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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Power - Maintaining the status quo
Introduction :: Mining uranium
Iran asking nuclear watchdog for exemptions from nuclear suspension deal
Iran Wants to Amend Nuclear Freeze, EU Says 'No'
Outside View: Iran's Nukes - What's The Problem
Iran Seeks to Loosen Some Nuclear Restrictions
U.S. to Urge EU to Get Tough on Iran Nuclear Aims
El Al to fit anti-missile system
North Korea tested lethal gas on humans - Wiesenthal
Brazil to start enriching uranium next month: official
CIA warns 'dirty bomb' within Al-Qaeda's capabilities
Congress deletes bunker busters
Bush Denied Funds for New Nuclear Weapons Research
More Yankee issues coming New Entergy info prompts safety concerns
MILITARY
Violence Fractures Cease-Fire In Sudan
Auditor to Army: Dock Halliburton's Pay
Rumsfeld: Druyun Had Little Supervision
6000 Iraqi recruits graduate
Fallujah Leaders Were Local, Not Foreign
US-led forces in huge offensive near Baghdad
Observers OK'd for Palestinian Elections
Rally Against Ukraine
For the U.S., a Balancing Act on Ukraine
Russia Sends Scientist To Jail For Spying
Bush Orders the CIA To Hire More Spies
CIA Releases Report on WMD in Iran, North Korea
How to Create a WIA -- Worthless Intelligence Agency
U.S. struggles to find troops for Iraq, Afghanistan
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Justices Asked to Rule on Detainees
I-Team: Illegal Strip Searches at Reagan National?
White House View of Stalled Bill in Doubt
White House Seeks Deal to Save Intelligence Bill
POLITICS
U.S. kept quiet on Chávez plot
In Congress, Growing Doubts on Spending Process
Attempt to Discredit Whistle-Blower
Alleged al-Zarqawi tape berates Muslim clerics
In the name of evil
Despite Growing Unrest, Ukraine Certifies Winner in Election
Powell Says U.S. Will Not Accept Final Tally in Ukraine
OTHER
Activists Target U.S. Crops Produced With Methyl Bromide
HIV Increasing Faster Among Women Than Men, Report Finds
Groups Take On Chronic Homelessness
ACTIVISTS
At least 20 arrested at protest of U.S. school for Latin American soldiers
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Power - Maintaining the status quo
khilafah.com
24 Nov 2004
http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=10441&TagID=1
Nagasaki changed the world. No weapon used before had been so inhuman and destructive. Old and young, rich and poor, men and women were all slaughtered, vapourised, burned to death or suffering an anguished demise from radiation poisoning.
Hiroshima was yet more devastating.
Neither North Korea, Iraq or Iran were responsible for these atrocities. Both the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union and Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the carnage. The USA, self heralded champion of justice and liberty, is the country guilty of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the Mid-40's. The US is the only country guilty of using this most heinous weapon in the history of mankind.
As the 20th century continued, the cold war brought the world to fear complete annihilation in a nuclear holocaust. This fear faced every man and woman for no one would escape from all out nuclear war.
The major powers in the world at that time agreed that they must prevent these weapons from getting into the hands of the irresponsible to avoid tragedy. They produced a few international treaties to prevent the proliferation of these weapons, and bullied weaker states into agreeing never to pursue nuclear goals.
However, their own research into nuclear power continued and increased. The destructive power of their weapons surged forward until they realised they had become so powerful, they were probably beyond reasonable use. After that they began to develop weapons, based on nuclear technology and materials, which could be used on the battlefield, such as depleted Uranium tipped missiles. Year by year their efforts and funding of nuclear research has increased. Even though they have committed time and again to reduce their nuclear stockpiles. The quantity has only marginally decreased whereas the quality has increased considerably.
Thus, those countries who are responsible for inventing nuclear weapons, developing the technology and using nuclear weapons against civilians were free to develop their nuclear technologies and augment their stockpiles. Simultaneously, those countries who were weak, poor and vulnerable to the bullying of the powerful, promised never to improve their military capabilities in such a way.
Iran has been pushing forwards its nuclear programme in recent years, recently declaring that they are in the process of enriching Uranium. The IAEA under the leadership of Western Powers have insisted that Iran immediately stop their nuclear programme or the matter would be taken before the Security Council. Although the IAEA concede that all declared Iranian Uranium is accounted for in their nuclear power programme, they assert that this does not prove that the Iranians do not have secret stockpiles of weapons grade material and underground programmes to develop nuclear weapons. So once again we face Western policy based upon what they don't know rather than what they do know.
In response, Israel has recently ordered 5,000 smart bombs from America, including 500 one-tonne bombs capable of destroying six-foot concrete walls. This has been taken as a direct threat by Iran.
The West desperately wishes to prevent Iran from developing nuclear technology as they fear that it could be a threat to Israel and to stability in the region in general. They further realise that their ability to threaten and control Iran would diminish if Iran developed such a deterrent and in the event of a mass unification in the Islamic world, Iranian (and Pakistani) Nuclear technology would be available to an Islamic super state. They are happy to take any measures necessary to prevent Iran from succeeding in these aims and have not ruled out pre-emptive strikes against nuclear plants.
Then, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell responding to a question about an Israeli attack on Iranian facilities, said: "We're talking about diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward a nuclear weapon. We're not talking about strikes. But every option always, of course, remains on the table" (AFP, AP).
Iran, for her part, claims that she has no intention of developing nuclear weapons but rather she seeks nuclear energy and that it is perfectly legitimate for her to pursue this. Iran has been open and transparent and it would therefore be unjustifiable for the international community to take economic, political or military action against her.
The EU has recently negotiated a deal with Iran over its Uranian Enrichment programme in which the Iranians would postpone their programme and allow objective verification of its peaceful nature in exchange for the European promise that they would cooperate on nuclear, technology and security issues and "actively support" Iranian ascension to the World Trade Organisation.
The Iranian government have maintained throughout negotiations that they have the right to research peaceful nuclear power and have insisted that the agreement include that Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment "is a voluntary confidence-building measure and not a legal obligation."
There is a great contradiction in the way that nuclear weapons are seen in the world. The USA was the first country to produce a nuclear bomb, the only country to use one - twice. Spends more money than any other country on developing nuclear technology and has its military scattered all over the world taking part in various military campaigns. The USA is a militaristic, nuclear weapon using nation which feels at home initiating conflict with other sovereign nations for her own interests and interfering with the domestic affairs of others.
Israel has an undisclosed number of nuclear weapons and is almost completely ignored by the international community. Israel has invaded neighbouring sovereign countries, has undertaken pre-emptive strikes against targets in the Middle East and has an extremely secretive weapons of mass destruction programme. Every Arab country in the Middle East is therefore under threat from Israel and she has repeatedly proven her willingness to use force providing it is against the weak and vulnerable.
Yet Iran is not allowed to develop even a nuclear power station. This is because the West seeks to maintain the status quo.
The current balance of power in terms of nuclear arms is overwhelmingly favourable to the Western powers at present, particularly America. Conversely, Muslim countries in particular are disadvantaged by agreements on the non-proliferation of nuclear technology. While Israel can wreak unknown devastation on surrounding Middle Eastern countries, the West forbids Muslims from producing a deterrent of their own.
While India has been relatively tolerated and accepted into the nuclear club, Pakistan has been scrutinized and pressured to allow full international inspections and put their nuclear weaponry out of commission.
It is not necessarily the use of nuclear weapons that provides a cutting edge to a countries military capabilities. It is rather the knowledge that a country has nuclear weapons that decreases its enemies desire to face them in war.
For any country with enemies or potential enemies, developing adequate deterrents is clearly in her interests. George Bush has repeatedly included Iran as a member of his "Axis of Evil," with North Korea and Iraq. After what has happened to Iraq, to Lebanon and what continues in Palestine, it is very clear that Iran needs to deter potentially belligerent states such as Israel and the USA from attacking her.
Currently, America finds it easy to attack, invade and generally bully any country that it chooses, as its military is relatively powerful and they have nuclear weapons in the background as a psychological and potentially material advantage. The fact that very few of the countries she seeks to exploit have nuclear weapons allows her to act with relative impunity. If the country is a Muslim country with a religious population with the potential to form a Khilafah state, the importance of preventing the development of nuclear weapons increases. The foundation of any non-capitalist ideological state anywhere in the world could potentially disrupt America's influence in that region and therefore upset the continued supremacy of her economy. This is only magnified with respect to the oil rich Middle East.
It is therefore within the permanent interests of the USA that no Arab/Iranian and particularly no Muslim country develops nuclear weapons.
Whereas with closer scrutiny, it is apparent that America herself is an irresponsible nuclear power. Second World War President Truman's Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy wrote regarding the use of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War, "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons; in being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in this fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
Neither has the US shied away from using biochemical weapons. During its war in Vietnam, the US used CS gas against Vietnamese guerrillas and dumped 12 million gallons of the infamous "Agent Orange," destroying 4.5 million acres of vegetation and poisoning it for years.
Facing such an unpredictable and ruthless foe, it seems ridiculous that Iran should desist from its nuclear programme. Rather it should rush to produce a deterrent that would go some way to protect it from its openly agitating enemies.
It is not true that the countries that now possess nuclear weapons are responsible. They have used their power consistently for their own interests and benefits and prevented others from protecting themselves from exploitation by forcing them into non-proliferation treaties. Meanwhile, the US happily steps around past treaties prohibiting the testing and production of new ballistic missiles. From the American point of view, such treaties are a means to establish her interests and therefore taken or abandoned on the merits of the potential material and strategic gain that she can get from them.
Thus, if the IAEA were truly independent and sought a truly safer world from the perspective of nuclear weapons, their primary focus would be the USA followed by Russia, the two largest nuclear powers. These countries, particularly America, must be pressured to reduce and dismantle their nuclear arsenals and cease funding for research into nuclear weapons. They have a bad record with weapons of mass destruction and are well known to attack sovereign states. In fact the openly belligerent US's enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons probably provides the greatest encouragement for other countries to develop their own nuclear deterrent.
As for Iran it should try hard to develop its security apparatus to protect itself from American aggression. Iran has even declared its intent not to produce weapons but rather to concentrate on nuclear power generators.
The West uses treaties as a means to an end. International treaties are accepted or abandoned as suits a countries strategic and economic objectives. There are countless examples of this, including American abandonment of the test-ban treaty, British abstention from the Euro, the US rejecting Kyoto, the US invading a sovereign nation without consent of the UN and so on. However, they seek to set up international law upon the Muslims as though it was divine in origin, and that the West has the right to militarily account any nation that failed to comply.
Muslim countries should reject such a position for two reasons. Firstly, they are forced to sign up to treaties that are against their interests and bully them into defensive, weak positions. This is a form of colonialism and continued exploitation of Islamic lands. Secondly, Muslims must make their political decisions based upon the guidance of Allah (swt), not the whims of Western imperialists.
Therefore, treaties should be signed if they are mutually beneficial, and for restricted periods upon the basis of Islam. As for treaties on non-proliferation, these are not mutually beneficial as it puts those countries that already have nuclear weapons in a far stronger position. Iran should reserve its right to develop whatever weapons it feels it needs in order to maintain the security of its borders in such a hostile world. The Muslims in general must establish unity and cohesion as well as develop their military in the form of the Khilafah to permanently defend their lands.
Source: KCom Journal
-----
Introduction :: Mining uranium
BBC
24 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2003/nuclear_fuel_cycle/mining/default.stm
Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes.
It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores.
When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission.
In a nuclear power station this fission occurs slowly, while in a nuclear weapon, very rapidly. In both instances, fission must be very carefully controlled.
Nuclear fission works best if isotopes - atoms with the same atomic number, but different numbers of neutrons - of uranium 235 (or plutonium 239) are used. Uranium-235 is known as a "fissile isotope" because of its propensity to split in a chain reaction, releasing energy in the form of heat.
When a u-235 atom splits, it emits two or three neutrons.
When other u-235 atoms are present, these neutrons collide with them causing the other atoms to split, producing more neutrons.
A nuclear reaction will only take place if there are enough u-235 atoms present to allow this process to continue as a self-sustaining chain reaction. This requirement is known as "critical mass".
However, every 1,000 atoms of naturally-occurring uranium contain only seven atoms of u-235, with the remaining 993 being denser u-238.
-------- iran
Iran asking nuclear watchdog for exemptions from nuclear suspension deal
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041124173859.d943gopo.html
In a dramatic 11th hour move ahead of a crucial UN atomic agency meeting, Iran has asked the watchdog to exempt several dozen centrifuges from its pledge to freeze its nuclear fuel cycle, diplomats told AFP Wednesday.
The development has been rejected by the European Union which earlier this month negotiated what was supposed to be a halt in all of Iran's uranium enrichment activities.
It comes ahead of a meeting Thursday of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will decide whether to bring Iran before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, sought by the United States for what it says is a covert nuclear weapons program.
A diplomat close to the agency said the Iranians "are trying to convince the IAEA to leave several dozen of the centrifuges unsealed for RD (research and development) purposes in addition to other equipment which has direct use for enrichment."
A Western diplomat said it would be "outrageous" if Iran at the last minute exempted some centrifuges, the machines used in enriching uranium.
"It is not acceptable to us," a European diplomat said.
Under the terms of a deal hammered out with Britain, France and Germany, Tehran was to suspend all uranium enrichment activities from Monday, a move which is now being verified by the IAEA.
Iran had continued to produce the uranium gas that is the feedstuff for enriching uranium only days before Monday's ban, in a move which one European diplomat characterized as "not very helpful" as it led to doubts about Iran's intentions and the future of the suspension deal.
Enriched uranium, made by spinning uranium gas in what can be cascades of thousands of centrifuges, can serve as fuel for nuclear reactors or as the raw explosive material for atomic bombs.
Iran has moved quickly to "sanitise" a site in northeast Tehran alleged to be at the heart of its feared pursuit of nuclear weapons, an Iranian opposition group claimed Wednesday.
Speaking in London, National Council of Resistance (NCRI) member Farid Soleimani who said nine days ago in Vienna that secret enrichment work was being done at the Centre for Development of Advance Defence Technology, said the top secret site now has been sealed off.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is to report on the suspension when the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors meets Thursday.
IAEA officials were meeting with an Iranian delegation in Vienna Wednesday to point out that the Europeans insisted on a full, unequivocal suspension, a European diplomat said.
The IAEA board will Thursday hear a European draft resolution based on the suspension agreement and which finally won US backing.
Diplomats said Washington had taken a pragmatic decision to support the European draft, even though it falls short of demanding possible UN sanctions for Iran.
The United States is "just being pragmatic for once, recognizing that the EU3 (Britain, France, Germany) text is pretty good and that there are few good policy alternatives to joining consensus on it," a Western diplomat said.
The United States has for over a year been trying to get the IAEA board to take Iran before the Security Council, but non-aligned states, as well as the European trio and Russia and China, have opposed this, saying Iran must be given a chance to cooperate with a two-year-old IAEA investigation of its nuclear program.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is strictly peaceful.
Mohammad Saidi, deputy head of Iran's national Atomic Energy Organisation, said Wednesday the Europeans were trying to legally oblige Iran to maintain an "unlimited suspension", whereas Iran had only agreed to freeze its controversial fuel cycle work for the duration of a fresh round of negotiations with the EU aimed at reaching a long-term solution to the nuclear stand-off.
The EU has promised Iran a long-term deal, including increased trade and peaceful nuclear technology, if it maintains the suspension.
Under IAEA investigation since February 2003, Iran agreed in October 2003 to suspend the actual enrichment of uranium but continued support activities such as making centrifuges and converting yellowcake into uranium gas.
--------
Iran Wants to Amend Nuclear Freeze, EU Says 'No'
By REUTERS
November 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has asked to be allowed to exclude some research and development work usable in nuclear bomb-making from a freeze on sensitive atomic projects, but EU negotiators rejected the request, diplomats said on Wednesday.
One Western diplomat said the request amounted to Iranian ``chutzpah'' before a meeting on Thursday of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating whether Iran has a secret nuclear arms program.
Another said it was a clear message that Tehran had no intention of ending work on producing fuel, an activity that the United States believes will enable Iran to make nuclear arms.
The request followed an Iranian pledge to France, Britain and Germany last week that it would suspend its entire uranium enrichment program and all related activities in a bid to avoid possible economic sanctions by the U.N. Security Council.
``The Iranians asked to be allowed to continue conducting research and development with centrifuges during the freeze, but the Europeans told them, 'No','' a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
``Iran has asked to be allowed to test centrifuge rotors during the freeze,'' said another diplomat, adding this would require permission to operate several dozen centrifuges.
The freeze, which includes all centrifuge work, took effect on Monday, though Iranian officials said it would be short. Centrifuges purify uranium to fuel power plants or weapons by spinning at supersonic speeds.
NO IRANIAN COMMENT AVAILABLE
Iran's delegation to the IAEA was unavailable for comment.
The United States accuses Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program and has threatened to press for U.N. Security Council sanctions. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear program is only for power generation.
Last Friday, diplomats said Iran was producing large amounts of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, the form of uranium fed into centrifuges during the enrichment process.
The report, denied by Tehran but confirmed by the IAEA, prompted European Union diplomats to question Iran's intentions.
One diplomat said intelligence reports said Iran hoped to make it through Thursday's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-member board and later announce plans for a cascade of centrifuges to produce bomb-grade uranium.
``They already have the parts for 1,100 to 1,200 centrifuges,'' said the diplomat, adding this number could purify enough uranium for a bomb within two years.
With nearly five months until a March session of the board, Iran could make much progress before an immediate threat of U.N. sanctions returned, he said.
France, Britain and Germany have circulated a draft IAEA resolution to be submitted to Thursday's meeting that appears to be unacceptable to most board members outside the EU.
Washington is unhappy at the lack of a ``trigger'' clause that would refer Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council if Tehran resumed any enrichment-related work.
Iran rejects what it sees as an indirect trigger in the text. The draft says it is ``essential'' Iran keep all parts of its enrichment program suspended if its case is to be resolved ``within the framework of the Agency.''
While not a direct threat of referral to the U.N. Security Council this wording hinted it could be considered, making it troublesome for some board members and Iran, diplomats said.
But Iran played down the disputes. ``Such discussions are quite normal in such a stage,'' Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters in Tehran.
To shouts of ``No compromise,'' tens of thousands of Iran's Basij militia staged a show of strength before the IAEA meeting.
Wearing military fatigues and some armed with Kalashnikov rifles, members of the voluntary organization described by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as ``Iran's atomic bomb,'' also shouted ``Death to America, Death to Israel.''
--------
Outside View: Iran's Nukes - What's The Problem
Dubai, UAE (UPI)
by Youssef M. Ibrahim
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04x.html
A newly invigorated George W. Bush administration accuses Iran of making an atom bomb, which is a true story but also an old one. Iran's efforts to acquire such weapons are well documented and have been known for years.
The world has witnessed Iran's widely publicized testing of multiple stage missiles to deliver these weapons on television many times.
Just like Israel, which has acquired scores of nuclear arms, Iran wants the world to know something is afoot while continuing to deny this. It is openly saying it is enriching uranium, which could be used in the making of nuclear weapons.
Iranian military strategists have let it be known for some time that they feel a need to acquire nuclear weaponry potential as a defense primarily against Israel and the United States, not as an offensive weapon. This posture is plausible as the Iranian ruling establishment, while defiant at times is never reckless.
All of which raises the question: What are they thinking in the White House and the Pentagon?
Given the record of the past four years, the answer may simply end up being baffling. It could be as simple as this: There is no logic behind the logic. Maybe they think they will save the Gulf region by destroying it. They really may not know what they are doing. It has happened before. Why not again?
Here is the logic, before the illogic. One would imagine that those making the noises about Iran are fully aware that in practice nothing will or can be done at this point to stop Iran from pursuing at least the goal of being able to put such a weapon of mass destruction in its military arsenal. Or at the least, develop the ability to produce it on short notice.
Short of the use of direct force, an organized state with a fairly solid military infrastructure cannot be prevented from acquiring those weapons if it decides to do so.
North Korea is a prominent example of this. Equally well-established is the fact that ever since World War II nations that acquired nuclear weapons - including Pakistan and India, which have gone to war several times - have never resorted to using them.
Even Israel, which possesses some 200 atomic weapons, did not use any in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war where it, albeit for a few days, faced a threat to its survival. Indeed, the only nuclear power that used its weapons was the United States, which dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 to end World War II.
Furthermore, respected and authoritative military strategists believe that joining the nuclear club confers a sense of gravity and responsibility upon its members.
The concept of mutually assured destruction, which is what can happen to anyone that uses nuclear weapons against anyone else that has them, has worked pretty well for more than 50 years to keep weapons of mass destruction dormant.
