NUCLEAR
What if Terror Went Nuclear?
Fischer wins Greens' support
Don't Forget North Korea
Safeguard Russia's Nukes
Reducing weapons, but by how much?
Radiation study may use teeth from years ago
Notes From Underground
Safety Study Of Gas Plant Gets Higher U.S. Priority
MILITARY
Yemen camps in U.S.-British sights
Bin Laden Is Reported Spotted in a Fortified Camp in Eastern Afghanistan
American Marines Land Near Kandahar
How to Put a Nation Back Together Again
Northern Alliance says Kunduz captured
Hundreds of Marines land near Kandahar
Bioterror fears lead to plans for quarantine
Anthrax Type That Killed May Have Reached Iraq
Turner's Foundation to Spend Millions to Fight Bioterrorism
Industry Sees Opportunity in U.S. Quest for Security
We'll Pay for All This Later, Okay?
German Greens Patch Rift and Support Use of Troops
Pakistan's Anxiety Grows as Taliban Collapse
America Tries, Again, to End the Endless Conflict
Japan Ships Depart to Join War Against Terrorism
U.S. wants Russia-NATO ties
Putin's Tilt to the West Riles Key Factions
A Space Station Out of Control
Security Tight for NASA Launch
Anti-terrorism agency faces turf wars, critics say
Bin Laden's camps teach curriculum of carnage
New Battles in Old War Over Freedom of Speech
Yemen, Long a Foe of U.S., Joins Anti-Terrorism Effort
Navajo 'code-talkers' earn medals
Pentagon waging a massive effort
POLICE / PRISONERS
Park officers reassigned to 'homeland'
Local police need terrorism data, Michigan chief says
Ashcroft to face questioning on civil liberties
Leahy: Ashcroft 'owes explanation' about tribunals
Cyber-crime treaty not "Big Brother"
Malaysian Authorities Arrest a Fugitive Philippine Muslim
Swept Up in a Dragnet, Hundreds Sit in Custody and Ask, 'Why?'
Bush's New Rules to Fight Terror Transform the Legal Landscape
Indefensible - The case against military tribunals.
ENERGY AND OTHER
Wolves Wander Into Germany, Aiding a Resettlement Effort
New study clarifies cancer-insulin link
ACTIVISTS
Ulster Protestants to End Demonstrations Against Schoolchildren
On Campus: The Microphone War
-------- NUCLEAR
What if Terror Went Nuclear?
New York Times
November 25, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/opinion/L25NUCL.html?searchpv=nytToday
To the Editor:
Re "The Specter of Nuclear Terror" (editorial, Nov. 19):
The possibility that Al Qaeda operatives might obtain atom bomb materials from Russia and former Soviet republics is a matter of grave concern. But so is the availability of these materials from the growing British, French and Japanese plutonium industries and from a new German research reactor to be operated on bomb-grade uranium. National and international controls against undetected losses and outright thefts of these materials remain weak.
The report you refer to by five American nuclear weapons experts, prepared for the Nuclear Control Institute, provides a wake-up call on the folly of allowing "civilian" atom bomb materials to pile up anywhere in the world. India and Pakistan built their nuclear weapons programs on such materials. Iraq tried. Iran may be next.
STEVEN DOLLEY Research Director Nuclear Control Institute Washington, Nov. 19, 2001
•To the Editor:
You point out the possibility that terrorists could steal Russian highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon (editorial, Nov. 19). But such uranium may be even more vulnerable to theft elsewhere.
Germany is about to commission a new reactor that by the year 2010 will use 800 pounds of bomb-grade uranium fuel, enough for 16 rudimentary Hiroshima-style bombs. The reactor sits at a university less protected than most Russian weapons facilities.
Similarly, most of the world's medical-isotope producers still employ bomb-grade uranium at commercial facilities less secure than Russia's weapons sites.
Russian nuclear material can and should be better protected. But if American officials acquiesce to bomb-grade uranium commerce at even less secure facilities in other countries, we will not be much safer.
ALAN J. KUPERMAN Venice, Calif., Nov. 19, 2001 The writer is a visiting scholar, Center for International Studies, University of Southern California.
•To the Editor:
The need to vastly improve the security of materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons is immediate and of paramount importance to global security ("The Specter of Nuclear Terror," editorial, Nov. 19.) Before Sept. 11, the Bush administration, citing budget concerns, planned to cut financing for joint Russian-American efforts to do just that.
If money is the issue, the billions now being spent on missile defense should be redirected to address this far more immediate nuclear threat. There can be no excuse for failing to act aggressively.
MICHAEL CHRIST Exec. Dir., International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 20, 2001
•To the Editor:
Besides beefing up measures to prevent nuclear theft, two other matters should be addressed by United States policy makers ("The Specter of Nuclear Terror," editorial, Nov. 19):
¶Support the International Atomic Energy Agency's new initiatives. The agency's governing body will meet soon to receive the director general's report on ways to prevent terrorism involving nuclear materials. There should be swift support for the recommended measures.
¶Get moving on international legal instruments. Since 1998, a draft convention on suppressing acts of nuclear terrorism has been languishing in the Legal Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. That draft not only addresses terrorism in the form of trying to acquire nuclear material to build a nuclear explosive device. It also deals with the use of other radioactive material that could be used with a conventional device ("dirty bomb") to terrorize and spread radiation.
LARRY D. JOHNSON Davis, Calif., Nov. 19, 2001 The writer was legal adviser at the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2001.
-------- germany
Fischer wins Greens' support
World Scene
November 25, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011125-17786584.htm
BERLIN - Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer won the backing of his Greens party yesterday for sending German troops to aid the war on terrorism, averting the risk of a government collapse.
A national party conference passed a motion endorsing the troop pledge after an emotional plea for support by Mr. Fischer, who demanded solidarity with the United States and warned the Greens that they would risk political oblivion by bringing down Germany's center-left coalition.
"This is a clear mandate," said Greens lawmaker Albert Schmidt, who supported sending troops.
The vote signaled a fresh move away from the Greens' anti-war roots and also bolstered Mr. Fischer's position as his nation's chief diplomat.
-------- korea
AFTER THE TALIBAN, WHO?
Don't Forget North Korea
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/weekinreview/25SANG.html?searchpv=nytToday
WITH the Taliban badly battered in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden on the run, the biggest parlor game in Washington has now boiled down to one question: What will Phase II of the war look like?
Theories abound. The Bush administration may not have decided. But one scenario beginning to gain credence goes something like this: In coming months, while it steps up pressure on Al Qaeda's haunts, the United States also gives countries long suspected of hiding their nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs short deadlines to open up to intensive international inspection. If they refuse, as they have in the past, Washington will quickly raise the pressure, apply sanctions through the United Nations, and vaguely threaten that at some point diplomacy will give way to bombs.
Or, as one high-ranking hawk in the Bush administration said Friday, "they might be urged to consult the Taliban" about the risks of stiff-arming Washington.
At the very top of the list would sit Iraq, of course. Conservatives in and out of the administration have been talking about making Saddam Hussein a target almost from the first week of the war. But there is a hint of talk about another secretive, totalitarian nation with a troublesome history of nuclear and germ warfare: North Korea.
For two months, the odd regime in Pyongyang had rarely been mentioned, even though the C.I.A. has long suspected that it has amassed enough nuclear material for two or three atomic weapons. The silence ended last week. John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, named Iraq and North Korea as the two nations the United States has concluded are actively developing germ weapons, in violation of a global treaty. He added Iran, Libya and Syria as countries strongly suspected of following suit. "The purpose of naming the names today was to put the international spotlight on them," Mr. Bolton said. "Prior to Sept. 11, some would have avoided this approach. The world has changed, however, and so must our business-as-usual approach."
It would be easy to read too much into Mr. Bolton's statement. Naming names is quite different from demanding inspections and punishing those who play shell games or refuse to open their doors. It could be a feint. "Why not get everyone we dislike on notice?" asked Ashton B. Carter, the Harvard professor who was in the midst of negotiations with the North during the Clinton administration. He said that since Sept. 11, "the North Koreans have been laying as low as they can."
But this is an administration that never put much faith in the Clinton-era negotiations, and stopped such talks dead when it took office. So it was notable that Mr. Bolton said the Bush administration would no longer wait for "slow-moving multilateral mechanisms that are oblivious to what is happening in the real world."
Still, North Korea is an immensely complicated case, and it poses perhaps the most interesting test of how far Mr. Bush is willing to push his war on terrorism and his vow to make sure that weapons of mass destruction do not threaten America or its allies.
North Korea has mixed weapons production and intimidating tests of its medium- range missiles with peace gestures, including negotiations that nearly brought President Clinton to Pyongyang a year ago. President Kim Jong Il abandoned his father's habit of sponsoring terrorism, but he still makes his money by trading in missile technology, notably with America's newest friend, Pakistan. It wants Western aid and trade, but believes its fearsome stockpile of weapons is the only way to hold Washington's attention.
So from the Bush team's first days in Washington, North Korea has divided the administration's "engagement" camp (led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell) from hard liners who urge that the country must be isolated and, if possible, pushed to the brink of collapse. Mr. Powell lost round one of that debate, and prevailed in round two. Then came Sept. 11, which may change everything.
No one doubts that the North has behaved badly. The 1994 nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula was set off by Pyongyong's refusal to allow international inspectors into its huge nuclear reprocessing site at Yongbyon, north of the capital. The Air Force floated a proposal to take out the nuclear facility in an air strike (it insisted that the resulting nuclear contamination would be minimal), but William J. Perry, then the secretary of defense, warned President Clinton that the approach "was highly likely to start a general war."
THEN, just when Mr. Clinton was on the verge of imposing what amounted to an economic embargo on the country, and reinforcing the 40,000 American troops on the Korean Peninsula in case things turned ugly along the DMZ, a partial deal was reached.
Ultimately, North Korea allowed inspectors into Yongbyon, and froze the fuel production from a reactor that the C.I.A. believes had already yielded enough weapons-grade material to produce a few nuclear weapons. (Whether they have been assembled is anyone's guess.) In return, the Western allies agreed to help North Korea build a new generation of "proliferation resistant" nuclear power plants. But construction has proceeded at a dead slow pace, the country is starving, and after 11 months in office the Bush team has yet to hold a serious meeting with North Korean officials.
Now comes the hard part.
Does Mr. Bush try to revive the talks, and with it the Clinton-era offer that North Korea could get itself off the State Department's terrorist list, opening up the possibility of economic aid? Or does he heed conservative advisers who see in North Korea a chance to make an example of a non-Islamic country that poses a threat to two close allies, South Korea and Japan? After all, the intelligence community has a long list of suspect sites it would love to see north of the DMZ.
It's a tough call," said one senior administration official. "There is no link to Al Qaeda," he said, and no evidence of active proliferation of weapons since Sept. 11. South Korea, intent on reviving its own rapprochement with the North, would resist any effort to make its menacing neighbor the next target of the war on terrorism. China and Japan are equally uninterested in creating a crisis. But, the official said, "you can't say you are serious about neutralizing weapons of mass destruction and ignore Kim Jong Il."
-------- russia
Safeguard Russia's Nukes
By David S. Broder
Sunday, November 25, 2001; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7805-2001Nov23?language=printer
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=broder25&date=20011125
As a rule, procedural votes in the House of Representatives are about as important to the citizenry as yesterday's tide table. But one scheduled to come up this week could affect the lives of you and millions of other Americans.
The question is whether the Republican leadership of the House will allow a floor vote on an amendment that would increase spending on anti-terrorism programs by $6.5 billion. A key part of the proposal would boost funding for joint U.S.-Russian efforts to keep Russian nuclear materials from falling into terrorist hands.
The amendment was rejected by a narrow 34-31 margin in the Appropriations Committee, with two Republicans joining all the Democrats on the losing side. Chairman Bill Young of Florida, who led his fellow Republicans in scuttling it, made it clear that he did not disagree with its substance but felt constrained by President Bush's threat to veto any appropriation larger than the administration had requested.
Still to be decided is whether the Rules Committee, which takes its guidance from the Republican leadership, will allow a floor vote on the amendment or, alternatively, if the House will insist on it.
Here's why it matters to you. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, federal agencies asked the White House for $127 billion more to recover from that assault and beef up security. The White House Office of Management and Budget cut that back by more than two-thirds.
Most of the extra $6.5 billion proposed by Wisconsin Rep. David Obey and the other Democrats would be spent on security measures here at home. Among other things, their amendment would enable the FBI to modernize its computer system for tracking suspects by next spring, instead of waiting until 2004. It would give the U.S. Postal Service funds for detection equipment to prevent anthrax-laden envelopes from going through the mail. It would increase coverage at 64 Canadian-U.S. border points that now are not staffed 24 hours a day, and boost port security, where currently only 2 percent of entering cargo containers are searched.
But "the major deficiency" that Obey says his amendment would rectify is the scant $18 million add-on the Bush-imposed ceiling allows for securing Russian nuclear materials from terrorists, who have made repeated efforts to acquire ingredients for atomic weapons. The amendment would add $316 million to the Nunn-Lugar program, which began 10 years ago under the bipartisan sponsorship of then-Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Those who watched NBC's "Meet the Press" Nov. 18 heard national security adviser Condoleezza Rice say that President Bush has been "very supportive of the Nunn-Lugar program." She said, "The funding was not cut. . . . All the way back in the campaign, the president talked about perhaps even increasing funding for programs of this kind." Rice said Bush has asked for as "much money as is actually needed."
Perhaps the usually well-informed security adviser was misinformed, but what she said was wrong.
The administration's budget request cut the Department of Energy part of the Nunn-Lugar program from $872 million to $774 million and the Department of Defense portion by another $40 million. The "materials protection and accounting" program that safeguards and monitors Russian nuclear materials was cut $35 million; the program to subsidize research facilities for jobless Russian nuclear scientists and keep them from working for terrorists, another $10 million.
Nor is it true, as Rice claimed, that no more money could usefully be spent. Veteran professional staff people in Congress and the administration tell me the Russians have never been more receptive to American help in locking up or disposing of these materials. On Sept. 26 the Russians agreed to give U.S. inspectors access to nuclear sites never before opened. The window is open, but money is short.
The program for disposing of plutonium -- a basic ingredient of nuclear weapons -- is essentially bankrupt. Some in the Bush administration argue that current disposal methods -- burning it in nuclear power reactors or storing it in glassified form -- are too expensive. I cannot judge. But last week, 20 senators wrote Bush "strongly urging" him to give "full and adequate funding" to the plutonium disposal program. Among the signers were 10 Republicans, including the party's senior defense and budget spokesmen, Sens. John Warner and Pete Domenici.
This is a stupid place to try to save money. The House deserves a chance to reverse the error.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Reducing weapons, but by how much?
By Walter Pincus
WASHINGTON POST
Sunday, November 25, 2001
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/11/25/national/MX25.htm?template=aprint.htm
WASHINGTON - In January 1992, President George Bush announced that he was prepared to eliminate all 50 MX "Peacekeepers," a 10-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile that is the largest in the U.S. strategic arsenal, if Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin made a comparable offer.
Yeltsin responded the next day by saying that he would dismantle all of Russia's giant SS-18 ICBMs as part of a deal to cut each nation's nuclear stockpiles from 6,500 warheads, the level set by the 1972 START I treaty, to between 2,000 and 2,500.
Earlier this month, President Bush offered a unilateral reduction in the U.S. strategic force to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads. Among those to be cut would be the 500 warheads on the MX missiles that his father offered to eliminate nearly a decade ago.
The story of the resilient MX is something of a cautionary tale about Russian-American efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles. History has shown that eliminating nuclear weapons is far more difficult than designing and building them.
Indeed, even as Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin concluded a three-day summit at which they said they were laying the foundation for a new strategic framework based on a relationship between friends rather than adversaries, both countries continued to modernize the nuclear weapons they intend to keep.
The United States is spending billions of dollars to refurbish and make more accurate its warheads, whose yields are more than 10 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The only purpose for such weapons is to strike hard targets, such as missile silos, found only in Russia.
Putin said last week that Russia also would drastically reduce its nuclear stockpile. Though he did not give an exact goal for his reductions, he has in the past used 1,500 warheads by the end of the decade as a target. Most U.S. experts believe Russia would be able to afford to keep only 1,000 or fewer operational by that time.
Even so, Russia is still building new warheads to replace those on ICBMs it intends to keep. Russia also is building the SS-27, a new ICBM to replace those already dismantled because of obsolescence, though economic problems have cut SS-27 production levels to fewer than 10 a year.
Under START II, signed by Bush's father and Yeltsin in January 1993, dismantling the MX was to be accomplished by next month. But when President Bill Clinton suggested he might unilaterally begin dismantling some of the 50 ICBMs before the Russians had ratified START II, Republicans in Congress passed legislation prohibiting any such reductions until treaty ratification was complete.
Earlier this year, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he wanted to begin taking down the missiles, although ratification was still not complete, he had to go to Congress to get the restriction repealed.
The House agreed to exempt the 50 MX missiles from the prohibition, and the Senate eliminated the restriction entirely, permitting the President to reduce any number of strategic warheads he wished. The House-Senate conference on the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill has yet to vote on the issue, according to congressional sources.
-------- us nuc other
Radiation study may use teeth from years ago
By Stephanie Simon
Los Angeles Times
Monday, November 26, 2001
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=teeth26&date=20011126
http://detnews.com/2001/health/0111/27/a02-352169.htm
ST. LOUIS - The study was designed to stir alarm and did it ever: As the United States tested nuclear bombs with scores of explosions in Nevada, researchers here - four states away - found radioactive fallout in local kids' teeth.
No one knew at the time how the radiation might affect the children's health. No one attempted to find out. The study simply documented that as nuclear tests intensified through the late 1950s and early 1960s, kids were absorbing ever more radiation.
The study's goal was to help lobby for an end to above-ground tests.
The strategy worked. The St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey gained worldwide fame. Scientists collected nearly 300,000 teeth - most from the St. Louis area, a hot spot for fallout from the tests. Their findings helped build public pressure for the ban on atmospheric atom-bomb tests that President Kennedy signed in 1963.
Now researchers hope to revive the tooth study - and the public activism it sparked - by exploring whether the fallout those Cold War children absorbed has caused health problems over the years.
The follow-up is possible because of a chance discovery. Workers cleaning out an old ammunition bunker at Washington University in May came across a cache of small envelopes secured with rusty paper clips. Inside were 85,000 baby teeth left over from the 1960s, each matched with a card identifying the donor.
The university was about to throw them out when a biology professor recommended donating the teeth to the Radiation and Public Health Project, a private research group in New York. Elated, scientists from the radiation project launched an effort this month to track down donors so they can collect 40 years of health data.
Project director Jay Gould calls the opportunity "priceless."
Not every scientist is so enthused.
"The short story? It's unabashed junk science," said Steve Musolino, a health physicist specializing in radiation at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. "It's a study designed to scare people. It will never be able to reveal anything conclusive."
Even the biologist who engineered the original tooth study has his doubts about the new project. "It's going to be very difficult" to get any valid results, said Barry Commoner, now a professor at Queens College in New York. Not only that, the study will destroy the teeth, which Commoner would prefer to see preserved as a historical archive.
Critics say there's no way to compare the tooth donors' health with that of contemporaries who did not absorb nuclear fallout. There's also no way to measure other sources of radiation the donors might have been exposed to over the years.
But Gould thinks he will be able to draw valid conclusions. He plans to divide his subjects into three groups according to how much radioactive contamination is found in their decades-old baby teeth. He then will compare health statistics from each group to determine, for instance, whether those with the most contaminated teeth have suffered more cancer.
In the first five days after Gould went public with his plans, he received more than 1,000 e-mails from people who remember contributing their teeth and who are willing to answer health questionnaires. "The interest has been quite extraordinary," Gould said. "We're flabbergasted."
One volunteer is Julie Fleck, 39, of St. Louis, who remembers that when she put her baby teeth under her pillow as a kid, the tooth fairy would leave her a quarter but would not take the tooth.
"Our teeth are going to a study," her mom would explain, "and our tooth fairy is smart enough to know that."
The original Baby Tooth Survey marked one of the first times the public mobilized en masse to aid scientific research. The hoopla spread far; researchers received baby teeth from children around the world, some in envelopes addressed to "Tooth Fairy, St. Louis."
Most teeth from remote locales were laid aside, however, to focus on kids from St. Louis. Although the bomb tests were conducted in Nevada, wind patterns pushed much of the byproducts there, where it fell to the ground with the rain. Animals grazing on that ground would absorb radioactive elements, which could be passed to people consuming local milk or meat.
The high levels of strontium 90 in St. Louis affected mostly fetuses, whose bones and teeth readily absorbed any radioactive elements their mothers had ingested through contaminated food.
Thus, the Baby Tooth Survey found the levels of strontium 90 in kids' teeth varied dramatically by birth year.
Children born in 1950, when there had been just a few small-scale atom-bomb tests, had barely perceptible levels of the element in their teeth. By 1957, when powerful hydrogen bomb tests were under way, they averaged 2.6 picocuries of strontium 90 per gram of dental calcium.
That ratio more than quadrupled for babies born in 1964, when atmospheric testing had ceased but remnant fallout was at its peak over St. Louis, said Joseph Mangano, an epidemiologist with the radiation project.
"We really thought we were making a big contribution to science," said Sandy Rosen, 69, who sent her four children's baby teeth to the project.
----
Notes From Underground
New York Times
November 25, 2001
BURROW IN
By NAOMI WAX
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/weekinreview/25NWAX.html?searchpv=nytToday
AS Taliban forces retreat under pressure, many are trying to regroup in the crags and caverns of Afghanistan's mountains. Then the real war will start, Osama bin Laden recently told a Pakistani journalist. But President Bush has repeatedly vowed to "smoke them out of their holes," conjuring an image of burrowing rodents whose eradication is a only a matter of fumigation.
And last week Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said he hoped that the cash rewards being offered for information on the location of Mr. bin Laden and eight other Al Qaeda leaders would persuade Afghans to "begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks."
The Taliban's use of caves has been cast as primitive, cowardly and amusing by everyone from late-night comedians to cartoonists. Even so, it wasn't too long ago that Americans looked to their own caves for sanctuary.
At the height of the cold war, the Army Corps of Engineers commissioned a survey of buildings and natural spaces that could be used as fallout shelters in the event of nuclear attack. According to a 1963 National Speleological Society bulletin, at least 60 caves were deemed "usable" as they were, and "a surprising number" of others were adaptable.
"Caves were selected and food was stored," said Nicholas C. Crawford, the director of the Center for Cave and Karst Studies at Western Kentucky University. But the enthusiasm was short-lived. "The problem is that caves breathe," Dr. Crawford said. "Air and water go in and out, so they don't adequately protect from radiation. You can make a cave airtight, but then there are ventilation problems."
In addition, most of the caves were too far from large population centers to be accessible. New York's largest cave system, for example, McFail's Cavern (with 6.7 miles of mapped passageways), might be viable for evacuating Manhattan's masses, but it's a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the city.
Beyond that was an image problem, according to Kenneth D. Rose in "One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture" (New York University, 2001). "It proved extremely difficult to put an admirable (much less heroic) spin on burrowing into the earth to save one's hide," he wrote. Retreating into shelters "represented a devolution of the human species," he said, suggesting "that humanity's long climb out of the dark caves was now being reversed."
