Onward Christian Soldiers--to the Sudan 9-11 Probe--The Joke's on Us The 9-11 Report--Dodging Palestine-Israel Police Officer in Costa Rica Takes Chilean Embassy Staff Hostage Turkey, Israel Aim to Forgive and Forget US Paints Pakistan Further in a Corner Muslim Charity Shut Down by US Government UBS Accused of "Laundering" Cuban Money Another Oil-Related Conspiracy Thomas Szaz's Challenge to Libertarians

 

Giving Up "Space" and "Time" GR [General Relativity] is the discovery that spacetime and the gravitational field are the same entity. What we call "spacetime" is itself a physical object, in many respects similar to the electromagnetic field. We can say that GR is the discovery that there is no spacetime at all. What Newton called "space", and Minkowski called "spacetime", is unmasked: it is nothing but a dynamical object--the gravitational field--in a regime in which we neglect its dynamics. In Newtonian and special relativistic physics, if we take away the dynamical entities--particles and fields--what remains is space and time. In general relativistic physics, if we take away the dynamical entities, nothing remains. The space and time of Newton and Minkowski are reinterpreted as a configuration of one of the fields, the gravitational field. This implies that physical entities--particles and fields--are not all immersed in space, and moving in time. They do not live on spacetime. They live, so to say, on one another. It is as if we had observed in the ocean many animals living on an island: animals on the island. Then we discover that the island itself is in fact a great whale. Not anymore animals on the island, just animals on animals. Similarly, the universe is not made by fields on spacetime; it is made by fields on fields. . . . One consequence is that the quanta of the field cannot live in spacetime: they must build "spacetime" themselves. This is precisely what the quanta of space do in loop quantum gravity. We may continue to use the expressions "space" and "time" to indicate aspects of the gravitational field . . . We are used to this in classical GR. But in the quantum theory, where the field has quantized "granular" properties and its dynamics is quantized and therefore only probabilistic, most of the "spatial" and "temporal" features of the gravitational field are lost. Therefore for understanding the quantum gravitational field we must abandon some of the emphasis on geometry. Geometry represents well the classical gravitational field, not quantum spacetime. . . . Alain Connes has beautifully described the existence of two points of view on space: the geometrical one, centered on the space points, and the algebraic, or "spectral" one, centered on the algebra of the dual spectral quantities. As emphasized by Alain, quantum theory forces us to a complete shift to this second point of view, because of noncommutativity. . . . In loop gravity, the physical features of space appear as spectral properties of quantum operators that describe our interactions with the gravitational field. The key conceptual difficulty of quantum gravity is therefore to accept the idea that we can do physics in the absence of the familiar stage of space and time. We need to free ourselves from the prejudices associated with the habit of thinking of the world as "inhabiting space" and "evolving in time." — Carlo Rovelli, Quantum Gravity

 

With Kerry We Can Ditch This Terrorism Shit, and Get Back to the War on Drugs Financing the Election Save the Little Bastards from that Online Gambling Menace Opium Trade Booms in 'Basket-Case' Afghanistan Disturbing Colors of Anti-Globalization McClendon Report

Chief CIA Leak Investigator Named Philadelphia FBI Head Pentagon Gleefully Seeking that Paramilitary Force Another Charge against US-Syrian Airman Dropped CIA Sponsors Arabic Festival Chinese-American Faces Trial for Spying for Taiwan Bollywood: India-Pakistan Spies Join Forces to Kill Terrorists eBay Denies South Africa 419 Hacking Report America--a Nation of Corporate Email Snoops Email Harvesting Virus Crashes Google US Navy Preps 'Gestapo' Server Removal

 

Astronomy Picture of the Day Tiny Moon Is No Space Station Living Deep Stray Star May Have Jolted Sedna Space Images Show Relentless Floods in Bangladesh Highways Help Pigeons Find Their Way Home Female Vengeance Is Genetic The Two Envelopes Paradox Concerning the Scientific Study of the Human Aura Mediums Lend Supernatural Powers to Mission A Report on the Motivation and Activities of Extraterrestrial Races Interacting with Humanity

 Suicide Bomber Kills More Than 70 North Of Baghdad

 Opium Trade Booms In 'Basket-Case' Afghanistan

 The Fight For A Fair Election

 

 

 

JOKES ON US

911 Probe- - The Joke's On Us

Iran: the Next Big Lie Iraq Racked by Bombings, Kidnappings NeoCon "Democracy" = Security for Israel Israel Expands West Bank Settlements Britain Should Stay out of Sudan Peruvian President Accused of Accepting Multi-million Dollar Kickbacks A Scary Tale of Incompetence at the Top What the 9-11 Commission Report Ignores--the CIA-al Qaeda Connection Oshkosh Police Confiscate Guns Door-to-Door Mask Sheds Light on Subject of un-American Satan-Worshippers

Freedom and the Social Mirror A man can only possess himself if he creates himself; but if he creates himself he escapes from himself. There is only one thing that a man can ever possess; but if he is a thing in this world, he loses that creative freedom which is the foundation of appropriation. And then Baudelaire, who possessed a sense of freedom and a taste for it, became afraid of it when he descended into the limbo of his consciousness. He saw that freedom led necessarily to absolute solitude and to a total responsibility. He wanted to run away from the anguish of the isolated individual who knows that he must accept total responsibility without recourse to the world or to Good and Evil. No doubt he did want to be free, but free within the framework of a ready-made universe. Just as he planned the conquest of a solitude which would have people in it and would be consecrated, so he tried to win a freedom which only carried a limited responsibility. No doubt he did want to create himself, but he wanted to create himself in the images which other people had of him. He wanted to be a something whose very nature was a contradiction--he wanted to be a freedom-thing. He fled from the terrifying truth that freedom is only limited by itself and he tried to force it into an external framework. He merely asked that it should be just sufficient for him to be able to claim as his own handiwork the images other people had of him. His ideal was to be his own cause, which would have soothed his pride, and nevertheless to have produced himself in conformity with a divine plan, which would have calmed his anguish and justified his existence. In short, he asked to be free which was tantamount to saying that he was gratuitous and unjustifiable in his very independence--and to be consecrated--which implied that society had imposed his particular function and even his own nature on him. — Jean-Paul Satre, Baudelaire

 

America Is Safe: Congress Has Left Town Here, Inside This Barbed Wire, Is Your Free Speech Zone Seven Million 'Doing Time' as US Prisons Overflow Tense Petro Rivalry in East China Sea Russia Sticks with Iran

Pentagon Memo Reveals Bugging Israeli Security Minister Warns of Jewish Terrorist Attack on al Aqsa Top RAW Man Flees India Fighter Pilots Could Command Drone 'Swarms' Cold War Plan for Evacuation of Cities May Be Revived Girlfriend of CIA Contractor on Leave from Police Job Pakistani Art Student Nabbed in Delhi Old Spies Never Die Schwarzenegger Virus Terminated Google Goes Gimpy from MyDoom Infection

Astronomy Picture of the Day Sending a Messenger to Mercury Synthetic Biology on the Verge of Creating Life Surface Climate's Effects Felt on Ocean Floor Etymology of Neanderthal Language Strange Movements May Signal Autism South American Physicists Make Carbon that Is Magnetic at Room Temperatures An Eco-Evolutionary Dance through Deep Time The Dragon Legacy: the Secret History of an Ancient Bloodline Art Gallery of Islamic Geometrical Patterns Quantum Gravity and the Holographic Principle

The Chakra System Crop Circle Formation

 

 

Prostitutes Converge on Democratic Convention Your Week in Sex Prized Bachelors Turn Backs on Boring Love Game Man Wins Lottery Two Days after Divorce Wrestler Expelled from School for Showering Naked Sexy Emails Expose English Soccer Love Triangle Boob-onic Plague Makes Females Flat-Chested Alterna-Porn Challenges the Playboy Body Ideal

 

 

MAKOW

Makow - Are Our Leaders Criminals & Satanists-

 

Hypocrisy Of Accursed Cheney

Halliburton CEO Cheney's Amazing Lobbying Of Congress

 

911

Pentagon 911 - Still Searching For A Boeing

 

DARPA

Army 'Non-Line-Of-Site' Future Combat Systems

 

 

 The Unveiling Of The National Security State

Intelligence Gang-Bang on Athens' Arabs Bohemian Grove: "Greatest Men's Party on Earth" A Day in the Life of the Saddam Clone Right-Wing Israelis Join Hands in Protests over Gaza Senator Suspected of Leaking Classified Info The Struggle for Iraq Is Just Beginning Iraqi Forces Battle Insurgents as Key Deadline Approaches for Hostages Radical Author Blames US Priest for 1941 Day of Infamy The Worldwide Mossad Espionage Network Temple Mount Activist Says Blowing Up Dome of Rock Is 'Worthy Act'

Servitude ". . . How I loathe the servitude people try to hold up to me as being so valuable. I pity the man who is condemned to it, who cannot generally escape it, but it is not the burden of his labor that disposes me in his favor, it is--it can only be--the vigor of his protest against it. I know that at a factory furnace, or in front of one of those inexorable machines which all day long, at a few seconds' interval, impose the repetition of the same gesture, or anywhere else, under the least acceptable orders, in a cell or before a firing squad, one can still feel free; but it is not the martyrdom one undergoes which creates this freedom. It is, I mean, a perpetual unfettering: yet for this unfettering to be possible, constantly possible, the fetters must not crush us, as they do many of those you mention. But it is also, and perhaps, in human terms, much more, the relatively long but marvelous series of steps which man may make unfettered. Do you suppose these people capable of taking such steps? Have they even the time for them? Have they the heart? Good people, you said, yes, good people like those who get themselves killed in wars, isn't that what you mean? Enough talk of heroes: a lot of unhappy men and a few poor imbeciles." — André Breton, Nadja

 

In Case of Terror, Whitewash Your Windows and Open a Can of Peaches Report: Diana Got Big Divorce Settlement Russian Oligarchs Spend Millions of Dollars on Luxury Now Everyone Can Enjoy a Tax Haven Monitoring Those Terror Dollars

DNC Security Goes Apeshit DNC Gov Secuity/Yahoo Muzzle Whistleblower Protestors Shun DNC Killing Pen Who or What Is This Idiot Named Zarqawi? Brazil Arrests Corporate Spy Soviet Spy Who Outwitted Einstein Russian Journalist Expelled from Israel on Spy Charges 9-11 Terrorist Funds Hidden in the Pentagon Budget Israeli Pre 9-11 Eavesdropping on the White House Iran Spy Cleared in Death of Reporter CIA Scrapped Plan to Kidnap Bin Laden

Astronomy Picture of the Day No 'L' Word Yet Looms for Mars Satellite Experiment Snaps Photos of Sprites, Jets and Elves US Nuclear Clean-Up Could Spread the Dirt Around Synchronized Swimming in Bacteria Has Mathematician Proven Euclid's Parallel Lines Postulate? What Is the Multiverse? The Virtual Multiverse Theory of Free Will Perspectives on the Multiverse Theory Evaluate Your God--Did He/She/It Create the Multiverse or Just a Big Mess? Zero Point Energy--"the Ultimate Quantum Free Lunch" The Challenge of Synchronicity UFOs Preceding Earthquakes (.pdf)

Charlotte Banned from Sex Club When Your Child Catches You Having Sex Taking It Off Takes Off The Ice-Cold Phallus of Shiva The Bloody Truth about Menstruation Not Much Data on Female 'Waterfalls' Breaking and Entering

The 9-11 Coverup Commission's Not-So-Puzzling Whitewash

Iraqi Kidnap Crisis Escalates

Butler Wrong on Iraq Uranium Link

Bin Laden Forced Yemen to Release Bombing Suspect

US Urged to Revise Its Muslim Strategy Bush's National Security Strategy Protocols of the Elders of Zion Rasputin Is in Charge

The Mossad Strategy of Stealing Passports

Arafat Welcomes Qurie Reform Proposals

Pubs Ordered to Ban Smoking

Brown's Da Vinci Code Unbreakable

Kill Scientists, Says Animal Rights Chief

Science and Sacred Fever And ever since I have had a great desire to show forebearance to scientific musing, however unbecoming, in the final analysis, from every point of view. Radios? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don't see any reason why not. The cinema? Three cheers for darkened rooms. War? Gave us a good laugh. The telephone? Hello. Youth? Charming white hair. Try to make me say thank you: "Thank you." Thank you. If the common man has a high opinion of things which properly speaking belong to the realm of the laboratory, it is because such research has resulted in the manufacture of a machine or the discover of some serum which the man in the street views as affecting him directly. He is quite sure that they have been trying to improve his lot. I am not quite sure to what extent scholars are motivated by humanitarian aims, but it does not seem to me that this factor constitutes a very marked degree of goodness. I am, of course, referring to true scholars and not to the vulgarizers and popularizers of all sorts who take out patents. In this realm as in any other I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he choses, along any other such path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can. Such and such an image by which he deems it opportune to indicate his progress and which may result, perhaps, in his receiving public acclaim, is to me, I must confess, a matter of complete indifference. Nor is the material with which he must perforce encumber himself; his glass tubes or my metallic feathers . . . As for his method, I am willing to give it as much credit as I do mine. I have seen the inventor of the cutaneous plantar reflex at work; he manipulated his subjects without respite, it was much more than an "examination" he was employing; it was obvious he was following no set plan. Here and there he formulated a remark, distantly, without nonetheless setting down his needle, while his hammer was never still. He left to others the futile task of curing patients. He was wholly consumed by and devoted to that sacred fever. — André Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism

 

Desert Love Rat Put His Dirty Penis in Diana's Holy Vagina

The Democrats and Their Conventions

Harvard Study Positive for Cattle Trade

What's at Stake in Venezuela

Volatility in Financial Markets: Eerie Calm Before the Storm

CIA Unable to Break into Osama's Inner Circle (after They Took Him Off the Payroll) Senator Shelby under Investigation New British Spy Unit to Cash-In on Terror Loot NZ: 2 More Passport Suspects May Have Fled to Israel Kiwi Caper Is 'Worst' of Many Mossad Blunders Fourth Israeli Spy a Kiwi Academic Mossad Fiasco in New Zealand Should Ring Alarm Bells The Israeli Spy Ring in the US and Its Connection to 9-11 Aussie Report Prompts Urgent Spy Hunt CIA's Homepage for Kids Why Can't Los Alamos Keep a Secret?

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Saturn Ringscape in Natural Colors

Another "Life Is More Dangerous than We Thought" Article from New Scientist

Susquehanna, Potomac More Active in Youth

Supercomputers Get Better

Memory and the Movies

Origins of Syphilis

For that Healthy Glow, Drink Radiation

A Tale of Two Sieves (.pdf)

Goddesses Yes; Goddess, No!

Trickster at the Crossroads

Erowid: Don't Get High without It

They've Got Your Number

 Feds Halt Classified Work At Labs

 911 Whitewash - Carefully Blaming No One

 The Three Living 911 'Hijackers'

 Ten US Nuke Plants To Get Guard Towers

 Pentagon Finds Bush's 'Destroyed' Military Records

Two US Soldiers Dead, Four Wounded In Afghanistan 

 Middle Finger News - Dictionary Of American Resistance

 Sunspot Grows To 20 Times Size Of Earth

Official US Body Count Is A Lie 

The Rube Goldberg Security of the Olympic Games US Now Linked to Vigilantes in Afghanistan The Warlords of the Present Danger Fallujah, Part 7: Radicals in the Ashes of Democracy Wolf Blitzer Terror Brigade Bent on Causing Mass Death in US--Kean Ruling Could Let Alleged Bali Bombers off the Hook If Not Israel, Who Makes the World More Dangerous?

Blair Dishonest over Iraq Weapons Despite Report: Poll Mexican Judge Mulling Whether to Arrest Former President Echeverria

Objective Hazard and the Divine Disorder . . . "objective hazard"--the term used by the Surrealists to describe the unpredictable and seemingly illogical forces which control the succession of events . . . Humanity is constantly evaluating all phenomena in the world according to the standards of order and then finding the "merveilleux" and the "mystérieux" within the bounds of this order, as a result of its own endeavors at simplification. The inconceivable, therefore, according to the Surrealists, is disorder. Thus, disorder becomes the real god; and Providence which is generally revered as the manifestation of the mystical order of things, gives way to the worship of hazard, or chance, the mystical manifestation of the inconceivable but existent disorder of things. That is why we find Aragon saying: "Je vivais au hasard, à la poursuite du hasard, qui seul parmi les divinités avait su garder son prestige." That is how Paul Eluard finds a mystical revelation in what, to the average reader, would seem a purposeless coincidence, when he discovers that objective hazard has arranged the printed form of Tristan Tzara's Grains et Issues in such a way as to have six consecutive lines begin with the letter "p." . . . . . . Both religion and science are to the Surrealist outlets of the positivist attitude of mind which shuts the door to a daring exploration of the surreal . . . . . . And yet, ironically this poetry borrowed from science and religion the most fundamental characteristics of each: from religion the "aile," the desire to transcend ordinary life, and from science the method of untiring objective investigation, experimentation, cooperative activity, and collective discovery . . . The subject of this poetico-scientific investigation is the effort of the mind to liberate itself . . . from the process of logical thought which, according to the Surrealists, cannot grasp nor express the divine disorder. — Anna Balakian, Literary Origins of Surrealism

 

SEC Links Martha Stewart to 9-11 Insider Trading Republicans Will Feed the Hungry with Sound Bites Russian Hackers Raid Online Bookmaking Companies The Human Factor in S. Korea's Economic Woes NeoCons the Real Present Danger, by Paul Craig Roberts

Churchill's Wartime Secret: Ape Sex Threat to the US from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (.pdf) Bin Laden Will Be Caught Soon: CIA New Zealand Has Solid Evidence of Mossad Death Squads Killing Australian Tourists Israel Will Not Abandon Terrorist, Says ex-Boss Spy Focus on Vanished Lecturer Diana's ex-Lover in Drug Arrest Kroll Covers Up Spying by Ads in Big Brazilian Papers How Spy-in-the-Sky Technology Is Changing Our Lives Police to Retain DNA Records of Cleared Suspects Trojan Poses as Bin Laden Suicide Pix

 

Astronomy Picture of the Day Mars Echoes of Earthtones Martian Racetracks Ocean Extreme Shows Its Spine Microscope Adds and Removes Single Electrons from Gold Atoms ET First Contact 'within 20 Years' Doctors May Have Killed Napoleon Adolf Hitler Died in 1960 Surf 75 Foot Waves Quantum Harmonic Oscillator Ghost Hunters Gather in Baltimore The Effects of Spirit Possession

9-11 Cover-Up Commission Releases Fake 'Hijacker' Video

9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean (L) and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton speak to the press about the commission's final report in Washington, July 22, 2004.

GUILTLESS
& GUTLESS

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↔

Makow - 911 TraitorsAbsolve Themselves 

 

KAMINSKI

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↔

Deeper Dreaming - Does Someone Want To Kill Us All-

 Egyptian Diplomat Taken Hostage By Iraq Militants

 India's Shocking New Sensation

 Marine Mammals Not A Threat To Fisheries - Report

 Florida GOP Tries Again to Stop Black Voters

Bush Withholds Key Records About His Military Service

 US Launches Air Strike On Falluja

 More Proof vCJD, Prion Diseases Spread Via Blood

 Iraqi Van, US Tank Crash, Killing Nine

 Is Al Qaeda The New Emmanuel Goldstein-

 Kuwaiti Firm Willing To Quit Iraq To Save Hostages

 Deaths From Asbestos Exposure Surge In US

 Brazil Wins The Race On Alternative Fuel

 Los Alamos Suspends 19 Employees

 Murdoch's War On Journalism

 Iraqi Woman Recalls Abu Gharib Rape Ordeal

Army Calls Up 68 Year Old Doctor - To Be Sent To Iraq

 South Africans Terrified Of Crime - 43,000 Murders Yearly!

'Multiverse Theory' Holds Universe Is Virtual Reality Matrix

1,500 Of 2,000 Homing Pigeons Lost During Race  

 Britain Seeks End Of Dolphin Killing Fields

 Iraqi Resistance Kills 33 American Soldiers In Ramadi

 Israel Critic Cynthia McKinney Wins GA Dem Primary

 Will Kerry Give Affordable Health Care To All-

 Army Finds 94 Cases Of Iraq, Afghan Prisoner Abuse

 Rockers Against Bush

Glowing Saucer Photographed In Oklahoma 

 Border Watch Group Sneaks Fake WMD Into US

 Presbyterians Divest Themselves From Israel

 

 

World Ends on Sept. 29 When al Qaeda Aliens Attack Earth But Dubya, You Told Us to Invade Ira-! Fallujah, Part 6: Mean and Clean Streets Concern Voiced over Iraqi Disintegration by Israeli Plots PNA Calls for Sanctions as Israel Defies UN Vote Putin Urges Russian Jews to Leave Israel Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction 9-11 Commission Confirm Iraq-al Qaeda Ties Matching a NeoCon Jacket 9-11's Big Dirty Secret: Trafficking with the Taliban 9-11 Cover-Up Commission Blah Blah Mossad Agents Posing as Arabs Scout Jetliners for New Attacks Organized Crime and US Elections

Can One Learn Astrophysics from History? Sirius was also prominent in Egyptian culture. In fact, it was perhaps one of the strongest influences upon the scientific, agricultural, and religious lives of the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians of 3000 B.C. worshipped it for the following reason: Sirius was the star whose first heliacal rising each year--that is, its first annual rising just before the sun on the eastern horizon--occurred just prior to the flooding of the Nile. Thus the heliacal rising of Sirius each spring presaged the Egyptian agricultural cycle. We are not surprised to find that the Egyptians built temples to include alignments with Sirius (such as the small temple of Isis erected in about 700 B.C.). Even in the New World, Sirius seems to have played a prominent cultural role, being incorporated in the design of the Bighorn medicine wheel . . . and in the street layout of the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico.   My own interest in Sirius derives from my hope one can learn astrophysics from history. It has happened before. Many of us in high-energy astrophysics consider the Crab Nebula, for example, to be our Rosetta Stone: a key, not to ancient myths, but to modern physics. The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion, and near its center lies a pulsar, a pulsating radiation source reliably believed to be a rotating neutron star. Much of what we know about the astrophysical origin of cosmic rays, synchrotron radiation, and heavy elements derives from our knowledge of the Crab Nebula, and much of what we can deduce from observations of the Crab Nebula is aided by knowing that the supernova explosion that created it was recorded in 1054 A.D. by Chinese astronomers, and perhaps by Southwest American Indians . . . Now Sirius, as I will show later in this article, might be called the Rosetta Stone of normal stellar astronomy--the study of rather normal stars that have never exploded but have gently shriveled up and are fading away. Accordingly, anything that ancient civilizations can teach us about Sirius is likely to be useful in understanding the late stages of stellar evolution. — Kenneth Brecher, "Sirius Enigmas" in Kenneth Brecher and Michael Feirtag, ed., Astronomy of the Ancients

 

Canadian Government Backs Same-Sex Divorce Russian Scientists Turn Blood into Coffee Russian Military Technology Fights Back Yukos Warns of Bankruptcy in a Month Delhi Loses Its Way on China Trade Route McClendon Report

CIA Rebuffs 9-11 Commission Criticism CIA's Role in 9-11 Commission Chinagate: a US Counterintelligence Failure (.pdf) Israel Arrests Jesus, Mary, Joseph, 3 Wise Men, and a Goat Mossad Madness Brazil Police Probe Report of Spying on Government Aussie Spy Report: PM Says No One Responsible Advertiser Charged in Massive Database Theft Russian Internet Extortion Gang Cracked

 

Astronomy Picture of the Day Will Aliens Watch the Olympic Games? Evidence Revealed for Creation of Elusive Matter Fermi Gas Goes Superfluid Hawking Loses Black Hole Bet Handedness Develops in the Womb Jelly-Fish Toxin Could Cure Male Impotency Monkey Starts Walking Like a Human 'Brocken Specter' Dazzles Climbers on Mt. Fuji The Structure of the Multiverse (.pdf) Interview with R.U. Sirius The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz (.pdf) The Quantum Theory of Immortality

I see magic, as I've mentioned, as a kind of 'special attention' - the magician watches and listens to the world very closely and uses his/her knowledge of the obvious to do things which seem baffling or supernatural to people who have not been trained to be quite as closely observant. Remember that human consciousness - that is EVERYTHING WE CAN THINK ABOUT - occupies a very narrow bandwidth. Of the 11 million bits of information our senses receive from the environment every second, the conscious mind edits out 10,999,984 bits, leaving 'us' with very little to think about and to look at - only 16 bits of information per second, in fact. Let THAT sink in. The world around us is seething and swarming with multitudes of things we refuse to or don't need to process into conscious awareness - hence those troubling 'sub'-conscious tremors and blinks we call feelings, intuitions, hunches, deja vu.