It is a military doctrine taught in military academies. The notion that a state, even a rogue one, would upset that rule is not tenable.
North Korea, which has the bomb, would only use it in a moment of panic if attacked first. North Koreans view the bomb as a defensive weapon and a method of blackmailing the West into giving them financial and food aid.
Indeed, after the end of the Cold War, a consensus among military and intelligence strategists has emerged that the real threat of weapons of mass destruction comes from rogue elements.
They can be disparate terrorist groups or corrupt scientists teaming up with mafia or corrupt government elements to steal, smuggle or otherwise obtain weapons of mass destruction for chaotic use in states that are in various conditions of disintegration, such as some of the former Soviet republics.
None of the above is a stretch. Much of it is already public knowledge and part of established intelligence doctrines, simply, facts of the post-Cold War world.
Given all this knowledge, one has to wonder why the Bush administration is then reviving the old play of "weapons of mass destruction'' rearing their heads again, this time from Iran, and why it is beating the war drums in the Gulf region for the second time in four years.
Could it be that the same president who gave us the Iraq war in his first term is preparing the Iran war in his second? On the face of it, this sounds crazy, especially since no evident exit is yet visible for America out of the Iraqi quagmire.
Reason would suggest before taking on Iran with its 70 million people, the United States should finish its quarrel with Iraq's 25 million.
Even Bush's opponent in the recent presidential elections, Sen. John Kerry, who said that Bush's invasion of Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, failed to come up with a way of ending it or a promise to bring the troops home in another four years.
Neither is it possible that anyone in the White House or the Pentagon imagines that making noises will dissuade Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. If anything, it may speed them up.
All this leads to the craziest conclusion of all: George W. Bush and his neo-conservative crowd really do not know what they are doing. Before you say this is far-fetched, just think that we are where we are precisely for that very same reason.
Yes, they really did not know what they were doing the past four years and do not know now what they are doing. What you see is what you get: There is no plan, there is no strategy, no roadmaps. As simple as that. Fasten your seat belts.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com
This essay first appeared in Gulf News.
-----
Iran Seeks to Loosen Some Nuclear Restrictions
November 24, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/international/middleeast/25irancnd.html?hp&ex=1101358800&en=678578e2330d05ad&ei=5094&partner=homepage
VIENNA, Nov. 24 - Despite Iran's agreement with the Europeans to freeze all of its uranium enrichment activities, Tehran is now demanding the right to run some key equipment for research purposes, European and Iranian officials said today.
In a letter over the weekend to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran declared its right to continue to operate about two dozen centrifuges, the slender machines that spin at high speed to produce substances like enriched uranium, the officials said.
The demand struck diplomats here as a symbolic, but important, last-ditch effort by Iran to assert its sovereign right to enrich uranium, which it contends it is doing only to produce fuel for generating electricity. Thousands of centrifuges must run for months to produce enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
But the demand is certain to erode the international community's confidence in Iran's claims, as well as its commitment to abide by the deal it struck with Britain, France, Germany and the European Union just nine days ago.
It comes on the eve of a crucial meeting by the 35-country governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will decide the extent to which Iran should be censured for failing to cooperate fully with the agency on its nuclear program.
In London, the British Foreign Office was quick to reject the Iranian demand. "The agreement stands as it states," an official statement said. "There is absolutely no exception to the agreed suspension of all reprocessing, conversion and enrichment activities."
In Brussels, a European Union official had the same reaction, saying: "The response is no. It has to be no. An agreement is an agreement. This was a stupid move on the part of the Iranians."
In Paris, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Cecile Pozzo di Borgo, said the French government would only comment publicly after Thursday's board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna.
But an Iranian official in Vienna said Iran had never committed itself to curb all of its research activities under the European agreement.
"We have informed the I.A.E.A. that we will do research and development for centrifuges," the official said. "This is not uranium enrichment. This is not using nuclear material. We never agreed with the Europeans not to do R.&D. It would be absolutely impossible for us not to do R.&D."
He added that centrifuges are even used in hospitals to do blood tests.
It was not known if the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, was speaking on behalf of the Iranian government and whether the demand was merely a test of the Europeans' will in an effort to keep Iran's options open.
It also may have been an effort to drive a wedge between the United Nations' watchdog agency and the Europeans.
The agency has taken the position that it has all of Iran's known enrichment programs sealed and under safeguards and that the issue of centrifuge research is a matter for Iran to work out directly with its European negotiating partners under the terms of its agreement.
In recent days, in anticipation of Thursday's meeting, officials from the 35 countries on the agency's governing board have been negotiating the text of a resolution critical of Iran because of its nuclear activities.
They will be considering a Nov. 15 report by Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency director, that states that Iran "has conducted experiments to acquire the know-how for almost every aspect" of the nuclear fuel cycle in order to become self-sufficient. It also lays out in detail evidence of Iran's repeated failure to give the agency the information and access it has requested.
The deal with the Europeans committed the Iranian government to full suspension of uranium enrichment and all related reprocessing and conversion activities while the two sides negotiate a complicated long-term accord aimed at providing Iran with technology and economic, political and security benefits.
It does not specifically address the issue of centrifuge research. Following a similar but more vague agreement that Iran reached with the three European countries in October 2003, Iran was allowed to continue centrifuge research. That agreement fell after Iran restarted its enrichment activities after it accused the Europeans of failing to live up to their commitments.
The goal of the Europeans this time is to persuade Iran that the rewards would be so great that it should abandon its vast enrichment program.
But the Iranians were given nothing concrete in exchange for suspending their uranium enrichment activities and the deal has been widely criticized inside Iran as a sign of the country's capitulation.
Iran also knows well that many of the potential rewards proposed by the Europeans - including membership in the World Trade Organization and access to a light-water nuclear reactor - depend on the consent of the United States.
And Iran has insisted that it has the sovereign right to enrich uranium and that the freeze is only temporary.
Even before the most recent demand, Iran had unnerved the international community by speeding up one crucial area of the enrichment process at its vast uranium conversion plant in Isfahan in the week after the agreement was reached but before it went into effect.
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U.S. to Urge EU to Get Tough on Iran Nuclear Aims
By REUTERS
November 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html?pagewanted=all
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States will press the EU to get tough with Iran at a meeting of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog on Thursday, urging a trigger for U.N. Security Council action if Tehran resumes any uranium enrichment work.
The European Union's ``Big Three,'' Britain, France and Germany, have circulated a draft resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that demands Tehran keep frozen any nuclear work that could help it develop fuel for atomic weapons.
``The Americans are not happy with the draft resolution,'' said one diplomat, asking not to be identified. ``They think there needs to be a trigger that says if (Iran) resumes its uranium enrichment program something will happen.''
But this will be tough for the EU, which does not want to anger the Iranians. Tehran rejects U.S. charges that it has a secret atomic weapons program, saying its nuclear program is only for power generation.
Iran gave the EU a pledge last week that it would suspend its entire uranium enrichment program and all related activities in a bid to avoid possible economic sanctions by the U.N. Security Council. The freeze took effect on Monday.
But since last week Iran has annoyed the Europeans by asking that some enrichment research and development work be excluded from the freeze, diplomats said.
``CHUTZPAH''
One Western diplomat said the request amounted to Iranian ``chutzpah.'' Another said it was a clear message that Tehran had no intention of ending work on producing fuel.
Iran first promised to freeze its enrichment program in October 2003 but never entirely halted the work.
The IAEA's 35-member board will discuss the agency's two-year investigation into Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA has found no clear proof that Tehran plans to make atomic arms, but is concerned Iran may possess hidden nuclear facilities.
Some analysts say the Europeans and IAEA have let the Iranians run rings round them, while the Americans have accomplished little with their threats.
``The U.S. has good reasons to be skeptical. Tehran has been playing the EU and IAEA skillfully while acting as if it has something to hide,'' said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa director for the International Crisis Group think-tank.
``But the problem with the U.S. posture is it simply hasn't worked. Four years of threats without tangible incentives to change behavior have only bolstered hard-liners, increasing the regime's hold on power to its strongest level in a decade.''
The Iranians have made clear the freeze will be short and that uranium enrichment is what they term a sovereign right that Tehran will never renounce.
To shouts of ``No compromise,'' tens of thousands of Iran's Basij militiamen staged a show of strength south of Tehran on Wednesday.
Wearing military fatigues and some armed with Kalashnikov rifles, members of the voluntary organization -- described by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as ``Iran's atomic bomb'' -- also shouted ``Death to America, Death to Israel.''
-------- israel
El Al to fit anti-missile system
bbc
24 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4038101.stm
Israel's national airline is ready to fit the world's first anti-missile protection system on passenger aircraft, according to reports.
El Al will install the first system on a Boeing jet over the next month, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
The system, built by Israeli defence firms, will cost about $1m per plane.
It fires invisible flares to counter rocket attacks, such as a failed attempt to bring down an Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2002.
The Flight Guard system has been developed by Israel's largest defence firm, Israel Military Industries, and Elta, a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries.
It is expected to be installed on six El Al jets if initial tests prove successful, and eventually on the rest of the airline's 30-strong fleet, Haaretz reported.
The airline will deploy the system on "high risk" routes in Asia and Africa, as US and European aviation authorities have not approved their use for civil aviation.
El Al has long placed a high value on in-flight security, and deploys armed plain-clothes sky marshals on all flights.
The Flight Guard system fires so-called "dark flares" if radars on board an aircraft detect an incoming rocket attack.
The flares, which have been designed to be invisible to the naked eye in order to reduce the chances of panic among passengers, confuse the missile's heat-seeking systems, sending them off course.
VIP treatment
Military aircraft from a number of countries have used a similar system in the past.
Anti-missile flares have also been fitted to private jets and VIP aircraft, such as Air Force One, the US president's plane.
The El Al development is the first time flares have been fitted to civilian passenger jets, although other airlines are believed to be interested in the system.
Jim O'Halloran, editor of Jane's Land-Based Air Defence, told BBC News that the Israeli system was essentially an interim development until a more sophisticated defence is completed.
"This is an intermediate step to protect aircraft today but in the future they will rely on infra-red and laser jamming systems," he said.
US and European aviation officials believe such a system will be less controversial to use in built-up areas close to western airports, Mr O'Halloran said.
The next generation system, codenamed Britening by Israeli engineers, is being backed by United Airlines in conjunction with the US arm of British defence firm BAe Systems, he added.
-------- korea
North Korea tested lethal gas on humans - Wiesenthal
Reuters
24 November 2004
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/manawatustandard/0,2106,3106540a6408,00.html
SEOUL: North Korea conducted lethal chemical experiments on humans until 2002 as part of a programme to develop weapons of mass destruction, a human rights group said yesterday, quoting former scientists from the communist state.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the scientists gave first-person testimony describing gassing of political prisoners in the North from the 1970s until 2002.
"We can basically, I think collectively conclude that North Korean political prisoners are gassed," he told reporters.
Cooper said the testimonies, if true, indicated the existence of functional gas chambers, where enemies of state were eliminated with no sense of remorse.
"That makes a mockery of the lessons that civilisation alleges that it has learned since the end of World War 2".
Cooper urged the international community and the South Korean government to look hard at the allegations.
"Such barbaric practices, if proven, should lead to legal action against its instigators and perpetrators," Cooper said.
The South Korean government had questioned the validity of previous reports on human chemical testing in North Korea.
North Korea has previously denied the reports, calling them a US "smear campaign" designed to justify war against it.
Two of the scientists cited were those who had previously provided testimony that resulted in a BBC television report earlier this year about gassing of political prisoners in experimental gas chambers in the North, Cooper said.
The third was a former chemist in North Korea who had been involved in experiments using gas that killed immediately and another type that killed slowly, he added.
The latter claimed to have worked only with animals, but the result of "successful" tests would then be turned over to colleagues who "experimented on human guinea pigs," Cooper said.
The witness fled the communist state in 2002 and now lived in South Korea, Cooper said.
Victims in the experiments described by the other two witnesses were put into a glass cell hooked up for audio, Cooper said quoting one of the witnesses.
"It didn't just take two and a half hours for a prisoner to die. There was two-way communication in terms of audio," he said, adding this implied the scientists were also monitoring the degree of suffering during a slow death.
"I don't think there is any question that such practices continue to take place."
The alleged experiments, while similar to gassing of Jews by the Nazis during World War 2, were different in that they were part of a programme to develop weapons of mass destruction, he said.
Cooper said a lack of denial of the experiments at a meeting with a South Korean Foreign Ministry official yesterday suggested Seoul had independent verification of such experiments.
But Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyun denied this. "We do not have independent sources who can confirm the experiments," he said.
Pyonygang has admitted to operating a nuclear weapons programme based on plutonium technologies and is also accused of secretly operating one based on uranium, something it has denied.
The programmes are at the centre of slow-moving, six-country negotiations by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China aimed at stopping the North's programmes.
North Korea's official media yesterday denied a Japanese media report that it had sold fluorine gas - used to manufacture weapons-grade uranium - to Iran.
"Explicitly speaking, there had never been any negotiation or dealing between the DPRK and Iran as regards the nuclear issue," the North's KCNA news agency said, using its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil to start enriching uranium next month: official
BRASILIA (AFP)
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041124202740.xtm4avba.html
Brazil will start enriching uranium next month after getting the green light from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the government announced Wednesday after months of negotiations.
"Permission was granted to start operations," Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos told a news conference.
In a first stage that will last six to eight months, the Resende enrichment facility in southeastern Brazil will be running tests. "That phase will start in December," the minister said.
The announcement followed an inspection of the Industrias Nucleares Brasilenas (INB) facility in Resende, which an IAEA team conducted on November 16-18 after the government dropped its initial objections to such a visit.
Campos said the inspection showed the complex complied with IAEA conditions.
"This means that from the point of view of international safeguards, the INB plant fulfils conditions for the start of operations with the introduction of UF6 uranium gas," the government said in a statement.
UF6 -- uranium hexafluoride -- is the chemical form of uranium that is used in the enrichment process.
He said that after the initial test stage, the plant will produce enriched uranium for Brazil's Angra I and II nuclear power plants.
The announcement came at a time when the Vienna-Based IAEA has been pressing for states such as Iran and North Korea to allow inspections of their nuclear facilities.
The IAEA is particularly concerned that enriched uranium should not be diverted for clandestine development of nuclear weapons.
Uranium enrichment produces fuel for civilian reactors, as well as atomic bombs.
Brazil, with one of the world's largest uranium reserves, had cited trade secrets in initially denying IAEA inspectors access to the facility in February and March.
But Campos said Wednesday the inspection did not compromise those secrets.
-------- terrorism
CIA warns 'dirty bomb' within Al-Qaeda's capabilities
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041124035857.vb14vc69.html
The Al-Qaeda terror network is fully capable of building a radioactive "dirty bomb" targeting the United States and other Western nations and "has crude procedures" for producing chemical weapons, the CIA warned Tuesday.
In an annual report to Congress on proliferation threats, the US Central Intelligence Agency also repeated its insistence that Iran was pursuing "a clandestine nuclear weapons program."
But it remained silent about charges, made earlier this month by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who accused Iran of seeking to adapt its missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
Instead, the agency used its strongest terms to alert lawmakers to the threat of terrorist organizations using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials to harm the United States and its allies, saying the danger of such an attack "remained high."
"One of our highest concerns is Al-Qaeda's stated readiness to attempt unconventional attacks against us," the report said.
The CIA said analysis of an Al-Qaeda document recovered in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002 "indicates the group has crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin, and VX."
The group founded and led by Osama bin Laden, the admitted mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, is also keenly interested in radiological dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs," the spy agency warned.
It added that construction of such a device "is well within its capabilities as radiological materials are relatively easy to acquire from industrial or medical sources."
Documents recovered by US forces in Afghanistan show that bin Laden and his associates were engaged in what US intelligence officials described as "rudimentary nuclear research."
But the CIA cautions that the true extent of Al-Qaeda's nuclear program "is unclear," suggesting it could be more advanced than originally thought.
Outside experts, such as Pakistani nuclear engineer Bashir al-Din Mahmood, may have provided assistance to Al-Qaeda's nuclear program, according to the report.
Bashir reportedly met with bin Laden and discussed nuclear weapons with him, the CIA asserted.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Congress deletes bunker busters
The Associated Press
November 24, 2004
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/11/23/headline_news/news02.txt
Congress has drastically reduced or cut out entirely funds that could have gone to New Mexico installations to design a nuclear bunker-buster, build a factory to make new nuclear bomb parts and study designs for next-generation weapons.
"It's clearly a setback for the president and the nuclear weapons policies the first (George W. Bush) administration had done," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, a Washington, D.C., arms control group.
The overall nuclear budget for fiscal 2005 grew. Congress on Saturday approved $6.6 billion for nuclear weapons work, most of which will maintain the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Future weapons initiatives such as the bunker-buster were deleted in last-minute deals Friday and Saturday between Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who head their chambers' subcommittees responsible for nuclear weapons budgets.
"We had two days to do this bill. That means you have to make some trade-offs," Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said Monday.
In return for letting Hobson cut the bunker-buster and other proposed nuclear weapons, Domenici said he got money for work at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico. That includes $91 million for Sandia's new microsystems building complex and $40 million for Los Alamos' new plutonium lab.
The administration had sought about $27.5 million for research into a bunker-buster - a small part of the overall budget but a large part of the debate over the nation's future U.S. nuclear weapons policy.
The idea behind bunker busters would be to modify a nuclear bomb to penetrate underground before detonating.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque were to design the weapon, called a robust nuclear earth penetrator.
Supporters hope such a weapon would be effective against fortified underground bunkers. But critics, including Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said it would send the wrong message when the United States is trying to persuade other nations not to acquire nuclear weapons.
"I don't think we can credibly try to lead the world in stopping the nuclear program in Iran and other places if we're in the process of developing a new generation of nuclear weapons," Bingaman said.
One of the weapon's strongest backers, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., said she believes it will be back on the congressional agenda next year.
The administration also sought $9 million for scientists to study advanced concepts in weapons design. Domenici helped change its direction to become a program called the reliability replacement warhead program.
Domenici's office said the program now will focus on refurbishing existing weapons instead. Weapons designers, including those at Los Alamos, will be challenged to make existing weapons more reliable, easier to certify without testing and safer to store.
The administration also sought $29 million for work on a new factory that would make plutonium bomb parts. Congress cut that to $7 million, with restrictions on how the money can be spent.
Both Los Alamos and Carlsbad are on the list of potential factory sites.
Greg Mello, head of an Albuquerque-based anti-nuclear group, Los Alamos Study Group, said it was a victory that the spending bill did not endorse new nuclear weapons.
"No doubt there was real growth in the weapons program despite these cuts, and there will be real new weapons designed this year and upgraded weapons built - don't doubt this for a minute - but these important symbolic projects, which carry messages about the legitimacy of the whole, were stopped for now," Mello said.
-----
Bush Denied Funds for New Nuclear Weapons Research
November 24, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-24-09.asp#anchor2
The U.S. Congress has rebuffed a request by the Bush administration to fund research into new types of nuclear weapons.
The funding was deleted from the final version of the $388 omnibus spending bill passed Saturday by the Congress.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonprofit group Arms Control Association, hailed the decision as "an important rejection of the administration's costly and counterproductive drive to invent new nuclear arms for new missions."
The Bush administration had requested $36 million to continue research on modifying two existing high-yield warheads to destroy targets buried deep underground - bunker-buster bombs - and to develop low yield nuclear weapons less than five kilotons.
A five-kiloton nuclear weapon is about half the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Critics say that the administration's policy is dangerous and undermines efforts to curb proliferation of nuclear weapons across the world.
Congress also slashed the administration's request for $30 million toward construction of a new facility for building the explosive cores or plutonium pits of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Only $7 million was appropriated for the project and said none of the funding could be used to select a location for the facility in fiscal year 2005, which ends Sept. 30, 2005.
The proposed Modern Pit Facility could churn out up to 450 pits a year, cost up to $4 billion to build, and $300 million annually to operate.
According to independent analysts, the proposal greatly exceeds realistic requirements for maintaining a shrinking U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
"The congressional budget cuts send a strong signal to the White House that Republicans and Democrats will resist efforts to create new and 'more usable' nuclear weapons or resume nuclear testing," Kimball said. "It is clear many believe such efforts make it harder to convince other states to exercise nuclear restraint."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
More Yankee issues coming New Entergy info prompts safety concerns
Rutland Herald,
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041124/NEWS/41123002/1003/NEWS02
More safety concerns about Vermont Yankee's proposed power boost will be filed with federal regulators because of new information released by Entergy Nuclear, according to the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser for the coalition, said Tuesday that he was pleased that the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board agreed to accept two of the seven safety issues already raised by his group, ordering an unprecedented hearing. But Shadis promised that more were coming.