That may help explain the derision that the Taliban's cave-lurking incites. But Mr. bin Laden probably perceives metaphor as being on his side. After all, the Prophet Muhammad had his first revelation in a cave on Mount Hira in the 7th century. Later, when his life was threatened by the ruling party of Mecca, Muhammad took refuge in a cave.
"Muslims steeped in Koranic narrative can't help seeing the parallels," said Steven Simon, the former director of counterterrorism in the Clinton administration. "Bin Laden knows these perceptions will enhance the aura of sacredness that surrounds him."
Given that Mr. bin Laden insists the war is fundamentally religious, his sympathizers are likely to interpret Afghanistan's labyrinthine, booby-trapped cave networks as a modern-day parallel to the acacia tree, bird's nest and spider web sent by Allah to camouflage Muhammad's cave from his pursuers.
Jews and Christians have also retreated to caves in times of persecution. The Prophet Elijah (revered by Muslims and Jews), encountered the Divine while hiding in a cave on Mount Carmel. A Christian legend (recast in the Koran) tells of the "sleepers of Ephesus," who refused to worship idols and took refuge in a cave, where they slept for 300 years. The principle book of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, was written during Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai's 13-year refuge from the Romans in a Galilee cave.
From China to Europe, elaborate cave systems that have provided shelter to those on the run are not uncommon. Many, including those in Afghanistan, have been expanded and upgraded over the years. Afghanistan's Zhawar complex, for example, which was bombed ineffectually by both Russians and Americans, reportedly featured lengthy tunnels, some 40 spacious caves, a hospital, an ornate mosque, a bilingual library and a plush hotel even before the Taliban moved in.
WHETHER Mr. bin Laden is living like the Cyclops or Calypso - both denizens of Odyssean caves (his primitive, hers plush) - his quarters have so far shielded him from American air attacks. But the womblike protection of caves is only part of the story: they can also be tombs. Mythology, literature, psychology and even religion often conjure caves as places of death, darkness, confusion and evil. The Islamic hell is located deep underground, according to some traditions, as it is in Christianity. Hades ruled over a host of doomed souls in the Greek underworld, whose gates were guarded by the grotesque three-headed dog Cerberus. Dragons, monsters, trolls and witches are all traditionally portrayed as denizens of the deep. Mark Twain's Injun Joe hid out in a cave, and Shakespeare's Caliban was "deservedly confined into . . . rock" because of his savagery. And although (according to early tradition) Jesus was born in a cave, he was also tempted by the devil in one. He was buried in a cave, as well, before he ascended.
America's caves - there are about 10,000 - have harbored criminals like Jesse James and oddballs like the Leather Man, a 19th-century leather-clad loner who wandered Westchester County's environs by day and spent his nights in its caves. Caves have also had a role in various war efforts, primarily as munitions depots and to mine material for explosives, and were sometimes used as temporary barracks.
Today most of the nation's caves are privately owned and used primarily for research, tourism and sport. (Meramec Caverns in Missouri offers tours of its extensive cold war-era fallout shelter at $12.50 a head.) Nearly 100 subterranean bunker cities have been created across the country (some natural, others dug out of rock) to harbor government officials in the event of catastrophe. Vice President Dick Cheney, for one, was spirited to a bunker beneath the White House on Sept. 11.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, Socrates acknowledges the human impulse "to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light," as it adjusts to the world's brightness. But he warns that it is less appropriate to laugh at the person who emerges and then chooses to return to the darkness without reconciling truth with illusion; for such a soul has the potential for evil and to manipulate those "who have never yet seen absolute justice." As much as Mr. bin Laden's cave-cowering has been scoffed at, philosophically speaking, it's not so funny.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Safety Study Of Gas Plant Gets Higher U.S. Priority
Ridge Makes Request After Mikulski Protest
By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 25, 2001; Page SM01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8392-2001Nov24?language=printer
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has asked federal officials "to move up the priority list" the completion of safety review of a Tulsa company's plan to import liquefied natural gas via foreign tankers to a plant on the Chesapeake Bay in southern Calvert County.
Ridge's involvement came at the urging of U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who has publicly criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's October approval of reopening and expanding the Cove Point plant in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"After Governor Ridge got the call from Senator Mikulski, he picked up the phone and asked if the secretary of energy, [Spencer] Abraham, will look at it," said Susan Neely, director of communications for the Office of Homeland Security.
FERC announced on Nov. 9 that it would reconsider the Williams Co. project, just two days after Mikulski first publicly criticized the commission's original approval. Mikulski has pointed out that the fuel primarily would come from Algeria, the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and that it would be delivered to a site near the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.
A week after the decision to review the matter again, FERC staff conducted a technical conference not open to the public during which interested parties and regulatory agencies discussed "any national security issues" raised after Sept. 11.
In its order, FERC said it would "take further action, as appropriate, based on the additional evidence received and in conjunction with action on any rehearing petitions."
The Cove Point project was not considered at the commission's November meeting on Tuesday, according to FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen.
"The ball's in the commission's court," Young-Allen said.
The Williams Co. still needs the Coast Guard to complete a risk-assessment study this month before foreign tankers can begin delivering liquefied natural gas to the Cove Point plant. Company officials were present at the FERC technical conference, but declined to reveal how they would address concerns about the project.
"We know everybody's concerned about September 11, and so are we," said Cindy Ivey, a Williams spokeswoman.
The terrorist attacks have caused many local officials to revisit the possible security risks of the project. Previously, County Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) told FERC officials about local support for the plant, which when fully operational would become the county's second-highest taxpayer, behind Calvert Cliffs.
However, on Nov. 13, Hale and the four other board members sent a letter to FERC asking for an evaluation of "the proposal in reference to the prevention of terrorism."
And officials at Calvert Cliffs, who previously determined that "Cove Point operation would not jeopardize the operations" at their facility, were reexamining safety, too.
"Events like the September 11 incident lead us to conduct a new review, which we're doing right now," Karl Neddenien, a Calvert Cliffs spokesman, said recently.
On Tuesday, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) toured the nuclear power plant and proclaimed that he was "impressed" with heightened security there. But Hoyer added that it would "foolish not to relook" at the potential impact of the Cove Point operation on Calvert Cliffs.
FERC's approval came despite concerns raised by nearby residents and elected officials about the potential for a disaster if there were a fire or explosion on a tanker or at the facility. Neighbors told FERC representatives about their worries months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
State Sen. Roy P. Dyson (D-St. Mary's and Calvert) already stated that he preferred that the Cove Point plant "not open right now," saying, "I don't think they've answered all the safety questions."
Although a draft of FERC's October order deals with safety concerns, it does not specifically address the possibility of terrorism, according to Young-Allen. The commission required that the plant meet 37 conditions, including establishing direct communication with the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant.
Williams Co. officials expressed hope that the company could begin to import gas to the existing offshore pier in the second quarter of 2002.
The plant's former owners, Columbia Gas and Consolidated Natural Gas, operated a liquefied natural gas terminal and related pipeline facilities there. The import operation ended in December 1980 because of falling domestic natural gas prices and a dispute with dealers in Algeria.
-------- MILITARY
Yemen camps in U.S.-British sights
November 25, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/25112001-063750-8662r.htm
Terrorist training camps in Yemen, Sudan and Somalia are the next targets of the U.S.-British war on terrorism, the Sunday Times of London reported.
Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh visits Washington this week and the United States hopes for his cooperation.
The newspaper reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush have agreed that the momentum created by the anti-terror coalition's successes must be maintained.
The report said intelligence officers from both Britain and the United States have been gathering information about terrorists in the three countries although targets have not been made final.
Yemen is considered to be the country most likely to see coalition action, the newspaper reported. That was where 17 American sailors died in a suicide bomb attack launced on the USS Cole from a small boat.
Al Qaida supporters are reported to have established bases in Yemen's northern mountains.
-------- afghanistan
THE FUGITIVE
Bin Laden Is Reported Spotted in a Fortified Camp in Eastern Afghanistan
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/asia/25LADE.html?searchpv=nytToday
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 24 - Osama bin Laden was seen this week at a large and well-fortified encampment 35 miles southwest of this city, a minister of the self-proclaimed government here said tonight.
The official, Hazarat Ali, the law and order minister for the Eastern Shura, which claims dominion over three major provinces in eastern Afghanistan, said trusted informants had told him that Mr. bin Laden was spotted near Tora Bora, a village where two valleys meet in deep mountains in Nangarhar Province.
"We have some people who told us that three or four days ago, Osama bin Laden was in Tora Bora," Mr. Ali said. "I trust them like my mother or father."
"He is moving at night on horseback," he said, citing his informants. "At night he sleeps in caves."
Overlooking the village of Tora Bora is a large network of mountain caves and forts used by the Afghan rebels who fought the Soviet Union in the 1980's. Eastern Shura commanders say operatives of Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's organization, paid the villagers of Tora Bora $50 a family to vacate the village weeks ago.
Aides to Mr. Ali say as many as 2,000 foreign fighters - "Afghan Arabs," as they are called here - are at Tora Bora too, armed with rifles, machine guns and surface-to-surface missiles.
He described the fighters as "experienced and suicidal."
Mr. Ali's intelligence chief, Sohrab Qadri, said the Tora Bora encampment lay along a ridge of the White Mountains, and could not easily be reached except on horseback. It includes a network of caves, bunkers and ammunition depots, he said, and is sheltered by deep forests. The Afghan rebels who fought the Soviets wintered there over several years, he said, and he assumed that the caves included heating and ventilation systems.
The reported sighting of Mr. bin Laden may lead to an increased American presence in and around Jalalabad, which is precisely what the Eastern Shura commanders would like to see.
They are eager to get their hands on American weapons and matériel to help them shore up their week-old government.
Soviet Army reports described the most sophisticated caves used by the Afghan rebels as "the last word in NATO engineering." Some of the caves were upgraded in the mid-to-late 1980's, when the rebels were receiving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in covert aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The Soviets threw almost everything in their arsenal at the caves, short of tactical nuclear weapons, but with little success. They did not have the precision-guidance systems possessed by the Pentagon. But "bombing alone will not be effective" against the caves at Tora Bora, Mr. Qadri said. He said the site would have to be taken by siege.
A network of mule trails connects Tora Bora and the Afghan border with Pakistan. It was a three-day journey for the men and the mule trains that moved weapons and supplies from Pakistan into Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The trail ends in the Tirah Valley of Pakistan.
Mr. Ali said it was possible that Mr. bin Laden would "slip into Pakistan" if Tora Bora came under heavy attack. Other Eastern Shura commanders said Mr. bin Laden was taking shelter in early October at a farm in Nangarhar Province owned by Yunis Khalis, a commander of Afghan rebels in the 1980's who was closely allied with the Taliban.
They said that Mr. bin Laden left the farm days before the American bombing started in October and that "Afghan Arabs" in his retinue had gone to Tora Bora to secure the site.
---
American Marines Land Near Kandahar
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/25WIRE-SOLDIERS.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - In the first major infusion of American ground troops into Afghanistan, hundreds of American marines carried aboard helicopters landed at a makeshift airfield near the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar today, beginning what Pentagon officials said would be a period of sustained assaults against Taliban and al Qaeda forces.
The marines were to be the front edge of a powerful force of more than 1,000 combat troops who, the officials said, will join within days the hunt for Osama bin Laden and begin launching raids against Taliban forces concentrated in Kandahar and in mountain redoubts near the border with Pakistan.
Immediately upon landing in CH-53 and CH-46 transport helicopters, the marines set to work securing the airstrip, located just 12 miles southeast of Kandahar, the Taliban's political base and last major military stronghold. As early as Monday, C-130 cargo planes carrying additional troops, armored vehicles and supplies were expected to begin landing at the field, the officials said.
The officials said the advance party of marines, members of the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units, encountered no resistance when they landed shortly after nightfall. It appeared that their arrival was welcomed by local tribal leaders opposed to the Taliban.
The landing by the Marines unambiguously confirmed the shift in the American strategy from one of using air power and proxy Afghan armies to oust the Taliban from power, to one of relying on powerful U.S. forces - still with heavy air support, and probably with western allies - who can, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it, "crawl around on the ground and find people."
Before today, there had been just a few hundred American ground troops in Afghanistan, almost all of them Special Operations forces who had been advising rebel militias, helping to direct air strikes and working in small teams to watch and sometimes harass Taliban and al Qaeda forces. And aside from a brief air assault in October by commandos who parachuted onto a runway near Kandahar and raided a Taliban building there, the only sustained use of troops on the ground has involved Special Forces advisers traveling with the Northern Alliance.
The Marines who have now taken up position are a different kind of force entirely. With their superior firepower - the marines bring with them armored personnel carriers, Cobra attack helicopters and Harrier jump jets - they will be more heavily armed and more mobile, capable of conducting sustained and repeated assaults across a much larger geographic area, Pentagon officials said.
They can, for example, respond quickly and in relatively large numbers if there are opportunities to encircle mountain hideouts and search them for Taliban or al Qaeda leaders. And they will put the kind of pressure on enemy forces still in and around Kandahar that would be beyond any threat posed by Special Operations Forces or the anti-Taliban militias mustered so far by Pashtun tribal leaders in that region.
In total, the two marine units based on ships in the Arabian sea have about 4,400 troops, basically a brigade of ground forces with its own helicopters, fighter planes and artillery. It is not clear how many of them eventually will go ashore.
The marines are also trained for both conventional ground combat and special operations, guerilla-style warfare, making them available not only for attacking concentrations of Taliban troops but also moving in small groups to pursue Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants across rugged terrain.
The marines would probably not roam the countryside in search of enemy forces, as Special Operations forces have been, but would instead be dispatched on clearly focused missions guided by clear and credible intelligence reports, military officials said.
As they arrived, American warplanes continued to bomb Taliban forces in the area, as they have done for weeks.
--------
How to Put a Nation Back Together Again
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/weekinreview/25CROS.html
THE assignment is Afghanistan. But even after a decade or more of rescuing imploded countries, the United Nations and its members have never faced anything like this. A quarter century of war and repression in the name of Islam has left Afghanistan less a country than a drought-stricken shambles of a battlefield with up to a fifth of its 27 million people huddled in refugee tents or makeshift hovels with scant food and no medicine. And, yet again, they are at the mercy of narrow-minded warlords.
The Bush administration, which once scorned "nation building," now pins its hopes on the United Nations to rebuild Afghanistan. A planning meeting is scheduled in Bonn this week. Fortunately - after a decade of trial and error in Cambodia, the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti and East Timor - there is a corps of experts and a formidable body of expertise to draw on this time.
Many lessons have been learned, often painfully, about what works or does not. Somalia was a disaster. Ethnic cleansing raged in Bosnia until NATO stepped in, and Rwanda endured genocide. Haiti seemed to defy most good efforts. More successful have been recent moves into Kosovo and into East Timor, where a United Nations administration is building new political, judicial and economic institutions. Meanwhile, an instinctively undemocratic government in Cambodia finds it can't quite rid itself of the rule of law, which a United Nations mission introduced, nor silence dissenters who have gathered strength under international tutelage.
Officials who have played a role as the United Nations has tried to untangle the ruins of failed states have refined similar lists of rules to go by. In conversations, they suggested a few cardinal principles:
1. Neither the U.N. nor any one country can perform miracles; a new way of living, however humane, should not be forced on people who don't want it.
"The world has learned a degree of humility in the last decade," said David Malone, a Canadian diplomat who is president of the International Peace Academy, a United Nations agency that tracks conflict resolution. "Ideal social engineering projects devised in the United Nations Security Council or in regional organizations cannot be imposed on populations."
"This was particularly true in Somalia," he said. The United Nations' vision of a state strong enough to displace clan rule "was simply not shared, and ultimately was resisted by the Somalis with incredible loss of life - and loss of heart by the international community, leading to our abdication of responsibility in Rwanda."
Mr. Malone sees warning signs in Afghanistan - "a fractious and fractured country beset by warlordism, where war in many ways is sport as well as livelihood to many of the men. To wean them from the only life they know is going to be extremely difficult." What the United Nations does well, he added, "is peace-building in the right conditions when the parties are actually interested in stability and economic growth, which are taken for granted by us. But they are not taken for granted in many parts of the world where clan honor, ethnic survival or religion may be more important."
2. Don't wait for the peacekeepers. Or count on blue helmets to restore order.
Faster-moving armies are necessary. The Australians in East Timor, the Nigerians in Sierra Leone, NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo, all conducted operations led (with or without United Nations blessing) by national armies, and their quick action made a difference.
Nancy Soderberg, a member of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council who later represented Washington at the United Nations Security Council, said the debacle in Somalia, where warlords had reduced the country to violent fiefs, occurred because the international presence was weak and miscast. "The U.N. didn't have an international force occupying Somalia to keep the peace," she said. "Our troops were there to provide humanitarian assistance." When that proved impossible, the mission collapsed and Americans died.
Ms. Soderberg is now vice president of the International Crisis Group, an organization that issues rapid- fire reports on areas of unrest and conflict. In Bosnia, she said, the troops sent by the Security Council were inadequate to handle the murderous rivalries. "In the early days of Bosnia, you had a bunch of U.N. guys who weren't there to fight a war and it was disastrous - U.N. people chained to lampposts watching ethnic cleansing going on," she said.
The key to peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan will be the quick introduction of an outside force to provide enough safety for work to begin, she said.
"It's entirely possible that the Afghans will reject an outside force," Ms. Soderberg said. "If you can't get an international force in there, then the U.N.'s ability to help the Afghans would be severely hampered."
3. Set the table for talks and leave the room.
Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who was the first prosecutor for United Nations tribunals on war crimes in the Balkans and Rwanda, said South Africa's transition to majority rule and the hunt for Balkan war criminals taught him that "clearly the first priority - not always attainable - is getting local people talking to each other, preferably on their own."
"The key to South Africa's success," he said, "was that negotiations were handled by South Africans themselves but with crucial input, support and encouragement from the international community." In the Balkans he sees still-unfinished business. He said he has seen people there "consumed by their own history, a very selective history." The sense of victimization still runs high and could be addressed by a truth commission like those in South Africa and Central America.
4. Make the talks all-inclusive.
Sir Brian Urquhart, a former under secretary general of the United Nations who worked on early peacekeeping missions in the Congo and the Middle East, said that excluding anyone associated with the Taliban from the meetings in Bonn is a mistake reminiscent of early Mideast policy errors involving the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Taliban, after all, spring from the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. "You can't have a Middle East peace conference without the P.L.O.," he said. "But that's what we tried to do for 40 years and got into a hell of a mess. It's an old, old story: we don't deal with somebody for supposedly moral reasons, and then we get something infinitely worse. We wouldn't deal with the P.L.O., and now we've got Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Some element of the Taliban should be there in these talks. They were the previous government, after all."
Representatives of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last Afghan king, will be present, although he has not been in the country since his overthrow in 1973. The Taliban are out because the Northern Alliance, fighting in support of the United States, refuses to entertain their presence. Pakistan, which once supported the Taliban, still argues that the Northern Alliance, which wrecked Afghanistan by infighting and looting after the Soviet Union withdrew and its puppet Afghan government collapsed, should not dictate the country's future. But Pakistan lost this round.
5. Whatever the lessons, they will mean little unless applied by leaders with skill, creativity and wisdom.
The people in any nation being built need to trust the builders. Mr. Goldstone said his own country, South Africa, was fortunate to have had its own political and judicial leadership and institutions that people could trust at a critical moment. For Afghanistan, Secretary General Kofi Annan has chosen two talented and experienced international troubleshooters, Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria and Francesc Vendrell of Spain. The Bush administration has also sent in pros: Richard N. Haass, the State Department's policy planner, and James F. Dobbins, a career foreign service officer with experience in Haiti and the Balkans.
But there have to be local counterparts, and in Afghanistan, Mr. Goldstone warned, towering symbols of wisdom and strong institutions have been noticeably absent.
---
Northern Alliance says Kunduz captured
USA Today
11/25/2001
By Kirk Spitzer, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/25/kunduz.htm
CHOGAR, Afghanistan - Opposition forces were poised to take over the last remaining Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan on Sunday as hundreds of fighters who had been dug in there for nearly 2 weeks gave themselves up peacefully. "Kunduz is liberated," said Abdullah, the foreign minister of the opposition Northern Alliance. He said there remained a "pocket of resistance" from Taliban fighters in part of the city. Other alliance officials said a final march into the city would come Monday.
Hundreds of surrendered Taliban troops from Kunduz were killed in a prison uprising put down with U.S. help.
The fall of Kunduz came after hundreds of Taliban troops surrendered over the weekend and meant the crumbling of the hard-line regime that had controlled Afghanistan since 1996 and sheltered terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was nearly complete.
The only remaining area of Taliban control was the area around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, home to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Opposition tribes said they had taken control of the road leading to Kandahar from Pakistan, cutting the key supply route.
People arriving in Pakistan from Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, described a town largely deserted and slipping into lawlessness and desperation as Taliban forces left their posts.
Abdullah, speaking on the CBS program Face the Nation, said Omar and other top Taliban leaders would be treated as war criminals, but amnesty would be extended to Taliban fighters "who have not committed crimes."
The search for bin Laden continued, with particular focus on an area south of Jalalabad where intelligence sources said he was believed to be hiding.
Hundreds of those who surrendered from Kunduz were killed Sunday when Northern Alliance troops, with help from U.S. warplanes and special operations troops, put down a rebellion at a fortress in nearby Mazar-e-Sharif, where the prisoners had been taken.
Witnesses said the Taliban fighters had smuggled weapons into the prison and seized other arms from their guards, sparking a fierce 4-hour battle for control. Speaking at the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said the fight involved about 300 "hard-core Taliban" prisoners.
An alliance spokesman said most of the prisoners involved were killed.
Stoneking said all U.S. personnel appeared to be accounted for in the uprising, but Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Culler, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command would not rule out the possibility that CIA officers or other U.S. government personnel or contractors might have been hurt or killed.
Contributing: Vivienne Walt in Quetta, Pakistan, wire reports
---
Hundreds of Marines land near Kandahar
USA Today
11/25/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/25/riot.htm
BANGI, Afghanistan (AP) - Hundreds of U.S. Marines landed by helicopter Sunday near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual home and power center of the Taliban, a senior U.S. official said. As many as 1,000 troops could be on the ground there within days. The official, who spoke in Washington Sunday night on condition of anonymity, would not disclose the troops' mission, but their arrival was the largest deployment of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led war began Oct. 7.
Sending in the Marines marks a perilous new phase of a conflict that until now has been focused on U.S. airstrikes backing up the opposition Northern Alliance, plus limited ground missions by several hundred American special forces fanned out in small units across Afghanistan.
Kandahar, the Taliban's home base and spiritual home, has come under fierce bombardment since the conflict began Oct. 7, and the Taliban have vowed to fight to the death rather than abandon the city. In the last three weeks, they have lost their grip on three-quarters of Afghanistan, plus the capital, Kabul.
Most of the top Taliban leadership is believed to be holed up in and around the city. Efforts by tribal leaders over the past 10 days to negotiate a handover of the city failed to yield results.
Abdul Jabbar, an anti-Taliban Afghan tribal official in Pakistan, said his colleagues in Kandahar confirmed that U.S. troops were on the ground there.
