http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/breaking_news/15336507.htm
Posted on Tue, Aug. 22, 2006
Masked gunmen kill protester in Mexico
REBECCA ROMERO
Associated Press
OAXACA, Mexico - Masked gunmen killed a protester Tuesday as escalating violence increased pressure on President Vicente Fox to intervene in a three-month-long protest by leftists and striking teachers.
Thousands of protesters calling for Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz's resignation have occupied the southern city's center, stealing buses, setting up barricades and taking over radio and television stations to broadcast revolutionary messages. The protest started May 22.
On Tuesday, a group of about 15 men in three cars drove up to a private radio station that has been occupied by protesters and sprayed the building with gunfire, killing a 52-year-old man, officials said.
Prosecutor Lizbeth Cana said detectives would investigate the shootings, saying that the city was under siege from "urban guerrillas."
Ruiz and business leaders have urged President Vincente Fox to send federal police to the city but Fox spokesman Ruben Aguilar said the government will not use force to resolve the conflict.
"Only dialogue can solve problems. ... Violence will just lead to more violence," Aguilar said.
Prior to the shooting, thousands of protesters, some armed with clubs, marched through the center of the city throughout Monday night, burning piles of tires and smashing windows.
Most businesses in the center of city were closed Tuesday and garbage collectors could not operate because of the street blockades.
A group of masked men Monday fired on a government television station that the protesters have occupied since Aug. 1, injuring one man. Protesters responded by taking over 12 private stations and blocking the city's four main entrances with buses.
Some 70,000 public school teachers went on strike May 22 to demand salary increases totaling about $125 million, but the government said it couldn't afford that and counter-offered with less than a tenth of that amount.
The protesters have since expanded their demands to include the resignation of Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and of using force to repress dissent. Ruiz belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has governed the state since 1929.
The teachers refused to halt their three-month-old strike to allow 1.3 million students to return to classes Monday, the start of the new school year. Private schools remained closed because of the unrest.
---
Associated Press Writer Ioan Grillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.
© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.timesleader.com
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/15315796.htm
Posted on Sun, Aug. 20, 2006
Police helicopter makes emergency landing at school
The Wichita Police Department's helicopter made an emergency landing in a middle school parking lot Saturday night after it developed engine trouble while on routine patrol.
Sgt. Randy Reynolds said the aircraft was flying over west Wichita about 8 p.m. when the engine began to malfunction. The helicopter landed in a parking lot of Wilbur Middle School, 340 N. Tyler Road, without damage.
Reynolds said the pilot and an observer were unnerved by the sudden landing but were not hurt. He said the helicopter would be towed back to the department's heliport.
-- Hurst Laviana
One killed, one hurt in accident near Lindsborg
One Kansan was killed and another was injured Friday in a two-car accident just south of Lindsborg. The Kansas Highway Patrol said Todd A. Bridges, 41, of Salina was killed after his car went left of the center line and collided head-on with a car driven by Sanford L. Corey of Lindsborg.
The accident occurred at 3:22 p.m. Friday, the Highway Patrol said. Corey was in critical condition Saturday at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Francis Campus.
-- Eagle staff
Baseball game, auction benefit police memorial
Wichita police officers and Wranglers office staff will square off in a charity baseball game Sept. 3.
The second annual match will benefit the Sedgwick County Law Enforcement Memorial Fund for a planned monument to officers who died in the line of duty.
The free match starts after the 2 p.m. Wrangler game finishes. Donations will be accepted.
A silent sports memorabilia auction will be held, with items signed by Troy Aikman, Nolan Ryan and many others.
Last year's game raised about $2,000 for hurricane victims. Wichita Officer Brian Mock said the department hopes to take in at least double that this year.
-- Jon Schubin
© 2006 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansas.com
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/15315790.htm
Posted on Sun, Aug. 20, 2006
Quilters sew for wounded veterans
BY KAREN SHIDELER
The Wichita Eagle
When our part of the country was being settled, Karen Funcheon says, men had land and women had quilts.
Much of the land has been eaten up by cities and corporate farming, but "those quilts are still around" and treasured.
And 100 years from now, Funcheon and other quilters hope the Quilts of Valor they were working on Saturday at Asbury United Methodist Church will be treasured heirlooms, too.
First, they'll be sent to military and veterans hospitals, to be wrapped around the shoulders or over the legs of men and women wounded in the war on terrorism.
The quilts are part of a national effort to provide each wounded service member with a quilt of his or her own. Most are in some variation of red, white and blue -- burgundy, cream and light blue, for example -- and each has a label that says who made it and where.
"This is like a group effort," Funcheon said, with one person donating fabric, another piecing together a quilt block, someone putting the blocks together into a quilt top and someone else doing the quilting. Everyone involved signs a label sewn to the back before the quilt is packed into a pillowcase, many of them embroidered by Janice Cryer of Wichita. The pillowcase serves as wrapping paper around these gifts.
The women almost never know who gets their quilts. They're presented by chaplains or hospital volunteers.
The quilts are made of sturdy cotton and quilted by machine, so they'll be durable enough for hospital laundry rooms. But those labels on the back put them in the future heirloom category, Funcheon said, because any signed quilt is more valuable.
Katy Vickers of Wichita made a dozen Quilts of Valor on her own before hooking up with Cassandra Carson, a machine quilter from Wichita.
"We decided we wanted to get a quilting bee up and going," Vickers said.
Saturday, the monthly bee was a combination of sewing, storytelling, and oohs and aahs at new contributions.
Funcheon, who lives in Bel Aire, has been quilting for 20 years and has a son headed to Iraq later this year. "I'm already panicking," she said.
Carson has a son serving in Baghdad, "so this is important to me."
Harriet Ratzlaff had told herself for years that she'd start quilting when she retired. "And I'm retired." She hooked up with the group at a quilt show.
But you don't have to know how to quilt to join, the women pointed out. In fact, you don't even have to know how to sew. They'll teach you, as they did with two women at last month's bee.
When a quilt top is finished, it's given to someone who has a quilting machine, then returned to the group for finishing touches before being packed and sent.
Nationwide, Quilts of Valor has delivered almost 6,000 quilts.
"We're going to keep going as long as there's a need," Vickers said. "There's still a lot more guys out there who could use some quilts."
Reach Karen Shideler at 316-268-6674 or kshideler@wichitaeagle.com.
© 2006 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansas.com
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2006/08/23/ap-state-wa/d8jlrug02.txt
Two airliners return to Sea-Tac Airport
Aug 22, 2006 - 07:51:44 pm PDT
SEATTLE - Engine trouble forced an American Airlines jetliner headed for Chicago to return to Seattle and make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff early Tuesday, the airline said.
In a second incident, a United Airlines plane bound for Tokyo also turned around and landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after the crew reported an odor aboard the Boeing 777.
Pilots of American Airlines Flight 526 turned around soon after the compressor in one of the MD-80's two engines stalled, said Tim Wagner, a spokesman for Fort Worth-based American.
The plane, which departed Sea-Tac around 11:26 p.m. Monday, landed safely back at the airport around 12:13 a.m. Tuesday, Wagner said.
Passengers were placed on another plane, which left Seattle at 1:52 a.m. and landed at Chicago's O'Hare Airport at 7:39 a.m., about two and a half hours later than the original flight had been scheduled to land, Wagner said.
The United incident involved Flight 875, which left for Narita Airport at 1:42 p.m. Tuesday with 252 passengers and 14 crew members, said airline spokeswoman Megan McCarthy in Chicago.
It turned around a short time later and landed safely at about 2:30 p.m., as emergency crews stood by. The passengers got off the plane normally, through the jetway at a gate.
The initial report was of smoke and fire aboard the plane, airport spokesman Bob Parker told KIRO-TV. McCarthy said she could not verify that _ only that an odor was reported. There was no fire, she said, and the source of the odor was not immediately known.
One flight attendant was checked by paramedics for some respiratory discomfort, but there were no other reports of injuries, McCarthy said.
The plane was taken out of service, and passengers were to be put on a replacement plane for the flight Wednesday morning, McCarthy said.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1670829/posts
Sniper shootings kill 1 on Ind. highway-(update multiple gun afire locations)
ap ^ | 7/23/06 | ap
Posted on 07/23/2006 7:48:29 AM PDT by Flavius
SEYMOUR, Ind. - Sniper shootings of two vehicles along Interstate 65 in southern Indiana early Sunday left one person dead and another injured, state police said. ADVERTISEMENT
A sniper shot at a southbound vehicle about 12:20 a.m., killing one of its three occupants, police said. About the same time, occupants of a second southbound vehicle called police to report a passenger had been shot.
The victim was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.
Authorities closed a 14-mile stretch of the interstate in the area, about 40 miles south of Indianapolis.
A preliminary investigation showed the sniper fired from either the roadway or an overpass, state police said in a news release.
Meanwhile, police also were investigating two other shootings along the interstate about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis. Those shootings, which occurred about two hours after the first shooting, struck a semitrailer and a parked, unattended vehicle, state police at the Redkey post said. No one was hurt.
"At this time it is unknown whether the shootings in the Seymour and Redkey area are related," police said.
[a post for study and research]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900856_pf.html
A Covert Chapter Opens For Fort Hunt Veterans
As Files on Nazi POWs Are Declassified, Their Interrogators Break Their Silence.
By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 20, 2006; A01
For more than 60 years, they kept their military secrets locked deep inside and lived quiet lives as account executives, college professors, business consultants and the like.
The brotherhood of P.O. Box 1142 enjoyed no homecoming parades, no VFW reunions, no embroidered ball caps and no regaling of wartime stories to grandchildren sitting on their knees.
Almost no one, not even their wives, in many cases, knew the place in history held by the men of Fort Hunt, alluded to during World War II only by a mailing address that was its code name.
But the declassification of thousands of military documents and the dogged persistence of Brandon Bies, a bookish park ranger determined to record this furtive piece of history, is bringing the men of P.O. Box 1142 out of the shadows.
One by one, some of the surviving 100 or so military intelligence interrogators who questioned Third Reich scientists, submariners and soldiers at one of the United States's most secretive prisoner camps are, in the twilight of their lives, spilling tales they had dared not whisper before.
"It's good. Very good to talk about all this, at last," Fred Michel said last week, steadying himself on his cane as he looked over the rolling, green land along the Potomac River in Fairfax County that once was home to prison cells and interrogation rooms embedded with hidden microphones.
Michel, 85, slowly lowered himself onto a picnic table bench next to his old friend, H. George Mandel, 82. Although they have lived just a few miles apart for most of six decades, they had not spoken since their discharge Dec. 13, 1945. So hush-hush was their work for P.O. Box 1142 that the men recruited for it were ordered to never mention it. To this day, some have refused to speak to the park ranger gathering their oral histories, believing that the oath they took more than 60 years ago can never be broken.
For others, the taboo has eroded as documents have been declassified in waves, starting in 1977 and continuing into the 1990s. Nevertheless, many of the activities of P.O. Box 1142 remain shrouded in mystery.
According to a history cobbled together by the National Park Service, the unit was conceived as an Army/Navy installation to gather information from prisoners who had been captured or surrendered and were brought to the United States for questioning. Germany had superior technology, particularly in rocketry and submarines, and the information that was gleaned from interrogations gave the United States an advantage going into the Cold War and the space age.