Pop Magic: Grant Morrison Interview (Intro & Parts 1-8)

 

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Wigu

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Bigger Breasts Offered as Perk to US Soldiers A Midsummer Night's Sex Reading List This Happened to My Friend's Brother's Coworker!!! A Guide to Sex Toys Sharon Stone: I Want Toyboy Sex Posh Porn J.Lo-Butt Implants Explode! Teenagers Favor Peer-Led Sex Lessons Sex Advice from Female Bartenders

 

 Monkey Walks Like Human After Near-Death Experience

'Hijacker Video' - No Time And Date Stamp

 Top 30 Bush Iraq Lies Debunked Before Invasion

 Military, Industry Sonar Killing Whales - Report

Alzheimer's Risk Linked To Lifestyle More Than Genetics 

 RFID Chips Can Do Just About Everything

 Are We Ready To Know Everything About Each Other-

Canada To Introduce Biometric Passport

 Australian Report Finds Iraq Data Flawed

 Third Man In NZ Passport Affair 'Was Israeli Diplomat'

 Chunk Of Mars Found At South Pole

 Copyright Bill To Kill Tech-

 Global Holocaust-Deniers Bill Passed In Knesset

US Army Food... Just Add Urine

 

New York City Is Now a Maximum Security Prison Rumsfeld Knew All about Me, Says American 'Jailer' Held in Kabul Another Square-Off over Iran The American Occupation of Iraq Continues Fallujah, Part 5: The Tongue of the Mujahideen Israel Faces International Condemnation for Apartheid Policy Israel Threatens to Bomb Europe Assassination Fears after Arafat Critic Shot at Home Sandy Berger Now Accused of Cover-Up Israeli Spies: 'Mega Was Not an Agent, Mega Was the Boss'

The Universal Importance of Zero Point Energy In my professional area, I began with the pure physics side. In my first published study on the significance of zero-point energy for broad issues I showed that the basic stable states of matter are not merely inert, static structures, but rather depend on the presence of the underlying, sustaining zero-point energy which is continually being absorbed and re-admitted on a dynamic-balance basis. Pull the plug on zero-point energy and all atomic structure would collapse. In my second study I developed the idea, originally put forth as a hypothesis by the famous Russian physicist and human-rights advocate, Sakharov, that the gravity of Einstein’s equations is not a separate, fundamental force, but rather is a pressure force derived from partial shielding of the ambient zero-point energy. (A corollary to this view is that if one could cohere the otherwise random fluctuations of space, a host of interesting phenomena would follow.) In my third study I showed that on the cosmological scale a grand hand-in-glove dynamic equilibrium exists between the ever-agitated motion of matter on the quantum level and the surrounding zero-point energy field. One consequence of this is that we are literally, physically, “in touch” with the rest of the cosmos as we share with remote parts of the universe fluctuating zero-point-energy fields of even cosmological dimensions. Who is to say whether, for example, modulation of such fields might not carry meaningful information as in the popular concept of “The Force?” In a fourth study with colleagues from Lockheed, CIPA and Cal. State at Long Beach, we have shown that the simple property of inertia possessed by all bodies is simply resistance to being accelerated through the zero-point fluctuations, an extremely fundamental result in physics that proves an underpinning for Newton’s Law of Inertia. In a fifth study I examined the evidence that not only is zero-point energy at the base of a number of fundamental physical phenomena, but that in principle non-polluting energy can be extracted from the fluctuations so as to constitute a new energy source; a concept for which my research group has attracted seed funding, obtained encouraging laboratory evidence, applied for and obtained patents worldwide, and which is the focus of a present in-house program. Finally, in a sixth study I indicate how manipulation of the underlying zero-point-energy spacetime metric opens up the possibility for efficient interstellar propulsion, a concept well received both in popular writings (e.g., Arthur C. Clarke) and by the mainstream (Air Force, NASA Laboratories). — H.E. Puthoff, PhD., "Searching for the Universal Matrix in Metaphysics, Research News and Opportunities in Science, No. 8, April 2002

 

Expatriate Manifesto Another Smear Piece on Lyndon LaRouche Insurgents in Iraq Take 6 New Hostages Green Light for Designer Babies China to WTO: Dump anti-Dumping Rules

Lowdown on Threats to Democratic National Convention in Boston CIA: All Our Beatings Are Classified Energy Dept. Asks for FBI's Help at Los Alamos Lab Mossad Agents Killing Oz Tourists to Steal Their Identity Polish PM Meets Secret Services Following Terror Threat Kelley Fabricated Story about Islamic Charity Link to al Qaeda The Bourne Supremacy Eye Spy with My Little Network ATM Keypads Get a Security Boost Cybercops Seize Russian Extortion Masterminds

 

 

Astronomy Picture of the Day Iapetus as Sybill Moon Allan Hills Meteorite Abiogenic? Morning Star Ripped from the Headlines Hawkings Concedes Black Hole Bet Tsunamis of Gas Hot Up Galaxy Clusters Army Rations Rehydrated by Urine The Truth about Global Warning Taming the Multiverse Mass Dreams of the Future From Bell's Theorem to the Art Bell Effect Spider Divination in Sociological Context

 

 

UFO Event Maps

 Taleban Kill 12 More US Soldiers In Afghanistan

High Radioactivity Recorded In Israel 

 Stephen Hawking, Black Holes And Alex Collier

Death Toll Of US Forces In Iraq Reaches 900 

US Chopper Shot Down In Iraq - 3 Dead

 Gates Did It - Would Our Local Govt Do The Same-

 'I Want To Be The Peace President' - Bush

 Bush Signs Law To Develop Drugs Against Bioterror

 

 

Berger Regrets Stealing Notes as Sloppiness Iraq's Transition to Dictatorship Goal of Regime Change in Iraq Corrupted US Spies Fallujah, Part 4: All Power to the Sheikh UN Demands that Israel Tear Down Its Berlin Wall More Israeli Huff and Puff: We'll Attack Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere Israel, a Rogue State Alarm at US Drift over Middle East Schröder's Artist Admits Naked Prostitute and Cocaine Parties Bin Laden, 9-11, and President Bush: Has the Smoking Gun Been Found?

Are Economic Decisions Pre-Rational? Pointing both to long, persistent financial trends and to sudden giant changes in valuation, neither of which are ever generally anticipated, author J. Orlin Grabbe, straight to the point of this chapter, says, "It would seem that changing images of the future . . . are endogenous. . . . They are neither rational or irrational; they are pre-rational." In other words, they are within men, not brought about by outside events. They are not irrational because they have a purpose, no matter how ill-applied in modern life. Yet neither are they rational, as they are within men's unconscious minds, i.e., their basal ganglia and limbic system, which are equipped to operate without and to override the conscious input of reason. — Robert J. Prechter, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior

 

Kerry Discovers African-American Voters Bolivians Demand Recovery of Gas from Foreign Corporations Indian Economy: Past, Present, Future Tense Moscow Set to Seize Huge Yukos Oil Division Bank Cards Change Old Cash Habits in Vietnam McClendon Report

Israeli Spy Is Electronic Surveillance Expert Israel to Slash Spy Satellite Funding The Future of Russian Counter-Intelligence MI6's Scarlett Must Be Axed Scarlett's MI6 Appointment Raises Issue of Credibility MI6 Investigates Discredited Agents $242 Million 419 Scam Trial Collapses I Will Make Thee Phishers of Men The UK Surveillance Gotterdammerung Handheld PC Virus Holds Ominous Promise

 

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Startling new eyewitness testimony and official communiqués sent shortly after the bombing of the Murrah Building bring an important fresh dimension to one of the most troubling aspects of the investigation into the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. And previously suppressed eyewitness reports from bombing survivors who claim to have seen Timothy McVeigh and other bombing suspects in the Murrah Building in the days and weeks before the bombing provide important clues as to who may have planted the charges inside the building. On August 10, 1995, a federal grand jury handed down a three-count indictment charging Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and “others unknown” with the bombing that took 168 lives. In the three years that have passed since that time, McVeigh and Nichols have been convicted in a court of law, but others remain at large and the crime has not been solved nor has justice been rendered. Alarm over flagrant abuses by federal investigators and prosecutors in the case, and concern that a major cover-up was underway to conceal evidence of multiple perpetrators, multiple bombs, and prior knowledge of the bomb plot, sparked a citizens campaign led by Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key to convene a special county grand jury. Among the many things the grand jury has been examining are evidence and testimony that devastatingly challenge the central premise of the government case. That premise holds that a Ryder truck loaded with some 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) was solely responsible for the death and destruction visited upon Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Science vs. Silence From the start of our investigation, THE NEW AMERICAN has found the government obstinate adherence to this tottering premise in the face of monumental evidence to the contrary to be one of the most troubling aspects of the case. And we have played a major role in developing and disseminating the evidence and expert testimony that thoroughly discredit this increasingly untenable position. “What is becoming daily more obvious is that the federal investigation went off track very early on, and nowhere is this more blatantly obvious than in the claim that the truck bomb brought down the Murrah Building,” Cate McCauley, executive director of Mr. Key's Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, recently told THE NEW AMERICAN. “Science and the forensic evidence overwhelmingly contradict this claim. However, aside from your magazine, no one in the media or the government has really done the hard work of explaining and exposing this travesty. What we have been seeing for three years is science versus silence. The implications are profound. If internal charges were, in fact, used, it would have been impossible for McVeigh to have carried out the operation on his own, as the government contends. More hands and much more sophisticated expertise would have been required. Even more perturbing is the charge by experts that evidence of demolition charges on the building's columns would have been unmistakable to forensic investigators. Thus, the extraordinary rush to blow up the crime scene and bury the evidence before it could be subjected to independent examination is itself strong evidence of a cover-up. The earliest and most compelling challenge to the lone bomb/lone bomber theory came from Brigadier General Benton K. Partin (USAF, Retired), an expert with sterling credentials and a distinguished military career. On May 18, 1995, one month after the bombing, General Partin delivered a preliminary detailed analysis of the event to members of Congress. “From all the evidence I have seen in the published material,” Partin testified, “ I can say with a high level of confidence that the damage pattern on the reinforced concrete superstructure could not possibly have been attained from the single truck bomb without supplementing demolition charges at some of the reinforced column bases.” In that report (See “OKC Bombing: Expert Analysis” in our June 26, 1995 issue), and in the detailed study which he released on July 13, 1995 (see “Explosive Evidence” in our August 7, 1995 issue), Partin eviscerated the prosecution's lone-bomb thesis with a host of findings from the forensic evidence indicating that demolition charges were certainly used inside the Murrah Building. Since that time, a veritable mountain of evidence, documents, records, eyewitness testimony, and authoritative support has accumulated to fortify General Partin's thesis, making the stubborn adherence of government officials and journalists to the lone-bomb scenario truly incredible.
New Evidence In this article, we present startling new eyewitness testimony concerning demolition charges removed from the Murrah Building and the men who may have planted them there, together with new expert testimony, recently released official records, and some of the most important evidence and supporting documentation that has been reported piecemeal in our previous articles on the bombing. This includes:
a World-renowned physicists and an assortment of scientists, engineers, and explosives experts who concur that internal charges must have been used. A series of Air Force test blasts on concrete structures corroborating General Partin's main contention that air blast from a truck bomb outside of the building could not possibly account for the pattern and magnitude of the damage to the Murrah Building's superstructure. A study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) which acknowledges that a truck bomb of 4,800 pounds of ANFO (as claimed by the government) would have been insufficient to cause the destruction experienced at the Murrah Building. Two eyewitnesses inside the Murrah Building who attest that they observed bomb squad personnel removing undetonated explosive devices from the building after the initial blast. A rescue worker who attests that she heard an ATF agent state that he had found an undetonated explosive device inside the building.
Recently released government communiqués and radio transmission logs indicating that undetonated devices had been found in the building during the early rescue efforts. Recordings of real-time, live television news broadcasts reporting official confirmations of multiple unexploded devices inside the Murrah Building. Early statements from government officials and terrorism and bombing experts before the “official” line was laid down that the explosives used were clearly very sophisticated, indicating it was the work of a “group” highly knowledgeable in explosive techniques. Five survivors of the blast who attest that they saw three men in the parking garage of the Murrah Building with wires, tools, and what appeared to be building plans several days before the bombing. Military personnel who reportedly saw McVeigh or John Doe No. 2 inside the building but were threatened with court-martial if they mentioned what they had seen.

The Unheard Experts

General Benton Partin's report on the Oklahoma bombing should have hit the nation like a thunderclap. Not only was his analysis thorough and scholarly and his credentials unimpeachable, but his observations also conformed to a commonsense appraisal of evidence that was widely available and understandable to the general public. General Partin's highly decorated, 31-year military career included command of the Air Force Armaments Technology Laboratory and direct involvement in the research and development of many of our armaments and weapons systems. Among many other things, this expert's expert pointed out that:
Blast through air is a terribly inefficient coupling mechanism against heavy reinforced concrete beams and columns. Blast wave energy drops dramatically when traveling through air, initially falling off more rapidly than an inverse function of the distance cubed. Using the official estimate of 4,800 pounds of ANFO would yield a maximum pressure of explosion of about one-half million pounds per square inch at detonation. But by the time the blast wave traveled through the air to the nearest of the building's columns, it would have dropped off to about 375 pounds of pressure per square inch, and by the time it reached the nearest column in the second row of columns it would have been down to 27 to 38 psi. The compressive yield strength of concrete is around 3,500 pounds per square inch, far above anything exerted by the truck bomb blast on the building's structure. The asymmetrical damage to the building i.e., the off-center bite presents another insuperable problem for the official scenario, requiring that the blast wave leave standing columns that were closer to the explosion while taking out columns that were farther from the blast. Inherent in the official scenario is the absurd claim that the truck blast was sufficiently strong to collapse the huge columns and beams, but not strong enough to knock down sheet rock, furring strips, and other light, fragile materials. Examination of the photographic evidence shows clearly that the column failures were smooth and localized, as would be expected with cutting charges, not jagged, as would be the case if they had been shattered by the brisance of an air blast. The persuasive cogency of his analysis coupled with his outstanding stature and experience in the field of military ordnance, explosives, and blast effects should have earned General Partin's a respectable hearing. But it was dismissed out of hand or ridiculed by the same officials and media-anointed experts who have propagated a continuous string of absurdities to explain away the avalanche of contradictions and inconsistencies in the official scenario of the bombing. However, an impressive and growing array of experts supports the general conclusions.

Renowned physicist Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the “neutron bomb,” is one of them. One of the last remaining scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the original U.S. atomic bomb program, Dr. Cohen has spent more than half a century deeply involved in scientific work on weapons systems and analysis for the U.S. government and private industry. “I believe that demolition charges in the building placed inside at certain key concrete columns did the primary damage to the Murrah Federal Building, Cohen stated in June 1995. “It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil, no matter how much was used to bring the building down.” Contacted this year shortly after the third anniversary of the bombing, Dr. Cohen said he was even more convinced of the truth of that statement. “I have not been following the case closely,” he told THE NEW AMERICAN, “but it seems to me that the evidence has gotten much stronger in favor of internal charges, while the ammonium nitrate bomb theory has fallen apart.” Another celebrated scientist who shares much the same opinion is Dr. Frederick Hansen, professor of physics at the University of Oregon. Dr. Hansen's distinguished career includes professorships in engineering, aeronautics, and chemistry at MIT, Nagoya University in Japan, the Indian Institute of Technology in India, and Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. For 15 years he was the head of earth and astro sciences at the General Motors Defense Research Laboratories, and for more than 20 years was a research scientist with NASA, where he became chief of the Fluid Mechanics Branch and, later, chief of the Physical Gas Dynamics Branch. In the latter post, he supervised construction of the world' most powerful research shock tube, where he conducted experiments using high explosives. In a letter to Representative Charles Key earlier this year, Dr. Hansen stated: “I agree with Gen. Partin that blast through air is a very inefficient coupling mechanism against structure. Only by containing or focusing the blast can extensive damage be inflicted on reinforced structures.... Everything considered, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that only an explosive detonated right at the column could have sheared it.” Dr. Roger A. Raubach, a chemist who taught on the research faculty of Stanford University and now serves as the technical director of a chemical company, says he has “no reservations supporting General Partin.” He adds that “the possibility of an ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb, regardless of size, demolishing a reinforced concrete structure at a 20 or 30 foot standoff not only strains the limits of credibility but exceeds it by a considerable margin.” Dr. Ernest B. Paxson, an engineer with over 30 years experience in civilian and defense-related projects and a published author in many professional journals, concurs completely. The damage pattern of any structure will indicate how the loading conditions which caused failure were applied, Dr. Paxson wrote in a letter to THE NEW AMERICAN after reviewing forensic evidence in the Oklahoma bombing. “In the case of the OKC Murrah Building, the failure pattern demonstrated to me that individual charges were placed on each of the failed columns inside the building. Paxson, who now runs his own engineering company in Utah, says he bases his evaluation on not only his knowledge of physics and engineering, but on training and practical experience he received in the U.S. Army Engineers Corps in the use of explosives to destroy different types of structures. “Based on that training alone,” he told THE NEW AMERICAN, I would say that a 4,800 pound ANFO truck bomb is an extremely inefficient way to bring down any structure. It might blow a hole in the curtain wall closest to the truck, but it would hardly touch the supporting columns of the building, because air is such a poor coupling agent. In fact, to be assured of destroying any structure, one would have to place the correct amount of explosive charge in intimate contact with the pertinent supporting members. These experts are on solid scientific ground and are supported by a wealth of authoritative sources pertaining to blast effects in general as well as to evidence specific to the Murrah Building explosion. Especially important in this regard is the data from tests of blast effects on concrete structures conducted by the Armament Directorate of Wright Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base. An extensive study of the Eglin data conducted by construction and demolition analyst John Culbertson and first published in THE NEW AMERICAN (see “Multiple Blasts” in our March 31, 1997 issue) concluded that “it is impossible to ascribe the damage that occurred on April 19, 1995 to a single truck bomb containing 4,800 lbs. of ANFO.... It must be concluded that the damage at the Murrah Federal Building is not the result of the truck bomb itself, but rather due to other factors such as locally placed charges within the building itself.” The same conclusions were reached by the engineering experts who reviewed the study for this magazine: Robert Frias, president of Frias Engineering in Arlington, Texas; Mike Smith, a civil engineer in Cartersville, Georgia; and Alvin Norberg of Auburn, California, the engineer of record on over 5,000 building construction projects.

Undetonated Devices Millions of viewers who watched the live television coverage of the aftermath of the horrendous explosion in Oklahoma City will recall that rescue workers, survivors, and onlookers were twice evacuated from the Murrah Building area because of reports that additional unexploded bombs had been found. Cover-up in Oklahoma, a videotape produced by Jerry Longspaugh of the Citizens Information Network in Ft. Worth, Texas, has captured many of the early broadcasts from Oklahoma City and Dallas concerning the evacuations. Among those reports on the day of the bombing is an interview with Governor Frank Keating, who states: The reports I have is [sic] that one device was deactivated and, apparently, there is another device; and obviously, whatever did the damage to the Murrah Building was a tremendous, very sophisticated explosive device.” In another interview, terrorism expert Dr. Randall Heather says, It was a great stroke of luck that we actually got defused bombs. It was through the bomb material that we will be able to track down who committed this atrocity. In another report the news anchorman states: Two other explosive devices were found that were not detonated and they were larger than the first. But there were more bombs set to go off, according to ATF officials. The discovery of undetonated devices would indeed be helpful in identifying the perpetrators, as well as proving the Partin thesis. Official government communiqués obtained by THE NEW AMERICAN over the past two years appear to confirm these earlier news stories.* These include: The following entries from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol's radio dispatch logs: 10:29 a.m. There is another bomb on the south side of the bldg. Need to get away as far as possible.... Evacuate the area of the bldg immediately, evacuate the S. side of the bldg immediately. 10:33 a.m. Adv CP [Advise Command Post] we [possibly] have another device. If it is the one on the S. side we have already [grabbed] it. Okay. Did you have anything further beside the one on the S. side? [negative]. 10:37 a.m. OC Fire Dept. confirms they did find a second device in the bldg. O.K. Cont. [contact] all troopers and have them move all civilian personnel back 1 more block. 2:00 p.m. Unable to contact ATF. Keep trying they think they have found another device. Have one of there [sic] people contact HQ48 on the north side of the building. ATF Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Georgia, log entry for April 19, 1995 at 11:57 a.m. which states: Two more explosive devices were located vicinity the explosion site. Evidently intended for the rescuers. A DoD Atlantic Command memo from Norfolk, Virginia on April 20, 1995, which states: A second bomb was disarmed, a third bomb was evacuated. 6; A Federal Emergency Management Agency Situation Report for April 20, 1995 which reads: A second and third bomb were located in the building. The second bomb was disarmed and the third bomb was evacuated. However, after the official “line” settled on the lone-truck-bomb scenario, all reports about finding additional devices were labeled misinformation and ascribed to the confusion and rumors that attend all catastrophic events. An alternative explanation which is supposed to dispose of any reports of bomb removal asserts that only several inert training devices of the ATF were found in the rubble. But that story doesn't, It was with bomb squad experts we have talked with, who point out that training devices are always clearly marked as such. To suggest that officials were so incompetent that they would not once, but twice evacuate the area on false alarms, forcing rescue people to leave victims to die for lack of attention, strains credulity. It also does not wash with Roger Charles, a retired marine lieutenant colonel who has been investigating the bombing for the past two years first for ABC is 20/20, and now for Rep. Key; and who has intensively investigated the stream of official communications, is noteworthy that you don't find a single retraction or correction [of the accounts of undetonated devices] in any of the communications. Normally, if there had been updated information correcting false stories of that kind, that's the type of intelligence that would have been relayed back through channels immediately and entered into the logs.” The fact that official sources were still reporting as fact 24 hours later that bombs had been discovered, disarmed, and evacuated would seem to weigh strongly in favor of the position that explosive devices were indeed found. On the Scene Recent eyewitness testimony received by this magazine supports the bomb removal reports. In May of this year, THE NEW AMERICAN interviewed Joe Harp, a retired CIA operative who claims to have been at the Murrah Building on the morning of April 19th. In our interview and in an affidavit, Mr. Harp stated that he flew to Oklahoma City from his home in Texas shortly after the explosion to search for his good friend, Mickey Maroney, a Secret Service agent who worked in the Murrah Building. According to Harp, he flew with his friend Woody Lemons, in Lemons' private plane, and the two arrived at the Murrah Building around 11:00 a.m. His affidavit states: I knew right away that the explosive device that had caused the building damage was not an ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil) bomb, for two reasons: 1) There was a strong sulfur smell in the air that was very reminiscent of the gas-enhanced Daisy cutter” bombs I am familiar with from my tours of duty in Vietnam, as well as other military experience. It was not an ANFO smell. 2) I could see right away from the bomb signature the damage to the structure of the building that there must have been explosive charges inside the building. The truck bomb could not have done that damage from out on the street. Mr. Harp further states: While I was up in the building, the police and fire department started evacuating people from the area because of the discovery of additional explosive devices. Most of the rescuers at the ground level and the spectators evacuated the area, but many of us up inside the building did not leave. I observed members of the fire department EOD removing two devices and placing them in the bomb disposal unit. The devices were military olive drab in color, and the size of round five-gallon drums, with black lettering designating the contents as fulminated mercury, a high-grade explosive. I was also close enough to see what looked to me like mercury switches on the devices, which I presumed were for detonation purposes. I have had significant experience with these materials in the military and so readily recognized them.” The bomb handlers were treating the devices as if they were real bombs, not training devices, he says. According to Harp's affidavit, he and Woody Lemons took residue samples from the bomb site and scrapings from another building across the street from the Murrah Building to a laboratory for chemical analysis. That analysis showed that there was fulminated mercury residue, along with other chemicals, in the sample.” Harp says he originally had intended to take the test results and his testimony to the Oklahoma County grand jury, but changed his mind when he became convinced that there was a leak in the grand jury and that District Attorney Macy's office was working with the Clinton-Reno Justice Department to scuttle the investigation. A couple weeks before this magazine's first telephone interview with him, Harp says a representative of Mr. Macy's office, accompanied by a Texas Ranger and a U.S. Marshall, appeared at his home with a subpoena demanding all of his materials relating to the bombing, including his lab test report. However, in a May 12th telephone interview he said that Woody Lemons also had a copy of the report, as well as other documents and receipts to verify their story, and that Lemons would provide them to THE NEW AMERICAN, along with an interview. Four days later, before this reporter could arrange travel to Texas news stories reported that Woody Lemons, along with his wife and his mother, had been killed when their private, twin-engine plane crashed under mysterious circumstances. Harp said he is sure the crash was no accident and that more than one attempt has been made on his own life. “Somebody doesn't want us to tell what we know, I guess, he told THE NEW AMERICAN during a face-to-face interview at his home.

