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by David Johnston and Don Van Natta Jr.
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ASHINGTON, Nov. 30 — Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States, senior government officials said today.The proposal would loosen one of the most fundamental restrictions on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would be another step by the Bush administration to modify civil-liberties protections as a means of defending the country against terrorists, the senior officials said.
The attorney general's surveillance guidelines were imposed on the F.B.I. in the 1970's after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the F.B.I. had run a widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro, to monitor antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while Mr. Hoover was director.
Since then, the guidelines have defined the F.B.I.'s operational conduct in investigations of domestic and overseas groups that operate in the United States.
Some officials who oppose the change said the rules had largely kept the F.B.I. out of politically motivated investigations, protecting the bureau from embarrassment and lawsuits. But others, including senior Justice Department officials, said the rules were outmoded and geared to obsolete investigative methods and had at times hobbled F.B.I. counterterrorism efforts.
Mr. Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, favor the change, the officials said. Most of the opposition comes from career officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said today that no final decision had been reached on the revised guidelines.
"As part of the attorney general's reorganization," said Susan Dryden, the spokeswoman, "we are conducting a comprehensive review of all guidelines, policies and procedures. All of these are still under review."
An F.B.I. spokesman said the bureau's approach to terrorism was also under review.
"Director Mueller's view is that everything should be on the table for review," the spokesman, John Collingwood, said. "He is more than willing to embrace change when doing so makes us a more effective component. A healthy review process doesn't come at the expense of the historic protections inherent in our system."
The attorney general is free to revise the guidelines, but Justice Department officials said it was unclear how heavily they would be revised. There are two sets of guidelines, for domestic and foreign groups, and most of the discussion has centered on the largely classified rules for investigations of foreign groups.
The relaxation of the guidelines would follow administration measures to establish military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism; to seek out and question 5,000 immigrants, most of them Muslims, who have entered the United States since January 2000; and to arrest more than 1,200 people, nearly all of whom are unconnected to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and hold hundreds of them in jail.
Today, Mr. Ashcroft defended his initiatives in an impassioned speech to United States attorneys.
"Our efforts have been deliberate, they've been coordinated, they've been carefully crafted to not only protect America but to respect the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein," Mr. Ashcroft said.
"Still," he added, "there have been a few voices who have criticized. Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they've had a chance to understand it at its best."
Under the current surveillance guidelines, the F.B.I. cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places like mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause, or evidence leading them to believe that someone in the group may have broken the law. Full investigations of this sort cannot take place without the attorney general's consent.
Since Sept. 11, investigators have said, Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques — apparently knowing that the religious institutions are usually off limits to F.B.I. surveillance squads. Some officials are now saying they need broader authority to conduct surveillance of potential terrorists, no matter where they are.
Senior career F.B.I. officials complained that they had not been consulted about the proposed change — a criticism they have expressed about other Bush administration counterterrorism measures. When the Justice Department decided to use military tribunals to try accused terrorists, and to interview thousands of Muslim men in the United States, the officials said they were not consulted.
Justice Department officials noted that Mr. Mueller had endorsed the administration's proposals, adding that the complaints were largely from older F.B.I. officials who were resistant to change and unwilling to take the aggressive steps needed to root out terror in the United States. Other officials said the Justice Department had consulted with F.B.I. lawyers and some operational managers about the change.
But in a series of recent interviews, several senior career officials at the F.B.I. said it would be a serious mistake to weaken the guidelines, and they were upset that the department had not clearly described the proposed changes.
"People are furious right now — very, very angry," one of them said. "They just assume they know everything. When you don't consult with anybody, it sends the message that you assume you know everything. And they don't know everything."
Still, some complaints seem to stem from the F.B.I.'s shifting status under Mr. Ashcroft. Weakened by a series of problems that predated the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. has been forced to follow orders from the Justice Department — a change that many law enforcement experts thought was long overdue. In the past, the bureau leadership had far more independence and authority to make its own decisions.
Several senior officials are leaving the F.B.I., including Thomas J. Pickard, the deputy director. He was the senior official in charge of the investigation of the attacks and was among top F.B.I. officials who were opposed to another decision of the Bush administration, the public announcements of Oct. 12 and Oct. 29 that placed the country on the highest state of alert in response to vague but credible threats of a possible second terrorist attack. Mr. Pickard is said to have been opposed to publicizing threats that were too vague to provide any precautionary advice.
Many F.B.I. officials regard the administration's plan to establish military tribunals as an extreme step that diminishes the F.B.I.'s role because it creates a separate prosecutorial system run by the military.
"The only thing I have seen about the tribunals is what I have seen in the newspapers," a senior official complained.
Another official said many senior law enforcement officials shared his concern about the tribunals. "I believe in the rule of law, and I believe if we have a case to make against someone, we should make it in a federal courtroom in the United States," he said.
Several senior F.B.I. officials said the tribunal system should be reserved for senior Al Qaeda members apprehended by the military in Afghanistan or other foreign countries.
Few were involved in deliberations that led to the directive Mr. Ashcroft issued this month to interview immigrant men living legally in the United States. F.B.I. officials have complained that the interview plan was begun before its ramifications were fully understood.
"None of this was thought through, a senior official said. "They just announced it, and left it to others to figure out how to do it."
The arrests and detentions of more than 1,200 people since Sept. 11 have also aroused concerns at the F.B.I. Officials noted that the investigations had found no conspirators in the United States who aided the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and only a handful of people who were considered Al Qaeda members.
"This came out of the White House, and Ashcroft's office," a senior official said. "There are tons of things coming out of there these days where there is absolutely no consultation with the bureau."
Some at the F.B.I. have been openly skeptical about claims that some of the 1,200 people arrested were Al Qaeda members and that the strategy of making widespread arrests had disrupted or thwarted planned attacks.
"It's just not the case," an official said. "We have 10 or 12 people we think are Al Qaeda people, and that's it. And for some of them, it's based only on conjecture and suspicion."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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by David E. Rosenbaum
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WASHINGTON — The war against terrorism has created some novel pitches from Washington lobbyists, now swarming over the capital as Congress tries to wrap up its business for the year.The American Traffic Safety Services Association, whose members make traffic signs, is arguing that more federal money is needed for road signs to prevent traffic jams after terror attacks. California date growers have petitioned the White House and the Pentagon to buy dates for food packages being dropped in Afghanistan. They would be a treat for the Afghans during Ramadan, the growers maintain.
What happened was a tragedy, certainly, but there are opportunities. We're in business. This is not a charity.
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James Albertine
Corporate Lobbyist
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Since Sept. 11, many other business lobbyists have taken old pleas for federal help and turned them into new arguments for spending to combat terrorism.
Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, is amused by the efforts to profit from patriotism.
"No self-respecting lobbyist," he said, has not "repackaged his position as a patriotic response to the tragedy."
This, he said, is what he is hearing:
"The challenge is terrorism. The answer is re-establish telecommunications monopolies."
"The challenge is terrorism. The answer is to drill for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge."
"The challenge is terrorism. The answer is a $15 billion retroactive tax break to scores of corporations."
The minute he arrived at work on the morning of Sept. 12, a top aide to a Democratic senator recalled, he received a call from a lobbyist for the airline industry pushing for a repeal of the federal tax on jet fuel to help the industry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Over the next few days, the aide said, reading from his desk calendar and telephone logs, he heard from representatives of the travel, insurance, telecommunications and software industries, from lobbyists for farmers, pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, and from several military contractors.
None of them asked for anything different from what they had sought from Congress before, the aide said, but all had new pitches presenting their cases as responses to the attacks.
Until Sept. 11, money was scarce. President Bush and Congress had said they would save the surplus in the Social Security accounts. But now, fiscal discipline has been played down, budget deficits are the order of the day and companies, unions and the range of interest groups want a slice of a vast new stimulus-military- bioterrorism-homeland defense pie.
The idea of making money from the attacks sounds so crass that few lobbyists are willing to talk about it openly. But James Albertine, a lobbyist who represents companies, trade associations and nonprofit organizations, was remarkably frank. "What happened was a tragedy, certainly, but there are opportunities," Mr. Albertine said. "We're in business. This is not a charity."