In the beginning, the prisoners were mostly U-boat crew members who had survived the sinking of their submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. As the war progressed, P.O. Box 1142 shifted its attention to some of the most prominent scientists in Germany, many of whom surrendered and gave up information willingly, hoping to be allowed to stay in the United States.
The prisoners stayed at Fort Hunt for as little as two or three weeks and as long as nine months. They were held incommunicado; when they had told everything they knew, they were transferred to regular POW camps elsewhere in the United States, and the Red Cross was then notified of their capture. After the war, some returned to Germany, and some stayed in the United States, slipping into the fabric of American life.
Michel and Mandel were German Jews who had immigrated to the United States before the war and were recruited to the unit. They and other interrogators said they obtained information about discoveries in microwaves, atomic and molecular studies, jets used in German planes and submarine technology, including a snorkel that allowed U-boats to stay underwater for long stretches. All they learned was put into top-secret reports that went straight to the Pentagon.
But at night, Michel and Mandel maintained an air of mystery with the dance-card girls, snapping back the reply of "P.O. Box 1142, ma'am" when asked where they were stationed, they recalled.
Further explanation was forbidden. The more than 3,400 prisoners who stayed there were off the books, too, partly because operations at Fort Hunt were "not exactly legal" according to the Geneva Conventions, the National Park Service said.
When it all ended, Michel and Mandel went their separate ways, kept apart by the code of silence. They raised families and had long careers, Mandel as a chemist in Bethesda, Michel as a mechanical engineer in Alexandria.
They met again last week at a Fort Hunt they barely recognized. A family reunion was underway nearby, and a moonbounce wiggled under the weight of children as Beach Boy tunes wafted in the air. It was a far cry from their recollections of roaring Jeeps, the German prisoners and high-ranking officers storming by.
They revisited the place of cloaked memories because Bies had found them.
Bies, 27, is a cultural resource specialist with the National Park Service, schooled in archaeology and obsessed with military history. The wide-brimmed Smokey Bear hat and crisp uniform of the park service suit him all right, but he is more comfortable in piles of documents in a National Archives research room than in the hills of Virginia.
He was working on a series of signs that the park service was planning to place throughout Fort Hunt. They would detail the fort's transformation from a picnic area in 1942 into a major military installation with more than 100 buildings, guard towers and a tangle of electric fences.
Bies hopes to create a full archive of oral histories recorded from the interrogators. He envisions a visitors center that would display the stories, declassified reports and photos he has found. He even imagines installing World War II-era speakers like the ones that were planted in prison cells, piping in German conversations that intelligence officers translated and picked apart.
Then, early this year, a woman on a guided tour of Fort Hunt told a park ranger she thought that her neighbor used to work at Fort Hunt, which today is a park managed by the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The ranger passed Michel's name on to Bies, jump-starting a race against time and old age to find the veterans and record their histories.
"A lot them, unfortunately, have passed away," Bies said. "They're very frail, and this is really the last chance that many of them get to tell their stories. One of them even died since we interviewed him."
He and other Park Service rangers have sifted through reams of documents in the National Archives and have come up with a few names. Almost all of the interrogators were Jewish immigrants from Germany; some lost entire families in the Holocaust. They were recruited to P.O. Box 1142 for their language skills and, in the cases of Michel and Mandel, their scientific background. But the full rosters were kept secret, and many of the declassified documents are missing.
Bies tracked down Michel in Kentucky, where he had moved from Alexandria to be near his family because of his failing health. The former interrogator, who had immigrated from Landau, Germany, before the war, was overjoyed to talk about his time at P.O. Box 1142.
They spent hours talking about Nazi scientists who told Michel about microwave technology, U-boat engineering and other marvels that the young mechanical engineer coaxed out of them.
Michel also told Bies about his bunkmate, Mandel. One quick Google search turned up Mandel's smiling face. "He was right there, near us all along, teaching at George Washington University," Bies said of Mandel, who had immigrated from Berlin in 1937.
Mandel had kept his own family in the dark about his wartime exploits.
"I know my family wondered where the hell I was," he said. "I told them I was speaking to scientists, or something like that. They didn't know I was interrogating Nazis."
His past revisited him once, at a scientific conference in Paris. In passing, he locked eyes with another scientist, a man he had interrogated in a cramped cell years ago.
"He looked at me, and I heard him say to someone in German: 'That was my prison warden,' " Mandel said. The two men shook hands. The exchange was respectful and friendly, he said.
Not everyone at Fort Hunt was an interrogator. Some, such as Wayne Spivey, 86, of Marietta, Ga., were brought in to manage the massive flow of information that interrogators such as Michel and Mandel were getting.
"My mouth was always dropping open when we heard them talking and when we saw the information they got and the sketches of atoms and molecules and whatnot," Spivey said. "I was just one of three Southern boys there, walking around hearing German and Russian and Japanese."
So far, Bies has contacted about 15 veterans, and he tries to rush to their sides to capture their fading memories.
Bies hopes to stage a large reunion next year, with all of the veterans he can find. Then they can stand on the green fields of Fort Hunt, shake hands and embrace, as Michel and Mandel did last week and, at long last, talk.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
[there are other links to associated articles]
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Dachau/BostonGlobe270601.html
BostonGlobe
Friday, June 29, 2001
[Photo and caption provided by this website]
Press Release
The Boston Globe's Series, 'Secret History of World War II' Reports On Holocaust Plans and a Dark Note to The US Liberation of Dachau
Two special reports to be published Sunday and Monday, July 1 and 2
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 29, 2001-- The Boston Globe's continuing year-long series, "The Secret History of World War II," resumes Sunday and Monday, July 1 and 2, with two significant reports, one about the Nazi's Holocaust plans and a second about a dark side to the American liberation of the Dachau death camp.
On Sunday, July 1, the Globe reports on a declassified document showing that the U.S. knew about Nazi plans for the Holocaust six months earlier than previously believed. A leading historian who discovered the November 1941 document independent of the Globe said the dispatch raises new questions about what the Allies could have done to prevent what became the central horror of the war.
The dispatch is among the three million pages of documents released by U.S. intelligence agencies under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The declassified records, unprecedented in their breadth and depth of detail, are the dossiers that the CIA had previously refused to open to public scrutiny because they contained the names of sources and described the precise way that missions were carried out.
Among the other revelations in The Boston Globe story, by staff reporter Mark Fritz, are details of a U.S. intelligence effort to block the creation of Israel.
US troops massacred German prisoners at Dachau
Felix Sparks's soldiers liberating Dachau. Surrendered German soldiers were stood against a wall and massacred.
continued/....................
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20221652-38196,00.html
China denies Hezbollah arms export
From correspondents in Beijing
August 22, 2006 09:35pm
CHINA has never exported arms to Hezbollah, a senior Chinese diplomat said today, although he did not rule out the possibility that weapons may have been transferred to the Lebanese group by a third party.
Sun Bigan, China's special envoy to the Middle East, was asked to respond to media reports which alleged Hezbollah used weapons from Iran, whose technology originally came from China.
“I think the information or the news is not accurate about the use of Chinese weapons in the Lebanon-Israel battlefield,” Mr Sun said in a briefing about his recent trip to the Middle East.
“I have taken note of these reports. The information itself is groundless.
“China does have some normal arms trade with some countries, however, the arms trade is with sovereign states. China does not provide weapons to any organizations, groups or (political) parties.”
Hezbollah fired a missile at an Israeli warship on July 14 and killed four sailors. The Israeli army said at the time it was a radar-guided C-802 anti-ship missile, developed by Iran using Chinese technology.
Mr Sun said he had not seen the missiles and was not a military expert but could offer a response based on China's policy.
“According to China's policy, it's impossible for us to sell missiles to Hezbollah,” he said.
But Mr Sun, could not rule out that the weapons may have been transferred by a third party.
He said that if weapons were transferred to another country, China would be “very concerned,” but as far as he knew, Beijing had not launched an investigation.
A ceasefire in the Hezbollah-Israel conflict took effect on August 14, bringing to an end 34 days of warfare that cost more than 1400 lives and devastated much of Lebanon.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the US and Israel had launched a diplomatic effort to prevent other countries from helping rearm Hezbollah.
Officials have been pressing world arms suppliers, notably Russia and China, not to allow their weaponry to find its way to the Lebanese group, the report said.
Iran, which has good relations with China, is considered a main backer of Hezbollah, though it had denied supplying the group with weapons. The United States is Israel's biggest military supplier.
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment
Two experts report on how a group of Cold War true believers were invited to second-guess the CIA. Did the "outside experts" of the 1970s contribute to the military buildup of the 1980s?
By Anne Hessing Cahn
April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
lection years have much in common. They produce a profusion of punditry, media attention, and politically expedient action, quickly forgotten, and with little lasting impact. But not always; sometimes events are set into motion that have long lifetimes. This was the case in 1976 when, as in 1992, an incumbent Republican president faced a strong challenge from the right wing of his own party. Then (as last year) sops were offered to placate the far right and, while it is too early to know which of the 1992 capers will endure, we now know a great deal about one of the most political events of 1976, and its remarkably long-lasting effects on U.S. policy.
Late last year, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released the 1976 "Team B" reports. Team B was an experiment in competitive threat assessments approved by then-Director of Central Intelligence George Bush. Teams of "outside experts" were to take independent looks at the highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). NIEs are authoritative and are widely circulated within the government. U.S. national security policy on various issues as well as the defense budget are based on their general conclusions. Although NIEs represent the collective judgment of the entire intelligence community, the lead agency is the CIA.
There were three "B" teams. One studied Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examined Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and one investigated Soviet strategic policy and objectives. But it is the third team, chaired by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, that ultimately received considerable publicity and is commonly referred to as Team B.
The Team B experiment was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an "October surprise." But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of "the window of vulnerability" and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.
How did the Team B notion come about? In 1974, Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, and conservatives began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat. This assessment--the NIE--was an obvious target.
In the mid-1970s, the CIA was vulnerable on three counts. First, it was still reeling from the 1975 congressional hearings about covert assassination attempts on foreign leaders and other activities. Second, it was considered "payback time" by hard-liners, who were still smarting from the CIA's realistic assessments during the Vietnam war years--assessments that failed to see light at the end of the tunnel. And finally, between 1973 and 1976, there were four different directors of central intelligence, in contrast to the more stately progression of four directors in the preceding 20 years.
The vehicle chosen from within the administration to challenge the CIA was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Formed as the Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Affairs by President Eisenhower in 1956, PFIAB was reconstituted by President Kennedy in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Members are appointed by the president but hold no other government positions (except possibly on other advisory committees or panels). By 1975, PFIAB was a home for such conservatives as William Casey, John Connally, John Foster, Clare Booth Luce, and Edward Teller.
The PFIAB first raised the issue of competitive threat assessments in 1975, but Director of Central Intelligence William Colby was able to ward them off, partly on procedural grounds (an NIE was in progress). But Colby, a career CIA officer, also said, "It is hard for me to envisage how an ad hoc 'independent' group of government and non-government analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities--even in two specific areas--than the intelligence community can prepare." [1]
At a September 1975 meeting of CIA, National Security Council, and PFIAB staff, the deputy for National Intelligence Officers, George A. Carver, noted that since John Foster and Edward Teller, the principal PFIAB members pushing for the alternative assessment, disagreed with some of the judgments made by the intelligence community, "the PFIAB proposal could be construed as recommending the establishment of another organization which might reach conclusions more compatible with their thinking."
