enough is still being done, and we're already two months after Sept. 11. I don't intend that as a comment blaming the new crowd. But shame on us all."

---

CONFIDENTIALITY
Breaking Law or Principles to Give Information to U.S.

New York Times
November 23, 2001
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/national/23LIBR.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - When the names and photographs were first released, Kathleen Hensman, a public librarian in Delray Beach, Fla., recognized some of the suspected hijackers in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as men who had used the computers in her small library.

She immediately called the police.

That broke a Florida law that guarantees confidentiality to library patrons. It also violated a cardinal principle of librarians never to tell the police, in absence of a court order, about who uses their rooms and what books they check out.

But almost no one thinks Ms. Hensman did the wrong thing. Of course, she will not be prosecuted.

Professionals in many other fields are also re-evaluating long-held precepts in light of the terrorist attacks and the war that followed.

Reporters and photographers in Afghanistan, trained to keep at arm's length from the authorities, have come across documents left behind by fleeing Al Qaeda operatives. Now they are faced with the question of whether they turn over their documents and photos to the military for potential use in trials.

The Federation of American Scientists, whose project on government secrecy was created 10 years ago to force more government data into the open, decided after Sept. 11 to remove from its Web site information about United States intelligence and nuclear weapons sites.

A pharmacist in Florida, also sworn to maintain confidentiality, reported to the police that over the summer he had recommended treatment to one of the suspected hijackers who had badly chapped hands.

Many lawyers are rethinking their concept of civil liberties in view of the administration's decision to use military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism and to monitor communications between people in federal custody and their lawyers.

Robert M. Steele, an expert in journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, a research center in St. Petersburg, Fla., expressed the view of people in many professions that the terrorism was so horrific that ordinary scruples might not apply.

"Principles are always in tension with other principles," Mr. Steele said. "Seldom is there absolutism."

Steven Aftergood, who founded the scientists' project on government secrecy, said, "I have had to come to terms with the fact that government secrecy is not the worst thing in the world. There are worse things."

Ms. Hensman, the librarian, said she was well aware of the Florida law and of her professional responsibility, but she has no qualms about calling the police.

"People were murdered," she said, "and people have a right to know that terrorists were here in our library using our public facilities."

After Ms. Hensman called, the police in Delray Beach, between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, notified the F.B.I. Agents obtained a court order and seized two computers the suspects were thought to have used. Officials said they hoped to retrieve e-mail messages the hijackers sent and received.

Librarians' assertion of the principle of confidentiality may seem trivial to some people compared with similar stands by, say, doctors or priests. But librarians take it very seriously - so seriously that in most libraries nowadays, once a book is returned, the record of who checked it out is expunged. Forty-eight states have laws that protect the privacy of library patrons.

As a consequence, Ms. Hensman's decision to call the police has been the topic of considerable debate in professional library circles, especially in Florida. The assistant library director in Broward County, Fla., Betty Dejean, circulated a memorandum reminding librarians that they could not give any information to authorities who did not have a court order.

In an interview, Ms. Dejean said that she was "not standing in judgment" of Ms. Hensman but that librarians were obligated to maintain their principles and follow the law in all circumstances.

Asked about this, Ms. Hensman said she could not have waited for the police to get a court order because the police did not know what she knew and therefore did not know to apply for an order.

Depending on its interpretation, the antiterrorism legislation enacted last month could make library records more accessible to federal agents. Thomas M. Susman, a Washington lawyer who often represents the interests of librarians, said he had been studying the hastily drawn statute to discern its implications.

"I don't mind relinquishing some rights to catch these people," Mr. Susman said. "Five thousand deaths in one blow does that to you."

Mary Wegner, Iowa's chief librarian, said that the notion of a librarian calling the police gave her pause but that the more she thought about it, the more she thought Ms. Hensman acted properly.

"I suppose our duty to our fellow humans trumps everything else," Ms. Wegner said.

Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's office of intellectual freedom, said, "I would have felt better if she had followed the Florida law."

But Ms. Krug added, "I suspect most people faced with the same situation would have done what she did."

--------

REMOTE VIEWING: OSAMA BIN LADEN CAN RUN, BUT HE CAN'T HIDE.

Robert L. Park
Friday, 23 Nov 01 Washington, DC
From: "Zoe Calder" <zoe@mint.net

WHAT'S NEW

According to The Sunday Times (UK), investigators at the FBI and CIA were told to "think outside the box in tracking down Bin Laden".

They did. They reactivated the CIA's "remote viewing" program, which was abandoned as useless in 1995 after 20 years(WN 1 Dec 95).

At one point during the cold war, the viewers were asked to help locate Soviet nuclear subs. They could see them in the water, but couldn't tell which ocean. Nor were they ever quite able to read documents they said they could see on Kremlin desks.

What would you bet they can see Bin Laden in a cave?


-------- activists

Man Sets Himself Afire in Ill. Mall

NOVEMBER 23,
AP
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=crime&STORYID=APIS7FVI6E00

CHERRY VALLEY, Ill. - A man shouting ``freedom and liberty for all'' set himself on fire in a suburban shopping mall Friday and hurled flaming objects at shoppers before he was subdued and hospitalized in critical condition, officials and witnesses said.

Four other people also were injured.

Witnesses said the man, identified by authorities as Richard Lewis, 27, was yelling about freedom as he leaned from a mezzanine railing and threw burning packages onto the CherryVale Mall's center court. The fire was just outside the second-floor entrance to a department store in this Rockford suburb.

Two shoppers subdued him and extinguished the fire that burned him. Security guards put out the burning packages.

Mall employee Jeremy Wolf said Lewis had stretched his leg over the railing as if to jump down to the center court, where hundreds of shoppers were waiting in line.

``I could literally see his face on fire,'' Wolf said.

Police said Lewis apparently doused himself with gasoline. He also carried a backpack containing jugs of gasoline and ammonia that he lit and dropped, but the backpack was extinguished before it could explode, Officer David Fiduccia said.

Lewis was taken to Rockford's OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center but was flown to Loyola University Medical Center outside Chicago, Saint Anthony spokesman Gregory Alford said. Loyola officials reported Lewis suffered burns to more than 30 percent of his body and was in critical condition Friday evening.

Two men who grabbed him were treated for burns on their hands, and a woman was treated for smoke inhalation, Alford said. A 67-year-old woman remained at the hospital with difficulty breathing but was expected to be released.

The mall closed its center court area after the incident. Managers were unavailable to say when it would reopen.

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