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NUCLEAR
Honeywell doubts problems from leak
A Nuclear Headache: What if the Radicals Oust Musharraf?
N. Korea Has Mixed Message On Talks
Brazil Asked to Allow Spot Nuke Checks
Nuclear Agency Rejects U.S. Help in Libya
Libya's Atom Bid in Early Phases
US seeks details from UN on Libya's weapons vow
Kadhafi's decision on arms has Libyans torn between joy and scepticism
Nuclear Program In Libya Detailed
Sleuths Patrol Nations for Nuclear Mischief
Iran the ideal test bed for beefed-up nuclear treaty
TVA Disciplines Employees for Hazing
Dean Labels Bush 'Reckless'
Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident
Some words better left unuttered
MILITARY
Fighter jets on offer in Israeli army's end-of-year sale
Iran formally accepts U.S. assistance
Iran hints ties to U.S. may thaw over quake
Israelis against Sharon policies are right
Brazil Judge Orders U.S. Citizens Fingerprinted
Saddam Has Options for War Crimes Defense
Russian Scientist Acquitted of Treason
China-EU launch space project
Wanted: 'Space Depot' For The Rocket Builders
How the British Spy Agency MI6 Secretly Misled A Nation
Polish officer arrested for espionnage
A Soldier's Return, to a Dark and Moody World
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ashcroft to Remove Himself From Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak
DOJ challenges anthrax ruling
Judge OKs closing of tribal smoke shop
U.S. Tightens Rules For Foreign Airlines
Ashcroft Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation
ENERGY AND OTHER
U.S. agency picks up legal tab
The U.S. natural gas crunch
ACTIVISTS
Israel Is Concerned About Whistleblower
IDF may change open-fire orders after protesters shot
A draining year in Gorleben - Come to Paris!
What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth
Protesters wary of new tactic by feds
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Honeywell doubts problems from leak
Air sampling indicates the likelihood of exposure on Dec. 22 to the plant's neighbors was minimal to none.
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2003/nn12023.htm
METROPOLIS, Ill.--Honeywell officials say they don't think plant neighbors ingested toxins from a Dec. 22 uranium hexafluoride release, but are awaiting urine test results to be certain.
"We do have results back for our employees, and basically they came back all clear," said plant manager Rory O'Kane. "We don't know about public urinalyses yet, but air sampling tells us the likelihood of exposure to the public was minimal to none."
The company and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are investigating the release and three other apparently unrelated chemical leaks in September. NRC officials tentatively plan to discuss their findings in a public meeting Jan. 6, but a time and place have not been picked, said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah.
Honeywell converts natural uranium to uranium hexafluoride, or UF6, for use in nuclear fuel. Although UF6 is mildly radioactive, it is mainly a chemical threat because it emits toxic hydrogen fluoride, or HF, when exposed to moisture in the air, the NRC says.
Production ceased after the Dec. 22 release, and the shutdown will continue "until the NRC and Honeywell are jointly satisfied it's safe to operate the plant," O'Kane said. All 315 employees are still at work - some helping with the investigation, some reviewing procedures and others doing nonproduction tasks such as cleaning.
There are no plans for layoffs. The company in fact is hiring 30 more workers amid expanded business at the Metropolis plant, the nation's only converter of uranium to UF6, O'Kane said.
Honeywell, which had traditionally sent all its UF6 to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, last year began exclusively supplying USEC competitors in Europe. Honeywell still does business "on paper" with USEC, but the UF6 goes to Europe in what is essentially an international swap of material by governments, he said. USEC gets UF6 from Russia in a nuclear disarmament deal.
The Dec. 22 release began at 2:24 a.m. in a process building and made its way outside, resulting in the evacuation of more than 20 people residing less than a mile from the plant. Four residents were hospitalized - two treated and released, and two held briefly for evaluation, according to the plant and NRC. About 75 people were told to stay in their homes as a precaution.
O'Kane said Honeywell is still evaluating the cause and quantity of the latest release, which lasted about an hour. The NRC said radioactivity outside the plant was within safe regulatory levels, but an investigative team was sent to the plant because the leak was the fourth since September. An earlier review of the three previous leaks determined that the company had taken sufficient corrective action.
O'Kane gave this account of the previous incidents:
On Sept. 9, an employee was "pretty seriously hurt" by accidentally inhaling a puff of HF from a vaporizer that converts liquid HF to gas. The employee returned to work after just over a month, including about two weeks' hospitalization for facial burns and HF inhalation. A tiny amount of the chemical escaped and was confined to a building.
On Sept. 12, about 18 pounds of antimony pentafluoride, a Honeywell specialty chemical, leaked from a building toward the Ohio River. Because no homes or businesses were affected, there was no evacuation or involvement from outside agencies, O'Kane said. He said the NRC was notified "as a courtesy," even though NRC doesn't regulate the nonradioactive chemical. As with UF6, the main threat of antimony pentafluoride is HF emission, O'Kane said.
On Sept. 30, about three grams of UF6 leaked and were confined to a building. The leak was stopped by operations personnel.
-------- india / pakistan
A Nuclear Headache: What if the Radicals Oust Musharraf?
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
December 30, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/international/asia/30DIPL.html
RAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 29 - Two recent assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, have renewed concern in the Bush administration over both the stability of a critical ally and the security of its nuclear weapons if General Musharraf were killed or removed from office.
Administration officials would not discuss their contingency plans for Pakistan, but several said the White House was revisiting an effort begun just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help Pakistan improve the security of its nuclear arsenal and to prevent Al Qaeda or extremists within the Pakistani military or intelligence services from gaining access to the country's weapons and fissile material.
"It's what we don't know that worries us," said a senior administration official, "including the critical question of how much fissile material Pakistan now holds - and where it holds it."
Three years ago, American officials estimated that Pakistan had enough highly enriched uranium to manufacture 40 nuclear weapons, and it is assumed that the figure has grown.
"It's one of the things that we're concerned about - nuclear materials or weapons-related information falling into the hands of terrorists or states who harbor them - irrespective of what country we're talking about," a State Department official said Monday. "We have discussed these concerns with Pakistan, and we continue to do so. Pakistan has taken those concerns very seriously."
Under both President Clinton and President Bush, the Pentagon has analyzed whether American forces could seize or secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if it appeared likely to fall into the hands of terrorists or their sympathizers, part of a broad effort at planning for nuclear emergencies around the world.
But a number of current and former administration officials said they had concluded that it was impossible to be certain where all of Pakistan's nuclear materials and weapons components were stored.
One Pentagon official said any raid by the American military to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal during a period of chaos would be "an extremely difficult and highly risky venture." Other administration officials termed it simply impossible.
Officials said they were relatively confident that even if General Musharraf lost power or was killed, Pakistan has established some fairly reliable nuclear safeguards. Nuclear warheads, triggering devices and the delivery systems for the weapons are all stored separately; thus, it would be difficult to steal a complete weapon, according to administration officials and academic analysts.
The degree to which the United States may have aided in that process is a secret, in part because the Bush administration does not want to worsen anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. But there are other reasons, administration and Pentagon officials say.
Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and so the United States is prohibited from sharing certain technology. But two years ago a senior American official said the Bush administation would not let those rules be an impediment to improving the safety of the Pakistani arsenal.
Still, the computerized, encoded nuclear safeguards are among the United States' most prized secrets, and military officials fear they could pass through Pakistan's hands to adversaries. Pakistan, too, might reject an offer of the safeguard technology because it would have to share its own nuclear design secrets with the United States to create a compatible system.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, visited Pakistan and raised the delicate issue. On Monday, officials declined to describe the results of those discussions.
But administration officials appear less concerned that General Musharraf would lose control over actual weapons than over highly enriched uranium. Terrorists in possession of bomb fuel, even without the triggering devices needed to produce a nuclear explosion, could build a "dirty bomb" that spews radioactive material, or could attempt to engineer a crude nuclear device.
Documents seized after the invasion of Afghanistan suggested that while Al Qaeda sought to develop a nuclear weapon, it was not close to doing so. But Pakistan's scientific community has that ability, and much of the American concern centers on the issue of whether General Musharraf has the loyalty of his nuclear scientists.
"When people talk about the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear programs, they often focus on facilities and weapons and whether, if you have a coup or the death of Musharraf, these facilities come under some kind of hostile control," said Mahnaz Ispahani of the Council on Foreign Relations. "But an equal threat is the nature of these scientists, and what their connections are, and how well they are screened and monitored."
George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is among those who argue that Pakistan's self-interest is reason for confidence in the security of its nuclear arsenal. "You have an organization that runs the country that would be quite obsessive about maintaining control over these weapons," he said. "They are the crown jewels, the ultimate deterrent and source of pride and prowess."
That calculation changes, experts warn, should Pakistan, fearing war, assemble the weapons and transport them about the country for possible use. And the recent attacks raise a fresh set of concerns.
"It's very unsettling what these assassination attempts imply, that the inner security circle for Musharraf has been breached," said Gaurav Kampani of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "If security for the president, for the head of the Pakistani Army, cannot be guaranteed, what guarantee is there that nuclear assets and missiles and so forth are safe?"
David E. Sanger reported from Crawford, Tex., for this article, and Thom Shanker from Washington.
-------- korea
N. Korea Has Mixed Message On Talks
By Mike Allen and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39769-2003Dec29.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 29 -- Bush administration officials said Monday that they have been told North Korea has signaled a willingness to begin a second round of six-nation arms talks in Beijing as soon as next month.
But U.S. officials said they will not agree in advance to incentives that have been sought by North Korea, and North Korean officials issued a statement saying they have been "slandered" by President Bush and "U.S. imperialists."
The public comments by both sides suggested they are a long way from even beginning productive discussions, let alone defusing the tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Administration officials had hoped the talks would resume this month and had expressed increasing impatience with North Korea's reluctance. The first set of talks ended in August with a threat by North Korea to test a nuclear weapon. White House aides had been discussing the possibility of a public statement by President Bush to put more international pressure on North Korea to return to the table.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said at his daily briefing on Monday that the United States had been told by the Chinese, who are coordinating the negotiations and hosting the talks, that North Korea "has agreed in principle to a resumption of the talks." But Ereli declined to describe that as progress, and U.S. officials were equally cautious in their private comments.
"I don't think we're close until we're there," Ereli said. "It's a complex diplomatic effort that requires patience and does not lend itself to sort of flights of exuberance."
The talks also include the North Korea neighbors South Korea, Russia and Japan. Bush has said he is willing to be a party to a joint statement among the nations promising not to attack North Korea, but U.S. officials have said they are not ready to discuss possible economic or energy assistance in the second round of talks.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy, speaking to reporters near Bush's Texas ranch, repeated the U.S. demand that the talks lead to the "complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear programs."
Administration officials have said North Korea has been unwilling to agree to such language, and Vice President Cheney indicated at a recent senior-level meeting that he will insist on it.
A State Department official said the Chinese intermediaries, speaking through the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, have not made it clear whether North Korea has dropped such preconditions for talks as security assurances and an aid package.
"We are ready for talks without preconditions," the official said. The official said no date has been set but that the United States would like to hold them as soon as possible after New Year's Day.
Ereli said the United States had been told about North Korea's agreement in principle in the last couple of days.
A new round of talks was not mentioned in a tough statement transmitted from Pyongyang, the capital, on Monday by the North Korean news agency KCNA, which said that "this year the U.S. imperialists have escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula, pursuant to a hostile policy towards" North Korea.
Referring to a series of international meetings, the statement said, "The U.S. has craftily worked to exploit those meetings for the settlement of the nuclear issue between [North Korea] and the U.S. as a leverage for attaining its sinister aim."
It concluded by saying that "all these facts go to prove once again that the [North Korean] government was just when it took the measure to build up its nuclear deterrent force this year . . . clearly seeing through the true aggressive nature of the U.S. imperialists."
Ricks reported from Washington.
-------- latin america
Brazil Asked to Allow Spot Nuke Checks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Brazil-Nuclear-Inspections.html?pagewanted=print&position=
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Despite Brazil's assurances that its nuclear facilities are open to spot inspections, the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday said South America's largest country has still not signed a key agreement that would formally allow such inspections to take place.
The remarks by IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming in Vienna came a day after Brazil's Science and Technology Ministry released a statement reaffirming the ``peaceful objectives'' of the country's nuclear program, its commitment to safeguard agreements signed with Argentina and the IAEA and its commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Brazil signed in 1997.
``As a consequence of these commitments ... all of Brazil's nuclear materials and facilities ... are inspected on a regular and unrestricted basis and subject to unannounced inspections,'' the statement said.
But Brazil is not on the IAEA's Dec. 18 list of nations that have signed the so-called additional protocol of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that authorizes spot inspections.
``The IAEA encourages Brazil, as it does all countries with sophisticated nuclear fuel cycles, to sign and bring into force the Additional Protocol, to provide the Agency with the additional authority it requires in order to provide the necessary peaceful use assurances,'' Fleming said.
Brazil is preparing to begin enriching uranium by the middle of 2004. The uranium, to be enriched at a plant in Rio de Janeiro state, will be used as fuel for the country's two nuclear plants, the government says.
Enriching uranium is a process by which the heavy metal found in the earth is run through huge centrifuges where it is purified to be used either to generate energy in nuclear power plants or in weapons.
By 2014, the country hopes to be enriching enough uranium to run its Angra 1 and 2 nuclear plants plus a third, designated Angra 3, expected to come on line the same year.
At that point, the country is expected to have a surplus of enriched uranium that could be exported, Samuel Faiad, of the government-run Nuclear Industries of Brazil, said in October.
Brazil has the world's sixth largest uranium reserve and, although it has possessed the capacity to enrich uranium since the 1980s, the country has so far done so only for research purposes.
-------- mideast
Nuclear Agency Rejects U.S. Help in Libya
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press writer
Dec 30, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LIBYA_NUCLEAR_INTERVIEW?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- U.N. inspectors do not need American help in scrapping Libya's nascent nuclear program, the chief inspector told The Associated Press on Tuesday in comments that brought to mind earlier differences with Washington over Iraq and Iran.
The U.S. administration is convinced that Libya's nuclear program was far more extensive than assumed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Because of that, Washington has decided to send its own inspectors and British technical experts to Libya to help survey and dismantle weapons programs there.
But, while it's happy to receive U.S. and British intelligence that will assist it, the IAEA doesn't want help on the ground. "I am not familiar with anything they plan to do on a bilateral basis," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview Tuesday, when asked about U.S. plans to police and scrap Libya's covert nuclear program. "But as far as I'm concerned, we have the mandate, and we intend to do it alone."
ElBaradei spoke after returning from a visit to Libya, where he and an IAEA team saw four formerly secret nuclear sites in the capital, Tripoli. They said that, from what they saw, Libya was still years away from developing nuclear weapons. During the trip, ElBaradei also met with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who assured the IAEA chief that Libya would cooperate fully with inspections and eliminate its long-secret nuclear program, saying he wanted to turn Libya into a "mainstream" nation, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
The White House and ElBaradei's agency have had tensions during the past year over the extent of the nuclear weapons threat in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and in Iran.
The Americans invaded Iraq arguing that Saddam was trying to make nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. ElBaradei maintains that what his teams saw in the months preceding the war suggested the Iraqis were in no position to build a nuclear weapon. So far, after eight months of U.S. control over Iraq, no such weapons have been found.
U.S. officials also rankled at ElBaradei's assessment in November that IAEA inspectors had found "no evidence" of an arms program in Iran, though they noted suspicious findings and upbraided Tehran for hiding part of its nuclear program for years. The United States asserts that uranium enrichment and other Iranian activities point to attempts to make nuclear weapons.
Justifying the joint U.S.-British plans in Libya, a senior Bush administration official pointed to ElBaradei's visiting of only four nuclear sites. CIA and British intelligence have concluded there are 11 such sites, said the official, who asked for anonymity.
But ElBaradei said Tuesday there was no suggestion on his part that the four sites represented the total possessed by Libya.
"I think I made it very clear that our assessment was based and what we have been told and what we have seen," he said. "We're not saying, 'This is it, guys.'"
A diplomat familiar with the IAEA's information said the agency believes there around 10 nuclear sites in Libya, mostly warehoused centrifuge and conversion equipment acquired - but never used - for full programs of uranium enrichment.
Indirectly contradicting U.S. assertions of an extensive program, ElBaradei said that what he has seen suggests Libya did not go beyond "low-level, small-scale" testing of enrichment equipment.
ElBaradei described the equipment he saw as, "nothing really special," calling them, "components which had not been assembled .... mothballed and in containers."
"It was much more modest in comparison with the Iranian program, which is much more ambitious, large-scale industrial production" of enriching uranium, he said.
Suspicions about Iran's nuclear activities prompted ElBaradei to tour Iran's nuclear facilities last February, including an incomplete plant in Natanz, nearly 300 miles south of Tehran. Diplomats said he was taken aback by the advanced stage of a project using thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
Iran insists its program aims only to produce energy and signed an agreement in December allowing snap IAEA inspections of its facilities.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Libya seemed to posses far fewer centrifuges than Iran. While a few dozen were assembled, most were still in their original shipping crates and lined up along warehouse walls, as were crated uranium conversion units that were opened only for the visiting IAEA team, he said.
Libyan nuclear scientists interviewed by the IAEA team "swore up and down they never had any weapons activities," said the diplomat. "They said they were never told to develop a weapon, they were only told to develop enrichment capability."
Gadhafi's recently acknowledgment that Libya had been seeking nuclear weapons and his decision to renounce them - made after months of secret negotiations with the United States and Britain - came as a surprise to the IAEA, the U.N. body charged with keeping watch on nuclear programs.
Libya has promised to cooperate with the Vienna-based U.N. agency and said it would sign a protocol allowing intrusive inspections at short notice, similar to the one signed earlier this month by Iran.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
----
Libya's Atom Bid in Early Phases
By PATRICK E. TYLER
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/international/middleeast/30LIBY.html?pagewanted=print&position=
LONDON, Dec. 29 - The top United Nations nuclear inspector, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, said Monday that Libya's nuclear program was years away from producing a nuclear weapon and that important pieces of equipment were now largely dismantled and stored in boxes.
But Dr. ElBaradei, who spoke in Libya after visiting four previously undeclared sites where scientists had been working to perfect the enrichment of uranium, did express surprise that Libya had acquired a great deal of high-technology equipment needed to enrich uranium through black-market transactions that have yet to be disclosed.
It was "an eye opener to see how much material has been going from one country to the other" and "the extent of the black market network," Dr. ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a news conference in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, The Associated Press reported. The existence of this shadowy network of middlemen who often circumvent national export controls, he said, proved that those controls were not working.
"What we have seen is a program in the very initial stages of development," Dr. ElBaradei said of the Libyan effort.
"We haven't seen any industrial-scale facility to produce highly enriched uranium. We haven't seen any enriched uranium."
The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, met Dr. ElBaradei for about half an hour, during which the Libyan reiterated his pledge to rid the country of illicit weapons, an official traveling with Dr. ElBaradei said. Colonel Qaddafi also pledged to begin immediate compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, especially by submitting to unannounced inspections of any site.
"Libya committed today to act as if the protocol was in force," Dr. ElBaradei said, referring to the treaty requirement on inspections. The Libyans have also been asked to produce documentation about their nuclear program, officials with the atomic energy agency said.
During the news conference, Dr. ElBaradei, a former Egyptian diplomat who last year directed the final inspections in Iraq along with his colleague Hans Blix, said it was his "gut feeling" that Libya was three to seven years away from producing a nuclear weapon.
"We are now working with them to neutralize any activities, any programs that could have led to a nuclear weapon," he said.