In 1976, when George Bush became the new director of central intelligence, the PFIAB lost no time in renewing its request for competitive threat assessments. Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bush checked with the White House, obtained an O.K., and by May 26 signed off on the experiment with the notation, "Let her fly!! O.K. G.B." [2] Why in the world did the Ford administration, gearing up for an election campaign, put prominent outside critics of the CIA on the agency's payroll, give them free access to the classified material, data, and files they requested, and not foresee how damaging the resulting study could be?
By spring 1976, President Ford was in deep political trouble. A January poll showed that his performance had a 46 percent disapproval rating. The president attributed much of the dissatisfaction to the increasing criticism of détente by a conservative coalition in both parties. Moreover, at the time the Soviet Union and Cuba were actively supporting the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, while the U.S. Senate had barred further covert American support to the other contenders.
Nevertheless, early in January 1976 President Ford defended the policy of détente he had inherited from Richard Nixon and said in an NBC News interview: "I think it would be very unwise for a President--me or anyone else--to abandon détente. I think détente is in the best interest of this country. It is in the best interest of world stability, world peace." [3]
But then came the February 24 New Hampshire primary, and President Ford nosed out challenger Ronald Reagan by only one percent-age point. Reagan began to step up his attacks on the "Ford-Kissinger" foreign policy, claiming that the United States had been permitted to slide into second place and that the Soviet Union was taking advantage of détente at the expense of American prestige and security.
In March, three important events took place. During an interview, President Ford abruptly banished the word "détente" from his political vocabulary, much to the surprise of the White House staff. "We are going to forget the use of the word détente," the president said. "What happens in the negotiations . . . are the things that are of consequence." [4] Then, at a lunch at Washington D.C.'s Metropolitan Club, Richard Allen, Max Kampelman, Paul Nitze, Eugene Rostow, and Elmo Zumwalt, all well-known hawks opposed to détente, agreed to form the "Committee on the Present Danger" (CPD) to alert the public to the "growing Soviet threat." The first draft of the committee's initial statement was circulated to its members within a month. Finally, on March 23, Ronald Reagan won the North Carolina primary--only the third time in U.S. history that a challenger had defeated an incumbent president in a primary. He went on to win the Nebraska and Texas primaries as well.
By now, conservative critics in full swing kept up a steady cry of alarm. Paul Nitze, a CPD and Team B member, testified before the Joint Committee on Defense Production that the Soviet Union was conducting a massive civil defense program that would give it a bargaining edge in the then-deadlocked arms talks. Retired Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham, also a Team B member, wrote in the September 1976 Reader's Digest: "The Soviets have not built up their forces, as we have, merely to deter a nuclear war. They build their forces to fight a nuclear war and [they] see an enormous persuasive power accruing to a nation which can face the prospect of nuclear war with confidence in its survival."
A January 21, 1976, Library of Congress report, "The U.S./Soviet Military Balance, a Frame of Reference for Congress," identified a strong shift in the quantitative military balance toward the Soviet Union over the past 10 years. And the CIA itself revised its estimate of Soviet military spending to 10-15 percent of Soviet gross national product (GNP), as compared to 6-8 percent in previous NIEs. The revision was immediate news.
(This jump did not indicate any great increase in Soviet military spending nor did it change the Pentagon's estimates of actual Soviet troops, tanks, and missiles. Indeed, it reflected the judgment that the Soviet military sector was less efficient than previously believed and therefore the military's economic burden on the Soviet Union was greater than earlier estimates indicated. None of this meant a greater threat to the United States. However, such distinctions, usually made in the next to last paragraph of a long article, were lost on the public, and the message seemed to be that the Russians were spending more on defense and therefore we should too.)
In the summer of 1976, President Ford was rearranging priorities in much the same erratic way as George Bush did 16 years later in an effort to stave off conservative critics. Even the signing of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty was delayed from May 12 to May 28 because of panic at Ford's loss to Ronald Reagan in the Nebraska primary.
In July 1976, Director of Central Intelligence George Bush let a PFIAB subcommittee suggest members of the three B teams; in August he wrote to the president that "morale at the CIA is improving." [5]
Each B team met in September and October and exchanged drafts with their CIA counterparts during October. The first press leak occurred two days after the first meeting of the CIA and Team B members who were examining Soviet strategic policy and objectives. William Beecher's story in the October 20 Boston Globe contained leaks by at least one Team B member who conveyed to the journalist only his recommendations, not those of his fellow panelists. According to Leo Cherne, then chairman of PFIAB, Director of Central Intelligence Bush was aghast at the leak and stormed into the Old Executive Building accusing members of PFIAB of being the leakers. Cherne assured Bush that this was not the case, and that "members of PFIAB were sufficiently smart to recognize that any publicity would invalidate what had been a serious effort." [6] The story was not picked up and seemed to fade from view.
However, after the Democrats won the election and President-elect Jimmy Carter had ignored Bush's hint that up to now, CIA directors had not changed with an incoming administration, George Bush, the foe of leaks, agreed to meet with David Binder of the New York Times. The same director who wrote to President Ford in August 1976, "I want to get the CIA off the front pages and at some point out of the papers altogether," now made sure that Team B would become front-page news. [7]
On Sunday, December 26, the lead New York Times story was about Team B. Bush appeared on Meet the Press, and three separate congressional committees vowed to hold hearings on the whole exercise. Although officials within the new Carter administration paid scant attention to the Team B reports, the spadework had been done. In particular, the Pipes panel's major conclusions had been publicly and repeatedly aired.
Meanwhile, back in November, nine days after the presidential election, the Committee on the Present Danger issued its founding statement, "Common Sense and the Common Danger." "The principal threat to our nation, to world peace and to the cause of human freedom is the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup. . . . The Soviet Union has not altered its long held goal of a world dominated from a single center--Moscow." If this sounded similar to the conclusions of Richard Pipes's Team B panel, it was hardly surprising; panel members Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and William Van Cleave had leading roles in the committee.
Even before the Team B report was officially presented to PFIAB, Pipes was eager to publicize its findings. He opened a December 7 meeting by discussing the possibility of declassifying the report. After the CIA rejected declassification, Pipes said that "he would urge PFIAB to make the Team B report available to as large an audience as possible. If his appeal to PFIAB were rejected . . . he mentioned . . . the publication of articles on the general subject of the report without reference to classified information. . . . Pipes also raised the possibility of using the Freedom of Information Act to get the report into the public domain." [8]
It took 16 years before Pipes's hopes were fully realized and the documents published. In February 1989, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain Team B documents. After repeated letters, phone calls, and an interview by the chairman of the Intelligence Council produced only two items, I filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in July 1992. By the first meeting before the judge in September 1992, counsel for the CIA promised that I would receive all the documents before the end of October. The CIA deposited the Team B report at the National Archive, and delivered to me most of the documents I had requested before the end of October 1992.
Today, the Team B reports recall the stridency and militancy of the conservatives in the 1970s. Team B accused the CIA of consistently underestimating the "intensity, scope, and implicit threat" posed by the Soviet Union by relying on technical or "hard" data rather than "contemplat[ing] Soviet strategic objectives in terms of the Soviet conception of 'strategy' as well as in light of Soviet history, the structure of Soviet society, and the pronouncements of Soviet leaders."
And when Team B looked at "hard" data, everywhere it saw the worst case. It reported, for instance, that the Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers, with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." (In fact, the Soviets had 235 in 1984.) Team B also regarded Soviet defenses with alarm. "Mobile ABM [anti-ballistic missiles] system components combined with the deployed SAM [surface-to-air missile] system could produce a significant ABM capability." But that never occurred.
Team B found the Soviet Union immune from Murphy's law. They examined ABM and directed energy research, and said, "Understanding that there are differing evaluations of the potentialities of laser and CPB [charged particle beam] for ABM, it is still clear that the Soviets have mounted ABM efforts in both areas of a magnitude that it is difficult to overestimate." (Emphasis in original.)
But overestimate they did. A facility at the Soviet Union's nuclear test range in Semipalatinsk was touted by Gen. George Keegan, Chief of Air Force Intelligence (and a Team B briefer), as a site for tests of Soviet nuclear-powered beam weapons. In fact, it was used to test nuclear-powered rocket engines. According to a Los Alamos physicist who recently toured Russian directed-energy facilities, "We had overestimated both their capability and their [technical] understanding."
Team B's failure to find a Soviet non-acoustic anti-submarine system was evidence that there could well be one. "The implication could be that the Soviets have, in fact, deployed some operational non-acoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years." It wasn't a question of if the Russians were coming. They were here. (And probably working at the CIA!)
When Team B looked at the "soft" data concerning Soviet strategic concepts, they slanted the evidence to support their conclusions. In asserting that "Russian, and especially Soviet political and military theories are distinctly offensive in character," Team B claimed "their ideal is the 'science of conquest' (nauka pobezhdat) formulated by the eighteenth-century Russian commander, Field Marshal A.V. Suvorov in a treatise of the same name, which has been a standard text of Imperial as well as Soviet military science." Raymond Garthoff, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has pointed out that the correct translation of nauka pobezhdat is "the science of winning" or the "science of victory." All military strategists strive for a winning strategy. Our own military writings are devoted to winning victories, but this is not commonly viewed as a policy of conquest.
Team B hurled another brickbat: the CIA consistently underestimated Soviet military expenditures. With the advantage of hindsight, we now know that Soviet military spending increases began to slow down precisely as Team B was writing about "an intense military buildup in nuclear as well as conventional forces of all sorts, not moderated either by the West's self-imposed restraints or by SALT." In 1983, then-deputy director of the CIA, Robert Gates, testified: "The rate of growth of overall defense costs is lower because procurement of military hardware--the largest category of defense spending--was almost flat in 1976-1981 . . . [and that trend] appears to have continued also in 1982 and 1983."
While Team B waxed eloquent about "conceptual failures," it was unable to grasp how the future might differ from the past. In 1976 mortality rates were rising for the entire Soviet population, and life expectancies, numbers of new labor entrants, and agricultural output were all declining. Yet Team B wrote confidently, "Within what is, after all, a large and expanding GNP . . . Soviet strategic forces have yet to reflect any constraining effect of civil economy competition, and are unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future." (Emphasis in original.) And When Ronald Reagan got elected, Team B became, in essence, the "A Team."
For more than a third of a century, perceptions about U.S. national security were colored by the view that the Soviet Union was on the road to military superiority over the United States. Neither Team B nor the multibillion dollar intelligence agencies could see that the Soviet Union was dissolving from within.
For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to "rearm." In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world's greatest debtor--in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.
1. William E. Colby to President Ford (Nov. 21, 1975), author collection. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Anne H. Cahn.
2. George A. Carver, Jr., "Note for the Director," May 26, 1976.
3. Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations From Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985), p. 548.
4. Ibid.
5. Director of Central Intelligence George Bush to President Ford (August 3, 1976), author collection.
6. Leo Cherne, interviews with author May 23, 1990; August 2, 1990.
7. Leo Cherne, May 23, 1990.
8. Donald Suda, note to file (December 7, 1976), author collection.
Anne Hessing Cahn, a visiting scholar at the Center for International Studies at the University of Maryland in College Park, is a former official at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Defense Department.