The New England Coalition and the Vermont Department of Public Service had raised several safety issues with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about Entergy Nuclear's plans to boost power by 20 percent at the 30-year-old reactor.
On Monday, the quasi-judicial board, which is made up of nuclear experts and attorneys from all over the country, ordered a federal hearing on the power boost.
Shadis said that his organization has the right to file new issues because Entergy keeps filing new and updated information about its power boost plan.
And the whole process is complicated, Shadis said, because the NRC last month shut down its electronic public document room, called ADAMS, because of an NBC News report that showed the Web site containing highly sensitive information about nuclear materials at hospitals, including diagrams showing exactly where the nuclear material was kept.
Shadis said that the coalition also would file concerns based on the eight safety problems unveiled during a special inspection at Vermont Yankee this summer. That special inspection was a condition of state approval of the power boost.
Entergy Nuclear spokesman Laurence Smith, meanwhile, said that the company's attorneys were still studying the 40-page decision and hadn't made a decision one way or the other on whether to appeal. Entergy has 10 days to appeal the decision.
Entergy had objected to the state's and coalition's request for a federal hearing, saying it was not necessary.
The state had argued that Entergy might be shaving long-standing safety margins at the plant by boosting power and making changes that could affect the plant's safety systems in the event of an emergency.
"We're pleased the board has responded so quickly," Smith said. "It's good for all of us, especially the people of Vermont." Shadis said that the new information Entergy Nuclear had provided to the NRC were answers to questions raised by NRC staff about its proposal, including questions about heat removal and effects on the plant's steam piping system.
The NRC already has pushed back its original target date for a decision, and placed the blame on Entergy's lack of information on several key conditions of its plan. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearing also will affect that timetable. Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Violence Fractures Cease-Fire In Sudan
Darfur Town Bombed Following Rebel Attacks
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8611-2004Nov23.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Nov. 23 -- Government helicopters and warplanes bombed the town of Tawila in North Darfur on Tuesday after rebel fighters attacked police stations there Monday, said U.N. officials, who accused both sides of breaking a renewed cease-fire that had lasted just under two weeks.
The fighting began Sunday when Arab militia fighters known as the Janjaweed refused to pay for livestock in the market there, aid workers said. Rebel forces attacked the Janjaweed and police stations Monday, said Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to Sudan.
During the clashes on Monday, 45 aid workers, including 30 from Save the Children U.K., fled into the bush to hide and were later airlifted to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, by African Union helicopters.
Save the Children U.K. said government warplanes had dropped at least one bomb about 50 yards from one of its feeding centers.
Between 20 and 30 police officers were killed along with six civilians when the rebel group carried out a dawn attack, U.N. officials said. No one was sure of the total number killed in both days of fighting.
The rebel militia, the Sudanese Liberation Army, has taken control of Tawila, a strategically important mountain town located between rebel headquarters in the Jebel Marra Mountains, southwest of El Fasher, and the homeland of the Janjaweed around Kabkabiya, 90 miles west of El Fasher. U.N. officials condemned both sides and said the violence did not bode well for the future of Darfur. The rebels and government have violated a cease-fire signed this month in Abuja, Nigeria, in which the rebels agreed to stop fighting and the government agreed to halt aerial bombardment.
"To our eyes, there is no justification [for] the violation of the cease-fire," Pronk said in a strongly worded statement. "The parties should understand that the recent aggression goes directly against the spirit and the letter of the Abuja protocols."
As a result of the fighting, the U.N. stopped all movement outside El Fasher and withdrew all staff from Abu Shouk camp, home to 80,000 Africans driven from their homes during the 21-month conflict between a government-backed militia and African rebels.
Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian officer who heads the African Union mission in Darfur, said the union was investigating the attacks and could not confirm the bombings.
"We do know that the fighting is very serious," Okonkwo said.
The government and the rebels accused each other of attacking first and said they had the right to defend themselves.
Sudan's interior minister, Gen. Abdel Raheem Mohamed Hussein, said that 29 police officers had been killed Monday and that the government would continue fighting. He denied that any bombs were dropped but said government troops were defending the town.
"What goes on in Abuja does not affect what's happening on the ground," Raheem said. "I think the rebels are now trying to gain ground and make footsteps in our cities. They want to create chaos and ring alarms to the displaced people who want to return home. . . . So now, we are re-ordering ourselves and protecting ourselves."
Abdou Abdullah, a leader of the Sudanese Liberation Army and member of the African Union's cease-fire commission, said the 1.5 million Africans displaced in squalid camps were driven from their land by the government and its proxy Janjaweed militia.
He said people would not return home because they were afraid of government attacks. He also said the rebels attacked police officers in order to defend civilians in the market.
"It's the government and their militia that continue to harass the citizens of Darfur, not the other way around," Abdullah said. "We were defending our people against constant harassment and then we mobilized our forces to take the town."
The fighting in Tawila is part of an upsurge in violence across the region. On Monday, six police officers and three rebels were killed when rebel forces attacked a police station at the crowded Kalma camp in South Darfur.
Some aid workers said the attacks were reprisals sparked by police abuses in the nearby al-Jeer Sureaf camp, where residents were tear-gassed and beaten this month before being forcibly moved to another camp.
"It's the same dismal pattern," said Barry Came, a spokesman for the World Food Program. "They reach cease-fire agreements, and before the ink dries, they are violated."
Fighting broke out in February 2003 when African tribes rebelled against the Arab-led government. In retaliation, the United Nations said the government has bombed villages and armed the Janjaweed, while tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease and violence.
-------- business
Auditor to Army: Dock Halliburton's Pay
Reuters
By Sue Pleming
Nov 24, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20041124/ts_nm/iraq_halliburton_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army should withhold some payments to Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL - news) for its work in Iraq (news - web sites), a government auditor said on Wednesday, in a move that could cost the contractor tens of millions of dollars a month.
In another development involving the Texas company, the lawyer for an Army Corps of Engineers whistle-blower said his client was interviewed by the FBI (news - web sites) last week over her claims of contracting abuse involving Halliburton, which was run by Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) from 1995-2000.
The Houston-based company is the U.S. military's biggest contractor in Iraq with the potential to earn up to $18 billion for multiple contracts there. Its tasks range from cooking meals for troops to rebuilding Iraq's oil industry.
Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said based on his "limited audit work," he supported military auditors' proposals last August for the Army to implement a 15 percent withholding on future Iraq invoices from Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root.
"We agree with U.S. Army Materiel Command and DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) positions (on the withholding issue)," said Bowen in the memorandum.
The U.S. Army did not follow the recommendations last August and opted instead to give Halliburton more time to resolve the ongoing billing dispute, fearing such punitive action could disrupt supplies to U.S. troops.
Military documents indicated the company had not provided enough details to support at least $1.82 billion out of $4.3 billion of logistical work for the U.S. Army, which estimated such a withholding could cost KBR about $60 billion a month in unpaid bills.
Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Gist said the company was still working hard with its client to resolve the dispute and it had not received any new information about a withholding.
Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Illinois, said there was no new information in Bowen's report. "But its contents will be evaluated as part of the Army's decision process (about the withholding)."
WHISTLE-BLOWER TALKS TO FBI
Aside from Halliburton's long-running billing dispute with the U.S. military, government investigators are looking into whether the company overcharged for work and whether there was any improper action that favored Cheney's old company.
A lawyer for Bunny Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers top contracting official, said his client met for the full day last Wednesday with the FBI and an investigator from the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Criminal Investigative Division.
"My client provided a lot of detailed answers to their questions," said lawyer Michael Kohn, while declining to provide any specifics.
He said much of the questioning focused on a no-bid oil contract handed out to KBR in March last year, which was later followed up by a competitively bid deal. KBR's business in the Balkans with the military was also examined.
Of particular interest are allegations over whether KBR overcharged the Army to deliver fuel to Iraq, which despite being crude-oil-rich suffered from a shortage of refined oil products. A draft Pentagon audit last December found the company may have overcharged by at least $61 million for this service.
Democrats seized on the latest news and New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record) said they showed the need to investigate Halliburton and its military contracts.
"When will the Republican Congress stop covering up Halliburton's wrongdoing and end this abuse of taxpayer dollars?," said Lautenberg in a statement.
Halliburton stock rose 32 cents to close at $40.79 on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) after falling as low as $39.84 earlier.
-----
Rumsfeld: Druyun Had Little Supervision
Defense Secretary Cites High Turnover In Procurement Woes
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8689-2004Nov23.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld blamed an Air Force procurement scandal on high turnover in top management positions, which he said reduced the amount of "adult supervision" of major weapons contracts over the past decade.
Cautioning that his view isn't yet "definitive," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing yesterday that he had recently been looking into the case of former Air Force acquisition official Darleen A. Druyun, who last month was sentenced to nine months in prison after admitting to granting favors in contracts to aerospace giant Boeing Co. before going to work there. Earlier this month, Michael M. Sears, Boeing's former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to a conflict-of-interest charge for his role in hiring Druyun while she was overseeing large contracts with the company.
Rumsfeld said he was struck that during the nine years in which Druyun had been a top Air Force weapons buyer, there had been heavy turnover among other senior managers who might have questioned some of her decisions if they had been on the job longer. From the time Druyun became the Air Force's deputy acquisition chief in 1993 until her retirement in 2002, he said, the positions of secretary of the Air Force, assistant secretary for acquisition and senior military official for acquisition had all changed several times.
"So what you had with all these vacancies over a 10-year period . . . the only continuity was that single person, who's now pled guilty and is going to go to jail," he said. "When you have that long period of time, with . . . no one above her and no one below her, over time I'm told that what she did was acquire a great deal of authority and make a lot of decisions, and there was very little adult supervision."
Rumsfeld linked the problem to one of his pet peeves about contemporary Washington: the difficulties posed by an elaborate -- and slow -- congressional confirmation process.
"Our entire department operates generally somewhere between 20 and 25 percent vacant in presidential appointees, Senate-confirmed, because of the nature of the ethics reviews, the FBI reviews and the Senate confirmation process," he said.
Rumsfeld has said another irksome aspect of the personnel system is how quickly military officers move from one position to another, meaning they sometimes don't stay in one spot long enough to really understand their jobs.
In this situation, he said, there was too little longtime experience in the management slots around Druyun overseeing the Air Force's $30 billion procurement budget. "You have too much turbulence on the military side, too much turbulence plus vacancies on the civilian side, and a person who has continuity -- the only one with continuity -- who is going to break the law."
Rumsfeld credited his own subordinates -- Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and acquisition chief Marvin R. Sambur -- with reining in Druyun. "I'm told that when Secretary Roche and Assistant Secretary Sambur came in, they looked at that situation, were uncomfortable with it, and began taking authorities away from her . . . and that was one of the reasons that apparently she began negotiating for her departure," he said.
Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized Roche, releasing e-mails that he said showed how Roche worked intensely behind the scenes to support a Boeing bid for a controversial contract to provide tanker aircraft. Druyun was chief negotiator on that deal, which drew sharp criticism from the Senate Armed Services Committee and has since been derailed. The Pentagon now plans to hold a competition for the refueling tanker contract.
At one point, according to e-mails released by McCain, a critic of the tanker contract, Roche wrote a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!" In another e-mail, Roche said a Defense Department critic of the tanker deal should "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to it, according to documents released by McCain.
Roche announced his resignation recently, and Rumsfeld issued a statement hailing him for his service to the country.
-------- iraq
6000 Iraqi recruits graduate
The Australian
November 24, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11491172%255E1702,00.html
SOME 6000 Iraqi Army troops - the first batch of quick-reaction forces - graduated today from a southern military base, a military spokesman said.
The new graduates are the first group trained as quick-reaction forces, in charge of launching defensive and offensive operations in emergencies, said the spokesman.
A delegation of the Iraqi Defence Ministry and US military officers attended the graduation ceremony at Al-Nuimiyah base is 140km south of Baghdad.
-----
Fallujah Leaders Were Local, Not Foreign
Associated Press Writer
By HAMZA HENDAWI
November 24, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-fugitive-leaders,0,1277858,print.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Before the assault on Fallujah, U.S. officials described the city as a den of foreign terrorists, but its top commanders were an electrician and a mosque preacher -- both natives of the community and now on the run from American forces.
Religious fervor and hatred of Americans brought Omar Hadid and Abdullah al-Janabi together in a partnership that played a major role in transforming Fallujah from a sleepy Euphrates River backwater into a potent symbol of Arab nationalism.
Their rise to prominence provides insight into contemporary Iraq, where the U.S. presence sparked a religious backlash that gave radical Muslim leaders major roles in filling the void created by the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime and its replacement by a weak U.S.-backed government.
After U.S. Marines lifted the siege of Fallujah last April, central government control collapsed. That enabled men like Hadid, an electrician who lived with his mother, and al-Janabi, a local imam and member of an important local clan, to emerge as powerbrokers until the Marines took the city back this month.
Of the two, Hadid, thought to be in his early 30s, appears to have been the more influential, even though al-Janabi, in his 50s, headed the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which set up Islamic courts that meted out Islamic punishments, executed suspected spies and enforced a strict Islamic lifestyle.
Fallujah residents and Iraqis with close family ties to the city said al-Janabi was more a spiritual leader -- deeply respected but without the leverage that Hadid enjoyed over the bands of fighters who patrolled the streets, directed traffic, attacked U.S. positions on the city's fringes and fought the Americans in April and again this month.
Hadid led one of the bigger and better armed factions in the city, residents say, but they also stress there were other groups of fighters and all largely operated independently of one another.
Some U.S. and Iraqi officials believe Hadid was close to Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose al-Qaida-linked movement allegedly used Fallujah as a headquarters. Al-Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for many of the suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages.
But many Fallujans insist al-Zarqawi was never in the city, even though American forces found what they believe was a command and training center for his movement. Residents also insist the number of foreign Arab fighters was small, giving estimates ranging from several dozen to a couple of hundred in a city of nearly 300,000 people.
Given the uncertainty about al-Zarqawi's role, it is difficult to determine his relationship with either Hadid or al-Janabi.
Some Iraqis who knew Hadid said he was too independent-minded to have taken orders from al-Zarqawi or anyone else. "Omar is far too powerful to be anyone's deputy," said a neighbor of Hadid, who spoke on condition his name not be printed for security reasons.
Those who knew him said Hadid came from a lower middle class Fallujah family. Since his father died a few years ago, Hadid had lived with his mother in the family home in the city's al-Moatasim area until the fighting in April. He's married but without children.
About two months ago, one of Hadid's brothers and a nephew were killed by a U.S. airstrike that also injured several other family members, the neighbor said. Hadid escaped with a minor injury, he said.
People who know Hadid differ over the depth and nature of his religious persuasion. Some said he is a Salafi, a conservative sect whose members try to emulate the appearance and behavior of Islam's 7th century prophet, Muhammad. Others said he is a Wahhabi, the austere and radical brand of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Janabi, on the other hand, is a Sufi, a mystical version of the faith that seeks closeness to God through the cleansing of one's soul. Sufis abhor violence, but al-Janabi found in Hadid a like-minded partner as Salafis and Wahhabis began to prevail over Sufis in Fallujah.
"He's a Salafi in a Sufi disguise," said one native of Fallujah who says he knew both men.
Al-Janabi even joined Hadid in orchestrating the expulsion of a prominent Sufi cleric and mujahedeen leader, Sheik Dhafer al-Obeidi, from the Shura Council after they became alarmed by his growing popularity, say residents who knew the cleric. Al-Obeidi now lives in hiding abroad.
In 1998, al-Janabi, married with five children, was suspended by Saddam's government from delivering Friday sermons because of his public criticism of government policies. He returned to the pulpit of Fallujah's Saad Bin Abi Waqas mosque after Saddam's ouster, devoting most of his sermons to calling on Iraqis to join in a holy war against the Americans.
Fearing for his safety, he stopped giving Friday sermons after the April fighting.
Residents said al-Janabi never carried a weapon in public, but was frequently seen during the April fighting talking to front-line mujahedeen, exhorting them to fight on and telling them that those who died fighting Islam's enemies would be rewarded with eternity in paradise.
--------
US-led forces in huge offensive near Baghdad
aljazeera
24 November 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3519CAA9-46D7-473E-BA2E-CA49785E5D41.htm
More than 5000 US, British and Iraqi troops have attacked areas south of the Iraqi capital in the latest push to pacify the country before planned elections in January.
The operation on Tuesday came as world powers and Middle Eastern states meeting in Egypt threw their weight behind the war-torn country's first free and multi-party elections in decades.
US marines and an Iraqi Swat (special weapons and tactics) team swept through the small south-central Iraqi town of Jibla, starting a fresh campaign in the north of the Babil (Babylon) province, the US military said in a statement.
The offensive involved more than 5000 Iraqi, US and British forces and follows the seizure of Falluja, the statement said.
"As the Iraqi people prepare to vote in nationwide elections in January, multinational forces are determined to capture or kill those who desire to destabilise the elections process," the military said.
Joint operation
The joint operation resulted in the seizure of 32 suspected fighters, the military said. Jibla is 80km south of Baghdad and in what is known as the Triangle of Death.
The military said US and Iraqi forces continued rounding up suspected fighters in house-to-house searches and vehicle checkpoints.
In the past three weeks, Iraqi troops and US marines have detained nearly 250 suspects, the statement added.
They have been aided by British forces from the 1st Battalion of the Black Watch Regiment, which was brought into the area from southern Basra to aid American forces in closing off escape routes for fighters between Baghdad, Babil province to the south and Anbar province to the west.
It would be the third major military offensive against fighters opposed to the US-led government since the massive Falluja operation, which has claimed the lives of more than 50 US soldiers and injured more than 400.
Close to the northern city of Kirkuk, US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday rounded up dozens of suspected fighters in a pre-dawn raid and seized automatic weapons, ammunition and communications equipment, the US military said.
Detention
Kirkuk's local government on Tuesday also publicised the capture in recent days of five leading fighters including the brother-in-law of former president Saddam Hussein's chief deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri.
The governor's office said Umar Ali al-Sufyan, also known as Abu Sufyan, was arrested by US forces on 28 October.
He is suspected of sponsoring anti-US attacks.
Children killed
On Tuesday, two Iraqi children were killed when mortar bombs landed on houses near a US military base in al-Muallimin neighbourhood in central Samarra city, medical sources told Aljazeera.
A number of soldiers were injured and their Hummvee was destroyed when an explosive device detonated on the outskirts of Samarra.
In a separate incident, two fighters were killed and a third injured when an explosive device they were attempting to plant, detonated in al-Jubairiya district southeast of Samarra city.
Another fighter was killed when an explosive device detonated as he was attempting to plant it on a road in Baiji, northeast of Baghdad, Aljazeera reported.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced the deaths of five more US marines near Falluja, where US-led forces are winding down a major assault on the city.
A US soldier was also killed in northern Iraq, although details of the deaths have not yet been released.
The latest casualties bring the US troop toll to more than 1221 since the March 2003 invasion.
Falluja refugees
Meanwhile, many refugees who left Falluja are living in poor conditions with inadequate shelter and food in areas surrounding the besieged city.
Shaikh Yunus al-Hamdani, a member of the Iraqi Relief Body from Saqlawiya told Aljazeera the relief process was difficult as electricity had been disconnected for 15 days.
"Water supply stations which depend on electricity do not work so water has been cut for 15 days.
"Medical aid has not reached us and I confirm that we have not received any aid from the Iraqi government which said it would send relief. People have nothing to protect them from the freezing weather.
"I call on non-governmental organisations to take the initiative to aid the people of Falluja in Saqlawiya who face very critical conditions", he said.
It is estimated there are about 15,000 families who fled Falluja and are now living in makeshift shelters outside the city.
-------- israel / palestine
Observers OK'd for Palestinian Elections
November 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel will allow international observers to monitor upcoming elections to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority, Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday in another indication of easing of tensions since Arafat's death.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom made the commitment -- which can be seen as a concession -- before meeting visiting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Straw also offered assistance to the Palestinians.
``If the international community will want to send observers, Israel will allow the entrance of observers,'' Shalom told Army Radio.
Since Arafat died on Nov. 11, Israel has scaled back military operations in Palestinian areas, and tensions have abated. Israel accused Arafat of promoting Palestinian terrorism and refused to deal with him.
Now the Israelis are walking a self-imposed fine line -- hoping a moderate Palestinian leadership emerges to resume negotiations, but keeping its distance before the Jan. 9 election.
On Wednesday, the violent Islamic group Hamas strongly rejected any move to restart peace negotiations.
Hamas, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel during the last four years of conflict, wants to replace Israel with an Islamic state and shuns any official contact.
Negotiations ``will never ensure the minimum rights or aspirations of the Palestinian people,'' Hamas said in a statement.
Israel usually opposes an official international presence in the Palestinian areas, rejecting a frequent Palestinian demand for observers or peacekeepers. Israel assumes that because most of the world opposes its policies, international teams would be hostile to Israel.