On Sunday, Dr. ElBaradei's inspectors visited four previously unknown sites near Tripoli where nuclear weapons-related equipment was stored. A senior Bush administration official said all the sites had been inspected by British and American intelligence experts in October and early December as part of the secret diplomacy that led to Colonel Qaddafi's renunciation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on Dec. 19.
Also over the weekend, Dr. ElBaradei's team met and debriefed Libyan scientists and senior government officials, including Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem and Matouq Muhammad Matouq, a Libyan deputy prime minister and head of the country's secret nuclear program.
Robert J. Einhorn, who was the top State Department official in charge of nonproliferation in the Clinton administration, said in an interview that while it is "very good to get Libya out of the nuclear weapons business, it could be even more important if this helps us to understand the black market in nuclear technology and roll up some of those sources of supply."
A senior official in the Bush administration said Dr. ElBaradei's visit was another reminder that the nuclear agency "missed the Libyan nuclear weapons program just like it missed so many others." A spokesman for Dr. ElBaradei said he responded to this assertion by pointing out that "no verification system would be able to detect the kind of low-level activities Libya was conducting short of sheer luck or some perfect intelligence tip." The spokesman said Dr. ElBaradei had long campaigned for a strengthening of the nuclear safeguard provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Dr. ElBaradei said his visit to Libya demonstrated that "we have to go after supplies and the source of supply" of nuclear technologies, because the system of export controls has once again been proven ineffective in Libya. He also said the centrifuges that Libya had acquired for uranium enrichment were inactive.
"There was a very small cascade of tens of centrifuges that were developed years ago as a pilot and that has been dismantled now, and they haven't developed an industrial or large scale cascade, so there were in the experimental stage," he said.
The visit by the international team of inspectors led by Dr. ElBaradei was arranged hastily in the wake of the announcement on Dec. 19 by Britain and the United States that Libya would disclose and dismantle its programs that were intended to develop unconventional weapons in order to reach a new accord with the West.
The announcement followed nine months of intensive negotiations with British and American officials and secret visits by British and American intelligence experts.
The senior Bush administration official said a large contingent of British and American intelligence officials, along with experts from the Department of Energy, the Defense Department and the national laboratories are expected to return to Libya in January to pursue unanswered questions about acquisition activities over the past two decades.
This official said Colonel Qaddafi, facing a deteriorating economic and political climate at home, was motivated by concerns for "regime survival" in finally allowing foreign intelligence officials to see all of his secret weapons laboratories last fall.
"In October there was an event involving a shipment that Qaddafi expected that did not show up, and after that, he finally said, `O.K., you can send your teams in,' " the official said.
President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair both praised Colonel Qaddafi's decision. Mr. Bush hinted that a full disarmament process in Libya could be followed by lifting of sanctions and normalizations of relations, steps that Congress would have to approve and that had seemed inconceivable after decades of vilification and recriminations over Libya's support for terrorism.
Dr. ElBaradei's description of the Libyan nuclear program appeared more modest and less alarming than the descriptions by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair when they disclosed that nine months of secret diplomacy had led to a breakthrough with Libya.
Dr. ElBaradei said most of Libya's illicit nuclear equipment was "quite dismantled" and still in boxes.
"Luckily, I think, we are here when they have not developed a full fledged capability, and luckily also they have announced that they are ready to eliminate all programs relevant to weapons of mass destruction," he said.
At the same time, Dr. ElBaradei called on North Korea to follow Libya's example.
"If a country was to show transparency and active cooperation, that can open the doors" and allow for "a complete change of face," he said, adding, "It is a lesson for North Korea to observe."
----
US seeks details from UN on Libya's weapons vow
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031230214630.ey40333z.html
The United States said Tuesday it looked forward to a full accounting of Libya's vow to abandon weapons of mass destruction, after the head of the UN's atomic watchdog wrapped up a visit to Tripoli.
Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier called International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei for a briefing on his mission.
"We look forward to a thorough IAEA investigation of Libya's nuclear facilities and we also look forward to hearing what the IAEA found out on his visit to Libya," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
ElBaradei said that Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi confirmed he has abandoned weapons of mass destruction.
Libya also said that the IAEA would be permitted to send UN inspectors to sensitive sites as if it had already signed the additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ElBaradei said.
Despite those announcements, Ereli said it was still too early to say for sure if Libya, a traditional US foe, was being sincere.
"I would caution anybody against rushing to any conclusions," he said.
"This is going to take a long time. It's not as a result of one visit that we are going to have a complete picture or be able to come to any final conclusions about Libya's programs."
The US and British governments were already working with the UN to work out how "best we can assist Libya in getting rid of those weapons programs which it has said it wants to get rid of," Ereli said.
A US team could leave here within the next few months, but it is not yet clear if they will go to Libya, or hold a first meeting with Libyan officials in a third country, a senior Bush administration official said.
Libya's announcement and ElBaradei's visit are the fruit of nine months of secret negotiations between Libya and diplomats from Britain and the United States which ended with Tripoli's dramatic pledge on December 19.
Libya still faces a range of US sanctions, and the latest move by the unpredictable Kadhafi was seen partly as a bid to get them removed.
The country was under international sanctions for years after the 1988 bombing of a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie that killed 270 people.
But the United Nations lifted its embargo in September after Tripoli agreed to pay 2.7 billion dollars (2.2 billion euros) in compensation and accept responsibility for the bombing but denied guilt.
----
Kadhafi's decision on arms has Libyans torn between joy and scepticism
TRIPOLI (AFP)
Dec 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031230135556.hpenjetg.html
In Tripoli's bustling old town ordinary Libyans view the decision by leader Moamer Kadhafi to renounce unconventional arms with a mixture of pride in their government and mistrust of their old arch-enemy, the United States.
"We are very proud of our government regarless of its decisions," said Dia, a forty-something bank employee who studied in the US state Arizona.
"It is a good decision and it was about time it was taken. We do not need these arms. We need something different. Nobody here should be living out of a garbage can. We are rich because we have oil."
Libya on December 19, in a surprise move following nine months of secret talks with the United States and Britain, announced that it was giving up the quest for chemical, biological and nuclear arms.
Within days it opened its doors to inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which now has a mission of four experts in the north African country.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei met with Kadhafi here on Monday and confirmed that he wanted to "turn a page in his country's history and promote its social and economic development."
Mohamed, a waiter smilingly serving tea in a small cafe in the medina, told AFP: "What the government has done is a very, very good thing. I am very happy."
But at the Arafat Beauty Salon with its bright green shutters, the owner Ali angrily wanted to know: "Why do the Americans not do to North Korea what they have done to Iraq and what they wanted to do to us?"
"I will tell you why: because the United States are scared of (North) Korea," he says, adding that for Washington's dealings with countries suspected of seeking nuclear arms came down to either using force or bribery.
"It is either blood or money."
The United Nations lifted an embargo against Libya in September after it accepted guilt for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay compensation, but the country still faces a range of US sanctions and Kadhafi's move is seen partly as a bid to get them removed.
At the fishmarket in Tripoli, sitting next to impressive Roman ruins, men and women in flowing djellabas waited for the day's catch of sardines and cob at Brahim's stall. He was not too optimistic about the sudden prospect of better relations with the United States after Libya has spent many years as one of the world's pariah states.
"There is no reason to be poor forever. But, we have had many promises, we have been told so many things ..."
Moustafa, a former technician who spent two years in France and now runs a chicken restaurant, was more upbeat.
"This is a time for peace, not for war," he said, and added with a wave to Kadhafi's picture on the wall and a nod to the ephemeral nature of politics: "Allah is the only saviour."
He explained that his restaurant is called Philadelphia, after the legend that a ship docked here in the early 19th century and took Libyans to work as slaves in the US city.
At the nearby "Baghdad Cafe" a man called Edriss sipped mint tea uunder a palm tree.
He said he left his native Morocco for Libya 15 years ago and that since then the people of Tripoli have become more open and independent-minded, in spite of Kadhafi's iron grip on his country.
"Now that we have foreign television channels on satellite, the Libyans are less afraid to speak their minds. And they can also see all the things they do not have, so they are organising themselves.
"Today, you can find anything you like on the black market. Even alcohol, though it is strictly forbidden around here. Do you want a bottle of wine?"
--------
Nuclear Program In Libya Detailed
Research at Early Stage, U.N. Inspectors Report
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38591-2003Dec29?language=printer
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec. 29 -- U.N. investigators inspecting facilities associated with Libya's weapons program found centrifuges and other equipment indicating the country was at an "early stage" of its weapons program, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Monday.
Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Libyans exhibited "a good deal of cooperation" during the inspections Sunday, the first since the Libyan leader, Moammar Gaddafi, pledged Dec. 22 to give up the country's efforts to develop a nuclear device.
In buildings scattered in urban neighborhoods and suburbs of the capital, Tripoli, inspectors found crates that held hardware for machinery capable of purifying uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Two structures contained rooms where such equipment had been installed.
The Libyans displayed dozens of centrifuges, the devices required to develop weapons-grade uranium, ElBaradei said at a news conference here. By comparison, Iran -- which opened its secret nuclear arms program to IAEA inspection this year -- possesses thousands.
"What we have seen is all the equipment they have imported," said ElBaradei, who declined to specify the origin of the imported centrifuges, steel piping and other equipment. He said the paraphernalia so far does not point to former Soviet republics, frequently prime suspects, as a source.
A sophisticated black market, he said, has been refined since the end of the Cold War and extends through Europe and Asia. Countries do not have to purchase complete systems from a single source to enrich uranium, but instead can buy pieces of equipment from many suppliers and cobble them together.
Libya agreed to permit spot inspections in advance of signing a protocol formalizing the so-called intrusive investigations, ElBaradei said. The inspections were a major step in Libya's drive to break free of international pariah status, especially in the eyes of the United States, which maintains a strict embargo on trade with Libya.
Officials in Washington said Monday that the Bush administration was planning to test Libya's pledges as early as next month, the Associated Press reported.
A senior administration official told the AP that the United States intended to pursue its own program for dismantling Libya's nuclear infrastructure, along with its chemical and biological weapons and missiles. The United States will send an initial group of technical experts to Libya in January; British experts are expected to go with them.
Last week, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, sounded a note of caution about Gaddafi's intentions, saying the United States would "make sure that whatever disclosures Libya makes, that there is a follow-up to identify the full extent of those programs."
During his 34 years in power, Gaddafi has supported terrorist groups, and his government was implicated in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He proclaimed himself a hero of the Arab world, then the liberator of Africa. Now, government officials say, Gaddafi wants to lead his country of 5.5 million people into the global economy, increase production and marketing of Libya's large oil reserves and attract investment and trade.
"We can't afford guns and butter," Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem said in an interview.
Nonetheless, by setting up the clandestine program and importing equipment, the Libyans were in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Gaddafi's government had long ago signed. "There were some imports and some activities they should have reported," ElBaradei said.
The veteran inspector said the findings highlighted the inadequacy of international inspections. IAEA teams have been visiting Libya for years and knew nothing about the equipment they saw Sunday. Some of it was found along dirt alleys in urban neighborhoods.
Even permission to allow surprise inspections would not guarantee discovery of a nuclear weapons program. "Low-level programs like this are difficult to detect. They can be run in a garage," ElBaradei said. "You would have to be lucky or have very good intelligence to run across it. We're doing a lot of soul-searching."
At the news conference, ElBaradei appealed for export controls on the kind of equipment found here, and for international surveillance of sites where enriched uranium is produced. "The leeway for countries to develop uranium is too risky. We need to choke the supply," he said.
The IAEA director also appealed for countries to use diplomatic means to resolve disputes and reduce the temptation for governments to obtain nuclear weapons, especially in the Middle East, which he called "a hotbed of proliferation."
"This should be part of the peace process," he said in reference to negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has drawn in several Arab countries over the decades. Israel is believed to be the only Middle Eastern country to possess nuclear weapons, though the Israeli government has never confirmed it.
ElBaradei left Monday for Vienna. Three members of his team stayed behind, and another three IAEA inspectors will join them by New Year's Day. A Western diplomat, speaking on condition on anonymity, said Libya's program appeared to have been pursued on an ad hoc basis. The Libyans did not systematically shop for equipment, but seemed to pick up pieces where and when they could, said the diplomat, who estimated the overall price tag to be in the hundreds of millions rather than billions of dollars.
"The technology is out of the bag. There are not just one or two suppliers, but many," the diplomat said.
The Libyans began developing nuclear technology in the 1970s, the diplomat said, initially to generate power for desalination projects. In the 1980s, the government told scientists they should also experiment with producing weapons. Most of the work was done by Libyan scientists, some of whom had studied at the universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and at the University of Exeter in Britain, the diplomat said.
In the late '80s, the program was dissolved, only to be revived in the mid-'90s.
The diplomat said it might take up to 18 months to certify that Libya had fully abandoned its nuclear program. "It could possibly be done in less time, but who would believe it's thorough?" he said.
-------- terrorism
Sleuths Patrol Nations for Nuclear Mischief
December 30, 2003
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/science/30SLEU.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SEIBERSDORF, Austria - Amid rolling hills and tidy farms, the fences are topped with barbed wire and the guard at the gate carefully checks for identification before letting a visitor into the world's top laboratory for nuclear sleuths.
Here, atom by atom, scientists from many countries are addressing riddles like the source of Iran's highly enriched uranium, which inspectors recently found. The answer could expose a simple case of contamination on imported machinery or, more worrisome, a clandestine program to build atomic bombs.
The dozens of experts and officials here at the Safeguards Analytical Laboratory are quiet and unassuming. But it is not far-fetched to think that their work has the power to tip the balance between war and peace.
"We're very proud," Dr. Werner Burkart, deputy director general at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said. "You can sample dust from a truck that has passed by a factory. You can see a single atom. It's really marvelous."
The laboratory, part of the atomic energy agency, is an arm of the United Nations that helps monitor the nuclear ambitions of 145 nations. Its mission is to analyze clues of chemistry and physics to verify that states are meeting their peaceful atomic pledges and not secretly making deadly weapons.
Skeptics note that Iran, Iraq and North Korea embarked on secret arms programs under the nose of the agency's teams. But agency supporters say that of late, investigators have gained major powers. They can now examine whole states as well as tiny particles invisible to the eye.
It is a world of precision focused on wisps of evidence that inspectors have gathered from gear, nuclear sites, water, trees and even dust. The lab analyzes up to 2,000 samples of nuclear materials and 500 environmental samples a year. Its ultrasensitive machines can tease vital information from particles one one-hundredth the width of a human hair.
Like crime scene detectives, the analysts are tight-lipped. "Safeguards is very secretive," Dr. Burkart said.
Just outside the village of Seibersdorf, about an hour southeast of Vienna, is a blue and white complex that includes a new large windowless building where the agency is intensifying its hunt for the most subtle kinds of evidence. It is known simply as the Clean Laboratory.
Its origins lie in crisis. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, international inspectors were stunned to discover that Iraq had deceived them and that it was trying to learn how to make nuclear arms. In 1997, in response, the agency instituted what is known as the Additional Protocol to help ferret out clandestine work around the globe. The agency can now go anywhere in a cooperating nation, not just to places declared relevant.
"It fills in the gaps," said Dr. Jill Cooley, an American who directs Safeguards' planning at the agency.
In particular, the protocol lets the agency go beyond the old methods of simply auditing nuclear materials. When nations ratify the accord, inspectors can examine mines, waste-storage sites and other nuclear areas; can investigate on short notice; and can gather environmental samples from wide areas.
The Clean Laboratory leads the environmental work. Its main task is to make sterile kits that are free of nuclear contamination for field inspectors, Dr. Yusuke Kuno, a Japanese scientist who heads the Safeguards lab here, said.
"It's very, very clean, like a semiconductor lab," Dr. Kuno said as he led a visitor through. Big windows looked in on inner sanctums where men and women worked at benches and gleaming machines.
Dr. Kuno said each sampling kit held a pen, paper, lab gloves and cotton swipes packed in plastic bags. The inspectors run the swipes across surfaces where dust or other telltale particles may collect, like the corners or ventilation ducts of a nuclear plant. Then, the inspector double bags the swipe to make sure it remains uncontaminated.
Swipes being analyzed are given unique identifiers. Dr. Kuno showed one, No. 20569. "We have no idea where it came from," he said. "Only headquarters knows." The anonymity is a safeguard to root out inspectors' bias and clandestine efforts to plant or cover up evidence.
The lab keeps backup samples and sends others to a global consortium to confirm readings. Partner labs are in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Russia and the United States, among others.
The Clean Lab has some of the world's most advanced machines for disclosing the signatures of atomic materials. A signature may arise from a special mix of isotopes, atoms of the same element whose nuclei bear different numbers of neutrons. Detecting such nuances can shed light on a sample's history. And by matching distinctive samples, much as a detective matches up fingerprints, inspectors gain insights into the places they originated.
The first machine is the size of a small car. Its robot arm can pick up a sample bag and position the swipe for X-ray fluorescence analysis, which identifies the sample's elements, perhaps finding uranium, the fuel of reactors and bombs. The machine produces a multicolored map showing the overall concentrations of the elements.
Dr. Kuno found a sample printout. Its brightly colored hot spots showed where the inspector had pressed down hard on the swipe, increasing the pickup of uranium particles.
The next machine dug deeper into the physical makeup of the sample, identifying its various isotopes like uranium 234, found in tiny amounts in nature; uranium 235, slightly more prevalent, but valuable because it splits easily in two; uranium 236, made in reactors and not found in nature; and uranium 238, dominant in uranium ore. The method is known as thermal ionization mass spectrometry.
"This is very, very sensitive mass spec," Dr. Kuno said, adding that the machine can measure a particle that weighs as little as a single femtogram, or 0.000000000000001 gram.
Uranium 235 is a possible alarm bell. Low concentrations are the hallmark of reactor fuel, but high concentrations signal bomb fuel, a top target for the inspectors.
In the next room, two men fed samples into a gamma ray spectrometer, which can identify products of uranium fission like cesium and strontium, some of the residue when uranium splits. They would signal a history of nuclear reactions.
Like powerful microscopes, the next machines peered deeper into the samples, letting operators ferret out single particles whose compositions might escape detection in bulk measurement. One was a scanning electron microscope with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.
"No contributor lab has this combination," Dr. Kuno said. "Only Seibersdorf." Its operators can zero in on a uranium particle, inspecting it for visual clues of the way it formed.
A final machine, a secondary-ion mass spectrometer, can probe a single particle to determine its isotopes. For instance, it can reveal a glut of uranium highly enriched in the 235 isotope, by definition making it a potential sign of bomb fuel.
"This is the most important tool to find evidence of enrichment," Dr. Kuno said. "It's a very strong tool. We used it with Iraq and Iran," where inspectors have in the last year carried out major searches.
Evidence from Seibersdorf and partner labs goes to the agency's headquarters in Vienna, where analysts know the samples' origins and try to interpret the clues.
A tiny speck is enough to send officials and diplomats racing back to the originating country for answers. "We don't care about the quantities," a Safeguards analyst, Diane Fischer, said. "The whole purpose is to look for evidence of undeclared activities."
Although many experts hail the Additional Protocol and its tools as powerful means of uncovering illicit programs, some note that its application remains limited. The problem, said Dr. Lawrence Scheinman, a nuclear expert at the Washington office of the Monterey Institute for International Studies, is that so far only 38 nations have it in force, and just about half of those have significant nuclear programs.
Even so, Libya, long an outcast among nations, this month signaled its willingness to sign the protocol so that the agency's inspectors can verify the elimination of its program for nuclear arms.
And the agency scored a significant victory on Dec. 18, when Iran, under intense international pressure, became the 79th country to sign the accord. The country has recently been accused of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear arms, an accusation that it fiercely denies.