Paul C. Light, director of government studies at the Brookings Institution, put it directly. "This is the best of times for lobbyists," Mr. Light said. "All of a sudden, they are in a position where they can sell their clients on the possibility of success."
Some of the lobbyists have such clear cases that their clients were damaged by the terrorism and need immediate relief that the government has already come through or seems very likely to. The $15 billion package of aid and loan guarantees for the airline industry, enacted in September, is an example, although some critics have assailed its size.
Insurance companies, which were busily lobbying in the House last week, can expect some form of federal protection against large losses from future terrorist attacks, although it remains unclear what form the aid will take. New York City has a strong claim for federal assistance to rebuild the devastated area, though the amount of money that will be available is a matter of considerable dispute.
As for economic stimulus, the Republican package the House of Representatives approved in October was made up principally of corporate tax breaks: larger write-offs for investments in plants and equipment, retroactive repeal of the alternative minimum tax, tax savings for financial services companies with operations abroad and a lower capital gains tax.
Michael Baroody, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, made this argument for how cutting corporate taxes would help revive the economy: "Companies are either going to invest the extra money in equipment, or they're going to invest it in jobs."
But even Mr. Baroody, who put together a coalition of corporate lobbyists to press for prospective repeal of the minimum tax — a measure enacted in 1986 to make sure profitable companies could not escape income taxes — did not defend the House plan for repealing it retroactively. That plan, denounced by Democrats, would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax refunds to corporations, including International Business Machines, General Motors and General Electric.
Here are some other commercial interests that have adjusted their pitches in response to the attacks:
- The travel industry is seeking a temporary $1,000 tax credit per family to help offset vacation expenses.
- Boeing , with the Marine Corps, is pressing Congress and the Pentagon to revive the V-22 Osprey, an experimental aircraft that has been grounded because of fatal crashes.
- Verizon Communications wants to lift federal rules that give smaller competitors access to its network. The company argues that its success in restoring telephone service to Lower Manhattan demonstrates the importance to the nation of large telecommunications companies.
- Farm lobbyists are portraying a subsidy bill as a safety net for farmers in the recession and a bulwark against disruptions in food supplies in war time. Once called the Agriculture Act of 2001, it has been renamed the Farm Security Act of 2001.
Many, maybe most, of these proposals will never become law or public policy. But that is not so important to lobbyists, said Charles Peters, the founding editor of The Washington Monthly magazine and a cryptographer of the codes of Washington. "I can hear them saying, `Oh, God, we fought hard on this amendment,' " Mr. Peters said. " `We got it through the House. That's worth another $2 million in billing.' "
When the Senate took up a bill to extend the moratorium on sales taxes on purchases over the Internet, both sides tried to take advantage of how times had changed. Those who wanted to end the moratorium said states needed the sales tax revenue because of their new expenses for homeland security. And those who wanted to continue the moratorium said taxes would further depress sales that have dropped since Sept. 11.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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by Susan Milligan
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WASHINGTON - The terrorist attack on the nation has shaken most members of Congress into an uncharacteristic state: silence.
There is virtually no criticism on Capitol Hill of the American war effort or military strategy. Democrats and Republicans have paraded their patriotism, shying away from criticizing President Bush, even on matters not directly related to terrorism or the war.
'We go through periods where it's fashionable to blow the whistle, and then it becomes unpatriotic to blow the whistle. There's a sense now that it's political suicide to object
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Christopher Pyle
Professor and constitutional expert at Mount Holyoke College
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While a few lawmakers are raising questions about Bush's plans for military tribunals to try alleged terrorists, civil libertarians say they have been surprised and disappointed in how some of their strongest allies in Congress have acquiesced to administration demands for more law enforcement powers.
''There are a lot of people who would otherwise be jumping up and down who are saying, `Let's give the government the benefit of the doubt on this,''' said Kit Gage of the First Amendment Foundation. ''There's a sense of `We've got to stick together on this stuff,' and it didn't matter what `this' was.''
The response on Capitol Hill is overwhelmingly backed up by the American public, political analysts note. Polls have shown strong support for the president, as well as for the use of military tribunals and a willingness to give up personal freedoms for the sake of national security.
''I think in this case, it's understandable why there's almost no dissent. This is a case when people came over here and just murdered 6,000 innocent people,'' said former Democratic Senator George McGovern.
McGovern, who was recently named to a new UN post as ambassador for global hunger, said he has personal concerns about the civil liberties implications of the antiterrorism law. But with people still in shock over the events of Sept. 11, he said ''it's going to be a long while for people to substitute a more reasoned, discriminating view of what's going on.''
Lawmakers who have challenged the administration, even in the mildest of ways, have suffered the consequences. Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, received threats at her office after she was the only member of Congress to vote against giving Bush the right to use force to punish terrorists or prevent future acts of terrorism.
Representatives Martin Meehan, Democrat of Lowell, and Richard Neal, Democrat of Springfield, were stunned at the vitriolic response when each was quoted making relatively tame statements about Bush. Meehan had suggested soon after the attacks that there was no evidence a terrorist-piloted plane was headed toward Air Force One - a view that turned out to be correct. Neal had remarked casually that Bush's oratory skills weren't up to those of his predecessor.
''People read Marty Meehan's comments and they recognized the fallout. Barbara Lee is another case in point,'' said Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, who defended both colleagues for speaking their minds.
Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, was the only senator to vote against the antiterrorism package on the floor, and watched as his own party's majority leader urged Democrats and Republicans to table Feingold's amendments modifying the package - essentially disallowing debate on them.
''I have to answer questions about why I voted against the USA Patriot Act,'' Feingold said, referring to the title of the antiterrorism law. Feingold said he was disappointed at the dearth of opposition to the law.
''There's no dissent. There's 100 percent patriotism,'' said Jim Jordan, executive director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, predicting ''a lot of ads with flag imagery'' in next year's congressional campaigns.
In a memo to Democratic clients, political consultants James Carville, Stan Greenberg, and Bob Shrum urged their party's candidates to tread carefully in attacking Bush personally, suggesting they instead make House Republicans a target on such matters as the economy.
Appeals to patriotism have driven a number of recent legislative initiatives on Capitol Hill, including the use-of-force resolution, the appropriation of $40 billion for post-attack cleanup and security, and a $15 billion airline bailout bill. Even an agricultural aid package was titled the ''Farm Security Act,'' and a bill passed Thursday in the House to protect insurance companies from liability in terrorism-related cases was dubbed the ''Terrorism Risk Protection Act."
When New York State House members pleaded for more recovery money, House Appropriations Committee chairman Bill Young, Republican of Florida, told committee members they would appear disloyal to the commander-in-chief if they defied his demand to add no new spending.
Backing for some of the administration's actions has even come from staunch liberals who had attacked the civil liberties record of Attorney General John Ashcroft when he was nominated.
House minority leader Richard Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, said last week he thought the plan to question 5,000 men with Middle Eastern backgrounds in America was ''a necessary policy ... to keep people safe.''
A cadre of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress has sharply questioned the use of the military tribunals, and asked Ashcroft to answer questions about Bush's military order at a Thursday hearing. The outcry represents the first serious challenge Congress has made of the administration's response to the terrorist attacks.
Ashcroft is also likely to be questioned about reports he is considering expanding FBI powers to include more surveillance of religious groups and political organizations.
Christopher Pyle, a professor and constitutional expert at Mount Holyoke College, noted that historically, dissent has developed slowly. Opposition to the Japanese internment camps during World War II, to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and to the Vietnam War in the 1970s started slowly, with just a few detractors, he said.
''We go through periods where it's fashionable to blow the whistle, and then it becomes unpatriotic to blow the whistle. There's a sense now that it's political suicide to object,'' Pyle said.
''It's wartime, and it's a fairly unique war in recent US history, in that we all feel personally threatened,'' said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. ''Members of Congress are reluctant to be seen undermining the president's ability to wage the war.''
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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by Simon Tisdall in Washington
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The Bush administration rejected calls last night for the US to rein in the government of Ariel Sharon, despite escalating Israeli attacks in the Occupied Territories, and reiterated its demand that Yasser Arafat do more to crack down on the Palestinian hardliners held responsible for the weekend terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa."Obviously Israel has a right to defend itself and the president understands that," Ari Fleischer, President Bush's White House spokesman, said when asked how the US viewed the Israeli missile strikes in Gaza and the West Bank.