There have been exceptions. Israel agreed to a special observer force in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 after a Jewish settler massacred 29 Palestinians at a disputed holy site.
Also, observers including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter watched the other Palestinian election, in 1996.
Shalom said the role of observers would be ``to ensure that these elections are fair and the results will be acceptable, not only to the international community, but first and foremost to the Palestinian people.''
Straw is on a two-day visit to the region as part of a new round of diplomacy meant to restart peace efforts and movement on the internationally backed ``road map'' peace plan following Arafat's death.
At a joint news conference after their meeting, Straw said he was optimistic about the situation, agreeing with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that ``there is an entirely new opportunity here and a real determination by the collective Palestinian leadership to work to the implementation of the road map.''
Palestinians have also demanded Israel pull its troops out of Palestinian cities during the campaign and allow residents of east Jerusalem to vote in the poll.
After initial opposition, Israel said it would let residents of east Jerusalem vote by absentee ballot. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it, claiming the whole city. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as their capital.
Shalom would not promise to pull troops out of the West Bank for the voting.
``The elections process will not be harmed if, on the outskirts of a certain town, soldiers are located. I think what is important is allowing freedom of movement,'' Shalom said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had to postpone his meeting with Straw because of a sore throat, a statement from Sharon's office said.
Meanwhile, a new threat to Sharon's minority government emerged Wednesday when the moderate opposition Labor Party decided to stop abstaining in parliamentary votes -- raising the possibility that Sharon could be toppled.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority because of opposition from his own backers to his plan to pull Israeli settlers out of Gaza and part of the West Bank next year. Labor, which backs the pullout, offered a ``safety net'' to protect Sharon from no-confidence votes.
Now Labor says it can't continue to prop up the government because of differences over economic policy.
-------- russia / chechnya
Rally Against Ukraine
Vote Swells Nation Is at 'Threshold of a Civil Conflict,' Opposition Candidate Says
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6555-2004Nov23?language=printer
KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 23 -- Opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko took a symbolic oath of office in his country's parliament Tuesday as supporters -- whose numbers swelled to an estimated 200,000 -- rallied in the frigid capital to challenge official vote counts that gave an insurmountable lead to his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
The risk of violent unrest in this former Soviet republic of 48 million people heightened as both sides claimed victory and stepped up their rhetoric following a vote Sunday that Western monitors said was marked by widespread fraud.
"Ukraine is on the threshold of a civil conflict," Yushchenko said in parliament. "We have two choices: Either the answer will be given by the parliament, or the streets will give an answer." Supporters wearing ribbons, neckerchiefs and neckties of the campaign's trademark orange color cheered as he took the oath, which had no legal merit.
In the face of the protests and strong condemnation from the United States and the European Union, the government appeared to hesitate. President Leonid Kuchma, who supported Yanukovych, called for negotiations, and there was no sign of a general mobilization of security forces.
"We strongly support efforts to review the conduct of the election and urge Ukrainian authorities not to certify results until investigations of organized fraud are resolved," the White House said in a statement.
Russia, which backed Yanukovych, dismissed foreign charges of electoral fraud as premature and arrogant. "We cannot recognize or protest results that are not yet official," President Vladimir Putin told reporters during a state visit to Lisbon. "Ukraine is a state of law. It doesn't need to be lectured."
With 99.48 percent of precincts counted, Yanukovych had 49.39 percent of the vote compared with 46.71 percent for Yushchenko. The results were official but not final. Exit polls had put Yushchenko well ahead.
Yushchenko supporters continued to mass in Kiev's Independence Square on Tuesday, their numbers reaching an estimated 200,000 as people arrived from different parts of the country following calls for help from Yushchenko. Many skirted police roadblocks to reach the city.
"We need to get as many Ukrainians as possible into Kiev," said Sergei Gayday, a senior strategist with the Yushchenko campaign. He said the goal was to bring out more than 1 million people while seeking redress from either parliament or the Supreme Court.
Several thousand protesters were facing riot police Tuesday night near the offices of President Kuchma in a standoff that so far has remained peaceful. Across the city, dozens of small clusters of Yushchenko supporters could be seen. Protests also expanded in other cities.
Busloads of Yanukovych supporters, mostly young men, have also arrived in Kiev, but so far have stayed in the background.
A senior Western diplomat said Kuchma has been warned that the government should neither certify Yanukovych as the official winner nor use violence to end the demonstrations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said Yushchenko and his supporters have been counseled to exercise restraint.
Both camps were divided over whether to escalate their efforts, according to diplomats and strategists with each campaign.
The government is debating whether to wait out the protests or put them down, one government adviser said. Though Kuchma called for negotiations on state television Tuesday night and said the government would not use violence, he stopped short of meeting U.S. and European demands for a review of the election.
The senior Western diplomat said there was increasing evidence that the military and the country's security service would not agree to use force, leaving only Interior Ministry troops or the police. The loyalties of both groups are in question, particularly in Kiev and western Ukraine, Yushchenko strongholds. "You have a government which, to my opinion, doesn't know what to do," said the diplomat.
"They may have been stupid enough to think that obvious, outright fraud would somehow persuade the international community . . . that this was a legitimate election," the diplomat said.
An adviser to the Yanukovych campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity said he expected his candidate to be certified as the winner by the Central Elections Commission on Wednesday. In a statement Tuesday evening, Yanukovych's campaign manager appeared to be preparing the way for such a move when he called on Yushchenko to concede.
"Mr. Yushchenko must help unite the country now that it is apparent that Viktor Yanukovych is Ukraine's president-elect," said Sergei Tyhypko.
Within the Yushchenko camp, some of his chief supporters argue for using the assembled crowds to seize key facilities, including the state television building. But so far, the protesters have limited themselves largely to noisy gatherings in public places.
There were clear signs that Yushchenko's organizers hope to maintain the protests for as long as possible despite the hardship of the severe cold. Mobile food kitchens and generators to run heaters have been moved onto Independence Square, where supporters have pitched tents and announced their intention to remain round-the-clock.
Yushchenko and key advisers have been meeting nightly to map out the next day's strategy, according to Gayday, who has attended the meetings.
On Tuesday, Yushchenko led supporters on a march to the parliament building and then went inside, leaving the crowd outside. Some legislators tried to put forth a vote of no confidence in the Central Elections Commission, but the session was boycotted by lawmakers who support Yanukovych. A quorum could not be reached.
Yushchenko took an oath of office, his hand on a copy of the constitution, as supporters shouted: "Bravo, Mr. President!"
Some of the protesters outside attempted to burst into the building. But they were coaxed back by lawmakers supporting Yushchenko, evidence that the campaign has not yet decided to use force.
The role of the Communist Party in parliamentary maneuvering remains critical and uncertain. Its leader did not endorse any candidate in the second round of voting despite pressure from Russia to back Yanukovych. But if it sides with Yushchenko, there would be enough votes to demand a review of the election and the 11,000 violations that the Yushchenko campaign claims to have documented.
--------
For the U.S., a Balancing Act on Ukraine
White House Seeks to Support Election Protesters Without Angering Russia's Putin
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7810-2004Nov23.html
The Bush administration is seeking to support Ukrainian demonstrators who are challenging official results declaring that a Moscow-backed candidate narrowly won Sunday's presidential election without risking an open break with Russian President Vladimir Putin, administration officials said yesterday.
Even before the count was completed, Putin on Monday congratulated Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych on his victory over Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko in an election that international observers said was deeply flawed. Yushchenko declared himself the winner yesterday and took a symbolic oath of office as hundreds of thousands of protesters packed Kiev's downtown streets.
Putin visited Ukraine before the runoff election and an earlier round of voting, in an apparent attempt to influence the results. But administration officials said they are focusing on the need for a democratic outcome and ensuring a result that reflects the will of the voters and is credible to the world -- a message that a top State Department official, A. Elizabeth Jones, delivered to the Russian ambassador Monday.
"This is not a U.S.-Russia issue," an administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "It is not an East-West issue." He said that a fully democratic Ukraine would have to have close relations with Russia, no matter who wins the presidency.
"The Russians may make it an issue, but it isn't," he said.
Although White House officials hailed the close relationship with Putin early in President Bush's tenure, tensions have risen in the past year over Putin's efforts to muzzle political opponents and centralize political control. The dispute over the Ukrainian election is potentially problematic because Russia may feel that the United States is interfering in its sphere of influence. Yesterday, Putin attacked Western criticism of the election.
Charles A. Kupchan, director of Europe studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the administration appeared to be trying to encourage a review of the election without crossing what he called two "red lines" -- creating an overt rift with Putin or encouraging violence in Ukraine.
He said that Ukraine has remained relatively cohesive since the breakup of the Soviet Union but that the voting generally split along east-west lines, with the western, Ukrainian-speaking areas supporting Yushchenko and the eastern, mostly Russian-speaking areas voting for Yanukovych. A misstep, Kupchan said, "could turn a political cleavage into a conflict of competing identities."
Bush raised the upcoming Ukrainian election with Putin when they met on the sidelines of an economic summit last weekend, officials said, but they declined to characterize the discussion except to say that Bush stressed the United States' interest in a democratic outcome.
Bush also raised concerns about Putin's efforts to rein in democratic institutions, officials said. Putin responded with a long lecture about how he was creating a "democratic style" of government that is consistent with Russian history and the unique problems that Russia faces as a multiethnic society on a large landmass. Bush has not spoken to Putin since the Ukrainian election, officials said.
The White House, in a statement issued in Crawford, Tex., where Bush is spending Thanksgiving, said the United States "is deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian elections."
The statement noted that "the United States stands with the Ukrainian people in this difficult time." The White House urged Ukrainian authorities not to certify the results until allegations of "organized fraud" are resolved, and to respect the will of the people.
"The government bears a special responsibility not to use or incite violence," the statement added, saying the government also must permit news organizations to report on the matter "without intimidation or coercion."
State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said Jones, an assistant secretary of state, had also spoken twice to the Ukrainian ambassador expressing "our deep concern over the allegations of fraud and abuse" and calling for "a complete and immediate investigation into the conduct of the election."
U.S. officials have suggested they are considering a series of escalating steps against the Ukrainian government if it fails to take effective action, starting with refusing to issue visas for officials and moving to restrictions on nearly $150 million in annual aid. But officials said they are working to avoid having to take such steps.
"It is pretty clear it was a stolen election," the administration official said. "But the situation is very fluid."
-------- spies
Russia Sends Scientist To Jail For Spying
(UPI)
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04zzzk.html
Krasnoyarsk, Russia - A Russian court has sentenced a physicist Valentin Danilov to 14 years in a Siberian prison for passing space secrets to China.
Danilov, 53, a professor at Krasnoyarsk Technical University in Siberia, was first arrested in 2001 on charges he attempted to sell technology to China based on his work on the effects of the space environment on man-made satellites.
He spent 19 months in prison before being cleared of charges in December 2003, but the verdict was overturned on appeal in December 2003. He was retried and found guilty of high treason earlier this month.
Russian authorities claimed his invention, a tool designed to examine ways to destroy redundant satellites, revealed state secrets. But Danilov has always maintained information he sold to China was already publicly available.
Danilov was sentenced and ordered to serve his sentence in a maximum security labor camp, the BBC reported Wednesday. His lawyer said she planned to appeal the sentence in the Russian Supreme Court, the Itar-Tass news agency said.
------
Bush Orders the CIA To Hire More Spies
Goss Told to Build Up Other Staffs, Too
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8650-2004Nov23?language=printer
President Bush has ordered CIA Director Porter J. Goss to increase by 50 percent the number of qualified CIA clandestine operators and intelligence analysts, an ambitious step that would mean the hiring and training of several thousand new personnel in coming years.
Bush also ordered the doubling of CIA officers involved in research and development "to find new ways to bring science to bear in the war on terrorism, the proliferation of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and against new and emerging threats." In the presidential order, dated Nov. 18 and released by the White House yesterday, Bush also called for a 50 percent increase in the number of CIA officers proficient in "mission-critical languages" such as Arabic.
The directive comes as the CIA is under intense scrutiny and in a period of transition under Goss's new leadership, and as the administration is under pressure to show progress in addressing the shortcomings documented by the Sept. 11 commission this summer. Last week Congress was unable to agree on details of legislation to dramatically reorganize the U.S. intelligence community.
In addition to calling for such a reorganization, the 9/11 commission had also urged strong increases in the number of clandestine officers, intelligence analysts and language specialists, as had the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA has undertaken an unprecedented recruiting and training campaign. The president's order left unclear how that would be accelerated.
The 50 percent increases he called for "are huge," requiring a new training facility "and even more aggressive recruiting, or lowering the quality of people," a former CIA official involved in the recruiting effort said.
The exact number of CIA officers in one area targeted for increase -- the clandestine service, officially known as the Directorate of Operations -- is classified, but former officials say it is around 4,500. Only about one-third are in the field as case officers who recruit agents, a former official said. The rest provide support from headquarters and overseas. Overall, the agency is believed to employ about 20,000 people.
U.S. officials said much of what Bush proposed was already being undertaken by the CIA and had been outlined in a strategic plan finished in December 2003. Officials said the White House was not aware of that planning when the president signed the directive, the existence of which was first reported by the New York Times.
Goss has said he wants to make significant changes in the way the agency does business, but he has been unclear on many specifics.
His tenure so far has been tumultuous. Several senior and mid-level clandestine officers, including the director and assistant director of the Directorate of Operations, have resigned or retired.
In his order, Bush gave Goss 90 days to put together a budget and implementation plan for hiring and training the new personnel. One former senior agency official said yesterday that the task "could take years."
Bush's order said the increases should be done "as soon as feasible."
Since many new trainees will be used against tough targets such as terrorists and closed governments such as North Korea and Iran, the training and eventual placement overseas will be even more difficult. Many will not be able to work out of embassies with diplomatic cover -- as many traditionally have -- but will operate covertly in their target countries. These officers will be "NOCs," which means they are there under "non-official cover," and subject to arrest as spies if they are caught.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, suggested that Congress should be "prepared to triple the budget for intelligence" if needed. "We will answer the issue of resources," he said.
In a separate presidential directive -- also issued Nov. 18 and released yesterday -- Bush gave the attorney general 90 days to provide plans for the creation of a "specialized and integrated national security workforce" within the FBI.
That directive builds upon reforms set in motion by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who announced in June that he was creating a "directorate of intelligence" aimed at improving the collection and analysis of intelligence information within the FBI.
The president also signed an order calling on the national security agencies to study whether to expand the types of covert operations undertaken by the military, activities that are now largely handled by the CIA's paramilitary division.
Bush set a 90-day deadline for that study as well.
The Sept. 11 commission recommended that the Pentagon assume all paramilitary activities, including those in which the hand of the U.S. government is to remain secret. None of the recent intelligence reorganization bills contained that provision, however.
The Defense Department has been studying and experimenting with new ways to use military forces to collect intelligence and conduct other covert operations. In this realm -- technically called "intelligence preparation of the battlefield" -- some skeptics view the department as inching into covert actions.
This is controversial, in part because it would mean that if soldiers involved in a covert operation are captured, the government would not admit they are U.S. military personnel. CIA operatives sign up for this risk. Military personnel do not, except when they agree to be temporarily transferred to the CIA.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
--------
CIA Releases Report on WMD in Iran, North Korea
voanews.com
By Michael Bowman
24 November 2004
http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-11-24-voa73.cfm
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has restated its belief that Iran has secretly pursued nuclear weapons, and also says North Korea is continuing to develop ballistic missiles that could reach parts of the United States. The CIA posted the unclassified report on its Internet website.
The report covers activities related to weapons of mass destruction for several nations and terrorist networks in the second half of last year.
It says that Iran "continued to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons" and that Iran's clandestine nuclear program received "significant assistance" in the past from the proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.
The report also alleges that Iran has worked to improve its delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction, and that the nation continues to use its civilian nuclear energy program as a shield to hide a weapons program.
The report notes a series of steps by North Korea, including its stated intention to resume nuclear activities that had been frozen under the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework, its completion of the reprocessing of spent fuel rods, and the utilization of plutonium to increase the size of its deterrent nuclear force.
The report says by the end of last year, North Korea was nearly self-sufficient in developing and producing ballistic missiles, and may be ready to flight-test a multiple-stage missile that could potentially reach U.S. soil.
The CIA report says the risk of terrorist networks like al-Qaida using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials remained high last year. But it notes that any attacks would likely be small-scale in nature, utilizing readily-obtainable materials and improvised delivery systems, such as a so-called "dirty bomb." The report adds that terrorist groups may launch a conventional attack on a U.S. chemical or nuclear facility in hopes of sparking panic and economic disruption.
The director of the Virginia-based GlobalSecurity.org Internet site, John Pike, notes that the CIA report points to progress in containing the spread of weapons of mass destruction in only one country, Libya.
"It was interesting to see the extensive discussion of their concerns about al-Qaida aquiring weapons of mass destruction," he noted. "Iraq has been invaded and found to have no weapons. Libya has voluntarily given theirs up. [But] Iran and North Korea seem to be moving ahead and aquiring more weapons of mass destruction. So it is definitely a mixed report card -- some good news, some bad news and some worrisome news."
U.S. law requires the CIA provide regular assessments of other counties' activities concerning the acquisition, development, and production of weapons of mass destruction. Although the reports are made public, they may also contain a classified annex intended only for select members of Congress.
-----
How to Create a WIA -- Worthless Intelligence Agency
by Chalmers Johnson
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
by TomDispatch.com
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1124-10.htm
Two weeks after George Bush's reelection, Porter J. Goss, the newly appointed Director of Central Intelligence, wrote an internal memorandum to all employees of his agency telling them, "[Our job is to] support the administration and its policies in our work. As agency employees, we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."[1] Translated from bureaucrat-speak, this directive says, "You now work for the Republican Party. The intelligence you produce must first and foremost protect the President from being held accountable for the delusions he has concerning Iraq, Osama bin Laden, preventive war, torturing captives, democracy growing from the barrel of a gun, and the 'war on terror.'"
This approach is not new, even though former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman declares that "the current situation is the worst intelligence scandal in the nation's history."[2] Back in 1973, when James Schlesinger briefly succeeded Richard Helms as CIA director, he proclaimed on arrival at the agency's Virginia "campus": "I am here to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon."[3] Schlesinger underscored his point by saying that he would be reporting directly to White House political adviser Bob Haldeman and not to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. In the contemporary White House, Goss need not bother going directly to Karl Rove since Bush's outgoing and incoming National Security Advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, have both been working for months under Rove's direction primarily to reelect the President. In 1973, Schlesinger wanted to protect Nixon from revelations that the CIA had broken into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and illegally infiltrated the antiwar movement within the United States. His actual achievement was to perpetuate Washington's idée fixe that the United States could still win the Vietnam War despite overwhelming intelligence to the contrary. The same is likely to be true today and the outcome is likely to be similar. Just as thirty years ago, an administration refused to pay attention to its own internal intelligence assessments and lost the Vietnam War, so another administration has again wrapped itself in a fantasy bubble of wishful thinking and so is losing the war it started in Iraq.
Intelligence and the Truth-teller
Part of the background to the Goss memo is a widespread misunderstanding of why the CIA was created and what it actually does. For example, Bush apostle David Brooks writes in the New York Times that the CIA is engaged "in slow-motion brazen insubordination, which violate[s] all standards of honorable public service. . . . It is time to reassert some harsh authority so CIA employees know they must defer to the people who win elections. . . . If they [people in the CIA] ever want their information to be trusted, they can't break the law with self-serving leaks of classified data."[4] Brooks seems to think that the CIA is the President's personal advertising agency and that its employees owe their livelihoods to him. About Michael Scheuer, the head of the "bin Laden Unit" in the agency's Counterterrorism Center from 1996 to 1999 and the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Brooks fumes, "Here was an official on the president's payroll publicly campaigning against his boss."
Leave aside the fact that the President doesn't pay any government official's salary, at least not legally, and that Scheuer was more interested in educating the public about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, on which he is an authority, than in covering up the President's mistakes; the point is that the issue of the CIA's intelligence on the Iraq war is bringing back into our political life once again the figure most feared by presidents: the truth-teller. During a previous period of falsified intelligence, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger said in the Oval Office in front of President Nixon and his Special Counsel Charles Colson, "Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs."[5] Kissinger and Nixon subsequently ordered up felonies, such as a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, in order to try to smear and discredit the man who had revealed to the public the systematic lying of three presidents -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson -- about the war in Vietnam.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered a special staff to write a top secret History of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, known as "The Pentagon Papers," of which Ellsberg was responsible for the 1961 volume on John F. Kennedy's presidency. Ellsberg's release of the highly classified Pentagon Papers to the New York Times resulted in the public exposure of virtually every National Intelligence Estimate on Vietnam written by the CIA since the end of French colonial rule. Bush's attempt to squelch information from the CIA then is hardly unprecedented in the annals of our government, but it is egregious and ultimately self-defeating.