April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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North Korea's nuclear program, 2005
By Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
May/June 2005 pp. 64-67 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
On February 10, North Korea announced for the first time that it possesses nuclear weapons. [1] The claim grabbed headlines, but it is difficult to substantiate. In the early 1990s, the CIA concluded that North Korea had effectively joined the nuclear club by building one or possibly two weapons from plutonium it produced before 1992. [2] Yet North Korea has never conducted a nuclear test, and although it has extracted weapon-grade plutonium, it has never conclusively demonstrated that it possesses operational nuclear warheads. (Nor has the United States been able to verify it.) It is known, however, that Pyongyang has a nuclear program. By cataloging the program's capabilities and quantity of separated plutonium, it is possible to estimate how many nuclear weapons Kim Jong Il's country might have.
North Korea's probable possession of nuclear weapons presents a serious and extremely complicated problem, with implications that could drastically affect Asian security and, by extension, U.S. interests as well. By violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), North Korea has weakened the treaty and sent signals that obtaining nuclear weapons has geopolitical benefits, at least when confronting the United States.
Nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Nuclear weapons and Korea have been entwined for more than 50 years. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the United States threatened several times to use nuclear weapons. [3] After the armistice, U.S. military forces remained in South Korea (the Republic of Korea). The United States began deploying several types of nuclear weapons to the South beginning in January 1958, a time of extensive worldwide deployments (see "Where They Were," November/December 1999 Bulletin). The U.S. arsenal in South Korea was at its largest in 1967, with approximately 950 warheads of eight types. By the mid-1980s, only the 8-inch and 155-millimeter artillery shells, atomic demolition munitions, and gravity bombs remained, and the number of warheads dropped to about 150. With no formal public announcement, in the fall of 1991 President George H. W. Bush ordered the removal of all remaining weapons, which was accomplished in late 1991.
The threat of a U.S. nuclear attack both during and after the Korean War may have helped spur former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to launch his own nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang started the program in the 1960s with Soviet help, and over the next two decades China provided various kinds of support. In 1986, the North began operating a newly constructed 20-megawatt thermal (MWt) reactor near the city of Yongbyon--a major milestone.
More recently, Pakistan has played a substantial role in the progress of North Korea's nuclear program. In the second half of the 1990s, Abdul Qadeer Khan, scientist and "father" of Pakistan's nuclear program, supplied uranium enrichment equipment and perhaps even warhead designs to North Korea, according to some news reports. Khan originally came to world attention for stealing centrifuge designs and equipment while working in the Netherlands in the 1970s. After returning to Pakistan, Khan used suppliers from around the world to build centrifuges capable of enriching uranium for Pakistan's bomb program. Those vendors and manufacturers became the foundation of an extensive and profitable black market run by Khan and others, which amassed hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S. intelligence agencies monitored Khan's network for years but did little to halt the traffic, so as not to compromise sources and methods or, later, jeopardize relations with Pakistan. Achieving short-term foreign policy goals took precedence over preventing widespread nuclear proliferation. [4]
Finally, in early 2004, Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf placed Khan under house arrest but pardoned him soon after. Neither the United States nor the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was permitted to interrogate him. On February 4, 2004, Khan admitted on national television that he was responsible for widespread nuclear proliferation. Later news reports described how Pakistani centrifuges were transferred to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missile technology. [5] In 2003, New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that U.S. intelligence agencies believed that Khan had made at least 13 trips to Pyongyang, the last in June 2002. [6]
Fissile material. The center of North Korea's nuclear program is at Yongbyon, some 60 miles north of Pyongyang. In addition to a 20 MWt reactor, Yongbyon's major facilities include a chemical separation (reprocessing) plant and a fuel fabrication plant. The 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States halted the construction of a 200 MWt reactor in Yongbyon, as well as the construction of a 700-800 MWt reactor near Taechon. Although North Korea pulled out of the agreement, there is no evidence that it resumed construction of either plant. North Korea operates uranium ore processing facilities at Pyongsan and Pakchon.
Intelligence analysts and nuclear experts widely believe that North Korea has produced and separated enough plutonium for a small number of nuclear warheads. Most or all of the plutonium came from reprocessed spent fuel from the 20 MWt reactor at Yongbyon, which went critical on August 14, 1985, and became operational the following January. [7] The U.S. intelligence community believes that during a 70-day shutdown period in 1989, North Korea secretly removed fuel from the reactor and separated the plutonium. Estimates vary as to how much plutonium was obtained. The State Department believes about 6-8 kilograms; the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency say 8-9 kilograms; the Institute for Science and International Security estimates as much as 14 kilograms. South Korean, Japanese, and Russian analysts estimate a much larger quantity, ranging up to 24 kilograms.
In October 2002, the United States publicly accused North Korea of operating a secret uranium enrichment program; North Korea denied it. In response to the U.S. claim, Pyongyang in December 2002 removed the IAEA safeguard seals at Yongbyon, shut down the monitoring cameras, and ordered the IAEA inspectors out of the country. On January 10, 2003, Pyongyang announced that it would withdraw from the NPT; it is the only country ever to do so. North Korea restarted its 20 MWt reactor and reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, and by June 2003 scientists had extracted plutonium from the 8,000 spent fuel rods kept at the site, according to North Korean officials. Western analysts estimate that this reprocessing would have resulted in 25-30 kilograms of plutonium.
Little is known about North Korea's alleged uranium enrichment program--where it might be located, its state of development, or how many centrifuges might be operational. The United States has not provided any public information that substantiates its existence. Following the U.S. manipulation and distortion of intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, some countries and analysts are now skeptical of any U.S. allegations regarding other nations' nuclear programs. [8] A March 20 Washington Post report that the White House misrepresented intelligence on the supposed transfer of nuclear material from North Korea to Libya may have further undermined the Bush administration's credibility, even though the White House denied the report.
Technical capability. The precise amount of plutonium, or uranium, needed to build a bomb depends upon two variables: the desired yield and design, which hinges on the technical capabilities of the scientists and engineers. (The IAEA and some nongovernmental institutes use a different analytical approach, assuming that the necessary quantity is some fixed, arbitrary amount.) [9] With approximately 1 kilogram of plutonium, designers with high technical capabilities could make a bomb with a 1-kiloton yield; with approximately 3 kilograms, a 20-kiloton yield is possible. Designers with low technical capabilities would need about 3 kilograms for a 1-kiloton yield and about 6 kilograms for a 20-kiloton yield (see "Approximate Fissile Material Requirements,"). The Trinity test and the Nagasaki (Fat Man) bomb each used 6.1 kilograms of plutonium and produced yields of approximately 21 kilotons.
No one knows the skill level of North Korean bomb designers. In the 60 years since the Manhattan Project, a large amount of information on nuclear weapons design has become available, and a medium capability certainly seems possible. This would mean that building a bomb with a 1-5 kiloton yield would require about 2 kilograms of plutonium. Weapons with a 10-20 kiloton yield would require approximately 3 kilograms. For several weapons, 8-9 kilograms of plutonium could be enough. During the 1994 North Korean crisis, then-Defense Secretary William Perry said, "If they had a very advanced technology, they could make five bombs out of the amount of plutonium we estimate they have." With 25-30 kilograms of additional plutonium from the 8,000 fuel rods, North Korea could build approximately 6-8 more warheads. A reasonable estimate of the number of assembled North Korean nuclear weapons is up to 10.
The potential capacity of North Korea's nuclear program is unsettling. The CIA estimates that the 200 MWt reactor at Yongbyon and the 700-800 MWt reactor at Taechon would generate about 275 kilograms of plutonium per year if completed and operated at full capacity. Even if North Korea resumed work at these unfinished reactors it would take several years to complete construction and more time to operate them and reprocess the fuel.
North Korea could make more bombs if it produced highly enriched uranium and manufactured it into weapon cores. If it used a composite-core design, which features a smaller plutonium sphere encased in a shell of highly enriched uranium, the North could make even more bombs than if it used plutonium or uranium in separate weapons. (The United States successfully tested the composite-core design in Operation Sandstone during the spring of 1948.)
Ballistic missiles. North Korea retains a very active ballistic missile program (see "North Korean Ballistic Missiles,"). [10] Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union supplied various types of missiles, supporting technologies, and training to North Korea. China began supplying North Korea with missile technology in the 1970s.
In 1979 and 1980, Egypt supplied Pyongyang with a small number of Soviet Scud B missiles, launchers, and support equipment. North Korea reverse-engineered the Scuds and built the industrial infrastructure to produce its own missiles. In 1987 and 1988 it was producing Scuds at a rate of eight to ten per month. It sold approximately 100 to Iran, many of which were fired at Iraqi cities during the Iran-Iraq War. North Korea first test-launched an extended-range version of the missile, known as the Scud C, in June 1990 and achieved a 500-kilometer range by reducing the payload from 1,000 to 770 kilograms. The North had produced a total of 600-1,000 Scud B and Scud Cs by the end of 1999, according to some estimates. It sold half of them to foreign countries.
Driven by a desire for longer missile ranges, North Korea developed what is known in the West as the Nodong (also Rodong), which has a maximum range of 1,480 kilometers (depending upon payload) and is capable of hitting Japan and U.S. bases in Okinawa. Pyongyang deployed 100 Nodongs in the mid-1990s and sold another 50 or so to foreign countries. The missile is known as the Ghauri-I in Pakistan and the Shahab-3 in Iran.
The North is working to build a missile with an intercontinental range. The two-stage Taepodong-1 is intended to carry a 1,000-1,500 kilogram warhead up to 2,300 kilometers. Pyongyang launched a three-stage space-launch version of the missile, intended to place a North Korean satellite in orbit, on August 31, 1998, from the facility at Musudan-ri. The missile flew over Japan, causing much consternation. Its first and second stages separated and landed in the water, but the third stage broke up after traveling more than 5,500 kilometers, and the satellite did not reach orbit.
Depending on the payload, the as-yet-untested Taepodong-2 may have a range greater than 6,200 kilometers, sufficient to strike parts of Hawaii and Alaska in its two-stage variant, and all of North America in a three-stage variant.
It is reasonable to assume that North Korea wants to put nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles, but whether it has achieved this capability is unknown. Most other countries that have developed nuclear weapons chose airplanes as their initial delivery method, followed in most instances by the development of ballistic missiles of various ranges.
Although there is no evidence that North Korea has modified aircraft for nuclear delivery, such a capability would be easier to develop and more difficult to detect than ballistic missiles. North Korea maintains underground aircraft hangars within a 10-20 minute striking distance of Seoul and has bombers and fighter aircraft that had nuclear strike roles in the Soviet Air Force.
U.S. policies. The current administration's hope that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons seems fanciful at this point. [11] What incentives could possibly persuade it to give up its weapons program, dismantle its nuclear complex, and agree to an intrusive verification regime? It seems highly unlikely that North Korea would agree to abandon the very thing that gives it leverage with its neighbors and the United States.
President George W. Bush's first-term policies failed to move North Korea toward the goal of disarmament and instead proved to be counterproductive. Admonitions that North Korea is an "outpost of tyranny" and part of the "axis of evil" have tended to increase the North's already substantial fear and paranoia of the United States. The hardliners around Bush believe that isolation, pressure, and sanctions will cause North Korea to collapse and that it should not be rewarded for any positive steps it might take. The six-party talks, held in August 2003, February 2004, and June 2004, have yielded little. The United States proposed a step-by-step process for further talks, but North Korea recently rejected further negotiations.