Free to conduct inquiries in Iran even before that signing, the atomic agency is trying to track down the origins of highly enriched uranium that its inspectors found last spring and summer. It discovered at least three diverse types, potentially complicating the task of analysis, the agency reported last month.
Iran told the agency that the suspicious uranium was contamination from centrifuge parts that it had imported. If the I.A.E.A. finds otherwise, gathering evidence that Iran made the highly pure uranium 235 itself, the agency could judge the country in violation of antiproliferation accords and send the case to the United Nations Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Bennett Ramberg, a policy analyst in the State Department in the first Bush administration, said the consequences could be even more dire. Israel, fearing a neighbor with atomic capacity, might attack the Iranian nuclear sites, as it did an Iraqi reactor in 1981, concerned that Baghdad might use it to make nuclear arms.
So the numbered bags now making their way through the warrens of Seibersdorf could prove significant, as the atomic agency is only too well aware. A public report on its Iranian findings is probably months off, agency experts and officials said. Considering the stakes, a lack of haste and scrupulous attention to detail are the watchwords.
"This is an exhaustive process," one official said. "We haven't set deadlines."
-------- treaties
Iran the ideal test bed for beefed-up nuclear treaty
ASHTON CARTER, ARNOLD KANTER, WILLIAM PERRY AND BRENT SCOWCROFT
Tue 30 Dec 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1420502003
THE Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is arguably the most popular treaty in history. In force since 1970, every nation in the world is part of it except India, Pakistan, Cuba, Israel and North Korea, which withdrew last year. For more than three decades, it has helped curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
Since 9/11, however, and especially in recent months, the viability of the treaty has been called into question. Some say it is obsolete. Others that it is merely ineffective. In support of its argument each side cites the situation in Iran, which has been able to advance a nuclear weapons programme despite being a signatory of the treaty.
The Iranian nuclear programme - and, to a lesser extent, the activities of Libya, which has also signed the treaty but announced recently that it would give up all illegal weapons programmes - highlights both the utility and the limitations of the treaty. It is not obsolete; if it did not exist, we almost certainly would want to invent it. At the same time, it would be a mistake to rely on it exclusively to address the problem of nuclear proliferation.
Those who say the treaty is useless argue that either the bad guys don't sign the treaty, or they do and then cheat. The good guys sign and obey, but the treaty is irrelevant for these countries because they have no intention of becoming nuclear proliferators in the first place.
This all-or-nothing argument is wrong. First, it fails to acknowledge that there is an important category in between good guys and bad guys. For these in-betweens - countries such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Argentina or South Korea - the weight of international opinion against proliferation expressed in the treaty has contributed to tipping the balance of decision-making against having nuclear weapons.
Second, the treaty does have an impact even on "bad guys" such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. When the United States moves against such regimes, it does so with the support of the global opprobrium for nuclear weapons that the treaty enshrines.
This consensus underpins the multilateral approach that is under way to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, and was at the heart of the international pressure that persuaded Tehran to increase the transparency of its nuclear programme. Even in the divisive case of Iraq, no-one argued that Saddam Hussein should be left alone with weapons of mass destruction.
Yet the treaty is not perfect. It allows, for example, nations that foreswear nuclear weapons to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
Signatories may build and operate nuclear power reactors, and they are permitted to produce enriched uranium to fuel the reactors, to store the radioactive spent fuel from those reactors, and to reprocess that spent fuel. The only specific obligations are that signatories declare these plants to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and permit it to inspect them.
The problem is that this "closed fuel cycle" gives these countries the inherent capacity to produce the fissile material required for a nuclear weapon. Facilities used to produce enriched uranium for power reactors can also be used to produce enriched uranium for weapons. Reprocessing spent fuel yields plutonium that can be fashioned into nuclear weapons.
As North Korea and Iran demonstrate, regimes that intend to violate the treaty's ban on nuclear weapons can exploit this right to operate a nuclear power plant. While seeming to remain within the terms of the treaty, they can gather all the resources necessary to make nuclear weapons. Then they can abrogate the treaty and proceed to build a nuclear arsenal.
The world should renew its determination to curb the spread of nuclear weapons by supplementing the treaty with additional inducements and penalties. The key is to draw a distinction between the right to a peaceful civilian nuclear power programme and the right to operate a closed fuel cycle.
The first should be preserved - and perhaps enhanced - but the second should be seriously discouraged, if not prohibited.
How might such a system work? In addition to their treaty obligations, those countries seeking to develop nuclear power to generate electricity would agree not to manufacture, store or reprocess nuclear fuel. They also would agree to submit to inspections (probably under the IAEA) to verify compliance.
Those countries that now sell peaceful nuclear technology in accordance with the treaty, meanwhile, would agree not to provide technology, equipment or fuel for nuclear reactors and related facilities to any country that will not renounce its right to enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel. And agree not to sell or transfer any equipment or technology designed for the enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
At the same time, they would agree to guarantee the reliable supply of nuclear fuel, and retrieval of spent fuel at competitive prices to those countries that agree to this new arrangement. We might also consider sanctions against those countries that, nevertheless, choose to pursue a closed fuel cycle.
Why would any countries that want to develop a peaceful nuclear power program agree to such a bargain? One blunt answer is that if these restrictions were put in place, these countries would have virtually no choice, because developing the necessary technology from scratch is a daunting task. Refusing the arrangement would open them up to international scrutiny and pressure. On the other hand, any country that was truly interested in developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes would undoubtedly welcome a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel.
And why would countries that now supply nuclear technology be interested? First, no nation in this category has any interest in adding any country to the list of the world's nuclear states. Second, over time, there probably is more money to be made in nuclear fuel services than in nuclear reactors.
Iran provides an excellent opportunity to test this approach. The US should propose that Russian plans to help Iran build a network of civilian nuclear power reactors be permitted to proceed - provided that Iran enters into a verifiable ban on its enrichment and reprocessing abilities, and into an agreement to depend instead on a Russian-led suppliers' consortium for nuclear fuel services.
The Russians would be likely to embrace such a proposal for commercial and political reasons, and the Iranians would be confronted with a clear test of whether they harbour nuclear weapons ambitions. Britain, France and Germany, whose foreign ministers recently proposed a similar scheme to Iran, would need only to avoid the temptation to undercut the Russians on behalf of their own nuclear industries.
Of course, this new arrangement would hardly be a cure-all. And making it work would be difficult. But at a time when its effectiveness and relevance are being questioned, such an approach would strengthen the treaty by furthering its goals: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons while promoting the development of peaceful nuclear energy.
• William Perry and Ashton Carter were the US secretary of defence and assistant secretary of defence, respectively, under president Bill Clinton. Brent Scowcroft and Arnold Kanter were national security adviser and under-secretary of state, respectively, in the administration of George Bush Senior.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- tennessee
TVA Disciplines Employees for Hazing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-TVA-Hazing.html?pagewanted=print&position=
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Tennessee Valley Authority has disciplined employees for hazing a new worker at a nuclear power plant, and a report concluded that such rituals had been going on for years.
The worker, an employee of an independent contractor serving the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, was placed in a basket above the nuclear reactor while ice chips were blown over her. The baskets of chipped ice are used to absorb heat. She also was sent on a bogus assignment.
The incident involved both employees of the TVA and employees of outside contractors, Inspector General Richard W. Moore said in a report issued earlier this month.
``We found the practice of initiating people was common and had been ongoing for many years. Numerous contractor and TVA employees and managers knew about the practice, and several people knew the female contractor was going to be initiated. Most individuals we interviewed who knew about the practice generally believed it was harmless,'' the report said.
Disciplinary actions ranged from a written complaint to ``release from the company,'' TVA said in a statement. The agency declined to give details, including the names of the employees involved.
The same report also found eight TVA employees received golf outings and meals, along with other gratuities, from coal contractors that do business with the federal utility.
-------- us politics
Dean Labels Bush 'Reckless'
Candidate Launches Broad Criticisms Tied to U.S. Security
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39768-2003Dec29?language=printer
DETROIT, Dec. 29 -- From Iraq to homeland security to public health, President Bush's "reckless" habit of placing "ideology over facts" has resulted in "the most dangerous administration in my lifetime," Democrat Howard Dean charged over the past two days.
In Midwest campaign stops and an interview, the former Vermont governor said developments both abroad and at home give credence to his assertion two weeks ago that the United States is "no safer" with the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"If we are safer, how come we lost 10 more troops and raised the safety alert" to the orange level, Dean said Sunday night in Ankeny, Iowa.
"All the other Democrats pounced on me and beat me up and said how ignorant I was about foreign affairs," he said. "I think most people in America agree with me today and it's only two weeks later."
Dean has rocketed to the top of the Democratic presidential field with his sharp attacks on Bush, especially on the war in Iraq. Far from backing off his earlier comment about Hussein, Dean has broadened the critique, adding mad cow disease, the national deficit, HIV-AIDS and homeland security to the list of safety failures during Bush's tenure.
"National security and economic security are the touchstones of the election," he said in the interview after a rally Monday in Green Bay, Wis. "I think the president has been fairly reckless in just about every area I can think of."
Dean accused Bush of taking "enormous risks" by refusing to negotiate with North Korea, permitting "warlords" to control much of Afghanistan and failing to address the most serious threats to homeland security.
"We've made progress" on strengthening defenses at home, he said. "The problem is, on the things that are enormously important to us we have apparently made no progress. That is the ultimate nightmare of the so-called dirty bomb or a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States."
As president, Dean said he would initiate bilateral negotiations with North Korea, purchase the entire uranium stockpile held by the former Soviet Union and shift more money into security programs such as cargo ship inspections. "Why aren't these things being done now?" he said. "Why have we dillydallied for 15 months?"
Dean, leading in many polls in early nominating states such as New Hampshire and Iowa, is also on the verge of setting a Democratic fundraising record of $40 million. Aides announced Monday that the campaign had raised more than $14 million for the final quarter of the year from 280,000 contributors. The total is likely to climb by at least $400,000 before the official closing date with more than 1,300 fundraising house parties scheduled for Tuesday night.
Wesley K. Clark is the only candidate who will come close to Dean this quarter -- aides said Monday the retired general will top $10 million. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) is tapping his own fortune to keep pace with Dean.
Dean received glowing praise Monday from Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and the endorsement of Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus.
"I am proud to state and stand with the man that's ahead of everybody else, that is raising money from the little guys to the shock of everybody who thought it should always be the big fat cats," Conyers said at a Detroit rally Monday afternoon.
As he traveled across the Midwest, Dean hit familiar themes but with the fresh twist that they fall under the broader rubric of safety and security.
On domestic policy, Dean said the current $500 billion deficit and losses of nearly 3 million jobs have created widespread economic insecurity. If elected, he promised to raise the national minimum wage to $7 per hour, up from $5.15.
"Our philosophy is give the working people a little more money and they might be able to go down and spend something on Main Street," he told the audience of labor and African American activists here in Detroit.
Rising deficits and a large national debt mean people cannot find jobs, Dean said, and undermine U.S. authority overseas by forcing the government to look to nations such as China and Saudi Arabia for loans.
More than once, Dean drew direct connections between Bush's 10-year, $3 trillion tax cuts and critical security investments. "If you think tax cuts are more important than homeland security, then I think you've made a mistake as president, and clearly that puts us in greater danger," he said in the interview.
A physician, Dean also accused the administration of stubbornly ignoring warnings about mad cow disease and blindly promoting an abstinence-only sex education program that "is not a good solution at all for teens who have decided to have sex."
It may not be fair to blame the president for the recent mad cow case, Dean told Iowa audiences, but Bush is responsible for failing to enact broader cattle testing requirements, he said.
"Ordinary farmers in Iowa can't sell their calves right now because the president of the United States did not take the precautions that we could have easily predicted," he said. By choosing "ideology over facts," he added, the Republican administration is "not only a failure, but the most dangerous administration in my lifetime."
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Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident' finds its scapegoats, many questions remain
By: Jackson Thoreau
12/30/03
Liberal Slant
http://www.liberalslant.com/jt123003.htm
I'm for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers. - Sen. Paul Wellstone
Shortly before he died in a mysterious airplane crash 11 days prior to the 2002 elections, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone met with Vice President Dick Cheney, probably the Bush administration's most evil public face.
Cheney was rounding up Senate support for the October 2002 vote on giving the administration carte blanche to invade Iraq, with or without blessing from the United Nations. Cheney strong-armed opposing politicians like the most vindictive of mafioso leaders, and opponents usually gave in.
But not Wellstone. Whatever you thought of his progressive brand of politics, he wasn't a wimp. And that's what made him more than dangerous in the eyes of people like Cheney.
At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota."
Wellstone cast his vote for his conscience and against the Iraq measure, the lone Democrat involved in a tough 2002 election campaign to do so. And a few weeks later on Oct. 25, as he appeared to be winning his re-election bid, Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia Markuson, three campaign staffers, and two pilots died in a plane crash in Minnesota.
Talk about "severe ramifications."
My first hunch upon hearing about the tragedy was that the Beech King Air A-100 was tampered with by right wingers, possibly the CIA, either directly or through electromagnetic rays or some psychic mind games.
And nothing I have heard or read since then has made me drift from that hunch. I'm not alone. The Duluth News Tribune featured a column by Jim Fetzer, a University of Minnesota-Duluth philosophy professor and author, in November 2003.
Fetzer wrote that an FBI "recovery team" headed out to investigate the Wellstone plane crash BEFORE the plane went down.
"I calculate that this team would have had to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time the Wellstone plane was taking off,"Fetzer wrote.
That apparent prior knowledge was similar to Dallas police putting out an all-points bulletin for accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at 12:43 p.m.in 1963 for shooting a police officer. The problem was the officer was not shot until 23 minutes later.
Fetzer also noted that Wellstone's plane was "exceptional,the pilots well-qualified,and the weather posed no significant problems." He wrote that "we have to consider other,less palatable,alternatives, such as small bombs,gas canisters or electromagnetic pulse, radio frequency or High Energy Radio Frequency weapons designed to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field.
An abrupt cessation of communication between the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18 a.m.,the same time an odd cell phone phenomenon occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity.
This suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed."
Michael Ruppert, publisher of From the Wilderness,wrote that the day after the crash he received a message from a former CIA operative who was familiar with those kinds of assassinations. The message read, "As I said earlier, having played ball [and still playing in some respects] with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that."
Ruppert also interviewed two Democratic Congress representatives who said they believed Wellstone was murdered. One said, "I don't think there's anyone on the Hill who doesn't suspect it.It's too convenient,too coincidental,too damned obvious. My guess is that some of the less courageous members of the party are thinking about becoming Republicans right now."
Even National Transportation Safety Board officials found aspects of Wellstone's accident puzzling. An article in the Duluth News Tribune a few days after the tragedy said that "for some still unexplained reason - [the plane] turned off course and crashed." It quoted Carol Carmody, the NTSB's acting chair and reportedly a former CIA employee,as saying, "We find the whole turn curious."
NTSB blames pilots
But in November 2003, the NTSB blamed the two pilots of Wellstone's plane, Richard Conry and Michael Guess, for the crash. The pilots flew too high and too fast when they began a left turn toward the runway,then let it slow to dangerous levels,the NTSB said.
The NTSB also accused Conry and Guess of not even monitoring the instruments."One of them should have been monitoring the instruments," said Bill Bramble, a human performance investigator for the NTSB.
Still, NTSB board member Richard Healing called the conclusion "speculative," pointing out that the report did not say how the pilots missed the red flags or why they failed to make adjustments.
"We don't know why," Healing said. "It's quite speculative."
The conclusion was especially disturbing considering the NTSB's own simulations, which included flying a plane at abnormally slow speeds and being unable to bring it down. That by itself should have forced consideration of other possible causes.
The NTSB said that Conry made mistakes on previous flights that were covered by his co-pilots and was convicted of mail fraud related to a home-building business in 1990. But Wellstone had used Aviation Charter since 1992 and had flown numerous other times with Conry,with whom he was reportedly comfortable. Conry passed a proficiency test just two days before the tragedy, and some attorneys said regulations did not require revocation of a pilot's license because of a criminal conviction unless it involved drugs or alcohol.
While the NTSB said some fellow pilots questioned the skill levels of Conry and Guess,Conry had more than 5,000 hours of flying time, according to his management company,Aviation Charter Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn..
Family members of Wellstone reached a $25 million settlement in mid-2003 with Aviation Charter.
Several pilots said the NTSB was just looking for scapegoats. "It is hard to believe that two experienced pilots would fail to monitor airspeed," one said.
As in the case of JFK,the scapegoats who took the blame were conveniently dead.
And many questions remained.
Electromagnetic pulse device suspected
More people than Fetzer and I believe that Wellstone's plane could have been hit with an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] device that caused the aircraft to suddenly turn off course.
Electromagnetic pulses from military craft may have been responsible for several civilian airline disasters in the late 1990s, according to an article in The London Observer. In particular, Swissair 111 in 1998 and TWA 800 in 1996 both took the same route over Long Island,experienced trouble in the same region, suffered catastrophic electrical malfunctions,and were flying at a time when military exercises involving submarines and U.S. Navy P3 fighter planes were being conducted.
Experts have even testified before Congress about concerns that terrorists may use EMPs, which they said were capable of short-circuiting computers, satellites, radios, radar, and traffic lights. An EMP shockwave can be produced by a device small enough to fit in a briefcase, they said.
Stanley Jakubiak, senior civilian official for nuclear command, control, communications,and EMP policy for the Defense Department, admitted in 1999 Congressional testimony that the feds have studied EMPs for years.
U.S. Marine Corp Major M. CaJohn went farther than that in a 1988 report, writing that officials had sought remedies for the effects of EMPs at least since the early 1960s. The Air Force built an EMP testing facility called TRESTLE in 1980 at Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
The Navy also erected an EMP testing facility called EMPRESS I at Point Patience on the Patuxent River in Maryland. Other agencies have their own EMP facilities.
Fetzer also reports on other instances and reports,including nuclear tests by Soviets and Americans in the 1960s resulting in gigantic releases of electromagnetic energy.There is also this 1998 U.S. Department of Justice document describing these devices: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/sl298.txt.
First developed in the 19th century, EMPs now are relatively easy to obtain. Anyone can acquire an EMP generator through the Internet, such as at http://www.amazing1.com/emp.htm.
Theoretically, a person a few miles from the runway could bombard the aircraft with an intense electromagnetic pulse, which could cause an electrical failure, instantly knock out radio communication, disrupt normal engine ignition, and cause loss of steering control. The steering control surfaces on these airplanes are controlled by individual electrical actuators that are mechanically linked to the rudder, ailerons, and flaps.
This type of sabotage would leave no physical evidence on the aircraft, although it's possible that people at the airport or in the general vicinity might have noticed electrical anomalies like radio noises, a crashed computer, telephone disruption, and so on. A Texas software engineer wrote me that EMPs damage systems by generating an electrical pulse in the system wiring. Therefore, a component would not have to be directly exposed to an EMP to be damaged. An aircraft struck by an EMP pulse would not likely die, unless the plane was hit by an extremely powerful EMP pulse.
"More likely, an EMP strike would disable delicate electronic systems, leaving electrical systems intact," the engineer wrote. "After being struck by an EMP, the aircraft would likely function more or less normally, but without any control systems, instruments, or radios. This would account for the assertion that the Wellstone plane's engines were still running when the plane hit the ground."
Another electrical engineer wrote, "You don't need anything as elaborate as an EMP generator. Standard issue radio transmitters can screw up a landing."