The term "intelligence" has always rested uneasily in the name of the Central Intelligence Agency. There is no question that the agency was created in 1947 on the orders of President Truman for the sole purpose of collecting, evaluating, and coordinating -- through espionage and from the public record -- information related to the national security of the United States. Truman was concerned to prevent another surprise attack on the U.S. like Pearl Harbor and to ensure that all information available to the government was compiled and presented to him in a timely and usable form. The National Security Act of 1947 placed the CIA under the explicit direction of the National Security Council (NSC), the president's chief staff unit for making decisions about war and peace, and gave it five functions. Four of them concern the collection, coordination, and dissemination of intelligence. It is the fifth -- which allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct" -- that has turned the CIA into a personal, secret, unaccountable army any president can order into battle without first having to ask Congress to declare war, as the Constitution requires.
Clandestine operations, although nowhere mentioned in the CIA's enabling statutes, quickly became the Agency's main activity and as one of its most impartial Congressional analysts, Loch K. Johnson, has put the matter, "The covert action shop had become a place for rapid promotion within the agency."[6] The Directorate of Operations (DO) soon absorbed two-thirds of the CIA's budget and personnel, while the Directorate of Intelligence limped along writing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) -- summaries of intelligence produced by all the various intelligence agencies, including those in the Department of Defense -- for the White House.
Meanwhile, CIA covert operations subverted domestic journalism, planted false information in foreign newspapers, and covertly fed large amounts of money to members of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy, to King Hussein of Jordan, and to clients in Greece, West Germany, Egypt, Sudan, Suriname, Mauritius, the Philippines, Iran, Ecuador, and Chile. Clandestine agents devoted themselves to such tasks as depressing the global prices of agricultural products in order to damage uncooperative Third World countries, and sponsoring guerrilla wars or miscellaneous insurgencies in places as diverse as the Ukraine, Poland, Albania, Hungary, Indonesia, China, Tibet, Oman, Malaysia, Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, North Korea, Bolivia, Thailand, Haiti, Guatemala, Cuba, Greece, Turkey, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua, to name only a few of those on the public record. All this was justified by the Cold War, and no one beyond a very small group inside the government knew anything about it. The Central Intelligence Act of 1949 modified the National Security Act of 1947 with a series of amendments that, in the words of that pioneer scholar of the CIA Harry Howe Ransom, "were introduced to permit [the CIA] a secrecy so absolute that accountability might be impossible."[7]
How to Misuse Intelligence
Regardless of what it most enjoys doing, the CIA is still tasked with providing the president with accurate information to enable him to avoid a surprise attack and protect the national security. In the foyer of the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia, is inscribed a Biblical quotation: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Loch Johnson conjectures that former Director of the CIA (DCI) Allen Dulles probably thought it meant, "And ye shall know the truth -- if ye be me, or the president." Former DCI Richard Helms once maintained to Bob Woodward that the early warning function of the CIA "is everything, and underline everything."[8] Even if true, the CIA's power to provide such unrequested information to a president constitutes a potential restraint on his freedom of action and may on occasion totally derail his policies, particularly since such intelligence is very rarely certain or unambiguous. Over the years the powers of the DCI to compel a president to read an intelligence estimate have been systematically diluted, and when information supplied to the president about a possible attack or any other matter under the CIA's imprimatur has been leaked to the public, both the Agency and the intelligence have become politically radioactive.
Such revelations have usually taken one of two forms. In the first instance, the president, it is argued, has been shielded from or has refused to read accurate intelligence. In the second instance, the president is accused of secretly ordering the suppression of intelligence or of fabricating intelligence to support his preferred policies. President Bush has engaged in both forms of dishonesty, but he is certainly not the first president to do so. The examples are legion.
In 1961, at the time of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Richard Bissell, then head of the Directorate of Operations, gained the ear of President Kennedy and assured him that elated Cubans would welcome American-supported insurgents, strew rose petals in their path, and help overthrow the Castro government. Bissell simply did not show Kennedy the estimates that said Castro had extensive popular support and the invasion would fail.
Similarly, in May 1970, as President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger plotted their "incursion" into Cambodia, the Board of National Estimates (BNE) concluded that "an American invasion of Cambodia would fail to deter North Vietnamese continuation of the war."[9] DCI Helms failed to deliver this estimate to the White House, knowing what the BNE did not -- that the decision to invade had already been made. Former DCI Robert M. Gates generalizes: "It has been my experience over the years that the usual response of a policymaker to intelligence with which he disagrees or which he finds unpalatable is to ignore it."[10]
Examples of the distortion or fabrication of intelligence are rarer, but they do occur. During the Vietnam War, Gen. William Westmoreland, U.S. military commander from 1964 to 1968, omitted from his estimate of enemy forces all Communist guerrillas and informal local defense forces -- perhaps as many as 120,000-150,000 fighters -- that another estimate indicated had been responsible for up to 40% of American losses. His apparent intent was to make victory in Vietnam look more plausible to the American public. On March 14, 1967, DCI Helms included Westmoreland's figures in an NIE going to the White House even though he "knew that the figures on enemy troop strength in Vietnam provided by military intelligence were wrong -- or, at any rate, quite different from CIA figures. Yet he signed the estimate without dissent. The apparent reason, according to his biographer, was that 'he did not want a fight with the military, supported by [National Security Adviser Walt] Rostow at the White House.'"[11]
Another example of the suppression or distortion of intelligence occurred in 1969-70 over the issue of whether or not the Soviet SS-9 ICBM could carry three warheads and whether those warheads could be fired at separate and distinct targets -- that is, whether or not the SS-9 carried MIRVs (multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles). If true, this would perhaps have given the Soviet Union a first-strike capability against the United States. The SS-9 came in four models, the first of which had its flight test on September 23, 1963, and began to be deployed in the summer of 1967. All Western intelligence agencies agreed that models one through three carried a single warhead, some with huge yields (in the range of 18 megatons). Disagreement arose over model four, which seemed to carry three warheads. Whether these were independently targetable was in dispute.
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird contended that the fourth version of the SS-9 was a MIRVed weapon; the CIA in its NIE on the subject said that it was not. At first the CIA rejected the pressure coming from the policymakers and, in fact, added more evidence against MIRVs to its estimate. Ultimately, however, DCI Helms removed the paragraph arguing against Soviet preparations for a first strike after "an assistant to [Laird] informed Helms that the statement contradicted the public position of the Secretary."[12] As it turned out, the CIA was right. The SS-9s were armed with MRVs, not MIRVs -- that is, they could produce only a cluster of explosions in a single area. The Soviet Union did not deploy MIRVs until 1976, six years after the United States had done so. [13] So it was we, not they, who accelerated the race toward mutual assured destruction -- and did so on the basis of fake intelligence.
When it comes to ignoring accurate CIA intelligence, the preeminent example in the Bush administration was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's indifference to al-Qaeda and her failure to ensure that the president read and understood the explicit warnings of an imminent surprise attack that the agency delivered to her. As the Washington Post's Steve Coll has summarized the matter in his book Ghost Wars, "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. was the headline on the President's Daily Brief presented to Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6 [2001]. The report included the possibility that bin Laden operatives would seek to hijack airplanes. The hijacking threat, mentioned twice, was one of several possibilities outlined. There was no specific information about when or where such an attack might occur."[14]
Slaying the Messenger
After the extent of its failure became known, and under extreme pressure from the public and families of the victims of 9/11, the Bush administration reluctantly authorized the creation of a National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States and permitted National Security Adviser Rice to testify before it in public. But the fix was in: The Commission was to concentrate on "intelligence failures," not on the failure of policymakers to heed the intelligence, and on the need to "reform" the CIA but not to such an extent as to damage the president's ability to blame it for his mistakes.
On November 20, 2004, right-wing members of the House of Representatives scuttled the major recommendation of the 9/11 Commission -- namely, to provide the leader of the American intelligence community with greater authority to direct and coordinate the analyses of all 15 intelligence agencies. Reflecting the Pentagon's interests in maintaining control over 80% of the $40 billion annual intelligence budget, Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and an ally of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, withdrew his support. Other Republican congressmen joined him, demanding that the bill go even further than was already the case in harassing so-called illegal immigrants, primarily from Mexico.
The President and the Speaker of the House both said they favored enactment of the proposed legislation, but many experienced observers thought it was all Grand Kabuki by the Republican Party, intended to make it appear that the White House favored reform while ensuring that reform did not actually occur. In killing the reform bill, the Pentagon unambiguously displayed the raw political power of the military-industrial-congressional complex. During October 2004, Gen. Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, without the public approval of any civilian leader of the Defense Department, wrote to Congressman Hunter expressing his support for sabotaging change.
After the 9/11 attacks and the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, the focus shifted from ignoring unwanted intelligence to actively creating false intelligence. The critical item was the NIE of October 1, 2002, entitled "Iraq's Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction," which became known inside the CIA as the "whore of Babylon."[15] It explicitly endorsed Vice President Cheney's contention of August 26, 2002 -- "We know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons" -- and was signed by DCI George Tenet with "high confidence." "The intelligence process," writes CIA veteran Ray McGovern, "was not the only thing undermined. So was the Constitution. Various drafts of the NIE, reinforced with heavy doses of 'mushroom-cloud' rhetoric, were used to deceive congressmen and senators into ceding to the executive their prerogative to declare war -- the all-important prerogative that the framers of the Constitution took great care to reserve exclusively to our elected representatives in Congress."
In succeeding months numerous review commissions revealed that the October NIE was only one of numerous failures by the truth-tellers to do what the people of the United States pay them to do. The Senate Intelligence Committee, the 9/11 Commission, and the CIA's Iraq Survey Group under Charles Duelfer all reported that the CIA's so-called intelligence on Iraqi WMD was fictitious. Even more dangerously for the White House, these reports suggested that its so-called war on terrorism and its attack on Iraq rather than on the true perpetrators of 9/11 were based on false intelligence, much of it manufactured in the Pentagon.
The number three civilian defense official in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, had set up the Office of Special Plans, an operation devoted to going through all the raw intelligence available to the various spy agencies and finding items that offered possible evidence of (or hints of evidence of) links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It was this effort to get around both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, neither of which had found links or ties between Iraq and 9/11, that eventually led some officials to break ranks and charge that the war against Iraq was in fact undercutting the "war on terrorism" -- specifically, Richard A. Clark, the White House's coordinator for counterterrorism in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, in his book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terrorism; and the CIA's Michael Scheuer in Imperial Hubris and in his letter to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees entitled "How Not to Catch a Terrorist"[16]
The new head of the CIA, Porter Goss, is now setting about knocking off all such messengers and their supporters still inside the CIA because the agency, despite its frequent co-option and misuse by presidents, still retains a vestigial role as a truth-teller. Goss had been ordered to make it appear that the agency misled the President (rather than the other way round, as actually happened). He is then supposed to shake up what he calls a "dysfunctional" organization. After George Tenet resigned as DCI in July 2004 and went on the lecture circuit at $35,000 a pop -- he had earned well over a half-million dollars by November -- Bush appointed Goss to control further truth-telling at Langley and to head off efforts by Congress to create a powerful intelligence czar, as the 9/11 Commission has recommended.[17] The Senate confirmed Goss by a vote of 77 to 17 (six senators did not vote), strongly suggesting the increasing worthlessness of Senate oversight of the executive branch.
Goss represented the 14th district of Florida for some sixteen years in the House of Representatives, but before that, between 1962 and 1971, he worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO). He was stationed primarily in Latin America, and rumors persist that he left the agency under a cloud. In 1995, he was appointed to the House's Intelligence Oversight Committee and in 1997 became its chairman. There is no evidence that he did anything at all in this position, including investigating the intelligence lapses that preceded 9/11 or the failure of the CIA to have placed a single spy anywhere within Saddam Hussein's regime. Admiral Stansfield Turner, DCI under President Carter, has said that Goss was the worst appointment ever made to the position of director of the CIA.
How to Create a Worthless Intelligence Agency
Goss is a highly political bureaucrat, who raised eyebrows when he gave speeches earlier this year attacking John Kerry for slashing intelligence funding without mentioning that, in 1995, he himself had co-sponsored a measure calling for firing 20% of all CIA personnel over five years. Goss has also dismissed the efforts to find out who in the Bush administration identified, and so outed, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame -- wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson who had embarrassed the administration over its Iraqi nuclear claims -- to the press as "wild and unsubstantiated allegations," a position that will not reassure operatives at the Directorate who can be and have been assassinated because of such leaks. Goss brought with him to Langley a group of Republican Party activist staff members from the House Intelligence Committee and set them up in prominent executive positions from which they unleashed a witch-hunt against any and all intelligence officers who sought to put accuracy and integrity ahead of service to George W. Bush.
It is interesting that Goss has begun his shake-up of the CIA by forcing out the director and deputy director of operations, even though this is not where the alleged failures of the CIA in recent years occurred. (This, in turn, has lead to speculation that he is trying to ensure his own service record in the DO will be kept under wraps.) Within the coming weeks, he will certainly fire Jami A. Miscik, head of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), who has worked in the agency since 1983 and was a close associate of former DCI George J. Tenet. She has led the DI since May 2002, a period in which much of the false reporting on Iraq occurred. It may be logical and expectable that Miscik be held responsible for the politicized intelligence produced on her watch; but under the present circumstances it is clear that she is actually being punished for following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who ordered up the false intelligence in the first place. As Spencer Ackerman has written, "If Goss thought the CIA was dysfunctional before, he has guaranteed that it is now."[18]
There is every reason to try to make the CIA at least slightly more effective in its truth-telling mission, but even the hint that a Republican Party loyalty test is now being applied will cause an exodus of experienced analysts and leave the country even more vulnerable than it is now. With several wars underway (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Colombia, Kashmir, Sudan, and Chechnya, to name only the most obvious), Iran and North Korea on the cusp of becoming nuclear powers, a looming possibility of a global flight from the dollar, the emergence of China as an economic powerhouse, and the polar ice caps melting, this is not exactly a good time to be blinding ourselves. The only groups who will profit from a crippling of what is left of the CIA's early warning and analytic capabilities will be the Bush-Cheney White House and Rumsfeld's Pentagon.
The present sorry chapter in the rise and fall of the CIA reflects trends in the U.S. that are bolstering an "imperial presidency" and its handmaiden, militarism. Although the CIA was created to help inform presidents about threats to the country, it is clear that the President and his top officials no longer want or need its intelligence functions, which have, in any case, been increasingly transferred to the military establishment, the professional armed forces, and the military-industrial complex -- groups hardly best known for their reputations as truth-tellers.
It is true that the CIA, once founded, quickly evolved into a Praetorian Guard, totally under the president's secret control, and that every president since Truman, upon discovering such an extraordinary source of power privately available, has found its use irresistible. Over the decades, however, the CIA's ability to intervene covertly and often violently in the affairs of others almost anywhere on Earth has become somewhat less interesting to presidents as Congress passed laws constraining presidential independence of action when it came to the Agency -- and as alternatives came into being in the form of the military's various Special Forces. The president now has an explicit and far more military Praetorian Guard at his disposal that lacks any form of democratic oversight, although he risks a future moment in which it might eventually take power into its own hands, as the original Praetorians of the Roman Empire did two millennia ago.
Many presidents have abused their secret powers. When these violations of law became public, as they did spectacularly during the Watergate scandal, they led to Congressional efforts to impose oversight on the agency. From 1947 to 1974, Congress was completely uninformed about and exercised no control at all over anything the CIA did. The agency's budget was buried in the "black" sections of the Pentagon's budget. With the amending of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 (the "Hughes-Ryan Act") and the 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act, the president was required formally to authorize all operations in writing and report them to special committees of Congress or at least to their chairmen and ranking minority members.
None of these measures has worked well, but they reflected a growing public distrust of secret powers. Some members of Congress even collaborated with unscrupulous CIA officials to subvert controls over expenditures and covert operations. When Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) became chairman of the House's Intelligence Oversight Committee, he wrote to his friends at the CIA, who were then secretly enlarging the supply of weapons to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, "Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like."[19] Similarly, in 1985, the oversight system virtually collapsed when it was revealed that NSA director Vice Adm. John Poindexter and his aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North had secretly collaborated with DCI William Casey to sell arms to Iran and that no one in Congress had been informed about it in any way. Somewhat more rigorous Congressional scrutiny of the CIA ensued, which had the unintended effect of making CIA officers more risk averse while enlarging the powers of the Pentagon and our 14 other supersecret intelligence agencies, particularly the National Security Agency, whose budget the Pentagon controls.
Nonetheless, the CIA still retains its statutory role of compiling and transmitting to the president objective intelligence on matters it deems relevant to the nation's security. The Agency may have become little more than a speed-bump for an imperial president who also dominates the Congress and the courts, but it is still part of the checks and balances of power within the executive branch of our government that make the U.S. a democratic republic and protect us from an imperial usurpation of power. With the reelection of President Bush and the appointment of Porter Goss to bring the CIA under White House control, it becomes increasingly hard to see how the republic will survive.
Chalmers Johnson's latest books Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Metropolitan, 2000) and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan, 2004) are the first two volumes in a trilogy on American imperial policies. The final volume is now being written. Between 1967 and 1973 Johnson served as a consultant to the CIA's Office of National Estimates.
2004 Chalmers Johnson
Footnotes
1. Douglas Jehl, "Chief of CIA Tells His Staff to Back Bush," the New York Times, November 17, 2004.
2. Melvin A. Goodman, "Righting the CIA," the Baltimore Sun, November 19, 2004.
3. See, among several references, the remarks of a CIA officer who actually heard Schlesinger: Ray McGovern, "Cheney's Cat's Paw: Porter Goss as CIA Director," Counterpunch, July 6, 2004.
4. David Brooks, "The C.I.A. Versus Bush," the New York Times, November 13, 2004.
5. Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets [New York: Viking, 2002], p. 434.
6. Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 21.
7. Loch K. Johnson, p. 36.
8. Bob Woodward, Veil: The CIA's Secret Wars, 1981-87 [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987], p. 49.
9. Robert M. Gates, "The CIA and American Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs vol. 66, Winter 1987-88, p. 227.
10. Loch K. Johnson, p. 62.
11. L. K. Johnson, p. 62; see also Harold P. Ford, CIA and Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968 [Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998], pp. 86-104.
12. 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities [the Church committee], Final Report [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976], vol. 1, p. 78.
13. See Federation of American Scientists, Weapons of Mass Destruction, R-36/SS-9 SCARP; and Fred Kaplan, The Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency, Slate, October 28, 2002.
14. Steven Coll, Ghost Wars [New York: Penguin, 2004], p. 562.
15. Ray McGovern, "Cheney's Cat's Paw," Counterpunch, July 6, 2004.
16. Richard A. Clark, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terrorism [New York: Free Press, 2004]; Michael Scheuer, "How Not to Catch a Terrorist," Atlantic Monthly, December 2004, pp. 50-52.
17. Douglas Jehl, "Ex-CIA Chief Nets $500,000 on Talk Circuit," the New York Times, November 11, 2004.
18. Spencer Ackerman, "Killing the Messenger," Salon, November 16, 2004.
19. George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War [New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003], p. 494.
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U.S. struggles to find troops for Iraq, Afghanistan
Nov. 24, 2004
By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10264452.htm
WASHINGTON - The Army, which has been hard pressed to find enough soldiers to man the rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, may soon be faced with an urgent request to find another 5,000 to 7,000 troops to increase the number of boots on the ground in Iraq.
Commanders there have been quietly signaling an immediate need for at least that many more soldiers to add to the 138,000 Americans already there. This, they say, is the minimum number needed to allow them to pursue the offensive against the insurgents in the wake of the taking of Fallujah.
Far from breaking the back of the insurgency, the capture of Fallujah only served as a signal for the enemy to launch its own offensive in cities across the Sunni triangle and in Baghdad itself. The fighters and leaders who fled Fallujah before the Americans launched their attack simply moved to other cities and went straight to work sowing havoc.
The daily number of attacks and incidents in Iraq is now running more than 100 per day, or double what it was before the Fallujah offensive began.
Having taken Fallujah in a violent and bloody campaign that took the lives of more than 50 Americans and uncounted Iraqis and virtually destroyed a city where the insurgents and foreign fighters had had sanctuary and free reign for six months, the Americans now are obliged to rebuild what they destroyed.
The city and the reconstruction efforts both have to be secured against a return of the insurgents, thus tying down thousands of American soldiers and Marines when they are needed elsewhere to fight those who escaped Fallujah.