Other Eyewitnesses

Joe Harp's story of a fulminated mercury bomb is consistent with a 1995 article by Phil O'Halloran in Relevance magazine which quoted Lieutenant Bill Martin of the Oklahoma City Police Department as saying that such a device had been found at the Murrah Building. Martin now denies that report, but O'Halloran sticks by his story, insisting that Martin has changed his earlier testimony. Harp's story is also supported by another important witness, Virgil Steele, who attests to seeing two bombs removed from the building following the evacuation alarms. Steele, an elevator inspector, was among the first to arrive at the Murrah Building after the blast and was one of the few who worked at the site from that day until the building was demolished. Still another witness who has already gone on the record is Tiffany Bible, an emergency paramedic who was among the first medical personnel to arrive at the blast scene. According to Mrs. Bible (see “Witness Floodgate Opening” in our March 2, 1998 issue), she was standing with a police officer after the first bomb scare evacuation, when an ATF agent remarked to the policeman: We found a 50-pound bomb attached to a gas line inside the Murrah Building. There are also many witnesses including survivors of the bombing who reported seeing Timothy McVeigh together with other suspects inside the Murrah Building during the days and weeks prior to the explosion. Were they checking the building's security and planning where and how they would place charges? Those are logical explanations. What is illogical is the FBI's and the Justice Department's apparent disinterest in following through on these potentially vital witness reports. One of those witnesses is bombing survivor Jane Graham, who was interviewed last year and again earlier this year by THE NEW AMERICAN. Mrs. Graham cannot be written off as your stereotypical “anti-government, right-wing wacko. A lifelong Democrat, Graham is a public housing specialist with the federal HUD office in Oklahoma City and president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3138. Mrs. Graham is especially troubled and angry because of the government's failure to follow through on testimony by her and others concerning suspects inside the building prior to the bombing. According to Graham, the week before the bombing she came upon three men on the second level of the parking garage, behind an old station wagon, with what appeared to be plans of the Murrah Building. At first I thought, as I studied them, they were with the phone company, because I saw what looked like telephone wiring,” she says. However, after mentally reconstructing the incident and talking to three other survivors (we have since discovered a fourth) who also saw the strange men in the parking garage, and who experienced the same odd treatment from the FBI, she became disturbed. According to Graham, When I first told my story [to the FBI], the only question asked was, one of the men McVeigh? I told the agent absolutely not.” She was puzzled that she was not asked to describe the men, look at photos, work with a sketch artist, or provide any other information about the incident. “I wanted to know why no one asked questions about the week before the bombing and if anyone saw anything suspicious,” she says. “Apparently the FBI was not interested in any time other than the Monday or Tuesday the week of the bombing. And only if the responses pointed directly to McVeigh. My question is: Why is it that they were only interested if information was related to McVeigh? It appears that the FBI had an agenda which was to only target McVeigh and Nichols.” Arlene Blanchard also suspects a hidden agenda. She was a sergeant in the Army recruiting office of the Murrah Building when the bomb went off. Interviewed briefly for ABC's Nightline program two days later, she mentioned that the suspect depicted in the sketches of John Doe No. 2 looked “very familiar” and that her colleague, Sgt. Marilyn Travis, had seen and conversed with Timothy McVeigh inside the building. The next day she was called in by the battalion commander and, in spite of her serious injuries, subjected to a hostile grilling by the commander and agents of the FBI, ATF and Army CID. Moreover, she says, she was given a direct order not to speak to any members of the press and threatened with court-martial if she mentioned the sightings of McVeigh or John Doe 2 again. Sgt. Travis and other recruiting office personnel were likewise ordered by the commander not to speak to the press, or even to the official investigators, about information that may be material to the case. It is only since her recent retirement from the military that Mrs. Blanchard has been able to speak up. Says her husband, Stan Blanchard, a former member of the Army Special Forces: “Having been involved in covert operations, I am well aware of the need for secrecy, at times, in the interests of national security, but the treatment of my wife and others and the suppression of important evidence in this case has been outrageous.” General Benton Partin was one of the early witnesses to appear before the Oklahoma County grand jury last year. He came out of the hearing very impressed with the serious and respectful attention given to his testimony by the jurors. It is to be hoped that Jane Graham and other similar witnesses will be called to testify also along with many of the FBI agents and officials who conducted the government's investigation. © Copyright 1994-2000 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated The New American - Proof of Bombs and Cover-up; Conspiracy Unmasked! - July 20, 1998

Witnesses Allege Government's Prior Knowledge and Complicity Recent reports surfacing concerning the bombing of the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City are causing many observers to take notice. The trial of Terry Nichols is just beginning, but the truth of the matter will likely remain hidden under smoke and storytelling. As the evidence mounts, a picture emerges which does not weigh favorably for government agencies. The surviving witnesses, and some involved in the investigation who are mysteriously dying one by one, reveal that the government had infiltrated certain anti-government organizations. It is said that the government agents encouraged the use of violence against the government and, in certain cases, seemed to take the lead in pushing their “fellow comrades” into the use of violence toward the government. As the smoke begins to clear, there seems to be a trail of evidence indicating the Oklahoma federal building was being set up for a sting operation. Something went very wrong and the building, with its occupants, was allowed to go up in smoke. With the massive amount of evidence to the contrary, the judge in the McVeigh trial made it plain, he wouldn't permit anyone to call witnesses or to introduce evidence contrary to the government's claim of “one man, one bomb.

THE INVESTIGATION

1. The Cover-up

In a recent interview with General Benton Partin, The WINDS asked the retired military explosives expert about the county grand jury that is looking into evidence of the government's prior knowledge in the Oklahoma City bombing along with many other troubling aspects in the case. General Partin's response was, With the Grand Jury, I think everything possible will be done to thwart it, to keep them from indicting people, but, hopefully, they'll go ahead and gather up all the data and have some indictments. Partin recently gave six hours of testimony before the Grand Jury. He said, “the Governor vociferously opposed the independent investigation, so Charles Key (State Representative) filed to get an Oklahoma County Grand Jury. The judge turned it down and he appealed it to the Superior Court and the Superior Court remanded it back to the judge telling him he had to do it. Then the judge appealed to the State Supreme Court and a five-man panel unanimously sent it back to the judge and said you have to do it. His only option was to go to the (United States) Supreme Court. But you can see the opposition there, from some of the powers that be. But there's no question, there's been a massive cover-up and it's still going. Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key spoke to The WINDS on September 29 saying, “There are some documents (relating to the OKC bombing) that are right at our fingertips, that would be like the smoking gun. It would blow this whole thing open.” In all of the smoke, did the whole truth come out at the McVeigh trial? Will the Nichols' trial be any more honest? Are these trials an accurate representation of what actually occurred on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City? Or was that trial another massive effort by the government to impose the ONE MAN, ONE BOMB story on America? Is the nation in the midst of a massive cover-up with great and sinister implications? The jury in the Timothy McVeigh trial seemed to believe it was just that simple, one man, one bomb, but they made that judgment with only partial evidence. However, there are others, many of whom have invested a great deal of time, expertise, and research into this investigation who believe the evidence paints a far different picture. It would be worthwhile to review some of the original data that was revealed before the OFFICIAL VERSION had been created.

LIVE REPORTS FROM GROUND ZERO

2. The Witnesses

During extensive live coverage, several television news reporters gave an exhaustive running chronology of the disaster. One reporter said, “There were more bombs set to go off, according to Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). The Justice Department is reporting that a second explosive device has been found in the A.P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Another stated, “What we were told at the scene a few minutes ago was that in fact two different explosive devices were found in addition to the one that went off, a total of three bombs. You see the utter devastation that the one explosion caused, here's what we're starting to learn about the succession, or what someone obviously hoped would be a succession of explosions. “The first bomb that was in the federal building did go off. It did the damage that you see right here. The second explosive was found and diffused, the third explosive was found and they are working on it right now as we speak. Both the second and third explosives are larger than the first. Through the good work of munitions experts and explosive sniffing dogs, further tragedy has almost certainly been averted here.” Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating in a live telecast stated, One device has been deactivated, apparently there is another device. Obviously, whatever did the damage to the Murrah Building was a tremendous...a very sophisticated explosive device. Another reporter said, They are saying that this is the work of a sophisticated group. This is a very sophisticated device and it had to have been done by an explosives expert. Other reports revealed “the one and one half-hour delay in the rescue work due to the second and third bombs being discovered.” Firemen wept after having to abandon individuals whom they were endeavoring to pull from the rubble when the area had to be evacuated due to the discovery of additional explosive devices. One rescue worker said the woman he had been trying to extricate from the collapsed building had expired before he was able to return. Dr. Randall Heather, a terrorism expert, says, We should find out a lot when the bombs are taken apart. I think it was a great stroke of luck that we actually have diffused bombs. It is through the bomb material that we will be able to track down who committed this atrocity. These reports were made during the first few hours after the blast. Given a little time the story was carefully altered. Instead of a sophisticated explosive devise, it was a crude fertilizer bomb. Instead of a sophisticated group with explosives experts, it was a single individual with nondescript skills, acting independently.

EXPERT EVALUATION

3. The Facts

The WINDS asked General Partin what level of damage could have been expected from a 4800-pound fertilizer bomb. He said that “it would have blown in the glass in the front of the building, and it would have taken out some of the flooring in the first and second floors, maybe a little piece of the third floor. I don't think you would have collapsed a single column. (Actual damage included the collapse of eight columns). Dr. Rodger Raubach, who took his Ph.D. in physical chemistry and served on the research faculty at Stanford University, says General Partin's assessment is absolutely correct. I don't care if they pulled up a semi-trailer with twenty tons of ammonium nitrate; it wouldn't do the damage we saw there. (New American, Aug.1995). General Partin said, My analysis proved conclusively that there were demolition charges in the building. At least four and there were three other (five-gallon cans) of fulminated mercury that were removed from the building that had fuses set to go off with the explosion but didn't go (off). Three others, and that would have brought down most of the rest of the building.

CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE DESTROYED

4. Strange Practices

An independent investigator based in Oklahoma City has made some interesting observations regarding the handling of the crime scene and the crucial evidence. “Every time we have had a tragedy in this country, whether it's a pipe bomb going off, whether it's a plane going down, or a building blown up, in the past, the precedent has been that you go in there and you put it back together piece by piece, even the pipe bombs, to get a signature so you can understand how it was done, who did it, and if they do it again, you'll know how to catch them, plus you might be able to head it off. Well guess what, in Oklahoma City, they've violated every one of those precedence rules, and they still are. They are still not doing this investigation properly. Why does it need to be done? In order to find out who did it and how it was done so we can protect people's lives in the future. By asking for a proper investigation, you get away from all this conspiracy, anti-government stuff that Clinton and Congress and the press have been throwing at everyone that asks legitimate questions, questions that have always been asked before in terrorist activities. But now if you ask, you're anti-government. (Pat Breilly, Independent Investigator). There were many people who vocally opposed the demolition of the damaged federal building; General Partin was one. “I originally tried to get Senator Nichol's office to get the National Guard in Oklahoma to do an independent investigation because I knew they were lying about what had happened,” he said. “Then I turned out a technical report, this is while the building was still standing, that (report) was delivered to 75 senators and congressmen, trying to get them to take action to keep the building from coming down because I knew they would bring it down as soon as possible to cover up the evidence. A careful examination of the collapsed column bases would readily reveal a failure mode produced by a demolition charge” as compared to damage from a fertilizer bomb. This evidence would be critical in determining the cause of the damage to the building, therefore, General Partin considered it a very urgent matter to delay the demolition of the damaged structure until a careful examination could be made. Just five days after the release of Partin's report calling for a thorough examination of the Murrah building, it was demolished. The primary evidence in this “most deadly terrorist attack” had been destroyed by the government. One knowledgeable investigator said, I don't know who did the damage to the federal building, but I do know who is covering it up.” They not only brought down the building, they cleared out the site, they covered the entire site with dirt. They hauled the 200 tons of building wreckage to a landfill and buried the crime scene evidence. Partin further stated, “I was under the impression that it was laid out for further possible inspection, but we went over to the site and there were guards at the gate; we were not permitted to enter. We were told by people at the site that all of the material was buried.

TESTIMONY OF A SURVIVOR

5. Federal Worker Testifies

Jane Graham worked for HUD on the seventh floor of the federal building. While viewing a video tape of the original television coverage of the bombing, she noticed men who she had seen in the building the day before and again on the morning of the bombing. They were dressed like the building's maintenance workers, but she had never seen them before. On the morning of the bombing at approximately 8:00 a.m. “these two men were coming out of the stairwell on the first floor. Both were dressed in blue pants and shirts like our maintenance workers. They walked by me and I thought at the time they looked so different from our normal people that are employed in our building.” Jane saw three different men in the parking garage beneath the Murrah building who had what she thought was telephone wiring and a block of solid putty-colored substance. They had plans of the building they were discussing or arguing. Apparently, there was a disagreement because one of the men was pointing to various areas in the garage. They were talking about the plans of the building. I assumed they were telephone workers. When they saw me watching them, they took this wiring and whatever else was in their hands and put it into a paper sack, behind the passenger's seat in a...faded green station wagon. Jane's office was on the seventh floor, but she had just gone to the ninth when the blast occurred. In reflecting on this I want to specify that the first bomb, the first impact was a waving effect, like an earthquake, which lasted several seconds. About six or seven seconds later a bomb exploded; there was an entirely different sound and thrust. It was like it came right from the center up, we could feel the floor move. The last thing I remember was looking up and seeing the roof being blown off.” These were two distinct events that occurred. The second blast was not only very very loud, it was also very powerful. Jane gave this testimony as an affidavit. She also talked with the FBI about these incidents, but they showed little interest, only asking if she could positively identify either McVeigh or Nichols.

COUNTERTERRORISM STING OPERATION

6. An Operation Gone Wrong

Lester Martz, the ATF regional director from Dallas who is in charge of the Oklahoma City office, admitted to reporters after the bombing that there was, in fact, a sting operation underway at that time. When asked if it involved McVeigh he said, “I can neither confirm nor deny that. Terrance Yeakey, an Oklahoma City police officer was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the bombing. His observations of federal agents' actions there, his direct interactions with his superiors about the “operation gone wrong”, and his access to documentation dealing with the bombing, led him to make the following statement . My guess is the more time an officer has to think about the screw-up, the more he is going to question what happened.... Can you imagine what would be coming down now if that had been our officers who had let this happen? Because it was the feds that did this and not the locals, is the reason it's okay. The sad truth of the matter is that they have so many police officers convinced that by covering up the truth about the operation gone wrong that they are actually doing our citizens a favor. What I want to know is how many other operations have they had that blew up in their faces? Makes you stop and take another look at Waco. General Partin candidly gives his opinion about the scenario. “There is enough information out there to say without much equivocation the bombing in Oklahoma was a counterterrorism sting screwed-up. If you plan these things and some part of them is goofed up, even deliberately so, you have to cover for what you've done.” Glenn Wilburn an OKC resident who lost two young grandsons in the blast has done extensive research and investigation into the tragedy. He has said, The truth is they had a sting operation going on here. They (the feds) were aware of Tim McVeigh, they were aware of Michael Fortier, they were aware of Terry Nichols, well before the bombing. They had a federal informant working within this group, no question about it. He (the informant) was working with these people in the weeks and months before the bombing.

INSIDE AGENT

7. Let's Pretend We Are Anti-government

Andreas Strassmeir is one of the federal informants who was operating inside the eastern Oklahoma community known as Elohim City. Andy” Strassmeir, a German national who was in this country illegally, has an interesting history with some very mysterious connections. Glenn Wilburn reveals a part of this history. Some months before the bombing, Strassmeir was stopped in a roadblock near Elohim City. The owner of the towing company that impounded the vehicle said Andy could not produce a driver's license, had no documentation, his passport had expired, and he was in this country illegally. He was arrested, taken to jail and his vehicle towed. The next day the owner of the towing service got a call from the governor's office, from the head of the Highway Patrol, from the State Department, from a general at a military base in the Carolinas, and from two lawyers in a conference call, one from Houston, Texas, the other from Germany. All of the callers told him to release the vehicle immediately along with all of its contents (they were very concerned about the contents of a satchel of documents in the vehicle). Wilburn comments that “if Andy Strassmeir is not protected at the HIGHEST LEVEL, I don't know who is. When his identity is revealed we may understand why. Strassmeir is the son of the former German Secretary of State under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The senior Strassmeir was responsible for the peaceful transfer of leadership in Berlin during the fall of communism. Andy graduated from military academy in 1989 at the age of 27. Less than two years later, he was living at Elohim City, an obscure, far right wing Christian identity group in rural Oklahoma.

ENTER THE AGENT PROVOCATEUR

The people of Elohim City were taken in by Andy. Not knowing his real identity, they put him in charge of security for the community which gave him the opportunity to exploit their paranoia. In November, 1994 he spoke openly and vehemently of his desire “to forcibly act to destroy the United States Government with direct actions and operations such as assassinations, bombings, and mass shootings.” Strassmeir proclaimed, the biggest enemy to be the United States Government. [He] forcibly exclaimed that it was time to quit talking and time to start blowing things up. (Roger G. Charles- PRIOR WARNING). Almost all of the many independent investigators agree that the bombing of the federal building was a government sting operation gone awry. Most say the feds were fully involved in the operation which they had instigated through their inside informants-provocateurs. They say the government informants either create situations that otherwise would not have happened, or they accelerate situations when they are working a targeted group. There was an agreement between Germany's Kohl government and the Clinton Administration to infiltrate the Neo-Nazi and Aryan Nations movements in this country and in Germany. Strassmeir was apparently brought in on this undercover operation early in the Clinton Administration. He lived at Elohim City for approximately three to four years. During the latter part of his stay there, Timothy McVeigh made many trips to and from the community prior to the bombing, according to investigators. Andy stayed on at Elohim City for months after the bombing, without arrest, and eliciting no interest from the official investigators. Even after being linked by witnesses to Junction City, Kansas, accompanying McVeigh before the bombing, he has never been mentioned by the government prosecution as a possible accomplice or conspirator in the “most deadly terrorist attack in America”. The Department of Justice has consistently denied that Strassmeir has any relevance to the bombing whatsoever. He was allowed to quietly slip out of the country into Mexico and from there to Germany. When you add the ATF to the Elohim City connection and you look at the communiqués and documents pertaining to Elohim City, and you find Lester Martz's name appearing frequently on those documents, the pieces fit together. THE GOVERNMENT DID HAVE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE. The government very probably could have stopped the operation, but did not. Therefore, this begs the question, who bears the responsibility for the “deadliest act of terrorism in America”? A few days after the bombing, Carol Howe, another inside government agent at Elohim City told FBI officials she had overheard Andreas Strassmeir and white supremacist Dennis Mahon discuss bombing federal buildings months before the attack. Why haven't the feds gone out and brought these guys in? asked Rep. Charles Key.

STRANGE EVENTS

8. The killing of the witnesses

The Oklahoma City bombing has been called the most deadly terrorist attack in America, but a very disturbing series of deaths has continued following the bombing. It is reported that there are eleven such mysterious deaths of witnesses, rescuers and investigators of that tragic event. This could well be the most deadly cover-up in American history. At the time of the bombing, the rescue workers included police, firemen, medical workers and local citizens. These individuals risked their lives in the rescue work, but some of the most courageous workers were later singled out for special treatment. The following account focuses on three individuals. A prison guard, a medical doctor and a police officer. The following documentary is condensed from the research and investigation of journalist David Hoffman.

JOEY GLADDEN - PRISON GUARD

Gladden was a guard at the El Reno Federal Prison where Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were sequestered. While prison officials denied it, Gladden had worked in McVeigh's cell block and had spoken personally to the bombing defendant.” Like Terrance Yeakey, an officer with the Oklahoma City Police Department, Gladden had trouble with his superiors regarding corruption in their departments. Both Gladden and his supervisor, Charles “Chuck” Mildner, were concerned about corruption at the federal facility. “Mildner was subsequently suspended by Warden Thompson. The well-liked and respected supervisor was getting ready to blow the whistle concerning inside corruption. “Also getting ready to blow the whistle, it seems, was Joey Gladden. Like Mildner, the seven-year Bureau of Prisons (BOP) veteran had a good work record, and was well-liked by his peers. Gladden had also received a Medal of Commendation for his role during a prison riot in October of '95. Yet, soon after receiving the award, Warden Thompson suddenly switched tracks, instead blaming Gladden for the riot. Gladden was suspended. Joey Gladden was frightened. The day before his death, the 27-year-old father of two spoke to his first wife, Shelly Walling, and told her, If anything ever happens to me, I have it all written down...right here in my book. When she asked him what he was referring to, Gladden hesitated, then responded cryptically: We don't need to talk about it right now. I don't want you getting mixed up in this too. Perhaps Joey Gladden's diary entry of November 11, 1995, shortly after his suspension, provides a clue: What will being persuaded benefit me? I would be persuaded choosing the lesser of two evils.... I will not let pressure from any quarter effect my ability to resist persuasions. I will never make decisions based on fear, anger, or guilt. “Whatever Gladden was involved in, he obviously didn't want his family to be hurt. He explained to Walling that his insurance policy needed to be squared away, and to get “the book” in case anything happened to him. 'The book,' it turned out, was a lengthy report on corruption at El Reno Federal Prison which Gladden had been writing. If Gladden would not speak directly about what he was involved in, his diary entry of October 25, 1995, may provide a glimpse into his troubled mind: I have seen the Dragon. Every time I see him his scales glow brighter, his eyes glisten maliciously closer, gaping, fanged jawed demon. I felt his hot breath this time. Faith, heart, and steel saved me from death's icy grasp.... On January 14, three weeks before his death, Joey Gladden called his mom. 'He told me they were trying to kill him,' recalled a sobbing Sharon Gladden. I said, 'Joey, honey, it's just the stress of everything...' And he said, 'Mom, the Federal Government has power—you don't know the power. They could assassinate the president of the United States....' “I said, 'honey, things like that don't happen in real life.' 'Mom, just forget it,' Joey replied. 'Don't ask me about it. The least you know about it, the better you are.' 'And three weeks later he was dead!' screamed Sharon Gladden, tears streaming from her eyes.

DR. DON CHUMLEY - MEDICAL DOCTOR

One of the first doctors at the scene of the bombing was Don CHUMLEY who operated the Broadway Medical Clinic located about half a mile from the Murrah Federal Building. Shaun Jones, Chumley's stepson, was assisting him. Jones recalled the scene: Chumley, who was working with Dr. Ross Harris, was one of the few doctors who actually went into the Federal Building while the others waited outside. He had helped many people, including seven babies, whom he later pronounced dead.” Dr. Chumley, like many others, was strongly impacted by the tragic experience. He was a man of integrity and character and, when asked to participate in a questionable and outright deceptive act, he adamantly refused. An experienced pilot with over 600 hours flying time, Chumley's skills were never in question. Yet he was killed five months later when his Cessna 210 crashed near Amarillo, Texas in what are called “mysterious circumstances. It's a pretty mysterious circumstance. There's no apparent reason—there's nothing we can think of, ” said Jones. It was rumored that Chumley was about to go public with some damning information. According to Michelle Moore, who has investigated the bombing, Chumley was asked to bandage two federal agents who falsely claimed to have been trapped in the building that morning. Since the pair was obviously not hurt, Chumley refused. When the agents petitioned another doctor at the scene, Chumley intervened, threatening to report them. When Chumley learned of the government's hastily planned cover-up, he apparently decided to go public. It seems he never got the chance.

TERRANCE YEAKEY - POLICE OFFICER

The following are excerpts from an Oklahoma City policeman's letter to a bombing victim whom he had befriended. Officer Terrance Yeakey was one of the first rescuers at the scene of the bombing. As the letter indicates, he saw many disturbing things and much evidence that is contradictory to the OFFICIAL VERSION of the story. The letter begins, The man that you and I were talking about in the pictures, I have made the mistake of asking too many questions as to his role in the bombing, and was told to back off. I was told by several officers he was an ATF agent who was overseeing the bombing plot and at the time the photos were taken he was calling in his report of what had just went down! Luke Franey (ATF agent who said he was in the building at the time of the explosion) was not in the building at the time of the blast. I know this for a fact. I saw him! I also saw full riot gear worn, with rifles in hand, why? Knowing what I know now, and understanding fully just what went down that morning, makes me ashamed to wear a badge from Oklahoma City's Police Department. I took an oath to uphold the Law and to enforce the Law to the best of my ability. This is something I cannot honestly do if I keep my silence as I am ordered to do. “My guess is, the more time an officer has to think about the screw up, the more he is going to question what happened. Can you imagine what would be coming down now if that had been our officers who had let this happen? Because it was the feds that did this and not the locals, is the reason it's okay. If I tried to explain it to you the way it was explained to me, and the ridiculous reason for having our own police departments falsify their reports to their fellow officers, to the citizens of the city and to our country, you would understand why I feel the way I do about all this. “I truly believe there are other officers like me out there who would not settle for anything but the truth; it is just a matter of finding them. The only true problem as I see it is, who do we turn to then? I believe that a lot of the problems the officers are having right now are because some of them know what really happened and can't deal with it, and others like myself made the mistake of trusting the one person we were supposed to be able to turn to (the chaplain) only to be stabbed in the back. “I would consider it to be an insult to my profession as a police officer and to the citizens of Oklahoma for ANY of the City, State or Federal agents that stood by and let this happen, to be recognized as anything other than their part in participation in letting this happen. For those who ran from the scene to change their attire to hide the fact that they were there, should be judged as cowards. “You were right all along and I am truly sorry I doubted you and your motives about recording history. Everyone was behind you until you started asking questions as I did, as to how so many federal agents arrived at the scene at the same time. I worry about you and your young family because of some of the statements that have been made towards me, a police officer! I am not worried for myself, but for you and your group. I would not be afraid to say at this time that you and your family could be harmed if you get any closer to the truth. At this time I think for your well-being it is best for you to distance yourself and others from those of us who have stirred up too many questions about the altering and falsifying of the federal investigation's reports. “It is vital that people like you, Edye Smith and others keep asking questions and demanding answers for the actions of our federal government and law enforcement agencies that knew beforehand and participated in the cover-up. Don't make the mistake as I did and ask the wrong people. “If our history books and records are ever truly corrected about that day, it will show this and maybe even some lame excuse as to why it happened, but I truly don't believe it will from what I now know to be the truth. I am sad to say that I believe my days as a police officer are numbered because of all of this.” Tragically, just two days before he was to be awarded the Medal of Valor for his efforts in the rescue effort, he was found dead. The OFFICIAL VERSION called his death suicide”. The following facts in the case tell a different story: He kept telling me it wasn't what I thought it was,” said his ex-wife, Tonia Rivera. The story of the reluctant hero was nothing more than a 'thin veil of truth' which covered up a 'mountain of deceit.' There came a time about mid-year where they were forcing him into going to these award ceremonies; as in, 'Yes, you could not go, but we'll make your life hell.' 'I'm no hero,' he would say. 'Nobody that had anything to do with helping those people in that bombing are heroes.' “Shortly after the bombing, Yeakey appeared at his ex-wife's. 'About two weeks before his death he came to my apartment trying to give me these insurance policies,' said Rivera. 'He sat on my living room couch and cried and told me how he had a fight with [his supervisors] Lt. Randall and Maj. Upchurch. He did not tell me what that entailed, but he was scared. He was crying so badly, he was shaking. 'He wouldn't totally voice whatever it was,' recalled Rivera. 'It was like he'd be just about to tell me he'd want to spill his guts - and then he stopped, and he just cried. And that's when he kept insisting that I take the insurance policy. Why would a guy tell you to take a life insurance policy, knowing it wouldn't pay for a suicide? He obviously knew he was in danger.' At 9:00 a.m., May 8, 1996, Officer Yeakey was seen exiting his Oklahoma City apartment with nine boxes of videos and files. He then drove to the police station where he had a fight with his supervisors. He was told to 'drop it' or he'd 'wind up dead.' Driving straight to a storage locker he maintained in Kingfisher, he secured his files. What were in the files? According to one of Rivera's sources, incriminating photos and videos of the bombed-out building. Perhaps more. “While it is not known exactly what transpired next, at approximately 6:00 p.m. that evening, Deputy Sheriff Mike Ramsey noticed an abandoned vehicle in a field. 'Immediately hair stood up on the back of my neck,' said the deputy. Ramsey came upon the empty car which he immediately recognized as Yeakey's. There was blood on both seats and a razor blade lying on the dash. Yeakey was nowhere to be found. The deputy immediately called for a homicide investigator, and taped off the scene. Police dogs located Yeakey's body in a ditch, a mile and a half away. “Dr. Larry Balding, Oklahoma City's Chief Medical Examiner, quickly ruled the death a 'suicide.' Apparently Yeakey had tried to cut himself in the wrists, neck and throat, then after losing approximately two pints of blood, got out of his car, walked a mile and a half over rough terrain, crawled under a barbed wire fence, waded through a culvert, then lay down in a ditch and shot himself in the head. The Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's report described numerous 'superficial' lacerations on the wrists, arms, throat and neck, and a single bullet wound to the right temple. If Officer Yeakey's death was anything more than a suicide, the OCPD didn't go to any great lengths to find out. While his death occurred in El Reno, the OCPD took over the crime scene, squeezing the El Reno Police Department out of the picture. Although forensics are also standard procedure in the event of a violent or suspicious death, especially that of a police officer, Yeakey's car was never dusted for prints. No autopsy was ever conducted. Dr. Larry Balding, who signed off on the Yeakey report is adamant. I can tell you unequivocally and without a doubt that there was no other ME report.' YET, another medical examiner's report - quickly re-dated and hidden from public view - showed a face that was bruised and swollen; blood on the body and clothes was not the dead man's blood type; and multiple deep lacerations filled with grass and dirt, as though the body had been dragged a distance. According to Rivera, Maj. Upchurch denied that Yeakey's throat was slashed at all; yet she was later told by a sympathetic police dispatcher that his throat was indeed slashed - deeply. The report also showed another curious thing. The bullet had entered just above and in front of the right ear, and had exited towards the bottom of the left ear. Apparently, whoever held the gun held it at a downward angle. A person shooting them self would tend to hold the gun at an upward angle. “Perhaps the most revealing evidence was that the wound did not have a 'stellate,' the tell-tale star shape caused by the dissipating gasses from the gun's muzzle. At the close range of a suicide weapon, such markings would be clearly present. And if this weren't strange enough, Yeakey's diet-related condition would have made him too weak to walk the mile and a half from his car to where his body was found - especially after losing two to three pints of blood. In a letter to Police Chief Sam Gonzales dated September 4,1996, Rivera writes:

I have many questions regarding the investigation. What type of weapon was used to inflict the gunshot wound to his head? Who located the body? How could the cause of death be determined with such confidence with the multitude of injuries to his body and how did he walk the distance indicated with the great loss of blood from razor cuts not only to both wrists, but both his forearms as well as two razor cuts to his neck? Not only did he walk this distance, but he struggled with barbed wire fencing to reach his chosen destination to die then inflicted the gunshot wound to himself? I request that a copy of the investigative report of his death be made available to me.' Gonzales didn't respond. Their investigation remained sealed. Not even the family was allowed to see it. Yet while attending a social function, Rivera claims her sister had a chance encounter with the mortician who worked on Yeakey's body. She was discussing the strange inconsistencies of his death with someone at the party, when the mortician, not knowing the woman was Rivera's sister, spoke up. 'That sounds just like a police officer we worked on in Oklahoma City,' he said. When asked if that man happened to be Terrance Yeakey, the mortician 'freaked'. “When pressed, he told the shocked relative that the dead man's wrists contained rope burns and handcuff marks. A former FBI agent and police officer, the mortician said that Yeakey's lacerations were already sewn up when the body arrived from the medical examiner's office. Dr. Balding's response to this was that the marks were merely 'skin slippage', resulting from the natural decomposition of the body. Apparently those covering up his death had not counted on this particular mortician's testimony. Was Terrance Yeakey tortured? Was he murdered, then made to look like a suicide? Did he know something he wasn't supposed to know? Like Don Chumley, Terrance Yeakey was one of the first rescuers in the Murrah Building on April 19. Had he seen something he wasn't supposed to see? Had he heard something he wasn't supposed to hear? Rivera's confidential source 'described in intimate detail, the state of the dead man's car. The seats had been completely unbolted, the floorboards ripped up, and the side panels removed, all in an apparent effort to find the incriminating documents. “One afternoon, while the family was at police headquarters, an officer who Rivera described as Yeakey's 'only true friend,' pulled them off to the side and whispered, 'They killed him.' Yet Rivera's sources have warned her away from pursuing an independent investigation. They said, 'two U.S. Senators would go down' if she pursued it. One of them reportedly told Rivera he wouldn't pursue it 'even if his own mother was in the ground.' (Condensed from the forthcoming book by David Hoffman, OKC Bombing - The Politics of Terror ).

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Today we hear much about global unity, global security, and the global society which we are now entering. The concept is instilled that the horrors of the holocaust, the dark uncertainties of the cold war, the blackness of tyranny will be vanquished by the dawning of the enlightened world society. Tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing will be forever banished. Support of the United Nation's plan, it is claimed, will permit the establishment of world peace. If all the forces of opposition to its full empowerment are quelled, the UN, will in its own benevolent way, secure our future. But how will such an undertaking be accomplished? The peace which is to be imposed on Americans and the world will come in much the same way in which those in Oklahoma City were brought into agreement with the OFFICIAL STORY by force, coercion, torture and death. It has been written: Our State, marching along the path of peaceful conquest, has the right to replace the horrors of war by less noticeable and more satisfactory means. That is, by the sentences of death that are necessary to maintain the terror which leads to blind submission. ... We execute men in such a way that no one but we of the brotherhood will ever suspect it. Not even the victims themselves know of our death sentence and what is happening. They all just die when required and it appears as if from a normal kind of illness. Knowing this, even the brotherhood themselves dare not protest. Protocols. The agenda of the United Nations is founded on the very principles we have seen demonstrated in OKC. As the United States and the world looks to the new millennium, it can expect an escalation of these tactics to be used on an increasing number of “targeted individuals”. In the crushing and merciless force used at Waco.

In the clearly calculated bullet to the head” of the mother at Ruby Ridge.

In the deception of the “guardians of justice” that lead to the deaths of 168 - fathers, mothers and children in the federal building bombing.

In the cover-up that has been relentlessly pursued by those in charge of the investigation.

In the brutal manner in which those who would expose the deception have been dealt with.

In the trial that reinforced the cover-up and protection of those in high positions of trust who were responsible for the operation.

In all of this can be seen the true character of the powers that are pushing the world into the scheme of Globalism. 

Secure in your wicked ways, you thought no one could see you. Therefore evil and calamity will overtake you, and you will not be able to avert it. Is 47:10-11. Justice is turned away and righteousness stands far off. For truth is fallen in the streets, the City's forum, and uprightness cannot enter the courts of justice. Is. 59:14. Written 10/15/97 Copyright©1997 The WINDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Spy vs. Spy / CIA REVOKES JOHN DEUTCH'S SECURITY CLEARANCES

That'll teach him to throw "Hackers vs. Politicians" against the wall. WASHINGTON - In a highly unusual move, the CIA pulled the security clearances for former Director John Deutch, unwilling to excuse his violation of agency rules by keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer. Central Intelligence Agency spokesman William Harlow said Friday he knew of no precedent for the action taken against Deutch, a former deputy defense secretary who spent 38 years in public service before leaving the CIA in December 1996. The decision to suspend Deutch's security clearances was made by CIA Director George Tenet, Deutch's successor. Tenet acted after reviewing an inspector general's report on Deutch's improper handling of classified materials. "Director Tenet regrets that it was necessary for him to take this action, particularly in light of Dr. Deutch's distinguished record of public service," the CIA public affairs office said in a written statement. Deutch issued a written statement through the CIA in which he acknowledged he erred by using an unsecured computer to write classified documents and memoranda at his home. He stressed that investigators found no information was compromised as a result of his lapses. "I respect the decision of the director to suspend my CIA clearances," Deutch said. "As for the future, I intend to do everything in my power to reassure my colleagues at the agency of my commitment to comply with the rules that safeguard classified information." The inspector general's report to Tenet on July 13 is classified. Tenet said it found no evidence that national security information was lost due to Deutch's security lapses, but "potential for damage to U.S. security existed." The CIA normally does not announce suspension of security clearances but did this time because of prior news coverage about the Deutch case, officials said. John Pike, an intelligence specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, said he believes Tenet acted because of the public uproar over allegations that Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave China secrets about America's nuclear arsenal. The Lee investigation has unleashed an avalanche of charges about government inattention to lapses in protection of classified materials. "There was no way they could conceivably explain letting Deutch off the hook" in light of the Lee case, Pike said, even though most officials regarded Deutch's lapses at the time as "the sort of normal violation that is against the rules but is frequently practiced" and not punished. Deutch is an unpaid consultant to the CIA. The suspension of his security clearances makes it unlikely that the relationship will continue, Terrence O'Donnell, his personal attorney, said in an interview. O'Donnell said the CIA gave no assurance when the suspension might be reconsidered. Deutch was CIA director from May 1995 to December 1996. When he was leaving his CIA post, agency technicians went to his home for routine checks to ensure that secrets were properly protected. They found 31 classified documents on a CIA-issued computer not configured for classified work. The Justice Department decided in April not to prosecute Deutch but recommended that the CIA review Deutch's continued suitability to hold high-level security clearances. It concluded that Deutch's security lapses were reckless rather than criminal. In its statement Friday, the CIA said Tenet decided to suspend Deutch's clearances indefinitely in light of the "nature of the security violations involved" and the former director's responsibility as a senior intelligence official to set the highest standards in the protection of classified information. Just last month, Deutch concluded a stint as chairman of a bipartisan commission that assessed the government's preparedness to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, a role in which he relied on CIA security clearances. Associated Press, August 21, 1999

$$$-MONEY LAUNDERING-$$$

London Police Arrest BONY Employee Russians are automatically considered guilty Officers of the UK's national crime squad - an elite unit with the training and expertise to tackle cases of suspected organized crime - yesterday raided the central London home of an employee of Bank of New York and her husband who have been named in connection with an international operation to launder billions of dollars for Russian criminal groups. The employee is Russian-born Lucy Edwards, who has been placed on leave by the bank from her job as a vice-president in London with responsibility for eastern Europe. Her husband is Peter Berlin, also Russian-born and now a US citizen. According to UK company records, Mr Berlin is the sole director and only shareholder of Benex Worldwide. Transactions involving Benex's account are at the centre of the money-laundering investigation. Neither Ms Edwards nor Mr. Berlin had been charged with any crime, a police spokeswoman said. "We can confirm we executed a search warrant at an address in central London where she was living," she said, adding: "We are not prepared to comment further at this stage." Bank of New York said on Thursday it was co-operating with law enforcement officials investigating the use of bank facilities to transfer funds from Russia to other countries. Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, a New York-based senior vice-president, has also been placed on leave. The investigation into the Bank of New York accounts is thought to have been sparked off by information provided by British law enforcement and other agencies which had been co-operating with their US counterparts in combating suspect money laundering operations by Russian criminal groups. Although running for more than a year, the international investigation is understood to be far from complete and fears were being expressed yesterday that its effectiveness may have been undermined by details being leaked to the New York Times, which revealed the investigation earlier this week. Mr. Berlin is also a director and shareholder of International Investment Financial Company, another UK registered entity. The three other directors and shareholders are Russian, a business consultant in St Petersburg and a banker-consultant couple in Moscow. Until July 1998, it was owned by two companies in the Isle of Man. The Financial Times, August 21, 1999

EXECUTIVE OPTIONS / PLUCKING THE GOOSE

Meanwhile, the poor suckers holding the stock are about to get creamed As the US stock market continues its apparently inexorable rise, company bosses have been cashing in billions of dollars worth of executive share options. They were originally intended to focus managers' efforts on shareholders' interests, but many have been automatically triggered by the rising market tide. Because the conditions attached to these options have often been drawn very loosely, it has become difficult to distinguish individual company performance from the general optimism of investors in a robust economy. Options can, of course, be a good way to sharpen incentives. And even when they have made executives amazingly rich, shareholders have been happy to vote through the packages because they too have been raking in their chips from the bull market. Nevertheless the extent to which stock options threaten to deplete the value of companies is coming under increasing scrutiny - as is the size of individual packages. In the UK this week, Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the WPP advertising group, came under heavy fire after it was disclosed that he and 14 colleagues might scoop $100m from the company's latest incentive scheme. As it happens, the WPP scheme is almost modest in comparison with some in the US. This is partly because the managers must invest their own money into the scheme, and partly because the jackpot will only be won if WPP does well against its peers. The shareholders must judge whether this particular package is justified. In a business where talent commands a high premium, investors may be prepared to sign away a significant proportion of their future profits to keep the bosses happy, and increase the value of their company. Rich and poor But against a wider economic canvas, the prevalence and size of stock options raise disturbing questions, especially when the pay-off appears so easy to obtain. Last year, it is estimated that the average chief executive of the US's top 200 companies gained more than $8m from exercising share options and stood to pull in a further $50m from unrealized options. One consequence is a widening of the gap between rich and poor. The average chief executive's remuneration has increased tenfold in the past decade as a proportion of the average factory wage. Whether this is fair is a matter of opinion. However, one test of fairness must be whether other people - particularly shareholders - know and understand what is going on. Share options do not, after all, create money by magic, even if a steadily rising market has made it seem so. Options are a potential claim on the company's future profits and so reduce the payouts available to other shareholders. Unless they are associated with genuinely superior performance, the effect must be to dilute the value of the company's shares. Even when companies are not especially well managed, the depressing effect of options has been masked temporarily by the rising market, and in some cases by corporate purchases of their own stock. And while stock option schemes remained small in relation to company profits, few people bothered much about their effect. Huge transfer But the dilution can no longer be ignored. According to one estimate, 13 per cent of all US shares had been allocated for executive incentive schemes by 1997, and the proportion in some companies is much higher. A study by the London broker, Smithers and Co, earlier this year suggested that the real cost of option schemes for the largest US companies in 1998 was about 50 per cent of declared profits. The value of all outstanding options has now exceeded $1,000bn, almost equal to a fifth of US federal debt. This represents a huge transfer from traditional owners to the managers. Clearly, a collapse in the market would reduce the effect. But a 50 per cent fall in prices might be needed to wipe out all the benefits from existing options. Meanwhile, more needs to be done to curb their unrestrained growth. The most important step would be to insist that the value of stock options is set against reported profits. Earlier this month, the US Federal Accounting Standards Board lost the second round of its battle to ensure that the cost of options was properly reflected in the books. It must try again. If shareholders could see how much the schemes were costing them, they would no doubt insist on tighter performance criteria for triggering options. These have become notoriously lax. In many cases executives get big rewards if their companies do no more than keep pace with the average growth of the economy. This guarantees prizes for all, just like the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland. The Financial Times, August 21, 1999

THE RELIGION BUSINESS // New Modern Image of Jesus Needed // How about the face of Alan Greenspan?)

NEW images of Christ are wanted by an American Roman Catholic newspaper to replace the Renaissance depictions which still dominate popular perceptions. The National Catholic Reporter yesterday launched a competition for artists worldwide to provide images of Christ in any visual medium, painting, sculpture, photography, stained glass and computer art, to celebrate the second Millennium. Evangelicals opposed to religious icons have attacked the contest, but Michael Farrell, the editor of the weekly newspaper, is pressing on with his quest to find "a face, a persona, an image that best represents Jesus at 2,000". The judge will be Sister Wendy Beckett, the British nun and art historian. The winner will receive £1,300 in prize money. The Reporter, based in Kansas City, Missouri, has argued for many years that the Catholic Church has suffered from neglecting its relations with artists. The close relations between the Church and those who built and decorated its greatest monuments have been allowed to lapse to the disadvantage of both sides, it says. A similar pattern has been seen in relations between the Church and musicians, says the newspaper, leading to a decline in standards of new religious music. The Pope addressed the issue this month with a "Letter to Artists" in which he called for a new dialogue between the Church and the art world. He wrote: "Society needs artists. Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place." He ran through the history of Christian art, which began with the symbols used by early Christians as a code to conceal their activities, the elaborate art works of Byzantium and the debate over worshipping icons. He wrote: "The icon is venerated not for its own sake, but points beyond to the subject which it represents." Popular conceptions of Jesus still rest heavily on the works of medieval and Renaissance artists, sculptors and mosaicists. Mr. Farrell says he is not interested in bearded Jesus look-alikes, but rather "an image of Christ consistent with our times". The London Telegraph, August 19, 1999

DEFLATION// CHINA DISCOVERS MIRACLE CURE FOR DEFLATION!

The cure is ... Supply Shortage! (you have to read this to believe it) BEIJING - In a drastic move aimed at reversing a steady fall in prices, Chinese officials announced Wednesday that they would bar all plans for new production of a broad range of ordinary consumer items, from refrigerators and air conditioners to candy, apple juice and liquor. By withholding approval for any new production lines, while allowing existing output to continue, officials apparently hope they can shackle China's deflation, which threatens to seriously undermine faltering economic growth. Prices of consumer goods have fallen for 22 months in a row, causing many factory stockpiles to overflow and prompting price wars among many producers, a phenomenon that Chinese officials are unused to, and apparently uncomfortable with. "Producers have resorted to malicious competition by slashing prices drastically for survival," was how the official Chinese press agency, Xinhua, put it as it announced the ban, which begins Sept. 1. Its duration, if there is a plan for one, was not announced. The ban on new projects also covers the construction of luxury hotels, apartment and office buildings and department stores, which have also suffered sharp falls in price for many months as the market became oversaturated. In many industries, state regulators have imposed minimum prices to try to prevent producers from undercutting each other with price slashing. Meantime, financial authorities have authorized several interest-rate cuts to spur consumption, with limited success. Weak demand for consumer goods has grown out of a serious deterioration in consumer confidence. Many ordinary consumers fear that the economy will continue to weaken, and that it may lead to job loss and a reduction of welfare benefits, including pensions. Some Chinese economists have gently begun recommending that Beijing consider a devaluation of China's currency, the Yuan, to stem deflation. Yet the authorities appear unwilling to do so for the time being, at least until they see whether falling exports and prices can be controlled. "The Yuan is unlikely to be devalued this year and early next year, given China's balance of payments, which is still in surplus," Joe Lo, senior economist at Citibank in Hong Kong, told Reuters. "A devaluation can be an option if exports continue performing poorly and the economy is not improving after exhausting other measures." China's trade surplus in the first half of 1999 reached $8 billion, down from $22.5 billion a year earlier. Exports in the first half fell 4.6 percent year-on-year while imports surged 16.6 percent. At the same time, foreign direct investment declined 9.2 percent to $18.6 billion Government economists have said that if Beijing does decide to devalue its currency, it is likely to orchestrate a gradual process in several steps, unlike the last time it devalued, in 1994, by 33 percent in one fell swoop. For China's leaders, long afraid of inflation and the potential social disruption it could cause, deflation is a new phenomenon that few took seriously until recently. But it has continued for much longer than anyone expected, and now threatens to seriously undercut government projections that economic growth will reach 7 percent this year, compared with 7.8 percent in 1998. International Herald Tribune, August 19, 1999

GOLD MARKET // Consolidation in the Gold Mining Industry)

It's gonna get worse before it gets better The gold mining industry will follow the path of other metals sectors and see more consolidation, while a number of smaller producers may disappear from the business altogether, according to a new industry study. The annual review produced by the Washington DC-based Gold Institute, which represents most of the leading gold producers, bullion suppliers and manufacturers, also suggests that the closure of high-cost mines coupled with falling exploration expenditures mean that production will remain flat for the next four years. It predicts that the industry will produce about 82.9m ounces in 2002, barely changed from the 82m ounces seen in 1998. That assumes that there is some production increase - around 4 per cent - in South Africa, the world's largest producer with mine production of about 15m ounces in 1998. But the report also suggests that this could be optimistic: "The AIDS epidemic sweeping through the mines is having a negative effect on productivity . . . If production continues to decline at the rate it has for the past five years, South Africa will produce only a little over 12m ounces in 2002." In addition, the forecast for 2002 assumes a gold price of around $285 an ounce. The report acknowledges that today's price, of around $255, would probably cause some companies to lower their forecasts. "Unless prices recover, instead of growing 1 per cent, it is more likely that production will decline 1.5-2 per cent a year for the next few years," it concludes. Meanwhile, producers are likely to continue to focus on costs as they battle low gold prices, thus driving the consolidation trend. "The trend, at least in North America and Australia, is toward the industry being dominated by only a handful of players," says the report. John Lutley, president, warned unless prices recover soon, more smaller companies will probably leave the industry. The industry, from South Africa to North America, has already seen a number of junior miners either file for bankruptcy or fold altogether. He also cautioned that the full impact of the sharp reduction in exploration expenditure does not show up in the four-year forecasts, but will probably become evident in the middle of the next decade. "The 2003 to 2005 period is when we'll see that effect," he said. US producers' exploration expenditures are thought to have fallen by about 30 per cent last year, and Mr. Lutley said that he expected further cuts in 1999, with much of the remaining spending being concentrated on existing properties. In regional terms, the report suggests that there will be continued growth in gold production in Latin America, as well as some modest continued growth in Asia - partly due to the Batu Hijau mine in Indonesia - but declines in North America and Australia. The Financial Times, August 19, 1999

JAPANESE BANKING // ANOTHER WORLD'S BIGGEST BANK ?

Or just the beginning of the end of the Japanese banking system? Industrial Bank of Japan, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and Fuji Bank on Thursday confirmed they were discussing an alliance which would create the world's biggest bank with assets of more than ¥141 trillion ($1.26 trillion). IBJ, DKB and Fuji Bank have agreed a comprehensive tie-up which would include setting up a joint holding company as soon as autumn 2000, according to Japanese media. Trading in shares of the banks were suspended, and an announcement is expected as soon as Friday. The three banks are expected to divide their operations into retail, corporate and investment banking sections that would eventually be integrated. The wholesale securities business of the three banks would also be integrated, while affiliate brokerages might be reorganized, the media reported. News of the talks comes amidst increasing pressure for consolidation in the Japanese banking sector, which is among the least profitable in the world. An alliance between IBJ, DKB and Fuji Bank would enable them to benefit from economies of scale and reduce costs by cutting branch networks. It would also compensate for weaknesses at each bank. IBJ, which specializes in long-term corporate loans, is expected to suffer when the Japanese government introduces five-year government bonds in October, and doesn't have as many retail branches as city banks. Fuji Bank is without a presence in the securities business after losing its affiliate Yamaichi Securities, which collapsed in 1997, and would benefit from IBJ's profitable securities brokerage. And DKB, which also lacks a large securities affiliate, would gain from broadening its retail customer base. IBJ, DKB and Fuji Bank, which all posted losses in the year to March 31 after writing off several trillion yen in bad debts, were among 15 Japanese banks that received more than ¥7 trillion of public funds in March. Analysts said the three banks would need to reduce costs and rewrite the business reform plans they submitted to the government in return for the public funds. If the alliance goes ahead, it is expected to fuel further consolidation in the Japanese banking sector, which could see the number of leading banks reduced from 18 to just six or seven. The merged group would assume the mantle of the world's largest bank, succeeding Deutsche Bank, the German bank which is currently the world's biggest with assets of $735.2bn; and beating Banque Nationale de Paris, the French bank currently attempting to create the world's first trillion-dollar bank by taking over its rivals Paribas and Société Générale. The three-way alliance would have estimated revenues of $54bn, exceeding those of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Bank, currently Japan's strongest financial institutions. Its profits would stand at an estimated $1.7bn, and it would employ 41,000 staff in 772 branches. A Nikkei news report stating that IBJ, DKB and Fuji Bank were in the final stage of negotiations to integrate their operations was published in Tokyo 15 minutes before the close of trading on Thursday. Shares in IBJ and Fuji Bank rose by their daily limit highs of ¥100 to ¥984 and ¥953 respectively, while shares in DKB rose ¥91 to ¥909, before the Tokyo stock exchange suspended trading in the shares a few minutes later. The Financial Times, August 19, 1999

CHECHNYA Declares State of Emergency as Russia / Bombs Dagestan - military use of avalanches

The breakaway republic of Chechnya declared a state of emergency at the weekend as heavy clashes continued between Russian forces and Islamic guerrillas in neighboring Dagestan. Chechen military units, especially border guards, were put on heightened alert in a decree which also imposed an overnight curfew and a ban on all media except state television. The move follows Russian threats to bomb rebel camps inside Chechnya and a brief intrusion into the republic by Moscow's troops last week. Chechnya has denied any involvement in the fighting raging in Dagestan's mountain passes. But powerful Chechen warlords appear to be leading the rebels, who have declared a separate Islamic state and a holy war to drive Russia from the North Caucasus region. The uprising, now in its second week, is the worst security crisis for Moscow since the 1994-96 war which ended with Chechnya's de facto independence from the Russian Federation. Yesterday, Russian helicopter gunship and SU-25 aircraft pounded guerrilla positions in what was described as a prelude to a ground offensive by paratroopers to seize strategic high ground in Dagestan's Botlikh district. Moscow has rushed reinforcements to the region and has vowed to put down the insurgency quickly. About 60 rebels, commanded by the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev's brother Shirvani, were buried alive by an avalanche started by volunteers loyal to Moscow, reported Dagestani officials. Russia has sought to deploy a home guard made up of Dagestanis alongside paramilitary and regular army units, a tactic criticized yesterday by the influential leader of another North Caucasus republic, Gen Ruslan Aushev of Ingushetia. Moscow claims to have inflicted huge casualties on the insurgents, including 200 killed and 300 wounded. But the rebels dispute the losses, and it is impossible to verify either side's accounts of the fighting in remote areas of the mountainous, multi-ethnic republic on the Caspian Sea. The London Telegraph, August 16, 1999

ELECTRONIC MARKETS // MCI WorldCom Failure Disrupts CBOT //

Futures Trading There seems to be a problem with the network The Chicago Board of Trade, the world's largest futures exchange, has lost about four days of business on its out-of-hours electronic trading system in the past 10 days because of network failures at MCI WorldCom. The exchange warned traders on Friday that its electronic system, Project A, would be out of action until last night, and launched a back-up plan. MCI WorldCom said yesterday it was working to complete repairs to the high-speed data network and expected to restore it by last night. "Market users worldwide depend on Project A around the clock and MCI WorldCom has let them down for one full week," said Tom Donovan, CBOT president. "As a result of MCI WorldCom's failure to deliver on their promises to me early last week, CBOT is pursuing all available remedies." CBOT, which trades about 45,000 contracts a day electronically, said it had already lost a substantial volume of business because of the network problems. The exchange said it was considering its position in terms of seeking compensation from MCI WorldCom, but would not comment further. MCI WorldCom said: "Any time our service to customers is interrupted, it is important to us. Investigative teams are working to identify the cause of the problem." The telecoms group confirmed that senior managers were working with CBOT officials on the issue of compensation. Under its back-up plan, the exchange has deployed additional screens in the CBOT building and provided dial-up access to members. The problems began at 9.21pm Chicago time on Thursday August 5, when Project A trading was suspended because of a network failure. The system remained out of action until Tuesday August 10, losing business for Friday and Monday. Further problems meant trading had to be suspended again for three hours the following day. On Thursday, CBOT shut down Project A at 1pm because of a power failure in the Chicago region. Trading was due to resume on Friday at 8am but was unable to do so because of renewed problems. The exchange was expecting to have Project A back on line at 6pm yesterday. The Financial Times, August 16, 1999

U.S. Backs Japanese Missiles Race to fill the missile gap with N. Korea. Atomic bombs next?