"This is a real opportunity for Chairman Arafat to show in actions, not words, that he will take action that is enduring and meaningful against the terrorists and those who sponsor the terrorist attacks that took place in Israel."
Smoke rises after Israeli warplanes hit the Palestinian security headquarters in the Gaza Strip December 4, 2001. Israel attacked Palestinian cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday, hitting just beyond Yasser Arafat's main West Bank headquarters while he was inside, but he was not hurt. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah |
Mr Fleischer added that Mr Bush "has believed for quite a period of time that Yasser Arafat is capable of doing much more than he has ever done, and now the burden is on him to show it... It's important that Chairman Arafat move beyond where he has been before - to take concrete actions, to show that this is not the way for the future and it should not be the way of the present."
But Mr Fleischer drew attention to remarks by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, on Sunday when he urged both sides to think about the consequences of what they do in the heat of the moment. "It's important that whatever actions are taken, that all parties need to consider the repercussions of the actions so that peace can still be achieved," he said.
It was unclear how long the US will be content to stay on the sidelines if the Israeli attacks increase and the casualty toll grows. Mr Fleischer said the situation was being monitored closely. But in the meantime, the tenor of the White House's remarks, putting all the onus on Mr Arafat, and the absence of any form of caution or rebuke to Mr Sharon, strengthened the impression that Mr Bush had given the green light for Israel's retaliatory actions when he held private talks in Washington on Sunday with Mr Sharon.
The administration's choice of emphasis will also increase concern in the Arab world that despite its efforts to revive the Middle East peace process, and its dispatch of two senior envoys to the region in the past week, the US cannot act as an impartial peace-broker.
Mr Fleischer refused to accept a reporter's suggestion equating Mr Arafat with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan. But senior US officials, speaking off the record, have increasingly likened terrorist attacks in Israel to the anti-American activities of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and have questioned Mr Arafat's commitment (and ability) to end the violence.
Israeli spokesmen, and the former Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is visiting the US, have repeatedly tried to draw a parallel between their conflict with Palestinian extremists and the broader US war on terrorism.
Although it was too early to speak of a definitive pro-Israeli shift in policy, the Bush administration's apparent acquiescence in Israel's actions yesterday and its refusal to respond to appeals by Palestinian officials for American intervention were seen in Washington as a clear sign that Mr Bush's position is hardening.
Despite yesterday's violence, the US says the attempt by its special envoy, former Marine General Anthony Zinni, to help mediate a new ceasefire will continue for now.
Mr Powell warned at the weekend that Mr Arafat and his Palestinian Authority risked being overthrown by extremists unless they took effective steps to stop suicide bombers and other terrorist attacks on Israel. He said Mr Arafat was facing "a moment of truth".
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
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by Jim Geraghty, States News Service
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WASHINGTON - Members of Congress wear lapel pins, and their staff and members of the media wear laminated credentials around their neck. Lobbyists now want their own badges for quick, unhindered access to the Capitol.
Lobbyists are growing frustrated with long lines at entrances and at delays from new security procedures, which were implemented after threats of terrorist attacks and anthrax-laced mail.
''When there's a meeting in an hour, the question then becomes whether you have to go through an elaborate process to participate in a public meeting or to walk through the halls of Congress,'' said Jim Albertine, president of the American League of Lobbyists.
Albertine and colleagues argue that given the frenetic pace of Congress, where meetings and hearings are called, canceled, and rescheduled unpredictably, lobbyists need unrestricted access to most parts of the Capitol building and to legislators' offices.
There is no formal proposal, and establishing a new credentialing system would take at least several weeks. Many public officials and agencies are expected to weigh in on the decision, including the architect of the Capitol, the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, the House and Senate leadership, and several congressional committees.
Groups that support efforts to change campaign finance are wary of the idea of special badges and special access for lobbyists.
''It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, because it separates lobbyists as special and separate from the average person,'' said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Lobbyists argue that the lack of access means that Congress is less informed. ''Members of Congress know that you have to talk to lobbyists because nobody knows their issue as well as they do,'' said John Haddow, vice president of the lobbying firm of Parry, Romani, DeConcini and Symms. Haddow worked as legislative director for Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, from 1976 to 1983.
Albertine argued that the current security restrictions could increase the power of the wealthiest special interests, and leave other groups that are less well-funded - such as lobbyists for consumers, the elderly, or environmental interests - out in the cold.
The current measures have created a two-tiered world for lobbying firms, between groups who employ former members and those that do not. Former legislators face few access restrictions. Haddow said that when he goes to Capitol Hill with other members of his firm, such as former Senator Dennis DeConcini, the Arizona Democrat, he is waved through security checkpoints. Alone, he has much less access and far longer delays.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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by Michael Grunwald
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Republican congressional aide Barbara Kahlow sent the e-mail to a dozen business lobbyists on Sept. 26: "Here's our non-public chart," it said. She underlined "non-public" and put it in boldface."This was hush-hush, behind-closed-doors stuff," one of the lobbyists recalled.
Kahlow explained in her e-mail that President Bush's new regulatory czar, John D. Graham, had "asked me to convene key lobbyists to identify and rank" regulations that business groups found overly burdensome.
The e-mail and the chart were provided to The Washington Post by a lobbyist who attended the meeting, in the House Rayburn Building. The lobbyist said he was disturbed by what he perceived as an "underhanded" campaign to use obscure paperwork guidelines as a back-door mechanism to gut long-established regulations.
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Her chart listed 57 of the most paperwork-intensive rules the business community wants to target. The rules, which deal with health, safety and the environment, govern everything from pesticide use to coal-mine ventilation, to standards for blood-borne pathogens. They cover such areas as air and water quality, food labeling, lead-paint disclosure, truck safety inspections, toxic-release reporting, and family and medical leave.
Graham, who became administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget in July, after a nasty confirmation fight, acknowledged last week that he had invited Kahlow and others to let him know about overly burdensome regulations. But he said he had not seen Kahlow's chart of 57 "sunset review candidates" and pledged not to change any regulations without input from affected agencies and the public.
Still, the chart and other documents from a fledgling anti-paperwork campaign provide another glimpse of behind-the-scenes strategy-setting by business lobbyists and conservative Republicans in government, during the Bush administration. In April, an industry memo urged lobbyists to get "DRESSED DOWN" like "REAL WORKER types" for an event promoting the GOP tax cut's impact on blue-collar families. In May, an energy lobbyist asking people to pay $5,000 to join a corporate coalition to push the president's energy bill warned in a letter that absolute unity was a must: "I have been advised that this White House will 'have a long memory.' "
Now there is Kahlow's e-mail announcing an Oct. 2 meeting with trade-group lobbyists and GOP staffers to discuss the 57 regulations. "We intend to share the group's list with [Graham] confidentially," wrote Kahlow, who served for 25 years as an OIRA official before becoming deputy director of the House subcommittee overseeing federal regulations. Her e-mail went out to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Business Roundtable, the American Farm Bureau, the Associated Builders and Contractors, the Associated General Contractors of America and the Small Business Survival Committee.
The e-mail and the chart were provided to The Washington Post by a lobbyist who attended the meeting, in the House Rayburn Building. The lobbyist said he was disturbed by what he perceived as an "underhanded" campaign to use obscure paperwork guidelines as a back-door mechanism to gut long-established regulations. He said he was told that the campaign had Graham's blessing, if not his fingerprints. The campaign is being run out of the House Government Reform subcommittee on energy policy, natural resources and regulatory affairs, which is chaired by Rep. Doug Ose (R-Calif.), who is Kahlow's boss.
"This was a secret campaign to circumvent the process," said the lobbyist, who asked not to be named. "With Graham in that job, we figured we could get whatever we want."
Graham's background proved controversial when he was named to oversee the federal government's various rules. He founded the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, a think tank that is funded in large part by industry groups and individual businesses and that has argued that many regulations and policies are misguided.
Graham's nomination as head of OIRA was opposed by liberal groups and Democrats, who declared him an enemy of regulations. He responded that he supported cost-effective, science-based regulations that promoted public health and welfare and was confirmed by a 61-37 vote.
In September, he signaled his intent to take an activist role in a memo to his staff, warning that "if not properly developed, regulations can lead to an enormous burden on the economy."