The Marines, numbering in the "low hundreds," were to be followed by several hundred more from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea, the U.S. official said in Washington, on condition of anonymity. The Marines landed by helicopter southwest of Kandahar, the official said.
The fall of Kunduz, which came two days before talks were to begin in Germany on forming a broad-based government, leaves the Islamic militia with only a small share of Afghanistan still under its control, mostly around Kandahar.
Thousands of Taliban troops as well as Arab, Chechen, Pakistani and other foreign fighters linked to Osama bin Laden had been holed up in Kunduz, which the alliance said fell almost without a fight.
Pro-Taliban fighters including foreigners fled Sunday toward the town of Chardara, to the west, with alliance troops in pursuit, alliance acting foreign minister, Abdullah, said by satellite telephone from the north of Afghanistan.
While some chose to make a run for it, thousands of others surrendered by the thousands as Northern Alliance troops moved in. Under a pact negotiated earlier between the alliance and the Taliban, Afghan Taliban fighters were guaranteed safe passage out of the city but the foreigners were to be arrested pending investigation into possible ties to bin Laden.
Outside the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, 100 miles to the west, hundreds of foreigners who had been captured earlier in the Kunduz area staged a violent uprising at their prison fortress, triggering a fierce daylong battle with Northern Alliance guards. U.S. aircraft helped quash the insurrection.
Hundreds of foreign Taliban prisoners were killed, U.S. and alliance officials said. A U.S. special forces soldier inside the Qalai Janghi fortress was taped by a German television crew saying an American may have died.
But Pentagon officials in Washington later said all U.S. troops were accounted for and none had died. A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said later in Washington that a CIA operative was wounded in the uprising.
Dave Culler, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Afghanistan, suggested that the uprising was in effect a suicide mission. At least one foreign fighter had killed himself Saturday while surrendering, witnesses said - giving himself up, then setting off a hand grenade when an alliance officer approached.
The fighters had smuggled weapons under their tunics into the Qalai Janghi fortress and tried to fight their way out, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said. The Pentagon estimated that fighters numbered 300; the Northern Alliance had said previously there were 700 prisoners in the facility.
Yahsaw, a spokesman for Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik, said the prisoners broke down doors, seized weapons and ammunition, and fought a pitched battle with guards that lasted some seven hours.
An Associated Press reporter entering the city Sunday evening heard explosions coming from the direction of the fortress. Stoneking, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that U.S. airstrikes had helped Gen. Rashid Dostum's forces regain control of the prison. Dostum brought in about 500 troops to quash the unrest, he said.
International organizations had voiced worry over the prospect of atrocities involving captured fighters. Earlier this month, the United Nations reported the apparent reprisal killings of at least 100 captured Taliban fighters in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Pakistan had appealed without success for some guarantee of protection for any of its nationals captured when Kunduz fell.
The United States had strongly opposed any deal that would have allowed the foreigners to leave Afghanistan. As a surrender accord for Kunduz was being brokered last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he hoped the foreign fighters would be killed or captured, not allowed to go free.
The head of the Northern Alliance, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, said earlier Sunday there would be no slaughter of foreign troops.
"We will discuss their fate as far as international law is concerned ... They should have no concern for their safety," he told journalists in Kabul.
The capture of Kunduz was reported hours after alliance troops gained a small foothold inside the besieged city, then overran a town on its eastern flank.
Near the town of Khanabad, about 10 miles east of Kunduz, alliance troops spread across ridgetops held by the Taliban a day earlier and fanned out across fields to check mud buildings for enemy fighters. Later, the alliance announced the fall of the city itself.
-------- biological weapons
Bioterror fears lead to plans for quarantine
November 25, 2001
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011125-78651555.htm
State legislatures facing the threat of bioterrorism are preparing to tackle the sensitive idea of quarantine, a practice that has fallen off the map as medical breakthroughs eradicated the threat of mass contagion.
Isolation and quarantine are now being discreetly reviewed by state officials across the country. In the wake of recent anthrax attacks - and with concerns of bioterrorism using such deadly diseases as smallpox - a newly issued 46-page model for emergency preparations has been distributed to state health officials and governors by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In a section titled "Isolation and Quarantine," the rules are laid out clearly.
"A person subject to isolation or quarantine shall obey the public health authority's rules and orders, shall not go beyond the isolation or quarantine premises, and shall not put himself or herself in contact with any person not subject to isolation or quarantine," the draft reads.
The action would require a court order to enact the isolation, but a provision also allows authorities to act without the affidavit "if any delay would pose an immediate threat to the public health."
"I am aware that there will be people who will oppose this," said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown law professor and one of several academics who drafted the model. "They will say that it interferes with property rights, which would be a libertarian view. And there are those from the far left that will say it infringes on civil liberties. But the vast majority of people in the middle want to be protected."
The American Civil Liberties Union declined to comment on the CDC plan, with a spokeswoman saying "it is not something we are going to address right now."
The ACLU's stance betrays a post-anthrax awareness that the war on terrorism may mean limiting certain freedoms. Public health laws pertaining to quarantine have been neglected as Americans have lived healthier lives than ever before, free of highly contagious disease, Mr. Gostin said, so the laws dealing with such procedures "suffer from being highly antiquated and confusing."
Smallpox is now considered the most effective biological weapon, a highly contagious virus that is inhaled. One infected person can be the source of a widespread outbreak, and the disease has a 30 percent death rate among people who are not vaccinated.
The scenario for a biological weapons attack using smallpox, as laid out by authorities, is truly one of terror.
Designated hospitals would admit patients, and federal agents, as well as police and military troops, would descend on the location of the outbreak.
"Even one case of smallpox would bring that, because that just isn't a disease you see any more," said Cynthia Honssinger, director of legal and regulatory affairs with the Colorado Department of Health.
----
Anthrax Type That Killed May Have Reached Iraq
Baghdad's Bid to Obtain Microbe Fuels Suspicions
By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Sunday, November 25, 2001; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10804-2001Nov24?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS -- In August 1988, two key figures in Iraq's secret germ warfare program attended a scientific conference in Winchester, England, to survey advances in the battle against the anthrax disease.
Professor Nassir Hindawiand a colleague, Abdul Rahman Thamer,attracted little attention at the gathering, which was sponsored by scientists from the British biodefense institute at Porton Down.
But U.N. inspectors who uncovered Iraq's secret biological weapons years later believe that the trip was part of a covert mission to identify foreign suppliers for Baghdad's biological weapons program and to obtain deadly anthrax microbes, including the Ames strain, a highly virulent anthrax bacteria found in letters sent to American targets.
Shortly after the visit, Baghdad's trade ministry telexed an order to Porton Down for samples of the Ames strain and at least two other varieties of anthrax microbes. But the British scientists were suspicious that Baghdad might be seeking to develop biological weapons. "There were requests for anthrax strains, and they were denied," said Porton Down spokeswoman Sue Ellison. U.S. officials and former U.N. weapons experts have found no proof that the Iraqi scientists obtained the Ames strain from another supplier. But Iraq's attempt to obtain the Ames microbes has fueled suspicions among some U.S. and U.N. experts that Iraq may yet be linked to the series of biological attacks against the United States.
"We know that Iraq was very keen on obtaining that specific strain as well as others, and they were contacting many countries of the world," said retired Col. Richard Spertzel,a microbiologist and former head of biological inspection teams in Iraq for the United Nations. "The effort with which they [pursued] Porton Down would suggest that if they thought someone else had it, they would press for it. But we simply don't know."
Porton Down scientists obtained the Ames strain in the early 1980s from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. The deadly pathogen has been passed to an unknown number of scientists.
Iraq's unsuccessful attempt to secure the Ames bacteria from Britain represented a minor setback in its largely successful campaign in the mid-1980s to acquire ingredients for a massive covert biological weapons program.
Iraq sought materials from government and commercial labs in the United States, Europe and Africa.
"The Iraqis had set up this very secret and very sophisticated procurement system so that there would be no chance that outsiders could figure out what they were doing," said Raymond Zalinskas,a former U.N. inspector who is now senior scientist in residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
In 1988, Iraqi scientists obtained from a private British business, Oxoid Ltd., and other suppliers, nearly 40 tons of medium to grow anthrax and botulinum bacterium for its biological weapons, according to former U.N. officials and a 1999 U.N. report.
Iraq also acquired at least two other forms of anthrax, the Sterne strain, commonly used in an animal vaccine, and the A-3 strain derived from Spanish sheep, from France's Institut Pasteur.
"There was absolutely no reason to refuse an order from Iraq in the 1980s," said Michael Haynes, a spokesman for Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant that owned Oxoid until 1997. Haynes noted that Iraq at that time was not considered hostile to the West and was under no economic sanctions. "As far as we knew the growth medium would be used for genuine medical, humanitarian purposes," he said.
U.N. inspectors got their first glimpse at Iraq's offensive biological weapons program during an August 1991 U.N. inspection of Salman Pak, one of Iraq's premier biological weapons facilities.
Rihab Taha,the head of Iraq's germ warfare program, provided a team of U.N. biologists with several sealed glass vials containing freeze-dried anthrax spores. The vials included two variants of the Vollumstrain, which had been used in U.S. and British biological weapons programs.
The Iraqi scientist initially claimed that some of the anthrax spores were used in research but had never been weaponized. Baghdad also acknowledged that it had received the two Vollum strains and five other strains of anthrax bacterium from the American Type Culture Collection, a commercial germ bank now located near Manassas, Va.
Iraqi documents later obtained by the United Nations indicated that Baghdad subsequently filled more than 50 bombs and missile warheads with a liquid form of Vollum anthrax.
DNA analysis conducted on remnants of Iraq's Al-Hussein warheads at the Al-Nibai missile destruction site revealed traces of bacteria similar to the Vollum anthrax strain. "I can't say with one hundred percent certainty that they are identical," Spertzel said. "But they are consistent with Vollum."
The U.S. company also sold Iraq several strains of Clostridiumbotulinum, a poisonous toxin that paralyzes the muscles and lungs and kills by suffocation. Iraq acknowledged producing at least 19,000 liters of botulinum toxin, using more than half to fill at least 116 bombs and missile warheads.
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
----
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
Turner's Foundation to Spend Millions to Fight Bioterrorism
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/25BIOT.html?searchpv=nytToday
Ted Turner, who invented all-news television and is helping to subsidize the United Nations, has taken on a new challenge: reducing the threat of biological weapons.
Spurred by the events of Sept. 11 and the anthrax-tainted letters sent to news organizations and Capitol Hill, a foundation headed by Mr. Turner and Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, has decided to increase spending aimed at deterring bioterrorism and the threat of germ weapons.
The fledgling foundation, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which began operating only in January, decided months before Sept. 11 to devote some of its planned $250 million in grants over the next five years to combatting threats posed not only by nuclear weapons, but also by chemical and germ weapons. But foundation executives said last week that their emphasis had shifted somewhat following the mysterious anthrax attacks that have infected 18 people, 5 of whom have died.
Foundation representatives said the board approved almost $5 million in initial grants at its October meeting. Ultimately, they said, the foundation would spend about a third of its estimated $50 million in grants each year on combatting bioweapons and bioterrorism.
"Reducing the threat of biological weapons has always been our primary mission, but the events of Sept. 11 have led to new opportunities to address preparedness and consequence management," said Margaret A. Hamburg, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration who heads the foundation's biological projects.
The new grants, which the foundation's representatives discussed in interviews, involve both foreign and domestic threats and private and public partnerships. The largest category is about $2.4 million in initial grants to finance scientific collaboration with scientists who once worked in the former Soviet Union's covert biological weapons program. The investment supplements federal efforts to help Soviet scientists who once made biological weapons find peaceful employment working with American scientists on antidotes for those weapons.
The largest project - $1.3 million for three former Soviet labs in Russia - is intended to help develop a new vaccine against brucellosis, which threatens animals in the United States and throughout the world.
Another project will provide $600,000 to the Vector lab in Novosibirsk, Russia, which once specialized in turning smallpox and other viruses into weapons of war. The grant will finance a study of how Vector can best attract commercial investors in a new vaccine production facility. About $400,000 has also been allocated to helping identify Western drug companies willing to work with former Soviet bioweaponeers on commercial ventures.
The foundation also intends to bring at least 20 former Soviet bioweapons scientists together each year with American scientists in the United States to discuss germ weapon threats.
In Europe, the foundation has allocated $500,000 to help the Geneva-based World Health Organization establish a revolving fund so that doctors can respond quickly to outbreaks of a mysterious illnesses.
In the United States, the foundation has awarded $650,000 to help industry develop standards to reduce the potential for harmful applications of biotechnology and create a group to monitor the standards, and will give $400,000 to help the National Academy of Sciences draft standards to guard against the destructive application of biotechnologies.
Anthrax Inquiry in Chile
SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 24 (Reuters) - A Chilean judge has granted the police greater powers to investigate the mailing of a substance believed to be anthrax that has baffled the nation.
Judicial sources said that on Friday, Judge Rosa Maria Maggi issued a "wide investigation order" to detectives trying to find who sent a letter believed to have been laced with the bacteria to a doctor in Santiago. The letter, which bore a Swiss postmark but a Florida return address, was received last week by Dr. Antonio Banfi, who has specialized in infectious diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said it expected to receive a sample for testing.
-------- business
HOMELAND SECURITY
Industry Sees Opportunity in U.S. Quest for Security
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/national/25DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security, likes to say the home-front battle against terrorism is not just the business of government but of business. Business agrees.
Ever since Mr. Ridge stepped into the West Wing of the White House early last month, corporate executives, start-up companies and industry trade groups have been clamoring for his attention. Already he and his aides have huddled with dozens of corporate representatives.
And after the Pentagon asked entrepreneurs last month to come forward with proposals to combat terrorism and counter weapons of mass destruction, thousands of ideas were submitted.
"We were somewhat surprised by the response," said Maj. Mike Halbig, a Pentagon spokesman.
Some companies contact Mr. Ridge's office only to find out that he does not actually award contracts.
One company, PointSource Technologies in California, has hired a premier Washington lobbying firm - Akin Gump, Strauss, Heuer & Feld - to find out how to get financing.
"We're trying to feel our way right now, where to go, who to talk to," said Dr. Gregory M. Quist, the company's president, who thinks his firm's research into detecting naturally occurring pathogens in water could be modified to fight bioterrorism.
"It's a confusion," Dr. Quist said. "It's a big maze and we're a new company."
Mr. Ridge says security "will tap the creative genius and resources of both the public and private sector." But others fear that homeland defense could become a special-interest boondoggle with the potential to grow into an industry akin to the military- industrial complex spurred by World War II.
"In response to an immediate crisis, this is all an appropriate unification for the national good," said Gene Kimmelman, the Washington co-director for Consumers Union, speaking of the cooperation between government and industry.
"It starts smacking of the military-industrial complex if it goes on for too long and spreads beyond the immediate national need in responding to a crisis," Mr. Kimmelman added.
Already, the troubled airline industry received a $15 billion bailout from Congress after Sept. 11. The insurance industry is seeking assistance. And in the name of strengthening the economy, some industries are seeking special deals in the economic stimulus legislation that is pending on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Kimmelman said he was concerned about industries using the crisis to seek overly broad relief from regulation or antitrust laws and said it was already happening.
He points to a section of a $3.2 billion bioterrorism bill sponsored by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, that gives government the power for three years to pre-empt antitrust laws for companies like drug makers.
The drug companies say they need such protection to allow them to share information with the federal government and plot a strategy to produce vaccines against agents of bioterrorism.
Mr. Ridge says he knows the government must be careful not to repeat the 1980's, when the Pentagon was pilloried for the $600 toilet seat. But he is also welcoming to entrepreneurs who want to help develop high-tech security measures.
"Look, part of that entrepreneurial spirit is, `Hey, we make a product; we might make a buck,' " he said in a recent interview, laughing. "We look to American creativity to help solve our problems and to help make a profit in the process. That's what drives them. That's what really drives the research. That's what pays for the research."
He is even considering hiring "special employees" from the private sector to work on homeland defense in 60- to 90-day spurts. Such employees are usually not subject to the same kind of stringent financial disclosure rules and postgovernment employment restrictions as full-time White House officials.
By its very nature, homeland defense requires close cooperation between government and industry because much of the nation's vital infrastructure - from telecommunications networks to power plants to water supplies - is in private hands. And Mr. Ridge likens his drive to spur technological innovation to the government-industry effort that led to the national production boom after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
"It will be an American response to a challenge just like we responded to things in World War II," he said.
Franklin D. Roosevelt brought business leaders into policy-making positions and set up boards that developed manpower policy, controlled distribution of resources and worked with business and labor to bring about an enormous industrial mobilization.
But two decades later, as he was leaving the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower felt the need to warn of the "acquisition of unwarranted influence" by the arms industry.
Some officials and consumer groups are already expressing concerns that the partnership between government and industry could become too close.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has tangled with the Bush administration over its refusal to reveal the names of industry officials who advised a White House energy task force, raised some concerns about the potential for abuse in Mr. Ridge's idea for special employees.
"I would want some kind of Congressional oversight to be sure the relationships are not getting too mixed up so that without thinking about it government policy becomes the policy that is in the interest of the private companies rather than the public," Mr. Waxman said.
Many industries used to put their lobbying might into battling against big government. But after Sept. 11, with security measures likely to mean delays in commerce, many companies are suddenly seeking a larger government.
William J. Canary, the head of the American Trucking Associations, has written to Mr. Ridge calling for a "proper infrastructure" to be developed at the nation's ports of entry in order to speed truck traffic.
"This included not only bricks and mortar, but more importantly adequate levels of human resources and investment in systems and technologies that can ensure the efficient movement of legitimate cargo across our borders," Mr. Canary wrote.
In testimony before the Senate, the chemical industry recently called for the Department of Justice to get financing to speed a comprehensive assessment of the industry's vulnerabilities as well as for "significant federal funding" to increase the security of rail transportation.
Frederick L. Webber, the president of the American Chemistry Council, even said in that testimony that the industry's security should come under the jurisdiction of Mr. Ridge.
At a White House meeting last month, about a dozen executives in the pharmaceutical industry offered to send industry scientists to join the government effort to battle bioterrorism and to follow government direction, in exchange for liability and antitrust protections.
Richard J. Markham, the chief executive of Aventis Pharma, according to participants, told Mr. Ridge that the industry needed a road map from federal officials about what the threat is, what vaccines the government was likely to need, and what antibiotics should be made and by when.
"In very general terms, we were discussing a major research initiative," said Alan F. Holmer, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. "We need to be advised by the government what the threat is and what the priority is."
-----
[Yes, but where's the money coming from? Oh, yeah. As usual....]
We'll Pay for All This Later, Okay?
By Rob Norton
Sunday, November 25, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8356-2001Nov24?language=printer
"A billion here, a billion there," as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen put it, "and pretty soon, you're talking about real money." Well, these days, multibillion-dollar spending proposals are as thick on the ground in Washington as cherry blossoms in April. We're talking real money, all right -- but nobody's saying much about where it's all supposed to come from.
Barely a week has gone by since Sept. 11 without some new revelation about the staggering costs of the war against terrorism. First came the $40 billion in emergency funds authorized by Congress days after the attacks. Since then, there's been a $15 billion bailout for the airline industry, the estimated $1 billion per month for the direct costs of the military operation in Afghanistan, and billions more promised for humanitarian and economic assistance.
Now we're preparing to spend yet more billions on intensified intelligence gathering, improved security for the postal system, and a new federalized airport security system. As if that weren't enough, plans are afoot for more spending on railroad and nuclear plant security, and aid for everyone from travel agents to insurance companies to farmers. When Congress reconvenes this week, one of its first priorities will be an economic stimulus package costing $65 billion to $100 billion to pull the economy out of the recession that the attacks either caused or worsened.
So how are we going to pay for all this stuff?
Some of the costs are already covered, and some will be met by new taxes and fees. And some of the disaster relief will come from sources other than Washington. But for the bulk of the new spending, the answer is: We're just going to pay for it later.
Simply put, the government will borrow the funds it needs to meet today's unanticipated needs by selling Treasury bills and bonds to individual and institutional investors at home and abroad. There's nothing necessarily wrong with or even unusual about that -- it's called running a budget deficit, to use the local term. But there are both immediate negative consequences of deficit spending, and some potentially serious long-term ones. And inescapably, it means the government will have to make some hard choices in future years.
Not all the costs of the war against terrorism will need to be covered by borrowing. Some -- notably the costs of the property damage caused on Sept. 11 -- are already being paid for, by insurance companies. The nation's trade balance for September showed an unusual inflow of money that surprised economists, until they realized it reflected $11 billion in payments from foreign insurance companies to cover terror-related claims.
Some of the new spending will be pay-as-you-go such as the new airport security measures, to be funded by a $2.50per-flight tax. Why not pay for it all as we go? The weakness of the U.S. economy -- now in its first recession in more than a decade -- makes that impossible. Nearly all economists agree that raising taxes during a downturn is a bad idea.
States and localities will get stuck with part of the bill. By extension, that means that -- you guessed it -- we taxpayers will be shouldering part of the burden right away. New York City, for instance, is already complaining that the $20 billion promised from Washington is insufficient to cover its terror-related losses, and that the money isn't being disbursed fast enough. State and local governments, already suffering revenue shortfalls because of the general business downturn, will be further stressed by rising expenditures for such things as law enforcement and unemployment claims. Unlike the federal government, most states are prohibited from running budget deficits, meaning much of these increased costs will be paid for by rising state and local taxes.
Part of the costs of the war against terrorism will even be paid by foreign governments. Some U.S. allies -- most notably Britain -- have been contributing military assistance from the start, and others, including France, Germany, Italy and Turkey, are now helping. In addition, a much larger group of nations is pledging money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. The United Nations and international aid organizations will also chip in. The United States maywell recover many of the direct costs of the war from its allies. Though it's neverbeen well publicized, it's a fact that Uncle Sam collected $54 billion of the $61 billion in direct military expenditures for the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War from other governments.
But there's no question that many billions will come straight from the federal government. If this had all happened a year earlier, the impact on the U.S. budget might have looked very different. Back then, the United States was riding the end of the longest economic expansion in history, and the federal government was ringing up a budget surplus for the fourth year in a row. The total budget surplus in the fiscal year that ended in September 2000, for example, was $236 billion, and the 2001 surplus was projected to be more than $300 billion.
The Bush administration's tax-cut package, however, took a huge bite out of federal revenues, which were further shrunk by reduced tax income caused by the business slowdown already underway. The 2001 surplus turned out to be only $127 billion. And most analysts are certain there will be a budget deficit in 2002.
Budget deficits are the way we have always paid for wars -- beginning with the Revolution. There is no practical limit on how much the United States can borrow. The size of the deficit is customarily measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (or GDP, the nation's total output of goods and services). During some years of World War II, for instance, the government borrowed as much as 30 percent of GDP. A similar level of borrowing today would be more than $3 trillion -- real money indeed, and vastly more than any plausible estimate of terror-related spending.
The federal budget has also been in deficit during most post-World War II recessions. In 1992, for example, the year after the last recession, the budget deficit was $297.5 billion, equal to 4.7 percent of GDP. Partly, this is the natural effect of a business slowdown: Tax revenues fall and government expenses tend to rise. Nearly all economists think that deficit spending during a recession is acceptable; most even think it's desirable, since both lower taxes and more government spending inject more money into the economy.