JAPAN and South Korea have secured American backing to invest billions of dollars developing powerful missiles to counter the increasingly sophisticated arsenal controlled by Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator. On a visit to the region last week, William Cohen, the US Defence Secretary, agreed to demands for help from Tokyo and Seoul as they scramble to increase their defensive capability amid an intensifying arms race in the area. The American allies fear that the erratic and isolated Mr. Kim is developing the capacity to terrorize his neighbors with conventional as well as nuclear warheads. Intelligence agencies in both countries have reported that Mr. Kim has authorized a test firing later this month of the country's latest missile, the Taepodong 2, which is capable of reaching the western shores of the United States. Mr. Cohen conceded for the first time that America would withdraw its objections to Seoul's plans to develop a missile capable of reaching most parts of its northern neighbor, including the capital, Pyongyang. The South Korean Government has demanded the right to build weapons with a range of 310 miles but has been prevented from going ahead by a long-standing treaty with the US. In public, Mr. Cohen gave a warning that there would be "diplomatic and economic consequences" should North Korea launch a missile. South Korean officials said that, privately, the Defence Secretary went much further, promising visible military support in the event of a missile launch, including the dispatch of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, which is based in Japan, Aegis-class cruisers, EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft and reconnaissance planes. Earlier in the week, Mr. Cohen signed an agreement with the Government in Tokyo jointly to develop ballistic weapons that would intercept and destroy missiles heading for Japanese territory. The Japanese are keen to develop a new ship-launched missile defense system that is specifically designed to meet the North Korea threat. Defence analysts believe that Pyongyang has made a quantum leap in its missile programme since it fired the Taepodong 1 missile over Japan last August. The mark 2 version uses a newly designed booster as the first stage and a Scud-type delivery system as the second stage in a configuration that dramatically increases its arc, from just under 1,000 miles to between 2,200 and 3,570 miles. Pentagon officials have told the Washington Times that the programme has been further boosted by Chinese help in the weeks since Nato bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade. Chinese technology sold to the North Korean missile programme includes accelerometers and gyroscopes - key missile guidance components - as well as special high-technology precision grinding machinery useful for building missiles, the newspaper reported. The enigmatic Mr. Kim, an insomniac who is said to spend most of his waking hours in a vast office avidly channel-hopping across a bank of more than 20 televisions, has staked his survival on the development of weapons technology. The North Korean "Dear Leader" has used the weapons programme as a bargaining chip to secure multi-billion dollar promises of aid from the West, even while his regime is earning more than $1 billion (£640 million) a year from the sale of weapons parts to countries such as Pakistan and Libya. Weapons sales generate the vast bulk of the country's hard currency revenue. The North Korean economy has been devastated by a famine now entering its fifth year that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 people and reduced large swathes of the population to dependence on grass for sustenance. Albert Yeung, a Hong Kong-based tycoon, yesterday braved the North Korean economic wasteland to open the country's first casino in a $180 million (£112 million) hotel with 50 bedrooms and eight gaming tables. Mr. Yeung plans to add slot machines and tables for baccarat and blackjack. The London Telegraph, August 1, 1999

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RUSSIAN FOLLIES //

Russian Journalists Attack State Television Now, if U.S. journalists would attack CBS Several leading Russian journalists decided to make rather than break the news this week. The country's best known television anchorman, Moscow's punchiest radio commentator, and the editors of a daily newspaper and a news magazine got together to launch a blazing attack on the state-owned ORT television channel. The journalists, all employees of the privately run Media-Most group, accused ORT of peddling "lies". They also attacked Alexander Voloshin, President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff and the government representative on ORT's board, for misleading his ailing boss about the real state of the country. "We consider that the activities of A. Voloshin compromise the Kremlin, the president and the authorities in Russia. In any civilized country a bureaucrat who openly lies should be sacked," said Yevgeny Kisilyov, the suave presenter of Itogi, the flagship current affairs programme of Media-Most's NTV television channel. Such a direct attack against a public figure was extraordinary even by the rumbustuous standards of Russian political life. But the fact that it was journalists doing the mud-slinging, rather than political rivals, has many Russians worried about the independence and integrity of their fledgling free press. Perhaps it was inevitable that the media would become entangled in the ugly battle for power and wealth in the dying days of the Yeltsin regime. It was always expected that the media would play a critical role in influencing the outcome of presidential elections next July. But Media-Most is testing uncharted waters by being so openly hostile to President Yeltsin's closest allies. The "war of the television channels" began in mid-May, when Yevgeny Primakov was sacked as prime minister, leaving big corporate interests to shape the new government. Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin adviser, oligarch and power broker, placed many of his men in the cabinet and started lining up potential presidential candidates. The state-owned media was an essential instrument in his plans. A Ministry of the Media was recently created to "protect the interests of the state", stoking fears that freedom of expression - one of the most precious achievements of Mr. Yeltsin's presidency - could be curtailed. Although Mr. Berezovsky denies he exerts editorial control over any media organization, the ORT television channel, which is 51 per cent owned by the state, has actively sided with Mr. Berezovsky's supporters, while tarnishing his opponents. "ORT is like a matryoshka doll," says Alexander Pumpyansky, editor of the independent Novoye Vremya (New Times) magazine. "There is a private channel inside a government channel inside a state channel. "Berezovsky is clearly using ORT for his own financial and political goals," he adds. "The mass media are returning to their role as organs of agitprop." Mr Berezovsky's ambitions, however, have met a stumbling block in the form of Vladimir Gusinsky, a former theatre producer who has built Media-Most into Russia's biggest private media organization. His group embraces NTV, Echo Moskvy, a radio station, Sevodnya, a newspaper, and Itogi, a news magazine. Media-Most has further antagonized Mr Berezovsky by backing the presidential ambitions of Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's energetic mayor, who has fallen out with the Kremlin. Mr Gusinsky has not been above using his media assets to further his commercial interests. But NTV has set new standards of objectivity in Russian journalism in its coverage of the war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, and more recently in the refugee crisis in Kosovo. It has also encouraged a more vibrant political debate by devoting more airtime than other television channels to reporting the views of Russia's opposition parties - to the intense irritation of the Kremlin. "NTV is widely regarded as the main pioneer of free speech in Russian TV," says Aleksei Pushkov, a political commentator at TV-Tsentr, a rival television company. "It is the most outspoken and liberal and pro-western TV station in Russia." The animosity between Mr Berezovsky and Mr Gusinsky is intensifying by the day. And in this fight, many Russians fear Mr Gusinsky will be the loser because his finances, unlike Mr Berezovsky's, would appear to be particularly vulnerable. Recently, the tax police raided Media-Most's offices. At the same time, ORT began to air reports on the health of NTV's finances, highlighting its dependence on soft credits and loan guarantees from the giant Gazprom gas company. And from a different flank, Mr Berezovsky's allies are campaigning to remove Rem Vyakhirev as head of Gazprom, which owns 30 per cent of NTV. Mr Vyakhirev's dismissal could signal severe financial complications for Media-Most. But Mr Gusinsky, a veteran of many Kremlin intrigues, knows how to hit back. His NTV television channel has launched a vicious attack against Mr Voloshin in the presidential administration and has been fanning the flames of corruption scandals around the Kremlin. In some ways, the ferocious television war is a healthy sign of the political pluralism that is taking root in Russia. Only three years ago, most Russian journalists supported Mr Yeltsin's presidential campaign, fearing they would be out of jobs if the Communist party returned to power. The fact that newspapers and television stations are likely to support different candidates in next year's presidential elections is therefore a novel aspect of Russian political life. The vigorous scrutiny of all pretenders to power imitates the practice of US media groups prior to American presidential elections. But Mr Pumpyansky at Novoye Vremya fears this process is not being dictated by journalistic standards of objectivity, and that media groups risk becoming the pawns of oligarchs in their power games. At a time when few media outlets are profitable, he says, it is difficult to resist the financial allure of the richest men in Russia. "There is no tradition or practice or culture of distance between media ownership and editorial policy," he says. "The big battalions will decide this struggle. He who has the most money will win the war." The Financial Times, July 31, 1999

THE SPY BUSINESS// CIA Begins Recruiting on the Internet "If you can find our web site, you're hired." ) THE Central Intelligence Agency is advertising on the Internet for new spies as part of its biggest recruitment drive.

It is seeking agents to meet the challenges of the new Millennium, the official in charge of covert activities was quoted yesterday as saying. Jack Downing, who is retiring after 30 years at the CIA, also disclosed that he had called on retired agents to help out in recent crises, such as the Kosovo conflict, and had recently re-introduced parachute training for all recruits. Mr Downing's enthusiastic retreat to the traditional values of espionage follows years of neglect of the CIA by Congress. The covert operations branch has been particularly starved of funds. The end of the Cold War has meant that spying on other major powers has been sidelined in favor of deploying the CIA against terrorism, drugs and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. "There was a lot of resentment," Mr Downing told the Washington Post. "We were being victimized for our role in the past and so there was a reluctance to take risks." But change has come about under the new director, George Tenet, and Mr Downing has found a sympathetic ear in Congress from Porter Goss, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee. Andrew Gimson in Berlin writes: Two Germans suspected of spying for Russia were arrested yesterday, one allegedly "caught in the act" as he boarded a flight from Hanover to Moscow. Secret military documents were found in his luggage, it was claimed. The London Telegraph, July 30, 1999

WHAT THE MEANING OF IS IS // Clinton's Lewinsky Lies Cost Him $90,000The Chinese have already delivered the cash.

PRESIDENT CLINTON was ordered by a federal judge yesterday to pay more than $90,000 (£56,000) over his false statements about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The order was made by Judge Susan Webber Wright, who had found him in contempt in April over the false testimony given in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case. Mr Clinton has already paid Mrs. Jones $850,000 (£530,000) in settlement of her claim, although he has denied any wrongdoing. Judge Webber Wright said the President had shown a "willful refusal" to tell the truth and had given "false, misleading and evasive answers . . . designed to obstruct the judicial process". In her latest ruling, the judge said she was ordering the costs of lawyers to be paid so that Mrs. Jones would not be left with the bill, and to act as a deterrent to "others who might consider emulating the President's misconduct". Mr Clinton will have to pay $89,484 costs to Mrs. Jones's lawyers, Campbell, Fisher and Pike, who are based in Dallas, Texas. The judge also ordered him to pay her court $1,202 to cover the costs of her trip to Washington for deposition hearings in 1998. Mr Clinton's aides said they would not appeal. They were relieved at the size of the order, having feared a much larger, punitive fine from the judge. Mrs. Jones's lawyers had originally claimed almost $500,000 in costs from Mr Clinton, but Judge Webber Wright called this excessive and said it must be reduced. The Paula Jones case centered on her claims that Mr Clinton made sexual advances in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1991, while she was an employee of the state and he was its governor. In gathering evidence to pursue her case, Mrs. Jones's lawyers obtained sworn evidence from him in January 1998 about other alleged sexual liaisons. This included a denial that he had had sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky. Mr Clinton was forced to admit the affair after his DNA was found in a semen stain on a dress belonging to the former White House intern. His attempt to deceive a federal grand jury gave rise to the President's impeachment, although the Senate voted against removing him from office earlier this year. Mr Clinton said the relationship had not fallen under the definition of "sexual relations" provided by Mrs. Jones's lawyers during his deposition, and that his testimony was legally accurate. The judge wrote in her contempt ruling: "It is difficult to construe the President's sworn statements . . . as anything other than a willful refusal to obey this court's discovery orders." The London Telegraph, July 30, 1999

COMPUTER SURVEILLANCE ... WHITE HOUSE BIG BROTHER COMPUTER PLAN
FBI gets your bank records, your phone records, your email Etc.

The Clinton Administration has developed a plan for an extensive computer monitoring system, overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to protect the nation's crucial data networks from intruders. The plan, an outgrowth of the Administration's anti-terrorism program, has already raised concerns from civil liberties groups. A draft prepared by officials at the National Security Council last month, which was provided to The New York Times by a civil liberties group, calls for a sophisticated software system to monitor activities on nonmilitary Government networks and a separate system to track networks used in crucial industries like banking, telecommunications and transportation. The effort, whose details are still being debated within the Administration, is intended to alert law enforcement officials to attacks that might cripple Government operations or the nation's economy. But because of the increasing power of the nation's computers and their emerging role as a backbone of the country's commerce, politics and culture, critics of the proposed system say it could become a building block for a surveillance infrastructure with great potential for misuse. They also argue that such a network of monitoring programs could itself be open to security breaches, giving intruders or unauthorized users a vast window into Government and corporate computer systems. Government officials said the changing nature of military threats in the information age had altered the nature of national security concerns and created a new sense of urgency to protect the nation's information infrastructure. "Our concern about an organized cyber attack has escalated dramatically," Jeffrey Hunker, the National Security Council's director of information protection, who is overseeing the plan, said Tuesday. "We do know of a number of hostile foreign governments that are developing sophisticated and well-organized offensive cyber attack capabilities, and we have good reason to believe that terrorists may be developing similar capabilities." As part of the plan, networks of thousands of software monitoring programs would constantly track computer activities looking for indications of computer network intrusions and other illegal acts. The plan calls for the creation of a Federal Intrusion Detection Network, or Fidnet, and specifies that the data it collects will be gathered at the National Infrastructure Protection Center, an interagency task force housed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Such a system, to be put fully in place by 2003, is meant to permit Government security experts to track "patterns of patterns" of information and respond in a coordinated manner against intruders and terrorists. The plan focuses on monitoring data flowing over Government and national computer networks. That means the systems would potentially have access to computer-to-computer communications like electronic mail and other documents, computer programs and remote log-ins. But an increasing percentage of network traffic, like banking and financial information, is routinely encrypted and would not be visible to the monitor software. Government officials argue that they are not interested in eavesdropping, but rather are looking for patterns of behavior that suggest illegal activity. Over the last three years, the Pentagon has begun to string together entire network surveillance systems using filters that report data to a central site, much as a burglar alarm might be reported at the local police station. Officials said such a system might have protected against intrusions recently reported in computers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces information like the consumer price index that can affect the performance of the stock market. The draft of the plan, which has been circulated widely within the executive branch, has generated concern among some officials over its privacy implications. Several officials involved in the debate over the plan said that the situation was "fluid" and that many aspects were still not final. The report is vague on several crucial points, including the kinds of data to be collected and the specific Federal and corporate computer networks to be monitored. The report also lacks details about the ways information collected in non-Governmental agencies would be maintained and under what conditions it would be made available to law enforcement personnel. Government officials said that the National Security Council was conducting a legal and technical review of the plan and that a final version is to be released in September, subject to President Clinton's approval. The plan was created in response to a Presidential directive in May 1998 requiring the Executive Branch to review the vulnerabilities of the Federal Government's computer systems in order to become a "model of information and security." In a cover letter to the draft Clinton writes: "A concerted attack on the computers of any one of our key economic sectors or Governmental agencies could have catastrophic effects." But the plan strikes at the heart of a growing controversy over how to protect the nation's computer systems while also protecting civil liberties-particularly since it would put a new and powerful tool into the hands of the F.B.I. Increasingly, data flowing over the Internet is becoming a vital tool for law enforcement, and civil liberties experts said law enforcement agencies would be under great temptation to expand the use of the information in pursuit of suspected criminals. The draft of the plan "clearly recognizes the civil liberties implications," said James X. Dempsey, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington civil liberties group, "But it brushes them away." The draft states that because Government employees, like those of many private companies, must consent to the monitoring of their computer activities, "the collection of certain data identified as anomalous activity or a suspicious event would not be considered a privacy issue." Dempsey conceded the legal validity of the point, but said there was tremendous potential for abuse. "My main concern is that Fidnet is an ill-defined monitoring system of potentially broad sweep," he said. "It seems to place monitoring and surveillance at the center of the Government's response to a problem that is not well suited to such measures." The Federal Government is making a concerted effort to insure that civil liberties and privacy rights are not violated by the plan, Hunker said. He said that data gathered from non-Government computer networks will be collected separately from the F.B.I.-controlled monitoring system at a separate location within a General Services Administration building. He said that was done to keep non-Government data at arm's length from law enforcement. The plan also has drawn concern from civil libertarians because it blends civilian and military functions in protecting the nation's computer networks. The draft notes that there is already a Department of Defense "contingent" working at the F.B.I.'s infrastructure protection center to integrate intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement efforts in protecting Pentagon computers. "The fight over this could make the fight over encryption look like nothing," said Mary Culnan, an professor at Georgetown University who served on a Presidential commission whose work led to the May 1998 directive on infrastructure protection. "The conceptual problem is that there are people running this program who don't understand how citizens feel about privacy in cyberspace." The Government has been discussing the proposal widely with a number of industry security committees and associations in recent months. Several industry executives said there is still reluctance on the part of industry to directly share information on computer intrusions with law enforcement. "They want to control the decision making process," said Mark Rasch, vice president and general counsel of Global Integrity, a company in Reston, Va., coordinating computer security for the financial services industries. One potential problem in carrying out the Government's plan is that intrusion-detection software technology is still immature, industry executives said. "The commercial intrusion detection systems are not ready for prime time," said Peter Neumann, a computer scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., and a pioneer in the field of intrusion detection systems. Current systems tend to generate false alarms and thus require many skilled operators. But a significant portion of the $1.4 billion the Clinton Administration has requested for computer security for fiscal year 2000 is intended to be spent on research, and Government officials said they were hopeful that the planned effort would be able to rely on automated detection technologies and on artificial intelligence capabilities. For several years computer security specialists have used software variously known as packet filters, or "sniffers," as monitoring devices to track computer intruders. Like telephone wiretaps, such tools can be used to reconstruct the activities of a computer user as if a videotape were made of his computer display. At the same time, however, the software tools are routinely misused by illicit computer network users in stealing information such as passwords or other data. Commercial vendors are beginning to sell monitoring tools that combine packet filtering with more sophisticated and automated intrusion detection software that tries to detect abuse by looking for behavior patterns or certain sequences of commands. The New York Times, July 28, 1999 The Digital Society

NORTH KOREAN MISSILES:  Screws Tighten on North Korea over Missiles-No more free hotmail accounts if you don't shape up

SINGAPORE - North Korea will be hit with punitive economic sanctions and lose a major opportunity to improve relations with Washington and its two main allies in Asia if Pyongyang tests another powerful ballistic missile, the foreign ministers of the United States, South Korea and Japan said Tuesday. Increasing diplomatic pressure on the unpredictable Stalinist state, they warned that the consequences of missile proliferation for peace and stability in Asia and the Pacific were so grave that Pyongyang had to be punished, despite the possible risk of war. After meeting in Singapore to coordinate their policies on the issue, the three officials said in a joint statement Tuesday that another long-range missile launching would have "serious negative consequences" for North Korea. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that such a launching, "whether declared to be a missile test or an attempt to place a satellite in orbit, would be highly destabilizing and would have very serious consequences for our efforts to build better relations." As Tokyo warned Tuesday that the launching might take place within the next two months, Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura said in Singapore that if it happened it would very likely result in Japan's withdrawing its offer of $1 billion to help build two nuclear power plants in North Korea in exchange for a freeze on Pyongyang's suspected program to develop nuclear weapons. Japan recently approved the money for the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, which is building the plants under the 1994 "agreed framework" pact freezing the nuclear program of North Korea. "It will be extremely difficult for Japan to continue its cooperation with KEDO," Mr. Koumura said. Officials fear that the reactor deal could unravel if Pyongyang continues missile testing. This could prompt South Korea to develop its own ballistic missiles and hasten plans by the United States and Japan to develop a missile defense shield, a move strongly opposed by China and Russia. North Korea sent shock waves through the Asia-Pacific region last August by test-firing a Taepo Dong ballistic missile that soared over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang has said it was a satellite launching, not a missile test. U.S. officials have said North Korea appears to be preparing to launch a more powerful version of the missile sometime this summer that could reach as far as Hawaii and Alaska. Some analysts are convinced that Pyongyang will test the missile. But others suspect that it may be using test preparations to press Washington, Seoul and Tokyo for a better economic and political deal. They note that North Korea has in the past made skillful use of brinkmanship to exact a higher price. Still, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer of Australia said Tuesday that the prospect of another North Korean launching had alarmed all 22 of the Asian, Pacific and European countries, including China and Russia, that met privately in Singapore on Monday for security talks in the ASEAN Regional Forum. "I think its fair to say the unanimous view was that this would be an enormous setback for regional security," he said. "It will not only end the Perry review initiative, and therefore the possibility of greater engagement with North Korea, but a further test will throw into doubt the whole of the Agreed Framework." Mr. Downer said that, at the request of the U.S. government, William Perry, the former U.S. defense secretary, had recommended a new policy approach to North Korea that involved economic incentives and "some sort of diplomatic normality" for Pyongyang if it acted "in a considerably more constructive way on security issues." Mr. Downer said that if North Korea tested another missile, "it will lead to a very serious diplomatic, if not worse, confrontation between the region and North Korea." A Japanese government report on defense published in Tokyo on Tuesday said that the missile program of North Korea and suspected nuclear weapons development posed a grave security threat to the world. It said that the new Taepo Dong-2, with a potential range of 3,500 to 6,000 kilometers (2,200 to 3,700 miles) appeared to be under development. Mrs. Albright said that the United States, Japan and South Korea had stressed at their meeting here that improved relations with North Korea depended on cooperation in security matters. "This means full implementation of the agreed framework, complete transparency on nuclear issues, and cessation of the development, export and testing of longer-range missiles," Mrs. Albright added. Mr. Hong of South Korea said that if North Korea tested another long-range missile, "We can think of holding back all the incentives on offer and, as well, scaling down the speed and scope of all the international or the inter-Korean cooperation programs." The United States has urged South Korea to restrain its own missile program to help persuade North Korea to abandon its program. But Mr. Hong indicated that Seoul felt it must now press ahead with a missile deterrent. "We have to consider that North Korea is rather advanced in its missile technology," he said. "So we should do something to reinforce the real deterrence, credible deterrence, on the part of South Korea." The International Herald Tribune, July 28, 1999 The Financial Times, July 28, 1999

APOCALYPSE NOW / WILL "BIG BANG" MACHINE DESTROY THE EARTH ? 

CREATION OF BLACK HOLE ON LONG ISLAND ?