Lawrence Judd, an Illinois attorney, wrote the NTSB to ask whether it has or will investigate the possibility that EMF weapons were used to bring down the planes of Senators Wellstone and Carnahan. Robert Benzon wrote him back, thusly, "The NTSB is unaware of any mobile EM force or EM pulse weapon system capable of disabling an aircraft at the ground-to-air ranges that existed in either of the accidents you mention in your email."
But Fetzer noted that what the NTSB may or may not be "aware of" depends on its state of actual or feigned ignorance. "In this day and age, there is no excuse for any such lack of knowledge about increasingly familiar weapons," Fetzer wrote me in an email. "It reminds me of the Warren Report's conclusion that there was 'no credible evidence' of conspiracy in the death of JFK. It all depends on what you are willing to consider 'credible.' Today, such a statement would be considered laughable - similarly that of the NTSB."
Weird cell phone interference reported
John Ongaro, a Minnesota lobbyist, wrote to Fetzer about his experience the day Wellstone died. Ongaro said he was driving to the same funeral that Wellstone and his party were flying to in Eveleth, Minn. While traveling north on Hwy. 53 near the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport in the same area as Wellstone's plane,he received a call on his cell phone at precisely the same time Wellstone's King Air veered off course.
"This call was in a league of its own," Ongaro said. "When I answered it, what I heard sounded like a cross between a roar and a loud humming noise. The noise seemed to be oscillating, and I could not make out any words being spoken. Instead, just this loud, grotesque, sometimes screeching and humming noise."
What he heard may very well have been electronic interference from an EMP or microwave weapon.
One writer to talk show host Jeff Rense suggested a scenario involving "black op specialists" in a van or truck full of radio/instrument landing jamming equipment.
"As Wellstone's plane approaches the airport, the VOR/ILS jamming equipment is activated, and a 'decoy' VOR signal is sent to the plane, thus tricking the plane's instruments [and the pilot] into believing the airport is somewhere several degrees off the true course to the runway," S.H. wrote. "The pilot follows that signal straight into the ground. The non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming equipment, casually leaves the area, looking just like any other TV repair truck or moving van."
Witnesses hear an explosion, see a flash of light
One witness of Wellstone's crash, Megen Williams, who lived near the Eveleth airport, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that she heard "a diving noise and then an explosion" as she prepared for work as a nurse in her home near the crash site. At first, she thought it was blasting at a nearby iron ore mine, and she didn't call authorities.
Another local resident,Rodney Allen, said the plane flew right over his house. "It was so close the windows were shaking," Allen said. He added that the craft was "crabbing to the right," then less than a minute later, he felt an impact and heard what he thought sounded like a loud rifle shot. St. Paul Pioneer Press, Oct. 26, 2002
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was last seen on air traffic control radar at 10:21 a.m., flying at an elevation of 1,800 feet. Radar tapes indicate Wellstone's plane had descended to about 400 feet and was traveling at only 85 knots near the end of its flight.
Another person saw a blond-haired man on CNN saying he observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane.
Don Sipola,a former president of the Eveleth Virginia Municipal Airport Commission, said "something" caused Wellstone's plane to veer off course at low altittude. "This was a real steep bank, not a nice, gentle don't-spill-the-coffee descent," Siploa said. "This is more like a space shuttle coming down. This was not a controlled descent into the ground."
The pilots of Wellstone's plane radioed that they were two miles out, clicked up the runway lights,and had the airstrip in sight, said Traci Chacich, the airport's office manager. That was the last that airport employees heard from them.
Weather not that bad
Some officials and media reports blamed bad weather,but witnesses said conditions were not that bad at the time of Wellstone's accident. It was cloudy with a little ice, but there was little wind. Other pilots landed without problem during that same time and said the conditions were not bad. Airport visibility was about 3 miles at the time the plane went down,which was adequate.
Another pilot who landed a slightly larger twin-engine plane at the same airport that same day a couple of hours before Wellstone's plane crashed, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he experienced no significant problems. There was very light ice, "but nothing to be alarmed about," pilot Ray Juntunen said. "It shouldn't have been a problem."
According to the NTSB, Wellstone's pilots received warnings of icing at 9,000 to 11,000 feet and were allowed to descend to 4,000 feet. Juntunen said he was able to see the airport from five miles out, and another pilot landed 30 minutes later and said the clouds were a little lower, but still not bad.
Frank Hilldrup, lead investigator for the NTSB, said the landing gear of Wellstone's plane appeared to be down.
The King Air had a reputation as one of the safest turboprops around, many manufacturers and pilot said. Some 50 accidents involving King Air A100s had occurred between 1975 and 2002, according to the FAA. Five were fatal,but three of those weren't the plane's fault.
Wellstone was target of apparent assassination in 2000
Wellstone was the target of an apparent assassination plot before. In 2000, as he visited Colombia to survey conditions there, a bomb was found along his route from the airport. He was also sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate by a helicopter above him while watching the Colombian police demonstrate its fumigation of coca plants.Officials called the incident an accident.
Wellstone was a vocal opponent of military aid to the Colombian government. While there, he visited human rights activists who said the government did not protect civilians. Wellstone told reporters he thought his Colombian hosts created the bomb story to dissuade him from traveling to certain areas of the country. "I don't know whether I was targeted, but I certainly know that the human rights activists are targeted," Wellstone said.
Among the weird events since Wellstone's death was that his successor in the U.S. Senate, Republican Norm Coleman,was named chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. As Fetzer said, that's a practically unheard of position for a freshman senator with no previous experience. Could that be why Congress has not opened a formal investigation into Wellstone's death?
For my part, I'm not a big conspiracy nut who worries about this kind of thing all the time - just an average one like Oliver Stone who knows there's something sinister and weird going on in our world.
I have done extensive research into the JFK assassination in Dallas. The right wing of the CIA was heavily involved in that,from Oswald's CIA connections to the Dallas mayor at that time being the brother of the former CIA deputy director who lost his job after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and blamed that on JFK.
The Dallas mayor may even have approved the change in the parade route on that fateful day so it would go right by the grassy knoll and building where Oswald and probably other snipers were, where JFK met his death.
I have interviewed numerous people who reported weird things that occurred during that time, such as key witnesses dying in strange ways like mysterious plane crashes and being run over by trains in the middle of the night. I have written numerous stories on this and covered it in my book on Dallas history - and have received my share of threatening phone calls,mail opened, and the like to know I was stepping on some powerful toes.
There were also numerous JFK murder witnesses committing suicide in the months after that tragedy.The CIA has done extensive mind control work for decades - I know at least one psychic personally who started working for the CIA in the 1980s - and could possibly convince someone through such mind games to commit suicide. Could they psychically work on making a plane crash? Who knows? Anything is possible.
Similarities with Carnahan, Kennedy crashes
What about Democratic Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan,who was killed during a close Senate race when his small plane crashed right before the 2000 election? What about John F. Kennedy Jr.,who had intelligence, political ambitions,charisma,and the name,dying in a 1999 plane crash?
In both of those cases,the planes were already descending towards their landing and then suddenly wandered off their approach paths and crashed, similar to Wellstone's craft. In all three cases, radio contact appears to have been cut off while the planes were still in the air,possibly indicating electrical failures on board.
In Kennedy's case,at least one witness saw a flash in the sky and heard an explosion before the plane went down,as in Wellstone's situation. Kennedy's plane was also left unguarded at Teeterborough Airport in New Jersey, and almost anyone could have placed something inside it.
The list of high-profile Democratic politicians killed in plane crashes goes on - Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in 1996, Rep. Mickey Leland of Texas in 1989, Rep. Jerry Litton of Missouri in 1976 [who was also involved in a hard-fought election at the time], House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska in 1972.
High-profile Republicans have died in crashes, including Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania and Sen. John Tower of Texas in 1991, but not as many as Democrats.
In fact, of 22 air crashes involving state and federal officials, including one ambassador and one cabinet official, >From the Wilderness found that 14 - 64% - were Democrats and 8 - 36% - were Republicans.
Add to that Raytheon Co., one of the biggest U.S. military contractors and manufacturer of the plane that crashed with Wellstone in it, being a huge donor to Republicans, and the mind continues to wonder. U.S. House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas,for instance, received $48,201 alone from Raytheon in 1997-98.
The Republican National Committee received at least $170,000 from Raytheon since 1999. Raytheon donates to Democrats, too, but more than twice as much money goes to Republicans.
Raytheon has all kinds of CIA connections,as does Bush,whose father, remember, was once director of the CIA. One of the more intriguing discoveries that emerged from the NTSB's own investigation of this case was that Raytheon not only not only manufactured EM force and EM pulse weapons,but also manufactured the King Air A100. No other entity would have been better positioned to have taken it down. See http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2003/AAR0303.htm for more details.
Bush, for his part, issued some strange comments immediately after Wellstone's crash, even for him. He called Wellstone - who was an articulate, energetic, intelligent political science professor for 21 years before he was a senator - a "plain-spoken fellow." He said he wanted to issue his"condolences for the loss of the Senate." Did he mean the Democrats' sudden loss of the Senate, which occurred the day Wellstone died? Did he know something more than he let on?
Bush once called Wellstone a 'chicken shit'
There was no love lost between the Bush clan and Wellstone. In 1990, as Wellstone challenged the Persian Gulf War preparations, Bush Sr. even referred to Wellstone as a "chicken shit." When Wellstone first met Bush Jr. in 2001, the latter disrespectfully called him "Pablo."
As The Nation said in May 2002,getting rid of Wellstone was a passion for Bush, Karl Rove, and Cheney. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone,"a senior Republican aide told The Nation. "This one is political and personal for them."
No senator had a more consistent record of voting against Bush administration proposals in 2001. Wellstone voted against the Homeland Security Act and many of Bush's judicial nominees. He pushed for stronger environmental programs, for genuine measures to counter corporate fraud, and for investigations into Sept. 11 and $350 million that was missing from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Freepers' comments I read about this tragedy were mostly tasteful - on the surface - though some jokes and conspiratorial posts were published on their right-wing site. Right after the news of the crash, some posted comments like "prayers for control of the Senate." Several comments were removed by the moderator. One that was not said, "You do realize that as we sit here praying for one of our biggest political enemies' safety, President Bush will be blamed by the Democrats [including the rabid leftists at DU and other brain-sucking sites] for the crash."
Another joked, "Maybe it was shot down by a right wing militia. We've got to ban handguns." And another said, "Ted Kennedy may have been on [the plane]." Then there was this ramble: "Politically speaking, would this be good or bad news for the GOP if he's dead? I could see him winning now like Carnahan in 2000 so that Gov. Jesse could appoint his successor. I'm thinking this is probably not good news."
And this comment: "Any bets on how quickly the Democrats will have his wife take his place on the ballot?" Hello? Sen. Wellstone's wife died in the tragedy, remember? Another post predicted that "[Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota] Coleman's campaign is dead." And then there was this message: "I pray that Wellstone and all of his aides survive,and live to see themselves defeated handily on Nov 5th...unless this is yet another of Tom 'Caligula' Daschle's election schemes." Someone else added, "Carnahan II? Ventura is the governor,not a D..this time."
Such conservatives' glee at the demise of probably the most powerful real progressive in the country was entirely evident in such comments. Many contained themselves, but we know what they're really thinking, don't we?
And a few days after Wellstone's death, right wingers were selling and displaying on their vehicles insensitive bumper stickers with messages like, "He's dead, get over it." How's that for "compassionate conservatism?"
More good stories
There are many good stories on the Wellstone crash out there. Those include:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/FuturisticWeaponry.pdf
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/news/opinion/7306797.htm
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110102_wellstone.html
http://news.mpr.org/features/2003/03/03_zdechlikm_wellstone/
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=14399
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00206.htm
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=78&contentid=652&page=2
Jackson Thoreau, a contributing writer for Liberal Slant, is co-author of "We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House".
The 110,000-word electronic book can be downloaded at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html or at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html Thoreau also co-authored a book on Dallas history from the perspective of African-Americans, civil rights advocates, and others.
His articles can also be found at: www.americaheldhostile.com Thoreau can be emailed at: jacksonthor@justice.com or jacksonthor@yahoo.com
--------
Some words better left unuttered
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/154440_thomas30.html
WASHINGTON -- Some of the words uttered by very important people in Washington in 2003 are best forgotten.
On the other hand, as we enter an election year, maybe they should be remembered. Many of the official statements were made about the war in Iraq, and the so-called imminent threat Iraqi weapons posed for the United States:
- On March 17, three days before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said in an address to the nation: "There is no question we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical."
- On May 1, he delivered a war-ending speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California with a banner across the ship reading: "Mission accomplished."
But the death toll approached 470 GIs on Friday and is unlikely to stop climbing anytime soon. The number of combat wounded is 2,679.
- In an interview on Dec. 16, television anchorwoman Diane Sawyer pressed Bush on the fact that no unconventional weapons had been found in Iraq some nine months after the search had begun.
Bush kept interjecting: "Yet."
Sawyer persisted, asking about the administration's flat statements that Saddam had such weapons versus the mere possibility that he could acquire them.
An exasperated Bush replied: "So, what's the difference?"
Do we really have to explain?
- On Oct. 17, Bush gave an interview to Fox News, saying he does not read newspapers.
"The best way to get the news is from objective sources," Bush said. "And the most objective sources I have are the people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."
Objective? Hardly. Protective? Absolutely.
- On Dec. 15, after attending more than 30 fund-raisers in recent months to rally the GOP troops, Bush told a news conference: "There is plenty of time ahead for politics. Now is not the time."
Who is he kidding?
- Last June, during one of his many church speeches, Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin said George W. Bush became president "because God put him there." He also said Islamic extremists hate us "because we are a Christian nation."
Boykin went on to claim that a Muslim warlord in Somalia had been defeated because "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol."
His zealotry smacks of the extremism he hates.
- On Jan. 22, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ruffled diplomatic feathers when he referred to France and Germany as the "old Europe" and the former communist nations now in NATO as the "new Europe."
This is the same "old Europe" that stood by us in the Cold War and is now heading up security operations and civil enforcement operations in Afghanistan.
- On March 7, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Isn't it time for Powell to recant?
- On Jan. 9, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, "We know for a fact there are weapons (of mass destruction) there."
Any regrets, Ari?
- On Dec. 17, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the Bush administration gave a classified intelligence briefing to members of Congress in October 2002 saying Iraq not only had the weapons "but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities." The briefing was held before the vote authorizing the use of force to attack Iraq.
So why the congressional silence -- throughout 2003 -- after being misled into voting for war?
- On May 28, in a Vanity Fair interview, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraqi war, told of the administration plotting to sell the war to the American public.
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue -- weapons of mass destruction because it was one reason everyone could agree on."
Honest but appalling.
- After a trip to Iraq in late July to check on how the U.S. occupation was going, Wolfowitz warned: "Foreigners should stay out of Iraq."
A little too late, isn't it?
- For credibility, I'll take former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. He reminded us on Dec. 23 that there are only two justifications for pre-emptive war: the presence of a threat of armed action credibly documented, and an urgency that does not tolerate delay.
The U.S. action against Iraq met neither test.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Fighter jets on offer in Israeli army's end-of-year sale
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Dec 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031230150241.d4jki1qz.html
Assault helicopters, F-16 fighter planes and tanks are all available at knock-down prices in an end-of-year sale being staged by the Israeli army, the Maariv daily reported Tuesday.
The defense ministry has released a catalogue of military hardware which has been taken out of service and are deemed surplus to requirements.
Although prices are not published in the catalogue, the guide makes clear that the starting price for even the smallest item is 50,000 US dollars.
The annual sale is expected to be worth some 100 million dollars to the army which is facing major budget restraints amid the continuing economic downturn in Israel.
Any would-be purchasers must first prove that they have no connection with organisations hostile to Israel.
Sales of weapons systems produced in the United States must also be approved by Washington to ensure that they do not fall into "enemy hands".
-------- iran
Iran formally accepts U.S. assistance
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 30, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031229-065927-7610r.htm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Iran has formally accepted the U.S. offer to help it cope with a devastating earthquake that has killed tens of thousands of people, the State Department said Monday.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage spoke to the Iran's U.N. envoy Monday morning and offered to help, said the department's deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
Armitage, he said, told the Iranians that this was "a humanitarian tragedy that transcended political considerations and called for the support of the United States."
"We were offering that support to deal with the tragedy of the earthquake," Ereli quoted the deputy secretary as telling the Iranians.
The Iranian envoy, who was in Tehran, discussed the U.S. offer with senior Iranian authorities and called back to accept the offer of assistance, Ereli told a briefing in Washington.
Reports from Iran say that Iranian and international workers had estimated the death toll at 25,000 in the ancient city of Bam, which was hit by a devastating earthquake Friday. However, authorities say that the death toll may surpass 30,000.
Mechanical diggers, including some from the United States, have already replaced rescue teams, as rescuers do not hope to find any more survivors.
Iranian authorities fear those who survived the earthquake might have died of exposure to severe cold in Bam's below-freezing temperatures.
"There have been a number of flights from the United States to Iran bringing humanitarian relief supplies and personnel. From the State Department, the United States Agency for International Development dispatched a seven-member disaster assistance response team to Bam, along with 77 technical and medical specialists," Ereli said.
The specialists include 11 members of the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team, and 66 medical experts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This team is to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to the victims of the Bam earthquake.
U.S. specialists arrived Monday morning at Kerman, which is approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) northwest of Bam.
The U.S. Central Command, which controls U.S. troops in the Middle East, is also providing humanitarian rations, blood and miscellaneous medical support.
"We stand ready to continue our assistance and to respond to the needs of the victims of this tragedy as appropriate and as requested," Ereli said.
This was the first direct contact between the United States and Iran in decades and reports from Bam quote U.S. rescue workers as saying that they were overwhelmed by the warmth of the response they received, both from Iranian authorities and ordinary people.
Ereli said the United States and Iran did not have diplomatic relations but "they do talk to one another from time to time when circumstances require and when it's necessary to address specific issues."
U.S. and Iranian authorities had proxy talks in Geneva earlier this year to discuss the possibility of bringing out al-Qaida suspects from Iran where they are reported to have taken refuge after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The talks were inconclusive and Iran has not yet extradited the suspects.
Ereli said the U.S. rescue team in Iran is coordinating with the representatives of the International Federation of the Red Cross and the United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance.
----
Iran hints ties to U.S. may thaw over quake
But while Tehran hails steps on aid, Bush is cautious
Brian Knowlton
IHT
Friday, January 2, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/123435.html
WASHINGTON Iranian officials appeared Thursday to warm to the possibility that an easing of U.S. restrictions on aid to Iran, granted after the devastating earthquake in the city of Bam, could improve the relationship between the two countries.
The U.S. Treasury secretary, John Snow, announced the easing on Wednesday. For 90 days, he said, Americans will be permitted to donate money to private groups helping in the Bam region, where tens of thousands died in a Dec. 26 earthquake.
Snow called it a ''top priority'' to bring relief to the region, and a White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said that the Iranian people ''deserve and need'' international assistance.
While President Mohammad Khatami said at first that decades of tense U.S.-Iranian relations could not end without a radical change in American policy, several Iranian officials, including the president's brother, hinted Thursday at the possibility of a mutual thaw.
The brother, Mohammed Reza Khatami, the deputy speaker of Parliament, told Reuters that the legislature was evaluating what he called the U.S. government's ''positive behavior.''
''I'm sure,'' he added, ''that goodwill will be answered with goodwill.'' Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi also praised as ''positive'' the U.S. decision to permit money and relief aid to flow to the Bam region.
But he urged the United States to end permanently sanctions that have been in place much of the time since Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held dozens of Americans hostage for more than a year.
''Naturally, the permanent and total lifting of the sanctions would introduce a new climate into the relations between the two countries,'' Kharazi said, according to IRNA, the state press agency.