Nevertheless, the prospect of a return to deficit spending worries many economists and policymakers. Their concern, as expressed on Oct. 25 by the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group led by former U.S. senators and administration officials advocating fiscal responsibility, is: "If there is a budget deficit in 2002, will it be a one-time event caused by the events of Sept. 11 and a slow economy? Or will it signal the beginning of a new era of deficits as far as the eye can see?"
The answer will be written over the next couple of years, but an early indication of whether it will be yes or no may become evident in the next couple of weeks, as Congress debates the fiscal stimulus package. The idea of fiscal stimulus is to help haul the economy out of a slump by cutting taxes (to encourage consumer spending and business investment) or by boosting federal spending (to put money into the economy) or both. One immediate effect of a stimulus plan is to -- whoops! -- increase the federal budget deficit. But in theory, a stimulus package could pay for itself over time by boosting future economic growth, which in turn will result in higher tax revenues.
The partisan wrangling over the current stimulus plan has already been intense, with Democrats accusing Republicans of including excessive tax giveaways for corporations and wealthy individuals, and Republicans accusing Democrats of including wasteful new spending. If the parties settle on a modest compromise, such as the $75 billion plan suggested by a bipartisan group of Senate moderates, it will be a good omen for future fiscal responsibility. It would be bad news, however, if each party insists on including its own pet provision, and the total starts climbing into the $100 billion range.
The prospect of a 2002 budget deficit is already having more immediate negative impacts. One is that new programs that seemed affordable a few months ago will surely face more scrutiny, if they're not scuttled entirely. Prescription drug coverage for the elderly, for instance, already seems to have fallen by the wayside. More importantly, the return of the deficit means that the government has stopped setting aside enough money to fund America's future Social Security and Medicare needs. After many years in which it looked as though these programs were headed toward bankruptcy, the surpluses from 1997 through 2000 had finally begun to push them back toward solvency. But the reduction of last year's surplus wiped out all the money earmarked for these programs, and the likely 2002 deficit means that these long-term goals will continue to go unmet.
Once the war and recession are over, the administration and Congress will need to bring a quick end to deficit financing and begin to set aside surpluses for Social Security and Medicare. If it looks as though increased spending for anti-terrorism and homeland security will be permanent, they will have to figure out how to pay for it, as well, without borrowing.
None of that will be easy. There are times, like those in which we now live, when running a budget deficit is the right thing to do. But cutting taxes and boosting spending is always politically attractive. Raising taxes and cutting spending, on the other hand, is always ugly. After the smoke clears in a year or two, though, that's almost certainly what Washington will need to do.
Rob Norton is a columnist for Fortune.
-------- germany
German Greens Patch Rift and Support Use of Troops
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/europe/25GERM.html
ROSTOCK, Germany, Nov. 24 - Members of Germany's Green party defied their pacifist roots and voted overwhelmingly tonight in favor of sending German soldiers to Afghanistan.
The vote, which came with a seemingly easy show of hands, patched over an agonizing internal debate that had threatened to break apart Germany's governing coalition between the Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Mr. Schröder has adamantly insisted that Germany offer to send 3,900 troops in Afghanistan, and he had the full support of Joschka Fischer, the Green party leader who is Germany's foreign minister.
But many rank-and-file Greens were bitterly opposed and wanted to force the Green leadership into quitting the government.
On Nov. 16, a slender majority of Green members in Parliament fell in line behind Mr. Schröder after he called for a vote of confidence.
But party leaders still needed support from the delegates who assembled here today for a party congress, and the leaders had to labor mightily to stifle a rebellion.
"I ask for your trust, and I would like you not to leave me in the cold," Mr. Fischer told delegates meeting at this resort town on Germany's northern coast.
What he got, however, was more like grudging acceptance. Party leaders pushed through a resolution which merely says members "accept" rather than "support" the Green's position in Parliament.
Placards outside the conference center showed caricatures of Mr. Fischer in full combat dress, armed with a bazooka and carrying the slogan "fight for peace."
Nevertheless, the vote today was an important turning point for the Greens, an often unruly party that came perilously close to violence two years ago when members battled about providing military support for the war in Kosovo.
At that congress, dissidents denounced Mr. Fischer as a war- monger and splattered him with red dye. The Greens evolved from the environmental and pacifist movements of the late 1960's and early 70's, and one of the party's cardinal principles has been that German soldiers should never take a combat role in other countries.
Today, Mr. Fischer's critics were subdued and even polite. "An effective campaign against the terrorists is not through the kind of war now being led by the United States," pleaded Hans Christian Ströbele , a delegate who urged Greens to leave the current government.
More surprising, Mr. Fischer received a standing ovation after he finished his speech.
Numerous veterans of the party's left wing gave him their full support, with some saying their own views had been jolted by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
Banners over the stage carried the slogan "Argumentative, Open and Ready for the Future."
"We are and remain an antiwar party," said Claudia Roth, a top leader of the Greens. "But I think that under certain circumstances it must be possible to engage militarily in order to stop violence."
Ms. Roth herself struggled with Mr. Fischer when she suggested several weeks ago that the United States take a "pause" in its bombing.
But the tenor of the debate over military activities has changed markedly since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. In recent days, even party veterans with deep roots in the left-leaning and often anti-American wing of the party have argued that the Greens need to abandon their categorical antimilitarism.
Antje Radcke, who was a co-chairman of Green Party last year and a Green political leader in Hamburg, described herself as a person with left-wing roots, but she said the party now needed to accept the general principle that military force is sometimes necessary.
"Pacifism is not a means to anything," Ms. Radka said today. "People need to make a distinction between their own personal views on nonviolence and the broader goal of actually achieving peace."
Ms. Radka admitted that she was surprised at her own change in thinking. Before Sept. 11, she said, she would not have considered pushing the Greens for a general change in position.
Despite the vote, many political experts believe that the Greens are not likely to remain in the ruling coalition after general elections next fall.
Though Mr. Schröder's strength seems greater than ever, the Greens have been losing popularity. Pragmatists in the mold of Mr. Fischer have lost patience with the party's ideological feuding, while many traditional activists feel that it has sacrificed too many principles in order to remain in the government.
The weekly magazine Stern summed up those who think that the Greens' time has passed. "Thank you Greens," said its headline. "You were wonderful."
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan's Anxiety Grows as Taliban Collapse
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/asia/25STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 24 - A senior Pakistani official watched in dismay today as the television in his office showed Taliban fighters, streaming out of Kunduz, Afghanistan, to surrender to the Northern Alliance.
"I am sorry to put it in this way," he said, switching off the set, "but Rumsfeld's been extremely callous."
For two weeks, Pakistan has been mesmerized by the situation at Kunduz. There were reports that as many as 1,500 Pakistanis were with the Taliban garrison at Kunduz, and that extremists in the Taliban were threatening to execute any who tried to surrender. People across Pakistan feared a blood bath that would reverberate in every mosque in this nation of 140 million Muslims.
Pakistan's worst fears appear to have receded with the news tonight that many of the fighters surrendering were Pakistanis. Now, the concern will shift to the safety of prisoners in the hands of the alliance, which Pakistan has never trusted.
Still, few here seem likely to forget that when Pakistan appealed for American intervention to work out an arrangement in Kunduz, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld responded, in effect, that the Pakistanis would face the choice of all defeated soldiers in war, surrender or death.
The Kunduz drama has captured the frustration and anger of many Pakistani officials who entrusted their interests in Afghanistan to the United States after Sept. 11, when the Bush administration demanded that Pakistan join in the war against terrorism.
The corollary, as stated and repeated by President Pervez Musharraf, was that Washington would see to it that all of Pakistan's essential interests in Afghanistan were protected.
From the American perspective, the war has gone a long way toward achieving its objectives, with the Taliban driven from power in all but one city, Kandahar, and Al Qaeda terrorists on the run. But from the Pakistani perspective, things have gone badly wrong, and the Americans have not delivered.
Only 10 weeks after General Musharraf pledged his "full support" to the United States, enraging Islamic militants in Pakistan and Islamic hard-liners in the army, the sense that the United States has failed to keep its side of the deal is rife, from the bazaars of cities to the offices where senior aides to General Musharraf ponder how to extricate Pakistan from the problems the war has caused.
Pakistan's gains have been substantial, especially financially, with the removal of American economic sanctions and the giving of fresh aid and help in debt payments. But strategically, the war has been a disaster in the minds of most Pakistanis.
Two weeks ago, when President Bush and General Musharraf met in New York, Mr. Bush pressed the Northern Alliance not to capture Kabul. But when the general returned home days later, he arrived just in time to see alliance troops pouring into the Afghan capital.
Northern Alliance leaders are contemptuous of Pakistan for supporting the Taliban before the Sept. 11 attacks. Another division is that the alliance draws its support, including its arms and much of its financing, from three countries regarded as potentially hostile to Pakistan: India, Russia and Iran.
Next Tuesday, the United Nations will convene a conference in Germany at which Northern Alliance leaders will sit down with opposition leaders from the Pashtun tribal group that dominates southern and eastern Afghanistan. The Pakistanis have low hopes for that meeting, believing that alliance leaders will begin a process of endless negotiation that will leave the alliance as the de facto government in Kabul.
Ever since Pakistan came into being in 1947, a primary goal has been to ensure that it keeps a friendly government to the west, in Afghanistan, since it already faced the unfriendly state of India, to the east. With the alliance in Kabul, the risk of having unfriendly governments on either side look real.
With the German meeting coming up, General Musharraf has said little about the situation, other than repeating his "expectation" that the talks will begin the process of establishing a provisional government with strong Pashtun representation that would be friendly to Pakistan. But privately, Pakistani officials say, the general is deeply skeptical that alliance leaders will keep their promise, especially to cede military control of Kabul to a force comprising Pashtun units.
General Musharraf has bitten his tongue, hoping that the Bonn meeting will prove his worst fears wrong, Pakistani officials suggest. He does so knowing that his own standing in Pakistan would be seriously undermined if he were to say that the United States has broken a promise to him.
"But the fact that he's not saying anything right now does not mean that he's calm," one official said. "Privately, he's telling people that if the alliance hold on Kabul is not broken, his position could become untenable."
President Musharraf took a considerable risk supporting the Americans, letting them use Pakistan's airspace, providing them with intelligence and leasing several airfields for use by American spacial operations troops.
President Bush's emissary to the rival Afghan political groups, James F. Dobbins, met with alliance leaders this week and later said he had told them that the West would withhold billions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Afghanistan until a "broad- based government" was set up. "It's a big carrot," he said.
But many Pakistanis with experience of dealing with Afghanistan have concluded that American policy is naïve, or else cynical. Those holding the latter view contend that the Bush administration sees itself within reach of accomplishing its goals in Afghanistan and cares little about accomplishing Pakistan's.
In this view, the United States will accept a Northern Alliance government in Kabul if it has to, because the only means of removing it would be to go to war with the alliance. But if the alliance is left in control of Kabul and other cities, these Pakistanis say, the United States will have set the stage for a new civil war.
"If Sept. 11 was a tragedy, there is a bigger tragedy ahead,", said Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who was director- general of Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, when the withdrawal of Soviet troops in Afghanistan gave way to a civil war and who is regarded in Pakistan as having strong sympathies for Islamic militants.
Even among aides to General Musharraf, there are officials who agree, and one senior policy maker said Washington could witness a devil's choice of a new civil war against Pashtuns or taking back the capital from the alliance.
"If the Americans are not very careful with that ambitious little lot, they will find themselves in an unholy mess," he said. "Right now, peace in Afghanistan hangs by a thread."
-------- israel
America Tries, Again, to End the Endless Conflict
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/weekinreview/25SCHM.html
RARELY has there been such an urgent, unanimous sense among the world's powers that the long, violent impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle must now end.
This is not because the conflict somehow precipitated the Sept. 11 terror attacks; Osama bin Laden's hatreds had plenty of other sources. But the attacks were stark reminders of a major irritant in a highly unstable region, and of the Bush administration's disengagement.
Among Arab and Islamic countries called on by President Bush to assist in the war on terrorism, it was almost an article of faith that the administration had to reciprocate by getting back into the Middle Eastern fray. That perception seemed universal at the United Nations General Assembly, too, where over the past two weeks virtually every speaker, while declaring support for the American campaign, also referred to the need to resolve the conflict.
Meanwhile, the Europeans felt so strongly that American inaction in the Middle East was undermining support for the war that they invited the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, and Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, to meet with European Union leaders in Brussels earlier this month.
So when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced last week that the Bush administration was at last plunging into the Middle East, declaring that "We will push, we will prod, we will present ideas," there was the sense that a major effort was underway. Against the backdrop of a global war on terrorism, and after a period that saw the two sides come right to the edge of agreement, and then fall back into destructive violence, there was a sense that this must be the final round.
An agreement in the past has seemed so imperative, so close, that some veterans of the process have voiced the wish that a solution could simply be imposed. The two sides had gone as far as they could go by themselves, and the end result was known and inevitable. So why not, some on both sides of the negotiatons have wistfully asked, just present both sides with the blueprint of a solution?
This was almost certainly not what the administration had in mind. There were indications that the White House remained highly reluctant to follow Bill Clinton into the Middle Eastern morass, in which he shed so much prestige only to watch the region go up in flames. And with the campaign in Afghanistan looking ever more successful, there was the chance that the need to mollify Arab and Muslim leaders would diminish.
While General Powell asserted that "the goal can be nothing less than an end to conflict and a resolution of outstanding claims," the concrete steps he announced were focused on the more immediate goal of securing a cease-fire and restoring limited talks.
The plan was one proposed earlier this year by a commission headed by former Senator George Mitchell, which also called for a "cooling-off" period of six weeks, a Palestinian crackdown on militants, and an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied lands.
Even that could prove difficult after 14 months of intifada and the collapse of mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet the very fact that General Powell was dispatching a tough retired Marine general, Anthony Zinni, along with a State Department envoy, William Burns, to the Middle East while fighting raged in Afghanistan created expectations far beyond a cease-fire. The extraordinary difficulty of their mission was underscored Friday when missiles from an Israeli helicopter killed the senior West Bank leader of Hamas's military wing, virtually insuring retaliation by the group and threatening a new cycle of violence.
But the background to the mission remained: However haltingly and despite enormous suffering on both sides, the Israelis and Palestinians had made remarkable strides since they agreed to the Oslo process in 1993. The Oslo agreement was based on the premise that by first taking gentle steps toward peace, the two sides would build the strength and stamina to tackle the big issues. Though both sides failed to live up to many of their obligations, and most deadlines were missed - including a goal of reaching final agreement by May 1999 - it did elicit the recognition that both sides would have to live in neighboring states.
BY the time President Clinton summoned the two sides to Camp David in July 2000, it was already with the understanding that the time of interim agreements was over.
There is a fierce, ongoing dispute over what led to the failure of Camp David. But the fact is that the great taboos of refugees and Jerusalem were breached, and that the Camp David talks and the subsequent, secret meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Jerusalem and finally in Taba, Egypt, that continued through last January sketched the outlines of a comprehensive settlement.
Though nothing was translated into formal agreements, and though Mr. Sharon has rejected many of the concessions made by the Israeli negotiators, who were from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, those talks defined what each side expected of the other, and what outside mediators - the United States included - would consider the basis for future negotiations. Mr. Arafat made clear in his recent speech to the United Nations that he no longer trusted any process that did not declare a final settlement as its sole purpose. What the process required, Mr. Arafat said, was that the United States join with other countries "to introduce immediately a comprehensive framework for a permanent solution."
That framework already exists. According to published reports and interviews with some participants, it would probably include the following elements:
•Israel would withdraw from all of Gaza and the West Bank, except three concentrations of settlements north, east and south of Jerusalem, and a temporary presence in Hebron. In exchange for the lost territory, the Palestinians would get some additional desert land adjacent to Gaza or the West Bank. Each side could claim victory - Israel would say that the large majority of the settlers would not be displaced, and the Palestinians could claim to have recovered 100 percent of occupied territory.
•A sovereign Palestinian state would be proclaimed, but would agree to remain demilitarized. Israel would retain three early- warning stations in the Jordan Valley, eventually in conjunction with an international military "presence."
•The issue of Palestinian refugees would require more legerdemain. Israel would acknowledge that refugees had suffered and would agree to a one-shot compensatory payment, but would accept no responsibility for their plight.
The refugees would be given several options: to stay where they were, to settle in a third country, to settle in the new state of Palestine, or to settle in Israel in numbers to be agreed on. At Taba, the Palestinians reportedly said 400,000, the Israelis 20,000.
•And finally Jerusalem. There could be some form of international stewardship over the holy places. Or the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif could be shared, with the Palestinians controlling the surface plateau and the Israelis holding sovereignty underneath, as well as over the Western Wall. The rest of the Old City would be divided up, as it already is, and the outlying portions of the city divided roughly along the lines of who lives where now.
So why not plop these ideas down on the table, with "United States of America" stamped across the top?
One reason is that however far Mr. Sharon has come in accepting the notion of a Palestinian state, there are elements that the conservative military veteran would never accept, such as the partitioning of Jerusalem, which to many Israelis is their "eternal and undivided" capital, or the abandoning of so many settlements or some of the security arrangements. Moreover, if he rejected proposals put before him by Americans, the left would quit his government; if he accepted them, the right would bolt. Either way, his government would fall, and his successor would likely be another conservative, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nobody expects Washington to challenge Mr. Sharon or Israel so openly. But the United States has exerted painful pressure on Israel in the past and may this time, too. Moreover, Yossi Beilin, a leading left-wing politician who was involved in the Taba negotiations, said it was as wrong to presume that no agreement could be reached with Mr. Sharon, as it was for the Israelis to presume that Mr. Arafat was finished as a negotiating partner.
DESPITE widespread distrust of Mr. Arafat, Americans and Israelis with a long experience of dealing with the Palestinians believe that waiting for him to die or be deposed poses too many unknowns, and that it is better to deal with the one leader likely to have the authority to make an agreement stick.
"Giving up on Arafat is something we cannot afford," Mr. Beilin said. And as for Mr. Sharon, he noted that other right-wing leaders had been led to major concessions by the Americans - Menachem Begin on Sinai, Mr. Netanyahu in the West Bank.
"Since they did that, you can't exclude the possibility that Sharon could do it," Mr. Beilin said. "I don't think he can easily ignore an American wish to pacify the Middle East."
Many on the right would disagree. Natan Sharansky, the housing minister, was among those who bristled at the notion that General Powell would press Israel to drop some of its conditions for peace talks, which included seven days without violence. "It's clear that America is not going to impose on us its own approach, if we feel it endangers our security," he said.
As for Mr. Arafat, there are indications that senior members of the Palestinian Authority are increasingly frustrated with Mr. Arafat's chronic indecisiveness, and increasingly concerned that they are losing control over the Palestinian population because of it.
PEOPLE close to Palestinian affairs say Mr. Arafat's senior lieutenants confronted him earlier this month and told him he needed to move against terror organizations immediately, that the longer he delayed a crackdown, the higher the cost at home and abroad. The confrontation led to a shouting match with Muhammad Dahlan, the chief of security in Gaza and one of the most powerful men in the leadership, who then left on an indefinite "vacation."
Egypt and Jordan would be no more tolerant of Mr. Arafat if he further complicated their relations with a newly assertive American giant. And Europe, Russia and the United Nations seem willing to pitch in if Mr. Arafat finds it difficult to accept the United States as the sole go-between. Terje Larson, the United Nations coordinator in the area, has already formed a "quartet" of the local ambassadors of United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, to press for an end to violence.
Of course, this is still the Middle East, where the greatest strides toward peace have often provoked the greatest resistance. But with the world now seriously anxious to end the fray, and with the United States rampant, there is a sense that something must give. As General Powell put it, "History, fate and success have combined to compel American leadership in the Middle East and around the globe. We welcome the challenge."
-------- japan
Japan Ships Depart to Join War Against Terrorism
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Japan.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Three Japanese warships left port Sunday to support the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan under a new law that loosens post-World War II restrictions on Japan's military.
The supply ship Towada left the Kure military base in southern Hiroshima state carrying some 130 troops, while the minesweeper Uraga with 110 sailors aboard departed from Yokosuka base just west of Tokyo. The destroyer Sawagiri carrying about 200 sailors left from southern Sasebo base.
Teary-eyed relatives waved Japanese flags as the ships departed for the Indian Ocean.
The deployment marks the first time since World War II that the Japanese military has been used to support forces engaged in combat. Ten years ago, Japan sent minesweepers to the Persian Gulf War, but they arrived only after fighting was over.
The vessels are restricted to a non-combat role by Japan's pacifist constitution. They will link up with three other warships sent earlier this month to scout shipping lanes.
Because the ships deployed earlier in November were only doing reconnaissance, they were not dispatched under the new law, approved on Oct. 29, that allows the military to provide non-combat support for the U.S.-led strikes.
The Japanese mission is to last no longer than six months. It focuses on transporting supplies to and from Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean serving as a base for allied operations. Japanese aircraft will also conduct airlifts between U.S. bases in Japan and staging areas overseas.
The new law was written by a Japanese government determined to show its commitment to battling terrorism but constrained by the anti-war constitution and bitter memories of Japan's aggression in Asia during the first half of the century.
-------- nato
U.S. wants Russia-NATO ties
November 25, 2001
By Pamela Sampson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011125-87367741.htm
MOSCOW - The U.S. ambassador to Russia said last week that the United States wants Russia and NATO to establish closer relations, and that common threats facing the West overshadowed differences over missile defense.
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said the United States is prepared to consult with Russia over allowing Moscow to coordinate joint activity with NATO, the 19-member military alliance formed to counter Moscow during the Cold War.
"The members of NATO and Russia are increasingly allied or acting as allies against terrorism and other new threats," Mr. Vershbow said at a news conference in Moscow.
His comments followed a summit meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two leaders formalized a series of agreements, including one to strengthen Russia's ties to NATO.
During his U.S. visit, Mr. Putin said Russia feels closer relations with NATO would help deal with the threat of terrorism, and he pledged to work with the West to deny terrorists nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Also Monday, the ambassador expressed hope that Washington and Moscow would be able to bridge differences over Mr. Bush's desire to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to proceed with plans for a U.S. anti-missile shield.
"We, for our part, are committed to continuing to work on a new strategic framework for the future - whether or not we find a compromise on the short-term question of testing under the ABM Treaty," Mr. Vershbow said.
"Missile defense could be an area for close U.S.-Russian collaboration since both of us face and will face these new threats in the future," Mr. Vershbow said.
The ABM Treaty allows each country to protect one area with missile interceptors, but bans nationwide defense. It is based on the assumption that the fear of retaliation would prevent each nation from launching a first strike.
Washington says the planned limited missile defense is needed to protect the U.S. territory from missile threats posed by such nations as North Korea and Iran. But Moscow dismisses such threats as hypothetical and says the national missile defense would tilt the strategic balance in the U.S. favor.
Regarding the conflict in Afghanistan, Mr. Vershbow indicated the United States has "no desire for a long-term presence either in Afghanistan or in the republics of Central Asia."
Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan, has allowed U.S. troops to be stationed there in support of military operations; Tajikistan, also a former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan, has given approval for U.S. overflights and U.S. officials were evaluating several air bases for possible use by U.S. forces.
-------- russia
Putin's Tilt to the West Riles Key Factions
Powerful Constituencies Still Distrustful of U.S.
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 25, 2001; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10916-2001Nov24?language=printer
MOSCOW, Nov. 24 -- President Vladimir Putin, who came to office nearly two years ago as a champion of the Russian military and intelligence agencies, has unsettled these powerful constituencies with his recent overtures to the United States on arms control and the war against terrorism, observers and government officials said.
Yet the early criticism has been muted. In a time of optimism over the economy, Putin is extremely popular and the Russian public has willingly followed his lead toward a new relationship with the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the risk down the road is that if things go wrong at home or abroad, Putin will have made enemies. Observers recall that some leaders of the 1991 attempted coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev were generals upset with his "new thinking" that led to arms reductions and reduced tensions with the United States.
"The new course is bound to provoke resistance from the very forces Putin considers the backbone of the Russian state -- officials who work out decisions in the field of foreign and defense policies, a majority of Russian generals and the most powerful heads of the military industrial complex," said Alexander Golts, a defense analyst, writing in the weekly Yezhenedelny Zhurnal.
"The whole intelligence community is raised on hate for the United States and the West," recalled Yuri Kobaladze, a former spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence service. "The quick change on such an issue is difficult to swallow."
Only two years ago, during and after the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia's relations with Washington were at a low point. When Putin was elected president in March 2000, having been acting president since December 1999, he quickly embraced a doctrine of Russia as a counterweight to global domination by the United States. Under ideas that had blossomed under former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, Russia was meant to look less to the West and more eastward -- to China, and to Arab allies from Soviet times -- to build a coalition against American hegemony.
Now Russia-the-counterweight has become Russia, America's buddy. Russia adheres to a U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. Some of the potential enemies are old Soviet clients -- Iraq chief among them.
Inklings of dismay surfaced on Nov. 10 in an open letter from retired generals, which took Putin to task for a variety of Russia's ills. The letter was regarded as an assault originating with officers on active duty. "America's war is not our war. We are just making enemies needlessly," said Vladimir Volkov, a Communist member of parliament, a member of the defense committee and a signer of the letter.
Earlier, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov expressed opposition to the United States' using bases in the Central Asian countries that were once Soviet republics. Putin overruled him, and he has been mum on the subject ever since. The newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which is widely read among the military and foreign policy community here, said generals were "dissatisfied" with the Kremlin's permission to let the United States into Central Asia.
Officers in the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, also objected to Putin's post-Sept. 11 decision to close an intelligence-gathering base in Cuba, a senior government official said. They regarded it as a firm gesture in Washington's favor with nothing received in return, the official said. Putin endorsed the closure as a cost-cutting measure.
Both opponents and proponents of Putin's dealings with Washington are looking for signs of concrete benefits. In Moscow, the Bush administration's decision not to immediately pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was viewed as a positive development. However, critics viewed Bush's announcement of a unilateral cut in the U.S. nuclear arsenal as only partially satisfying. The Russian military prefers to have such decisions enshrined in a treaty -- which Bush is resisting -- because treaties provide for verification. "It's now Russia that says trust but verify, just like Ronald Reagan used to," said Viktor Litovkin, a defense writer for Obshchaya Gazeta.
Other possible benefits, such as accelerated membership into the World Trade Organization or write-offs of Soviet-era debt, remain in the hazy future, skeptics pointed out. "We have an old saying: Promises are not marriage," Litovkin said. "So far, there's a lot of promises."
Even fans of the new policy seem somewhat confused. Putin is far from a Great Communicator; during the 2000 Russian presidential campaign, for example, he declined to issue an economic platform on the grounds that it would be criticized. He has made no major policy speech since Sept. 11. There have been no major personnel shifts by the Kremlin to signal subsequent policy changes.
"It seems to have been a personal decision," said Igor Bunin, a political consultant. "Putin usually operates by consolidating relations with elites, but he worked outside of them this time."
"How this will all be taken may depend on the next phase of the war," observed Mark Urnov, also a leading consultant. "He will certainly need to consult more widely if the campaign moves on to Iraq or other places."
Kobaladze offered a psychological explanation of Putin's actions: They stem from Putin's previous career as a spy. "Spies learn to be liked by those they are trying to influence," he said. "Putin may have learned that lesson well and is applying it to Bush."
Putin also has displayed a visceral hatred for Islamic-based "terrorist" groups, Kobaladze said. Putin once said he would "wipe the outhouse walls" with Chechens who are fighting for independence for Chechnya, a largely Muslim region in southern Russia.
Golts views Putin's attitude as cautious politicking to disguise a basically pro-Western bias. He said Putin, like Gorbachev, was trying to reach a point of no return of integration with the West before anyone noticed. "The current president must be telling generals that rapprochement . . . is a tactical move," he said. "And, like Gorbachev, he does not know who he is deceiving, Western leaders or his own entourage."
For the moment, Putin can carry the policy on the shoulders of broad popular support. One recent poll, by the Public Opinion Foundation, showed that Russians supported "significant rapprochement" by 69 percent, compared with 17 percent who were opposed.
Asked whether the United States is a friendly country, respondents split evenly, with 43 percent saying "yes" and 43 percent "no." A poll conducted in February found 52 percent of those surveyed regarded the United States as unfriendly, and only 32 percent as friendly.
The pollster Alexander Oslon, who has worked closely with the Kremlin, said that Russians currently regard the United States as easier to live with because the Sept. 11 attacks showed that the world's sole remaining superpower could be hit and hurt. "The myth of American invulnerability shrank," he said.
-------- space
TODAY'S EDITORIALS
A Space Station Out of Control
New York Times
November 25, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/opinion/25SUN1.html
The international space station - the centerpiece of the American manned space program - has encountered severe cost and management difficulties that could damage its value as a platform for conducting "world class" science, the supposed goal of the project. No more urgent task will confront the next administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration than to get this troubled program under control.
The station, which is now partially assembled and circling overhead with three astronauts aboard, has had a difficult evolution since President Ronald Reagan first ordered it built in 1984. Costs have escalated, forcing repeated delays, redesigns and downsizings, and Congress has considered no less than 25 different proposals to terminate the program.
This page has long been skeptical of the value of the station given its rudimentary technology, huge cost and lack of a clear mission that required the permanent presence of astronauts on a platform in low Earth orbit. But it is getting harder and harder to consider backing out. Billions have already been spent by the United States, 14 other countries are spending large sums of their own, and the initial modules are already up and functioning.
Nobody doubts that the station has been a great engineering achievement, demonstrating that astronauts can indeed erect a platform in space with few glitches. It is NASA's managerial performance that has been dismal. Early this year the agency shocked the administration and Congress by revealing that it would overshoot a $25 billion Congressional cap by almost $5 billion, exclusive of the $18 billion needed for shuttle flights to boost astronauts and hardware into orbit. Worse yet, nobody could be sure that that was the end of the cost overruns.
Faced with this latest crisis, the administration forced NASA to scale back its plans for the station, an approach that was endorsed this month by a special task force led by Thomas Young, a retired Martin Marietta executive and former NASA official. The solution recommended by the Young panel was to hold the program to a simple core station, able to accommodate only three crew members for lengthy stays, while giving NASA two years to get its management act together before deciding whether to complete a station able to support six or seven people as had been expected. President Bush's choice to be the next NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, has made it clear that he will vigorously carry out the Young panel's recommendations.
Should NASA fail to meet the challenge over the next two years, we could be left with a station of minimal capabilities. A crew of only three would have little chance of performing outstanding science. Huge cuts in research equipment will also curtail research. A proposal to add additional crew time by extending the length of shuttle and Soyuz visits to the station looks mostly like a stopgap measure.
The Young panel urged that the highest priority be given to research aimed at enabling humans to survive for long periods in space, a prerequisite for more ambitious space exploration. Meanwhile, four Nobel Prize winners have urged that the station support potentially "groundbreaking" research in physics in low gravity. But in truth, it has never been clear just what science needs to be done on a permanently manned platform in space as opposed to an unmanned platform or an earthbound facility.
The space agency has two years to improve its managerial and financial skills and to set clear priorities for what it actually intends to do in the unique low-gravity environment of space. Then a decision can be made on whether to expand the station to full capability or continue to limp along with a three-person core. If the prospects look really bleak two years from now, NASA might consider downgrading the station to an unmanned platform for automated experiments that would be tended occasionally by visiting astronauts.
---
Security Tight for NASA Launch
NOVEMBER 25, 01:47 EST
By MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=SCIENCE&STORYID=APIS7G0985G0
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - When mission commander Dominic Gorie and his crew rocket into orbit this week, it will be amid unprecedented security during unprecedented times.
Fighter jets, helicopter patrols, SWAT teams, military guards, closed roads, tourist bans, media crackdowns and possibly even anti-aircraft artillery are some of the safeguards expected to be in place for NASA's first wartime space shuttle launch.
``We're probably going to be some of the most well-protected people in the world,'' says Gorie, a Navy captain and former combat pilot.
Gorie has told no one, not even his wife and two children, what types of security measures will be in place for the countdown to Thursday's launch. No one at NASA, in fact, is divulging any details.
All seven astronauts say they're satisfied with what the space agency and the Air Force are doing to protect Endeavour - and themselves - from terrorist attack.
``When this first happened on Sept. 11, one of my first thoughts was, 'A shuttle on the launch pad is a target,' `` says astronaut Linda Godwin, who has a 1 1/2 -year-old daughter.
But she is comforted by the precautions.
``I just don't see how they could be doing anything else,'' she says.
NASA went so far as to consider keeping Endeavour's 7:41 p.m. launch time a secret until minutes before liftoff. But because the launch time had already been publicized, officials concluded it would be ``not only inappropriate but ineffective'' to classify the countdown and other mission events, says flight director Wayne Hale.
Endeavour will deliver a fresh three-man crew to the international space station and bring back the one astronaut and two cosmonauts who have been living up there since August.
For the first time in 20 years of space shuttle flight, only a select few will be on hand to watch the astronauts depart for the launch pad; journalists and most Kennedy Space Center employees will be barred. Space center roads typically reserved for launch spectators will also be closed, even to the astronauts' guests.
Gorie and his crew expect a smaller crowd than usual to see them off, not just because of space center restrictions. Some of their friends and relatives are afraid to fly to Florida and do not have time to drive.
Impressed with the extra security, former astronaut Frederick Hauck is far less worried about Thursday's launch than he was for the first takeoff after the 1986 Challenger accident. He commanded NASA's return to flight in 1988 and, for his courage and dedication, was among the first shuttle pilots inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame earlier this month.
``It would be very difficult for anyone to do anything dangerous to the space shuttle,'' Hauck says.
Space station program manager Tommy Holloway notes that every shuttle flight has risks, given the million-plus parts per ship.
``The only thing I worry about is that this team that we have working, flying people in space, stay focused on the job ... and are not distracted by outside events,'' Holloway says.
Gorie has repeatedly urged his crewmates to stay focused so they can pull off a successful mission and, in their own way, help America heal.
``The fact that we've got a space shuttle launch coming fairly soon after those events is a great opportunity to show the world and our own citizens our strength and our power and our vision,'' Gorie says.
The shuttle will be carrying thousands of U.S. flags, most of which will be distributed after Endeavour's 11-day flight to relatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and to survivors of the tragedy.
The larger banners, including one still reeking of smoke from the trade center, will be returned to New York City, the Pentagon and the state of Pennsylvania.
``We recognize that this flight is certainly going to be overshadowed by everything else in the news and rightfully so. Our country is at war,'' says Navy Lt. Cmdr. Mark Kelly, Gorie's co-pilot and a combat veteran.
``But for the people who at least know about our mission and realize that the space shuttle is launching, I'm sure all those people are going to be really proud.''
-------- terrorism
Anti-terrorism agency faces turf wars, critics say
November 25, 2001
By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011125-23142612.htm
The Bush administration is trying to preserve a counterterrorism system that many observers say won't withstand repeated terrorist attacks.
Policy analysts and certain lawmakers fault the president's decision to avoid a giant government expansion by retaining a decentralized domestic security network that consists of 40 separate federal agencies and a myriad of state and local bureaucracies. All are linked by voluntary agreements and promises of cooperation.
The president's creation of the White House Office of Homeland Security, and his appointment of a close friend to run it, is a move to ensure that the disparate organizations function in harmony despite their different missions, priorities and cultures.
However, critics say the system assures turf battles and confusion. They note that the U.S. counterterrorism and civil defense arrangement differs radically from tested systems in countries that have been rocked repeatedly by bombings, assassinations, street battles and sabotage.
Indeed, the possibility of friction between agencies under stress became apparent earlier this month, when New York's firefighters refused orders to trim their force at the World Trade Center Twin Towers disaster site. The firefighters fought with New York police to gain access to the debris.
As some see it, the president must at least vest budget authority and more direct power in the 2-month-old homeland security office headed by Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor. Mr. Ridge's effectiveness currently depends mainly on his personal relationship with the president.
But a debate over that arrangement is brewing in Congress. Like the question of federalizing airport baggage inspectors, the issue pits those comfortable with increased government control against advocates of limited federal government.
Sens. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, propose creating a big Department of Homeland Security. The new department would house the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard and certain other agencies responsible for critical infrastructure protection. It would plan and coordinate government activities relating to homeland defense.
"Governor Ridge can handle the job if he has sufficient authority," says Mr. Specter, but "as a practical matter, it is impossible for Governor Ridge to go to the president every time there is a turf battle. There is a need for governmental structure in regards to homeland defense."
Canada, France, Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom "had to stumble about before they arrived at a solution that provided a direct line of authority with assured cooperation between states and federal government and ... a common information database, " says Martha Crenshaw, a well-known specialist on international terrorism at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
All those countries have a single ministry or the equivalent responsible for countering terrorism and handling terrorist events. Each ministry - roughly like a U.S. department - has a rigid command and control structure that dictates who is in charge during any phase of a terrorist attack and recovery.
Each country has special terrorism-related laws that allow for special investigations and increased penalties for terrorism. Each has national terrorism-prevention policies.
"All relevant government authorities in my country have had to adapt to deal with terrorist situations," says an unidentified official at the Israeli Embassy.
"Unfortunately, government agencies have had much experience. We have a well-oiled machine. Even the schools are involved. They teach children what to beware of and how to react.
"Since I have been a child, I have known my bags would be checked before I went to a movie or when I went shopping," says the Israeli official. "I am suspicious of a plastic bag lying around."
Suppose that in the United States, terrorists bombed a big and busy shopping mall and, perhaps, fired automatic weapons at customers attempting to flee flames, falling debris and gunshots.
Who would be in charge and responsible for taming the situation?
"It would be the first arriving fire service officer. He would station the firefighters, the hazardous materials team, the emergency rescue teams, and tell arriving police what to do," says Alan Caldwell, director of government relations for the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
"There's no signed agreement about this. We just follow an incident management system that's taught in fire academies," says Mr. Caldwell, a recently retired fire chief.
But fire chiefs aren't versed in combat.
"So I suspect you'd have to set up a 'unified command,'" says Mr. Caldwell.
State and federal law enforcement and health and environmental protection officials, among others, would quickly begin arriving at the scene. At the local level, "a handshake" agreement probably would govern who would do what, says Mr. Caldwell.
But the FBI is considered the lead federal counterterrorism agency. It would take charge.
In some jurisdictions, however, local police agencies and FBI officials have difficulty seeing eye-to-eye. Then too, specialists of different emergency response teams have conflicting priorities.
"It's not a perfect system, but there have been presidential directives that mandate the different agencies must get along," says Mr. Caldwell.
The General Accounting Agency, which dispatched researchers to Canada, England, France, Germany and Israel to learn how those nations organized to cope with terrorist attacks, found that "each country places the majority of resources for combating terrorism under one ministry" and has "interagency coordination bodies." Each country "also has clearly designated leadership at the scene of terrorist incidents."
In England, the chief constable (the police chief) controls all aspects of the incident in a locality. In Israel, the National Police take charge.
The Mounties control events in Canada - except in the big cities, where by special written arrangement, municipal police may take charge. France empowers the politically appointed prefect of each region to be the incident commander in his region, but Germany's state police are the first responders, who later hand control to the federal police.
"These countries learned by their experience. Now we're in a critical mode, and we finally have to figure out what we have to do," Miss Crenshaw says.
----
Bin Laden's camps teach curriculum of carnage
USA Today
11/25/2001
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/26/cover.htm
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Plastic explosives, timing devices and sketches of the best places to hide a bomb on an airplane filled the files of Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps near here. Gas masks, cyanide and recipes for biological agents lined the shelves of his chemical weapons laboratory. Kalashnikov rifles, silhouetted targets and lesson plans teaching children to shoot at their victims' faces lay among the toys and near the swing set at the elementary school bin Laden established. The terrorist camps around this eastern Afghan city were apparently abandoned sometime in the past few weeks as bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network fled U.S. bomb attacks and Northern Alliance fighters. The camps offer clear evidence of the systematic way bin Laden and his lieutenants have been pursuing their efforts to wage jihad, or holy war, against the United States.
Last week, USA TODAY, with the permission of Jalalabad's new governor, alliance ally Haji Abdul Qadir, visited two of bin Laden's former camps. One, in the village of Farm Hadda, is about 12 miles south of the city. The other, near Darunta, is about 15 miles west.
Both are guarded by alliance troops sent by Qadir. Neither has yet been searched by U.S. troops or intelligence agents because, U.S. officials say, the area is still considered too dangerous.
U.S. and alliance officials say bin Laden and up to 1,500 of his fighters, as well as some Taliban troops, may still be hiding in the hundreds of caves south of Jalalabad. For now, it is assumed that only heavily armed U.S. commandos involved in the hunt for bin Laden are in the region - but U.S. officials won't comment on the record about such operations.
In Washington, Marine Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, says U.S. forces have begun "the business of checking those sites as they fall under our control." Once U.S. forces get to the camps, officials say, some of the information gathered could provide a "windfall" of intelligence.
USA TODAY was escorted to the sites by Jalalabad security officials who insisted that it was not necessary to wear a gas mask or protective clothing. Nothing threatening happened the day of the visits, but ominous lesson plans for war were everywhere, out for display as if the camps were some sort of museum.
The evidence shows that recruits at bin Laden's two main camps, at least those visited by USA TODAY, were trained in conventional, biological and even nuclear warfare, according to class manuals. They came from at least 21 countries, including Bosnia, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other U.S. allies, enrollment records show.
Nearly all the students were told to return to their countries after training and "await orders" to carry out attacks against the United States, class notes reveal.
"These materials provide circumstantial evidence that corroborates the suspicion that Osama bin Laden had been seriously pursuing weapons of mass destruction," says military analyst Rifaat Hussein of Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. "They give us a clue as to what this guy was up to. You're dealing with an enemy that has to be taken seriously."
Targets identified
Many of the buildings and barracks at the Darunta camp, a former Soviet military base, were destroyed by U.S. airstrikes Oct. 28. But the most important building at the camp, which contains the one-room laboratory lit by a single light bulb, was untouched. U.S. officials, who were unable to explain why it was not hit, say it has now been added it to their target list.
A drawer in the lab contained three manuals. One appears to be an 18-chapter, 179-page training book written by bin Laden operatives. It identifies "buildings, bridges, embassies, schools, (and) amusement parks" as targets for destruction in the West. Another chapter discusses the destruction that can be wreaked by "atomic explosions." Hand-drawn sketches of bombs fill the margins of those pages.
The two other manuals, both printed in the USA, are titled Middle Eastern Terrorist-Bomb Designs and Advanced Techniques for Making Explosives and Time-Delay Bombs. There were also 84 pages of bomb-building techniques involving dynamite and C3 and C4 plastic explosives that appear to have been downloaded from the Internet.
In another drawer were several fake visa and immigration stamps, one purporting to be from the Pakistani Embassy in Rome and another from the Tajikistan Consulate in Islamabad, Pakistan. There was also a photocopy of a money transfer requesting that a London branch of Pakistan's Habib Bank AG Zurich credit the account of an individual identified as Moazzam Begg in Karachi for an unspecified sum of money. U.S. and Pakistani officials say they do not know who Begg is but will try to find him.
On one shelf of the laboratory was a long metal box lined with wood shavings. It held 18 bottles of liquids with labels identifying them as lead acetate, nitric acid, carbolic acid and glycerin, all of which are highly toxic. On another shelf were several plastic containers, including one labeled cyanide. A dozen gas masks lay on the floor.
All the chemicals had labels reading "Made in China." The equipment in the lab, ranging from scales to heaters, was from the United Arab Emirates. A packet of earplugs, apparently purchased in Britain, still had a price tag reading 2.51 British pounds.
Perhaps most telling about the minds of those who trained here is a document found at the camp. "I am interested in suicide operations," wrote Damir Bajrami, a 24-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, on his entry application in April 2001. "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. I need no further training. I recommend (suicide) operations against (amusement) parks like Disney."
Hijackers among thousands trained
More than 5,000 recruits, including at least four of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, received training at bin Laden's camps, starting in the early 1990s, U.S. officials say. Muslim militants involved in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors, and the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which killed more than 200 people, also graduated from the camps, they say.
"It is from these camps that much of the world's terror has originated," says Qadir, the Jalalabad governor. "What was taught at these camps is sickening. The more I learn, the more I am in disbelief at what was going on here."
Qadir has designated the camps "crime scenes" and ordered police to seal off the sites to prevent looters or intruders from disturbing them.
Bin Laden, who has lived in Jalalabad at various points since coming to Afghanistan in 1996, operated at least six terrorist training camps near the city. He also owned or rented at least six homes and dozens of apartments and ran the elementary school for the children of his fighters here.
The camp at Farm Hadda was one of the largest. The camp, made up of mud and brick buildings, was abandoned quickly by its 600 recruits after suffering a major U.S. bombardment in late October. Tanks, family photographs and even a pair of dentures were left behind. A bucket of black facial hair, indicating that some of the recruits may have trimmed their beards to disguise themselves, was also found.
Amid the rubble were dozens of copies of a 26-page booklet, Jihad Against America. The booklet, which Pakistani officials say was given to all new recruits to the camp, contains speeches and statements by bin Laden. In it, the Saudi financier-turned-terrorist sets out his goals. At the top of the list: ousting thousands of U.S. troops still stationed in Saudi Arabia after driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden has stated that he does not want non-Muslims, or infidels, defiling Saudi Arabia's "holy ground."
'Eliminate all these problems'
The cover of the booklet, which is printed in English, Arabic and Bengali, shows a map of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, with American flags pinpointing the locations of U.S. military bases.
Bin Laden also has taken up several other Muslim causes. "Americans and Jews (are) shedding Muslim blood every day, looting their property," bin Laden writes in the booklet, apparently referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I want to eliminate all these problems created by the Americans and the Jews."
He goes on to list various militant groups that he says are "helping Afghanistan in its fight against the infidels" around the world. They include the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Libyan Jihad Fighters, the Abu Sayyaf rebels of the Philippines, and what it calls "jihad militants" from Burma, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Men from these countries or regions also were students at his camps.