In an interview, though, Graham said trade groups might be surprised if they think they will get "whatever they want" in his tenure. He said he had invited business lobbyists and congressional aides to approach him to discuss bad regulations, but that he did not remember telling Kahlow to "convene key lobbyists" to pursue candidates for "paperwork & regulatory burden reduction," as her e-mail said. And echoing a point made by his liberal critics, he emphasized that just because a regulation is onerous does not mean it is bad.
"I am happy to meet personally with lobbyists of all stripes to discuss burdensome paperwork and regulatory requirements," Graham said. "However, OMB will not order changes without considering the public benefits of these requirements."
Joan Claybrook, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, said she wasn't surprised that Graham didn't remember telling Kahlow to convene lobbyists. She said he often replied to questions at his confirmation hearing by saying that he didn't remember. She warned that the Bush administration and its supporters in the business community had launched a campaign to roll back health and safety regulations that protect ordinary people from corporate malfeasance.
"There's no question where all this is headed," she said. "These lobbyists have no shame."
Kahlow declined to comment. But it is no secret that business-friendly Republicans in general and on Ose's committee in particular have pushed to rein in regulations and paperwork. In August, Graham's staff gave Kahlow a computer printout of government rules that produced more than 1 million hours of paperwork a year. Ose then asked OMB to evaluate some of them, governing new drugs, sewage sludge disposal and "safety management of highly hazardous chemicals."
Kahlow then whittled the printout down to 57 "candidates for discussion" before the Oct. 2 meeting. The goal, several attendees said, was not just to reduce unnecessary paperwork, but to persuade Graham to use little-known provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act to try to weaken paperwork-intensive regulations.
Jim Tozzi, Kahlow's former boss at OIRA, said in an interview that he used to do just that, using paperwork technicalities as an excuse to review otherwise untouchable rules. "I have to plead guilty to that," said Tozzi, who is now on the advisory board at the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness. "The paperwork is a way in, you know?"
Another lobbyist who attended the Oct. 2 meeting said that even though Graham was not present, he was almost there in spirit.
"There was the implication that it was something he would want done, if you catch the fine line there," said this lobbyist, who also asked not to be named.
But Bill Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president for regulatory affairs, said that even though his group supported the goal of reducing government regulations, it was not impressed with the strategies floated on Oct. 2. He supports a more systematic attack.
"You can't just put 57 regulations on the table and say, 'Go to it,' " said Kovacs, who did not attend the Oct. 2 meeting but sent three staffers. "It would be political suicide."
Some of the 57 regulations, after all, are potentially inflammatory. For example, some business groups would like to reshape the Family and Medical Leave Act to stop parents from taking their leave in small increments, but that could have significant political consequences. Unions would fight any changes to the so-called Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage rules on government construction projects. The Bush administration might be reluctant to tinker with food labeling rules, "needlestick safety" standards for hospital workers and community right-to-know requirements that force industries to disclose their toxic chemicals.
But regardless of the politics, the business community believes that many regulations provide negligible benefits to consumers or workers while inflicting unbearable costs to entrepreneurs. Larry Fineran, a National Association of Manufacturers lobbyist who attended the Oct. 2 meeting, said that paperwork was as good a place to start slimming down as any.
"The cost is just enormous," Fineran said. "And so far, nobody's done much about it."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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The United States offered full and direct approval to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, a move by then-president Suharto which consigned the territory to 25 years of oppression, official documents released Thursday show.The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.
General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's National Security Archive.
When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.
"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State Department cable.
Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."
Kissinger, who has denied the subject of Timor came up during the talks, appeared to be concerned about the domestic political implications of an Indonesian invasion.
"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return.
"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better, if it were done after we returned."
The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting.
Kissinger has consistently rejected criticism of the Ford Administration's conduct on East Timor.
During a launch in 1995 for his book "Diplomacy," Kissinger said at a New York hotel it was perhaps "regrettable" that for US officials, the implications of Indonesia's Timor policy were lost in a blizzard of geopolitical issues following the Vietnam War.
"Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia," Kissinger said, according to a transcript of the meeting distributed by the East Timor Action network -- which advocated independence for East Timor.
"At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not seem like a very significant event."
The documents also show that Kissinger was concerned at the use of US weapons by Indonesia during the East Timor invasion.
By law, the arms could only be used in self defense, but it appears that Kissinger was concerned mostly on the interpretation of the legislation -- not the use of the weapons.
"It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation," he is quoted as saying.
The eastern part of the island of Timor, situated north of the Australian coast, was invaded by Jakarta in 1975 and annexed the following year.
After a 25-year independence campaign and guerrilla war, the territory voted overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999 in a referendum which triggered a wave of murderous violence by pro-Jakarta militias.
Copyright © 2001 AFP
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Published on Friday, December 7, 2001 by Reuters
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GENEVA - The United States forced an international conference on germ warfare to break up in disarray on Friday, angering even its European allies.In a bid to save face, the review conference of the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention agreed to suspend work for a year until November 2002 after Washington tabled what one European delegate called a "conference breaker.''
In a last-minute proposal, Washington formally demanded the winding up of a committee that had spent years trying to negotiate a deal to give teeth to a 1972 pact outlawing biological weapons.
The U.S. move, which caught even European Union states by surprise, came just an hour before the formal end of the three-week-long meeting aimed at finding ways to strengthen the 30-year-old pact.
"They have fired a missile at the conference. We are deeply disappointed,'' said one senior European diplomat.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited
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WASHINGTON - A defiant Attorney General John D. Ashcroft chided his opponents yesterday, telling members of a Senate committee that critics of a Justice Department crackdown ''aid terrorists'' and undermine national unity.
Ashcroft asserted that in the case of the adminstration's detention of noncitizens and its plan to try suspected terrorists before military tribunals Congress has only limited oversight. He flatly said that he would not tell the senators everything they want to know about the detainees or about his policy recommendations to President Bush.
''We need honest, reasoned debate, not fear-mongering,'' said Ashcroft, the sole witness at the packed hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
''To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against noncitizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve,'' he said. ''They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends.''
The former Republican senator from Missouri also gave no ground on complying with congressional requests for more consultation on counterterrorism policies.
''The advice I give to the president, whether in his role as commander-in-chief or in any other capacity, is privileged and confidential,'' Ashcroft told his former colleagues during nearly four hours of grueling questioning. ''In some areas ... I cannot and will not consult with you.''
But the senators were not cowed, and several Democrats and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania grilled Ashcroft about his department's decision to deny an FBI request for the gun records of terrorist suspects in custody.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, pointed out that the Justice Department has been willing to bend Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures to help the FBI track down terrorism suspects.
''Why is it, when we get to the Second Amendment, there's such a blind eye at the Justice Department?'' Durbin asked, referring to the constitutional right to bear arms.
Ashcroft said that current law does not allow the Justice Department to turn over gun records to counterterrorism investigators at the FBI. He refused to endorse proposed legislation that would expand federal power to track guns.
The attorney general has been criticized by civil liberties groups and a few members of Congress for the Justice Department's handling of the detention of nearly 1,200 individuals since Sept. 11. The department has withheld many details about the individuals held and the charges against them.
While Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials have maintained that the detainees' rights are being protected, there is anecdotal evidence that some were kept incommunicado or allowed only limited access to diplomats from their home countries, family members, and lawyers.
The administration has also been criticized for President Bush's order allowing military tribunals to decide cases against noncitizens suspected of committing or aiding terrorist acts.
Defending the need for military tribunals, Ashcroft said, ''When we come upon those responsible in Afghanistan, are we supposed to read them Miranda rights, hire a flamboyant defense lawyer, bring them back to the United States, create a new cable network of Osama TV or what have you, and provide a worldwide platform from which propaganda can be developed?''
Senators peppered Ashcroft with questions and demanded commitments that the detainees would be afforded constitutional rights and that the military tribunals would be conducted publicly, with defendants allowed to present an adequate defense. Ashcroft hedged on both requests, noting that the final guidelines for the military tribunals have not been written.
''History has shown that military courts have been effective, but they also show they've been abused,'' said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. ''This time, we want to get it right.''