A NUCLEAR accelerator designed to replicate the Big Bang is under investigation by international physicists because of fears that it might cause "perturbations of the universe" that could destroy the Earth. One theory even suggests that it could create a black hole. Brookhaven National Laboratories (BNL), one of the American government's foremost research bodies, has spent eight years building its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island in New York state. A successful test-firing was held on Friday and the first nuclear collisions will take place in the autumn, building up to full power around the time of the millennium. Last week, however, John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, set up a committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go disastrously wrong. It followed warnings by other physicists that there was a tiny but real risk that the machine, the most powerful of its kind in the world, had the power to create "strangelets" - a new type of matter made up of sub-atomic particles called "strange quarks". The committee is to examine the possibility that, once formed, strangelets might start an uncontrollable chain reaction that could convert anything they touched into more strange matter. The committee will also consider an alternative, although less likely, possibility that the colliding particles could achieve such a high density that they would form a mini black hole. In space, black holes are believed to generate intense gravitational fields that suck in all surrounding matter. The creation of one on Earth could be disastrous. Professor Bob Jaffe, director of the Centre for Theoretical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on the committee, said he believed the risk was tiny but could not be ruled out. "There have been fears that strange matter could alter the structure of anything nearby. The risk is exceedingly small but the probability of something unusual happening is not zero." Construction of the £350m RHIC machine started eight years ago and is almost complete. On Friday scientists sent the first beam of particles around the machine - but without attempting any collisions. Inside the collider, atoms of gold will be stripped of their outer electrons and pumped into one of two 2.4-mile circular tubes where powerful magnets will accelerate them to 99.9% of the speed of light. The ions in the two tubes will travel in opposite directions to increase the power of the collisions. When they smash into each other, at one of several intersections between the tubes, they will generate minuscule fireballs of superdense matter with temperatures of about a trillion degrees - 10,000 times hotter than the sun. Such conditions are thought not to have existed - except possibly in the heart of some dense stars - since the Big Bang that formed the universe between 12 billion and 15 billion years ago. Under such conditions atomic nuclei "evaporate" into a plasma of even smaller particles called quarks and gluons. Theoretical and experimental evidence predicts that such a plasma would then emit a shower of other, different particles as it cooled down. Among the particles predicted to appear during this cooling are strange quarks. These have been detected in other accelerators but always attached to other particles. RHIC, the most powerful such machine yet built, has the ability to create solitary strange quarks for the first time since the universe began. BNL confirmed that there had been discussion over the possibility of "perturbations in the universe". Thomas Ludlam, associate project director of RHIC, said that the committee would hold its first meeting shortly. John Nelson, professor of nuclear physics at Birmingham University who is leading the British scientific team at RHIC, said the chances of an accident were infinitesimally small - but Brookhaven had a duty to assess them. "The big question is whether the planet will disappear in the twinkling of an eye. It is astonishingly unlikely that there is any risk - but I could not prove it," he said. The London Times, July 18, 1999

SUMMER READINGS / GUN, BOOK, AND CANDLE BY VIN SUPRYNOWICZ

This was the week Democratic heir-apparent Al Gore called for the government registration-photo ID cards, fingerprinting, the whole nine yards-of every handgun owner in America. Of course, in a careful minuet, Mr. Gore thus carved out a victim disarmament position slightly more "moderate" than that of his Democratic rival, former New Jersey Sen. and NBA Power Forward Bill Bradley, who surely remembers how to execute the old picket fence. Mr. Bradley calls for the federal registration of every single firearm, historically the last step before confiscation. Presto: Gore the "Moderate." Regular readers will not be distracted by the fancy ball-handling. This has nothing to do with "reducing crime"-crime rates are now falling everywhere, except among police officers, who are now getting dismissed at record rates for torturing and murdering innocent "civilians." (But we wouldn't want to disarm them, surely?) Rather, the goal here is to divide America into two classes. One class will be our rulers and their armed minions, who will dress in battle gear and carry assault rifles and instruct us in our new duties while being "protected by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." The second class will be the rest of us-the tax-paying, disarmed serfs. It was in this context that I sat down to come up with this year's "Summer Reading List," where regular readers will know better than to expect any escapist romps soon to star Harrison Ford in a multiplex near you. (What is with this "Tom Clancy" guy, anyway? Is that actually an individual, or some sort of collective brand name, like "Pillsbury," or "Smith & Wesson"?) If you haven't read it in 35 years, the most important book you can pick up this summer, as we contemplate an America where the armed government goons will soon gather unrestricted power to have their way with us, is Leon Uris' classic novel of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, Mila 18. What abuses, indignities, and outright tortures will a peaceful people endure before they finally take up arms in a desperate struggle against tyranny? (One would be tempted to call it "a hopeless struggle," though in fact the ability of a handful of untrained civilians to hold off battle hardened units of the Wehrmacht for two months in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 stunned the world, and was in large measure responsible for the fact that an armed and free state of Israel was even judged feasible.) The Bantam paperback edition of Mila 18 is readily available. Not so easy to find, yet, is the thinner new novel The Mitzvah, by Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (Lethal Laws), and by veteran novelist and Second Amendment advocate L. Neil Smith (Pallas, The Probability Broach.) The Mitzvah recounts the tale of middle-aged Chicago Catholic priest John Greenwood, who discovers he is actually a Jewish Holocaust orphan, a revelation that forces him to rethink many of his "received" opinions, including the notion that the best solution to an increasingly violent urban America is further victim disarmament. Mind you, in competition for a permanent place in the literary pantheon, Mila 18 is the heavyweight. But if you're looking for an outreach tool for folks who might find a modest 243 pages more easily digestible, The Mitzvah is $10.95 postpaid from JPFO, P.O. Box 270143, Hartford, Wisc. 53027. On the non-fiction front, we would be remiss not to mention that the work of Jim Bovard (The Fair Trade Fraud) keeps getting better. In his latest hardcover, Freedom in Chains ($26.95, St. Martin's Press), Jim seems almost ready to join the radicals, declaring: "The achievements of government will be forever limited by the primary tool of government-coercion. ... The people are irrevocably labeled as 'free' until the government completely wrecks the economy or slaughters a statistically significant percentage of the population. People have worshipped government too long. ... At this point, marginal reforms should suffice only for those who believe citizens deserve marginal lives-lives consisting of what politicians choose not to confiscate and bureaucrats deign not to prohibit. To be overgoverned means lives thwarted, hopes dashed, creativity suppressed, potential squandered, character subverted, and dignity destroyed." By George, I think he's got it. Finally, in the video aisle, producer Mike McNulty (the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement") reports September is now the target date for release of his sequel, "Waco: A New Revelation," which promises further documentation of the purposeful use of government snipers to keep women and children trapped in the burning building on the day of the Branch Davidians' final incineration, while federal agents blocked access to fire engines. (A federal judge in Texas ruled this month those very charges have sufficient credibility to go forward at trial, with sniper Lon Horiuchi-the killer of Vicky Weaver-as a named defendant.) Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, is author of the new book Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement 1993-1998. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 18, 1999

CHINA vs. TAIWAN / TAIWAN DEFIANT IN FACE OF BEIJING BACKLASH Coming Soon:

Trade blockade, missile tests, seizure of Quemoy Islands? CHINA is to stage military exercises as a warning to Taiwan following the country's decision to scrap its "One China" policy. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and fears that the decision could be a possible step toward independence. Taiwan's announcement last week that it would abandon the "One China" policy marks the start of a bitter contest between the mainland and the prosperous island that has been ruled as a separate entity since 1949. The uneasy peace since the end of Chinese missile tests in March 1996, is set to be shattered by a new set of maneuvers designed to disrupt shipping and trade, and undermine public confidence. Military analysts believe that the People's Liberation Army has identified three options for its campaign - a trade blockade of Taiwan, a new round of missile tests similar to those three years ago, or an invasion of one or more of the Quemoy Islands which belong to Taiwan and are close to the Chinese mainland. Taiwan's decision to redefine its relationship with Beijing as "two states within one nation" rather than "two equal entities within one nation" drew a furious reaction from the mainland. But most analysts doubt that China has the capacity to recover Taiwan in a full-scale invasion, given the island's superior air and sea forces, though its capacity to cause chaos has been proven. Rumors of an imminent strike from China caused panic among Taiwanese investors on Friday and Saturday. Shares slumped as traders reacted to PLA warnings that it stood ready to smash any attempts to split the country. One Chinese analyst with close ties to the military expects the PLA to unveil its threat gradually from August 1, the anniversary of its foundation 71 years ago. In the first signs that China was preparing for confrontation, troops in the Nanjing military region were placed on heightened alert. Western intelligence believes that China has tripled the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan in the past two years to almost 200 and has plans to increase that figure to 650 by next year. It is also said to be developing a weapon similar to the Tomahawk cruise missile to deploy around Taiwan. Taiwan's increasingly assertive stance stands out as a blot on the record of the Beijing government at a time when it is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary in power on October 1 and the return of Macau from Portuguese rule in December. Hong Kong newspapers said yesterday that Chinese exercises, involving army, air force and navy units, would steadily increase in intensity ahead of the October anniversary as the leadership showcased the country's military capability. The campaign is likely to continue beyond October because Beijing now sees the outcome of the Taiwanese presidential election next March as crucial to its hopes of reuniting the Chinese motherland. While the Communist party leadership will be relieved to see President Lee Teng-hui, whom it branded last week a "sinner for 1,000 years", retire from politics, it will be keen to ensure a successor who will back away from the gradual approach toward independence. Beijing favors James Soong, a former governor of Taiwan who left the ruling party Kuomintang on Friday to pursue an independent bid for the top office. Mr Soong, who was born in China, backs negotiation with Beijing and the resumption of direct communication with the mainland. The London Telegraph, July 18, 1999

TWA BIG BROTHER / THE FBI AND FLIGHT 800 / A MISSILE EXPERT CRIES COVER-UP!

The Flight 800 investigation, still at a loss to explain the tragedy, has the right stuff for a thrilling spy novel. Government flacks easily spin the lazy mainstream media to sedate the nervous public. Meanwhile, a band of military insiders heads for the Internet (http://twa800.com) and reaches out to a few sympathetic independent journalists to convince readers that the truth is being hidden. For some reason-at this point only a fiction writer could provide one-many observers believe that the government is covering up the disaster's most likely explanation: it was a missile that three years ago this week, 10 miles south of Long Island, brought down the Paris-bound 747, killing all 230 aboard. As the investigation's third anniversary passes, the mystery is deepening. A few months ago, a retired army officer bearing impressive credentials approached the Voice as an intermediary for a missile expert with a story to tell. This expert is extremely fearful of losing his job-for more than 20 years he's been a military engineer who specializes in infrared missile technology. Assured of anonymity, he submitted to lengthy interviews by telephone and e-mail, detailing why he believes the investigation of TWA Flight 800 is a cover-up. After spending more than $40 million on the investigation, the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board have not found a definitive answer for why the center fuel tank exploded. Yet they have ruled out a missile as the cause. The NTSB believes an undetermined system flaw produced an electrical spark that ignited jet fuel vapors in the tank. Prior to the official embrace of this mechanical explanation, the missile expert was among several scientists invited by FBI agents to explore the missile theory. He was made privy to evidence suggesting that TWA 800 could have been shot down, consisting of eyewitness accounts of a "flare-like object" shooting skyward moments before the plane exploded. Later he examined the debris in the Calverton hangar. The missile expert has also been in contact with military labs where, he says, the chemists have been unable to make jet fuel vapor explode as the NTSB says it did in TWA 800's center fuel tank. "The labs told the NTSB there's a big problem-it can't happen." The NTSB wouldn't listen. He says, "They were adamant that [the labs] had to find something." The evidence adds up, the missile expert believes, to a "70 percent chance" that TWA 800 was downed by a shoulder-launched missile. Like others who have spoken to the Voice, the expert is exasperated with what he sees as a corrupted investigation. Asked why he is speaking up now, he says, "I wanted someone to look at the truth, not whitewash it away." The missile expert says his unit was summoned by the FBI quite early in the investigation and asked to review the eyewitness accounts and check out the potential for a successful missile hit. "We talked to Ted Otto and Steve Bongardt"-two agents assigned by FBI assistant director James Kallstrom to examine the missile theory. "We picked missiles and ran computer simulations and shipped the data to Bongardt," the Voice source says. The data showed that virtually any post-Vietnam era shoulder-launched missile would have had the range and infrared seeker capability to reach the plane at 13,700 feet, he says. But it was the eyewitness accounts that most impressed the expert-the investigation has compiled more than 100 eyewitness interviews reporting a streak of light ending in a flash or explosion, apparently contradicting the official scenario. "When we discussed this with the FBI, they said some of these people were very credible," he recalls. "The most compelling account was from a female witness, as I remember, who reported something with a small flame rising from the ocean trailing a faint smoke trail. The flame was reported to have burned out after about six or seven seconds with a puff that was seen when it hit the aircraft at about 10 seconds. I can tell you that this testimony, if the recounting is accurate, is about as precise as you can get on what you would see from a shoulder-fired infrared SAM [surface-to-air missile]." The accounts were so persuasive, he says, that Otto and Bongardt arranged a meeting in Washington, D.C., in late '96 to discuss them and other data. A high-powered group convened around the table-the CIA and other military and intelligence agencies were represented but not the NTSB. "We took a vote, and almost everyone said the plane was shot down," the expert says. Only the CIA remained silent. "The CIA was very quiet." Someone asked if there was a warning prior to the disaster of a terrorist attack. "The CIA wouldn't say," he recalls. Asked about this meeting, the FBI's Kallstrom says, "It never happened," though he allows, "There might have been a meeting where underlings were speculating, but I don't have any knowledge of it." The CIA at the time was developing its theory that eyewitnesses to the crash saw not a missile but the burning plane itself as it reared up and climbed several thousand feet after the explosion. The Voice missile expert source has no patience with the CIA's point of view. He insists that the eyewitness accounts "are information that cannot be denied." And there was more-the expert mentioned a videotape shot by a man on Long Island one night during the weeks preceding the crash, which appeared to show a rocket trail rising skyward. "The FBI showed it to us as interesting evidence," the expert says. It looked like the trail of a missile, he adds. FBI assistant director Kallstrom, now retired from the agency, says he doesn't recall any such video. Later in the investigation, only a month or so before Kallstrom shut down the criminal investigation in late '97 for lack of evidence, Bongardt called the missile expert and invited him to Calverton to view the wreckage. What he saw there hardened his suspicions. "The left wing root near the center fuel tank was clearly a potential impact point, since much of it was missing or badly damaged," he wrote in an e-mail. In an interview he added that together with the left-side wall of the center fuel tank and the left wing, these areas exhibited "a lot of damage which was not well explained, as far as we were concerned....The metal there looked like something very violent happened." The NTSB's reports confirm the view that the damage on the left side of the plane was of a different order from the damage on the right side. While the left wing upper skin, for example, was shattered into many small fragments, most of the right wing was recovered in one large chunk that had to be cut up into several pieces before it would fit onto a flatbed truck for the journey from East Moriches to Calverton. In its Sequencing Report the NTSB says that the left wing damage is consistent with "extremely high-strain energy release associated with water impact," but does not suggest why the right wing should have escaped similar damage. The missile expert interviewed by the Voice says that part of the problem was a lack of time to thoroughly examine the debris for clues. In fact, he says his group proposed that the FBI extend its investigation to evaluate the left-side damage. "The recommendation was verbal and in a letter that we sent the FBI looking to do some additional work on the case with funding from the FBI," he says. "They never replied." Bongardt asked him for a formal report, he says, but before he could write it, Kallstrom ended the criminal probe. Kallstrom told the Voice he doesn't recall any military experts recommending an extension of the investigation. Kallstrom insists, "It was unanimous among all the experts" that nothing was seen in the damaged metal to warrant further scrutiny. Kallstrom's "unanimous" claim is open to dispute. Richard Bott, of the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, testified at a Baltimore hearing during the investigation that he had seen no evidence of a missile on any of the debris. But just a few days earlier he had signed off on a report, called "TWA Flight 800 Missile Impact Analysis," in which he drew attention to what he called "unexplained damage characteristics" that "puzzled" investigators. He recommended further tests before conclusively ruling out a missile as the cause of this damage to the left wing upper skin, the left wing front spar, and the left side of the center fuel tank. Bott did not return repeated phone messages left by the Voice. The missile expert the Voice interviewed says of the Bott report, "Much of what he states was brought up in discussions of our people." The expert insists that those discussions took place over a year before he first heard of Bott and read his report. Kallstrom is apparently indifferent to Bott's concerns. He says, "I wouldn't put much credence in that-I've got a huge pile of expert opinion to the contrary." The missile expert the Voice interviewed still insists that a forensic team should "take a real hard look" at the left side, and rule in or rule out a missile. But he also admits that the region of damage that would bear clues of the explosion of a shoulder-launched missile-which has a small warhead-would be quite small, and could easily be among the large areas of the left wing front spar and left side of the center fuel tank that are among the 5 percent of the plane that was never recovered. Voice interviews with a number of metallurgists and experts in explosives confirmed that unless investigators are able to identify the area-perhaps only a few inches across-where the explosion first impinged on the metal, it's impossible to tell what caused the structure to fail. One author of a book on explosives who has worked on government projects told the Voice, "You're looking at something bent and fractured, but to tie it to a pressure source is very difficult." Several metallurgists suggested that explosive residue on the debris would point unambiguously to a high explosion. In August '96, traces of PETN and RDX, both ingredients of the plastic explosive also found in some missile warheads, were indeed detected in recovered debris from Flight 800's passenger cabin. It seemed as if at last evidence had been found proving that a terrorist bomb or a missile had downed the aircraft. But shortly afterward it was claimed that a month before the crash the same 747 was used for a bomb-sniffing-dog exercise. Some of the explosives used, according to this account from the FBI, were apparently in poor condition and could easily have spilled. This explanation was itself recently thrown into doubt by Victoria Cummock, a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, established by President Clinton in the wake of the ValuJet and TWA 800 disasters and chaired by Vice President Al Gore. Cummock, an advocate for victims' families since her husband was killed on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, told the Voice that when she asked at an FBI briefing to see the FAA log for the training exercise, "they said, 'It's not conclusive this particular plane was involved.' They couldn't produce the log." Nevertheless, Kallstrom says, "It's absolutely confirmed that it was that plane." And there, with the dog-sniffing dispute between Cummock and the FBI, we have another juicy subplot within the larger enigma of the TWA Flight 800 story, which like any good spy novel should continue to tantalize until the final chapter. Tell us what you think.editor@villagevoice.com  The Village Voice, July 14-20, 1999

SPY vs. SPY // CIA ADMITS SPYING ON BRITISH CABINET MINISTER//

Genetically modified politicians ... CIA agents have secretly investigated the environment minister Michael Meacher, The Telegraph can reveal. Mr Meacher said last night that he was "astonished" after the US government confirmed that the CIA keeps a file on him. Compiled recently, it is believed to contain details of Mr Meacher's reservations about genetically-modified foods, which Washington promotes in Europe. The CIA last night refused to release details of the contents of its file, described by another department as a "biographical profile". Inquiries by The Telegraph have uncovered no other files compiled by the CIA on British ministers. Environment groups expressed alarm over the CIA's actions. Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "The immediate fear is that the CIA is working hand in glove with Monsanto [the US biotechnology company] to do anything they can to force this technology down our throats whatever democratic politicians say. It would be dynamite if this file has anything about Michael Meacher's track record on genetically modified crops and foods. What business is it of the CIA's to worry about any politician's views about biotechnology products?" With the US pressing for GM products to be allowed more freely into Britain - despite British consumers' worries - GM food is emerging as a potential source of conflict between the two countries. President Clinton is known to have had several conversations on the subject with Tony Blair and US diplomatic missions abroad have been ordered to promote the GM industry. The existence of the CIA file on Mr Meacher came to light after The Telegraph conducted inquiries using the US Freedom of Information Act to ask whether Government agencies held any information about British ministers. Most agencies and departments said they had nothing. A small number of departments replied that they had drawn up conventional briefs to prepare their own staff for visits to Washington by British ministers. The briefs, which were drawn from published and embassy sources, were freely disclosed to The Telegraph. However, the US Environmental Protection Agency - Mr Meacher's counterpart department - said it held a file on him but could not disclose it because it "originated within the Central Intelligence Agency". The EPA could not say whether it held the complete file, or whether its holding was part of a larger CIA file. A spokesman, Lynn Schoolfield, said: "We have a biographical profile of Mr Meacher which was compiled by the CIA. But I don't think it's of any great concern. There's nothing to worry about here." The CIA said that it could not release Mr Meacher's file. A spokesman said: "We never comment to the press on the contents of files." Mr Meacher said he had "no idea" why the CIA had information on him. "I am astonished. I find it interesting, but I have no idea what the reason might be." Mr Meacher refused to comment on the action he may now take, but he is likely to raise the matter with the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, and with the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. Within the Government, Mr Meacher has been the most cautious on GM crops, insisting that none should be grown commercially before trial plantings establish whether they pose an environmental risk. He is also reconstituting the main committee advising ministers on GM foods to reduce the number of members with links to the biotechnology industry. Mr Meacher's background is on the Labour hard Left, but no more so than several other key figures in the Blair government. He led Tony Benn's campaign for the Labour deputy leadership in 1981 and was a member of the shadow cabinet before the 1997 election, but was not appointed to the Cabinet after Labour's election victory. He is well regarded by environmentalists. The London Telegraph, July 11 1999

DRUG DISTRIBUTION // FAST CARS GO BETTER WITH COKE //

Formula One linked to cocaine smuggling 

FORMULA ONE racing has been linked to cocaine smuggling amid allegations that grand prix cars may have been used to conceal drugs as they are transported around the world. Customs officers revealed last week that they have been monitoring the movement of Formula One personnel and equipment through Dover. Officers say they were tipped off by an informant in the motor racing world 18 months ago. The disclosure follows an earlier inquiry by Scotland Yard drug squad detectives. Codenamed Operation Equipment, their investigation was sparked by details given by two informants that individuals within F1 were using the sport as cover for international drug trafficking. Two of the detectives involved told Insight that racing cars and their containers have allegedly been used to conceal cocaine. They say traffickers allegedly took advantage of the shipment of vehicles as cover to bring drugs into Britain and the Continent from South America. The drugs were believed to have been stashed in car parts and equipment and then placed in containers which were transported across the world. "Formula One teams do a lot of practice in Spain, Portugal and France. Stuff might be coming through there and then into Britain," said a source. At one point in their inquiries, Scotland Yard detectives considered putting an undercover policeman inside Formula One. They planned to ask Nigel Mansell, the former British world champion and a special police constable, to help them get their man in. Mansell said last week he was unable to comment. The wife of one well-known British driver revealed that she saw "white packages", believed to be cocaine, being put inside a container in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. She said that F1 transporters were rarely searched: "After all, these guys are heroes. All anyone wants is an autograph. The containers were used to ship all sorts of goods. I saw white packages loaded into a container. I guessed it was cocaine," she said. Jackie Oliver, the former grand prix driver, said he was aware of an inquiry into alleged trafficking. He said F1 equipment had been seized on its way back from South America. "They pounced on all the equipment coming back from the Brazilian Grand Prix and held it up for days in customs while they went through everything with a fine tooth comb. We all complied and gave them full access and they got their sniffer dogs and went round everything - and never found anything." A third source close to several F1 teams said he had heard that containers had been secretly used to transport drugs and money, adding that he had been interviewed by police about their investigation. Customs officials in Dover confirmed last week they had recently received instructions from head office in London to monitor Formula One teams and their equipment as they entered this country. "We have previously been successful in finding drugs in vehicles associated with motor sport, and Formula One teams using the port will be treated to the same level of scrutiny," said Nigel Knott, customs spokesman for southeast England. "When you're talking about 15-metre trailers, the potential for hiding drugs is phenomenal. And there is more than one vehicle per team. "There are at least 11 competing Formula One teams, each with more than a 100 members. Along with scores of hangers-on, hundreds of people have access to grand prix cars and their containers. Police sources say the high-profile nature of some teams makes it easier for them to travel unhindered across international borders. They suspect a number of rogue individuals have taken advantage of this. One of the men named by their informants is a convicted cocaine smuggler with links to figures in F1. Last week the man, a London businessman, told The Sunday Times he was aware he had been under surveillance and that he had complained to Scotland Yard that he had been harassed and threatened by police. Describing the allegations of a cocaine link to F1 as a "complete fairytale", he said he believed police had tried to entrap him in a "sting" operation involving hidden cameras. It is not the first time that motor racing has been implicated in drugs trafficking. In 1990 Johnny Herbert, the Formula One driver, told the Old Bailey he had been unwittingly sponsored by a man who, it turned out, had masterminded a £18m cannabis smuggling ring. Paul Newman, a London businessman, had his own box at Brands Hatch and used his drugs profits to set up two motor racing teams. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Herbert told the trial he did not realize there was any drugs connection. The Scotland Yard inquiry into Formula One was inconclusive but its existence was confirmed by Derek Todd, the former head of its central drugs squad. Duncan MacLaughlin, a former drugs squad detective in charge of the investigation, also revealed that allegations from within the motor racing world had been made that F1 was being used as a front for cocaine trafficking. It is believed that Bernie Ecclestone, the boss of Formula One, became aware of the inquiry 18 months ago after news of the operation started circulating within F1. MacLaughlin said Ecclestone had telephoned him in November 1997 to offer full co-operation. During Operation Equipment, police traveled to Los Angeles in 1995 to liaise with drug enforcement officers about an investigation there into money-laundering and F1. Scotland Yard has also made inquiries in Tokyo where evidence emerged of a possible link between some F1 individuals and drugs money laundering for the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza. MacLaughlin left the Metropolitan police last year and now runs a security consultancy that numbers Damon Hill, the former British world champion, among its clients. Ecclestone declined to discuss the affair last week. But an aide said: "He did not have any knowledge or evidence that individuals within F1 were doing anything of the sort [drug smuggling]. If he had information or evidence, he would have taken it to the police. "Scotland Yard said this weekend that drug operations were now the responsibility of the National Crime Squad. A spokesman for the squad said: "We do not discuss our ongoing inquiries. "A 32-year-old Royal Navy serviceman was being questioned by police yesterday on suspicion of manslaughter after an accident at Silverstone motor racing circuit that left one man dead. The accident happened when an open-top MG sports car drove onto the grand prix circuit, then spun off and overturned. Three men managed to crawl free, but a fourth died at the scene. The driver was later arrested. The man who died, aged 35, had not been named last night at his family's request. He was based at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton in Somerset and came from Salisbury. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence confirmed that the other three, including the man who has been arrested, were from 771 Squadron, based at RNAS Culdrose in Helston, Cornwall. The accident happened just before 11pm on Friday night. The driver and the other two men, aged 36 and 40, were later taken to Northampton General Hospital and were discharged after treatment for minor injuries. The driver was then arrested and taken to Daventry police station for questioning. The men had all been off duty and were there as spectators, the MoD said. The London Times, July 11, 1999

Spy vs. Spy: NATO Secrets on Missing Laptop Secret Briefing One:

How Terrorists Get Security Passes SENSITIVE military secrets have been stolen in a second major security bungle involving a laptop computer. The portable PC belonging to Royal Navy Commander Paul Lloyd, was taken from a car in Pinner, Middlesex overnight on June 26. A security source told the Sunday Mirror: "This is a major security breach. "The laptop contains secret and highly sensitive information, which would be particularly useful to terrorist organizations." "This is the worse security lapse in 10 years," added the source. "It is being dealt with at the highest level. "Commander Lloyd is a staff officer at the secretive tri-service Permanent Joint Headquarters, at Northwood, Middlesex. He is involved in daily briefings with Nato bosses and helped plan the Kosovo war and peace-keeping campaign. Commander Lloyd has also been involved with the Trident nuclear submarine programme. Amazingly, the computer, which police have been told contains "top secret/classified" material, was not protected by a password. The laptop, manufactured by the firm Leo, was in a black leather carry-case. The thief also took two high-level security passes in the name of Commander Lloyd along with his combat fatigues with their commander's insignia. Police have warned the passes allow access to Ministry of Defence and naval sites. A source said: "Commander Lloyd is a high flyer with a exemplary service record. It is highly embarrassing that this has happened to him." The MOD says the laptop did not hold information on the Balkans campaign or any Trident nuclear secrets. '"Commander Lloyd has not been suspended. No decision has been made on disciplinary charges. The Sunday Mirror, July 11, 1999

Russian Follies Russian Spies Penetrate NATO's Eastern Front Files for blackmailing politicians