The earthquake occurred at a delicate time diplomatically, with the United States and Iran quietly and tentatively exploring ways to improve the long-dismal state of their relationship. Last month, the Bush administration cautiously welcomed the decision by Tehran to permit tougher international inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities.
And it is eager to point to signs of progress in the region that it could attribute, more or less directly, to its war in Iraq, its case for pre-emptive warfare, and its pointed inclusion of Iran in an ''axis of evil'' including Iraq and North Korea.
Officials in Washington and Tehran referred this week to months of quiet efforts to turn a slippery diplomatic corner.
''We must look at it more closely,'' Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, said in Bam, referring to earthquake assistance from Americans, ''but they are in the process of sending positive signals for several months now.''
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview published Tuesday that the administration was open to restoring dialogue with Iran after what he called its ''encouraging'' moves of late.
''There are things happening,'' he told The Washington Post, ''and therefore we should keep open the possibility of dialogue at an appropriate point in the future.''
Powell spoke of ''a new attitude in Iran'' and of an awareness there that ''the world is watching and the world is prepared to take action.''
Besides Iran's agreement to surprise nuclear inspections and its acceptance of U.S. earthquake aid, Tehran has shown new openness to moderate Arab governments allied with the United States.
In early December, Khatami met briefly in Geneva with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. King Abdullah of Jordan had traveled to Tehran in September for talks with Khatami that, similarly, were the first of their kind since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Iranian-Egyptian ties have been particularly grim: Egypt supported Iraq in its war against Iran, and Iran celebrated the assassination of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat.
But Egypt recently sent earthquake aid to Iran in a humanitarian effort coordinated partly by Mubarak's wife, Suzanne.
On the U.S. side, after months of indecision on how to treat hundreds of Iranian opposition fighters based in eastern Iraq, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer 3rd, said that they would be sent to third countries. The members of the People's Mujahedeen remain under U.S. guard. . Bremer's choice was criticized by Tehran, which wanted the fighters to be turned over for trial.
But it amounted to a less confrontational outcome than what was favored by some in the Bush administration, who have suggested that the group could be used to gain leverage against the Iranian government.
Khatami, meanwhile, has suggested that he might be willing to extradite more than 100 suspected Al Qaeda members to their countries of origin.
The U.S. administration, for its part, has become slower to complain of Iranian interference in Iraq.
Serious issues remain, however, led by Iran's opposition to the Middle East peace process strongly advocated by President George W. Bush, and Iranian support for groups deemed as terrorists by the United States.
In easing the U.S. restrictions on aid to Iran, the Treasury Department issued a general 90-day license to permit U.S. citizens and nongovernmental organizations to contribute money and material aid directly to Iranians and relief groups working in the Bam area.
The guidelines will bar funds from flowing to Iranians suspected as financiers of terrorism.
The State Department said the nongovernmental groups and the U.S. government would be allowed to send sensitive items to Iran, including satellite telephones, personal computing equipment and transportation material.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis against Sharon policies are right
By John Nichols
December 30, 2003
Madison, WI Capital Times
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/64192.php
They say that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a mission of oppression.
They say that Israel is denying basic human rights to millions of Palestinians.
They say that if Israel continues the occupation, the country will endanger not just the lives and rights of Palestinians but the future of Israel itself.
Who are these militant critics of Israeli policies? More than a dozen members of the ultra-elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. Arguably the most respected, and feared, soldiers in the Israeli military, members of the unit have for decades been at the forefront of their country's most daring military initiatives - including the 1976 rescue at Entebbe airport of 100 hostages being held on an Air France flight that had been hijacked by terrorists. The mystique surrounding the Sayeret Matkal unit is even more intense and dramatic than that associated with the U.S. Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, or the British Special Air Service.
Sayeret Matkal is, in the words of military historian Yagil Levy, "the No. 1 military unit in Israel."
That is why it is so startling, and so very significant, that members of the unit have refused to participate any longer in what they describe as "missions of oppression." Like a growing number of Israelis, many of whom serve in the military, the dissident members of the Sayeret Matkal unit say they are no longer willing to cooperate with the occupation of Palestinian land on the West Bank and Gaza Strip - or with the often brutal actions that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes are justified as part of that occupation.
On Dec. 21, 10 soldiers and three officers of the Sayeret Matkal unit signed a remarkable letter to Sharon, in which they declared, "We shall no longer lend a hand in the occupation of the territories."
Accusing Sharon of using their unit and other Israeli military forces to promote the development of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the signers of the letter wrote, "We shall no long serve as a shield in the crusade of the settlements."
The letter sent shock waves through the Israeli political establishment that were even more intense that those felt in September, when 27 Israeli Air Force pilots and navigators said that they would refuse to participate in missions involving the territories. And it ought to be read closely by policy-makers in the United States, where the Bush administration and too many members of Congress continue to believe, wrongly, that support for Israel requires support for, or at the least acceptance of, the occupation.
In fact, the opposite is true, as the members of the Sayeret Matkal unit made clear in their letter to Sharon.
"Out of concern for the future of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist, Democratic state, and out of fear for its moral character," they wrote, "we declare that: We shall no longer lend a hand in the occupation of the territories. We shall no longer take part in the deprivation of basic human rights from millions of Palestinians. We shall no long serve as a shield in the crusade of the settlements. We shall no longer corrupt our moral character in missions of oppression. We shall no longer deny our responsibility as soldiers of the Israeli DEFENSE force.
"We fear for the fate of the children of this country, who are constantly subjected to an evil that is unnecessary, an evil in which we have participated. We have long ago crossed the line of those who fight for their own protection; we stand facing the border of those who fight to conquer another people.
"We shall not cross this border!"
By continuing to support Sharon's folly, the United States crosses that border, and in so doing encourages what some of the most respected members of the Israeli military appropriately characterize as "missions of oppression." Just as this letter from members of the Sayeret Matkal unit should lead Israeli leaders to rethink their misguided policies, so it should lead American leaders to rethink the role that U.S. support and encouragement of those same misguided leaders and policies have played in creating the current crisis.
-------- latin america
Brazil Judge Orders U.S. Citizens Fingerprinted
Tue December 30, 2003
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4059482
BRASILIA, Brazil - A Brazilian judge furious at U.S. plans to fingerprint and photograph Brazilians entering the United States has ordered Brazil to do the same to U.S. citizens, police said on Tuesday.
The order, set to go into effect on Jan. 1, came after a government office filed a complaint in federal court over the U.S. measure aimed at millions of foreign travelers.
"Unless the court order is contested in the justice system, it will be complied with," said a spokesman for Brazil's Federal Police, the agency overseeing immigration.
Starting Jan. 5, citizens of countries such as Brazil who need a visa to enter the United States will be fingerprinted and photographed when they pass through immigration at major U.S. airports and seaports.
The procedure is meant to identify people who have violated immigration controls, have a criminal record or belong to groups the U.S. government lists as "terrorist" organizations.
The checks will not be carried out against citizens of 27 nations who do not need a visa to enter the United States.
"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.
Brazil currently requires U.S. citizens to have a visa when entering the country.
-------- prisoners of war
Saddam Has Options for War Crimes Defense
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Defending-Saddam.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even Saddam Hussein has legal options. The deposed Iraqi leader could harken back to the trials of Nazi leaders and Japanese commanders after World War II to fight expected charges of genocide and war crimes, claiming he never personally killed anyone or that he had no control over atrocities committed in his name, U.S. defense lawyers and scholars say.
Saddam also might look to the present, and adopt the tactics of deposed Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. On trial now before a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Milosevic has essentially thumbed his nose at the prosecutors and judges and uses the sessions to make windy speeches.
Any trial for Saddam may be a long time off, and it is not clear where or how he will be called to answer for alleged crimes dating back decades. But when the expected trial comes, Saddam can choose from a few basic legal strategies.
The first step for Saddam's defense team will be a challenge to the authority of whatever body puts him on trial, lawyers say. That attack will be easier to make if Americans are involved in organizing or underwriting the trial, but a smart defense lawyer would use the same tactic to challenge even a trial conducted wholly by Iraqis, lawyers say.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said last week that he would be willing to provide legal counsel to the ousted Iraqi leader if he requested assistance. Clark was attorney general under President Johnson and is a staunch anti-war advocate who has met with Saddam on several occasions in the past decade.
Another strategy would be for Saddam to plead insanity or infirmity to try to head off a trial altogether, although lawyers say that seems unlikely.
Assuming there is a trial, Saddam could claim he committed no crimes, or that his actions were justified to put down insurrection or defend his country.
Or, as in the trials arising from World War II, Saddam could try to shift the blame or turn the tables on his accusers.
Adm. Karl Doenitz, commander of the German U-boat campaign, received a relatively light sentence of 10 years at the Nuremberg war crimes trial after claiming that he used the same warfighting tactics as the Allies, including failing to pick up survivors after a submarine attack. Doenitz' lawyers produced an affidavit from U.S. Adm. Chester Nimitz to back up this claim.
In Saddam's case, he could claim Western countries including the United States willingly sold him weaponry and chemicals, and turned a blind eye to the consequences.
``He could try to leverage that, saying, 'You gave me the weapons, did you expect I wouldn't use them?''' University of Denver law professor Robert Hardaway, who favors a Nuremberg-style tribunal for Saddam, said in one of several recent interviews with legal experts.
Saddam might head off some charges, or at least make pursuing them uncomfortable, by pointing fingers at U.S. government figures or companies that had dealings with Iraq, said Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law.
``His lawyer could say, 'We were the U.S. ally against Iran, and Secretary Rumsfeld himself came here to make friends,''' Cassel said, referring to meetings in 1983 and 1984 between then-White House Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld and Iraqi officials. ``'We're going to have to subpoena Rumsfeld.'''
Saddam also could challenge the evidence against him, arguing that the paper trail showing his culpability is weak and witnesses unreliable, lawyers said. He could exploit any forensic lapses in the documentation of mass graves or other evidence of murder.
``Then, there is everything from denial that these things happened to 'I didn't know my underlings were performing these atrocities,''' said Donna E. Arzt, a Syracuse University law professor who assisted the prosecutor in a special war crimes court in Sierra Leone.
Some top Japanese military leaders pleaded ignorance after World War II. Notably, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, charged with wartime crimes in the Philippines, testified that he never ordered atrocities and that if crimes occurred he was powerless to stop them. He still was convicted and sentenced to death.
``One very reasonable possibility for Saddam is the I-wasn't-really-in-charge defense,'' said Paul Rosenzweig, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has written about past war crimes trials.
``That was rejected on both factual and philosophical levels,'' in Yamashita's case, and Saddam would probably have no luck with it either, Rosenzweig said.
Still, Saddam has nothing to lose by putting on a vigorous defense. He's not likely to win his freedom, but he could save his life.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Scientist Acquitted of Treason
Decision Seen as a Repudiation of Government Legal Campaign
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; 3:54 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39159-2003Dec29?language=printer
MOSCOW, Dec. 29 -- A Russian space scientist accused of spying for China was acquitted of treason charges on Monday in a repudiation of the government's legal campaign against scholars and researchers working for foreign organizations.
Valentin Danilov convinced eight of 12 members of a jury in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk that he did not agree to turn over classified space technology to the Chinese, vindicating him nearly three years after he was first arrested. Prosecutors vowed to appeal the verdict.
"This is a historic verdict and it's extremely significant for Russia and the Russian system of justice," Danilov's defense attorney, Yelena Yevmenova, said in a telephone interview from Krasnoyarsk. "This is an example of real change in the judicial system in Russia."
The decision represented the latest setback to Russian authorities who have zealously pursued scientists in espionage cases in the last few years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian scientists who have lost career opportunities have turned to foreign companies for work. However, those ties have aggravated the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, which often interprets them as espionage.
While courts in Russia generally defer to the government, they have bucked state pressure to some degree in several recent spy cases. Twice this year, Russian courts convicted accused spies as requested by the government but gave them only suspended sentences. A judge this year also paroled a military journalist convicted of treason.
In the latest case, Danilov was cleared altogether, apparently the first time a jury has handed down a decision in an espionage trial in Russia. Another scientist accused of spying, Igor Sutyagin, was brought to a jury trial last month, however those proceedings have been indefinitely suspended.
Jury trials remain relatively rare in Russia. Moscow and most Russian regions have finally adopted them only in recent months and national law allows them only in the most serious cases. When juries have been allowed to determine criminal cases, they have acquitted defendants about 20 percent of the time, compared to less than 1 percent when judges issue verdicts.
Yevmenova said she believed Danilov was acquitted only because his case was heard by a jury. Prosecutors said the same thing and argued that such an espionage case was inappropriate for a jury to handle. "The available proof was quite enough to have quite an opposite decision by the jury," prosecutor Sergei Kharin said on Russian television.
Danilov, then head of the thermal physics center at Krasnoyarsk Technical University, was arrested in February 2001 and accused of agreeing to sell secret satellite technology to a state-run Chinese company. Danilov's defenders said his contract with the Chinese company involved information that had been declassified in 1992 and, in some cases, even published in official scientific journals during Soviet times.
Danilov spent 19 months in prison before a court released him pending trial in September 2002. Three months later a court rejected the indictment against him and sent it back to prosecutors because of procedural violations. Prosecutors lost an appeal to reinstate the indictment and had to redraft it.
-------- space
China-EU launch space project
December 30, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031229-104420-1942r.htm
BEIJING, Dec. 29 -- China and the European Union launched a space mission Tuesday to study the Earth's magnetic fields, the BBC reported.
The Double Star mission -- which involves two spacecraft -- is the first joint project between China and the European Space Agency.
The first spacecraft blasted off early on Tuesday aboard a Chinese Long March 2C/SM rocket from a base in the town of Xichang in southwest China.
The second will be launched in about six months' time.
The spacecraft will study how the magnetized and charged particles streaming off the Sun affect Earth.
In extreme cases, this ejected material can interfere with communications and power lines, and even damage electronic components on orbiting satellites
----
Wanted: 'Space Depot' For The Rocket Builders
A production line for GPS birds at Lockheed Martin shows that commoditized approach to space has its benefits
by Joe Latrell
Colorado Springs
Dec 30, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-03k.html
I am a builder. My family, have for generations built things. Homes, Offices, Retail Stores - you name it and we have built it. A straight laced blue collar family until I came along. Growing up, I worked along side my father and brothers doing what we did best, our finest work to build places for people to carry out their lives. Then I found computers and the rest is a strange tale that lead me down a different path than the one planned for me.
But while I left the building trade, it did not leave me. To this day I still compare the work I do in the computer and engineering fields to the work I have done building a home. Do I have a solid plan? Is the work progressing correctly? Are there any changes that we need to make due to some unforeseen issue? Does everything work the way it should?
The process is simple - start with an idea, create a plan and then build. Modify as needed. Test and check systems often, but not to the point where all you do is check. Before too long, you have a finished product. It works for houses, it works for computers and it should work for space companies. Not too hard of jump right?
Well, that isn't quite how it works. Several things are missing. The biggest being infrastructure and I am not talking about launch complexes either. Getting good parts is not only difficult; it is downright impossible some days. Most of your time is spent running around finding things that will work that are not priced so high as to be outside your budget (namely for liability issues). What is a rocket enthusiast supposed to do?
For the time being, there isn't a lot that can be done. But there is an opportunity for an individual (or individuals) to change this state of affairs. It is not glamorous but it is needed and could probably reap some nice profits. Someone needs to create a one-stop shop for parts and services for the rocket engineer. Someone needs to build the Home Depot of the space industry.
A builder today has the advantage of a large number of suppliers for his design choices. If you need a faucet, just hop down to Home Depot. They have several designs that will fit your needs (and your plans).
Want shingles for the roof? You can get a dozen different sizes and colors delivered to you. The system works great. The prices are reasonable and you can get what you need. There are plenty of materials for a builder to choose from so they don't have to create a sink from scratch.
For the rocket guy or gal, these types of resources are hard to come by. Why isn't there a 'Space Depot' of sorts? A place where a company could buy whatever components they needed for their rocket projects, pay reasonable rates for the materials and get good quality for their money? A space superstore for the engineer to use?
If you think this idea strange then consider the following: A large quantity of policy and position papers are written about what space flight should look like in the future. How we should be working on land use rights for the moon, flight regimes for tourists, etc.
There are entire conferences on what we should do with the abundance of space resources. Lots of it seems to be just paper shuffling and rhetoric on what we should be doing instead of actually working on the issues.
Why?
Because the basic terrestrial resources needed to do the job just don't exist. I have attended the ISDC and the Space Access conferences and have seen a lot of wonderful concepts. Most of them revolve around needing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars before they can start to produce results simply because you have to build everything from scratch. There is no 'Space Depot' to get parts from.
For the record, I want to go to space. I created a company to start the ball rolling in that direction but I have found, like many others who have started aerospace firms that the resources needed aren't quite there yet. It is a sad state of affairs. If you want off the shelf parts, they are practically non-existent.
For those parts that do exist, the companies that produce them fear selling them because of liability issues. If someone were to create a 'Space Depot' then many infrastructure problems would have easier solutions and we can get to space that much faster.
So, how much for those 2,500 pound engines on isle 3?
-------- spies
Scott Ritter:
How the British Spy Agency MI6 Secretly Misled A Nation Into War With Iraq
Tuesday, December 30th, 2003
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/30/1441259
Former U.N. Iraqi Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discusses how he was personally involved in the MI6's "Operation Mass Appeal" in the late 1990s to "shake up public opinion" by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media. [includes transcript] President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blairs' justification for the invasion of Iraq has run up against what appears to be unintended scrutiny from an unlikely source-Paul Bremer, head of the occupation forces in Baghdad.
In an interview with London's ITV-1, Bremer dismissed Blair's allegation that British and American weapons hunters had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq. The supposed danger from Saddam Hussein's alleged WMD was central to the case for war in Iraq, but despite months of work, the Iraq Survey Group, headed by David Kay, has all but given up hope of finding them. Blair has remained undaunted, insisting that the evidence would eventually turn up, and told British troops in his Christmas message that the information on laboratories showed Saddam had attempted to "conceal weapons".
But when the claim was put to Bremer, he said it was not true. Unaware that it had been made by Mr Blair, the American proconsul said it sounded like a "red herring" put about by someone opposed to military action to undermine the coalition. He said "I don't know where those words come from, but that is not what David Kay has said. I have read his report, so I don't know who said that ... It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring, then knocks it down."
But when the interviewer told Bremer the statement was actually made by Tony Blair, he changed his tune, saying "There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public,", adding that the group had found "clear evidence of biological and chemical programs ongoing ... and clear evidence of violation of UN Security Council resolutions relating to rockets".
This comes amid allegations from a former chief UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, that MI6-the British intelligence agency-ran a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Ritter told reporters in the British House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned from the UN. Ritter said the MI6 operation was designed to "shake up public opinion" by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media. A spokesman for MI6 said the allegations were "unfounded".
Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Ritter joins us now, the former UN weapons inspector.
SCOTT RITTER: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: First of all, can you talk about what you were doing with the British spy agency?
SCOTT RITTER: First of all, let's clarify a couple of things. It's not an allegation. The British Government did say it was unfounded when I first came forward with the specifics of Operation Mass Appeal, but according to the Sunday Times this past weekend, the British Government has now changed its tune and acknowledged that indeed there was Operation Mass Appeal, and that it was an MI-6 operation, and that it was designed to help shape public opinion. So, you know, let's just understand from the start that what we're talking about is not a mere allegation. It's a statement of fact.