Bin Laden says in the booklet that he has found a home in Afghanistan, the country where in the 1980s he and other Islamic fighters defeated another great superpower, the Soviet Union.
"We can defeat the infidels from here," bin Laden writes. "I will give you the training so you can carry on after we are gone. Our struggle will never end; it will grow stronger and more lethal by the year."
Back at Darunta - and its lab - were other reminders of the lengths to which bin Laden and his supporters are apparently willing to go.
Outside the laboratory, next to a vegetable garden, were four metal poles with chains attached to their bases. At the end of one of the chains were the remains of what appeared to be a dead animal with white fur.
Nerve gas experiments
U.S. officials, citing satellite photographs taken of the camp earlier this year and intelligence gathered from local residents, say a 60-year-old Saudi man named Abu Khabab experimented with nerve gas on dogs, rabbits and other animals here.
Khabab's neighbors said they saw large trucks, all of them with Pakistani license plates, delivering chemicals and other supplies to the camp at least once a week. Most of the neighbors said they thought Khabab was a doctor.
"Everyone was afraid of him," says Shah Ahmadi, 35, who lives nearby. "One day, he was making something and there was a big explosion. The entire area smelled of chemicals for hours. We protested, and he limited his work. From then on, we knew something evil was going on inside."
Similar chemicals, weapons and manuals, including a brochure for a $4,200 Korean-made chemical agent alarm, were also found among the rubble of bin Laden's palatial home and the elementary school.
It all leads U.S. and Pakistani officials to wonder what the recruits did not leave behind but took with them.
"I fear there's a lot more out there that we just don't know about," Jalalabad governor Qadir says. "I'm afraid what happened at the World Trade Center and Pentagon was just the beginning. The worst terror may be yet to come."
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New Battles in Old War Over Freedom of Speech
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/education/25SPEE.html
COSTA MESA, Calif., Nov. 21 - On campuses across the country, heightened tensions and sensitivities following the Sept. 11 attacks have unleashed an avalanche of clashes over free expression.
At Orange Coast College here, administrators summarily barred a political science professor from campus after Muslim students accused him of blaming one of them personally for the hijackings, though a recording of the class given to an internal investigator more than a week ago suggested the accusations may be exaggerated or false.
At the University of New Mexico, Prof. Richard Berthold faces disciplinary procedures that could result in his dismissal after opening his Sept. 11 history class with a quip he now admits was "stupid" and ill conceived: "Anybody who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote," he said.
Thor L. Halvorssen, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group that monitors campus civil liberties abuses, said his group customarily receives about 30 complaints a month, but has collected 150 since Sept. 11 accusing college administrations of attempting to abridge free expression.
Some administrators worry that their campuses may be seen as overly critical of American policy; others seem eager to protect the sensitivities of Muslim students when the United States is at war with a Muslim nation.
In recent years, there have been numerous conflicts centered on speech or publications that violate campus codes aimed at avoiding offense to ethnic, religious or racial minorities. But the cases arising since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have also involved conflicts that go beyond ethnicity and often range across the political spectrum.
Some critics consider the surge in complaints about speech, at a time when nerves remain raw over the terrorist attacks, an inevitable consequence of the speech codes themselves, which they say have shaped the campus as a therapeutic environment where students are protected from discussions that make them uncomfortable.
"This is the first time that people can look across the entire country, at community colleges, four-year colleges and graduate universities, on the right and the left, and see that all of them have an apparent problem with the idea of free speech," Mr. Halvorssen said.
At the University of California at Los Angeles, an assistant librarian, Jonnie Hargis, was suspended for a week after sending out an e-mail message that said American taxpayers "fund and arm an apartheid state called Israel, which is responsible for untold thousands upon thousands of deaths of Muslim Palestinian children and civilians," and asked, "So, who are the `terrorists' anyway?"
The university said that Mr. Hargis's message "contributed to a hostile and threatening environment" for co-workers who might have "ethnic, religious and family ties to Israel."
At San Diego State University, an Ethiopian-born student fluent in Arabic, Zewdalem Kebede, received a disciplinary warning for criticizing three students he said he overheard in the university library praising Osama bin Laden in Arabic for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Kebede, a naturalized American, said the students had been "gloating about the actions of the terrorists, saying how great it was, how precise it was, that bin Laden is now well known and his ideology is already spread."
Mr. Kebede said he became furious and confronted the group, telling them that they "should feel shame" because while thousands had been "killed on their own land and became ash, you are enjoying the savage and barbaric actions of your brothers, your compatriots."
The students subsequently denied making those remarks.
Jason Foster, a spokesman for the university, said the Arab students had complained that Mr. Kebede approached them in "a threatening manner." He said the university "believes in the right of students to say what they want, but we also feel we have to protect students from feeling threatened."
Mr. Foster said no disciplinary action had been taken against Mr. Kebede. But the student did receive a letter from a university official, who admonished him and said, "Consider this letter to be your only warning that future incidents where your involvement is proven will result in you facing serious disciplinary sanctions."
Mr. Kebede said he was floored. "I didn't hit, I didn't beat, I didn't insult," he said. "I opposed them, I rejected them. That's my right and my obligation."
Not only is free speech an issue, but in some cases, like the one at Orange Coast, professors are dismayed at the haste with which college authorities have moved to silence controversy. Colleagues of the instructor who was disciplined, most of whom do not share his conservative views (he calls himself a born- again Christian conservative), are alarmed at the absence of due process in his case.
The situation here is complicated by uncertainty over the truth of the charges. A week after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Hearlson, a political science instructor, raised a series of provocative questions in his weekly lecture.
Why, he asked, had Muslim nations not risen with a single voice to repudiate Osama bin Laden? Why do leading Muslim figures seem to either deny the Holocaust or complain that Hitler had not killed enough Jews? Mr. Hearlson also condemned flyers that had appeared on campus last year, which showed a swastika plastered over a Jewish star, as "hate-filled messages" from "Muslim students on this campus." The flyer was signed by a group calling itself Hizb-ul-Haq, or party of truth.
What four Muslim students in his evening class said they heard that night, however, cut much deeper. One, Mooath Saidi, claimed that Mr. Hearlson pointed at him, saying: "You drove two planes into the World Trade Center. You were the cause of what happened Sept. 11." Mr. Saidi said another student, outraged, interrupted the instructor to say he appeared to be blaming a student personally.
Recordings of the Sept. 18 class obtained by The New York Times suggest that while Mr. Hearlson's criticism of Muslim nations was unrelenting, the claims of personal attacks were exaggerated or fabricated.
According to the tape, the remarks that prompted the student to interrupt Mr. Hearlson and question his use of the word "you" involved Arab nations that struck Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973, not the World Trade Center attacks. On the tape, Mr. Hearlson thanks the student for the interruption and says he "absolutely" did not mean to accuse any student personally. "I am talking about Arab nations," he says.
But within two days of the class, Mr. Hearlson was put on administrative leave with pay, and he was then barred from setting foot on the campus, where he has tenure and has worked for 18 years.
"The argument was, they had the right to freedom of speech," Mr. Hearlson said, referring to the students who had distributed the flyers. "And all of a sudden, I don't."
Asked about the discrepancy between his accusations and what appears on the tapes, Mr. Saidi said his memory could have faltered on the details, but not on the meaning. "Is it possible," he asked, "that the tapes might not have him saying, `You're a murderer, you're a terrorist,' but have him calling Muslims in general" murderers and terrorists?
"He turned the whole class against us that night," Mr. Saidi said. "And if some of the allegations I made were not maybe right, if my memory was shady, this is not the first time anybody brought anything against this teacher." Mr. Hearlson, he said, "has a history, and he obviously hasn't learned and he needs to be taught a lesson."
But faculty members worry that Mr. Hearlson's suspension has opened what one instructor calls "curriculum veto by student complaint."
"I don't mean to minimize the difficult situation the Muslims were in a week after the attack," said the instructor, Gayne Anacker, a tenured philosophy teacher who has taken up Mr. Hearlson's cause. "We were all rubbed raw. But the freedom to teach your students what you think is important. It's one of the glories of a democracy."
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Yemen, Long a Foe of U.S., Joins Anti-Terrorism Effort
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/middleeast/25YEME.html
SANA, Yemen, Nov. 24 - American intelligence officials and Yemeni authorities, putting aside the diplomatic strains of the last 10 years, including friction over the inquiry into the bombing of the destroyer Cole, have begun to work more closely on tracking terrorists here, Yemeni officials and Western diplomats said this week.
"Sept. 11 was a shock, and since then there has been a new cooperation, a genuine one, to combat terrorism," the interior minister, Rashid M. al-Alimi, said in an interview.
Acting on information from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Yemeni security police have begun to pick up suspects for interrogation in what the interior minister calls an "ongoing operation." Although authorities here would not be more specific, they said that at least one known member of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, had been among those identified by the C.I.A. and arrested.
It is hoped the man will provide information to help close down a large Al Qaeda cell that the Yemenis say is still operating in this impoverished country, where Mr. bin Laden's father was born and where Al Qaeda, along with other armed militant Islamic groups, operated with relative impunity during the last decade.
At the same time, the Yemenis have been providing the C.I.A. with phone records and dossiers on suspected terrorists who have been operating from here. The Yemeni government has also begun to cooperate more fully in the investigation of the suicide attack on the Cole, allowing the F.B.I. to interview at least some of the individuals who, until now, had been kept off limits by the Yemeni government, a Western diplomat said this week. The Cole was severely damaged in port in Aden in October 2000, with the loss of 17 American sailors.
American-Yemeni relations have been rocky since the Persian Gulf war, when Yemen did not support the anti-Iraq coalition. But now the Yemeni government, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is scheduled to begin an official visit to Washington on Tuesday, has made a "fundamental choice," as one Western official here put it, to move closer to the United States, and the West, at least in the war on terrorism.
It is unclear how far the cooperation will go, diplomats here say. Despite Mr. Saleh's stated commitment to wiping out terrorist organizations, it is by no means certain he can deliver. To some degree he is in their debt because they have helped sustain him in power over the years. Within the Yemeni security services and the military, Mr. bin Laden still has loyal supporters who receive money from him, a senior government official and diplomats said this week. Earlier this month, the Americans gave the Yemenis a list of suspected Al Qaeda members whom they wanted seized. Within 24 hours, at least a dozen had been notified, and had fled the country, said a senior government official.
During his visit to Washington, Mr. Saleh will hear more "requests and demands" for help on the Cole investigation, a senior Western diplomat here said.
In moving closer to the United States, Mr. Saleh, who has ruled since 1978, will also be bucking a strong anti-American current in this traditional society, where many women still cover themselves from head to toe in black - by choice, rather than by government decree - and men carry curved daggers in wide belts. Much of the resentment stems from the United States policy in Israel, officials and ordinary Yemenis said this week.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech earlier this week on taking steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will go far toward improving America's standing here, a newspaper publisher said.
American economic aid was terminated after the gulf war, except for recent food aid. And while the United States may want to provide economic assistance now, it will have to swallow an unpleasant reality. Corruption here is rampant, and much of the aid goes into officials' pockets. Of every dollar of foreign aid that comes into Yemen, whether from governments or international financial institutions like the World Bank, 40 cents is wasted, a senior Western official said this week.
To demonstrate their commitment to the war against terrorism, government officials here made themselves available for interviews this week. Among them was the interior minister, who rarely talks to journalists. He agreed to meet near midnight, when a lot of work gets done during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
A former professor of law, Mr. Alimi politely declined to give any specific information about suspected terrorists here, but sought to stress the policies adopted by his government to combat terrorism.
His government has done even more than the United States has requested, he said. When the Bush administration asked the Yemeni government to freeze the assets of two honey shops, which were said to be sources of income for Al Qaeda, he said the government not only did that but also interrogated the owners of every honey shop in the country. One owner was so incensed that he refused to answer any questions and is still in jail, Mr. Alimi said. He added that the government found no evidence that the honey shops had any links to Mr. bin Laden, not even the two whose assets have been frozen.
Thousands of Arab men who had fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan found a welcome here after the war, operating training camps and religious schools. Over the years, pleas from American officials to Yemeni authorities to crack down on the terrorists were largely ignored. Three major Al Qaeda camps were closed down three years ago, but there are still a few smaller ones operating in the country, a security official said this week.
This month, the Yemeni government adopted strict new visa requirements, intended to restrict terrorists. It will no longer be possible to get a visa at the airport, or border crossing, for a modest fee. Now, the interior ministry will run a background check on all visa applicants, Mr. Alimi said. People coming in from countries near Afghanistan, like Pakistan, will be questioned upon their arrival, even if they have a visa.
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Navajo 'code-talkers' earn medals
November 25, 2001
Around the Nation
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011125-21963195.htm
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. -Navajo "code talkers," whose code based on their native tongue was never cracked by the Japanese during World War II, were honored yesterday in a ceremony that many said was long overdue.
Thousands of people watched as more than 300 Congressional Silver Medals were presented to the surviving code talkers.
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Pentagon waging a massive effort
USA Today
11/25/2001
By Lynne Perri, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/23/pentagon-usat.htm
What began as a job for some has become a patriotic duty for others. Philip Sykora from Cleveland, one of those spraying water to keep down the massive amounts of dust, sees his time at the Pentagon renovation site that way, as more than another job.
"My wife didn't want me to go," he says. "But no way I wouldn't go. This is my way of trying to help."
The Pentagon's massive concrete structure was sliced by a hijacked jet Sept. 11. That attack, which came on the same day as incidents at the World Trade Center and in Pennsylvania, destroyed parts of the original structure and a section of a recently renovated area. Now, round-the-clock crews work to rebuild the home of the nation's military headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The cost of the crash site restoration is expected to be upward of $700 million, and the project is on a sped-up timetable.
Demolition was completed on Monday, and the first concrete for the reconstruction was poured then as well. A tower crane was erected Nov. 17, and a second will be built in mid-December. Both will hoist forms, steel and buckets of concrete. On Sept. 11, 2002, Pentagon staffers are expected to be working in the E-ring offices at the point where the jet hit the building. At an expected rededication ceremony, a memorial or plans for a memorial to the 189 victims will be unveiled. In the spring of 2003, the remaining portions damaged by the attack will be complete.
To meet these deadlines, crews are working 24 hours a day, six days a week with a slight slowdown on Sunday to catch up with debris removal. Some of the 350 dayside and 100 nightside workers are inside the building, scrubbing walls damaged by water and now covered in mold and removing asbestos, lead and PCBs. They are performing the quiet work. They wear their protective suits and breathe through respirators, silently exchanging information.
Those working outside hear the constant stream of trucks, the thunder of concrete falling. Since Oct. 18, crews have removed 47,000 tons of mixed debris - more than 1,000 dump-truck loads - and taken it to area landfills. The work includes areas of the original structure, built in 1941, as well as a section that had been renovated before the attacks in September - offices that have to be rebuilt yet once again.
Tourists and locals continue to stream by the building. They pause to look at what has evolved from a fire-blackened reminder of terrorism to a giant gap awaiting new life. There are makeshift memorials, picture-takers and those who stand quietly to take it all in. They carry and wave the American flag, much as Sykora does nightly when he clips his flag to his hard hat.
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Park officers reassigned to 'homeland'
USA Today
11/25/2001
By Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/11/26/transfers.htm
Several hundred federal law enforcement agents who normally protect national parks, wildlife and public rangelands have been temporarily assigned to homeland-security duties.
They are working as sky marshals aboard commercial aircraft, protecting the Liberty Bell and other landmarks, and guarding dams.
The reassignments are causing some staffing problems at land-management agencies such as the National Park Service, whose ranks are thin to begin with, federal officials say. More than 200 of the Park Service's approximately 1,500 law enforcement agents are assigned to homeland-security details.
Other agencies contributing personnel are the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
"A lot of these agencies, especially the Park Service, were short-staffed to begin with," Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby says. "It obviously doesn't improve their situation, but in a sense, this may help bring attention to the needs of these agencies."
To help fill the gaps, the Park Service has been given authority to rehire seasonal rangers who normally work only during the busiest summer months.
Interior employees serving as air marshals will be on reassignment for periods up to 6 months, while those protecting dams and other federal facilities are on rotations of a week or two. "Everyone is looking at this as a temporary solution until there is a permanent force in place," Park Service spokeswoman Elaine Seevy says.
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Local police need terrorism data, Michigan chief says
November 25, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011125-29655054.htm
The FBI must issue security clearances to thousands of the nation's top police officers so they can have access to classified material about terrorist threats, says a Michigan police chief, who has accused the agency of keeping local police nationwide out of the loop.
"There's no reason why the best 10,000 police officers in this country, the most talented people in each individual agency, shouldn't have security clearances and be briefed on the fight against terrorism and the hunt for infiltrators in this country. It's something completely within the FBI's control," Daniel J. Oates, chief of police in Ann Arbor and a former head of intelligence for the New York Police Department, said yesterday on CNN.
Chief Oates, who appeared in an interview on "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields," has emerged as a national spokesman for local police seeking better communication and cooperation with federal law-enforcement officials since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
His forums have included an interview on CBS' "The Early Show," an op-ed piece in the New York Times, wire service reports and articles in newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Daily Herald.
On CNN yesterday, Chief Oates said he sees signs FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is listening to police concerns and trying to improve that agency's relationship with local law-enforcement organizations.
"The best sign that I can think of is that he has formed an advisory group of police chiefs from the International Association of Chiefs of Police," said Chief Oates, a lawyer and a law-enforcement official. "He met with them last week. He's going to meet with them monthly, I understand."
Even so, he said, "Fundamentally, I think there are some really important additional steps that need to be taken. I firmly believe the FBI culture has to change, and they have to be more willing to embrace us and use the full potential of local law enforcement."
As for his proposal that about 10,000 police officers obtain security clearances so they can be more directly involved in the terrorist investigation, Chief Oates says, "The real issue I hear quoted, the number one reason why the FBI is so reluctant to share information is the issue of security clearance. So much of the information that they deal in, when it comes to the terrorist threat, is classified."
But he says that situation can be resolved either by "declassifying a lot of information" or, if that is not possible, by providing security clearances to top-rated police officers.
For background checks on police deemed worthy of a possible security clearance, Chief Oates said turning to personnel files of police officers would be a "good start for any investigator."
"If the FBI doesn't have enough people to do the background checks, they should hire former FBI agents, former Secret Service agents, former Treasury agents - people who know how to do background investigations," he said. "With the kind of money that is being talked about being spent in this fight [against terrorism] in Congress, a few dollars to expeditiously do background checks would be a very wise expenditure."
A woman who answered the phone in the FBI press office yesterday said no one would be available this weekend to respond to Chief Oates' proposal to issue security clearances to police officers.
The chief, who spent 21 years in the NYPD, including four as a deputy chief, also says Congress must pass federal legislation to enable the FBI to share classified information with top state and local government officials and police. At this time, he said, FBI agents frequently contend they are "bound by statute" not to release certain information.
"We need a clear, unambiguous statement by the federal government that this information is going to be shared," Chief Oates said yesterday. Such legislation "needs the support of the Justice Department and the attorney general," he said.
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Ashcroft to face questioning on civil liberties
USA Today
11/25/2001
From wire services
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-25-ashcroft.htm
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers upset with some of the administration's anti-terrorism actions will question Attorney General John Ashcroft on the matter.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and others say the administration's actions have gone too far in infringing on civil liberties.
Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, criticized the attorney general Sunday. Ashcroft "owes the country, certainly owes the Congress, an explanation," Leahy said.
Ashcroft will testify at Judiciary Committee hearings in early December, his spokeswoman said.
Among actions by the administration that have upset some in Congress:
- The continued incarceration of more than 1,000 people who were rounded up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
- President Bush's recent order that allows secret military tribunals to try non-citizens.
- Justice Department approval of eavesdropping on conversations between defense lawyers and clients in the terrorism probe.
"We stand for a great deal in this country," Leahy said on NBC's Meet the Press. "When we're talking about setting aside our criminal justice system for something like this, we end up looking more and more like some of the things that we are fighting against."
Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican appearing with Leahy, said that the Supreme Court upheld military tribunals during World War II.
"These are extraordinary times, and I believe you have to have extraordinary measures," Shelby said.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said balance is needed in fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties.
"We are all very concerned about the spread of terrorism," Daschle said on Fox News Sunday. "But we have to ask ourselves what the balance is: How do you do that and ensure that we don't trample on the constitutional rights that we have fought to protect for over 200 years?"
In a related matter, a Justice Department memo outlined questions for federal investigators to ask in interviews with 5,000 male foreigners, ages 18 to 33.
The men come from the Middle East and other countries and entered the USA after Jan. 1, 2000. They are not suspected of crimes, but officials say they hope the men can help with the investigation.
The memo instructs investigators to ask the men whether they know any terrorists, or anybody with access to guns, explosives, or chemical or biological weapons such as anthrax.
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Leahy: Ashcroft 'owes explanation' about tribunals, other measures
CNN
November 25, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/11/25/inv.congress.terror/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft "owes the country an explanation" of new law enforcement measures issued by the Bush administration for use in the battle against terrorism, the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday.
In an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said he wants Ashcroft to appear before his committee for a lengthy hearing to discuss President Bush's order allowing the use of military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, a Justice Department's decision to monitor phone conversations between suspects and their lawyers and the questioning of thousands of people of Middle Eastern descent.
Leahy said these "ad hoc, outside-the-justice system methods" go well beyond the new anti-terrorism measures that Congress recently approved at Ashcroft's urging.
"It is bothering a great number of people, Republicans and Democrats. I think the attorney general owes the country -- certainly owes the Congress -- an explanation," he said.
Leahy and the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sent Ashcroft a letter asking him to appear before the committee. Leahy said Sunday that Ashcroft is now scheduled to appear the week after next.
The scope of the law enforcement battle against terrorism won't be the only topic being investigated on Capitol Hill in the near future. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that the committee will hold hearings after the first of the year on what went wrong prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"We need to know what happened, how it happened and what we can do about it. And then, after that, I think we have to look forward," Shelby said on NBC. "I think it's going to take a restructuring, legislatively, of our entire intelligence ... communities."
In addition to the questioning of Ashcroft by Leahy's committee, the House Judiciary Committee is also considering holding hearings on Bush's authorization allowing the use of military tribunals.
The tribunals could be used to try non-citizens accused of terrorist acts, using rules set out by the secretary of defense. Individuals brought before the tribunals would have no right to a jury trial, no right to confront their accusers and no right to judicial review of trial procedures or sentences, which could include death.
Critics on both the left and right have assailed the order, saying it is too far-reaching and compromises American principles. But Bush has defended the plan, calling it "the absolute right thing to do" to maintain national security in the event that terrorists are captured alive and to spare criminal court jurors from potential harm.
But Leahy said the United States has "an enormous ability" to deal with terrorist suspects without resorting to such extraordinary means.
"We end up looking to the people we've asked to be our allies more and more like some of the things that we are fighting against," he said.
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Cyber-crime treaty not "Big Brother"
November 25, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011125-46897672.htm
BUDAPEST - A European treaty to combat the growing menace of cyber-crime will give law enforcers broad international reach but will not be a "Big Brother" type agency, the Council of Europe (CoE) said Friday.
"Contrary to what has been said in certain circles, we are not going to set up a 'Big Brother'," Guy de Vel, CoE's legal affairs director, said at a news conference after 30 countries signed the new convention in Hungary's parliament.