Commanders in Iraq are under pressure to take the war to the enemy and beat them into less of a threat so that the Jan. 30 first round of elections in that country can take place with minimal violence. Washington would love to see an election in Iraq that was something like the success of the Afghanistan voting last month.
Army planners are looking at a number of temporary stop-gap measures to boost the strength in Iraq during January, including extension of the tours of thousands of soldiers nearing the end of their 12-month combat assignment and speeding up the deployment of the 3rd Mech Infantry Division so more of them arrive before January.
They are also reportedly eyeing the ready brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division - which stands by at Fort Bragg for rapid deployment anywhere in the world in a crisis - as one way to boost temporarily troop strength in Iraq. Those troops, however, are light infantry and do not come equipped with the Bradley fighting vehicles and M1A2 Abrams tanks that are increasingly needed for urban combat in Iraq.
Finding the rest of the troops that commanders want may be difficult. Getting them to Iraq in time and properly equipped to fight in that dangerous environment may be even more difficult; Army and Marine commanders have already used up most of their bag of tricks to find troops for the usual rotations to Iraq.
The Baltimore Sun reports that the Army is hard pressed to find enough officers for staff jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan and will double the length of their tours in those countries from 179 days at present to a full 12 months.
Other extraordinary steps ordered or under consideration include pulling officers out of military schools or delaying entry into such programs. They could also curtail family-oriented programs such as the one that allows soldiers to extend their tours at a stateside base so their children can finish their senior year in high school.
The Army is struggling to fill hundreds of staff jobs for majors and lieutenant colonels in war zone headquarters and in the past month began stripping majors and lieutenant colonels from their Pentagon billets and ordering them to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Although the Pentagon has counted on the rapidly growing Iraqi security forces to begin taking up some of the slack, their hopes may be misplaced in the immediate future. The Iraqi battalions in the field seem to function much better when they come in behind American troops, as in Samara and Fallujah.
Until they have a good deal more experience and develop both leadership and confidence they will remain too weak to go after insurgents and foreign fighters in the Sunni triangle.
--
ABOUT THE WRITER
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.
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-------- courts / tribunals
Justices Asked to Rule on Detainees
Yemeni's Attorneys Want to Bypass Federal Appeals Court
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7386-2004Nov23.html
Attorneys for a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have asked the Supreme Court for immediate intervention to decide the legality of the "military commissions" set up by the Pentagon to prosecute alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Lawyers representing a Yemeni man accused of serving as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard argued that they should be allowed to skip appeals in his case and have the Supreme Court make a decision soon. Victorious in federal court earlier this month, attorneys for Salim Ahmed Hamdan said that waiting for the government to appeal that decision would leave the Bush administration's plans for trials suspended and would prolong detainees' captivity.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan has been at Guantanamo for nearly three years.
Some of the detainees, including Hamdan, have been held at the U.S. military prison for nearly three years.
In the highly unusual request, filed late Monday night, attorneys for Hamdan said the Supreme Court is the proper panel to settle the "gravity of the questions presented" about a president's broad powers to wage war and punish terrorists. They noted, and the government has acknowledged, that the case will undoubtedly be appealed to the Supreme Court eventually.
The president has asserted that he has the right to try anyone who is not an American citizen "with rules he alone decides," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, an attorney for Hamdan, said yesterday. "It's a fairly ambitious statement of presidential power . . . and that's an appropriate question for the Supreme Court to rule on."
Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers declined to comment yesterday.
A federal judge ruled Nov. 8 that the special military trials, revived by the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, would not provide detainees fair legal treatment or an ability to challenge the accusations against them.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the detainees first should have been afforded hearings on whether they are prisoners of war. Until the government provides those hearings, Robertson ruled, the detainees must be given the prisoner-of-war protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.
Hamdan was the first detainee scheduled to be tried by a military commission, but his trial was postponed indefinitely after Robertson's ruling.
The Supreme Court is rarely asked, and even more rarely agrees, to hear arguments in a case before it has been reviewed by a federal appeals court. Most recently, it agreed this summer to hear a case so it could resolve nationwide confusion caused by a June ruling on the sentencing of criminals.
In the past, the court has agreed to skip appellate reviews of cases it said were "momentous" -- including those involving the Watergate tapes, President Harry S. Truman's seizure of steel mills under his powers to wage war, and Nazi saboteurs during World War II. Hamdan's attorneys contended that this is that kind of urgent case.
"Such a delay would not only leave petitioner detained at Guantanamo for an additional, fourth, year, it would leave the military commission process in limbo, cast a significant cloud over the government's compliance with its international obligations and promote continuing uncertainty in the courts in other cases," the lawyers wrote.
The government filed for an expedited appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing also that the case was momentous and needs to be resolved quickly. A panel of the appellate court agreed last week and set a schedule for a three-judge panel to hear the case early next year. But even on that speedy track, the process would take at least a year, officials said.
Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, predicted that the high court will await the appellate court's ruling before deciding whether to take up the case. "This is a strategy designed to attract headlines, not the court's early review," he said.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
I-Team: Illegal Strip Searches at Reagan National?
Andrea McCarren
November 24, 2004
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1104/190100.html
-WJLA Script-
Anchor: NEW ALLEGATIONS TONIGHT ABOUT ILLEGAL STRIP SEARCHES TAKING PLACE INSIDE REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT.
ON MONDAY, THE I-TEAM UNCOVERED CHARGES OF SERIOUS SECURITY LAPSES THERE AND NOW, WE'RE HEARING ABOUT SOME DISTURBING INCIDENTS RELATED TO PASSENGER SCREENING.
ANDREA MCCARREN JOINS US WITH MORE ON THE STORY.
Andrea McCarren on-set: IN TSA JARGON, THEY'RE CALLED PRIVATE SCREENINGS. THAT'S WHEN A PASSENGER WHO SETS OFF AN ALARM IS TAKEN TO ANOTHER LOCATION AND CHECKED MORE THOROUGHLY FOR WEAPONS OR EXPLOSIVES.
BUT WE'VE NOW LEARNED ABOUT SOME PRIVATE SCREENINGS THAT APPARENTLY WENT TOO FAR.
Story: TSA Employee: "I couldn't imagine my sister or my mother going through that process. I was so upset."
AGAIN AND AGAIN, TSA EMPLOYEES AT REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT -INCLUDING SUPERVISORS-TOLD US THAT PASSENGERS WERE ASKED TO REMOVE THEIR CLOTHING AND EXPOSE THEIR PRIVATE PARTS DURING SECURITY SCREENINGS...A CLEAR VIOLATION OF TSA'S OWN INTERNAL GUIDELINES... OBTAINED BY THE I-TEAM.
TSA Employee: "The look on their face would almost give you the sense that they felt like they were in a sense being raped. In a sense, being victimized and to a certain extent, they were. "
TSA Employee: "That really incensed me that someone felt that they could just put on some gloves and they could just violate someone to that degree."
TSA Employee: "They actually had the passenger remove the clothing that covered the sensitive area and perform a duck walk to see if something would fall out."
IN FACT, SOME OF THOSE SO-CALLED PRIVATE SCREENINGS WERE ALLEGEDLY CONDUCTED IN A VERY PUBLIC PLACE: THIS STAIRWELL...ACCESSIBLE TO OTHER PASSENGERS AND AIRPORT EMPLOYEES.
TSA Employee: "The private screenings were conducted right in that stairwell"
Andrea McCarren: Isn't that an inappropriate place to be searched?
TSA Employee: "That's a very inappropriate place to be searched."
TSA EMPLOYEES SAY AFTER THEY COMPLAINED, THE SCREENINGS WERE MOVED INTO THIS MANAGERS' OFFICE... WHERE THEY ALLEGE, UNSUSPECTING PASSENGERS WERE EITHER VIDEOTAPED OR MONITORED ON CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION.
TSA Employee: I couldn't believe it! I said is that a camera up there? And they said yeah.
Andrea McCarren: Do you think the women being strip searched had any idea they were being videotaped? TSA Employee: Absolutely not
A TSA OFFICIAL INSISTS THE CAMERA WAS COVERED UP AND EVEN DEACTIVATED... A FACT SEVERAL EMPLOYEES DISPUTE.
Andrea McCarren: You saw a light go on in that camera? TSA Employee: "Right."
SOME TSA EMPLOYEES ALSO ALLEGE THAT THE PASSENGERS SELECTED FOR ADDITIONAL SCREENING WERE OFTEN DETERMINED WELL BEFORE THEY REACHED THE MAGNETOMETERS. Andrea McCarren: "You're saying a FEMA (website - news) le passenger would be stopped for additional screening not because she set off an alarm but because of her breast size?"
TSA Employee: "Absolutely, Yes"
IN FACT, SHE SAYS SOME SCREENERS EVEN -INTENTIONALLY- SET OFF MAGNETOMETERS BY KICKING THEM.
TSA Employee: "It leaves supervisors in a very bad spot because if the manager's enjoying it, then how are you going to tell him to stop them from doing it?"
Mark Hatfield, TSA Spokesman: "The rules are non-negotiable and they apply to everybody."
TSA SPOKESMAN MARK HATFIELD.
Mark Hatfield, TSA Spokesman: "In terms of a violation or a criminal act, something that violates civil rights or the privacy of an individual, there's zero tolerance for that. And we'll get to the bottom of that and root out the individuals."
SOME FEMALE PASSENGERS FEAR IT'S ALL PART OF A GROWING TREND TOWARD MORE AGGRESSIVE SCREENING.
Woman #1: "Sometimes they overdo it. I've been almost stripped, practically."
Woman #2: "You're sort of treated like a criminal."
Woman #3: "I was like, whoah! You can't do that and the supervisor who I had been objecting to was standing right there and he said yes, we can."
TSA Employee: "It's very upsetting to see this happen and there are a lot of screeners that took his job thinking that they could do something good and many of them have quit and many of them are talking about quitting now."
Andrea McCarren on-set: SO, WHO INVESTIGATES COMPLAINTS ABOUT TSA SCREENINGS? WELL, THE TSA DOES! THROUGH THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, WE'VE REQUESTED ALL OF THE PASSENGER COMPLAINTS ABOUT SCREENINGS AT NATIONAL AIRPORT AND WILL REPORT BACK ONCE WE HAVE THAT INFORMATION.
REPORTING LIVE FOR THE I-TEAM, ANDREA MCCARREN, ABC7 NEWS
--------
White House View of Stalled Bill in Doubt
By Charles Babington and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7858-2004Nov23.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the White House knew of a Pentagon letter that criticized key aspects of a now-stalled bill to revamp the nation's intelligence community. House Republicans who blocked the legislation said the comments bolster their claim that the administration's support of the measure has been tepid at best, and that prospects for a breakthrough are not strong.
Asked by reporters if he was aware last month that Gen. Richard B. Myers was planning to send lawmakers a letter endorsing House GOP opposition to major points in the Senate version of the bill, Rumsfeld replied: "Not only was I, but the White House was. I mean, we had discussed this matter internally."
The points that Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had criticized remain in the House-Senate compromise that President Bush says he supports. Myers said yesterday his views have not changed.
Rumsfeld said he stands with Bush in calling for the bill's passage. But his comments about Myers's letter -- which the White House has never disavowed -- appeared to undermine administration claims that Bush and Vice President Cheney have fought for passage of the measure, which would create a director of national intelligence.
Several House Republicans said yesterday they were not defying Bush on Saturday when they rejected the compromise that the president and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) had endorsed. Rather, they said, they were insisting on stronger protections for the Pentagon and for immigration-control efforts in the face of what many view as mixed signals from the administration.
"We were not saying, 'The hell with the president,' but 'On substance, we think we can do better,' " said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), describing Saturday's closed-door showdown between Hastert and his caucus. Sentiment against the bill was overwhelming, he said.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who supports the compromise bill, said: "The White House is in real danger of neutering itself" by allowing the Pentagon to undermine the president's officially stated policy.
For weeks, senior House Republicans have cited Myers's Oct. 21 letter in arguing that the legislation would harm the Pentagon's ability to control important intelligence-gathering satellites. The letter said the Pentagon, not the proposed director of national intelligence, should control the budgets of three intelligence-gathering operations housed in the Defense Department.
The House-Senate compromise that emerged early Saturday would have given much of the budget control to the new director.
Those speaking against the bill included Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). Bush had called Sensenbrenner on Friday, while House-Senate negotiations continued, urging him to drop his insistence on tougher regulations on issuing driver's licenses to immigrants, which the Senate opposed.
"Out of deference" to the president, Sensenbrenner agreed, said his spokesman, Jeff Lungren. But the chairman insisted that some other immigration-control items be put back in, "and the president agreed," Lungren said. When Senate negotiators rejected those items, he said, Sensenbrenner opposed the conference report.
The White House yesterday released memos from Bush to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and CIA Director Porter J. Goss to implement portions of the Sept. 11, 2001, commission's report that could be achieved by executive action. Aides said all the measures were ones Bush had previously embraced.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan told reporters in Crawford, Tex., where Bush is spending Thanksgiving, that the bill stalled in Congress is something the president "wants to get done" and that "I would say the president has made very clear that he believes the Congress should act on the intelligence bill."
Privately, however, some White House officials continue to express a lack of enthusiasm for the bill. A senior administration official said officials were "attempting to assess the validity of reviving it sooner rather than later."
A Republican official who has discussed the matter in detail with top West Wing officials, but declined to be further identified, said Bush and his aides "had to look like they're pushing the bill" but in fact would cry no tears for its demise. "No one in this administration wants to be held hostage to an external power like the 9/11 commission or the so-called 9/11 families," who support the House-Senate compromise, the official said.
A White House official replied that Bush's staff "has worked this issue endlessly" and said that Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. "has spent more time on this than anything."
Rumsfeld said yesterday: "The president's position is evolving as the negotiation evolves."
Allen reported from Crawford, Tex.
--------
White House Seeks Deal to Save Intelligence Bill
November 24, 2004
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 - The White House held out hope on Tuesday that a compromise could be reached on legislation to overhaul American intelligence, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has been accused of working secretly to scuttle the bill, vowed his support for President Bush's position.
In a Pentagon news conference, Mr. Rumsfeld denied that he had exerted his influence to protect the Defense Department's sweeping budgetary powers over intelligence. But he said that even the administration's views on the legislation could shift as Congressional negotiators sought compromise language to revive the bill.
"Needless to say, I'm a part of this administration," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "I support the president's position."
In Crawford, Tex., a White House spokeswoman said that Mr. Bush's stance remained unchanged but that the administration was working with members of Congress on legislative language that could accommodate the concerns of House Republicans without diluting the essence of the changes the bill would bring about.
"The president's views remain that he believes we should have a strong national intelligence director with full budget authority that also preserves the chain of command," said Claire Buchan, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush.
White House officials said that there were "ongoing discussions" about the intelligence bill with Congress and that the talks would continue when senior White House officials attended a Republican House and Senate leadership retreat next week at a golf resort on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.
With the bill stalled, the White House on Tuesday disclosed a series of orders that Mr. Bush signed last week intended to strengthen the nation's intelligence capabilities, including a directive to the Central Intelligence Agency to increase by 50 percent the number of analysts and agents in its clandestine unit and agents proficient in "mission-critical languages."
Standing at Mr. Rumsfeld's side at the Pentagon, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not waver in expressing his opposition to any bill that did not preserve a provision in the House version to continue Pentagon control over intelligence money for gathering information specifically needed by combat commanders in the field.
His concerns, which echoed Congressional testimony last week by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps service chiefs, had been solicited by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and were offered as part of his required duties as the nation's highest-ranking officer, General Myers said.
"My position on the particular issue is as stated in my letter," he said.
When that position was taken together with Mr. Rumsfeld's earlier public statements cautioning against a rush to reorganize how America's spy agencies collect, analyze and share intelligence, some in Congress saw a coordinated Pentagon effort to scuttle a bill endorsed by Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, has described Mr. Rumsfeld as "blatant" in his opposition to the bill.
Mr. Rumsfeld said his words of caution and even criticism of efforts to create a national intelligence director to control budgets and the flow of intelligence were offered early in the debate. Those statements, he emphasized, were made "well before the president established a complete position on intelligence reform" and before the drafting of any legislation.
The defense secretary took a shot at members of Congress who said he had worked to kill the bill, and he specifically criticized an editorial in The New York Times on Tuesday that said "it seems obvious" that Mr. Rumsfeld lobbied against the legislation.
"The New York Times is wrong," Mr. Rumsfeld said. And any member of Congress who is "saying that I had blatant opposition to the bill is incorrect because the bill didn't exist in the form that it currently is, and the president didn't have a position on the bill at the times that I was briefing him."
Mr. Rumsfeld noted that House-Senate conference work and negotiations on possible compromise language was continuing and said that "the president's position is evolving as the negotiation evolves."
Little movement on the bill was seen on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with most lawmakers already gone from Washington for the Thanksgiving holiday.
But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, agreed that they would make another push to pass the intelligence legislation when the House returned to Washington on Dec. 6.
The standoff remained between the Senate and the two House Republicans who had led objections to the bill, Representatives F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin and Duncan Hunter of California.
Mr. Sensenbrenner wants provisions that would prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses, as some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had done. Mr. Hunter, whose son has served in Iraq, argues that the current bill would endanger troops by interfering with the Pentagon's ability to share intelligence with battlefield commanders.
John Feehery, Mr. Hastert's spokesman, said, "We need to get some movement from Democrats in the Senate."
Mr. Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, indicated in a statement released late Tuesday that he saw little room for him to make additional compromises.
"This is not about protecting turf; it is about protecting troops," the statement said. "Yes, everyone supports the troops - but the conference report on intelligence reform, as presently written, needlessly risks the adequate and timely flow of intelligence to our troops."
The bill would adopt major recommendations of the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including the creation of a cabinet-level national intelligence director. Some House Republicans contend that the legislation would dilute Pentagon authority on intelligence issues.
After a year-and-a-half investigation and hearings, the commission recommended in July that there be an intelligence director who would control the budgets of the C.I.A. and the government's other spy agencies, including those within the Pentagon. Legislators set to work immediately to enact the recommendations, but the Senate and House produced sharply different versions of the legislation.
The Senate version granted extensive powers to the intelligence director to create a unified effort and eliminate intelligence turf wars, especially those within the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the C.I.A. The House bill, which gave the intelligence director less authority, drew more support from the military.
Mr. Bush and his aides were ambivalent about the commission, and initially opposed its creation in 2002.
Thom Shanker reported from Washington for this article, and Richard W. Stevenson from Crawford, Tex. Elisabeth Bumiller and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.
-------- POLITICS
U.S. kept quiet on Chávez plot
Newsday
November 24, 2004
BY BART JONES AND LETTA TAYLER
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wovene244053424nov24,0,5440783.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
The U.S. government knew of an imminent plot to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, in the weeks prior to a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him, newly released CIA documents show, despite White House claims to the contrary a week after the putsch.
Yet the United States, which depends on Venezuela for nearly one-sixth of its oil, never warned the Chávez government, Venezuelan officials said.
The Bush administration has denied it was involved in the coup or knew one was being planned. At a White House briefing on April 17, 2002, just days after the 47-hour coup, a senior administration official who did not want to be named said, "The United States did not know that there was going to be an attempt of this kind to overthrow - or to get Chávez out of power."
Yet based on the newly released CIA briefs, an analyst said yesterday that did not appear to be the case.
"This is substantive evidence that the CIA knew in advance about the coup, and it is clear that this intelligence was distributed to dozens of members of the Bush administration, giving them knowledge of coup plotting," said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington.
However, Kornbluh said that while the documents show U.S. officials knew a coup was coming, perhaps implying tacit approval, they do not constitute proof the United States was involved in ousting Chávez, Venezuela's elected leader. That is partly because the briefs are from the intelligence side of the CIA, not the operational side.
A CIA spokeswoman contended the agency played no role in the coup and was merely collecting information about political events in Venezuela for top U.S. officials. She said it was up to those officials and not the CIA to determine what to do with the information.
"The CIA was simply doing what it is we do, in terms of analyzing events and providing policy-makers with our best estimate of the events as they unfold," said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named. She added that alerting Chávez to the impending coup "would suggest we would meddle in the affairs of another nation."
Asked to comment on the CIA documents, a U.S. State Department spokesman would say only, "As we've stated before, there is no basis to claims the United States was involved in the events of April 12-14 in Venezuela."
One of the CIA documents filed just five days before the coup would appear to support that statement. It notes that "repeated warnings that the U.S. will not support any extraconstitutional moves to oust Chávez probably have given pause to the plotters."
White House and National Security Council officials had no immediate comment.
Chávez was traveling in Spain yesterday and could not be reached for comment, although his information minister, Andres Izarra, said through a representative that his government had not yet taken a position on the documents. Tarek William Saab, a state governor and member of the president's inner circle, said the documents showed "that the United States was implicated in this coup and did nothing to stop it."