Why was I involved with the British intelligence service? Look, I ran intelligence operations for the United Nations in regards to the disarmament of Iraq. That was my job. Part of this job in 1997 and 1998 took on a propaganda aspect, given the fact that we had launched a series of controversial and confrontational inspections in Iraq, which although successful from a disarmament standpoint in exposing aspects of the Iraqi account which were not accurate, were causing problems for the United Nations in the Security Council. The Security Council as a whole was not backing these tactics that we were using. They were becoming more and more sympathetic to the Iraqi angle, which was that the inspectors were simply coming into Iraq and deliberately causing trouble, were serving the purposes of the unilateral objectives -- policy objectives of the United States and Great Britain to target Saddam Hussein, not to target weapons of mass destruction, et cetera.
We made a decision. We, being Richard Butler, the Executive Chairman who ran UNSCOM, and his senior staff members, of which I was one, that we needed to clean up our public image, and we did a number of things. For instance, in the fall and winter of 1997, we worked with CNN to put together a very high profile one-hour special on CNN about the weapons inspectors, about the Iraqi concealment program, et cetera. This is something that caused the Iraqis and their Security Council allies great consternation. They condemned UNSCOM for getting involved in this kind of media game. Of course, it was the same media game the Iraqis were playing, in taking journalists on guided tours of areas in Iraq that weapons inspectors were trying to gain access to, saying these are nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction.
I was approached by the British intelligence service, which I had, again, a long relationship with, of an official nature, to see if there was any information in the archives of UNSCOM that could be handed to the British, so that they could in turn work it over, determine its veracity, and then seek to plant it in media outlets around the world, in an effort to try to shape the public opinion of those countries, and then indirectly, through, for instance, a report showing up in the Polish press, shape public opinion in Great Britain and the United States.
I went to Richard Butler with the request from the British. He said that he supported this, and we initiated a cooperation that was very short-lived. The British came to me, not in the summer of 1997, but December 1997. The first reports were passed to the British sometime in February of 1998. There was a detailed planning meeting in June of 1998, and I resigned in August of 1998. So it wasn't as though UNSCOM's participation in this was significant. This is an operation - Operation Mass Appeal, that had been going on prior to UNSCOM being asked to be the source of particular data, and it's an operation that continued after my resignation.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Scott Ritter, who is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, who says that in 1997, 1998, he worked with the MI-6, with Operation Mass Appeal. A spokesperson speaking on behalf of the British spy agency told BBC News Online: "The allegation that Ritter was using MI-6 material is unfounded." Your response to that?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, it's absurd in the extreme. The allegation that I was using MI-6 material. First of all: what allegation that I was using MI-6? In regards to Mass Appeal, the statement of fact that I put forward is that UNSCOM provided data to MI-6, which then MI-6 used in the press. That's no longer unfounded. The British Government has acknowledged this. They have acknowledged the existence of Operation Mass Appeal and its role in, you know, serving as a conduit of propaganda information to the media.
So, I believe that what we're talking about here is that the British Government needs to be careful here, because, remember, there was an inquiry by Lord Hutton into the death of David Kelly, the former British scientist, who tragically took his own life after he was exposed by the British Government as a source of information to the BBC. During this inquiry, MI-6 was called to testify, and MI-6 stated on record that it played no role in shaping public opinion, that all it did was provide, you know, intelligence assessment to the British Government, and that was all its job was: collecting intelligence data and then providing assessments on this data and giving it to the British Government. Now, you know, after being summoned to testify under oath for an official committee, the British Government has to acknowledge that: "No, wait a minute, there was an intelligence operation run by MI-6, which did involve, you know, passing intelligence to media outlets for propaganda purposes." The revelation of Mass Appeal has totally contradicted, you know, sworn testimony of British intelligence services, and this should cause great consternation not only for Lord Hutton and his inquiry, which it appears now they were misled or lied to, but also the British Parliament, which needs to take a closer look, in my opinion, at how public opinion was shaped by the British Government in regards to, you know, alleged threats coming from Iraq in the form of weapons of mass destruction. Let's keep this all in focus, by noting that Tony Blair said that there were massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His government published a dossier which backed up these unfounded allegations.
Now, we are almost ten months into an occupation of Iraq, and no such weaponry has been found. That should be everyone's focus. Where are the weapons? Why did the British Government say these weapons existed before the war, and if the British Government didn't have the data necessary to sustain these allegations, were they lying when they made their assessments or were they simply manipulating the public? This is something that should be looked into. The existence of operations like Mass Appeal run by British intelligence services designed to manipulate public opinion should be examined in great detail.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Ritter, why didn't you say this before the invasion?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, before the invasion, I have said many things. I have gone on record saying that the British Government has manipulated data. I have gone on record challenging the assessments of the British Government and the United States Government. I have said straight up that they don't have this data to back up these allegations. I have said straight up they are misinforming the public, misrepresenting data. I have said straight up that their intelligence services cannot back up the claims being made. What I didn't say, was Operation Mass Appeal. Should I have said that before? Look, Amy -- I'm sitting on a wealth of data. You could interview me for a year, and I would come up with something new and dramatic every time you talked to me. Why didn't I pick that particular piece of data? Which piece of data do you want me to pick out of my seven-year experiences of weapons inspector which was very detailed and involved, multifaceted operations around world?
I did mention Mass Appeal to journalists in the spring of 2003, the summer of 2003. And some journalists chose not to do anything with it. Other journalists like Seymour Hersh ran major articles. Seymour Hersh ran an article in the New Yorker, although he didn't mention Operation Mass Appeal by name, he did talk about MI-6's information operations division and how they passed information to the media. He talked about the similar operation undertaken by the CIA, but nobody seemed to take notice. So, when I'm at the House of Commons in November of this year, in a meeting with British parliamentarians, and it becomes clear that the British parliamentarians are willing to rest on the laurels of the Hutton report that they were comfortable with the statements made by MI-6 and British intelligence, about their role with the media, I said, "Oh, look, it's time you guys big a little bit deeper. I'm going to give you some assistance, by putting -- by sharing this data with you." And I gave them the name of the operation, I gave them the name of the intelligence service, and I gave them the name of the people involved. I gave the name people involved off the record because they are serving intelligence officers, and the publication of their names would represent a threat to them and their families. So, hopefully no one is ever going to mention those names, but by providing those names to specific sources, they were able to pin down as the Sunday Times did this past weekend, the British Government caught them in a lie and compelled them to acknowledge Mass Appeal.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you give specific examples of disinformation that you gave to the MI-6?
SCOTT RITTER: First of all, I didn't give disinformation to MI-6. I provided, as I clearly stated, intelligence data that was unverifiable. I provided intelligence data that was unactionable. UNSCOM had a number of files of data pertaining to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program that lacked the specificity necessary for to us take action. So, these files were sitting in our cabinet doing nothing, gathering dust. What the British wanted were these files to be transferred to them, so that they could then work these files over using their own information, seeing if they could determine the veracity of this information, and then make an effort, if the information was accurate, and this is according to the agreement that we had, if this information was accurate, they would then seek to plant it in the media abroad. So, it wasn't a disinformation campaign that I was involved in. It was a propaganda campaign, one that we felt was politically necessary, given the political events of 1997, 1998.
AMY GOODMAN: What specifically was planted?
SCOTT RITTER: Again, and this is what I have told the British, and I'll say it right now. What needs to happen, isn't for Scott Ritter to pull out one or two examples and give it you to or anyone else. What needs to happen, happened. The British Government acknowledged now that their intelligence service, their secret intelligence service, was involved, contrary to the public statements of the MI-6 Chief to Lord Hutton's inquiry involved in a propaganda campaign designed to shape public opinion. So what needs to happen is, rather than me continuing to snipe from the edge, now that the government has acknowledged this, there must be an inquiry in which MI-6 is required to put all of its files. Don't ask me what MI-6 was doing. Ask MI-6. Demand that the files be put before the British Parliament. Demand that the people understand the totality of this propaganda campaign. Was this propaganda campaign disinformation? Did the British intelligence service deliberately plant data which they knew was unsustainable, unverifiable - data which they couldn't back up with anything else? This is the key of the question. Not to come back to the man who's trying to do his best to expose the truth by saying, "Give us specific examples." I can do that, and I have told the British Parliament, that if you want to have an inquiry and call me before you, I will testify under oath about this; but right now, the pressure should be put on the British Government to provide the data, not on other individuals.
AMY GOODMAN: Looking at the Sunday Times of London, it says that Mr. Ritter said he obtained approval to cooperate with Richard Butler, then Executive Chair of the UN Special Commission on Iraq Disarmament. Mr. Butler, now Governor of Tasmania, said yesterday he had no recollection of this. He said he would not have approved any operations falling outside of his disarmament mandate. "We have a choice with respect to Scott Ritter," Butler said. "Either he was misleading me when he worked for me, or he has chosen to mislead the public subsequently. He goes on to say, "He robustly advised me that Iraq retained unaccounted-for WMDs. I think his advice, then, was correct." Your response.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, Amy. If you compare my public statements with Richard Butler's public statements in regards to Iraq weapons of mass destruction programs, I think I have a very good track record. In fact, it's been 100% in terms of being accurate. I don't make anything up. Every time I say something, it's a statement of fact, and you can go to the bank with it. Richard Butler, on the other hand, has been publicly contradicted on any number of occasions about his assessments and about his statements. This is a man who testified before the United States Congress and told them that these weapons existed, that he knew they existed. I called him on this, on television on CNN. I called him a liar in front of everybody. I said, "You're lying. You cannot make that statement of certainty." I never once told him that Iraq retained unaccounted-for weaponry. I told him, it's a matter of record in the United Nations, that we cannot account for all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and related weaponry. Therefore, we must investigate them as if Iraq was retaining them, that we cannot treat this as a light subject. Our job is complete disarmament. If we have unaccounted for material, we must pursue it and pursue it aggressively. This was my advice to Richard Butler.
In December of 1997, I approached Richard Butler about this issue of Mass Appeal. The British Government through their station chief, the MI-6 station chief in New York, had requested that we do not put this in writing. So I went to Richard Butler and sought verbal permission. Richard Butler gave me this verbal permission. Richard Butler knows that this meeting took place in December of 1998. Richard Butler knows that there are minutes of meetings that we attended together in London in May -- excuse me, the first meeting took place in December of 1997, in May of 1998, we attended formal meetings in London in which this issue was raised by the British Government in front of Richard Butler and myself, and Richard Butler again concurred with UNSCOM's participation.
So, you know, I cannot say that Richard Butler is lying. He says he has no recollection of this. Maybe what I just told you, once he hears it or reads of it, will get his brain to dig deeper, and suddenly he will recall this, in fact, is accurate. I have been very accurate about everything I have said in regards to weapons of mass destruction. I stand by everything that I have ever said. And, you know, I think it's Richard Butler that is the one that the media should start looking at askance whenever he opens his mouth about his investment in the disarmament effort. Because clearly, he is part of the problem. He is somebody who, you know, didn't run a very effective ship when he was the Executive Chairman. He is somebody who stated with absolute certainty that these weapons existed. I have never said that. I said we had a job to do, a disarmament task to do, and we needed to finish that job. We needed to account for all of their weaponry. He took it a step further saying that Iraq retained this, and he had evidence of this retention. His statements clearly were cherry-picked by British and American political authorities to help sustain their own allegations of the existence of a massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That helped shape congressional opinion and public opinion here in the United States, and parliamentary opinion and public opinion in Great Britain to support a war that we now know was fought under false premises.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Ritter, I want to thank you for joining us. Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector in Iraq. Thank you.
SCOTT RITTER: Thank you.
----
Polish officer arrested for espionnage
WARSAW (AFP)
Dec 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031230203645.voqb85nz.html
A Polish armed forces officer has been arrested and charged with spying for foreign intelligence services, military prosecutors in the capital said on Tuesday.
The officer, who was arrested on Monday in Warsaw, has been accused of transmitting "documents containing information liable to harm Polish national interests," the prosecutor's office said.
Neither the officer's name, nor the country involved have been disclosed.
"Considering the nature of the inquiry, it remains entirely confidential," deputy prosecutor Colonel Jerzy Kwiecinski told the PAP news agency.
If found guilty, the officer could face at least three years imprisonment.
-------- us
A Soldier's Return, to a Dark and Moody World
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/national/30SOLD.html?ei=1&en=d3c638202a7a4b62&ex=1073811260&pagewanted=print&position=
LAIRSVILLE, Pa., Dec. 24 - Jeremy Feldbusch joined the Army to travel the world. Now the only place he can go by himself is the 40 steps from his bed to the reclining chair in the living room.
The stucco walls guide him, past the bathroom, kitchen and closet, past the photographs of him in football jacket and wrestling singlet, past the coffee table, where he sometimes stubs his toe. At last, he finds his chair.
"Mom!" he yelled on a recent day. "I want a drink of some drinky stuff!"
"How about water?" his mother said back.
"No! Mountain Dew!"
"O.K., Jeremy, O.K."
Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, a fit, driven, highly capable Army Ranger, left home in February knowing the risks of combat. Two months later, he came home blind.
A growing number of young men and women are returning from Iraq and trying to resume lives that were interrupted by war and then minced by injury. Sergeant Feldbusch, a moody 24-year-old, is one of them, back in a little town in western Pennsylvania, in a little house overlooking trees and snow-blanketed hills he cannot see.
"What happened to my plans to become an officer? Gone," Sergeant Feldbusch said. "Can I ever jump in my truck again and just take off? No. Do I always have to be with my mom or dad now? Yep."
Since the war started, more than 2,300 American soldiers in Iraq have been hurt in combat, many by artillery shells and homemade bombs that spray shrapnel. Bulletproof vests and helmets protect vital organs. But as the insurgency continues, doctors say that severe facial injuries, along with wounds to the arms and legs, are becoming a hallmark of this war.
"There's that little area between where the helmet ends and the body armor starts," said Dr. Jeffrey Poffenbarger, an Army neurosurgeon. "And we're seeing a lot of guys getting hit right there, right in the face."
Back home, one little piece of metal can turn an entire household upside down. Charlene Feldbusch stopped working to take care of her son. She rubs cream on his face in the morning, helps him pick out his clothes, fixes him meals and gives him pills at night so he does not shake.
His father, Brace, started writing a book about him. "He's been such an inspiration to me, accomplishing more at 24 than I have my entire life," said Brace Feldbusch, a former coal miner who lost two fingers to a coal cart before he lost his job. He ticked off the chapters, his son's greatest moments: winning the state freestyle wrestling championship; bench-pressing 405 pounds; graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, a biology major, the only member of the family to finish college; becoming an Army Ranger.
His two brothers, Shaun, 25, and Brian, 17, sometimes feel left out.
"But they understand our entire world has changed," Ms. Feldbusch said. "Somebody has to be with Jeremy all the time. But that's O.K. I'm his mom. And that's what moms do."
During the two months Jeremy Feldbusch spent recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, his parents lived at his bedside. Charlene Feldbusch remembers one day seeing a young female soldier crawling past her in the corridor with no legs and her 3-year-old son trailing behind.
Ms. Feldbusch started to cry. But not for the woman.
"Do you know how many times I walked up and down those hallways and saw those people without arms or legs and thought, Why couldn't this be my son? Why his eyes?"
Artillery shells make a certain sound when they are coming right at you. Not a looping whistle, but a short shriek.
On April 3, Sergeant Feldbusch, a 6-foot-2-inch, thickly built mortar man, heard the shriek. He and his platoon of Rangers were guarding the Haditha Dam, a strategic point northwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River, when a shell burst 100 feet away and a piece of red hot shrapnel hit him in the face. The last thing he remembers was eating a pouch of chicken teriyaki.
The inchlong piece of steel, part of the artillery shell's casing, sliced through his right eye, tumbled through his sinuses and lodged in the left side of his brain, severely damaging the optic nerve of his left eye and spraying bone splinters throughout his brain.
Two weeks later, at the Brooke Army Medical Center, doctors removed the shrapnel and reconstructed his face with titanium mesh and a lump of fat from his stomach in place of his missing eye, so the hole would not cave in.
For five weeks, Sergeant Feldbusch remained in a coma. When he came out, it was still black.
"I could hear my parents' voices," he said. "And I thought, What are they doing here? Am I dreaming? What the hell is going on?"
His mother knelt by his bedside and sang softly into his ear, "When I wish upon a star."
Then she asked him, "Jeremy? Who do you love?"
True to form, he whispered, "Brace." He was joking.
Two weeks after he came out of the coma, his parents broke the news. He was being awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. But there was very little chance he would see again.
"I thought there's no way this is happening to me, there's no way I'm going to go through life as a blind man," Sergeant Feldbusch said.
One day, as he lay in bed with tubes and wires and needles sticking out of him like he was some sort of science project, his father looked at him and said, "Maybe God thought you had seen enough killing."
Jeremy responded, "But Dad, why did he have to take my eyes?"
The inch-long piece of shrapnel not only took his sight and dulled his sense of taste and smell, but it took some of his brain, too. It left him quick to lose his temper and acutely sensitive to pain. When he got out of the hospital, it hurt his skin when the wind blew.
It also left him prone to seizures. Right before Christmas, he had his third.
"We're just holding on," said his father. "It's like we're living in a bubble."
His moods flash like the bits of color that sometimes glitter in the mine shaft he lives in. Sometimes he sees red, blue, a bright yellow. Sometimes he is angry, then sad, then suddenly playful.
On a recent night, Brace, 49, asked: "In your mind, Jeremy, if there's an image, if there's a picture in there, buddy, what do you see?"
His son growled back: "I see you getting off your butt and going to the store and getting me some icy-pops. I'm hungry."
Lately, his parents say, he has been more sarcastic.
This month, he was invited to speak to a sixth-grade class. His mother told him the children would like to see his uniform. Instead, he wore sweat pants.
One boy asked about the weather in Iraq. Another asked Sergeant Feldbusch if he had made any new Iraqi friends.
"I didn't make any Iraqi friends," he said.
And at the end of the talk, the school principal asked, "Jeremy, can you say something in Iraqi?"
Sergeant Feldbusch replied, "Something in Iraqi."
The children looked at the principal, who stared at Sergeant Feldbusch who grinned back at her.
"That's just how I've always been, a wisecracker," he explained later.
But then he said, rubbing his finger on the pink splotch by his right eye: "When you look at me, you see this little scar. But people forget that I had this piece of metal go through my eye and bounce up and down in my face and get stuck in my brain."
Dr. Poffenbarger, who operated on Sergeant Feldbusch, explained that his personality may have been affected by damage to the brain's frontal lobe, which controls social skills and behavior.
"When you get a frontal lobe injury, you tend to be more emotionally aggressive," Dr. Poffenbarger said. "A lot of young men with these injuries seem to be angry."
Charlene Feldbusch, 47, said she was concerned about "what's going to come out in Jeremy." "I know he's a big-hearted person," she said. "But it's just that now he's, he's," she searched for a word she could live with. "Different."
Sergeant Feldbusch said his attitude was evolving. "I'm fine with it now," he said. "I'm going to learn Braille. I'm going to get a cane. I'll survive. There's more to life than seeing. "
Even in his dreams, he no longer sees. And he has stopped trying to picture faces.
"When I was first in the hospital, I tried to think of what the doctors and nurses all looked like," he said. "But then I stopped. I'm blind. I figured why am I doing this? I'm never going to see them."
He went on: "It's not that I don't allow myself to get upset. I don't think about it. I had a job. I got hurt. Now I'm blind. My day is my day now."
He spends most of his time in bed or slouched in the reclining chair in the corner of the living room, absorbing his favorite television shows like "Sanford and Son" and the news. At first, he had a lot of visitors and friends. Blairsville, an old coal-mining town of 3,600 people, even had a parade for him this summer and the mayor proclaimed Sept. 20 Jeremy Feldbusch day.