Nominally a European treaty, the first international cybercrime convention, which took four years to draft, was also signed by South Africa, Canada, the United States and Japan.
Europe's expansion to fight crime, terror
VIENNA - The enlargement of the European Union and NATO is the best protection against organized crime and terrorism, Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski said Wednesday.
"The enlargement of the EU and NATO are the most effective way to maintain the joint values of Europe," said Mr. Kwasniewski, whose country is by far the biggest EU candidate state, during a visit to Austria.
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Malaysian Authorities Arrest a Fugitive Philippine Muslim
New York Times
November 25, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/asia/25FILI.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 24 (Reuters) - Malaysian police officers today arrested a fugitive Philippine Muslim leader, who is blamed by the Philippine government for an uprising this week in which more than 100 people have been killed.
Nur Misuari, the leader of the Moro National Liberation Front, a one-time rebel group in the southern Philippines, had been on the run since fighting started between 600 of his supporters and 7,000 army troops on Jolo island last Monday.
The police said today that Mr. Misuari and six followers were captured at 3.30 a.m. on Pulau Jampiras in Malaysia's Sabah state.
The place where he was arrested, on the northern tip of Borneo, was suspected of having been used as a training camp for the rebel group in the past, residents of the area said.
Mr. Misuari and his supporters entered Malaysia illegally and though unarmed when they were arrested, they were regarded as a security threat, the police said.
"We have cause for concern over the danger posed to national security," the police chief, Norian Mai, was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency. He added that he believed there had been cooperation between Mr. Misuari's group and the Abu Sayyaf, another Philippine Muslim rebel group.
Abu Sayyaf is fighting for a separate Islamic state in the south of the Philippines. The United States says that Abu Sayyaf has had links in the past with Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. Chief Norian said that Mr. Misuari and his men might be flown to Kuala Lumpur before being sent back to the Philippines, although Malaysia does not have an extradition treaty with Manila.
"We have to respect Malaysia's laws," said a Philippine presidential spokesman, Rigoberto Tiglao. "They may want to prosecute him under their own laws."
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia said that Mr. Misuari would not be given political asylum. "Malaysia should not interfere by providing refuge to rebels from other countries," he said.
Mr. Mahathir and fellow Southeast Asian leaders agreed at a summit meeting in Brunei earlier this month to step up cross-border cooperation to combat terrorism.
Mr. Misuari gave up life as a guerrilla after he was installed as governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao under a 1996 peace pact with the Philippine government. The accord ended the rebel group's 24-year revolt for an Islamic state in the south.
But Manila says that Mr. Misuari began a fresh rebellion when it called a new election for the governor's post, which is scheduled for Monday. He objected to the election, contending that the government was trying to oust him from the position and that the election violated the agreement with his group. He is not a candidate in the election.
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THE DETAINEES
Swept Up in a Dragnet, Hundreds Sit in Custody and Ask, 'Why?'
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By JODI WILGOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/national/25DETA.html
Osama Elfar was dozing on a hard bench under the ever-present drone of the prison television set when a guard's voice crackled over the intercom, "Happy birthday." Otherwise, Nov. 9 would have passed without Mr. Elfar even noticing he had turned 30.
"When you're here, you don't know day from night, Thursday from Friday - it's all the same," Mr. Elfar said in a telephone interview from the Mississippi County Correctional Facility in Charleston, Mo. "A new decade start for me. Unfortunately, I was locked up."
An Egyptian who came to the United States five years ago to attend a Florida flight school, Mr. Elfar recently worked as a mechanic for a small airline in St. Louis. He has been in jail for two months and began a hunger strike on Friday to protest his incarceration.
Mr. Elfar is among hundreds of little- known foreigners swept up in a vast dragnet after the terrorist attacks - some of whom have résumés suspiciously like those of the 19 hijackers, and others who have spent days, weeks and now months in prison for immigration violations that before Sept. 11 would probably have been ignored or resolved with paperwork. Government officials say that the aggressive response is warranted by the extraordinary situation, and that they are simply enforcing longstanding laws.
"Sept. 11 has forced the entire government to change the way we do business," said Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. "Our No. 1 priority right now is to prevent any further terrorist attacks. Part of that entails identifying those who may have connections to terrorism who are here in America and making sure they're not in a position to carry out any further terrorism."
Over all, more than 1,200 people have been detained as part of the sweeping investigation, including men traveling the country with large amounts of cash and box cutters, and those who sought information on crop-dusters and flying lessons on large jets.
But a senior law enforcement official said for the first time last week that just 10 to 15 of the detainees are suspected as Al Qaeda sympathizers, and that the government has yet to find evidence indicating that any of them had knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks or acted as accomplices.
While most members of this small group are being held in New York on material witness warrants, some 500 others - almost twice as many as previously believed - are in federal custody on immigration charges for violations like overstaying their visas or lying on documents.
A handful of those arrested are believed to have known some of of the suspected hijackers. Osama Awadallah, for instance, wrote about one of them in a college exam book, prosecutors say. Another student, Mohdar Abdallah, is in jail because his name was found on a slip of paper in a rental car one of the hijackers parked at Dulles International Airport in Washington before his suicide mission.
Others seem to have drawn suspicion for more coincidental reasons. An Egyptian antiques dealer from Arkansas named Hady Hassan Omar made plane reservations on a Kinko's computer around the same time one of the hijackers did so at the same place; he spent two months in jail before being released on Friday. A Pakistani gas station attendant was just a few minutes ahead of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader, in the line to renew his driver's license; he was denied bail by a Miami judge.
Of those snared in the government's net, many have cooperated with the F.B.I., admitted that they violated their visa agreements and agreed to leave the country. But they remain in jail.
Now, as the Justice Department seeks to interview 5,000 young men who have arrived here from the Middle East on temporary visas in the past two years, immigration attorneys and Arab-American community leaders are worried that cooperation may lead to the same fate as that of those already detained.
"The impact of all this is alienating the very community whose confidence and support is critical to a successful investigation," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the immigration rights project of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The F.B.I. has so far denied a Freedom of Information Act request filed by a coalition of 21 Arab-American and human rights groups demanding a list of who is jailed, where and why. Earlier this month, six members of Congress made a similar request. Ms. Tucker said that the department was prevented from releasing some information because judges have sealed criminal cases, and that some information has been given to Congress.
"People don't want to step forward to help with bail," said Randall Hamud, a San Diego lawyer who represents three detained students, one of whom has been released. "They're afraid if they give money, they'll be put on an F.B.I. hit list."
Mr. Elfar, the man who turned 30 in the detention center, said he was expecting F.B.I. questions because he had entered the country to study at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., as did one of the hijackers. Agents picked him up on Sept. 24 at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, where he had been repairing planes for Trans States Airlines, a small regional carrier, for several years.
Investigators seized Mr. Elfar's address book, phone bills and computer. On Oct. 5, he was given a lie detector test.
A month ago, Mr. Elfar, who is from Alexandria, Egypt, was granted a "voluntary departure," which means he must leave the country but would not be blocked from returning. He was supposed to fly out by Friday; instead, he is still in jail.
"He's willing to buy a ticket, but they're not finalizing this," said Dorothy Harper, Mr. Elfar's lawyer. "Whether they're investigating more, whether they just want to keep him around for a while, I don't know."
Already fasting during daylight hours because of Ramadan, Mr. Elfar said Friday that he was starting a hunger strike and would only drink a glass of water each sunset to fulfill his religious obligation of breaking the fast.
"A lot of things that were on my mind I do not believe it anymore, like the fair trial, the free speech," he said.
Though the government has provided scant information, the story of the detainees has begun to emerge through interviews with their lawyers, relatives and friends. Here are a few of their stories.
Ali al-Maqtari
In the two months he spent in a detention center in Mason, Tenn., Ali al-Maqtari had a lot of time to think about why he had lost his liberty. But even now, two weeks after he was released with a simple, "You're free to go," he is unable to explain it.
"They said this is a free country, right?" he said. "But for two months I was locked up, I suffered there and my wife had to leave the Army, and for something I didn't do. I really don't understand it, and no one will explain it to me."
Immigration officials will not discuss the matter. But court papers show that Mr. Maqtari was detained because authorities found two box cutters in his car, along with postcards of New York City, as he drove to Fort Campbell, Ky., where his wife was reporting for Army duty on Sept. 15.
Although an immigration judge asked the government to present more solid evidence for holding Mr. Maqtari, the government declined to do so, saying only that he might be part of a larger terrorist "mosaic." "What may seem trivial to some may appear of great moment to those within the F.B.I. or the intelligence community," wrote Michael E. Rolince, the F.B.I.'s international terrorism section chief, in an Oct. 11 affidavit justifying Mr. Maqtari's detention. He added that the bureau was unable to rule out the possibility he was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Maqtari, 26, was born in Yemen, studied in France and came to the United States on a tourist visa last year with hopes of becoming a French teacher. He met Tiffinay Hughes, a native of North Carolina and a convert to Islam, through an online chat room, and they were married in June. He had planned to study at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, but his wife, a member of the National Guard, wanted to enlist, so he drove her to Fort Campbell.
At the gate, the two were ordered out of their car and questioned while the car was searched, Mr. Maqtari said. His lawyer, Michael J. Boyle of New Haven, said her picture had already been posted at the guardhouse because she had picked up her military orders in Massachusetts on Sept. 13 wearing an Islamic head covering. While he was taken to Memphis for questioning, she was trailed by guards around the base for weeks, while other soldiers openly asked her if she was a spy. She said base officers encouraged her to take an honorable discharge, and she finally did so on Oct. 28.
Meanwhile, Mr. Maqtari was held at the West Tennessee Detention Center for weeks, able to speak by phone to his wife once a week. On Oct. 1, an immigration judge agreed to release him on $50,000 bond, but the immigration service appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, saying he was a danger to the community. The board said the service could continue to hold Mr. Maqtari, but asked for additional proof. A month later, when the service had provided no more proof than the Rolince affidavit, the board said Mr. Maqtari could go.
The couple has moved back to New Haven, where both plan to study education and look for work.
"I just want to get my life back," he said. "I just hope people will trust me now." David Firestone
Ahmed Abou el-Kheir
Ahmed Abou el-Kheir was among the first wave of people arrested following the Sept. 11 attacks. He arrived in the United States on a tourist visa on Sept. 7. He was arrested and has been in jail ever since on a variety of charges.
Details are scant as to why Mr. Kheir, 28, came under suspicion. All documents pertaining to his status as a material witness are under seal. Law-enforcement authorities declined comment on the case.
In a recent telephone interview from the Passaic County jail in New Jersey, where he is being held, Mr. Kheir, an Egyptian citizen, said he believed there was suspicion he had "a relationship with one of the hijackers." He said he was shown an array of photographs, apparently of suspected hijackers, and was asked whether he knew any of them.
"I'm sure that I didn't know any of them," he said. One person familiar with the investigation said a polygraph test of Mr. Kheir raised some questions about the veracity of his answers.
Mr. Kheir contended he was arrested because "I was Egyptian and Arabic and Muslim - this is the reason they hold me."
Mr. Kheir was picked up in the days after the attacks and initially charged with trespassing in the suburban Maryland hotel where he was staying, said his lawyer, Martin R. Stolar. At some point in late September, while still in custody, Mr. Kheir was charged as a material witness.
On Oct. 11, however, investigators dismissed the material witness order. But before he could be released, Mr. Kheir was served with an arrest warrant charging that he had failed to pay a $250 fine for a 1998 disorderly conduct charge in the Bronx, Mr. Stolar said.
On Oct. 12, Mr. Kheir appeared before a judge in the Bronx, Mr. Stolar said. The warrant was vacated, and he was given a conditional discharge.
Mr. Stolar then learned that there was another request to detain his client, this time from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Documents charged that Mr. Kheir, who had visited the United States on two previous occasions, had held jobs while on a tourist visa.
Because of these violations, Mr. Kheir was eventually ordered to leave the country, Mr. Stolar said. So far, Mr. Kheir has not been able to go anywhere. The immigration service will not deport him without his passport, which the F.B.I. still has. Mr. Stolar said he has been calling the two agencies, trying "to get the two of them together, so the I.N.S. can pick up the man's passport and get the guy on the airplane." Benjamin Weiser
Yael Antebi
At 2:30 a.m. after Halloween night, when she heard the knock on the door at her Columbia, Mo., apartment, Yael Antebi was on the phone, calling her father in Israel, where it was morning.
Her father didn't have time to answer before Ms. Antebi, 21, was arrested by immigration agents, taken to Kansas City and put in jail there. Ms. Antebi came to the United States in late September to visit her boyfriend, and the two of them, like dozens of other young Israelis here, had found work selling plastic toy helicopters and puzzles in shopping mall kiosks.
While her immigration papers were valid, Ms. Antebi was detained because her tourist visa prohibited employment, an offense that, in normal times, rarely results in detention. She was not alone. Around the country, at least 70 other young Israelis, including her boyfriend, have been detained on similar charges.
It was an anxious time for Ms. Antebi's parents, who live near Haifa; they got the message that their daughter had called, but all day, whenever they tried to call back, there was no answer.
"We were very worried," said her mother, Uta Antebi. "And then when she was able to call us, late the next day, we were very upset to find out that she was in jail." Ms. Antebi was worried, too. "I was never arrested before," she said. . "I had never been in jail. The people were nice to us, but it's a scary situation. Everyone said it wouldn't be very long, but as the days went on, we got more and more worried."
The logistics of calling her family in Israel made matters more complicated. Detainees were only allowed to make collect calls within the United States. For Ms. Antebi, the only route to her parents was through Yoav Cohen, a New York relative, who would arrange a conference call.
"Yoav and my parents were great, and did everything they could to help," she said. "I was lucky. They got me a lawyer, and I was released Monday. The sad thing is, my boyfriend is still in there, and there's nothing I can do to help him."
Ms. Antebi has agreed to go back to Israel, and she expects to leave next week. She is eager to see her parents and her two younger brothers, one of whom just went into the army.
"When I got out, and I called, I told him, this is the one moment in your life when you go into the military, and here I am, getting all the attention," she said. "I really hope my boyfriend is out by the time I leave." Tamar Lewin
Mohammed Refai
Mohammed Refai became a detainee on Sept. 18, after federal investigators in Arkansas found documents that appeared to connect one of the terrorist hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi, with an apartment complex in Akron, Ohio.
Mr. Refai, a Syrian immigrant, was one of a handful of Middle Eastern residents who lived in the complex. Initially, investigators believed Mr. Refai, 40, knew something about the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. At the Gas O Clean gas station he ran in Akron, investigators discovered he was selling cigarette lighters with knives in them. A polygraph test he took indicated deception. In interviews with his girlfriend, investigators learned that Mr. Refai had considered naming their child Osama. And at his home, they found video footage of bridges and power plants in Chicago, Washington and Niagara Falls, N.Y.
But Bradley Ortman, Mr. Refai's lawyer, said that investigators have cleared Mr. Refai of having connections to terrorists. According to newspaper accounts, investigators apparently have decided that the documents from Arkansas involved a case of mistaken identity, the cigarette lighters were just trinkets and Osama bin Laden was not the Osama proposed as his child's namesake. Mr. Refai has told investigators the videos were vacation shots.
Mr. Refai is still being held, however, accused of obtaining a green card by entering into a sham marriage with an American citizen in April 1998. The couple divorced 18 months after marrying.
Mr. Refai's ex-wife, Susan Hinzman, was recently charged with making false statements about their relationship.
Mr. Ortman said Mr. Refai was awaiting a deportation hearing. Pam Belluck
Basem Diab
Nearly nine months pregnant, Basima Diab sits by the phone most days, waiting for her husband, Basem, to call from the detention center where he has spent the last two weeks.
She worries about whether he has enough blankets. "It gets very cold in there," she said.
With their 3-year-old daughter in tow, the Diabs, both 34, came from Syria on tourist visas nearly a year ago, hoping for a taste of the relaxed social norms that draw so many from the Middle East to the suburbs outside of Disneyland.
A few months later, Mrs. Diab began what has been a difficult pregnancy, with frequent trips to the emergency room to treat her diabetes. The health care has been so good that the couple decided to stay in the United States until the baby was born, if not longer.
To cover the doctor visits and rent on their apartment in Stanton, Calif., Mr. Diab started loading trucks at Sasha Cosmetics, a company in Huntington Beach, Calif. "He's an educated guy, an engineer," Niazi Azhak, the owner, said. "But he couldn't find work anywhere else."
Nor was he supposed to. Under the terms of his visa, working is a deportable offense. Yet Mr. Diab stacked boxes at the plant for several weeks, earning roughly $1,500 a month, about 10 times what he might have made in Syria, his wife said. Then, 15 minutes after he showed up for his shift on Nov. 7, Mr. Diab was taken away by federal agents.
At a minimum, immigration officials said, Mr. Diab overstayed his visa, and would likely get a hearing before an immigration judge in the next few weeks. In the meantime, his former employers have said they would buy the family plane tickets back to Syria, while others in the Middle Eastern community in Orange County would try to find money for bail, if the judge granted it, and food for Mrs. Diab. Greg Winter
Nacer Fathi Mustafa
Nacer Fathi Mustafa and his father, Fathi Mustafa, went to Mexico on Sept. 9, on what was supposed to be a four-day business trip to buy leather jackets to sell at their store in Labelle, Fla.
Because of the attacks, they could not fly back until Sept. 15, and when they got to the airport in Houston, Mr. Mustafa, 29, and his 65-year-old father were detained by immigration officials who said their passports had an extra layer of laminate of the sort sometimes used to fraudulently insert a different picture.
The elder Mr. Mustafa, a Palestinian who is a naturalized American citizen, was released after 10 days, but sent home to Florida wearing a leg monitor to track his movements. His son, who was born in the United States and had a prior arrest record, was kept in jail for more than two months, and finally got home to his wife and two young daughters on Wednesday, after law-enforcement officials cleared his passport.
"It's been very hard," Mr. Mustafa said. "My 18-year-old brother was working in the store, but he doesn't know very much, and I've lost about $50,000. I don't know yet if we'll be able to go on. This is a small town and your reputation means everything."
His detention was difficult for his family. His wife, Sabreen, does not have a driver's license, so she had to be driven everywhere she needed to go by members of the extended family. And Diana, who is 5, and Jeneen, who is 8 months old, were bewildered by their father's absence.
"I'd call every day, and talk to Diana, and she would ask when I'd be home, and I would tell her in a week," Mr. Mustafa said. "I told her I was working. I didn't want to say I was in jail."
Even so, he said, Diana must have heard people talking, because when he returned she asked about jail. "So I asked her, 'What's jail?' and she didn't really know," he said. "I'll tell her about it when she's older."
Mr. Mustafa's father still has the leg monitor attached, but expects that it to be removed this week.
"It has been embarrassing for him," said his son. "He basically doesn't go out much, but if he goes to the bank, he sees people looking at him. It's changed his life a lot." Tamar Lewin
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THE LAW
Bush's New Rules to Fight Terror Transform the Legal Landscape
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By MATTHEW PURDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/politics/25LEGA.html
As Pentagon officials begin designing military tribunals for suspected terrorists, they are considering the possibility of trials on ships at sea or on United States installations, like the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The proceedings promise to be swift and largely secret, with one military officer saying that the release of information might be limited to the barest facts, like the defendant's name and sentence. Transcripts of the proceedings, this officer said, could be kept from public view for years, perhaps decades.
The military tribunals are the boldest initiative in a series of laws and rewritten federal regulations that, taken together, have created an alternate system of justice in the aftermath of Sept. 11, giving the government far greater power to detain, investigate and prosecute people suspected of involvement in terrorism.
Those changes, described by legal experts and government and law enforcement officials, are likely to affect mostly residents of the country who are not citizens but who, until now, have had many of the constitutional rights and protections of citizens.
The Bush administration says its agenda commands strong public support, a view bolstered by recent polls. Even most critics acknowledge the need for enhanced security measures, but the administration's new approach has stirred unease both inside and outside government, as well as overseas.
Some senior law enforcement officials believe that the military tribunals are unnecessary and that the government's record in prosecuting terrorists in federal court over the last decade justifies continuing that approach. Spanish officials told the United States last week that they would not extradite eight men suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks without assurances that their cases would be kept in civilian court.
Although it remains unclear how widely these new powers will ultimately be applied, the provisions alter some basic principles of the American judicial system - like the right to a jury trial, the privacy of the attorney- client relationship and strong protections against the use of preventive detention.
The steps taken by the administration reflect outrage that the Sept. 11 terrorists were foreigners who lived freely and undetected in the United States, even though some had violated their visas, and the fear that potential terrorists or people with information about terrorist acts are among the millions of immigrants in the country.
"We're an open society, we give people access to the American dream," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "With that privilege there is a responsibility. That responsibility has not always been lived up to, and it's not always been asked that they live up to it, either."
President Bush's authorization of secret military tribunals for noncitizens accused of terrorism and the systematic interviewing of 5,000 young Middle Eastern men in the country on temporary visas is well known. But broad new powers are also contained in more obscure provisions.
A recent rule change published without announcement in the Federal Register gives the government wide latitude to keep noncitizens in detention even when an immigration judge has ordered them freed.
And under new laws, the attorney general can detain for deportation any noncitizen who he has "reasonable grounds to believe" is "engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States," according to a recent internal Immigration and Naturalization Service memorandum.
Critics have said that the administration's measures often mean singling out people on the basis of nationality or ethnicity.
"We have decided to trade off the liberty of immigrants - particularly Arabs and Muslims - for the purported security of the majority," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University who often represents detained foreigners.
In the guidelines for carrying out the 5,000 interviews with young Middle Eastern men, Attorney General John Ashcroft wrote to federal prosecutors that the selection of the men was not meant to imply "that one ethnic group or religious group is more prone to terrorism than another." Yet local law enforcement officials in several cities have balked at carrying out the interviews because of the impression of profiling.
Secrecy is a hallmark of the wartime judicial system, just as the free flow of information is a signature of the nation's normal criminal procedures. The names of about a dozen people being detained for months as material witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation have been kept confidential because, officials explain, they are witnesses in grand jury proceedings. In ordinary cases, while grand jury proceedings are closed to the public, witnesses are rarely held in jail.
A full accounting of law enforcement activity related to the Sept. 11 investigation has not been made public. The Justice Department has not said precisely how many people are being detained, how many have been questioned and released and where people are being held and on what charges.
The new administration powers, amassed during wartime, have made the normally delicate balance between individual rights and collective security that much more precarious.
"My view on the military tribunals will be formed by how they're used," said Warren B. Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire and the chairman of the president's foreign intelligence advisory board. "If they're done carefully and with deliberation - and I really expect they will be - I don't have a problem with it.
"As far as ethnic profiling; it's very troubling. It pains me to say this, but some of it may have to be done. We just have to recognize that we cannot bend over backwards in our innate American fairness to overlook that there are some people trying to hurt us."
The Act: Bill With Long Name, and Longer Reach
The biggest changes in the government's power over residents who are not citizens were spelled out in a law known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, hastily passed after the attacks. The measure's potential reach is summarized in the full name that was needed to create that acronym - the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
Besides providing more money to strengthen border security, the act greatly expands the notion of who should be considered a terrorist and provides the attorney general with remarkable personal powers to detain such people.