The United States and the other parties involved in the negotiations disagree on how to deal with Pyongyang. Perhaps the sharpest differences are with South Korea. In a speech that must have shocked the Bush administration, South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun said that, "North Korea professes that nuclear capabilities are a deterrent for defending itself from external aggression." While in many cases its claims and allegations are hard to believe, Roh said that, "In this particular case it is true and undeniable that there is a considerable element of rationality in North Korea's claim." [12]
A nuclear-armed North Korea could trigger an arms race in East Asia and beyond. This prospect has already prompted the United States to expand its nuclear targeting doctrine, enlarge missile defense programs, and plan the development of new nuclear weapons, such as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. A nuclear North could further harden the U.S. posture toward the country and reinvigorate extended nuclear deterrence strategies in the region. Worse, Japan might decide to build its own nuclear weapons program, which would surely provoke a Chinese response and in turn cause reverberations in India and Pakistan. There could also be repercussions in Taiwan and South Korea, both of which built fledgling nuclear weapons programs before U.S. pressure shut them down. Recent public disclosures of secret South Korean nuclear research do little to increase trust and allay fears. [13]
Perhaps the greatest danger of all would be North Korea selling its plutonium, highly enriched uranium, or finished weapons to other countries or terrorists. Its track record with ballistic missiles is not encouraging. It has sold missiles to Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan--lucrative sources of income to the impoverished country. Fissile material and nuclear weapons would be even more lucrative and would have a far larger impact on regional and international security.
1. Korean Central News Agency, "DPRK FM on Its Stand to Suspend Its Participation in Six-Party Talks for Indefinite Period," February 10, 2005.
2. CIA, untitled estimate provided to Congress, November 19, 2002. According to the estimate, "The U.S. has been concerned about North Korea's desire for nuclear weapons and has assessed since the early 1990s that the North has one or possibly two weapons using plutonium it produced prior to 1992."
3. Bruce Cumings, "Nuclear Threats Against North Korea: Consequences of the 'Forgotten War,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, December 20, 2004.
4. Douglas Frantz, "A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout," Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2005, p. A1. Leonard Weiss, "Turning a Blind Eye Again? The Khan Network's History and Lessons for U.S. Policy," Arms Control Today, March 2005, pp. 12-18.
5. Weiss, "Turning a Blind Eye Again."
6. Seymour M. Hersh, "The Cold Test," The New Yorker, January 27, 2003.
7. Some of the plutonium may have come from a Russian supplied research reactor that first went critical in 1965. It was upgraded from 2 MWt to 4 MWt in 1974 and to 8 MWt in 1987.
8. Joseph Kahn, "China Questions U.S. Data on North Korea," New York Times, March 7, 2005, p. A5. See also: Joseph Kahn and Susan Chira, "Chinese Official Challenges U.S. Stance on North Korea," New York Times, June 8, 2004, p. 12; Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, "Intelligence about Iran for Bush is Called Weak," New York Times, March 9, 2005, p. A1.
9. The IAEA uses 8 kilograms of plutonium and 25 kilograms of HEU as threshold amounts for a single nuclear device. The International Institute for Strategic Studies assumes 5-8 kilograms of plutonium and 20-25 kilograms of HEU to calculate the North Korean arsenal.
10. The program is carefully documented by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK, Occasional Paper no. 2 (Monterey: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 1999).
11. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States, 109th Cong., 1st sess., February 16, 2005. On p. 10, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that, "Kim Chong-Il may eventually agree to negotiate parts of his nuclear weapon stockpile and program and agree to some type of inspection regime, but we judge Kim is not likely to surrender all of his nuclear weapon capabilities."
12. Roh Moo-hyun, "The U.S.-Republic of Korea Alliance and the Situation on the Korean Peninsula" (speech, Los Angeles World Affairs Council, November 12, 2004).
13. Jungmin Kang, et al., "South Korea's Nuclear Surprise," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2005, pp. 40-49.
Nuclear Notebook is prepared by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Inquiries should be directed to NRDC, 1200 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 20005; 202-289-6868.
May/June 2005 pp. 64-67 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
North Korean ballistic missiles
MAXIMUM RANGE
(kilometers) PAYLOAD
(kilograms) COMMENT
SCUD B 320 1,000 Reverse-engineered
Soviet Scud B
SCUD C 570 770 Conventional explosives, chemical, and cluster
warheads
NODONG 1,480 1,200 Test-fired in May 1993; flew 500 kilometers. Fewer than 50 launchers deployed. Designed to carry a nuclear warhead
TAEPODONG-1 2,300 1,000-1,500 Test-launched August 31, 1998. Not yet deployed
TAEPODONG-2 6,200+ 700-1,000 Not yet tested
TAEPODONG-2
(three-stage) 15,000 unknown More than a decade away. May be capable of striking all of North America
Source (for range): NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE INTELLIGENCE CENTER
Approximate fissile material requirements for pure fission nuclear weapons
TECHNICAL CAPABILITY YIELD
LOW MEDIUM HIGH (KILOTONS)
WEAPON-
GRADE
PLUTONIUM
(KILOGRAMS) 3 1.5 1 1
4 2.5 1.5 5
5 3 2 10
6 3.5 3 20
HIGHLY
ENRICHED
URANIUM
(KILOGRAMS) 8 4 2.5 1
11 6 3.5 5
13 7 4 10
20 9 5 20
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Global nuclear stockpiles, 1945-2006
By Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
July/August 2006 pp. 64-66 (vol. 62, no. 4) ) © 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Excessive secrecy prohibits the public from knowing the exact number of nuclear weapons in the world. Each nation shields the details of its own nuclear arsenal and generally knows few precise details about the size and composition of other countries' stockpiles.
Despite the uncertainty, we know that the total global nuclear weapons stockpile is considerably smaller than the 1986 Cold War high of 70,000-plus warheads. Through a series of arms control agreements and unilateral decisions, nuclear weapon states have reduced the global stockpile to its lowest level in 45 years. In the same period, the number of nuclear weapon states has grown from three to nine.
We estimate that these nine states possess about 27,000 intact nuclear warheads, of which 97 percent are in U.S. and Russian stockpiles. About 12,500 of these warheads are considered operational, with the balance in reserve or retired and awaiting dismantlement. We are able to make our estimates by monitoring all known nuclear weapon developments, by studying long-term trends, and by tracking the implementation of arms control treaties.
Estimating the arsenal sizes of the smaller nuclear powers--Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea--poses special difficulties, considering how minuscule they are compared with Russian and U.S. stockpiles. India and Pakistan have about 110 nuclear warheads between them, fewer than the number of warheads carried on a single U.S. Trident submarine, and the North Koreans could have around 10. Though Israel has not acknowledged it possesses nuclear weapons, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates it has between 60 and 85 warheads.
More than 128,000 nuclear warheads have been built since 1945, according to our calculations, and all but close to 3 percent were built by the United States (about 55 percent) and the Soviet Union/Russia (about 43 percent). Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia have moved an increasing percentage of their warheads from operational status to various reserve, inactive, or contingency categories, as arms control agreements traditionally have not required the destruction of warheads. For example, the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (the "Moscow Treaty") contains no verification provisions and ignores nonoperational and nonstrategic warheads altogether. With any number of warheads in indeterminate status, nuclear stockpiles are becoming more opaque and difficult to describe with precision. It's a situation that will only worsen after 2009 if the United States and Russia do not extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I, which requires biannual reporting on the status of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and bombers.
United States. The Pentagon has custody of approximately 10,000 stockpiled warheads, of which about 5,735 are considered active or operational. The remaining are categorized as reserve or inactive. Details from an Energy Department 2004 stockpile plan indicate that some 4,000 warheads will eventually be retired, returned to Energy's custody, and disassembled at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, though that task could take many years to accomplish. Refurbishments and upgrades to existing warheads will take priority over disassembly in terms of man-hours for the foreseeable future.
Of the more than 70,000 warheads produced by the United States since 1945, more than 60,000 have been disassembled by mid-2006. More than 13,000 of these warheads have been taken apart since 1990, but Energy retains more than 12,000 intact plutonium pits from dismantled warheads and stores them at Pantex.
Russia. Moscow has released very little information about the size of its stockpile, and its future plans are not known with a great deal of certainty. We estimate that since 1949 the Soviet Union/Russia produced some 55,000 nuclear warheads and that about 30,000 warheads existed in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. A few statements from Russian officials provide an occasional benchmark to help roughly calculate stockpile size and trends. But these statements typically lack detail, and the referenced dates are often ambiguous. In 1993, Victor Mikhailov, then minister of atomic energy, revealed that in 1986 the Soviet Union had 45,000 warheads in its stockpile. A decade later, Mikhailov said that nearly half of these warheads had been dismantled. [1]
The Defense Department and the CIA estimated that Russia dismantled slightly more than 1,000 warheads per year during the 1990s, though how firm those estimates were is unknown. Of the 16,000 intact warheads we estimate to be in Russia's possession today, around 5,830 are considered operational. Because Russia has removed warheads from its deployed and operational forces faster than it could dismantle them, there is a backlog of warheads awaiting dismantlement. The Moscow Treaty limits Russia's "operationally deployed strategic warheads" to no more than 2,200 by 2012, but its arsenal could shrink below this limit. Russia's production of new systems has been slow, and it is uncertain whether it can maintain such a large number of warheads because of limited resources and funding. Russia had previously pressed for a limit of 1,500 operational strategic warheads as part of the treaty, but the United States rejected this limit.
Britain. Since 1953, Britain has produced approximately 1,200 warheads, according to our estimates. The British arsenal peaked in the 1970s at 350 warheads and has mostly declined since. The current stockpile consists of some 200 strategic and "sub-strategic" warheads for delivery by Trident II SLBMs aboard Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). The Labour government declared in July 1998 that it would maintain "fewer than 200 operationally available warheads," of which 48 would be on patrol at any given time on a single SSBN.
France. The current French stockpile includes approximately 350 warheads, down from some 540 in 1992. We estimate that France produced more than 1,260 nuclear warheads since 1964. In the past decade, France dismantled its land-based ballistic missiles and retired its nuclear bombs intended for delivery by naval strike aircraft. France initially planned to arm its M51 sea-launched ballistic missile, which is scheduled for deployment in 2010, with an entirely new warhead, the Tête Nucléaire Océanique (TNO), but the missile will instead be equipped with a more robust version of an existing design, probably the TN-75.
China. We estimate that China has an arsenal of some 200 nuclear warheads, down from an estimated 435 in 1993. This change is due to new information about the arsenal. China is thought to have produced some 600 nuclear warheads since 1964, and U.S. intelligence and defense agencies predict that over the next decade, China may increase the number of warheads targeted primarily against the United States from 20 to about 75-100.
India and Pakistan. Neither India nor Pakistan has released any official information to the public about the size of its nuclear arsenal. Combined, the two are thought to possess as many as 110 warheads, some of which may not be operationally deployed. Independent experts estimate that India has produced enough fissile material for between 60 and 105 nuclear warheads but may have assembled only 50-60 warheads. In contrast, these experts believe that Pakistan has produced fissile material sufficient for between 55 and 90 weapons and has assembled 40-50 warheads. [2] Both countries are thought to be increasing their stockpiles.
Israel. Although Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it possesses nuclear weapons, the DIA concluded in 1999 that Israel had produced 60-80 warheads. Israel is estimated to have produced enough fissile material for between 115 and 190 warheads. The DIA projected that Israel's stockpile would increase only modestly by 2020.