He talks about going back to school and getting a master's degree. And hitting the weights again. He used to be really into that.
But the antiseizure medications make him sleepy. He naps a lot.
"Yeah, I get bored. And I miss the guys," he said. "Ever since I was 5, I was part of some team. Now I'm alone."
Sometimes that gets him into trouble. This summer he slipped off the deck. He also slammed his face into a door frame one night, nearly knocking himself out.
But he had no problem sawing down the family's Christmas tree last week, after his father got it started for him. And when the first snow of the season came, he stood on the lawn with his mother and held out his hand.
Once he retires and receives his medical discharge, Sergeant Feldbusch will be eligible for veterans' benefits that will most likely exceed his current $1,800-a-month paycheck.
On a recent night, his family took him to a wrestling meet. He sat at the edge of the mat with his father, who described each twist, turn and body slam. The gym was alive with the squeak of shoes and the hot press of a full crowd.
"Dad, what's going on now?" Sergeant Feldbusch asked.
"Well, Jerm, the kid with the tattoo is on top and got this boy in a figure four or something," Brace said. "The other kid's nose is bleeding."
"I'm rooting for the bleeder, then," Sergeant Feldbusch announced.
A minute later the bleeder was on his back. Some girls in the crowd screamed for him to get up.
"What's going on, Dad, what's he doing?" Sergeant Feldbusch asked.
Before he could answer, the referee smacked his hand flat like a pancake on the mat. The bleeder had been pinned.
The boy ran out of the gym crying. Brace shook his head.
"See, you got to take winning well and you got to take losing well," Brace said. "Look at Jeremy. He's got every reason to sit in a corner and be depressed. But he's not."
"Whatever, Dad," Sergeant Feldbusch said. "Who's next?"
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ashcroft to Remove Himself From Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak
December 30, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/politics/30CND-LEAK.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - Attorney General John Ashcroft will remove himself from an investigation into who gave the name of a Central Intelligence Agency officer to a newspaper columnist and turn over the inquiry to a special counsel, the Justice Department said today.
Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft had decided to step aside "out of an abundance of caution" and to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Democrats have insisted that Mr. Ashcroft remove himself from the case because he has close ties to some of the people who may have been involved in the disclosure to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, has been appointed special counsel to head the investigation and will be given complete authority to take the inquiry wherever it leads, Mr. Comey said.
The deputy attorney general declined to comment on where the inquiry was heading or when there might be a breakthrough. But his reply to a question hinted that the inquiry might be making progress.
"It's fair to say that an accumulation of facts throughout the course of the investigation over the last several months has led us to this point," Mr. Comey said. "What those facts are and where they tell us we're going is stuff I can't get into and that I would hope you would not speculate about."
The appointment of a special counsel strongly suggested that the controversy would not go away soon and that the inquiry could cause considerable embarrassment for some people. And if the identity of the leaker is established beyond doubt, he or she could face criminal charges for disclosing the name of a covert government agent.
Mr. Comey said the inquiry had been "moving along very quickly" and that Mr. Fitzgerald could choose to retain some of the department investigators who have been participating in it.
Mr. Comey described Mr. Fitzgerald, 41, as a man of "sterling reputation" and "an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor." Some people have likened him to "Eliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor," Mr. Comey said in an allusion to the federal agent of "Untouchables" fame.
Mr. Fitzgerald, a Brooklyn native, served as a prosecutor in the United States attorney's office in Manhattan from the late 1980's until the mid-1990's, where his work included terrorist cases, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
The inquiry is intended to find who leaked the name of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, to Mr. Novak last July. Ms. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who earlier asserted that President Bush had exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capabilities as a pretext for going to war.
Mr. Wilson and his supporters have asserted that his wife's name was disclosed to embarrass or intimidate him because of his criticism of the administration.
Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over whether the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity was spiteful but not very consequential, or a matter of personal and national security, or something in between.
Representative Porter J. Goss, a Florida Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee and is himself a former C.I.A. officer, said when the controversy was at its height a few months ago: "I would say there is much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security."
Some Democrats have expressed outrage.
"This betrayal by someone or some people in the administration has reached a new low," Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said last fall. "There's an unwritten rule in politics that no matter how rough the politics gets, families are off limits, particularly spouses and children."
It was disclosed earlier that Mr. Ashcroft's top aides had regularly briefed him on key details in the investigation, including the identities of people interviewed by the F.B.I.
Mr. Ashcroft's regular, detailed briefings suggest that he has taken a more hands-on role in the politically charged investigation than the department acknowledged. Senate Democrats said the arrangement threatened to compromise the independence of the investigation, a contention that Justice Department officials rejected.
Mr. Ashcroft and his aides repeatedly emphasized that the department's career lawyers were being left to run the investigation free of political hindrance.
But Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said today that he was glad that Mr. Ashcroft had stepped aside. "Throughout America, there was much concern that the investigation of the C.I.A. leak would not be conducted in a fearless and thorough manner," the senator said. "As a result of the action by the attorney general and the Justice Department, much of that concern can be allayed."
-------- courts
DOJ challenges anthrax ruling
By Pamela Hess
Pentagon correspondent
(UPI)
December 30, 2003
WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 -- The Justice Department is attempting to restart the Pentagon's anthrax vaccination program, which was halted last week when a federal judge issued an injunction against the mandatory program.
The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a request for clarification and reconsideration with the District of Columbia's Court of Appeals, arguing the court should have only prohibited the inoculation of the six anonymous people who filed the original lawsuit, rather than prohibiting the vaccination program for the entire military.
The case was filed in March by six anonymous "John Does," reportedly three military personnel and three government contractors who objected to the vaccine.
"A preliminary injunction granting relief exclusively to the six 'Doe' plaintiffs affords them complete relief," the Justice Department request argues. "(W)here large public interests are concerned and the issuance of an injunction may seriously embarrass the accomplishment of important governmental ends, a court of equity should act with caution and only upon clear showing that its intervention is necessary in order to prevent irreparable injury."
The military currently requires personnel deploying to high-risk regions like Korea and Iraq to receive the controversial six-shot treatment. More than a million service members have received anthrax shots. The vaccine has been in use since the 1970s for treating veterinarians against the naturally occurring disease.
However, the military uses it not just to prevent anthrax infections of the skin but pulmonary or inhalation anthrax -- a use for which the vaccine has never been proven effective. Studies have only measured its effect against subcutaneous anthrax.
Hundreds of military personnel rejected the controversial shot between 1998 and 2001, but only 10 have rejected the shot since Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax postal attacks in New York and Washington according to Pentagon officials.
Roughly 1,700 military personnel reported serious adverse reactions, according to the Pentagon. Of those, 69 were hospitalized. According to a Pentagon and a medical board review, only 11 of those were due to the anthrax vaccine.
To the Defense Department, taking the shot is like wearing a helmet or bullet-proof vest -- a necessary force-protection measure.
But Judge Emmet Sullivan, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia, disagreed in a decision handed down Dec. 22.
"The men and women of our armed forces put their lives on the line everyday to preserve and safeguard the freedoms that all Americans cherish and enjoy. Absent an informed consent or presidential waiver, the United States cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs," Sullivan wrote.
Sullivan's decision hinged on the fact that Congress, after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, passed a law banning the use of experimental drugs on military personnel without their informed consent. Federal law also allows the president to waive that law.
Because the FDA has not licensed the vaccine specifically for inhalation anthrax, Sullivan said it must be classified as an investigational drug when used for that purpose and given only voluntarily, with informed consent, unless there is a presidential waiver allowing otherwise.
The Pentagon disagrees, asserting the FDA has issued "guidance to us directly on that question that easily allows for the conclusion it is effective against inhalation anthrax."
However, there is enough ambiguity that the Pentagon is seeking "clarification" on that guidance.
Rather than addressing the status of the vaccine, the Justice Department is challenging the decision on the ground that the court overreacted by banning the vaccine instead of simply giving relief to the plaintiffs.
----
RHODE ISLAND
Judge OKs closing of tribal smoke shop
December 30, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/aroundnation.htm
PROVIDENCE - Rhode Island authorities acted properly when they shut down the Narragansett Indian tribe's tax-free smoke shop, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
U.S. District Judge William Smith said the state had the right to tax cigarettes sold at the shop on the tribe's settlement land in Charlestown.
Seven members of the tribe, including the tribal leader, were arrested by state police in a tumultuous raid on the shop in July.
The tribe filed suit after the raid arguing that, as a sovereign nation, it has a right to sell tobacco free of state taxes. The state argued that the tribe is bound by terms of a 1978 settlement agreement that gave the tribe 1,800 acres of land.
Judge Smith ruled that the state's tax falls on the tobacco consumer, not the tribe, making the tribe simply an agent for collecting the tax.
-------- homeland security
U.S. Tightens Rules For Foreign Airlines
Some Flights Will Require Marshals
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39638-2003Dec29.html
The U.S. government announced yesterday that it will require foreign airlines to place armed air marshals aboard certain international flights entering U.S. air space when intelligence officials deem it necessary to combat terrorist hijackings.
The Department of Homeland Security said international law allows it to require foreign passenger and cargo carriers to put armed law enforcement agents or undercover air marshals aboard flights bound for, leaving from or flying over the United States.
The agency said it has the authority to impose such demands under international aviation laws that allow nations to set the conditions under which foreign carriers enter their air space. U.S. officials acknowledged that many nations do not have air marshal programs but said those countries could meet the requirement by putting other trained law enforcement officials aboard. Officials also said they would take diplomatic steps to share intelligence about terrorist threats before taking dramatic actions, such as revoking landing rights, if requests for air marshals are refused.
"This is an international challenge we all have," Ridge said at a news conference in Washington. "There may be occasions in the future that we may ask them to provide this additional layer of security."
Ridge cited the cancellation of six Air France flights last week between Paris and Los Angeles as an example of how the United States hopes to work more closely with other nations to combat threats to air security.
U.S. officials requested that France put air marshals aboard Air France flights last week out of concern that some passengers on the flights had ties to terrorists, according to a French official and U.S. aviation sources. French police questioned and released 13 passengers in Paris who showed up for the canceled flights. U.S. investigators remain concerned about two passengers who did not show up and who have not yet been located, one official said yesterday.
U.S. officials raised the nation's threat level to "high" Dec. 21 after intelligence reports indicated that terrorists might try to use planes hijacked outside the United States as missiles against targets here. The "code orange" alert, which Ridge said will remain in effect through the New Year period, was also prompted by intelligence concerns about possible terrorist attacks aimed at Washington, New York, Las Vegas and California and the possibility of a "dirty" bomb, one that spreads radioactive material.
British Airways spokesman John Lampl said the airline does not oppose the decision to put air marshals on flights if British or U.S. officials had information about specific threats. The International Air Transport Association, which represents 120 carriers serving the United States, said it did not hear any immediate response from its members but said that any additional related costs should be borne by the foreign governments, not the airlines.
Broad requirements for other nations is a "relatively unprecedented step" that could be very expensive for poorer nations, said Kenneth P. Quinn, a former chief counsel at the Federal Aviation Administration and now an aviation lawyer in Washington. "We need to be careful that the unilateral imposition of security standards" does not anger and encourage other countries to impose unilateral rules, Quinn said.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
-------- justice
Ashcroft Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation
Fitzgerald of Chicago Named Special Prosecutor
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41807-2003Dec30.html
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has recused himself from the investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity as the Justice Department named a special prosecutor to oversee the widening probe, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said today.
The investigation into the disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to a columnist will be led by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, who Comey said will report to him.
"The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation," Comey said at a news conference in Washington. "I agree with that judgment. And I also agree that he made it at the appropriate time, the appropriate point in this investigation."
The naming of the special prosecutor and Ashcroft's recusal mark the latest twist in the ongoing saga of Plame, whose identity as a CIA officer was disclosed by unidentified senior administration officials to columnist Robert D. Novak, who published her name July 14. Disclosing such information may be a violation of federal law.
Several Democratic lawmakers have been calling for Ashcroft to remove himself from the case for months, arguing that the former Republican senator from Missouri has a conflict of interest because of his close ties to senior White House aides. FBI agents have questioned top figures in the administration, including senior advisor Karl Rove.
Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a prominent critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policies who concluded during a 2002 mission to Africa that there was little evidence that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium there. Wilson has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed in retaliation for his public discussions of those findings.
Comey described Fitzgerald as "Elliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor." As the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald has overseen the investigation of former Illinois governor George H. Ryan, who was indicted this month by a federal grand jury on charges of racketeering, mail and tax fraud, and lying to law enforcement officials.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
U.S. agency picks up legal tab
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 30, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20031229-091603-6165r.htm
The Energy Department spent $330 million to reimburse its private contractors for legal bills during a 51/2-year span, including for lawsuits they lost and settlements of sexual harassment and whistleblower accusations, congressional investigators reported yesterday.
The department said the reimbursements were legal and that it scrutinizes each legal bill before deciding to pay. But a key congressman said the reimbursements amounted to a "get-out-of-court free" card for contractors who engage in wrongdoing.
"When a contractor for the DOE gets sued, 95 percent of the time its legal fees and settlement costs get reimbursed by the federal government," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The Energy Department is atypical among federal agencies because private contractors run many of its facilities, including national defense labs and former sites where nuclear weapons production took place.
The department's reimbursements came in 1,895 cases from late 1997 through March of this year, according to a report released by the General Accounting Office, the investigatory arm of Congress.
There were 814 cases involving workers' compensation, 268 on equal employment opportunity, 100 from whistleblowers, 99 stemming from personal injury, 50 on wrongful termination of employment, 40 on radiation and different types of toxicity and 524 on other matters, the GAO said.
Of those, 563 cases are pending, including 290 on workers' compensation and 56 on equal employment opportunity, the investigators reported.
The University of California is one of the department's contractors, operating three laboratories including the one at Los Alamos, N.M. Drawing fire from Mr. Markey, the university in some cases invoked the 11th Amendment providing for state immunity from lawsuit by a private party in federal court.
"UC identified eight out of about 35 federal cases where it invoked immunity," the GAO report stated. "Two were dismissed without further litigation because of this argument.
"Officials at the University of California estimated that the university, in its role as a DOE contractor, has asserted other immunity-related defenses in at least 62 of about 137 cases, predominantly to defend against punitive damages," the GAO said.
Mr. Markey said that underwriting the costs of defending against lawsuits provides little incentive for Energy Department contractors to act within the law.
Mr. Markey said that one case of contractor reimbursement involved a $1 million jury award to a woman who sued Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for wrongful termination. She had testified in a sexual harassment case on behalf of other lab workers.
One legal analyst disagreed with Mr. Markey.
"You would expect in any large-scale operation like this to find a fair number of personnel actions, workers' comp claims and the like," said Steve Schooner, co-director of the government procurement law program at George Washington University law school.
Mr. Schooner said the Energy Department's rules on reimbursing contractors' legal bills are more stringent than those at the Pentagon and at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
----
The U.S. natural gas crunch
December 30, 2003
Washington Times
By Idriss Jazairy
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20031229-091558-2710r.htm
In 2000, I raised with the Department of Energy the possibility of restoring Algeria's position of the late 1970s as the leading supplier of baseload liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the United States. Four terminals had indeed been built at the time on the Eastern seaboard specifically to regasify the Algerian fuel.
Then the U.S. comparator natural gas prices ceased to be cost-based, as deregulation opened the way to competition from Canadian piped gas. The floor dropped out of the LNG market. The terminals had to be mothballed and U.S. LNG importing firms filed for bankruptcy.
But by 2000, hemispheric sources of piped natural gas were leveling off, while consumption was soaring (U.S. LNG imports later doubled between 2002 and 2003). However, I was told at the time that, apart from the kind of gas peak-shaving supplies of which Algeria had been the main provider, hemispheric self-sufficiency would continue to prevail. The 1999 report of the Natural Petroleum Council had said so.
Washington is now abuzz with experts predicting that the United States could be importing annually within two decades as much LNG as the combined imports of the whole world today.
Shortsightedness in anticipating U.S. LNG needs is reminiscent of that concerning world oil projections in the 1970s. Hopefully, the current enthusiastic response, belated as it is, will not lead to another gas bubble that would undermine, when it bursts, the foundation of the nascent international partnership. And this foundation is trust.
Building trust is what brought together 14 cabinet ministers and 23 delegations and major corporations from across the world at the Washington LNG Summit hosted by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham on Dec. 17-18.
The summit noted that there is plenty of LNG on the world market, close by in the Atlantic Basin region (including Algeria) and farther afield, offering a new opportunity to develop innovative international partnerships on the wings of our growing interdependence.
The price of natural gas is now about $7 per million BTU, in energy terms the equivalent of a barrel of oil at $42. For oil this would have caused an outcry against OPEC. But there is no OPEC to blame in this case.
Admittedly, market inefficiencies are the culprits and they do not make news. They are caused by long delays for federal regulatory approval, as in the case of new terminals. They result also from the limited availability of spot loads of LNG, as these are less than 10 percent of overall trade. Unlike oil, LNG trade is still governed by long-term contracts: Because of the huge upfront investments required, few resource providers are prepared to commit tens of billions of dollar unless they anticipate a fair chance of recovering their costs. Both the industry and Energy Minister Chakib Khelil of Algeria made this point at the summit.
Local communities may also act to restrain market forces. This may occur in exporting countries, as in Bolivia, where the government was ousted over an LNG export deal. It can also occur in importing countries like the United States, where people feel apprehensive about unfamiliar safety and security risks.
The summit recognized that we can address these market inefficiencies cooperatively. The federal regulatory approval period for new terminals may be shortened from three years to one year. LNG markets can be made less rigid through partnerships between resource holders and the U.S. gas industry, spanning the value chain from production to liquefaction, transport, regasification and distribution. The emergence of a real-world market for LNG can help.
As for the safety concerns of local communities, there needs to be more awareness promotion on all sides: Japan is entirely dependent on LNG for its gas consumption. It has operated 23 terminals on its limited land mass for several decades without any accident. Mr. Abraham also mentioned that there have been 33,000 LNG carrier voyages covering 60 million miles over a 40-year period without a major accident.Security risks should not give rise to scare-mongering: If a terrorist missile hit a methane tanker bound for Cove Point, Md., in the Chesapeake Bay, the gas would implode rather than explode. It would not effect surrounding communities. Nor would the LNG tanker's draw allow its diversion by a terrorist to a shallow canal leading to the nuclear power plant in the bay.
Time remains of the essence. Since mid-2000, 11 ammonia plants have been shut down, causing job losses in the United States. Fertilizer prices have doubled, affecting the viability of U.S. family farms.Meanwhile, a methane tanker smoothly delivered its first load of Algerian LNG to Cove Point on Dec. 6. More than gas, it delivered the reminder that international LNG partnerships can be a win-win situation for all.
Idriss Jazairy is the ambassador of Algeria to the United States.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Israel Is Concerned About Whistleblower
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Nuclear-Whistleblower.html
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031230-092452-4474r.htm
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel is concerned that a whistleblower who spilled Israeli nuclear secrets to a newspaper two decades ago might have more to say after his imminent release from prison, and is looking for ways to silence him, officials said Tuesday.
Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage after giving dozens of pictures and a description of alleged weapons from Israel's top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor to London's Sunday Times in 1986. He is due to be released in April.
Israel's official policy about nuclear weapons is purposely ambiguous: Officials say only that Israel will not be the first to introduce them into the Middle East.
But based on Vanunu's pictures, experts concluded Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA estimated more recently that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons.
Since his arrest, Vanunu has become the poster figure for critics of Israel's nuclear program.