POLISH counter-intelligence has arrested three army officers on charges of spying for Russia, as evidence grows that Moscow has established networks of agents on Nato's newly-created eastern front. Reports in Warsaw suggest all three were colonels in military counter-intelligence, the nerve centre of Poland's armed forces. They were unmasked by a Russian double agent "bought" by Polish intelligence. The arrests were made in the past two weeks, even though the Polish authorities were first informed of the officers' alleged spying activities in the early 1990s. The officers were left to continue in their jobs, but were moved to less sensitive posts. Polish newspapers suggested that intelligence chiefs postponed the arrests to protect the identity of their Russian source. The military and the government have played down the significance of the incident - the Prime Minister, Jerzy Buzek, last week claimed that two of those detained had retired, while the third held no post with access to important information - but public accusations of spying will deepen Poland's longstanding enmity with Russia, still smarting from the expansion of Nato into its former client states four months ago. But a different story was emerging elsewhere. A counter-intelligence officer said he was shocked by what the officers were alleged to have handed to Russia. He said: "It appears they would pass on everything they knew, without hesitation." The chairman of parliament's secret service committee described two of the arrested men as key officers with access to top-secret papers. The scandal is the most serious since communism's collapse 10 years ago. Although there have been many accusations of treason in Poland, few spies have been caught. Jozef Oleksy resigned as prime minister three years ago after an "imprudent" friendship with a KGB agent, but was never prosecuted. Until the current case, the worst proved incident was when Polish agents swooped on Major Marek Zielenski, a secret policeman, as he handed papers to a Russian military attaché in 1993. He was sentenced to nine years. According to government spokesmen, the officers worked for the Soviet Union until its collapse after the 1991 coup and then, without pause, for Boris Yeltsin's new Russian state. All three were commissioned during the communist era and were said to be motivated by pro-Russian sentiment. They are untypical. Most Poles remain anti-Russian, pro-Western sentiment is strong and intelligence ties are close. One of America's greatest spies was the Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who passed 300,000 classified documents to the CIA in the 1970s. But the West has long feared that Russian intelligence, the SVR, left high-quality espionage networks behind when it completed its withdrawal from central Europe in 1991. In intelligence terms, the pay-offs could be enormous. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined Nato in March and now constitute the alliance's eastern front. Officials in Warsaw acknowledge that they are a prime target for Moscow's shrunken but still potent spy machine. According to Captain Robert Kowal of military counter-intelligence: "As a new Nato member, we are an object of special interest for secret services from our eastern neighbors. We are now on the border of the alliance and we are being watched very closely by the Russians." Western intelligence agencies have been monitoring the revival of Russian interest in central Europe for some time. Two years ago, diplomats warned that Russian embassies and trade missions, which emptied of KGB and military GRU agents when Moscow's eastern empire imploded, were quickly filling up again. But countering the Russian intelligence threat among Nato's new members is extremely difficult. Predictably, Moscow's men are able to recruit among former friends and colleagues in the secret police and armed forces. And they also have a vast store of intelligence material gathered by communism's giant snooping apparatus during more than 40 years of Russian occupation. The information is held in a top-secret archive, the so-called Blackmailer's Treasure house. It holds sensitive details on the private lives of tens of thousands of citizens in Nato's new members. The worry is that the archive is being used to blackmail politicians with a murky past. The papers are largely copies of interior ministry documents from the former Warsaw Pact states. Czechoslovak officials first revealed the existence of the archive after the 1989 revolution. During the communist era, KGB liaison officers in Prague and other east European capitals received copies of every single significant secret police document. Every week, a special plane took selected papers back to KGB headquarters, where they remain today. But communist secret policemen burnt the original archives during the confusion of the 1989 revolutions. That leaves the central Europeans at a massive disadvantage. They cannot judge who might be vulnerable. The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999

The Carpet-Bagging Bitch / President Will Not Gag Hillary /Hillary, however, will be allowed to gag voters)

PRESIDENT CLINTON has given his wife a free rein to say whatever she needs to get elected in her US Senate campaign, regardless of the embarrassment she may cause his administration. He does not object to Hillary Clinton airing their disagreements over key administration policies, White House officials said yesterday, so long as she makes clear that she is speaking as a potential candidate for office, not as First Lady. Mrs. Clinton provoked a furor during a three-day tour of up-state New York last week by declaring that she considered Jerusalem to be "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel" and would press for the US embassy to be moved there. Her comments, in a letter to Orthodox Jews, contradicted White House policy of maintaining the embassy in Tel Aviv until Israel and the Palestinian Authority have resolved their dispute over the status of Jerusalem. They came just days before the first official visit to Washington by Ehud Barak, Israel's new prime minister, and were seized on by pro-Israeli Republicans who want the US to recognize Jerusalem as the capital. Ben Gilman, New York congressman and chairman of the House international relations committee, called on Mrs. Clinton to "convince her husband" to move the US embassy. Mrs. Clinton's advisers were delighted with her performance last week, which sharply raised her profile in parts of the state where she had never previously set foot, while also appealing to the Jewish voters, who make up 10 per cent of its population. The First Lady was gambling that her remarks on Israel would offset the damage done when she declared, last year, that she favored the creation of a Palestinian state. But they allowed critics to highlight what they said were a series of convenient "flip-flops" by Mrs. Clinton, from declaring herself a fan of the New York Yankee baseball team after a lifetime supporting the Chicago Cubs, to suddenly embracing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the retiring senator whom she hopes to succeed, as "probably the wisest New Yorker that we can know of at this time". Senator Moynihan has been a harsh critic of the Clinton administration. The First Lady did her best to address the charge of "carpet-bagging" leveled at her. She repeatedly said: "It's not where I'm from, it's what I stand for." But her visit sparked a contest to see who would be tripped up first, she or her likeliest Republican rival, by lack of local knowledge. In the event, it was New York City's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: confusing the town of Monroe, 40 miles to the north, with the county of Monroe, 270 miles away, and putting out a press release with the location of the famous waterfalls mis-spelled: "Niagara". But Mrs. Clinton also came under attack after reports that she was refusing to switch the family's summer holiday from out-of-state Martha's Vineyard to the up-state Adirondack mountain region because, so an aide let slip, she and the President were worried about the flies. Officially, Mrs. Clinton has so far merely established an "exploratory committee". Although her apparent intention to run has scared all other Democrat candidates off the field, the First Lady need not legally commit herself to the contest until next summer. Meanwhile, if she finds herself losing ground and decides to withdraw, she will be free to do so. But last week she attempted to quash Republican speculation that she might be considering a run for the White House in 2004, insisting that if elected to the Senate she would serve her full six-year term. The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999

Among others, Echelon will record your vote PEOPLE may be able to vote in general elections without even leaving home under new plans to link polling stations to the Internet. It is the latest idea from ministers to combat voter apathy following the disastrously low turnouts in the recent local and European elections. Thousands of voters will take part in trials of the Internet plan and a range of other reforms in local elections and by-elections next year. The Government is determined to rush through permanent reforms in time for the next general election, probably to be held in 2001, in the hope of achieving higher turnouts. On Tuesday George Howarth, the Home Office minister responsible for election law, will discuss setting up pilot schemes around the country when he chairs a working group of electoral officers and representatives from the other main parties. Under the Internet plan, voters would be able to log on to a website dedicated to elections and call up a list of candidates standing in their local constituency or council ward. They would then key in a code to prove their identity before placing a cross on an electronic ballot paper shown on the screen. The system, described as "the ultimate in armchair politics", would have to meet concerns about security since the Internet is notoriously vulnerable to hackers. Other ideas to reach reluctant or disadvantaged voters include mobile polling stations that would park outside old people's homes, where residents were unable to walk to vote. Voting booths could also be put up in supermarkets and at railway stations. The tradition that elections are held on a Thursday may be replaced with weekend voting. Another pilot programme will test the idea of conducting elections entirely by postal ballot or by telephone voting. All the main political parties support the attempt to encourage higher turnouts, although there will be intense scrutiny to ensure that the plans do not benefit one side more than another. The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999

MIDDLE EAST / Iranian Student Revolt Reveals Government Split Police beat students and burn the Koran PRO-DEMOCRACY;

Iranian students took to the streets yesterday to protest at police violence that left three students dead and many injured after demonstrations against a crackdown on the media by hard-line Islamic clergy. The higher education minister, Mostafa Moin, resigned, criticizing what he described as the "beating up of innocent students" by police. He described it as "unacceptable under any basis or expediency" and said the police were "paving the way for a national crisis". Teheran University's chancellor, Mehdi Khalili Araqi, also resigned and the university's board of directors issued a statement threatening to quit unless the authorities acted. In a statement reported by the official news agency, IRNA, the board said: "We will not resume our activities until the honor and status of our students is restored, all arrested students are released and the commander of the police force is dismissed. All students, professors and university staff, with all their power, will defend the sacred position and dignity of students." The board also expressed its abhorrence of "the dirty and willful move" of the police forces. The Interior Ministry, which supports the country's reforming moderate president Mohammad Khatami, also criticised the police action and said all the detained students would be released. The commander of the national police, Hossein Lotfian, is a known hardliner. More than 1,000 students staged a demonstration in Rasht in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan, while students in the northwestern city of Tabriz planned to hold a campus sit-in. There was more violence yesterday when hard-line vigilantes armed with clubs attacked some 10,000 students rallying outside the capital's university. The students retaliated by burning the motorcycle of one of the vigilantes, who were identified as members of the Ansar-e Hezbollah, a conservative group with shadowy ties to the Islamic establishment. Yesterday's rally began as supporters of the president staged a sit-in at the main campus, while many others marched from a dormitory complex several miles away. Some of the marchers covered their faces in black or wore traditional Arab headdresses to disguise their identities. The Higher Education Ministry accused the police of assaulting students, entering the hostel without permission, "breaking the doors and destroying public and private properties, and even setting on fire one of the rooms which resulted in the burning of a copy of the holy Koran . . . and ultimately firing gunshots. "In this bitter incident . . . decencies were ignored and respect disregarded," the ministry said and apologized to all students and academics. It was a rare accusation by one government ministry against another government department, reflecting the depth of the crisis between the two factions in the government. The trouble began on Thursday night, when about 200 students demonstrated to protest at the brief banning of Salam newspaper, which has backed the president in his continuing struggle against the clergy. A spokesman for the students, who was arrested and later released, told reporters that he and his classmates had been "physically and mentally tortured during detention". The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999

TENSIONS between India and Pakistan have intensified after Indian customs agents seized components shipped from North Korea which they claim were destined for Pakistan's top-secret missile programme. Indian customs agents, acting on an intelligence tip-off, boarded a North Korean ship when it arrived at an Indian port to offload a consignment of sugar. The ship was found to contain 177 wooden crates of precision machine tools along with other components used in missile production. Investigators believe that the components were central to Islamabad's attempts to develop its weapons of mass destruction. North Korea's support for Pakistan's weapons projects was disclosed by The Sunday Telegraph last November when it reported the murder of Kim Sinae, 54, wife of Kang Thae Yun, the economics counselor at the North Korean embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, and a key figure in the secret arms trade. It was believed she had been shot by other North Koreans working at Pakistan's top-secret nuclear establishment who suspected her of passing on valuable information about the arms trade to Western diplomats. The latest discovery came when the customs agents seized the Ku Wol San, a North Korean freighter owned by the Puhung Trading Corporation, as it docked at Kandla in Gujarat, on India's western coast, late last month. The ship had been scheduled to sail directly from Nampo in North Korea to Malta, via Bangkok. But in what appeared to be a private business deal, the captain, Tae-Min Hun, took on an additional 13,000 tons of sugar in Bangkok for delivery in India. After a first attempting to dock in Bombay, where his vessel was refused entry, he sailed south to Gujarat. There his ship and cargo were impounded and he and his 44 North Korean crew members were detained. Scientists from India's Defence Research and Development Organization, who were called in by customs officials, are currently examining the ship's cargo. But they have confirmed that the vessel was carrying 177 tons of highly sophisticated weapons machinery and equipment. These include heavy-duty machines used to make rocket motor casings and missile nose cones, equipment for missile-guidance correction, and other sophisticated technical devices. The ship's captain reportedly admitted last week that his cargo was bound for Karachi. But North Korea's ambassador to India, Myong Gu, has dismissed reports of the ship's military consignment as "speculative, distorted and groundless". Although Pyongyang's dealings with Islamabad are shrouded in secrecy, Pakistan is known to have received considerable assistance with the production of its Ghauri missile, believed to be modeled on the North Korean Nodong 1. Shipments of missile components, including warhead canisters for the Ghauri, have been sighted regularly. Last week another Ilyushin- 76 transport plane flew into Islamabad's military airfield from Pyongyang. A Western analyst. said: "We've known of North Korea's trade with Pakistan for the past few years. But now India believes it has found the smoking gun." The disclosure could not have come at a more embarrassing time for Islamabad. Last week Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, who had flown to Washington to meet President Clinton over the current fighting with India across the de facto border dividing Kashmir, was forced to release a joint statement promising to "take concrete steps for restoration of the Line of Control". The statement, which made no mention of the broader dispute of the control of all of Kashmir that Pakistan had hoped to raise, tacitly acknowledged Islamabad's direct role in the conflict. It provided a diplomatic success for New Delhi, which maintains that the alleged "Kashmiri freedom fighters" in mountaintop bunkers on the Indian side of the Line of Control are principally Pakistani soldiers. As the international community waits for a de-escalation of the undeclared war, evidence of Pakistan's dealings with North Korea - regarded as one of the world's most dangerous and unstable nations - is likely to harden attitudes against Islamabad still further. The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999

TWA800 / RADAR SHOWS 'GETAWAY BOAT' FLEEING FLIGHT 800 CRASH by Philip Weiss

The third anniversary of the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 is July 17, so it's a good time to look into what even the Government reluctantly concedes is a mystery about the crash: "the 30-knot track." The 30-knot track is the radar trail of a boat that was the closest vessel to the 747 when it exploded and that then headed out to sea on a beeline from right under the burning wreckage. "That boat is extremely suspect," said William S. Donaldson, a retired Navy commander who supports the missile theory of the plane's destruction. "He not only doesn't turn to render assistance, he runs." "It's like the getaway car," said Graeme Sephton, an electrical engineer who is active in an Internet researchers organization that is highly critical of the Federal investigation. The Government doesn't think the unidentified boat is such a big deal. "It does not intrigue me," said Peter Goelz, the National Transportation Safety Board managing director. F.B.I. spokesman Joseph Valiquette added, "In an ideal world, it would be nice to know everything, but I don't think the F.B.I. or the N.T.S.B. claims to know everything that happened in the crash." This is a convenient position for the F.B.I. to adopt now. The most unsettling thing about the 30-knot track is that the F.B.I. essentially suppressed knowledge of it when the crash was foremost on the public agenda. Two years ago, the F.B.I. closed its criminal investigation into the crash, and James Kallstrom, then the lead F.B.I. investigator, testified before Congress that the agency's "exhaustive" efforts had included "tracking of all air and waterborne vessels in the area at the time of the explosion followed by appropriate interviews." Mr. Kallstrom later held a lengthy press conference saying that agents had "left no stone unturned." He went into great detail about suspicious boats. "Who is there in the water? Who could be escaping in any direction?" he said. "We identified 371 vessels in the Long Island area and did investigation on those vessels. For the one-month period, we identified 20,000 records of vessels that entered New York Harbor and did an investigation of those vessels." The F.B.I. even seized some boats to inspect the flooring for burns characteristic of backfire from a shoulder-fired rocket. Mr. Kallstrom's press conference was aimed at discrediting the missile theory, and it worked. In an editorial titled "Conspiracy Inoculation," The New York Times congratulated him for an "extraordinary" performance. The F.B.I. had shared its "voluminous evidence" with "admirable thoroughness and openness." The closing of the criminal investigation allowed the N.T.S.B. to hold hearings on the crash, one month later, where it offered hundreds of exhibits, a few of which depicted a "30-knot track" 10 miles out in the Atlantic. Radar data collected during the last minute of the T.W.A. flight revealed the two closest objects to the plane, both between three and four miles away, as a Navy P-3 airplane and what the exhibit called simply a "30-knot target." Radar data for the next 20 minutes showed the mystery boat heading on a beeline out to sea, on a south-southwest course, even as other boats rushed to the crash to try to help out. It was nearly 9 o'clock at night, not the usual time for an excursion. "I looked at that and said, 'Wow, what is that guy doing leaving the scene?'" Commander Donaldson said. "And of course I assumed he was identified." Commander Donaldson called Steve Bongardt, an F.B.I. agent and fellow Navy veteran who was active in the investigation. "It was a pilot-to-pilot exchange," Commander Donaldson said. "I said, I want you to tell me if you have a 302 [interview] form for every single boat out there. He said, 'I can't answer that question without higher authority.' I said, 'Steve, you have answered the question.'" Commander Donaldson was then working closely with Representative James Traficant Jr., Democrat of Ohio, who was looking into the investigation for the House Aviation Subcommittee, and at the commander's prompting, Mr. Traficant sent a list of questions to the F.B.I. One asked if the F.B.I. has "been able to positively identify every single aircraft and surface vessel that was in the proximity of T.W.A. Flight 800 at the time of the accident." It took more than three months, but in July 1998 an acting assistant director answered the Representative: No. Lewis Schiliro acknowledged the presence of the mystery boat, which he said was at least 25 to 30 feet long and reached speeds of 35 knots, close to 40 miles per hour. "Despite extensive efforts, the F.B.I. has been unable to identify this vessel," he said. The response is somewhat alarming given the F.B.I.'s assurances that it had turned over every stone-and given the fact that many eyewitnesses on Long Island said they had seen a flare like object streak up from the horizon before the explosion in the air. Yet the speeding mystery boat goes unmentioned in the mainstream press. I first learned about it in a scientific report on "anomalies" in the Government investigation that has been widely circulated on the Net. "I show this data to physicists and their jaws drop," said the report's author, Thomas Stalcup, a graduate student in physics at Florida State University who heads an Internet group of 40 people with a technical background, called Flight 800 Independent Researchers' Organization, or F.I.R.O. Mr. Sephton, a F.I.R.O. member, said, "It's really weird that there are no eyewitnesses reporting from that vessel. These are the people who are pulling out from under the flaming debris, and none of them calls the 800 number that is set up by the F.B.I." The N.T.S.B.'s Mr. Goelz disputes the suggestion that the boat was fleeing. "It's perfectly reasonable to assume, because they were on a direct course and the explosion didn't occur in front of them, that they didn't see it," he said. Given the boat's speed, those on board may have heard nothing over the engine noise. "They would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have seen something," Mr. Sephton said. Commander Donaldson pointed out that the explosion was "a huge physical event" that filled the night sky behind the boat with a curtain of burning fuel. "It would be like having the sun come up at midnight right behind you," he said. "You would feel heat on the back of your neck. And you're going to feel the concussion. The explosion rattled windows on the beach 10 miles away." It would seem that even the F.B.I. secretly regarded the 30-knot track as suspicious. For six months, the Government conducted a $5.5 million trawling operation of the waters surrounding the crash, using scallop boats. Commander Donaldson has obtained documents left by the F.B.I. on one scalloper, showing that the F.B.I. was specifically looking for shoulder-fired Stinger missile parts-notably a Stinger ejector motor-in what the F.B.I. called a "possible missile launch zone" 2.7 miles from the crash. That circle included the mystery boat. "If it's a legitimate criminal investigation, with a possibility of 230 homicides, how do you close the investigation when you haven't identified the boat that was within missile firing range?" said Commander Donaldson, who investigated a dozen crashes in the Navy. "To me that's egregious. I don't see how you justify it." An aide to Representative Traficant said the F.B.I. and N.T.S.B. should have been more open about the mystery boat. Paul Marcone said, "Kallstrom should have come out and said, Here are some things we haven't been able to explain." Now an executive with the banking company MBNA, Mr. Kallstrom said he had no intention of misleading anyone at his press conference. "I wish I knew who it was," he said of the 30-knot track. But there are always loose ends in any investigation, and mentioning them is not helpful: "If you say you're 99.9 percent sure, people think you're opening the door, or that you're playing games." Representative Traficant's report concluded there was no Government cover-up. Such a conspiracy would have required hundreds of participants, Mr. Marcone reasons. He interviewed 40 or 50 investigators and they all struck him as sincere. If there had been a cover-up, he added, "Why would the F.B.I. admit to a U.S. Congressman that they couldn't identify the 30-knot track?" Commander Donaldson said a cover-up wouldn't require those numbers. Tasks in the Flight 800 investigation were parceled out amid an air of state secrecy, with pre-emptive suggestions from on high that the Government had found no evidence of a missile. In this climate, individual teams' reports could be honest and insufficient, because technicians were not in a position to put what they had seen together with other evidence. For instance, the N.T.S.B. held public hearings on the crash, but refused to allow eyewitnesses to testify about what they'd seen. Meantime, the F.B.I. presented a C.I.A. animation of the plane's breakup that purported to explain what the eyewitnesses had seen, and merely infuriated them. It's not hard to imagine ways this investigation could have become politicized. The Atlanta Olympics were to start days after the crash. A leading terrorist was then on trial in New York. There were threats; three weeks before, an apartment complex in Saudi Arabia had been bombed, killing 19 American servicemen. And it was election year for an administration that has shown it will do just about anything to win. What if voters saw the country as being vulnerable to terrorists? The N.T.S.B. likes to point out that Commander Donaldson is a right-winger, funded by Accuracy in Media. Yes, and Mr. Stalcup and Mr. Sephton are lefties. They have lately obtained more radar data which they say challenges the Government findings. The real distinction here is between the old hierarchical information order and the new one. For some time now, the mainstream media has been able to write off Internet investigators as ill-trained, people who are unable to sort out rumor from fact, and, when they do have facts, have no sense of their proportion. This criticism has often been true, but the Internet gets less hysterical one month to the next, and meantime the mainstream media have found themselves in an odd position. They are corporate authorities, who tend to accept the word of other authorities at face value. They don't seem to see the revolution at the door: The Internet is a growing society of people who are comfortable challenging authority. "You're focusing on minutiae," the N.T.S.B.'s Mr. Goelz said to me. "Ninety-five percent of the wreckage of the plane has been recovered and it shows no missile." "Let's see," Commander Donaldson said, getting out a calculator. "Five percent of the wreckage is 8 tons. You can put a lot of holes in that much stuff. It's like saying the Empire State Building fell over and we've found all but five floors." New York Observer, July 7, 1999

NATO BLOCKS RUSSIAN SOLDIERS; It's OUR KOSOVO, WE STOLE IT FAIR & SQUARE !

NATO has blocked two Russian military aircraft from flying to Kosovo with reinforcements, saying that Moscow has tried to flout an agreement on the deployment and command responsibilities of its soldiers in the province. Two Ilyushin-76 transports were scheduled to take 100 Russian paratroopers to Kosovo yesterday, but the flights were postponed after Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria denied the Russians permission to over fly. Loaded with hardware, the aircraft were left standing on the runway at a military base near Ivanovo. Senior officials in Moscow said that Nato's decision to prevent Russian reinforcements from reaching Kosovo was a provocation. There was no indication when the aircraft would receive orders to fly and Russian generals were left seething at what they called America's "unsporting" behavior. Nato is understood to be seeking fresh assurances from Moscow before it will allow the aircraft through. The diplomatic spat between Nato and the Russians is only the latest to mar relations within the Kosovo peace force, KFOR. The Russians want a stronger presence in areas where there are still large Serb populations. They have also tried to avoid taking orders from Nato commanders. After a tense stand-off at Pristina airport in mid June, Nato and Russian officials thrashed out an agreement under which more Russian troops would be allowed into certain areas of Kosovo. In exchange, Nato's overall control of KFOR was re-affirmed. Yesterday, Nato said that Russia was trying to renege on the deal, reached after lengthy talks in Helsinki, and was trying to muscle its way into areas controlled by other countries. Ethnic Albanians are suspicious of the Russians who sent hundreds of volunteers to fight with the Serb paramilitaries and soldiers. Some are thought to have carried out atrocities against Kosovar Albanians. Today and tomorrow, four more plane-loads of Russian troops are scheduled to leave for Kosovo as part of an operation to raise their presence from about 700 to 3,600. Presently at about half strength, KFOR is expected to deploy about 55,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo. In the southern Kosovo town of Orahovac yesterday Dutch and German peacekeepers were awaiting a fresh attempt by the Russians to drive into the city. Informed sources in Moscow suggest that the Russians have been trying to claw back some of the positions they believe they surrendered in the Helsinki talks and are not above playing a few dirty tricks. A key demand the Russians eventually gave up was a sector of their own. Now they may be trying to create a de facto Russian zone by arriving at Pristina airport, and going no further. The London Telegraph, July 5, 1999

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GOLD MARKET; Bank of England Gold Auction Arrives The Greenspan conspiracy to depress the price At around 12.15pm tomorrow the Bank of England will announce the result of the UK's first gold auction.