Civil libertarians and some lawmakers are upset about elements of Bush's military order that provide for secret trials and lower standards of proof than those used in criminal courts and allow a tribunal to convict a defendant and sentence him to death by a two-thirds vote, without right of appeal. Civilian courts require a unanimous verdict in capital cases and allow appeals.
Graham Watson, a member of the European Parliament who attended the hearing, said the US use of military tribunals could interfere with efforts to extradite suspected terrorists from European countries.
Extradition ''would be, I think, no problem if the trials were in normal civilian court,'' said Watson, chairman of the Justice Committee of the European Parliament. ''It seems to me that rights would not be respected or could not be guaranteed to be respected under military tribunals. Clearly the two sides of the Atlantic are at risk of being on a collision course.''
But while members of the Judiciary Committee questioned some of the details of Bush's proposal, most members generally supported the use of tribunals.
The Judiciary Committee's chairman - Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont - offered a proposal to allow military courts to try terrorism suspects, but with more safeguards, including a presumption of innocence, the right to an independent lawyer, and open proceedings except when national security might be compromised.
Leahy's proposal would limit the use of military courts to members of Al Qaeda or to other terrorists suspected of specific involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, with the determination made by a US District Court judge, rather than the attorney general. Ashcroft said he would study the proposal.
In response to a question from Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, Ashcroft said he could not guarantee that every detainee would have legal representation because the government is not required to pay for lawyers in immigration cases.
Ashcroft declined to discuss possible legal action against John Phillip Walker Lindh, the US citizen who has admitted fighting for the Taliban. Nor would the attorney general agree to release the names of all detainees, although he acknowledged that no law prevents him from doing so.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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The new Secretary General of Amnesty International is visiting Pakistan to highlight the plight of Afghan refugees.Irene Khan is due in Peshawar to visit refugee camps and meet Afghan victims of human rights abuse.
The visit comes after Amnesty called for an inquiry into the mass prison killings in Qala-i-Jhanghi fort.
It follows new video footage of events shortly before the deaths at the fort near Mazar-e-Sharif
Hundreds of Taliban and al Qaida fighters were killed in the uprising last month.
"The reported conduct of the CIA operatives is disturbing, specifically the apparent threat of execution.
"All personnel involved in the custody and interrogation of prisoners should be fully aware that death threats against prisoners violate international human rights and humanitarian law.
"The US, UK and United Front should reconsider their position and hold an inquiry without further delay.
"Amnesty International has suggested that they consider calling on the UN or the International Fact-Finding Commission to conduct a preliminary inquiry."
Copyright © 2001 Ananova Ltd
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Archived,
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The chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee warned the United States and its allies that extending their war on terrorism to Iraq and other states would be a recipe for disaster.
Might is not right. If it is utterly reprehensible that innocent civilians were targeted in New York and Washington (on September 11), how could we possibly say it doesn't apply elsewhere in the world ( in a reference to civilian casualties in Afghanistan).
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Desmond Tutu
South African Archbishop
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Concluding a three-day symposium of Nobel Peace Prize laureates at which the war in Afghanistan was a frequent theme, Gunnar Berge joined several of them in sharply criticizing the military action despite its success in ousting the widely decried Taliban regime.
"If that which is hailed as a success by so many is an encouragement to continue by the same means into other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Yemen (and) Iraq, then I think we have only seen the beginning of disaster," said Berge, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee which awards the peace prize.
"The victory of terrorism is if we respond in the language and the means of terrorist and we should not do that," he said.
US President George W Bush and other officials have vowed to pursue their "war on terrorism" launched in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States to any countries harboring the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the US assaults.
US officials have specifically spoken of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as suspected providers of refuge for al-Qaeda activities.
Several Nobel laureates spoke critically of the US-led military offensive against Afghanistan, where bin Laden is based, including retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who closed out the three-day symposium here marking the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize.
"Might is not right," he said. "If it is utterly reprehensible that innocent civilians were targeted in New York and Washington (on September 11), how could we possibly say it doesn't apply elsewhere in the world," he said in a reference to civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
But other peace prize winners openly defended the US response, including East Timor independence leader Jose Ramos-Horta and Elie Wiesel.
"I have supported from the beginning the US actions against the Taliban and bin Laden," Ramos-Horta said.
Copyright © 2001 AFP
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Published on Monday, December 10, 2001 by the BBC
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The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has warned the United States not to take action against Iraq as part of its declared war on terrorism."Any attempt or any decision to attack Iraq today will be unwise in that it can lead to a major escalation in the region and I would hope that will not be the case," he said.
The secretary general aslo said that the UN Security Council would need to consider any such action.
He added that the only way to defeat terrorism was through long-term international co-operation.
Mr Annan was speaking in the Norwegian capital Oslo, where he will be presented on Monday with the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts by the UN to work for a more peaceful world.
Washington has expressed concern that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is seeking new weapons of mass destruction.
US Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that Washington had still to decide "as to how we proceed to make certain the United States is not vulnerable to that kind of attack".
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had previously sought to calm speculation about widening US military action, saying there were no immediate plans to attack Iraq as part of the campaign against terrorism.
Afghanistan warning
Mr Annan said it felt "almost indecent" to receive the Nobel Peace Prize amid so many international conflicts.
He added that the current situation in Afghanistan remained very difficult, although details of a new multinational stabilisation force would shortly become clearer.
The country would "require the involvement of the international community for a long time to come", he said.
"I only hope that our attention will not wander."
Copyright 2001 BBC
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Anthrax Matches Army Spores
Bioterror: Organisms made at a military laboratory in Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress.
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by Scott Shane
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For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people, government sources say.Until the anthrax attacks led to tighter security measures, anthrax grown at Dugway was regularly sent by Federal Express to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, where the bacteria were killed using gamma radiation before being returned to Dugway for experiments.
The anthrax was shipped in the form of a coarse paste, not in the far more dangerous finely milled form, according to one government official.
Most anthrax testing at Dugway, in a barren Utah desert 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, is done using the killed spores to reduce the chance of accidental exposure of workers there.
But some experiments require live anthrax, milled to the tiny particle size expected on a battlefield, to test both decontamination techniques and biological agent detection systems, the sources say.
Anthrax is also grown at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, where it is used chiefly to test the effectiveness of vaccines in animals.
But that medical program uses a wet aerosol fog of anthrax rather than the dry powder used in the attacks and at Dugway, according to interviews and medical journal articles based on the research.
The wet anthrax, while still capable of killing people, is safer for laboratory workers to handle, scientists say.
Dugway's production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.
Scientists familiar with the anthrax program at Dugway described it to The Sun on the condition that they not be named.
The offensive program made hundreds of kilograms of anthrax for bombs designed to kill enemy troops over hundreds of square miles.
Dugway's Life Sciences Division makes the deadly spores in far, far smaller quantities, rarely accumulating more than 10 grams at a time, according to one Army official.
Scientists estimate that the letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle originally contained about 2 grams of anthrax, about one-sixteenth of an ounce, or the weight of a dime.
But its extraordinary concentration - in the range of 1 trillion spores per gram - meant that the letter could have contained 200 million times the average dose necessary to kill a person.
Dugway's weapons-grade anthrax has been milled to achieve a similar concentration, according to one person familiar with the program.
The concentration exceeds that of weapons anthrax produced by the old U.S. offensive program or the Soviet biowarfare program, according to Dr. Richard O. Spertzel, who worked at Detrick for 18 years and later served as a United Nations bioweapons inspector in Iraq
Lab security measures
No evidence linking the Dugway anthrax to the attacks has been made public, and there might well be none. Army officials say the anthrax there and at Fort Detrick has long been protected by multiple security measures.
The FBI has extensively questioned Dugway employees who have had access to anthrax, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Agents also have questioned people at Fort Detrick and other government and university laboratories that have used the Ames strain of anthrax found in the letters.
Still, the analysis of the genetic and physical properties of the anthrax mailed to Daschle and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy has caused investigators to take a hard look at Dugway's anthrax program.
First, the genetic fingerprint of the mailed anthrax is indistinguishable from that of the Ames "reference strain," which is the strain used most often at Fort Detrick and Dugway, according to a scientist familiar with the genetic work.
Researchers led by Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University have compared the two samples and found them identical at 50 genetic markers - the most sensitive genetic identification method available.