The Bush administration and Chávez, a fiery former paratrooper, have clashed repeatedly, with Chávez accusing the United States of backing the coup against him and U.S. officials denouncing his leadership as authoritarian. The United States was one of the few nations to embrace the coup initially, though it later reversed its position.
The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by Eva Golinger, a Long Island attorney and pro-Chávez activist who also is investigating U.S. funding of groups opposed to the Venezuelan leader. Golinger said she was outraged by the documents. "If they knew that a democratic government was going to be overthrown, why wouldn't they send signals to it or at least explain what was going to happen?"
The documents - called Senior Executive Security Briefs - are one level below the highest-level Presidential Daily Briefs and are circulated among about 200 top-level U.S. officials, Kornbluh said.
Chávez was arrested and overthrown on April 12, 2002, after military dissidents blamed him for violence at an opposition protest march that left 19 people dead and 300 wounded. He was returned to power two days later.
All the CIA documents were heavily censored before being released. One, dated April 6, 2002, states that "dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chávez, possibly as early as this month."
The document adds: "The level of detail in the reported plans [censored] targets Chávez and 10 other senior officials for arrest - lends credence to the information, but military and civilian contacts note that neither group appears ready to lead a successful coup and may bungle the attempt by moving too quickly."
The brief also states, "To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations slated for later this month or ongoing strikes at the state-owned oil company PSVSA."
While there is no requirement that one government inform another with which it has diplomatic relations that it may be facing a coup attempt, such an alert would be in keeping with the spirit of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of which both Washington and Venezuela are members, according to international relations experts.
Julia Sweig, deputy director of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington, said: "The fact that we didn't call Chávez and say, 'This is brewing,' reflects the incredible antipathy toward Chávez at that time" on the part of the Bush administration.
Jones was reporting from Long Island and Tayler from Caracas.
-------- budget
In Congress, Growing Doubts on Spending Process
November 24, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/politics/24cong.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 - The power of the purse has always been the ultimate power of Congress. But the way Congress is exercising that power is causing a ruckus on Capitol Hill, where members of both parties say the system for financing the government is broken.
This year, for the third year in a row, lawmakers delayed passing spending bills until the very last minute, then rolled most of them into a catchall measure called an omnibus. This year's bill, which passed Saturday night, was a 3,300-page legislative behemoth - stuffed with special projects for lawmakers and an embarrassing provision that would have allowed Congressional aides to examine citizens' tax returns - delivered to lawmakers just hours before they voted on it.
Many confessed they had not read it.
"We've reached the bizarre point where we approve hundreds of billions of dollars of bills without anyone seeing them," Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said in an interview Tuesday. "And then we're shocked - shocked! - that a provision should sneak in which is onerous."
On Tuesday, with lawmakers still in a dither over the tax-return provision, the spending bill encountered yet another delay in its tortured journey to President Bush's desk. Though the Senate, whose members say they were unaware of the language on tax returns, has approved a resolution stripping it from the bill, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, refused to allow the House to do so without formal debate.
"The assault on taxpayer privacy was not a simple mistake, and Democrats will not let Republicans sweep it under the rug," Ms. Pelosi said.
She called provision "a Saturday night massacre on Americans' privacy." In holding up the bill, Ms. Pelosi said she was seeking a promise from Republicans not to bring legislation to the floor so hastily in the future.
Her objection means the House must reconvene on Dec. 6 to take up the Senate resolution. If it is approved, as expected, the $388 billion omnibus, which includes nine separate bills and covers spending for myriad government agencies, can go to the White House, more than two months after the fiscal year started.
A spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, John Feehery, said Ms. Pelosi was playing "political games."
In the meantime, Congress is expected to give routine approval on Wednesday to a measure continuing government spending at current levels until Dec. 8, a move that is necessary to avoid a government shutdown of the sort that occurred in 1995 when Bill Clinton was president.
Though the parties are bickering about the omnibus, both sides agree that the process that produced it is in tatters. Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who has served on the Appropriations Committee for his entire 46 years in the Senate, found the measure, which was passed on his 87th birthday, so odious that he voted against it.
"We have seen within these last few years, especially, this excrescence of the body politic grow until now it has become malignant," Mr. Byrd said, calling it "a disgrace upon the escutcheon of the Senate."
The problem with an omnibus, lawmakers and independent analysts agree, is that it creates an opportunity for what Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called "legislative mischief." Others call it pork, and this year's bill is chock full of it. The measure will send taxpayer dollars all over the country, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a homeless shelter in Hawaii.
Passing spending bills is one of the few jobs that lawmakers can trace directly to the Constitution, which does not permit the president to spend money unless Congress approves. Under the current system, lawmakers are responsible for passing 13 separate spending bills each year. But in recent years, the Senate especially has been unable to complete its appropriations work.
This year, for instance, the House passed 12 of the 13 appropriations bills but the Senate passed only 4. Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, blamed the Senate for failing to adopt a budget resolution, which helps guide the appropriations process.
Mr. Byrd said "it was never that way in the old times."
Mr. Reischauer says appropriations bills were less contentious in the past, when one party or the other had a large majority in the Senate and deficits were not the problem they are today.
"It's a lot easier to pass an appropriations bill," he said, "when the bottom line is going up 10 percent than when the bottom line is going up less than inflation. Then what you're really doing is voting to distribute pain, rather than handing out pleasure."
At the same time, there is no public clamor for passing spending bills; the process is so arcane that almost nobody understands it. And Congress has a tradition of procrastinating. In the 1800's, said Donald A. Ritchie, the associate Senate historian, lawmakers would debate appropriations past midnight on the night of adjournment, and instruct Senate doorkeeper "to stand on the chair with a broom handle and turn the hands of the clock back to give them more time to debate."
But the recent delays trouble Senator Thad Cochran, the Mississippi Republican in line to become chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said Tuesday that the appropriations process was "in need of reform" and that overhauling it would be one of his panel's priorities when the new Congress convened in January.
"It's very much on my mind," Mr. Cochran said.
He said he had several proposals, but declined to discuss specifics. Asked if he had read the omnibus bill in its entirety, Mr. Cochran laughed, and then paused for a long time.
"Do you think anyone read it all?" he asked.
-------- corruption
Attempt to Discredit Whistle-Blower
Alleged Group Says His FDA Colleagues Made Calls
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8715-2004Nov23?language=printer
Managers at the Food and Drug Administration last month anonymously called a group that protects whistle-blowers in an attempt to discredit an outspoken agency safety officer who was challenging the FDA's drug safety policies, the legal director of the whistle-blower group said yesterday.
Tom Devine of the nonprofit Government Accountability Project (GAP) said the anonymous callers did not identify themselves but he is "100 percent positive" they were managers at the FDA because of their phone numbers and other identifying information. He said he initially took the callers' concerns seriously but later came to see the calls as an effort to smear the whistle-blower, Associate Director David J. Graham of the Office of Drug Safety.
Last week, Graham, a 20-year FDA veteran, said at a Senate hearing that FDA policies have left the American public "virtually defenseless" against the kind of safety problems that led to the abrupt withdrawal in September of the popular arthritis drug Vioxx.
He named five other prescription medications that he said pose serious safety risks that are not being adequately addressed by the FDA.
Although the FDA initially sharply criticized Graham's testimony -- one top official called him "irresponsible" and a practitioner of "junk science" -- the agency yesterday tightened the restrictions on one of the five drugs Graham had criticized, the acne medication Accutane.
In a statement regarding the GAP allegations, the FDA said yesterday that it "acknowledges the right of its employees to raise their concerns to oversight groups."
The agency said that it had no prior knowledge of any employee's contact with the whistle-blower group and that it is working to improve a process for ensuring that internal differences of scientific opinion are fully incorporated into its decision-making. "The agency promotes vigorous debate of the tough scientific questions it confronts every day," the statement said.
The allegation that the FDA used deceptive practices against Graham came two days after the Government Accountability Project agreed to take him on as a client.
Devine said Graham had asked five weeks ago for advice about overcoming his supervisors' opposition to the publication of his critical findings about Vioxx. The anonymous calls followed several weeks later, Devine said.
"The calls came under the guise of being anonymous whistle-blowers," Devine said. "They were clearly working together and shared allegations -- mostly that Dr. Graham's research was unreliable and that there were serious questions of possible scientific misconduct with his study. They said Graham wouldn't address their concerns, and that he was a demagogue and a bully."
Devine said that after several conversations, he persuaded the callers to provide documents to support their accusations, and Devine then challenged Graham based on what was provided.
"It became clear to me that Dr. Graham could reasonably explain any questions about the research, and that the callers were trying to smear him," Devine said. "After that, I called their bluff for more information and that was the end of it. It was all a red herring, and it made me believe Dr. Graham far more."
Devine said that, under his organization's rules, he could not identify the callers because they initially contacted GAP as whistle-blowers themselves. But he said he is certain they were supervisors at the FDA because of the details of the arguments they made and the phone numbers from which they called. In addition, he said that, after identifying the callers to his satisfaction, he referred to them by name during subsequent phone conversations. He said the callers were surprised by his identifications but did not tell him he was wrong.
The allegations follow weeks of bruising criticism of the FDA, which has been accused of being lax on drug safety and was sharply assailed in Congress over its oversight of the British plant that was supposed to produce half of this winter's U.S. supply of flu vaccine. The plant was closed by British health officials because of contamination problems.
The criticism on drug safety issues has led to calls for the creation of a more independent Office of Drug Safety within the FDA, or perhaps outside of it.
Currently, the office is overseen by the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which also supervises the Office of New Drugs. To critics of the current setup, the much larger and better-financed Office of New Drugs dominates the safety office, in part because drug reviewers involved in approving a new drug for marketing also play a role in deciding whether the drugs should be withdrawn when safety issues crop up.
In his Senate testimony, Graham said a more independent drug safety office is essential. His position was supported this week by the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The drug approval process must be decoupled from the post-marketing safety and surveillance system," the editorial said. "It is unreasonable to expect that the same agency that was responsible for approval of drug licensing and labeling would also be committed to actively seek evidence to prove itself wrong."
The FDA and drug industry officials have generally opposed a more independent safety office, saying it is unnecessary and would serve to de-emphasize the benefits of medications. But the FDA recently asked the congressionally chartered Institute of Medicine to review its drug safety procedures, and top officials said the agency will consider whatever recommendations the institute makes.
Although the drug safety issue involves a number of medications, companies, patients and officials, it has increasingly revolved in recent days around Graham's personality and positions. He has been at the center of the Vioxx controversy and has touched off more heated words and debate with his congressional criticisms of five other drugs, but his impact on drug safety issues goes well beyond those.
During his 20 years in the Office of Drug Safety, he fought passionately to bring about the recall of the diabetes drug Rezulin, the diet pills Fen-Phen and Redux, the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol, the heartburn remedy Propulsid, and the antihistamine Seldane.
Graham, 50, was trained as a physician at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities and has spent his entire career at the FDA's drug safety office. A deeply religious Roman Catholic, he has said that his faith serves as a spur to his work. Some see him as a crusading hero, while others believe he unfairly fixates on certain drugs and fails to take into account the patients who are helped by those medications.
His influence has been enormous. In his congressional testimony, Graham said that, in the course of his career, he had recommended that 12 drugs be taken off the market, and that 10 of them were subsequently removed.
The news that Graham had sought whistle-blower assistance and protection -- and that FDA managers had sought to undermine his credibility -- was first reported yesterday in the online edition of BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.
In that account, Devine said the FDA was "employing a classic law of whistleblower reprisal -- the smokescreen syndrome -- which shifts the spotlight from the message to the messenger. The agency attempted to discredit Dr. Graham rather than provide any scientific evidence contradicting his conclusions."
Graham could not be reached yesterday for comment.
One of the two drugs whose recall Graham has unsuccessfully sought is Accutane, which was approved to treat severe acne but, critics say, is widely prescribed for milder cases. The drug's distribution is restricted to prevent its use by pregnant women because Accutane can cause fetuses to die or develop birth defects. Nonetheless, some women have been getting pregnant while taking the drug.
Under an expanded monitoring program announced by the FDA yesterday, manufacturers will have to keep records of which doctors prescribe the drug, which pharmacies distribute it and which patients take it. Doctors and pharmacies will also have to inform women about the drug's risks, and pharmacists will have to see a signed proof that the patient is not pregnant before they dispense the drug, the FDA said.
In its news release, the agency said the changes stemmed from the recommendations of an advisory panel in February.
-------- propaganda wars
Alleged al-Zarqawi tape berates Muslim clerics
Terror leader says scholars 'let us down,' but origins of tape murky
NBC News
Nov. 24, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6403689/
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An audiotape purportedly made by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and posted on a Web site Wednesday lashed out at Muslim scholars for not speaking out against U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying they have "let us down in the darkest circumstances."
The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately confirmed, however.
And a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC that the audio was in fact not new, but an old tape originally aimed at Saudi clerics that had been re-edited to make it appear that al-Zarqawi was criticizing Iraqi clerics.
"The tape is nearly a year old, and the clerics he was criticizing in that tape were Saudi clerics," the official said. "We would steer you way clear of the notion that he was criticizing Iraqi clerics."
The intelligence community was uncertain about who was broadcasting the statement and the motivation, the official said.
Decrying 'silence on crimes' "You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy. ... You have quit supporting the mujahedeen," al-Zarqawi purportedly said on the tape. "Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence."
The comments were addressed to the "ulama," senior Muslim religious clerics.
-------- us politics
In the name of evil
The Augusta Free Press
David Mullenax
11-24-04
http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$28966
"If (America) becomes militant, it will be because its people choose to become such; it will be because they think that war and warlikeness are desirable." William Graham Sumner (1903).
America is engaged in an international war on terrorism, fighting an unholy alliance of radical Islamists, and others, repulsed by any nation's adherence to the principles of freedom and democracy. This is what the neoconservative propagandists have been claiming since 9/11, in their effort to achieve global hegemony, and it's the only unquantifiable excuse in their arsenal of weapons of mass deception. The popular WMD myth vaporized into illegitimacy long ago, along with the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection and the plethora of other excuses for waging war in the Middle East.
The freedom and democracy argument promoted by the Bush administration's lie-machine cannot be measured, or else that would be debunked as well. A brilliant move on the part of the conspirators and their cohorts to brainwash the American public into war in a region in which we don't belong.
To think that Al-Qaeda and Co. stumbled upon the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights on an Afghani mountaintop and decided to take matters in their own hands is comical. Apparently, ever since their discovery of republican principles, the world has known nothing but carnage and chaos. Yes, the masters of evil are hell-bent on destroying the forces of goodness and light, and who better to triumph over these villains than the latest superhero occupying the White House? If you read comic books frequently, you could fall for this "Marvel" theory, and apparently many Americans have.
But I'm not buying the "us vs. them" or the "good vs. evil" charade, and I didn't from the beginning. And I don't believe that only radical Muslims commit terrorism in the name of God, while America and Israel are exempt; as if a crusade is any different than a jihad.
Many in the Muslim and Arab world have continuously exposed the hypocrisy and defied the hubris that has emanated from America and Israel for years. They argue that Saddam Hussein defying U.N. resolutions is no pretext for war, when Israel has defied more than 64 resolutions with not so much as a slap on the wrist. It's quite the opposite, actually; America will increase Israeli foreign aid. Israel's arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is well known throughout the international community, and they have repeatedly disallowed weapons inspectors into their country.
Worse still are the arguments made by politicians and pundits for American atrocities committed in the Middle East, which have spanned more than half a century. To them, foreign policy has no consequences, and imperialism is the only objective. On numerous occasions the stentorian trumpet blasts spew from our television sets, sounding the alarm that Saddam has killed his own people, but now that the tyrant sits in an undisclosed prison cell we kill his people for him - the lowest estimate is 17,000 to date.
American media personalities repeatedly proclaim that the former secular dictator and Arab nationalist of Iraq gassed his own people. We drop depleted uranium bombs on a weekly basis, dispersing radiation over an already depleted country.
The torture chambers and rape prisons that existed under the Ba'athist regime, so decried by human-rights activists, have been replaced by Abu Ghraib and others. While Americans have yet to see all of the macabre images from that hell-created facility, Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker reports that the forbidden pictures are beyond "evil." Hersh notes the existence of children tortured in front of their mothers and young teen-age boys sodomized and raped before their fathers. Of course, all of this is censored from you and me. The party line is that the war is going according to plan. Oh yes, most definitely, and what an evil plan it is.
How long the list of American horrors is unbeknown to me, but more disturbing than the demonic injustices committed in the name of freedom and democracy is the justification of these actions by the American public. Never would I have dreamed that those in my country would excuse the leadership and the individuals responsible for drafting and implementing crimes against humanity, Republican and Democrat alike. Listening to Americans, many of them aligned with the religious right, rationalize the rape, torture and murder of the innocent are what nightmares are made of, and more specifically fuels the flames of terrorism.
Perhaps the Iranians were onto something when they labeled America the "Great Satan" a few decades ago. Indeed, when the great majority of our voters acknowledge that the presidential choice was a choice between the "lesser of two evils", I would expect they were probably right.
-------- voting
Despite Growing Unrest, Ukraine Certifies Winner in Election
November 24, 2004
By C. J. CHIVERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/international/europe/24cnd-ukra.html?ei=5094&en=aba87b632ce8d0ca&hp=&ex=1101358800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 24 - In defiance of Western leaders and amid growing popular unrest on the streets, the government of Leonid D. Kuchma, the outgoing president of Ukraine, ignored reports of widespread electoral fraud and certified his prime minister today as president-elect.
The action ended two days of indecisiveness at the top of government here as a political crisis had deepened, and signaled a decision by Ukraine's incumbent leadership to risk a chill in relations with the West in order to maintain a grip on power.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States did not view the election results as valid. "If the Ukrainian government does not act immediately and responsibly there will be consequences for our relationship," Mr. Powell said in a news conference.
Ukraine's certification of the election also intensified the marked differences between the ruling government and its emboldened opposition, whose supporters stood in a huge, impassioned rally in falling snow near the capital's center, saying they would continue to resist what they regard as an election stolen by the government's hand.
Kiev was electric with energy today, and even at the moment of Mr. Kuchma's assertive and apparently calculated step, its risks and the depths of the opposition against it were evident.
At the tumultuous meeting of the Central Election Commission, as the government declared Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich the winner of the presidential run-off on Sunday, giving him 49.46 of the vote to 46.61 percent for the opposition challenger, Viktor A. Yushchenko, people in the chamber heckled the reading of the results.
"You will answer in court!" one man shouted at the head of the commission, Sergei Kivalov.
Riot police were stationed outside behind a defensive ring of sand-filled dump trucks, as were busloads of dour and thick-set men from Donetsk, the eastern Ukrainian region from which much of the current ruling class comes. The newly arrived men waved the blue flags of the Yanukovich campaign and warned away opposition supporters with menacing sneers, and in at least one case, threats.
Mr. Yushchenko, addressing tens of thousands of his supporters not long before he was declared the official loser, said the election results were rigged to the point of being an effective coup. He vowed to continue to fight for the executive office, and called on the army and police to ignore orders to put down the demonstrations by force.
"You know what is the real choice of the people, you know the evil that is being made before your eyes, you know that the law is being violated," he said, his voice rising. "You are responsible for maintaining the order: Don't turn the weapons against the people!"
Western election observers, and Western leaders, have been unequivocally critical of Sunday's election here, saying the extensive documentation of organized fraud and the abuse of state powers to the prime minister's advantage have tainted its official result and called into question its validity.
The White House had publicly called for Mr. Kuchma to refrain from validating the results without conducting thorough investigations and ensuring the election was fair, as had European leaders. Mr. Kuchma chose to ignore the warnings, and after days of near silence, he and Mr. Yanukovich dispatched their representatives to explain the decision.
The spokespeople were alternately conciliatory and inflammatory, perhaps a reflection of the difficulty of their task, given that by Ukrainian law the results did not have to be certified until early December and requests for investigations from the West were pouring in.
Sergei Tyhypko, Mr. Yanukovich's campaign manager, chose a softer line, suggesting compromise by saying the president-elect would be willing to talk with Mr. Yushchenko to discuss government restructuring. "We can give certain guarantees," he said. "We can conduct political reform, reducing the rights of the president and giving more power to the parliament."
Oleksandra Kuzhel, a Yanukovich aide who serves as a liaison to businesses, took a more confrontational stance, describing Mr. Yushchenko as a disorganized and ineffective executive who had no claim to office, and saying that calls from Washington were unwelcome and irrelevant in political life here.
"I would like very much to see John Kerry as the U.S. president," Ms. Kuzhel said. "But this does not mean I will call on the United States to make this so."