North Korea. North Korea has a 5-megawatt-electric (MWe) graphite-moderated, gas-cooled reactor that began operations in 1986. Independent experts estimate that it has produced about 43 kilograms of separated plutonium, give or take 10 kilograms. [3] Depending upon the North Koreans' technical capability and the desired yield of the bomb, Pyongyang could have as few as five weapons or as many as fifteen. Ten weapons seems to be a reasonable estimate, with the addition of about one weapon per year. It is unknown if North Korea has weaponized its nuclear capability and made a deliverable or usable weapon that can be mated to a missile, for example. If North Korea completes an under-construction 50 MWe reactor in a few years, it could produce about 60 kilograms of plutonium per year, which could potentially grow the stockpile by 10-15 weapons per year.
The future. All five original nuclear weapon states continue to insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their national security, which translates into substantial global nuclear weapon stockpiles for the foreseeable future and the possibility that more nations will want the Bomb as well. India has committed to possessing a triad of nuclear forces including land-based ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable aircraft, and sea-based missiles that will probably require an arsenal of 100-150 warheads. Not to be outdone, Pakistan will likely keep pace with a similarly sized arsenal. Whether Israel's nuclear arsenal remains opaque will likely depend on the development of Iran's nuclear program, which appears to be about three to ten years away from joining the nuclear weapon club. Despite nuclear weapon states' progress in reducing global stockpiles, convincing nations to abandon their nuclear arsenals altogether remains a formidable task, one that will likely remain impossible until the nuclear powers themselves renounce their weapons.
1. Interfax, "Country Dismantles Nearly Half Its Nuclear Arsenal," April 27, 1997 (transcribed in FBIS-TAC-97-117).
2. Estimates of fissile material production are from David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, "Global Stocks of Nuclear Explosive Materials: Summary Tables and Charts," revised September 7, 2005 (http://www.isisonline.org/global_stocks/end2003/tableofcontents.html).
3. Siegfried S. Hecker, "Technical Summary of DPRK Nuclear Program," presentation at Carnegie Non-Proliferation Conference, November 8, 2005.
Nuclear Notebook is prepared by Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. Inquiries should be directed to NRDC, 1200 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 20005; 202-289-6868.
July/August 2006 pp. 64-66 (vol. 62, no. 4) ) © 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Nuclear weapons states*, 1945-2006
Year
U.S.
Russia
Britian
France
China
Total
1945
6
6
1946
11
11
1947
32
32
1948
110
110
1949
235
1
236
1950
369
5
374
1951
640
25
665
1952
1,005
50
1,055
1953
1,436
120
1
1,557
1954
2,063
150
5
2,218
1955
3,057
200
10
3,267
1956
4,618
426
15
5,059
1957
6,444
660
20
7,124
1958
9,822
869
22
10,713
1959
15,468
1,060
25
16,553
1960
20,434
1,605
30
22,069
1961
24,126
2,471
50
26,647
1962
27,387
3,322
205
30,914
1963
29,459
4,238
280
33,977
1964
31,056
5,221
310
4
1
36,592
1965
31,982
6,129
310
32
5
38,458
1966
32,040
7,089
270
36
20
39,455
1967
31,233
8,339
270
36
25
39,903
1968
29,224
9,399
280
36
35
38,974
1969
27,342
10,538
308
36
50
38,274
1970
26,662
11,643
280
36
75
38,696
1971
26,956
13,092
220
45
100
40,413
1972
27,912
14,478
220
70
130
42,810
1973
28,999
15,915
275
116
150
45,455
1974
28,965
17,385
325
145
170
46,990
1975
27,826
19,055
350
188
185
47,604
1976
25,579
21,205
350
212
190
47,536
1977
25,722
23,044
350
228
200
49,544
1978
24,826
25,393
350
235
220
51,024
1979
24,605
27,935
350
235
235
53,360
1980
24,304
30,062
350
250
280
55,246
1981
23,464
32,049
350
274
330
56,467
1982
23,708
33,952
335
274
360
58,629
1983
24,099
35,804
320
279
380
60,882
1984
24,357
37,431
270
280
415
62,753
1985
24,237
39,197
300
360
425
64,519
1986
24,401
45,000
300
355
425
70,481
1987
24,344
43,000
300
420
415
68,479
1988
23,586
41,000
300
410
430
65,726
1989
22,380
39,000
300
410
435
62,525
1990
21,004
37,000
300
505
430
59,239
1991
17,287
35,000
300
540
435
53,562
1992
14,747
33,000
300
540
435
49,022
1993
13,076
31,000
300
525
435
45,336
1994
12,555
29,000
250
510
400
42,715
1995
12,144
27,000
300
500
400
40,344
1996
11,009
25,000
300
450
400
37,159
1997
10,950
24,000
260
450
400
36,060
1998
10,871
23,000
260
450
400
34,981
1999
10,824
22,000
185
450
400
33,859
2000
10,577
21,000
185
470
400
32,632
2001
10,527
20,000
200
350
400
31,477
2002
10,475
19,000
200
350
400
30,425
2003
10,421
18,000
200
350
400
29,371
2004
10,358
18,000
200
350
400
29,308
2005
10,295
17,000
200
350
400
28,245
2006
10,104
16,000
200
350
200
26,854
*As outlined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
www.thebulletin.org | Copyright 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
http://www.strongangel3.net/
Anticipating Complexity | Exploring Responses | Cultivating Resilience
THE SCENARIO
A Complex Contingency: A lethal and highly-contagious virus gradually begins to spread around the globe. Infection rates are high, deaths are frequent, and no vaccine is available. Cities all over the world fall under quarantine. Emergency services and medical centers are stressed and national government agencies, affected just as severely as the cities themselves, cannot provide assistance. And then the situation goes from bad to worse.
A terrorist cell, having long waited for such an opportunity, launches a wave of successful cyber attacks in a medium size city somewhere in the developed world, bringing down grid power, Internet access, land and cellular telephones. Other, more subtle, attacks follow, and it's difficult to sort out the mess.
If there were ever a time to work effectively together, this would be it.
Recognizing that a comparable scenario might one day unfold in real life, a diverse group of disaster responders, technologists, and community leaders will assemble in San Diego in August of 2006 for an event designed to simulate a truly complex disaster. Over the course of seven days, on the grounds of the San Diego Fire Training Academy, the campus of San Diego State University, and in the streets of the city, we will explore techniques and technologies for responding effectively when the response itself must adapt to cascading losses. By demonstrating what is possible through public and private-sector partnerships within a community, we intend to develop approaches to cultivating local resilience that may be useful for any city, here or abroad.
International Partners
We are welcoming colleagues participating from around the world, including Afghanistan, Canada, China, England, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and more.
There is much here, interesting.....................
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
INVASION USA
Illegal immigration sparks
'race war' in cities, prisons
Hispanic, black gangs battle
amid shifting demographics
Posted: August 23, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Member of Hispanic gang MS-13 (photo: News 14 Carolina)
WASHINGTON – Four members of a Hispanic gang in Los Angeles are convicted of federal hate crimes for the cold-blooded slaying of a black man in their neighborhood.
In Maryland, state corrections officials have begun a new study of prison gangs, including the growing numbers of Spanish-speaking gang members, amid mounting violence against prison workers.
A war between Hispanic and black prison gangs set off a series of riots across California this year leaving two dead and more than 100 were injured.
Pat Buchanan, WND columnist and author of the new best-selling book, "State of Emergency," sees them as symptoms of out-of-control immigration into the U.S. mainly from Mexico and Central America.
"The country club Republicans may not recognize what is happening here, but those in America's cities do," he said. "Why are we risking the destruction of our country over this? How many unskilled workers do we need here?"
National crime statistics released by the FBI show homicides up 5 percent last year. But the real story, say experts, is what is happening in urban pockets across the country, where murders – increasingly across racial lines – are way up.
In Philadelphia's 12th Police District shootings have almost doubled over the past year.
In Boston, the homicide rate is soaring.
In Orlando, the homicide count has reached 37, surpassing the city's previous record.
All of this follows a national trend of decreasing violent crime through 2002.
The biggest increase in violence is in smaller cities where gang and drug problems are relatively new. In 2005, jurisdictions with populations between 50,000 and 250,000 saw homicide increases of about 12.5 percent – far larger than the big cities, says David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
"Those numbers tell only part of the story," he said. "Serious crime is concentrated in certain areas within poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods. For people who live in the Trinidad area of Washington, in the Nickerson Gardens housing complex in South Los Angeles and on Magnolia Street in Boston, the citywide statistics have always been meaningless. Their neighborhoods are war zones."
More people are noticing that much of the violence is at least partly racially motivated and tied directly to the rapid increase in Hispanic population over the last decade – much of it due to illegal immigration.
Last month, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca cited tensions between black and Hispanic gangs for his decision to redeploy deputies to the Compton area, where four people were killed in 20 gang shootings during one July weekend.
In one high-profile example of what's happening on the city streets of Los Angeles, Alejandro "Bird" Martinez and three other Hispanic gang members were joyriding in a stolen van when they came upon a black man parking his car. According to court testimony, they decided to kill him. Three of the four shot Kenneth Kurry Wilson with a .357-caliber revolver, a 9 mm semiautomatic and a 12-gauge shotgun.
Earlier this month, Martinez and three other members of the Avenues, a Hispanic gang, were convicted of federal hate crimes. It is believed to be the first case in which the U.S. Justice Department has prosecuted a minority gang as a hate group, using laws traditionally employed to go after white supremacist groups like skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.
Recently, a Hispanic teen was murdered by a black assailant who, witnesses said, yelled a gang name as he fled. On June 30, a pair of black gunmen killed three Hispanics, prompting black and Hispanic leaders to call an emergency summit on how to call a halt to the bloodbath in the streets of L.A.
Observers suggest the situation on the streets is complicated by the numbers of gang members returning from prison, where joining a race-based gang is often a matter of survival.
In the case of the Avenues gang, an informant told the FBI members had received an order from the Mexican Mafia prison gang to kill all blacks on sight in their mainly Hispanic neighborhood. Leading up to Wilson's murder, members of the Avenues terrorized other blacks, shooting a 15-year-old boy on a bike, pistol-whipping a jogger and drawing outlines of human bodies in a black family's driveway, according to news reports.
Gang feuds were historically intra-racial rather than interracial. But that situation began to change with the heavy influx of Hispanics in some previously predominantly black neighborhoods.
For instance, in the late 1990s, newly arrived Hispanics began moving into the traditionally black communities of Compton and South Los Angeles. An area that was 80 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic is now 60 percent Hispanic, 40 percent black.
The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations' latest human rights report said there were 41 recorded cases of interracial gang-related hate crime in 2004. But commissioners agreed the real number would be much higher if victims were not afraid to go to the police.
"In the overwhelming number of these cases, Latino gang members spontaneously attacked African-American victims who had no gang affiliation," the commission wrote.
It said conflicts between racially based prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia "can have a significant impact on racialized gang violence in L.A. County and contribute to the levels of hate violence involving gangs."
Meanwhile, in Maryland, officials are increasingly concerned about the impact of growing numbers of Hispanic gang members in state prisons.
Karen V. Poe, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the newly arrived Hispanic gangs – like MS-13 – pose a new set of problems in prison.
"They're not your Bloods and Crips," Poe said. "We need to look at communicating with them, understanding what they're saying to one another."
Inside the prisons, tensions are higher than ever because of turf wars between the competing gangs, said Ronald E. Smith, a former Maryland correctional officer who is now a labor relations specialist with a prison workers' union.
"Crips, Bloods, the Black Guerrilla Family, MS-13 – all these gangs are in there and they're all fighting for territory and control of all the drugs that come into the prison, the flow of money – anything they can take to show that they have the authority there," he told the Associated Press.