That does not mean the mailed anthrax necessarily originated from an Army program, because Ames anthrax has been widely used at government and university laboratories in the United States and overseas
Shipped without records
While some sources have estimated Ames might have been used in as few as 20 labs, one scientist who has worked with anthrax said the total cannot be known exactly, but is probably closer to 50.
"Until the last few years, a graduate student would call up a friend at another lab and say, 'Send me Ames,' and they'd do it," the scientist said. "There wouldn't necessarily be any records kept."
Ames is similar to but distinct from the Vollum1B strain of anthrax used in the old U.S. offensive biological weapons program.
The genetic testing proves the mailed anthrax was not left over from the old program, most scientists agree.
Even more provocative than the genetics are the physical properties of the mailed anthrax. While some scientists disagree, many bioterrorism experts argue that the quality of the mailed anthrax is such that it could have been produced only in a weapons program or using information from such a program.
Link to Dugway base
If true, that would greatly limit the field, increasing the likelihood of a link to the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years.
Dugway, which is larger than Rhode Island, has been a military testing ground since World War II, when military officials selected it for its remote location in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert.
The Dugway anthrax program was launched in the early 1990s, shortly after the Persian Gulf war reawakened U.S. military commanders to the threat from biological weapons.
Iraq is known to have built a major bioweapons program that included anthrax in its potential arsenal.
According to Dugway's Web site, the proving ground's Life Sciences Division has an aerosol technology branch and a biotechnology branch, both of which use a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory designed to contain pathogens.
Anthrax and other dangerous germs at Dugway are guarded by video cameras, intrusion alarms, double locks and a buddy system that does not permit workers to handle the agents alone, according to one scientist.
But Dugway does not have a gamma radiation machine, which is why its anthrax has been shipped to Detrick for irradiation.
Dr. David L. Huxsoll, who headed Detrick's biodefense program in the 1980s, said vaccines and detection systems must be tested against aerosolized anthrax if troops are to be prepared for biological attacks.
"When you're building a program to defend against biological weapons on the battlefield, you have to be prepared for an aerosol exposure," he said.
Not a treaty violation
Milton Leitenberg, an expert on bioweapons at the University of Maryland, said he was not aware of the Dugway anthrax production.
But he said making a few grams of weapons-grade anthrax for testing defensive equipment would not violate the international convention on biological weapons.
The treaty bans the production of bioagents "of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective and other peaceful purposes."
"There's no specific limit in grams or micrograms," Leitenberg said. "But if you got up in the hundreds of grams, people would be very, very skeptical."
The FBI's investigation, called Amerithrax, has focused on the possibility that the anthrax terrorist might be a loner in this country with some scientific training.
The Sun reported Sunday that in two months, none of the hundreds of FBI agents on the case had contacted the Army retirees who produced anthrax in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yesterday, one of those anthrax veterans, Orley R. Bourland Jr. of Walkersville, got a call from the White House Office of Homeland Security seeking information.
The FBI had not made contact with several veterans interviewed yesterday.
Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun
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Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2001 by Fox News
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by Carl Cameron
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WASHINGTON — Some 60 Israelis, who federal investigators have said are part of a long-running effort to spy on American government officials, are among the hundreds of foreigners detained since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Fox News has learned.The Israelis, a handful of whom are described as active Israeli military or intelligence operatives, have been detained on immigration charges or under the new Patriot Anti-Terrorism Law. Federal investigators said some of them failed polygraph questions inquiring about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
There is no indication the Israelis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it.
A highly placed investigator told Fox News there are "tie-ins," but when asked for details flatly refused to describe them. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified, I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information," the source said.
An Israeli Embassy spokesman offered categorical denials, and said any suggestion of Israelis spying on or in the United States is simply not true.
But Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis spotted in North Carolina recently is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the U.S. authorities are investigating for links to terrorism.
Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to Sept. 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.
Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that has been compiling evidence in the case since the mid-1990s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say quote "may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity."
Investigators are focusing part of their efforts on Israelis who said they are art students from the University of Jerusalem or Bezalel Academy and repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.
Documents say they "targeted" and penetrated military bases, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, dozens of government facilities and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel.
Another part of the investigation has resulted in the detention and arrest of dozens of Israelis working at kiosks in American malls, where they had been selling toys called "Puzzlecar" and "Zoomcopter."
Investigators suspected a front. Shortly after the New York Times and Washington Post reported the detentions of Israelis on immigration charges last month, the carts began vanishing.
Why would Israelis spy in and on the United States?
A General Accounting Office investigation referred to Israel as Country A and said, "According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the U.S. of any U.S. ally."
A Defense Intelligence report said Israel has a "voracious appetite for information."
"The Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every facet of their political and economic policies," the DIA report said. "It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target.
"Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives," the document concludes.
Copyright © 2001 Fox News Network, LLC
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by Scott Shane
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The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground confirmed last night that it has produced dry anthrax powder in recent years but said the anthrax has been "well-protected" and is all accounted for.The Dugway statement was issued in response to an article in The Sun yesterday revealing that the Army facility in the Utah desert has produced weapons-grade anthrax identical in important respects to the anthrax used in the postal attacks.
The statement is the first admission that any U.S. government program has produced the lethal dry powder since the offensive biological weapons program was closed in 1969.
"This is very significant," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist who heads a working group on biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "There's never been an acknowledgment that any U.S. facility had weaponized anthrax."
Rosenberg, who has theorized that the anthrax in the letters might have come from a U.S. government program or contractor, said Dugway's assurances about security do not necessarily rule out leakage of the tiny amounts used in the bioterrorist attacks.
"The question is, could someone have gotten hold of a very small amount and used it in the letters?" said Rosenberg, of the State University of New York.
5 deaths since October
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he term "weapons-grade" means that the anthrax particles are tiny enough - 1 to 5 microns - to be readily inhaled and deposited in the lungs.
A sufficient dose produces inhalation anthrax, which is blamed for killing five people since October.
Some of the anthrax produced by Dugway has matched the fine particle size and extraordinary concentration of the powder mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, estimated at close to 1 trillion spores per gram, according to a government scientist.
In addition, the mailed anthrax is genetically indistinguishable from the Ames strain used by the Army, the most sophisticated test methods show.
Neither the physical nor the genetic match proves that the terrorist used anthrax from Dugway.
Ames-strain anthrax has been used in numerous laboratories, and a person with microbiology training and access to the right equipment might have been able to concoct the deadly powder.
But many experts think it more likely that the attacks are linked to a government program, either in the United States or another country.
Staff questioned by FBI
The FBI appears to be taking seriously the possibility of a link to Dugway. Personnel working with anthrax, all of whom have been vaccinated against the bacteria, have been questioned at length by investigators.
A government official familiar with the Dugway program said about a half-dozen scientists there have the expertise to make dry anthrax. No one with such expertise has left the program in recent years, the official said.
The unsigned, two-page Dugway statement e-mailed to reporters last night says scientists there "routinely" make anthrax to test decontamination methods and equipment designed to detect biological agents. It confirms The Sun's report that most experiments use simulants or anthrax spores inactivated by radiation, but certain tests "must be performed with live agents."
It gives no details about the strain, production methods or physical qualities of the anthrax made at Dugway for aerosol testing.
'Rigorous tracking'
The statement confirms that anthrax in the form of a paste has been shipped for irradiation to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick in Frederick. It says the shipments followed "stringent federal regulations" and never involved dry anthrax powder.
"All anthrax used at Dugway has been accounted for," the statement says. "There is a rigorous tracking and inventory program to follow the production, receipt and destruction of all select agents. The facility is well-protected with robust physical and personnel security systems."
The statement says the Army is cooperating with the FBI and "will not comment further on any aspect of its bio testing program" until the investigation concludes.
The Environmental Impact Statement prepared in 1992 for the Life Sciences Test Facility at Dugway, where much of the work is done, lists some of the biological agents to be used there. They include not only anthrax but also the bacteria that cause the diseases tularemia and Q fever, as well as the virus that causes Venezuelan equine encephalitis.
3 ounces at a time
For bacteria such as anthrax, the facility is limited to growing 100 milliliters, or 3 fluid ounces, at a time. The maximum concentration of spores would be 10 billion per milliliter, according to the Environmental Impact Statement.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed 18 cases of anthrax since October, including 11 inhalation and seven cutaneous, or skin, cases. No new case has been reported since that of 94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren, a Connecticut woman who died Nov. 21.