Although Mr. Kuchma's government was able to muster a quorum at the election commission and force through its result, and to mount a public relations effort with the national and foreign news media, much remains uncertain.
Kiev is crowded with uncountable thousands of thus-far peaceful demonstrators loyal to Mr. Yushchenko, and this afternoon, realizing that the government had moved against him and would ignore his calls for investigations, the opposition candidate moved preemptively, appearing on stage before his supporters in Independence Square.
In front of him was a sea of people, rapt, waving orange banners that symbolize his campaign. Each day since Sunday Mr. Yushchenko has drawn more people in the capital. Today was the largest crowd yet. He told the people they were the heroes of their time.
"If you could see yourselves from this spot you would realize how beautiful you are, how strong you are," he began, and assured them they were on the cusp of history, that already "a wall had been torn down. It was the wall between dictatorship and democracy."
The fight against Mr. Kuchma and Mr. Yanukovich, he said, was not over, and he urged them to remain in the cold indefinitely. The crowd roared in approval. He called for another election, but this time with stricter rules to prevent abuse.
As the stand-off continued, one of its larger meanings emerged in ever more clear relief, as Europe and Russia diverged sharply in their reactions.
Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, unanimously passed a resolution condemning Mr. Yushchenko's supporters, referring to "the illegal actions of the radical opposition" and warning of "tragic consequences." The resolution called the election legitimate, throwing lawmakers' support, like that of President Vladimir V. Putin, firmly behind Mr. Yanukovich.
In Europe, however, leading officials criticized the announced results as fraudulent and intensified pressure on Ukraine to conduct a recount or to investigate Mr. Yushchenko's accusations of fraud.
The new president of the European Commission, the union's executive body, José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, warned of unspecified consequences if there were not "a serious, objective review," according to The Associated Press.
"It is our duty to say we are not satisfied with the way the election took place," he said. He also said it would be a subject of discussions with President Putin in a meeting with the European Union in The Hague on Thursday.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, who maintains warm relations with Mr. Putin, told the German parliament that he agreed with the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, which led one of the observer missions here, that "massive electoral fraud took place."
Poland's foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, called for a recount. The country's representatives in the European Parliament led calls for an emergency session to condemn the election.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said, "We will not accept elections that are fraudulent." Like the United States, the union urged Ukraine not to validate or even announce the results, to little effect. Mr. Solana warned of the possibility of violence if the accusations of fraud were not investigated.
NATO's ambassadors discussed Ukraine today, while Pope John Paul II prayed for peace. Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity leader in Poland, said he was prepared to travel to Ukraine to support the opposition's claim to power, referring to "the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko."
With signs of international disapproval accumulating, the Kuchma and Yanukovich staffs said the government had no plans to break relations with Europe, and suggested that as part of the calculation behind the decision to continue on the course to Mr. Yanukovich's inauguration, they expected that political pragmatism would emerge, and that protests in time would pass.
"Ukraine cannot disappear from the central part of Europe," said Sergei L. Vasilyev, the head of Mr. Kuchma's information department. "The West will have to learn to come to terms of agreement with the new president."
--------
Powell Says U.S. Will Not Accept Final Tally in Ukraine
November 24, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/international/middleeast/24cnd-poli.html?oref=login
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - With international pressure mounting on Ukraine, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States could not accept its recent election results. He urged President Leonid Kuchma not to use force against the sprawling crowds in Kiev streets protesting the official outcome.
Defying American and European calls not to certify the election, Ukraine declared today that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich was the winner.
"We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards," Mr. Powell said, "and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse."
The United States, he added, was "deeply disturbed" by these reports.
The secretary of state, in a forceful statement backed by similar declarations from European and Canadian officials, urged a full review of the election, which several international monitoring groups and a White House special envoy have declared seriously flawed.
"This is a critical moment," he said at the State Department. "If the Ukrainian government does not act immediately and responsibly, there will be consequences for our relationship, for Ukraine's hopes for Euro-Atlantic integration, and for individuals responsible for perpetrating fraud."
He did not spell out those consequences, though possibilities include a ban on travel visas for Ukrainian officials, and curbs on annual foreign aid totaling $150 million. Nor would Mr. Powell propose a solution, noting that "one suggestion that has been made is another election, but there are other suggestions out there.
European officials also spoke of consequences, possibly in lost economic aid or downgraded diplomatic ties, if Ukraine fails to review the elections.
Mr. Powell, following an apparently intense round of telephone consultations with officials from Brussels to Moscow, said he had spoken to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia and agreed on the need for "a solution that is based on the law" and on diplomacy.
After a phone conversation between President Vladimir V. Putin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, the Kremlin also issued a statement urging a law-based solution.
The United States has been in unusual conflict with Russia in recent days over what the White House considers Mr. Putin's aggressive support of Mr. Yanukovich. The Russian ambassador in Washington was summoned to the State Department on Monday to hear a protest.
But Mr. Powell insisted that the two could work together. "We're not looking for a contest with the Russians over this," he said. "We're looking for a way to make sure that the will of the Ukrainian people is respected."
He noted that hints of a possible compromise had emerged from both Mr. Yanukovich, the Moscow-backed candidate, and Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader. Mr. Powell said he supported an offer to mediate by President Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland, a close ally of the United States.
A White House spokesman had earlier welcomed a vow by President Kuchma not to use force. It was unclear whether he was speaking before or after the call Mr. Powell said he had made to the outgoing president, who has groomed Mr. Yanukovich as a successor.
"That's great," said Fred Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, when asked about Mr. Kuchma's "categorical" vow of nonviolence. "We're hoping the Ukraine government listens to the voice of its people." The United States had expressed its displeasure over Russia's strong backing of Mr. Yanukovich by summoning Ambassador Yuri Yushakov to the State Department on Monday. The Kremlin called this "unprecedented interference." President Putin, who had sparked the diplomatic protest by telephoning Mr. Yanukovich to congratulate him before he was certified as the winner, appeared to be taking a more cautious position today.
A Kremlin statement said that Mr. Putin and Schröder had agreed in a phone call, initiated by the chancellor, to urge Ukraine to find a legal solution to its political crisis, the Reuters news agency reported.
"It was noted that the post-election situation should be solved on the basis of Ukraine's existing election laws," a Kremlin statement said. "As far as other political problems are concerned, they could be solved through relevant political contacts and consultations."
In Brussels, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, warned that "there will be consequences if there is not a serious, objective review" of the election results. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign and security policy chief, made similar comments.
The NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said a review of the election was "absolutely necessary" and he called a democratic outcome "key to NATO-Ukraine relations." Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, had earlier cautioned Ukrainian authorities against declaring a winner.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Activists Target U.S. Crops Produced With Methyl Bromide
November 24, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-24-02.asp
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) launched a campaign Tuesday to convince supermarkets in the United States to stop selling food, such as tomatoes, strawberries and nuts, grown or treated with the chemical methyl bromide.
Used as a pesticide and soil fumigant, methyl bromide is considered the most potent chemical still in widespread use that depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer.
Methyl bromide is a fumigant used to control insects, nematodes, weeds, and pathogens in more than 100 U.S. crops. (Photo by Peggy Grebs courtesy USDA) The international non-profit organization said it plans to investigate the supply chains for major supermarkets and campaign to have products produced with methyl bromide removed from shelves across the nation.
"There are viable alternatives to the use of methyl bromide," said EIA President Allan Thornton. "Supermarket chains such as Safeway, Whole Foods, Albertson's, Kroger and Wal-Mart need to ensure that their shelves are free of produce grown or treated with this deadly chemical. We will be writing to major supermarkets to ask them to stop supporting the continued use of methyl bromide."
The depleted ozone layer allows more cancer causing ultra-violet solar radiation to strike the Earth, increasing the incidence of skin cancer. And methyl bromide also should be shelved for its other harmful effects on public health, the EIA said.
Direct exposure can result in headaches, nausea, chest and abdominal pain, respiratory failure, and even death. Many strawberry and tomato fields treated with methyl bromide are located so near as to endanger homes, schools, and churches.
Strawberries planted in soil fumigated with methyl bromide at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Bradenton, Florida. (Photo by Jose Manual Lopez Aranda courtesy MBAO) The chemical has been identified as a source of occupational illness for farm workers who are exposed to it.
The EIA's action is timed to coincide with a meeting this week in Prague of Parties to the Montreal Protocol, the international accord that aims to phase out use of ozone depleting chemicals, including methyl bromide.
Methyl bromide production has already been cut by some 30 percent of peak 1991 levels under the Montreal treaty, which the United States ratified in 1988 during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.
The remaining 30 percent is to be phased out by January 1, 2005, except for uses that the treaty parties agree are "critical."
The Bush administration has drawn criticism from environmentalists for negotiating a change in the treaty that has slowed the pace of the U.S. methyl bromide phase out.
The phase out covers such uses as fumigation of soils and pest control on farms. But other pest-control purposes, involving exports of commodity crops, animal fodder, cut flowers, hides and consignments in wooden pallets, are exempted from the international phase out.
Pole tomatoes treated with chloropicrin as an alternative to methyl bromide (Photo courtesy MBAO) Some experts estimate that close to a fifth of methyl bromide use worldwide could be excluded from control measures under these quarantine and pre-shipment exemptions, and they warn that the amounts used are even growing in some regions.
On the agenda of this week's intergovernmental meeting are requests by 16 developed countries, including the United States, for "critical use exemptions" for methyl bromide beyond the phase out date.
If agreed at the levels recommended by the Montreal Protocol's expert panel, such exemptions would allow these countries to use 18,486 metric tons of this chemical in 2005 and about 12,000 tons in 2006.
Requests for methyl bromide exemptions in 2005 have surpassed actual consumption in 2004, and nominations for 2006 show no signs of decreasing, the EIA said Tuesday in a briefing in Prague.
"The continuation of high levels of production after scheduled phase-out comes at a time when signs of illicit stockpiling, oversupply, and dumping in developing countries, and unreported trade of methyl bromide are increasing and remain shockingly un-addressed," the EIA warned.
"Dramatic progress has been achieved over the past 15 years in eliminating CFCs and other ozone-destroying chemicals. But the task remains unfinished, as demonstrated by delays in phasing out methyl bromide more completely," said Executive Director Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations Environment Programme, which provides the Montreal Protocol's secretariat.
At this week's meeting the Parties also will discuss the use of methyl bromide in quarantine and pre-shipment treatments aimed at preventing beetles and other pests from hitch-hiking rides with exported produce to other parts of the world. These treatments, which are not covered by the Protocol's phase-out schedule, are thought to account for the consumption of approximately 29 per cent of all methyl bromide that could potentially be released into the atmosphere.
U.S. Customs officer inspects an incoming shipment for destructive Asian longhorn beetles. (Photo courtesy APHIS) The EIA says this quarantine and pre-shipment exemption "masks a significant and growing use of methyl bromide."
Alternatives to methyl bromide fumigation of wooden packing crates exist, the EIA says. Sulfuryl fluoride, ethylene oxide, phosphine, heat treatment, chemical preservation, permanent wood preservatives, and alternative packing materials such as plastic containers are in use worldwide.
"Drawing on the best available science and working together with creativity and goodwill, the world's governments and industries need to speed up the development and spread of ozone-friendly replacements for this harmful pesticide. This would send a powerful signal to both producers and users that there is no future for methyl bromide," Toepfer said.
When the meeting considers the requests for critical use exemptions, governments will be keen to avoid a repetition of the deadlock that occurred at their regular annual meeting 12 months ago. This deadlock required the Parties to convene their first-ever extraordinary meeting last March in order to resolve the issue. At that meeting, the United States got the critical use exemption it requested.
"The quantities used on farms is very well understood and following an extraordinary meeting of the parties to Montreal Protocol in March this year, I hope we are now on a trajectory where its controlled uses are set to diminish. However the precise levels of methyl bromide being used for quarantine and pre-shipment purposes, where the chemical is used to kill insects like long horned and bark beetles, wood boring wasps, moths and other pests, remains uncertain," said Toepfer.
He urged countries to back a global survey, being carried out for UNEP's Ozone Secretariat, so that governments can be better informed on the precise quantities of the chemical being used globally.
The 16th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol is underway at the Hotel Hilton Prague. Ministers and other senior officials will attend the high level segment that caps the meeting, scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
-------- health
HIV Increasing Faster Among Women Than Men, Report Finds
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6929-2004Nov23?language=printer
The epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus infection is growing more rapidly in women than in men in almost every part of the world, according to a new report.
The "feminization" of AIDS appears to reflect a maturing of the epidemic, suggest the authors of the annual AIDS update prepared by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. More and more seemingly low-risk women, many of them married, are being infected by men who acquired the virus through high-risk behavior years ago.
The trend is most advanced in sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS epidemic began and home to more than half the world's HIV-infected population. Women there now make up 57 percent of people living with the virus.
From 2002 to 2004, the percentage of infected women rose or stayed the same in all regions.
"This is an emerging pattern. . . . This has profound implications," said Peter Piot, a Belgian physician and epidemiologist who heads UNAIDS. "We have to put women at the heart of the response to AIDS if we want to stop this epidemic."
The evolving risk to women is a main theme in the 87-page report that paints a mosaic portrait of the global AIDS epidemic.
In all, 39.4 million people are infected with HIV now, up from 37.8 million last year. About 3.1 million died of AIDS-related causes in 2004, out of about 55 million deaths from all causes worldwide.
About 25.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected, about 7.4 percent of all adults. The Caribbean has the next-highest prevalence, with 440,000 people infected, 2.3 percent of all adults. The prevalence is below 1 percent in both China and India, but the epidemic in those areas is expanding and could become explosive.
The growing proportion of infected women reflects the cumulative effect of many risks. They include the fact that women and, in particular, teenage girls, are more physiologically vulnerable than men; the inability of many women to require their partners to use condoms; the infidelity of husbands and the high-risk behavior of other male partners; the exploitation of young women by older men, especially in southern Africa; and rape and other forms of sexual coercion.
In South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, women ages 15 to 24 are three to six times as likely to become infected as young men. In the Caribbean, the risk for young women is twice that of men.
Marriage is no protection against infection -- and in some places appears to increase the risk.
In India, where about 5.1 million are infected, women account for one-quarter of new HIV cases. Among those who test positive at prenatal clinics, 90 percent say they are in long-term, monogamous relationships. In a study of young women in Kisumu, Kenya, and Ndola, Zambia, married teenage girls were more likely to be infected than unmarried, sexually active ones.
African Americans now account for 72 percent of infections among women in the United States. A recent study of a low-income section of New York found that women were twice as likely to be infected by a husband or long-term lover as by a casual sex partner.
In some places, however, the plight of women is improving, according to the report, which draws on national reports and dozens of epidemiological surveys.
For example, the percentage of infected women at prenatal clinics in Uganda and Kenya fell from 13 percent in 1998 to about 9 percent in 2002. At clinics in Ethiopia, it dropped from 14 percent to 12 percent. While the reason for that trend is not certain -- and probably reflects the cumulative effect of many prevention messages -- it appears to be real.
"It cannot be a burning out of populations at high risk because it is really happening," Piot said in a teleconference yesterday.
UNAIDS and WHO are gathering data on who is receiving access to AIDS drugs as life-extending antiretroviral therapy is finally reaching people in poor countries. Preliminary evidence suggests that women are getting drugs less often than men are.
Piot said he was recently at an AIDS clinic in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. One-third of the patients were women, even though they account for half of HIV-infected Ethiopians. There is a small charge for treatment, and many women either do not have the money or cannot get it from their husbands, he said.
Karen Stanecki, a biostatistician who helped prepare the report, said the French medical organization Doctors Without Borders has a higher percentage of women in its treatment programs because they are free.
"But if you look at centers that have fee-for-service, even when it is minimal, you immediately see more men," she said. "It's a real issue in terms of getting women into treatment."
Piot said that to fully address the AIDS epidemic, societies must address such issues as the laws governing property ownership and inheritance by women, as well as sexual norms under which older men believe it is acceptable to have sex with teenage girls in exchange for buying them school uniforms.
Microbicides -- substances that can kill HIV during intercourse and that a woman could use without a partner's knowledge -- will also be essential, he said. Three types are now undergoing final testing in humans.
The report noted that "there has been a sea change" in the amount of money spent on AIDS treatment and prevention in the developing world. In 2001, it was $2.1 billion. This year, it will be $6.1 billion -- half of it raised by developing nations and the rest provided by donors.
-------- poverty
Groups Take On Chronic Homelessness
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8651-2004Nov23.html
Several nonprofit groups and for-profit companies announced yesterday that they have joined forces to try to end the nation's most intractable homelessness cases -- the hard-core street people who sleep on grates, live under bridges and often struggle with mental illness and drug addiction.
The nine members of the Partnership to End Long-Term Homelessness said they have committed $37 million to help spur the creation of 150,000 units of specialized housing in the next 10 years for the chronically homeless. They acknowledged, however, that much more money would be needed to reach their goal.
The "long-term" or chronically homeless, the most visible, constitute 10 to 20 percent of the homeless, according to advocacy groups. Often suffering from mental illness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and physical disabilities, they frequently cycle through jails, hospitals and detoxification programs at enormous cost to governments.
About 150,000 to 250,000 people and 30,000 families are considered chronically homeless, said Nan Roman, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, one of the groups that will receive funding from the partnership.
"Most shelters can't help them," she said at a news conference yesterday announcing the initiative.
Instead, coalition participants said yesterday, they want to increase the supply of "supportive housing" programs, which move street people into permanent housing where they can get treatment and help with finding a job.
In recent years, studies have found that it is a cost-effective way to keep those who can't seem to stay off the streets in homes.
Yesterday, Carla Javits, chief executive of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a member of the coalition, said an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 units of supportive housing for the homeless are available nationwide. "A lot of groups have been doing this, but there is not enough," she said.
It costs about $13,000 a year to provide services to a resident of supportive housing, Javits said. But studies have shown that hospital visits, jail time and detox time fall dramatically for such residents.
"It's very clear that with supportive housing, people are able to live healthy lives and use fewer resources," said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is contributing $1 million to the effort.
Other foundations contributing $1 million each include the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Deutsche Bank and Fannie Mae Co. also are putting in $1 million each.
But partnership members said the sweeping program will cost far more than the private sector can pay -- a concern in an era of government cutbacks. They said they will push federal, state and local governments to reallocate money from other programs for the homeless into supportive housing programs as well as increase overall funding.
The partnership has the support of the Bush administration. Yesterday, Philip Mangano, who directs the administration's Interagency Council on Homelessness, praised the initiative, saying it matched the efforts his organization is making in cities across the country.
Such housing programs are increasing in the Washington area.
The District's Housing First initiative, launched in April in partnership with a D.C. nonprofit, Pathways to Housing, has enrolled 33 people and expects to enroll an additional 42 in the next six months. The city places the homeless in subsidized housing, and Pathways provides a team of specialists -- social workers, employment specialists, counselors and addiction experts -- who are available to them round-the-clock.
Martha B. Knisley, director of the city's Department of Mental Health, said she is pleased with the results and wants to expand it. "Our goal is to continue to move in that direction," she said.
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At least 20 arrested at protest of U.S. school for Latin American soldiers
(AP)
Nov 24, 2004
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041121/w112182.html
OLUMBUS, Ga. - At least 20 people were arrested Sunday while protesting a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans, some of whose graduates they claim later committed civil rights abuses that included murder.
Those arrested were among about a record 16,000 people who demonstrated outside the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation at Fort Benning, Ga., calling for the school to be shut down.
Charges ranged from trespassing to wearing a mask, a rarely invoked 1951 law originally aimed at the Ku Klux Klan.
"We gather to revive the memory of those who have died at the hands of this combat school," said Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Roman Catholic priest. "How do you teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun? If they are so concerned about teaching democracy, then why not close this school and send these students to some of our fine universities."
Bourgeois is head of SOA Watch, which monitors the institution formerly known as The School of the Americas. The group has staged annual protests there since 1990.
SOA Watch and other critics allege the school's graduates have committed murder, rape and torture, including the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989.
Seventeen of the arrests Sunday came after some protesters scaled chain-link fences onto military property, said Bill Quigley, legal adviser for the protest group.
The school trains soldiers, police and government officials. SOA Watch claims some of its graduates were involved in a string of human rights abuses in the 1980s and even now exploit the people and resources of Latin America.
As recently as October, a former Colombian army officer who graduated from the school had been accused of murdering a state official while still a member of the military. Maj. David Hernandez, who became the head of a paramilitary group, was killed in a clash with army troops.
Defence officials have steadfastly disputed the group's claims about the school. In the past, army officials have held news conferences to deny allegations, but days before Sunday's event the army said it would have no comment.
Organizers of the protest said concern about the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush's re-election boosted attendance at this year's event.
Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon addressed the group Saturday and Martin Sheen, delivered a fiery speech Sunday.
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