In the past, entry into the United States was denied only to members of 28 groups that were formally designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department. But under the new law, any foreigner who publicly endorses terrorist activity, or belongs to a group that does, can be turned away at the border or deported.
The term "terrorist activity" has also been broadened to include any foreigner who uses "dangerous devices" or raises money for a terrorist group, whether or not he or she knows the group is engaged in terrorism. And perhaps most strikingly, the law allows the government to detain any foreigners whom the attorney general certifies as endangering national security.
The attorney general can order such detention if he simply has "reasonable grounds to believe" that the foreigner might be a threat. The Justice Department has to bring criminal or deportation charges against such people within seven days, but it can hold them indefinitely.
Mr. Ashcroft has said that such aggressive detention policies are "vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks. It is difficult for a person in jail or under detention to murder innocent people or to aid or abet in terrorism."
The administration has also changed rules to make it easier for officials to keep watch on both citizens and noncitizens while they are in federal custody. In one change, it has eased officials' ability to eavesdrop on communications between lawyers and their clients in federal custody when it would "deter future acts of violence or terrorism."
Defense lawyers say that new rule erodes a basic right of the accused to confer privately with their lawyers. But civil liberties lawyers have found more to object to in the wide provisions of the Patriot Act.
Noel Saleh, an immigration lawyer and vice president of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Detroit, called the act "an extremely dangerous law in terms of the very expansive definition of the concept of terrorism. The consequences of being labeled a terrorist are extreme in that one can be detained indefinitely."
Mr. Saleh added, "That could theoretically happen to someone who at the end of Ramadan does their charitable tithing to an orphanage in South Lebanon that was established by Hezbollah."
Law enforcement officials have said they have not used the new powers yet because they already have enough authority to detain material witnesses and visa violators who have been picked up in the investigations.
The officials also said that many arrests of Middle Eastern men have been made not as a result of profiling but from a flood of tips pouring in about suspicious activities. And in many cases, the focus on Arabs and Muslims simply reflects the public's perception of where the current dangers lie.
Mr. Saleh said that since Sept. 11, the immigration service has held some of the detainees longer than usual by opposing their release on bail, forcing them to appeal to judges for bonds, a process that can add three to four weeks to their time in jail.
"I obviously think that this is improper," said Mr. Saleh, who represents six Middle Eastern clients detained in the recent investigations. "It's an abuse of discretion." Still, Mr. Saleh said he would not complain about what others see as selective enforcement, because clamping down on visa violators is what the immigration service is "supposed to do."
And if anything, some law enforcement officials say, the agency has been too timid. Conscious of the concerns about racial profiling, the agency has been reluctant to cull its files for people who have overstayed their visas, and it has generally detained only those Middle Easterners who have been of interest to the F.B.I.
It also has begun to turn back some visitors who once would have passed easily into the country.
At the F.B.I.'s prodding, in mid-October, the immigration service refused entry at Kennedy International Airport in New York to a Jordanian who is an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, law enforcement officials said. They said the man was on his way from Cairo to Los Angeles to do something that suddenly seemed a little worrisome: he was planning to attend flight school. He was put back on a plane to Cairo.
The Tribunals: Swift, Secret Justice, and No Appeals
At the Pentagon, very little has been disclosed regarding the shape of the military tribunals that President Bush has ordered, but one thing is clear: they will be unlike any judicial proceedings in this country since the end of World War II.
Suspected terrorists will be tried not before a jury but rather a commission made up primarily - though not necessarily exclusively - of military officers. The suspects and their lawyers, who may also be military officers appointed to represent them, will be tried without the same access to the evidence against them that defendants in civilian trials have. The evidence of their guilt does not have to meet the familiar standard "beyond reasonable doubt" but must simply "have probative value to a reasonable person."
There will be no appeals.
"The commission itself is going to be unique," said one military officer involved in the discussions. "It will be separate and distinct from a civilian criminal trial. It will be separate and distinct from a court-martial."
Mr. Bush's order establishing the tribunals - issued on Nov. 13 not as an executive order but rather as a military order by the president in his constitutional capacity as commander in chief of the armed forces - set only broad guidelines for the tribunals. It said, for example, that convictions and sentences could be reached by only a two-thirds vote of the commission's members. It also left to Mr. Bush himself the decision on who would face prosecution in the tribunals.
The rest of the details - the rules of evidence, the composition of the tribunals, the forums to be used - are now being debated inside the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that he had ordered the Pentagon's civilian general counsel, William J. Haynes 2nd, to begin drafting the procedures.
"The president's order is not terribly specific," one senior officer said. "Who prosecutes? Who defends? All of those things are up for grabs right now."
So far no one has been brought up before a tribunal, though some administration and Pentagon officials said it could happen soon. Officials are debating whether to prosecute Zacarias Moussaoui, 33, a French citizen of Moroccan descent being held in New York, through the tribunal process.
Mr. Bush's aides justified his decision by citing similar tribunals held throughout American history, from the Revolution through the Civil War and international tribunals in Nuremberg after World War II.
Mr. Bush's decision has provoked criticism from across the political spectrum, but legal experts are divided over the tribunals.
Phillip Allen Lacovara, a former deputy solicitor general, said military tribunals promised a more proportional prosecution of what, in the case of the attacks of Sept. 11, amounted to crimes of war than any criminal trial in a civilian court could.
Some federal law enforcement officials questioned the need for tribunals, given the government's success at convicting terrorists in civilian courts. But Mr. Lacovara noted the length of those prosecutions, including the trials of some of those charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He said the Bush administration was almost certainly considering the greater feasibility in a military tribunal of imposing the death penalty.
"People charged with violations of the laws of war are not entitled to the same level of guarantees as civilians charged with crimes," he said, citing Supreme Court rulings that have upheld the tribunals in the past, "as long as the proceedings are fundamentally fair."
The Reasoning: Trails Lead to Middle Easterners
The White House insists that the new emphasis on preventing terrorist attacks has not led to racial profiling - a practice that has become increasingly discredited in recent years with disclosures that the state police in New Jersey and elsewhere had pulled over disproportionate numbers of black men.
In the weeks since Sept. 11, said Mr. Bartlett, the White House communications director, investigators have simply followed the tips and evidence they had. "The idea was not that we were going to find all visa violators from the Middle East," he said. "That may have been the result."
But some law enforcement officials acknowledge that they have focused extra attention on young men whose last names suggest Middle Eastern origins. Just last month, detectives in New York City's warrants division culled through the police department's computers for people with Middle Eastern names for whom there were outstanding arrest warrants for petty crimes. Nearly 100 people were picked up and questioned about terrorism, an investigator said, with the warrants used to encourage full cooperation.
The federal government has conducted its own, wide-ranging interview program. In recent days, investigators have begun conducting "voluntary" interviews with 5,000 young Middle Eastern men who have entered the United States in the past two years from countries with links to terrorism.
The interviews are voluntary because under the Fourth Amendment, an involuntary detention for questioning might well be a "seizure" requiring justification, at a minimum, on the basis of some reason to suspect a particular individual of a particular crime.
The federal investigators are looking for evidence that they do not yet have, evidence that might shed light on the terrorist network that planned the Sept. 11 attacks or that might still be in the process of planning others.
On more than 200 college campuses federal investigators have contacted administrators to collect information about students from Middle Eastern countries: what they are studying, where they are living, how they are doing. The investigators are also paying unannounced visits on the students themselves, asking anything from their views on Osama bin Laden to their educational plans.
Unlike the actual detention of hundreds of Arab men, these investigatory sweeps have aroused little public controversy or criticism - with one exception. Some police chiefs, having worked hard to put racial profiling to rest, have said they would not cooperate with the F.B.I. because the sweep appears to violate departmental policy or state or local laws against racial profiling or intelligence gathering for political purposes.
Walter E. Dellinger, acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, said he had qualms about measures that applied to select groups of people.
"I am more willing to entertain restrictions that affect all of us - like identity cards and more intrusive X-ray procedures at airports - and somewhat more skeptical of restrictions that only affect some of us, like those that focus on immigrants or single out people by nationality," he said.
But Mr. Dellinger said infiltration and surveillance were necessary to combat terrorists. "We're going to find it impossible to physically protect every location," he said, "so we have to take significant steps that lead to a new level of intrusion."
This article was reported and written by Richard L. Berke, Christopher Drew, Steven Greenhouse, Steven Lee Myers, Robert Pear and Benjamin Weiser, with Mr. Purdy.
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Indefensible - The case against military tribunals.
BY ROBERT A. LEVY
Sunday, November 25, 2001
Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001507
President Bush has declared that an "extraordinary emergency" allows him to order military trials of non-U.S. citizens--even if they are arrested here, are tried here and reside here legally. The president need only assert that he has "reason to believe" the noncitizen is involved in international terrorism. We all want to fight terrorism, but shredding the Constitution--which applies to all "persons," not just citizens--isn't the way to do it.
Under the recently issued executive order, the defense secretary sets all the rules for these tribunals, including how many members will be on the panel, what qualifications they must meet, what standard of proof will be needed to convict, and what type of evidence can be considered. There will be no judicial review. Only the president or defense secretary will have authority to overturn a decision. Astonishingly, the only rule that Mr. Bush's executive order lays out with specificity is that the accused can be convicted and sentenced--to life in prison or death--if two-thirds of the panel agree.
Even military courts, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, require unanimity in capital cases and provide for several stages of appellate review. They also preserve many of our Fifth Amendment rights, like protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, and the right to Miranda-type warnings. Unlike conventional military courts, the new Bush tribunals could unleash an ugly and dangerous breed of justice, lacking the due process guarantees that distinguish us from the barbarians we are fighting.
The problems grow the more closely one examines the language of Mr. Bush's executive order. For example, the secretary of defense can "transfer to a governmental authority control of any individual" under the order. That could easily be construed to condone deportation, without conviction or trial, to a country that would be more willing than the U.S. to extract information by torture.
The order also provides that a detainee "shall not be privileged to seek any remedy . . . directly or indirectly . . . in any court of the United States." Despite denials from the administration, that provision sounds much like suspension of habeas corpus, long celebrated as the "Great Writ." Yes, if Congress approves, habeas can be suspended, but only if there has been an invasion or rebellion, neither of which is a fair characterization of September's horrific acts by a handful of terrorists.
Once an individual is scheduled to be tried by a Bush tribunal, the tribunal secures "exclusive jurisdiction with respect to offenses by the individual." Note that the executive order says "offenses," not "terrorism offenses." Thus the tribunal might acquire authority to prosecute ordinary crimes--drug dealing, say--as long as the president had "reason to believe," although not much evidence, that the defendant was also involved in terrorism.
That would not pass constitutional muster. In 1866, in Ex parte Milligan, the Supreme Court held that military tribunals may not try civilians unless the civil courts are "actually closed and it is impossible to administer criminal justice." After Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian authorities declared martial law, closed civil courts, and used military tribunals to prosecute ordinary crimes. Five years later, in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that martial law could not justify replacing civil courts with military tribunals.
Significantly, the court also held in Milligan that martial law may be declared only by Congress, during wartime, and subject to judicial review. That raises another grave problem with the edict: It was concocted without congressional input. Citing his power as commander in chief, Mr. Bush claims unilateral authority to establish the new tribunals. But that authority, at best, is shared with the legislative branch. Congress, not the president, is empowered by Article I, section 8, "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces."
The administration has two responses.
First, it contends that Congress has spoken. On Sept. 14, the Senate and House overwhelmingly passed a resolution authorizing "action against those nations, organizations or persons" that the president determines "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. True enough, but the resolution had nothing to say about tribunals. It sanctioned the use of force, not the procedures for convicting guilty parties.
Second, the administration cites the secret military trial, ordered by Franklin Roosevelt, of eight Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the U.S. with explosives. In 1942, the Supreme Court gave its consent (Ex parte Quirin), and six of the eight were ultimately executed. Yet that case cuts the other way. For starters, it applied to agents of a foreign government who were in this country illegally. Moreover, the court upheld the right of judicial review, which is nowhere to be found in the Bush executive order, and observed that Congress had formally declared war, expressly authorizing military trials of offenses "against the law of war." No state of war has been declared today.
The Bush executive order takes a perilous step toward eviscerating the time-honored doctrine of the separation of powers, a centerpiece of our Constitution. Too much unchecked power is vested in a single branch of government. The president and his secretary of defense--if not this administration, then a successor with fewer constitutional scruples--can run roughshod over the Bill of Rights. At a minimum, to the extent that military tribunals can try legal aliens, without congressional authorization, that's bad law, and bad public policy. It is also morally indefensible. This decent and honorable president can do much better.
Mr. Levy is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
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Wolves Wander Into Germany, Aiding a Resettlement Effort
New York Times
November 25, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/25WOLF.html
WEISSKEISSEL, Germany, Nov. 23 - The Society for the Protection of Wolves was founded in Germany in 1991, partly to create the conditions to resettle wolves there. It was an optimistic project. Wolves had been violently eradicated from German soil 140 years earlier.
"During the last 50 years, lone wolves were observed occasionally in eastern Germany, having wandered in from Poland," the group's president, Peter Blanché, said this week.
As it happened, the society's members could not have guessed how quickly they would see their wish fulfilled. In this remote corner of Saxony along the Polish border, foresters have confirmed the residence of a pack.
Natural wanderers, the wolves had arrived unaided by human intervention. Three cubs have been spotted in the pack - the first recorded births outside captivity within the current borders of Germany since about 1850.
The pack, thought to have migrated from either northwestern Poland or the Carpathian Mountains, has settled in the Muskauer Heide, a nature preserve west of the Neisse River, which separates Poland from Germany. The preserve, which supports a wide variety of wildlife, is also a military training ground.
"The wolves have chosen a good home," said Friedrich Koppelt of the Weisskeissel branch of the Federal Forestry Bureau, which oversees the preserve. "They are well guarded, and they do not seem to mind the training exercises."
The emergence of a wolf pack in Germany has given a new impetus to Mr. Blanché's organization, which above all seeks to educate people about wolves and quash irrational fears.
"We can trace hate of the wolf in this part of the world through historical and literary sources at least to the Middle Ages," said Erik Zimen, a biologist and an adviser to the group. His book, "The Wolf," records the history of attitudes toward wolves in central Europe.
"At some point in the 17th century after the Thirty Years' War, this hate seems to have become hysteria."
In the early 19th century, the Brothers Grimm collected and recorded German folk stories, including the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. The big, bad wolf makes an appearance in many of the stories - perhaps an indication of prejudices of the day. By 1846, the last wolf had disappeared from Bavaria and, shortly after, from what is now eastern Germany. The final momentum was provided by state eradication programs.
Many biologists and conservationists agree that the key to a lasting re- emergence of the wolf in Germany is a good reception from the human population. "The only thing that prevents the expansion of the wolf's terrain is human attitudes," said Frank Mörschel, a World Wildlife Fund biologist. "If we welcome them as a part of nature and humanity's heritage, they will come back."
Mr. Blanché said the reaction from people in Saxony had been positive.
Wolves are protected throughout the European Union by regulations adopted under the Bern Convention in 1979. German farmers are compensated by the state for losses of livestock to protected animals.
Dr. Zimen said he was euphoric about the return of the wolves. Still, he recognized that for the wolves, the Neisse is just a river. "Tomorrow," he said, "I could hear that they had decided to be Polish."
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New study clarifies cancer-insulin link
November 25, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011125-55627319.htm
High insulin levels caused by inactivity and excess weight may make cancer more likely, according to scientists with the American Institute for Cancer Research, or AICR.
AICR researchers say their new theory - based on a review of scientific literature dealing with obesity and cancer risk - could provide the "missing link" that explains why cancer is more common among the overweight and the obese.
AICR, the nation's third largest cancer charity, is not suggesting high levels of insulin - a hormone crucial for the metabolism of glucose and carbohydrates - are responsible for all cancer.
The institute focuses exclusively on the link between diet and cancer, and the only research it funds examines how diet and nutrition affect cancer risk.
However, Helen Norman, lead author of the new AICR report that sees high levels of insulin and other hormones known as "growth factors" as culprits in the increased risk of cancer among overweight, sedentary people, says there is growing support for this thinking.
Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, chief of UCLA's Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology, says, "Insulin levels have already been associated with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cognitive dysfunction and overall mortality.
"It should come as no surprise that new research is now implicating this same insulin-regulatory pathway in several kinds of cancer," he added.
Dr. Chlebowski was referring to research showing that two related conditions, known as insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, may be connected to malignancies such as breast and colon cancer.
Insulin resistance is marked by a growing inability to use insulin. It's a condition that tends to follow weight gain - particularly weight in the stomach area - and a drop in physical activity. It is often associated with higher-than-normal cholesterol and blood-sugar levels.
"As their bodies become less sensitive to insulin's effects, overweight and obese individuals experience greater difficulty converting glucose into energy," AICR said in a statement.
"The body attempts to compensate for this by producing more insulin, a condition called hyperinsulinemia, which, in turn, spurs cells to divide and raises cancer risk," the cancer research organization added.
"It's clear that high insulin levels coincide with a host of chronic diseases, including cancer," said Dr. Gerald Reaven, professor emeritus of medicine, endocrinology, and metabolism at Stanford University.
Dr. Reaven, best known for research showing that elevated insulin levels promote heart disease, said, "We've just published a paper showing that insulin resistance is a good predictor of cancer risk. But the situation is complex." He said it is important to recognize that "genetics [also] plays a role" in determining whether someone becomes insulin resistant.
The genetic factors, Dr. Reaven said, have "historically made the precise impact of weight and fitness harder to gauge."
"But I hasten to add that it is now very clear that insulin resistance is more common among overweight people, and that's important," the veteran researcher said.
AICR says that while insulin resistance is a "potentially dangerous condition," it is "reversible." It can be undone, the organization says, through regular physical exercise and by losing weight and keeping it off.
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Ulster Protestants to End Demonstrations Against Schoolchildren
New York Times
November 25, 2001
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/international/europe/25BELF.html
LONDON, Nov. 24 - Protestant residents of a Belfast neighborhood have decided to end a 12-week-old protest that has forced Catholic schoolchildren to walk to their classes under the protection of riot squad police and military escorts.
The daily demonstrations and the scenes of young children and their parents becoming targets of screamed obscenities, stones, bricks and pipe bombs have focused international attention on the depths of community suspicions and hatreds at a time when Northern Ireland is seeking to end decades of sectarian violence.
Protestant residents of the Glenbryn housing project agreed on Friday night to end the demonstrations after the direct intervention of David Trimble, the Protestant first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Mark Durkan, the body's Catholic deputy first minister.
The two men had expressed particular concern over the continuing impasse at a moment when the power-sharing legislature is taking up its functions after months of being suspended over an arms dispute. An Irish Republican Army decision to begin disarming last month cleared the way for a resumption of the assembly, which is the centerpiece of the 1998 Northern Ireland peace accord.
The school dispute has set off repeated outbreaks of fire bombings and stone throwing in North Belfast, where Catholic neighborhoods, with their Irish flags and republican murals, abut Protestant ones, with their curbs painted in the red, white and blue colors of the Union Jack and walls daubed in anti-Irish slogans.
"The decision will create a climate that will help them address the wider socio-economic problems facing North Belfast," the two political leaders said in a joint statement.
At issue has been the Catholic families' freedom to walk along several blocks in the Protestant Glenbryn community in their passage to the Holy Cross primary school.
The Protestants have contended that they were reacting to attacks and intimidation from residents in the adjoining Catholic Ardoyne neighborhood. They said that they agreed to lift their protests after receiving assurances of increased policing and the installation of closed circuit cameras at street corners.
The street demonstrations were carried out against a backdrop of growing Protestant disenchantment with the Ulster peace agreement. Mr. Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, has had to battle dissidents in his own party who argue that the accord has benefited Catholics more than it has them.
The party's ruling council has scheduled a showdown meeting next Saturday in Belfast to challenge his decision to re-enter the government with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the I.R.A., while the clandestine guerrilla group remains armed.
Brendan Mailey of the Catholic parents' Right to Education Group said today that he greeted the new announcement with a mixture of relief and caution.
"We welcome this, but we will believe it when we are walking up the road and there's nobody there shouting abuse," he said.
Throughout the standoff in North Belfast, residents of the rival neighborhoods had refused to speak to one another, but there were predictions that the new accord might produce some communication.
"The long-term solution is through dialogue, and it has got to happen," said Mark Coulter, a Protestant community worker.
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On Campus: The Microphone War
Are students apathetic? Not on Bush's turf, where they're scuffling over Iraq
By MELISSA SATTLEY/AUSTIN
From the Nov. 25, 2002 issue of TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101021125-391550,00.html
ON THE CAMPUS/UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
They hooted. They jeered. There was even one scuffle between the opposing sides. But it wasn't just another football game that roused such passions at the University of Texas last week. It was a debate about whether the U.S. should wage war on Iraq. That's become an increasingly divisive subject on college campuses across the country, and perhaps nowhere more so than on U.T.'s Austin campus, the largest in the nation, with some 50,000 students, including the President's daughter Jenna.
The tension first surfaced in October when the student government passed a resolution condemning a U.S. attack on Iraq by a 20-to-17 vote. Pro-war advocates on campus jumped on it and immediately began pushing for a repeal. On Veterans Day, more than 300 students poured into a campus auditorium for a formal exchange of views between the Young Conservatives of Texas, strong supporters of the President's plan for Iraq, and the Campus Coalition for Peace and Justice, a group formed after the Sept. 11 attacks to oppose the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and which is just as fervently against a second war front. Speaking for the Young Conservatives, Erin Selleck told the audience that the al-Qaeda terrorist network and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were one and the same. "They are enemies of the civilized world. Even more frightening is the idea of Iraq having nuclear weapons. Imagine if he supplies them to terrorists," she argued. Countered Campus Coalition member Joel Feldman: "The U.S. dictating who will be in power in the Middle East is part of the problem, not the solution. This war will be seen by the rest of the world for what it is, an act of aggression for a strategic purpose."
Most listeners in the audience seemed to agree with the Campus Coalition, or at least people on that side seemed more vocal about their feelings. Still, the Young Conservatives also had defenders. When an antiwar advocate began heckling a student in the pro-war camp, other supporters of the President's policies stood up, and a fistfight almost broke out. The evening's moderators managed to restore order before any damage was done, and the meeting ended civilly two hours later with each team thanking the other for its participation.
But the debate is far from over. The resolution against a war could still be overturned should a government member file a motion for a new vote. So the antiwar students continue to make their case. "With the passing of the U.N. resolution, it seems more important now than ever. We have to add our voices to the growing resistance and check this war before it gets started," says Andy Gallagher, 28, a senior majoring in psychology. Jordan Buckley, 20, a junior who wrote the resolution, is in the process of constructing a website to help other campuses get organized against the war. Buckley concedes that the peace efforts at U.T. may have little bearing on the country's actions, but he hopes that they will at least catch the ear of the President, whose daughter Jenna is a junior and nephew George P. Bush attends the law school. Neither of the younger Bushes has participated in the campus discussions about the war. "I don't think they are particularly interested in joining this debate," Buckley says. But, he speculates, "maybe word will get to Mr. Bush that we don't want a war; maybe he'll hear it through the grapevine."
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