Copyright © 2001 by The Baltimore Sun
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by Scott Shane
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Russia reacted to the imminent US pull-out from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with resignation but dismay amid warnings the move could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia.Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov set the tone of Russia's official reaction, describing a likely US withdrawal from the 30-year-old treaty as "a cause for annoyance," but adding that Washington was within its rights to abrogate the Cold War era pact.
The head of Russia's armed forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, said US plans to develop a controversial missile defense shield did not pose a threat to Moscow "at the military level" but predicted dire consequences from the demise of the ABM treaty.
"The Americans' pullout will alter the nature of the international strategic balance in freeing the hands of a series of countries to restart an arms build-up," said Kvashnin, chief of the Russian general staff.
Meanwhile, senior Russian lawmakers greeted the news from Washington with a mixture of hand-wringing over President Vladimir Putin's failure to save the ABM treaty and gloomy speculation about nuclear showdowns with China, India and Pakistan.
Vladimir Volkov, deputy head of the defense committee in Russia's State Duma, or lower house of parliament, warned that the US decision to develop a missile defense shield outlawed under the ABM could force China to beef up its strategic arsenal, thus prompting India and Pakistan to follow suit.
"All in all, the US move will spark a new nuclear arms race and lead to a reduction in the level of security," Volkov said.
He added that an American breach of ABM would "oblige Russia to reconsider" existing strategic arms reduction treaties (START) with the United States "in order to guarantee its own security."
President George W. Bush told top US lawmakers Wednesday that he would soon notify Russia that he planned to pull out of the ABM treaty in order to forge ahead with the missile shield fiercely opposed by Moscow, which sees the treaty as a "cornerstone" of global security.
The ABM treaty, signed by late presidents Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, bars the United States and Russia from unilaterally developing missile defense shields under the premise that the threat of "mutually assured destruction" will prevent nuclear war.
However, the United States argues that the treaty is outdated and no longer takes into account post-Cold War considerations like the threat of a limited missile attack from "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran.
Moscow would prefer to negotiate amendments to the treaty rather than abandon it altogether, Kasyanov told reporters during an official visit to Brazil on Wednesday.
Russian analysts acknowledged that US withdrawal from the treaty would pose a major test for Putin's new pro-Western foreign policy, unveiled in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Putin and Bush agreed to cut the number of nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 at their Texas summit last month.
The existing START II treaty envisages a reduction in the number of warheads to 3,500 by 2007.
Copyright © 2001 AFP
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by Glen Johnson
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WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday invoked executive privilege to block a congressional subpoena exploring abuses in the Boston FBI office, prompting the chairman of a House committee to lambaste his fellow Republicans and triggering what one congressman said is the start of ''a constitutional confrontation.''
''We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved...
Your guy's acting like he's king, ''
GOP Representative Dan Burton of Indiana (left) tells Carl Thorsen, a deputy assistant attorney general. (AP photo) |
''You tell the president there's going to be war between the president and this committee,'' Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who heads the House Government Reform Committee, told a Justice Department official during what was supposed to be a routine prehearing handshake.
''His dad was at a 90 percent approval rating and he lost, and the same thing can happen to him,'' Burton added, jabbing his finger and glaring at Carl Thorsen, a deputy assistant attorney general who was attempting to introduce a superior who was testifying.
''We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved. ... Your guy's acting like he's king.''
The searing tone continued for more than four hours from Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. All objected to the order Bush signed Wednesday and made public yesterday. It claimed executive privilege in refusing to hand over prosecutors' memos in criminal cases, including an investigation of campaign-finance abuses, saying doing so ''would be contrary to the national interest.''
Committee members said the order's sweeping language created a shift in presidential policy and practices dating back to the Harding administration. They complained also that it followed a pattern in which the Bush administration has limited access to presidential historical records, refused to give Congress documents about the vice president's energy task force, and unilaterally announced plans for military commissions that would try suspected terrorists in secret.
Representative William D. Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat and former district attorney, said: ''This is the beginning of a constitutional confrontation. In a short period of time, this Department of Justice has manifested tendencies that were of concern to Senate members during the confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft as attorney general.''
The Government Reform Committee is investigating the FBI's use of confidential informants while the bureau investigated New England organized crime activities.
The committee seeks information on deals FBI officials struck with suspected murderers Stephen ''the Rifleman'' Flemmi and James ''Whitey'' Bulger.
It is also exploring what FBI officials, including former director J. Edgar Hoover, knew about the innocence of Joseph Salvati of Massachusetts. Salvati spent 30 years in prison for the 1965 murder of Edward ''Teddy'' Deegan in Chelsea, but the Governor's Council commuted his sentence in 1997. His conviction was overturned in January after a judge concluded that FBI agents hid testimony that would have cleared Salvati because they wanted to protect an informant.
''The federal government wanted Joe Salvati to die in jail because dead men don't tell tales,'' said Salvati's lawyer, Victor J. Garo, at the hearing yesterday.
In buttressing the executive order, Michael E. Horowitz, chief of staff for the Justice Department's criminal division, told the committee that providing documents about prosecutorial decision-making could have a ''chilling effect'' on the advice that lower-level attorneys may be willing to provide to top prosecutors.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Ronald Reagan invoked such a privilege three times, while Bill Clinton did so on four occasions. Forms of privilege were also claimed in the Nixon administration during the Watergate investigation. Fleischer said the Justice Department has already turned over 3,500 pages to Burton's committee, although members complained that many were heavily redacted.
The Justice Department offered to provide summaries of 20 documents it believes would be covered by the subpoena.
Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Newton, said he and Burton, a conservative, had sometimes disagreed on the committee's inquiries into the Clinton administration. He said the chairman's strong words for his fellow Republicans showed he had not merely been partisan.
Turning to Horowitz, Frank asked why the Bush administration might cover up mistakes made in a previous administration. ''I don't know what bureaucratic reflex drives people to do this,'' the congressman said.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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Published on Saturday, December 15, 2001 by Reuters
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UNITED NATIONS - The United States on Saturday used its veto power to kill a U.N. resolution that demanded an immediate halt to Middle East violence and said the Palestinian Authority was essential to any peace process.U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the Security Council resolution, sponsored by Arab states, was aimed at isolating Israel politically and did not mention recent suicide bombings against Israelis or those responsible for them.
The vote in the 15-member council was 12 to 1 with 2 abstentions, Britain and Norway. The other two Europeans on the council, France and Ireland were among the ``yes'' votes following two dozen speeches that spilled into the early-morning hours.
The U.S. veto was the second this year on a Palestinian-backed resolution. In March, Washington killed a tougher measure that called for an international observer force, which Israel opposes.
Saturday's resolution, sponsored by Egypt and Tunisia and amended by France, encouraged ``all concerned to establish a monitoring mechanism'' to help ease conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. It condemned all terrorist acts, executions without trial, excessive use of force and the destruction of property.
But Negroponte said it was fundamentally flawed because it did not even mention ``recent acts of terrorism'' against Israelis or those responsible for them. On Dec. 1, Palestinian suicide attacks killed 26 in Jerusalem and Haifa.
At least 776 Palestinians and 233 Israelis have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian clashes flared anew in September of last year after U.S. mediated peace efforts collapsed.
The resolution sought to bolster Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat days after Israel severed ties with him and branded him ''irrelevant'' in response to the spate of attacks on Israelis this month. It said the Palestinian Authority remained ``the indispensable and legitimate party for peace.''
The break with Arafat on Thursday, a day after Palestinian militants ambushed a bus in the West Bank and killed 10 Israelis, further evaporating hopes for a negotiated end to the bloodshed. On Friday, the Israeli army killed eight Palestinians.
Palestinian U.N. representative Nasser al-Kidwa said cutting off Arafat threatened to plunge the region into war.
"This decision means the abandonment of the negotiation process," al-Kidwa said, adding he feared Israel wanted to roll back on autonomy and security agreements made during the Oslo negotiation process that began in 1993.
Addressing the United States, he asked ``whether this council is being used by some only when it's useful to them.''
A number of speakers admonished Israel for using excessive force against Palestinians.