Smith said about two dozen inmates from competing gangs were involved in a riot inside the medium-security Maryland Correctional Training Center near Hagerstown July 26. Meanwhile, the rate of assaults on correctional officers in the state's maximum-security prisons nearly doubled from about 3.4 per 100 inmates in 2004 to 6.6 in 2005, according to a budget analysis by the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services.
Related offers:
Get Pat Buchanan's new best-selling book, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."
Get "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders," by Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist
Get Rep. Tom Tancredo's "In Mortal Danger" direct from the people who published it – WND Books.
Michelle Malkin's "Invasion"
Illegal aliens invading U.S.: Expose puts you on southern border as citizens battle human flood
Previous stories:
Illegal aliens linked to gang-rape wave
Gang expert backs Tancredo charges
Mexican drug cartels take over U.S. cities
Tancredo's tome strikes chord
Tancredo blasts Senate 'amnesty'
Tancredo leads presidential poll
Tancredo wins GOP presidential poll
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
INVASION USA
Illegal aliens linked
to gang-rape wave
The crime epidemic no one will talk about?
Posted: August 22, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Member of gang Mara Salvatrucha (NPR.org)
A wave of illegal-immigrant gang rapes is sweeping the U.S. while public officials and law-enforcement authorities fear drawing the link, experts say.
Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, a Ph.D. researcher of violent crimes, told WorldNetDaily, "It appears as if there is a fear that if this is honestly discussed, people will hate all illegal immigrants. So there is silence. … But in being silent about the rapes and murders, it is as if the victims never even existed."
Schurman-Kauflin, who runs the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, participated in a 12-month, in-depth study of illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes and murders from January 1999 through April 2006. The study found approximately 240,000 illegal-immigrant sex offenders reside in the United States – while 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sexual offenders come across U.S. borders illegally every day.
Schurman-Kauflin said, "Gang rapes by illegal immigrants appear to be gang related. Many of the cases I reviewed involved gang members. As part of being a cohesive group, they offend together. Inflicting brutal gang rapes brings them closer together as a group. It is a way to demonstrate their power. And it sends a message to anyone who dares to cross them."
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC told WND it now is tracking 12 gang rapes by illegal aliens within America's borders since Oct. 2004.
ALIPAC's president, William Gheen, said, "These are just the ones we know of. The real number is much higher."
Gheen told WND he believes the number of gang rapes is increasing as the population of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases.
"Many illegal aliens have a rape and pillage mentality toward America," he said. "The government has shown them they can break our laws on many levels without much fear of enforcement. Why should they think of rape or gang rape any differently?"
Gheen said, "Illegal aliens are more likely to engage in these crimes because rapes and gang rapes are much more common in the gang-rule Third World areas they come from."
MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, a highly organized and well-funded Central American gang, is infiltrating at least 33 states across the U.S., according to law-enforcement authorities. The gang is well-known in Los Angeles, Houston, New York and Washington, D.C., for excessive brutality. Any person suspected of cooperating with authorities is hunted down, tortured and killed. Initiation rites include kickings, beatings and gang rapes.
Gheen said, "These gangs are forcing new female gang members to undergo gang rape to enter the gang and they are asking their male initiates to gang rape American women to become an official member of the gang."
MS-13 relies on metropolitan areas with highly concentrated populations of illegal aliens to boost its spreading membership. Chapters require that initiates perform random acts of violence, such as participating in gang rapes, to gain acceptance, confirm law-enforcement officials.
Three MS-13 gang members were charged in the brutal rapes of two deaf girls, one 14, the other 17, in a Massachusetts park in 2002. One victim, who also suffered from cerebral palsy, was pushed out of her wheelchair before being raped repeatedly.
Illegal alien rapists often maintain several aliases, making escaping justice easier.
Jorge Villa-Gutierrez, 25, is in prison for the gang rape of an 18-year-old Douglas County, Colorado woman. He claimed to have paid only $100 for a fake ID and Social Security number.
Manuel Cantu, 28, pleaded guilty in Middlesex Superior Court February 2005 in Cambridge, Mass., to six counts of rape and one count of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 years old. Cantu also went by the aliases Angel Meza and Angel M. Salvador, according to court documents.
Gheen said, "Illegal aliens have been walking out of American prisons after serving their time at taxpayer expense without being deported. Our government can't or won't find the hundreds of thousands of known felon illegal aliens walking America's streets tonight much less stop the new felons coming in tonight across our unsecured borders."
The Violent Crimes Institute study established a pattern of escalating offenses among illegal aliens, whose first offense was illegally entering the U.S.
Schurman-Kauflin told WND, "Illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes first cross the U.S. border illegally, then gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again. There is a clear pattern of criminal escalation. From misdemeanors such as assault or DUI, to drug offenses, illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes break U.S. laws repeatedly."
Most of the offenders reported in the study were located in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California was No. 1, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida. The 1,500 offenders studied had a total of 5,999 victims – averaging four victims each. Of those studied, 525, or 35 percent, were child molestations, 358, or 24 percent, were rapes, and 617, or 41 percent, were sexual homicides and serial murders.
Schurman-Kauflin said, "We need to know who is coming into this country. It is a matter of security, life and death. … Our borders should be secured so that those with evil intentions cannot enter. We need more Border Patrol agents, more training for these agents and a commitment that we will not tolerate predators coming into this country. There must be security and a return to the rule of law."
Last year, officials of the House Judiciary Committee said that U.S. immigration officers and police are not always on the same page. Police do not always inform immigration authorities about arrests of undocumented aliens, and immigration officers are often too late to identify the aliens before they are released on bail.
New York's arm of the Department of Homeland Security is only interviewing 40 percent of foreign-born inmates at Rikers Island – "a failure that puts criminal aliens back on the streets instead of deporting them," according to the New York Post.
"Gang rape is a form of terrorism. It has been used throughout history as a weapon of terror," Gheen said. "Most Americans do not see the war that is already upon us in our communities and neighborhoods."
Some high-profile gang rapes by illegal immigrants include:
* December 2002 – In New York, several criminal aliens, who had passed in and out of Rikers and other jails without being detected by immigration officials, brutally beat and gang-raped a Queens mother of two near Shea Stadium. Three of the five rapists were illegal Mexican aliens with multiple prior arrests for crimes including assault, weapon possession and armed robbery.
* January 2004 – Four illegal aliens were among the five men who brutally gang-raped a New York City woman. "They punched me so hard that I was knocked to the floor," the 43-year-old victim wrote before Supreme Court Justice Randall Eng sentenced one of her attackers, Victor Cruz, to 21 years in prison. Cruz, Luis Carmona, Carlos Rodriguez, Armando Juvenal and José Hernandez pleaded guilty in December to rape and kidnapping charges in exchange for sentences of 20 to 23 years.
* October 2004 – a 37-year-old North Carolina woman was gang raped by at least seven illegal aliens in Huntersville, N.C.
* Oct. 4, 2005 – In Immokalee, Fla., 14 field laborers, ranging in age from 18 to 56, broke into an 18-year-old woman's home, dragged her across the street and then took turns raping her. The victim said the men choked and hit her until she became unconscious. When she awoke, a man poured alcohol in her mouth. The men removed her clothing and each one raped her.
* June 28, 2006 – Texas' Waco Tribune Herald reported illegal immigrants Javier Guzman Martinez, 18, and Noel Darwin Hernandez, 22, have been charged with one count of aggravated kidnapping and one count of aggravated sexual assault of an 18-year-old Tehuacana woman. The girl had been cut with a piece of glass or "other unknown object."
* July 10 – In Sayre, Pa., the Evening Times reported "Gasper Almilcar Guzman" was among a group of men who were found July 10 to be in this country illegally following a routine traffic stop in Athens Township. Guzman had been convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl in Alabama in 2005. Guzman was deported before he could begin serving his five-year sentence.
* July 13 -- In Noblesville, Ind., an illegal alien named Miguel Gutierrez, 20, faces two counts of rape for taking a 14-year-old into a garage and participating in a four-man gang rape on the girl. Following the gang rape, the girl was forced into a car and raped again, according to news reports.
* July 17 – In Greenville, N.C., Fernando Cruz, 41, Walter Ramires, 26, Luis Morales, 24, and Pedro Vasques, 27, were charged with first-degree rape and first-degree kidnapping of a woman. They drove the woman to a field path on the edge of town and took turns raping her.
* July 21 – Sinoe Salgado Garcia, a 28-year-old Fontana, Calif., man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 4-year-old girl, was sentenced to a 30-year-to-life prison term, according to the Riverside Press Enterprise. The child was found hours later inside a shed, thrown over a 6-foot-tall block wall, investigators said. She underwent surgery to repair damage caused by the rape and sodomy, court records show. The site reported that she also suffered three facial fractures.
* Aug. 3 – Two young illegal aliens living in Charlotte, N.C., were charged with gang raping an Asheville teenager at the Red Roof Inn. They are 22-year-old Pablo Vasquez Osorio and 23-year-old Marcos Guerrero Fuentes. Both were charged with first-degree rape and kidnapping of a 17-year-old Asheville girl at a Red Roof Inn.
Related offers:
Get Rep. Tom Tancredo's "In Mortal Danger" direct from the people who published it – WND Books.
Michelle Malkin's "Invasion"
Jon Dougherty's "Illegals"
Previous stories:
Aliens among us? Don't ask, don't tell
Study: 1 million sex crimes by illegals
Gang expert backs Tancredo charges
Mexican drug cartels take over U.S. cities
Tancredo's tome strikes chord
Tancredo blasts Senate 'amnesty'
Tancredo leads presidential poll
Tancredo wins GOP presidential poll
Chelsea Schilling is a WND intern based in Texas and currently in Washington.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3294557,00.html
Assad: No UN troops on Lebanon-Syria border
Syrian president rejects Israeli demands for deployment of international troops on Lebanese-Syrian border to stop what Israel says is smuggling of arms to Hizbullah
Reuters
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday rejected Israeli demands for the deployment of international troops on the Lebanese-Syrian border to stop what Israel says is the smuggling of arms to Hizbullah.
"This would be a withdrawal of Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile position," Assad said, according to advance excerpts of an interview to be aired by Dubai Television on Wednesday.
Opportunity?
Turkey: Lebanon war could lead to peace / Reuters
Following meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul says 'after this catastrophe there is an opportunity to achieve peace'; adds Assad shares his view
Full story
The United Nations is trying to assemble a force of 15,000 to monitor a truce in southern Lebanon after a 34-day war between Israeli and the Shiite Muslim terror group Hizbullah , which ended eight days ago with an uneasy truce.
Israel wants UN troops to police border crossings between Lebanon and Syria to prevent weapons smuggling.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said stationing some of the international force at border crossings and Beirut airport would enable Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon.
UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said on Tuesday that there were indications from senior Lebanese officials that they would request help in monitoring the crossings and that the international community would heed any such requests.
He said about 2,000 Lebanese forces had deployed along the border with Syria, but the United Nations was having difficulty attracting contributions for the international force.
Many countries have demanded a clearer mandate for the expanded UN force, authorised by UN Security Council resolution 1701 establishing the ceasefire.
That resolution also demands that Lebanon's borders be demarcated, particularly to solve a dispute over the Shebaa Farms, an Israeli-occupied strip near the border between Lebanon, Israel and Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Border demarcation
Assad said, however, that his country would not draw the border until Israel withdrew from the area.