The Treasury's decision gradually to sell more than half the UK's gold reserves, announced on May 7, provoked considerable criticism. Its defenders say it is merely a portfolio move. Its more extreme opponents vilify it as part of an international anti-gold conspiracy masterminded by Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman. The success or otherwise of the auction is expected to have a strong influence on market sentiment. Since May 7, the bullion price has fallen by about 10 per cent. Gold mining shares have fallen by nearly a quarter, and some companies are talking of cutting spending, staffing and production. Lobbyists have attacked the UK's decision, and are attempting to persuade US congressmen to block the International Monetary Fund's plan to sell some of its gold reserves. The Treasury intends to sell 415 tonnes of the UK's 715 tonnes gold reserves over the next few years. The first 125 tonnes will be sold this year, in a series of auctions of 25 tonnes every other month. The UK sale is the latest in a series by central banks over the past 20 years, and is dwarfed by Switzerland's planned sale of 1,300 tonnes. But the Treasury announcement was wholly unexpected, and also gave speculators a wonderful opportunity to sell first. Eddie George, governor of the Bank of England, described the move as "a straightforward portfolio decision". But since May 6, the value of the UK's gold reserves has fallen by about $600m. "People get emotionally attached to gold and we have seen quite a lot of emotional reaction," Mr George said. The gold price has been dithering around $260 an ounce for the last three weeks. And some analysts, such as Michael Coulson of Paribas, believe the auction will spark a sharp rally of "at least $15 an ounce". But Tony Warwick-Ching, of Virtual Metals Research, said it was just as likely that the auction would lead to "a swift price correction as investors take profits and producers snatch at the chance to rebuild hedge books". Canadian major Placer Dome's response to falling prices was to announce a big cut in exploration spending, and said that even the Las Cristinas mine in Venezuela, one of its biggest developments, was under review. And Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, a lobby group, argues that the UK sale is part of an international conspiracy to keep the price below $300. "Just as the price of gold is taking off, our officialdom calls up the English poodles to make their ridiculous gold sale announcement." The Financial Times, July 5, 1999

INDIA vs. PAKISTAN////// India Captures Tiger Hill in Kashmir //

Now we're King of the Mountain DRAS, India - In what Indian officials called a turning point in their six-week-old war against Pakistani-backed infiltrators in Kashmir, Indian troops have stormed and recaptured a strategic mountain peak known as Tiger Hill several miles north of here, officials in New Delhi said Sunday. "The battle for Tiger Hill is over," All-India Radio reported from the area, describing a "massive" nighttime attack. "It was a scene to be watched. The sky was lit with deadly fireworks, mountains on fire. The soldiers involved in this operation are jubilant." Colonel Bikram Singh, the army spokesman in New Delhi, said the capture of Tiger Hill, a jagged, 16,000-foot (4,800-meter) peak, would create a "launching pad" to retake the remaining ridges still occupied by Islamic militants and their Pakistani army reinforcements. Tiger Hill is just inside the Line of Control separating Indian from Pakistani Kashmir. The colonel said there was no available count of battle casualties on either side. [Speaking in Islamabad, Muslim militant groups on Sunday dismissed New Delhi's claim, Agence France-Presse reported. The Indian claim that the Tiger Hill had fallen "is a complete lie," said Abdullah Muntazer, spokesman for one of the groups. ] Indian officials appeared doubly heartened by Pakistan's hasty diplomatic maneuvering over the weekend, suggesting that Islamabad felt cornered and was looking for a way to end the conflict. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan unexpectedly flew to Washington on Saturday and met with President Bill Clinton at the White House on Sunday. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India spoke with Mr. Clinton by phone on Saturday, but the Foreign Ministry said he had declined an invitation from Mr. Clinton to visit Washington. [White House officials said Sunday that Mr. Sharif had requested the meeting, but that Mr. Clinton would not try to mediate the dispute, The Associated Press reported from Washington. ["The prime minister is bringing some ideas that he wants to share with the president on how to resolve the current situation," said a White House spokesman, P.J. Crowley. "The president plans to hear him out."] Indian officials called Mr. Sharif's efforts little more than subterfuge, warning that they would continue a full-scale assault until Pakistan withdrew the fighters from Indian soil. Some Islamic fundamentalist and military groups in Pakistan, however, have warned they would try to bring down Mr. Sharif if he did withdraw. "Pakistan's call for dialogue is a blatant attempt to obscure the facts," said Rahinder Jassal, India's Foreign Ministry spokesman. "Pakistan must fully accept the futility of this misadventure." The spokesman added, "The bottom line is the aggressors have to go back." In Dras, a town of 16,000 that was the staging ground for the Tiger Hill assault, soldiers this past week spoke eagerly of the preparations under way, even as they slumped exhausted on sleeping bags and described the hardships of waging mountain warfare against opponents bunkered in the ridges above. Resting in one shop, several members of the army's elite Rajputana Rifles corps said they had just returned from a two-week combat stint, where their mission was to scale another steep ridge known as Tololing and evict the intruders. That operation left at least 40 fighters dead on both sides after fierce and protracted combat at 15,000 feet. "It was snowing, and the air was so thin you were gasping for breath and could only take a few steps at a time," said one soldier, slumped on the floor next to his rifle. "They were up there using machine guns on us, all kinds of automatic fire. It took us many days to capture Tololing. Now we get seven days' rest and go back to fighting." Another contingent of army signal corpsmen offered a group of journalists tea and spicy fried vegetables as they ate in their bunker. They said their site had been heavily shelled three weeks before, killing two men. The capture of Tiger Hill would be the latest and most significant in a series of military victories by India, which has been trying to evict the infiltrators for six weeks. Their opponents are a mixture of Islamic rebels who seek to free southern Kashmir from Indian control and troops from Pakistan, whose army seeks to reopen the half-century dispute over who should be in control all of Kashmir. Since India and Pakistan were split into two nations in 1947, divided Kashmir has remained a bitter point of contention, leading to two wars and numerous skirmishes along the Line of Control that separates Indian and Pakistani Kashmir. Since early May, Indian aircraft and artillery have been pounding the ridges north of Dras, Kargil and Batalik along the Line of Control. Meanwhile, thousands of Indian troops have been mobilized to assault the frozen hilltops, wearing "glacier clothing" and carrying up to 40 pounds of gear and weapons. For weeks, India's progress was painfully slow, but its luck began to turn with the capture of Tololing in mid-June. Since then, Indian troops have scored a succession of triumphs, taking a series of ridges known as Peaks 4,700, 5,000 and 5,100. As India's military position has improved and international pressure has increased on Pakistan to withdraw support for the fighters, there have been a flurry of signals this week that officials in Islamabad may be willing to negotiate an end to the conflict - even though formally they have continued to insist that they are not directly involved in it. First, Pakistan sent a former diplomat to make private contact with India's prime minister, who then announced that India was eager to "permanently resolve the Kashmir problem." Then Mr. Sharif suddenly flew to Washington. The move raised hopes of a brokered settlement to the conflict, which has already cost India at least 217 troops killed and 409 wounded, as well as millions of rupees in military expenses. India claims it has killed 446 Pakistani soldiers. "This has been an enormous drain," an Indian Army officer said. "We never thought we would have to fight a war like this, and we were not prepared for it. "We can't afford to let it go on too much longer," he added, noting that within two months, bitter winter weather will make fighting almost impossible. Still, morale seemed high among Indian troops, who have received an extraordinary outpouring of support from people across India. Dozens of funds have been set up for soldiers' widows; satellite phones have been donated so troops can reach home; commercial advertisements have taken up patriotic themes ("Stop 'em at the border!" commands one new ad for insect repellent). Throughout the conflict zone, soldiers encountered at random over the past week expressed strong emotional identification with the war, in spite of the hardships involved. Most are Hindus or Sikhs, long trained to view both Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Islamic insurgents as the enemy. In the Mushkoh Valley, a verdant but abandoned region just north of Dras whose horizon is dominated by Tiger Hill, the only human presence last week was a platoon of Sikh soldiers who had come down from a mountain camp to pick up supplies. The men said they would soon be joining the assault on Tiger Hill, and they seemed relaxed and unfazed by the prospect of heading off to war at 16,000 feet. International Herald Tribune, July 5, 1999

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SIXTH FLOOR, DOJ SPY PROBE PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON SECRET COURT; 

Reno didn't present Wen Ho Lee case to judges.

man is she/he ugly

WASHINGTON-Encased in vault like security and sheltered by extraordinary secrecy, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the most clandestine pocket of the U.S. legal system, is receiving a rare dose of public attention amid the controversy about whether Atty. Gen. Janet Reno did enough to pursue alleged Chinese espionage. The top-secret tribunal, where FBI agents seek permission to use wiretaps in national security cases, operates on the sixth floor of Justice Department headquarters behind a series of security doors reminiscent of the "Get Smart" television show's introductory scenes. Inside, the legal system's ordinary rules evaporate in the name of national security: There are no defense lawyers, and government lawyers have lost only once. Lawmakers have attacked Reno in recent days for her refusal to go into the windowless, surveillance-proof courtroom in 1997, as the FBI wanted her to, and seek a wiretap on Wen Ho Lee, a former scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory suspected of passing secrets to China. Reno has fiercely defended her decision not to seek the wiretap. But the political back-and-forth does not reflect the complexity of the system by which the FBI and other agencies get permission to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens in the name of national security. Unlike ordinary wiretap authority, this system relies less on the familiar tenets of law and order than on a nation's fundamental right to protect itself. Many say it is far easier to get wiretapping authority from the special intelligence court than from an ordinary criminal court. Since its creation two decades ago, the court has approved 11,210 of the 11,211 national security wiretaps requested by the Justice Department-and rejected just one. The tongue-lashing Reno is enduring for not seeking a wiretap on Lee is in some ways ironic, since by far the most common criticism of the system is that it grants wiretapping authority too freely. Some fear that lawmakers will react to the current scandal by making it even easier for FBI agents to get national security wiretaps. "The real danger in this Lee situation," said Kenneth Bass, former counsel for intelligence policy at the Justice Department, "is that Congress will go the other direction and inhibit the Justice Department from playing its role of being a serious, knowledgeable, fully informed hurdle that has to be overcome by zealous agencies." The seven-judge FISA court-named for the law that created it, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-was established in 1978 as a reaction to the "black-bag jobs" of the Watergate era and the FBI's COINTELPRO investigations of civil-rights activists and others. In the wake of these abuses, Congress decided that the FBI and National Security Agency would no longer have unfettered freedom to spy on U.S. citizens, resident aliens, foreign embassies and others in the name of national security. Now, one of the FISA judges flies to Washington every two weeks to sit in the vault like courtroom and hear Justice Department lawyers make their case for the wiretaps. Some say these jurists are so dazzled by the glamour of spy wiretaps that they can't say no. "It's like receiving a decoder ring in the mail," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has challenged the FISA system in court. "Suddenly these judges find themselves players in a high-stakes national security game. That has an insidious effect, I think, and there is a dangerous identification of the judges with the agencies that they must review." Royce Lamberth, a federal judge in Washington who serves as the FISA court's current chief judge, was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Harold A. Baker, a judge from Urbana, Ill., who also sits on the FISA court, did not return a call. The system's defenders say it works just fine. A senior Justice Department official insisted the process is not all that different from getting a criminal wiretap. The reason the FISA court grants so many of the wiretap requests, the official added, is that by the time they reach the court they have been exhaustively reviewed. "It's been scrubbed by enough people, it's been reviewed at such a senior level and so many people have had to verify the accuracy of it-it shouldn't be a surprise that we have made the best case we can make and that it meets the standards in the statute," the official said. When the FBI wants to wiretap someone, it sends over a two- or three-page document known as a letterhead memorandum, signed by the assistant FBI director for national security. A special office at the Justice Department-the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, or OIPR-decides whether to recommend to Reno that she seek the wiretap. In the Lee case, the office recommended that Reno not do so, and she didn't. Reno was probably not even informed of the request; that is typical when OIPR recommends against a wiretap. Still, Reno faced fierce recriminations earlier this week for the department's inaction. "I believe the attorney general ought to resign and she ought to take her top lieutenants with her," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), usually a strong administration supporter, was almost equally harsh. "I think it's time for President Clinton to have a conversation with the attorney general about her ability to perform her duties and whether or not it is in the national interest for her to continue," he said. Reno responded to the criticism, saying the FBI did not make a sufficient legal case for a wiretap. There is often tension between the FBI, pushing for a wiretap in an urgent spy case, and OIPR, insisting on strong evidence before passing on the request. For a tap to be approved by the Justice Department and the court, "probable cause" must exist that the potential surveillance target is engaged in clandestine, possibly illegal intelligence-gathering for a foreign power. "I have the awesome responsibility to determine whether to authorize government intrusion into the lives of American citizens," Reno said. "But the Justice Department has not-nor will it-authorize such intrusions when, as in this case, the standards of the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act have not been met." Lee has strongly asserted his innocence through his lawyer. Some activists applauded the department's decision not to eavesdrop on Lee. "This case gives me confidence that the process is not a rubber stamp and that you really do need probable cause to get one of these applications approved," said Steven After good, director of the government secrecy project at the Federation of American Scientists. "I find cause for celebration where congressional leaders find cause to call for the attorney general's resignation." The Justice Department's critics say Reno was obligated to take the Lee case to the FISA court and let the judges sort out the legitimacy of the wiretap, which is their job. "The Lee case was a terrible mistake, both by OIPR and by the FBI in not following up after it was turned down," said Stewart Baker, former chief counsel at the National Security Agency, which also conducts counterintelligence. "We may have all paid a very high price for OIPR's vigilance in protecting the rights of suspected spies." Whether the wiretap decision was the right one, broader questions remain about the handling of the Lee espionage investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department. Reno acknowledged as much by recently naming a task force, headed by a federal prosecutor from Virginia, to review the department's performance. "The team will review everything and make recommendations," Reno told said. "We'll be looking at anything related to Wen Ho Lee . . . We'll be reviewing process and conduct to determine what the circumstances were and what can be done." Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1999 )

Clinton administration gave away technology, but wants to classify Cox report CHINA has spent 40 years stealing nuclear technology and has spread it to unstable regimes around the world, including those close enough to attack Britain with ballistic missiles, a congressional inquiry reported yesterday. The 700 pages of the report by the Cox committee detail what it described as the worst security lapse in American history. Over decades, this allowed China to develop its primitive nuclear capability into a modern strike power. In a few years it could equal that of the American armed forces. In sections of the report that the Clinton administration has insisted remain secret, the committee says that missile technology and nuclear secrets have been leaked to countries including Iran, Libya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This goes beyond anything known previously about the spread of warlike technology by China to so-called "pariah" countries. Libya, for instance, fired short-range missiles towards Italy during territorial disputes in the Eighties. Beijing immediately rejected the accusations in the report as "groundless and filled with ulterior motives". The Chinese government linked it with the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade as an example of American anti-China sentiment. The report of a bipartisan committee chaired by Christopher Cox, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, chronicles an extraordinary catalogue of spying, starting in the Fifties. His committee's report says that the 23 missiles now aimed at America are based on the US Titan, details of which were given to China by a man, now a general in the People's Liberation Army, who was trained in America and was an officer in the US army until his defection after the Korean War. Spying went on under Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush. As recently as 1997 the Chinese obtained information about tracking nuclear submarines which, if developed, would undermine the whole of Britain's and America's nuclear deterrent. The report says that the Chinese continued to operate under the Clinton regime and that the relaxation of export controls by him in 1996 allowed them to obtain 600 supercomputers which help them to test nuclear-weapon technology. Although the PLA has had details of the miniature W-88 warhead, 10 times the power of the Hiroshima weapon, but only three feet long, since 1988, it is not known if they have managed to build the missiles and other technology to launch and aim it. Members of the committee said that although they had laid out a worst-case scenario, they could not be certain just how damaging the espionage had been. John Spratt, a Democrat member, said that if they had had time to call more expert witnesses, the committee might have decided that China was not able to exploit as much of the technology as feared. But it is likely that China has had the opportunity to copy every major nuclear weapon in the American arsenal as well as perfect missiles which would bring America well within its range of attack. The committee suggests that if, as President Yeltsin has said, Russia and America reduced their stockpiles of intercontinental warheads to 1,000, China could try to achieve numerical parity. Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, said: "By 2009 the Chinese threat against the US may no longer consist of a few slow-flying vulnerable missiles. Instead, we may have to face hundreds of accurate, fast-flying and hard-to-intercept warheads and China's neighbors may face thousands." It might be impossible to stop China becoming the dominant power in the Pacific and lead America into confrontation with a fellow nuclear superpower over Taiwan, Korea and Japan, he said. There is a distinct possibility that a nuclear arms race in Asia would suck in India and Japan, analysts believe. The committee called for an enhanced security programme, particularly at the Department of Energy, which oversees America's nuclear weapons production, where counter-intelligence "still does not meet even minimal standards". The White House said the recommendations of the report were "constructive", but added that it did not agree with all its conclusions. Sources there said the committee had put the "worst-case spin" on the issue. The committee remained remarkably unpartisan in its report and made no recommendations of sanctions against members of the Clinton administration. But at least one member said in a statement after the release of the report that he would give details in the next few days which he hinted would link donors to the President's 1996 re-election campaign to spying and prove that the administration had acted with negligent sloth. 

The London Telegraph, May 26, 1999

"Bismillah al rahman al rahim!" The Arabic words praising Allah are as old as Islam, but the buzzing electronic voice emanating from Ramatullah's laptop computer is brand new to Afghanistan, a country controlled by the Taleban movement - stern religious crusaders who have banned all Western influences and electronic gadgets. Under its harsh interpretation of Islamic law, Taleban restricted not only matters of religious observance, dress and the conduct of women, but also the use and possession of television sets, tape cassettes and cameras when they seized this capital city in 1996. But after struggling since then to run a government with walkie-talkies and handwritten notes, the authorities have belatedly realized they have as much to gain as to fear from technology. So officials like Ramatullah, a senior aide at the Communications Ministry, are trying to find a way to log on without losing faith. His screen-saver is a large drawing of the holy city of Mecca. His program icons are a miniature mosque and holy-water vessel. And when you switch on his computer, it greets you in the name of Allah, the most gracious and merciful. His boss, Tabib Alladad, has not got the hang of computers yet, but he was delighted recently when a group of foreign businessmen showed him how to use a cell phone, even if it did beep out such risqué Western tunes as "Can-Can" - as well as Bach's more sedate "Toccata and Fugue" - when he pushed the hold button. Tabib Alladad, an Islamic scholar who serves as deputy communications minister, grew somber as he wrestled aloud with his conscience, trying to reconcile his years of cloistered indoctrination against Western modernity with his country's desperate need for technology after 20 years of warfare. An austere man in robes and sandals, he said he felt uncomfortable behind the ornate wooden desk of his predecessor and preferred to sit barefoot on the sofa. "When we go to religious school, they don't just tell us to pray and read the Koran," he said slowly, fingering a few more buttons on the miniature phone. "They tell us to work for the people and the society, so that is what I must do. This is all in the hands of Allah, and if it is His will, we will do the job as He wishes." Even in a city ravaged by bombing, even under a government that has sworn to create a pure Islamic society free of Western immorality, it is proving impossible to keep out the tentacles - and temptations - of technology. At home, devout Muslim families confide that they like to watch movies on their banned videocassette recorders: Hindi musicals for the adults, "Rambo" and other American action films for the children. In the streets, jobless young men say they dream of studying computers, and although universities here are barely functioning, small, private training classes have started. And everyone who is anyone in Kabul, it seems, has applied for a mobile phone since a group of American and British investors began setting up a new telephone system here last month to replace the 40-year-old one that was largely destroyed by urban warfare. "People are really excited about this," said Manzur Ahmed, a young man who sells used radios and telephones in a bazaar. "Our old system is so messed up you can't even call across the city." If he had a working phone of his own, he said, "I'd call my brothers in New Jersey and my business suppliers in Dubai. It would make life a lot easier." One avid promoter of high-tech solutions to Afghanistan's problems is Ehsan Bayat, an Afghan-American businessman from New York and a founder of the telephone project. A few months ago he set up a house here full of electronic gadgets, and government officials have taken to dropping by for "business meetings" that soon turn into laptop lessons. One enthusiastic student is the deputy minister of mines, a lanky man in a black turban who has been studying both English and computers. One recent afternoon, he spent several hours in rapt attention while Mr. Bayat led him through a software program in Arabic. Trying to translate it into English, the pupil stumbled a bit, typing "merciful" and "gracious" and then laughing at his mistakes. Mr. Bayat, 37, whose family left Afghanistan when Soviet troops invaded in 1979, also has been exposing his old friends and relatives to the wonders of instant, wireless communication. During a recent trip here, he took great delight in carrying along his satellite phone, setting it up in people's front yards and dialing their relatives abroad. One morning, he went to visit an old farmer who had once worked for his family. Mr. Bayat had not seen the farmer since Mr. Bayat was a teenager. After sipping tea and chatting, he told the man he had a surprise. Out came the little black box and up went the screen. A white burro watched from across the farmyard; a half-dozen children crowded around to see. Then the businessman dialed and handed the phone to the farmer. It was Mr. Bayat's brother back in the United States; the two exchanged greetings and spoke in Pashto for a minute or two. When the old man put down the phone, there were tears in his eyes. "He asked if we had ever built the mosque we were planning when he left," the farmer said. "And he promised to come back very soon." (International Herald Tribune, May 26, 1999 )

Low gold prices may finally be checking the steady rise in production, according to industry experts. The World Gold Analyst, a specialist quarterly publication, calculates that total output of the 55 core gold mining companies it monitors fell 7 per cent to 12.2m ounces in the March quarter of 1999, compared with the December quarter of 1998. In 1998, production grew by 2 per cent every quarter. (The companies monitored account for almost 70 per cent of world production.) Gold was selling at more than $387 an ounce on average in 1996 and at $330 in 1997. In 1998 the average dropped to $294. So far this year the price has fallen from around $288 to just below $272, mainly because of the UK's decision, announced earlier this month, to sell more than half its gold reserves. The companies' average cash costs (running costs excluding items such as depreciation and amortization) were around $199 an ounce in the March quarter. "The low gold price of the past three years, and especially over the past 18 months, may be starting to have a material impact on industry output," said Paul Burton, editor of World Gold Analyst. "Two companies, Australian Resources and Royal Oak Mines [a North American company] went into receivership during the quarter . . . and some smaller mines have closed," he said. However, a number of extraordinary factors, such as bad weather in Australia, and technical hitches worldwide, also help explain the production setback. US companies suffered the biggest fall in production, with an 11 per cent drop to 2.5m ounces. This was mainly because of the 26 per cent reduction, to 610,000 ounces, at Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold's Grasberg mine in Indonesia. Another big US group, Newmont, reduced output by 4 per cent to 956,000 ounces. Australian companies' production was 10 per cent down at 2.2m ounces, with the demise of Australian Resources, which suspended operations in mid-March, a significant factor. Normandy Mining's output was about 8 per cent lower at 396,000 ounces, because of bad weather and technical hitches. Australian companies have been particularly badly hit by low gold prices recently, because of the strength of the Australian dollar. Production by South African companies dropped 3 per cent to 3.7m ounces, while Canadian companies maintained output at 2.7m ounces. (The Financial Times, May 26, 1999 ).

Tracking down those evil expatriates The US tax authorities are stepping up their efforts to track down expatriate tax-dodgers, in a bid to recover billions of dollars of unpaid taxes. In particular, the Internal Revenue Service is to start checking expatriates' tax status when they apply for new passports. It will target expatriates in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, Israel and Switzerland. According to census data and estimates of unfilled tax returns and unpaid tax, more tax is owed by Americans living in those countries than elsewhere, Marlene Sartipi of the IRS told a seminar of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich yesterday. Some 200,000 US expatriates live in London alone, making the UK home to one of the largest American communities outside the US. The US and Libya are the only countries that tax their citizens wherever they live, but the IRS believes it is losing several billion dollars a year in unpaid tax from the 3m US expatriates worldwide who have failed to file their obligatory US income tax returns. The US does not believe in letting its tax-dodgers off the hook, unlike Ireland, which has had five tax amnesties in six years, and Italy, which has had more than a dozen. Instead, the US is stepping up efforts to collect tax from expatriates. "Even if expatriates join the IRS's voluntary disclosure programme, it is not an iron-clad guarantee against prosecution," warned Ms Sartipi. US citizens have to provide their social security number when renewing their passports, making cross-checks with tax returns relatively easy, Ms Sartipi said. Although estimates of the level of unpaid tax vary considerably, Ms Sartipi said the IRS had recently conducted a study based on information from 1,000 passport renewals. Of the 1,000 people contacted, 600 replied, and only 83 of the 600 had filed a tax return. Of the 30,000 US expatriates in Switzerland, about 48 per cent are estimated to have failed to file tax returns. Zurich-based Philip Marcovici of Baker & McKenzie, a US law firm, warned that US expatriates not complying with IRS rules should try to sort out their tax affairs before the IRS began an investigation. About 15 per cent of taxes collected by the IRS come from tips provided by ex-wives or disgruntled employees. (The Financial Times, May 26, 1999 ) Princeton Economics International

Japan Goes After Martin Armstrong PEI's Hong Kong Brokerage Under Investigation Japan's banking watchdog has launched a surprise inspection of the Tokyo operations of Cresvale International, a Hong Kong-based broker owned by Princeton Economics International, a US investment adviser. The Financial Supervisory Agency did not give the reason for its inspection, which was launched on Monday. Officials at Cresvale, which has specialized in restructuring equity portfolios for Japanese companies, said they believed it was routine. But the move comes as the Japanese regulators are speeding up efforts to establish whether foreign brokers have used complex financial transactions to help Japanese clients hide losses. It is the third surprise inspection of a foreign broker launched by the FSA since it was established last year. In January, the FSA started inspecting several of Credit Suisse's Tokyo operations and last week it launched an inspection of Lehman Brothers, the US bank. Martin Armstrong, Cresvale's chairman, said yesterday: "We have been told that they are going to go through every foreign broker in the country." Cresvale has sold financial products such as privately placed bonds to Japanese clients, often through offshore structures. All such bonds had been approved by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, Mr Armstrong said. He said it was at the request of the Japanese ministry that PEI stepped in to rescue Cresvale's Asian operations in 1995 after its UK parent, then owned by France's Banque Pallas Stern, went into liquidation. Mr Armstrong said Cresvale had not dealt in derivatives or warrants, the sector in which it had made a name for itself, since PEI bought it. It had restructured equity holdings for Japanese companies including Yakult Honsha, the fermented drinks maker that reported losses on derivatives trading and other investments of ¥105bn ($846.77m) in 1997-98. Yakult's losses have become a cause célèbre in Japan as an example of the perils of such investments, but Cresvale's dealings were not responsible for any of them, Mr Armstrong said. The losses arose from Yakult's own decisions on futures in dealings arranged by other banks, he said. PEI, Cresvale's parent, specializes in forecasting the world economy based on computer models. PEI is registered offshore in the Turks and Caicos Islands, but its research operation is based in New Jersey. The FSA has assigned 40 regulators to the Credit Suisse case, but only 25 to Lehman Brothers and 10 to Cresvale. The three FSA inspections are attracting considerable attention from foreign bankers, since they are regarded as a crucial test of the degree to which the Japanese government is seeking to change its regulatory standards. Until recently, it generally ignored the activities of most foreign banks and brokers. Although some of these banks, such as Credit Suisse, actively marketed schemes that could help Japanese clients conceal losses, these plans appeared to be legal and sometimes had the authorities' tacit approval. (The Financial Times, May 26, 1999 )