But Israel said it believed the conflict was not about occupation but about the Jewish state's right to exist.
Israeli delegate Aaron Jacob said there was an ''ever-diminishing window of opportunity'' to salvage peace negotiations if Palestinians entered direct bilateral talks with Israel and crushed militant groups like Hamas.
"The terrorism that has afflicted Israeli civilians is part and parcel of the fundamentalist terrorism that is now the focus of a comprehensive international campaign aimed at its eradication," Jacob said.
Britain said it abstained because the text did not reflect the realities on ground, did not specify a next step for a resumption of meaningful negotiations nor define responsibility which both sides must accept to end violence.
``We urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to pull back from the brink and work together to end violence,'' British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said. ``It serves no one's interest to undermine President Arafat or to weaken the Palestinian Authority.''
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited
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by Rick Weiss and Susan Schmidt
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Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall's bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.
"That means the original source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID," said one of the scientists.
Those matching samples are at Fort Detrick; the Dugway Proving Ground military research facility in Utah; a British military lab called Porton Down; and microbial depositories at Louisiana State University (LSU) and Northern Arizona University. Northern Arizona University received its sample from LSU, which received its sample from Porton Down. Dugway and Porton Down got their samples directly from USAMRIID.
In another development yesterday, government health officials said they planned to recommend that about 3,000 people who were exposed to anthrax, including hundreds of Washington postal and Capitol Hill workers, be offered an experimental vaccine as a precaution in case antibiotic treatment alone failed to protect them from getting sick.
The FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources with knowledge of the probe. The results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility. The FBI is focusing on a contractor that worked with the CIA, one source said.
But it remains unknown which lab may have lost control of the material that apparently ended up in terrorist hands. One of the two scientists familiar with the genetic testing, who has been advising the government on the anthrax scare, said investigators still know little about security at Porton Down, though they have no reason to suppose it has been inadequate. Of the domestic labs, Dugway has attracted the most attention from the FBI, he said.
Dugway is also the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled.
Scientists have known for some time that bacteria used in the terrorist attacks belong to the Ames strain, a variant of the anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, that was first isolated from a cow in Iowa and has been under study by military scientists for decades. But the Ames strain comes in various subtypes that can be distinguished from one another by detailed tests on the microbe's genes.
The genetic fingerprinting finding was made by a research team led by geneticist Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, which has been comparing the Ames strain bacteria found in the Senate letters to other Ames strain samples retrieved from nature and from various university and government laboratories.
"That's good detective work in the sense of determining the origins; this will narrow the search for the people who had access to the strain," said Jennie Hunter-Cevera, a microbiologist and president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.
Other experts were cautious, noting that it is possible that the exact subtype of the Ames strain could have originated elsewhere -- perhaps even isolated from animals or soil in the wild.
"It's an important finding but it's not one of those things that says, 'Aha!' " said Richard Spertzel, a former director of the U.N. biological weapons team in Iraq.
The scientists are still planning to do genetic testing on anthrax bacteria from the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, a Canadian military research facility, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, a government contractor doing research on anthrax vaccines. Those are the only other facilities known to have received samples from USAMRIID.
The researchers also plan to test samples obtained from nature, and from other university labs known to have the Ames strain to see if any others match. But of the few such samples that have been tested so far none has matched the spores used by the terrorists. In addition, the researchers want to examine other characteristics of the samples, such as proteins, carbohydrates and other substances in the material.
"If there's also a telltale piece or trace of nutrients or chemicals that show the process, that's even better. You start adding the pieces and go from tentative to confirmative," Hunter-Cevera said.
The CIA's biowarfare program, which was designed to find ways to defend against bioterrorists, involved the use of small amounts of Ames strain, an agency spokesman said yesterday. The CIA declined to say where its Ames strain material came from. The spokesman said, however, that the CIA's anthrax was not milled into the volatile power form found in the letters and that none of it is missing.
Nevertheless, the FBI has turned its attention to learning more about the CIA's work with anthrax, which investigators were told about by the agency within the past few weeks, government officials said. The CIA has tried to develop defenses against a vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax reportedly developed by the Russians several years ago.
While the CIA has had small amounts of Ames strain anthrax in its labs to "compare and contrast with other strains," a spokesman said, the agency did not "grow, create or produce the Ames strain." The anthrax contained in the letters under investigation "absolutely did not" come from CIA labs, the spokesman said.
He also said that the FBI is fully aware of the CIA's work with anthrax and suggested investigators were satisfied with the information they had been provided. Law enforcement sources, however, said the FBI remains extremely interested in the CIA's work with anthrax, with one official calling it the best lead they have at this point. The sources said FBI investigators do not yet know much about the CIA program.
Both law enforcement and intelligence officials said the CIA is cooperating with the FBI probe.
Investigators are considering a wide range of possible motives for the anthrax attacks, including vengeance of some sort, profiteering by someone involved in the anthrax cleanup business, or perhaps an effort by someone to cast blame on Iraq, which has an extensive bioweapons arsenal. Whoever sent the letters could have a strong scientific background, officials said, but they also believe the material could have been stolen and mailed by someone without such expertise.
A law enforcement source said the FBI did not initially include the CIA on its list of labs working with anthrax because the agency was not among 91 labs registered with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to transfer anthrax specimens. But as investigators interviewed workers at those known labs, they learned of the CIA's work, and in the past few weeks posed questions about it to the agency.
CIA scientists worked with other government agencies and outside contractors in the defensive biowarfare program, the agency spokesman said. The agency said most of its defensive work involves simulants, not active biological agents.
"Everything we have done is appropriate and necessary and consistent with our treaty obligations," he said, adding that congressional oversight committees, along with the National Security Council staff, has been kept abreast of the CIA lab work. "One of our missions is to learn about potential biological warfare threats," he said, adding that research can involve "anthrax and other biological agents."
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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by Matthew L. Wald
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WASHINGTON -- CIA laboratories were not the source of the deadly anthrax bacteria mailed to Capitol Hill, a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said Sunday."The anthrax contained in the letters under investigation absolutely did not come from CIA labs," the spokesman, Mark Mansfield, said in response to a report that investigators were focusing on whether spores used in the anthrax attacks may have come from a domestic bioweapon research program, including one conducted by the CIA.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that genetic tests of the spores in the anthrax-laced letters mailed to Capitol Hill were identical to stocks maintained by a U.S. Army research program at Ft. Detrick, Md. Anthrax-contaminated letters, postmarked from Trenton, N.J., on Oct. 9 were mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). Anthrax letters also were sent to three media outlets.
Five people have died and 13 have been infected with anthrax since October.
The Washington Post said the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks was increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapon research programs may have been the source of the deadly bacteria. The report quoted one source as saying the FBI was focusing on a contractor that worked for the CIA.
Law enforcement officials have said the anthrax used in the mail attacks is a type known as the Ames strain. While the CIA has had small amounts of the Ames strain bacteria in the laboratory to compare and contrast with other strains, "we did not grow, create or produce the Ames strain of the anthrax virus," Mansfield said.
"One of our missions is to learn about potential biological warfare threats and our work in this regard is entirely defensive in nature and consistent with U.S. treaty obligations," he said.
On Capitol Hill on Sunday, technicians began fumigating part of the ventilation system in the Hart Senate Office Building in an attempt to kill the anthrax spores remaining in the building.
On Sunday night, Environmental Protection Agency officials and private contractors started pumping chlorine dioxide gas into the building's ventilation system in an effort to kill the spores from the bioterrorist attack that has killed two District of Columbia postal workers and sickened three other people.
Authorities said they expected the fumigation operation at Hart--the second one at the building in just over two weeks--to be completed this morning.
Authorities had hoped to begin the fumigation effort Friday night, but workers were unable to bring the building's humidity up to the necessary level--75%--to begin the work. Finally, after two days of pumping steam into the building and doing other things to raise the humidity, workers were able to begin their work Sunday.
The work crews are "overworked and tired," said Richard Rupert, the EPA's on-site coordinator.
Even if the cleanup goes well, Lt. Dan Nichols, spokesman for the Capitol Police, said he could not give an opening date for the Hart building, where the Capitol Hill anthrax attacks began Oct. 15 when an aide to Daschle opened a tainted letter. The building was closed two days later.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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