"There will be no drawing of the border in the Shebaa Farms before the Israeli forces leave it," Assad said.
"Hizbullah's victory was enough to teach Israel a lesson, that the isolation of Syria has failed and that anyone who tries to isolate Syria isolates himself from basic issues."
The Shebaa Farms is a small patch of land claimed by Lebanon, but occupied by Israel since it captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. The United Nations deems the territory Syrian until such time as Syria cedes it to Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending a 22-year occupation, but remain in Shebaa Farms.
After 29 years, Syria pulled out of Lebanon last year under intense world and Lebanese pressure following the killing of a former prime minister which many blamed on Damascus.
Assad said there was still a chance that peace could be achieved in the Middle East but that the window of opportunity could close within weeks or months.
Olmert this week rejected suggestions from within his cabinet that Israel should talk to Syria, saying peace negotiations could only be held if it stopped backing groups like Hizbullah.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3294666,00.html
Russia ready to seek negotiated settlement on Iran
Published: 08.23.06, 09:53
Russia is ready to pursue contacts with all sides to achieve a negotiated settlement to Iran's differences with the West on its nuclear program, the Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
"Russia will continue with the idea of seeking a political, negotiated settlement concerning Iran's nuclear program, maintaining the role of the IAEA and rejecting dilution of the principles of non-proliferation," Interfax news agency quoted ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin as saying. (Reuters)
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3294430,00.html
Sinai: 10 Israeli tourists killed in bus accident
(VIDEO) Bus carrying Israeli Arab tourists overturns Tuesday afternoon between Nuweiba and Taba in Sinai; Egyptian authorities: At least 11 tourists killed. Magen David Adom ambulances receive injured at Taba Terminal
Meir Ohayon
VIDEO - Ten Israeli passengers were killed Tuesday afternoon and dozens were injured as a bus overturned near the Egyptian town of al-Saada near Nuweiba in Sinai. Egyptian authorities and official sources in Sinai reported that 11 people were killed about 50 were injured led in the accident, some of them Israelis from Arab communities in northern Israel.
* Eyewitnesses: People died in our arms
Two passengers who sustained serious wounds, four who sustained moderate wounds and another 23 who were lightly injured in the accident crossed the Taba border terminal and were treated by Magen David Adom crews that were waiting in the area for many hours, since the accident occurred.
The injured were evacuated to the Yoseftal hospital in Eilat for medical treatment.
Scene of the accident (Photo: AP)
The accident occured at around 4:30 p.m. The bus, which belongs to the Egyptian RANO company, was one of eight driving Israeli Arabs on an organized tour. The tour was arranged by the Bassel Tours company from Nazareth.
Several passengers who sustained serious injuries were evacuated to the hospitals in Nuweiba and Sharm al-Sheikh. Passengers who sustained light injuries boarded buses making their way to the Taba Terminal.
High alert at Taba Terminal (Video: Haim Weingerten)
Workers at the Bassel Tours office told Ynet that the bus carried Israeli tourists from Sharm to Israel and back on a daily basis.
Leviv, one of the company managers said: "The tourists were families who were on their way home from Sharm to Israel. They were families from Nazareth, Kafr Manda and Kafr Yasif.
Referring to the Egyptian company, he said: "It's a very reliable company. We have been working with them for eight years now, and the bus which overturned was of a 2006 model."
Another manager in the company turned to the Egyptians through Ynet: "I turn to you and ask that you let the MDA ambulances enter. We view this as humanitarian aid."
Eilat District Police Commander Bruno Stein said that the bus overturned as a result of a puncture.
The Egyptian police officer also said that the accident was apparently caused by a flat tire, but added that "the authorities are also looking into the possibility that the driver lost control as a result of reckless driving at high speed. All the signs point to the fact that an explosion in one of the tires caused the bus to overturn. There are several casualties on the scene."
According to the officer, Israel was exerting efforts to allow the entry of Magen David Adom ambulances into Sinai. Army officials have contacted the Egyptian authorities to look into the possibility of sending crews to assist in the rescue efforts.
Ambulances wait at Taba Terminal (Photo: Haim Weingerten)
The MDA spokesman said that MDA Director-General Eli Bin issued an order to boost Eilat with mobile intensive care units and send ambulances to the border terminal in order to prepare for a possibility of entering Egypt or receiving the casualties on the border.
The MDA manager in the Negev district, who was on his way to the Taba Terminal, said: "We received information from people who were on the other bus. Two helicopters also arrived at the terminal, and the injured will be first evacuated to the Yoseftal hospital and then to other hospitals in Israel."
Popular tourist destination
About 40 Magen David Adom ambulances prepared to receive the injured at the Taba Terminal on the Israel-Egypt border. The Israel Defense Force is expected to fly paramedics to Eilat via helicopters to boost the crews there.
"We provided blood units to the Yoseftal hospital in Eilat. At the moment we are collecting additional details," MDA Spokesman Yeruham Mandola told Ynet.
The Eilat Police set up a command post headed by Eilat District Police Commander Bruno Stein. The Yoseftal hospital was preparing for a mass-casualty event with crews of doctors and nurses, and the hospital workers were preparing at the hospital to receive the injured from the accident.
The Foreign Ministry reported that a team from the Israeli Embassy in Cairo left for the field to see whether any assistance was needed. The Interior Ministry enabled Israelis to return from Sinai and enter Israel even without a passport.
Many Israelis, especially young ones, continue to travel to Sinai in spite of the two terror attacks that hit the area in recent years. Many beaches have become very popular due to the cheap accommodation prices. Nuweiba is considered one of the popular destinations.
Ali Waked, Sharon Roffe-Ofir, Roee Nahmias, Vered Luvitch and Meital Yasur-Beit Or contributed to the report
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3294745,00.html
MK Hilou: Don't go to Sinai
Following difficulties Egyptians made for injured Israeli bus passengers, Labor Knesset member calls to boycott trips to Egyptian peninsula
Roee Nahmias
Knesset Member Nadia Hilou, responding to difficulties encountered by Israeli casualties of a bus accident in Sinai, Egypt, called on Israelis to stay away from the area.
Fatal Accident
Sinai: 10 Israeli tourists killed in bus accident / Meir Ohayon
(VIDEO) Bus carrying Israeli Arab tourists overturns Tuesday afternoon between Nuweiba and Taba in Sinai; Egyptian authorities: At least 11 tourists killed. Magen David Adom ambulances receive injured at Taba Terminal
Full Story
"I am calling on all Israelis, Arabs and Jews, to boycott Egypt in protest of the failed treatment and blunders shown by the Egyptian authorities towards those injured and killed," MK Hilou (Labor) said.
The overturned bus was packed with travelers – most of them from holidaymakers from northern Israel who hoped to find some respite after a month of war and sitting in bomb shelters.
Many of those injured said that the evacuation of the wounded was clumsy, and that the Egyptians made it difficult to transfer injured people to Israel .
Members of the Juwamis family, of Beit Zarzir, were taken to the Nuweiba hospital, and returned to Israel furious. "The situation at the hospital is very bad. People don't have water, infusion, there are no sheets on the beds, the bathrooms stink – it all looks simply shocking. People are lying on the floor in the hospital, it's simply unbelievable. The injured told the Egyptians that they want to go to Israel to receive treatment at the hospital there, and the Egyptian's didn't agree," he recounted.
Family members added: "On the ground no one helped either, people died on the spot because there wasn't first aid. Foreign tourists from Europe helped us rescue the wounded, it's a disgrace what happened there, with all the injured children around. It hurts to see these scenes. That's the last time we are traveling to Sinai."
Difficulties
Khusam Omar, an eyewitness to the accident, spoke about the difficulties in evacuating the wounded and the disorder at the scene.
Scene of accident in Sinai (Photo: AP)
"We pushed people into trucks, so they take them to the hospital," he said. "Egyptian ambulances only arrived after half an hour."
Hilou called for the immediate transfer of injured people and bodies to Israel. "Overnight I spoke with every possible source in order to allow Israeli ambulances to go in and help," she said.
She says she also spoke with the hospital and police in Egypt. "I was very angry that the Israeli ambulances had to wait for hours at the border and that Israeli authorities didn't let them in. Many children bled throughout all that time, and by the morning they hardly knew the names of those killed. We can't return to normal after hearing about a mother whose son bled to death for hours. If that's the situation, I would like to ask all potential tourists not to travel, because when a disaster happens I am expecting cooperation and better treatment, a higher level of humanity, and not for all kinds of procedures when human lives are at stake," added Hilou.
The Knesset member added that this was not the first time Egyptian management has proved to be a failure: "The movement of tourism to Egypt, especially during this month, and especially to Sharm el-Sheikh, is large, mainly due to Arab Israeli tourists. If this is the treatment, I call on them not to travel. This is not a singular incident. In one of the last terror attacks Arab Israelis from Jaffa were injured and the treatment failed then too."
http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=19490
Fair Oaks Church Fire Ruled Arson
Written for the web by C. Johnson, Internet News Producer
Written for the web by Kristi Mattes, News Producer
Fire investigators have determined a fire that caused substantial damsge to Grace Baptist Church in Fair Oaks early Tuesday morning was arson.
Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department crews were called out to the blaze just after 1 a.m. The church's roof collapsed after the fire spread from the back of the building into the attic. No one was inside at the time and there were no injuries.
After spending the day examining evidence, investigators from the fire department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms announced the blaze was deliberately set. Their investigation continues into finding who set the fire.
"The evidence we've looked at, we're confident that this is a crime," said Sacramento Metro Fire Capt. Jeff Lynch. "We're confident that this was a deliberate act. It's important that you understand that now that it's a criminal investigation."
Continued............................
http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=40678&provider=top
U.S. Airplane Escorted Back to Airport by F-16's
Posted by: Greg Borowski, Producer
Created: 8/23/2006 7:04:17 AM
Updated: 8/23/2006 8:09:49 AM
Aiport officials in Amsterdam confirm that a Northwest Airlines flight was diverted back to Amsterdam and several passengers have been taken off the plane for questioning.
The Associated Press is reporting that two Dutch F-16 fighter jets escorted the plane back to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, where the plane had taken off.
Stay with WGRZ.COM for continuing updates on this developing story.
WGRZ/AP
Northwest Airplanes
Update:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1688550/posts
Terror Raid in Western New York
WGRZ.com ^ | Updated: 8/23/2006 7:06:52 AM | Lynne Dixon
Posted on 08/23/2006 6:13:01 AM PDT by freeperfromnj
The FBI says it's all part of an ongoing investigation into a group of Sri Lankans with terrorist plans. The FBI says there were no plans to attack Americans, but that the group, known as the "Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam" was targeting their home country of Sri Lanka. Officials say that terror group is responsible for assassinating a former prime minister of India.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force raided the Amherst home. Neighbors say three men were taken out in handcuffs. They say the task force also removed files, a computer and suitcases.
While it's not clear what role the three men arrested in Amherst allegedly played, the FBI says they've been watching the entire group, the Tamil Tigers, for years. The FBI's Leslie Wiser Jr. says the group was trying to purchase ten shoulder-fired surface to air missiles that can be used to bring down airplanes, and at least 500 A-K 47 assault weapons. According to Wiser, the terror group also asked for other sophisticated devises used in military operations.
Again, the FBI emphasizes there's no indication the weapons were to be used on U-S soil and it's still not clear what role the three men arrested in Amherst allegedly played.