He was nominated for the 2003 Nobel peace prize and an American couple adopted him in the mistaken belief that this would entitle him to U.S. citizenship and hasten his release.
A Channel Two TV report said officials, concerned about what else Vanunu has to say, are considering options that include barring him from traveling overseas or speaking in public after he is released.
While the Shin Bet security service and Israel's Justice Ministry had no comment, Israeli security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the report was true but would not elaborate.
Vanunu's lawyer did not return calls seeking comment.
Yossi Katz, then a member of the Israeli parliament, visited Vanunu in prison in 2000. He said Vanunu indicated he had more to say, but then contradicted himself.
Speaking after the visit, Katz said Vanunu appeared to mix fact with fantasy. Katz said his impression is that Vanunu is ``not a (mentally) healthy man.''
Born into an observant Jewish family, Vanunu converted to Christianity during a stay in Australia and became a pacifist. Vanunu has indicated that he wants to leave Israel after his release.
Israel, however, does not view Vanunu as the idealist he claims to be, but as ``a disturbed, vengeful person,'' said Hebrew University professor Shlomo Aronson, an expert on Israel's nuclear policies.
``If this is the case,'' says Aronson, ``I would not be surprised if Israel does all it can according to the law to prevent him from bringing further damage to Israel.''
However, it is not clear if the Israeli government could legally bar Vanunu from leaving the country after he completes his sentence, says Moshe Gorali, a legal analyst for the Haaretz daily.
Israel would have to prove he still constitutes a real danger, Gorali said.
A few months after the story in the Sunday Times, Vanunu was lured into a trap by a female agent from Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and spirited from Europe back to Israel, where he was tried and jailed.
Since his incarceration, Israel has treated Vanunu harshly, forcing him to spend long periods in solitary confinement and denying his repeated parole requests.
----
IDF may change open-fire orders after protesters shot
By Gideon Alon, Amos Harel and Jonathan Lis
Haaretz Correspondents,
Tue., December 30, 2003
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/377685.html
IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said Tuesday that the army is considering changing its orders on opening fire as a result of an incident last Friday, in which troops shot two demonstrators, one of them an Israeli, during a protest against the West Bank separation fence. "In the IDF this matter is being examined closely, in a profound and thorough-going investigation," Israel Radio quoted Ya'alon as telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "It's possible that if we have to change the orders for opening fire, we will do so."
The committee members raised many questions regarding Friday's incident, in which a left-wing Israeli activist, Gil Na'amati from Kibbutz Re'im in the Negev, sustained serious wounds and an American tourist was lightly injured, and vehemently criticized the soldiers' behavior. The Knesset plenum is also scheduled to discuss the incident on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Military Police detectives will interrogate an IDF sniper and two commanders involved in the Friday incident, Israel Radio reported. It said the company commander, identified as S., the squad commander, A., and N., the sniper who fired at the demonstrators will be questioned Tuesday.
The investigation is expected to focus on why the soldiers opened fire with live ammunition, failing to use or ask for non-lethal means of crowd dispersal.
Na'amati was questioned by police in his hospital room soon after his condition stabilized.
Ya'alon said the army was engaged in a process of weighing "new orders touching on the question of ivchun [diagnosis]," a factor which the radio called "a new factor in the field - the presence of Israelis."
The army chief was quoted as saying that the "problem" was not one of the soldiers and their field commanders, but of the army's senior officers. He said the "presence of Israeli demonstrators beside the fence was a new reality for which soldiers have not been trained."
"With what tools are we sending the soldiers to carry out their missions? We sent them to prevent terrorism and fight terrorism, and suddenly there's a new phenomenon - Israeli demonstrators. We didn't send them out for this."
Ya'alon said that although Na'amati and the soldiers agreed about what had taken place in the incident, there was an enormous difference in that "he knew that he is an Israeli, and the soldiers did not."
"The soldiers feared for their lives, because they saw a rampaging, kaffiyeh-wearing throng of masked people, and they did not know that they were Israelis."
Asked if it would have been correct to fire on the demonstrators had they been Palestinians, the army chief said, "Experience teaches that Palestinians demonstrations like this have always dragged in firing at our forces, and therefore the soldiers felt endangered."
The soldiers have said they acted strictly according to standing orders stating that the army's rules of engagement for arresting suspects must be followed regarding anyone trying to break through the security fence. They also stressed they had no idea that the demonstrators were Israelis, believing them to be Palestinians.
But footage taken of the incident from beside the demonstrators showed them chanting, shouting to the soldiers, and displaying protest signs in Hebrew.
During the demonstration by Israelis, foreign tourists, and local Palestinians near the Palestinian village of Meskha and the settlement of Elkana, a group of about 15 protesters reached a gate in the fence to shake it and open it, while others, including Israeli and foreign demonstrators, attempted to cut through it with wire cutters.
Meanwhile, some 200 Palestinians and a number of foreigners placed themselves about 30 meters behind the first group. Most of the demonstrators had covered their faces with handkerchiefs against possible tear gas attacks.
When the protesters approached the gate, a single IDF jeep with three soldiers, apparently a security detail for a funeral just held for the victim of a terror attack, was positioned about 30 meters away from them on the other side of the fence. The demonstrators began to shake the gate, shout at the soldiers in Hebrew, and raise signs. One of the soldiers took up a firing position. More soldiers then arrived.
The radio quoted soldiers who testified before a parallel IDF committee of inquiry as saying that after a number of demonstrators burst through the gate, the soldiers fired into the air, but the protesters were undeterred.
The company commander then instructed the squad leader to continue with the order of engagement procedure. The radio said that the soldier who fired at the troops was an army sniper.
The soldiers said they were certain that there were armed protesters hiding in a group behind the demonstrators shaking the wall.
Demonstrators said that the during the incident, which lasted 10-15 minutes, some 10-30 shots were fired, and the demonstrators shouted at the soldiers in Hebrew to stop shooting. At one point, two shots were fired at Na'amati, who was standing near the gate on a piece of concrete and was hit in both legs.
Contrary to the demonstrators' description of events, the IDF Spokesman said that the soldiers called out warnings.
It also appears that senior officers at the brigade level were aware of the order, which was transmitted over the radio.
----
A draining year in Gorleben - Come to Paris!
von Dieter Metk
30.12.2003
http://de.indymedia.org/2003/12/71011.shtml
The way to a "new" European Pressurised Water Reactor has been cleared in Finland. It's no safer than present ones, though the manufacturers like to claim it is. It can cause another "Chernobyl" just like any other and it, too, will produce eternally radiating atomic waste for which no "safe final storage" will be available. The anti-atomic movements throughout Europe and worldwide must join up against these plans. So travel with us to Paris, to the European demonstration against the planned EPR on 17 January at 2 p.m. on the "Place de la Republiqué". Dear Friends,
Another year is ending and we look back on a huge mountain of work we had to struggle through in recent months - and we look ahead to the next one that our opponents, using all tricks and means, keep piling up and that we have to move aside on our way to the goal of ending the insane atomic age.
We've had to take onboard criticism by some members of the BI who felt neglected by hearing too little from and about us and not being personally informed about the state of things. We'll try to rectify that with this roundrobin "at the 11th hour".
There was a lot to do, the CASTOR consignment in November demanded incredible effort - from all the people in the Wendland, from the friends who travelled here from other parts of Germany and from abroad, to support us and our resistance. The resistance was carried not just by the BI with its constitutional means of publicity and information work, but also by groups such as Widersetzen (Resist), X-TausendmalQuer (Thousands of Times in the Way), the Bäuerliche Notgemeinschaft (Farmers' Emergency Community) and many, many individual people. This was not "just" about the CASTOR consignments, the issue is also the impossibility of finding a "final repository" that "safely" locks away the artificially produced atomic waste for millions of years. This is still not clear to the public at large. Other future tasks will be to counter the false belief that the CASTORs would be buried in the Gorleben salt deposit and to resist the wish of the un-Christian-Liberal (CDU-FDP) coalition government of Lower Saxony state to turn "Schacht Konrad" (a former iron ore mine in the town of Salzgitter) and Gorleben into the atom waste toilets not only of Germany but possibly internationally as well.
Despite the "general decree" and a days-long prohibition of demonstration bans connected with it, thousands of people were not frightened off. Despite the deployment of 13,500 police in the Wendland alone - more than assigned in London for the Bush visit - who in some cases bashed through the transport more than "roughly", placed entire villages "under arrest", wouldn't let people out of or into their houses, even beat clergymen in front of their presbyteries and transported them to a prisoner collection point.
That cost "us" strength, incredibly much energy, tears, rage and grief - and an enormous amount of money! But it also brought joy to the people who at the railway line near Rossdorf, in the Göhrde forest near Metzingen and wherever else showed the power machine: the land, the imagination belongs to the living! You can encircle us, but not intimidate us. Many managed to get on to the rails, on to the roads, to make the protest against the transport plainly visible - and it was again more people who will stand in the way. Contrary to the prognoses of the Atom Mafia it has become clear that "Gorleben" and "CASTOR transports" are no "regional problem", but an insoluble one. That was shown by our French friends, who blocked the CASTOR train to the Wendland in their country, that is shown us by the two women from Australia who personally brought us the solidarity of the Aborigines damaged by atom bomb explosions and by the courageous people who had chained themselves to the rails near Heilbronn!
But we will not and cannot hold ourselves up with looking back, we must also look ahead and prevent the plans of the international Atom Mafia. Not just that Siemens, with Red-Green government approval, wants to flog the Hanau plutonium factory to China - of course only for "peaceful uses - along with 1.8 tonnes of plutonium. But also that this government sees no contradiction to the alleged abandonment of nuclear power in backing with government insurance cover the export of a new nuclear power station from the "switch-off country" Germany to Finland.
Europe-wide Siemens and Fromatome/Areva have cleared the way to a "new" reactor, the "European Pressurised Water Reactor" (EPR), becoming reality from early next year. This type of reactor is not the least bit "safer" than reactor types built hitherto, even though the manufacturers like to claim it is. This type of reactor can cause another "Chernobyl" just like any other and its operation will also produce tonnes of eternally radiating atomic waste for which no "safe final storage" will be available.
Also because a possible nuclear disaster knows no borders, the anti-atomic movements throughout Europe and worldwide must join up against these plans and prevent the Atom Lobby setting the atomic course for the third millennium!
This is why we invite you all to travel with us to Paris, to the European demonstration against the planned EPR, under the motto: No New Reactors in Europe and the World! On 17 January in Paris at 2 p.m. on the "Place de la Republiqué document international resistance, stand in the way!
The BI has organised a bus trip. It will start in Lüchow on Friday evening and will cost about 85 euros there and back, with one overnight from Saturday to Sunday in a hotel near Monmartre! Please show your solidarity, this is about the future of all of us!
And because there are people who, for whatever reason, can't do the trip themselves or others who can't afford even these favourable costs, we offer trip vouchers to give to someone that can be ordered from the BI office.
So mark it in your calendar: Off to Paris on 17 January!
Apropos calendar: the resistance is colourful, as was shown again this past November. And a bit of its freshness and colour is to be kept alive in the New Year as well. This is why we've brought out a calendar, with topical photos, including of the CASTOR transport, for every month an impressive "momentary" shot of what makes "resistance" visible, painful but also lovable. A present giving joy the whole year and encouraging joining in or going on with actions to end atomic power. The calendar is available from empathetic bookstores, organic food stores in Wendland or the BI office and costs 13 euros. Any money it makes is urgently needed to cover the costs of resisting the transports, which neither the state nor the Atom Lobby, but all of us have to cover.
And talking of money, we urgently need donations for further projects. For example, to be able to launch more litigation against permits for CASTOR caskets which, contrary to the claims of the atom lobbyists and the "supervisory" authorities, are totally unsafe. And to have the means to take action from the outset against the new container types with which the atomic scrap is to be carted from Sellafield (northwest England) to Gorleben and Ahaus. Against the demonstration bans even outside the ban "corridor", against people being stopped kilometres away from their villages from entering them and visiting friends. If you hurry with the "donations" you can do a double trick on the state: donations to the BI are tax-deductible and if we receive the money before the end of the year you can already make a saving with your tax statement for this year!
Dear friends, so that we don't all run out of breath, remember that we have to become more and more. More people who commit and take a stand. Showing the red card to the "police and atom state". And becoming member of the BI! Please speak to your acquaintances and friends, recruit for the BI! And perhaps you can take on sponsorships for young people and for nephews or nieces, or whoever, and pay their membership subscriptions!
Es gibt niX Gutes, ausser mensch tut es! (Nothing good happens unless we make it happen.)
Have a healthy, successful and fighting 2004!
On behalf of the BI Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg
Dieter Metk
PS: If you wish to be kept informed a little more regularly remember the "Gorleben Rundschau". It's available for subscription and reports almost monthly on what the stubborn ones are up to. In the next edition, for example, on the visit of the Wendlanders to Basilicata in southern Italy where tens of thousands of locals brought down (for now) the decision by the Berlusconi government to build a final atomic waste dump 200 metres from the Mediterranean Sea.
PPS: For the next transport there will be an extended concept for the "CASTORAL Country Party". To make clear with political culture, with events at the railway track, the road route, in the villages, "No Further Than Here". Anyone who knows "celebrities" should approach them, give us direct contact details, so that in addition to the many unknown culture workers we could also generate publicity for resistance actions with the one or other "big name".
e-Mail:: BI-Luechow@t-online.de
Homepage:: http://www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Anschrift:: Drawehner Str. 3, 29439 Lüchow, Fax 05841-3197
Telefon: : 05841 Tel 4684
----
What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/1203/1231willie_song.html
Willie Nelson, who has endorsed Dennis Kucinich for President, and who will lead a fundraising concert for Kucinich's campaign in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2004, wrote a new song on Christmas that he will perform in public for the first time at the Austin concert.
There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth
We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do
(Repeat Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free
(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
-------
Protesters wary of new tactic by feds
Obscure 1872 law cited in case against Greenpeace
Joe Garofoli,
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Bay Area nonprofits and anti-war leaders are fuming about what they see as an attempt by the Justice Department to clamp down on peaceful dissent by filing criminal charges against a group for the nonviolent actions of its followers.
Local activists are closely watching a case winding through the federal courts in Miami. There, a federal prosecutor has dusted off a 19th century law designed to prevent bar owners from luring sailors ashore with booze and prostitutes to file charges against Greenpeace in connection with an April 2002 case in which two activists tried to hang an anti-President Bush banner on a container ship headed into port.
The sign-hangers and four other Greenpeace activists pleaded no contest last year to misdemeanor charges and were sentenced to time served. Now it's their 32-year-old parent organization's turn in court.
If convicted of conspiring to illegally board a ship, Greenpeace could be sentenced to five years' probation and a $10,000 fine, and be required to allow federal probation officers to oversee certain parts of its organization.
While it's not uncommon for individuals to be charged in such cases, activists say this is the first time an advocacy organization has faced criminal penalties for its followers' actions. With 2004 promising to be a huge year of street activism -- from the presidential political conventions to the anti-war movement to the re-energized abortion debate -- advocacy groups from Operation Rescue to the American Civil Liberties Union say the Justice Department is using this tactic to chill criticism of the government.
They're particularly puzzled that prosecutors invoked an 1872 "sailor mongering" law from an era when whorehouse and tavern owners would jump aboard ships illegally to lure sailors onto shore with promises of women and booze. Until the Greenpeace case, the statute had been used only twice, the last time in 1890. A Justice Department spokesman said a trial could begin in May.
"The problem is that the Bush administration is responding to political criticism with criminal prosecution," said David Bookbinder, an attorney with the Sierra Club in San Francisco, one of the progressive heavy hitters to file a court brief in support of Greenpeace. "People are going to be real, real leery about exercising their First Amendment rights."
Federal officials say there was no political motivation behind the decision by U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez to prosecute. "Politics plays no part in our prosecutorial decisions," said Matt Dates, special counsel for public affairs for the U.S. attorney's south Florida office. "We base our decisions solely on the facts of the case."
On April 12, 2002, two Greenpeace activists boarded the APL-Jade as it entered the Port of Miami-Dade, believing it was carrying 70 tons of mahogany illegally imported from the Amazon. The activists were arrested before they could unfurl a banner that read, "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging." Greenpeace alleges that the mahogany was eventually delivered to a South Carolina port. Federal officials had no comment.
Fifteen months later, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Greenpeace on one count of illegally boarding the ship and another of conspiracy to commit that act.
What most frightens activists on both sides of the political spectrum are the penalties that could be invoked, ranging from stripping the organization of its tax-exempt status to allowing federal officials to view its records -- including everything from membership rolls to internal communications.
"It's always a concern when there's a concerted effort by the government to curb peaceful political protest," said Troy Newman, president of the anti- abortion group Operation Rescue West, which has not filed a friend of the court brief. "Greenpeace and Operation Rescue may not be on the same page philosophically, but we use some of the same tactics. . . . I plan on following Howard Dean or whoever the Democratic (presidential) nominee is around the country (in a truck featuring photos of aborted fetuses), and I don't want to be inhibited."
'A dangerous precedent'
While the legal fees won't be onerous to an organization like Greenpeace, which had $21.7 million in revenue in 2002, experts say a long court fight could sink smaller organizations.
"This is setting a dangerous precedent when you're politicizing a law for a purpose for which it is never intended," said Stephen Zunes, an associate professor of history at the University of San Francisco and an expert on social movements. "It's (also) somewhat of a stretch to be using a law that hasn't been used for 100 years.
"If the federal government is going to do that, it has a chilling effect, as people are going to wonder what obscure law they're going to dust off next."
That chill is spreading to advocacy organizations across the political spectrum. Major actions are planned this year at everything from national political conventions in Boston and New York to a June biotechnology conference in San Francisco. Abortion-related demonstrations will be held in Washington, D.C., and anti-war demonstrations will mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
It's chilliest at Greenpeace. Organizers there haven't canceled any events or curbed their criticism of the Bush administration, but are keeping a low profile lately.
"We're erring on the side of caution," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Nancy Hwa. "(The case) is casting a shadow over our activities. We don't want to do anything that the prosecution is likely to use against us."
Anti-war organizers such as Richard Becker of San Francisco, whose International ANSWER was at the forefront of coordinating peace demonstrations over the past 18 months, called the Miami prosecution "part of the crackdown on dissent that's been going on after Sept. 11." The group has called on the FBI to release internal memos concerning what it suspects was federal surveillance of Oct. 25 demonstrations that drew 100,000 in Washington, D.C., and 20,000 in San Francisco. Last week, California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer wrote a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller saying the agency's "Joint Terrorism Task Force should not be used to collect intelligence on the lawful activities of American dissenters."
Prosecution could backfire
Julian Bond, an advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience from his days as a civil rights leader, said prosecuting organizations such as Greenpeace could backfire on the federal government.
"When you force out the moderate leadership of a movement, you often get a more radical one in its place," Bond said. "This is an important case. If there was no civil disobedience in this country, we would still be sitting in the back of the bus, still not allowed to sit at lunch counters."
The Miami case is leading some activists to move more covertly -- and remain unaffiliated -- when committing civil disobedience. Some are opting for the guerrilla tactics used by Direct Action to Stop the War, the shadowy network that coordinated thousands of activists who paralyzed downtown San Francisco in March after the United States invaded Iraq.
Bay Area Direct Action activists were among the key organizers in street protests at last month's Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Miami, where they were met by more than 40 law enforcement agencies.
But if federal prosecutors tried to go after Direct Action itself, "there would be nothing there," said organizer Patrick Reinsborough. "We don't have an office or an organization or anything. We're individually targetable, that's about it.
"Still, this is scary," Reinsborough said, "because if the federal government is willing to go after Greenpeace, they're willing to go after anybody."
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com
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