***************************************************************** 05/12/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.122 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Russian Nuke Minister Says US Tensions Easing Over Iranian Nuke 2 US: DTE chairman doesn't see more nuclear reactors in near future - 3 Argentines Protest Against Nuclear Agreement With Australia 4 Protesters won’t have their cake or eat it 5 Russian Nuke Minister Says US Tensions Easing Over Iranian Nuke Plan NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 US: Atomic Plant Casts a Pall on Paradise NUCLEAR SAFETY 7 Doctors Seek Cause of Gulf War Illness 8 US: Fallout: Unfinished Business 9 US: Government should reach fair settlement with nuclear workers - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 10 US: Western Shoshone protest Yucca Mountain project 11 US: Big hike likely in nuclear traffic 12 US: Yucca: It's crunch time: What can Harry do? 13 US: Western Shoshone teams endure six-day trek to show love for 14 US: Hansen Tries To Thwart Utah: N-Site Access 15 US: In Vegas Politics, All Bets Are Off NUCLEAR WEAPONS 16 US: Bush PR on new weapons protocol 17 Pak had plans to nuke India in 1999 18 US: Cold War Book Review: The Bottom Line 19 US: Submarines' Secret History Surfaces 20 U.S. Says Russia Is Preparing Nuclear Tests 21 US: House OKs Nuclear Test Site Visits 22 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Russian Nuke Minister Says US Tensions Easing Over Iranian Nuke Plant MOSCOW - Russia's nuclear energy minister cited progress in easing US concerns about Russian involvement in building a nuclear power plant in Iran on Thursday, the last day of his three-day trip to the United States. Aleksandr Rumyantsev, Russia's nuclear energy minister, does hope the US agrees Iranian NPP poses no threat, but the topic remains to be "sensitive." Charles Digges, 2002-05-10 12:36 Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's nuclear ministry, Minatom, acknowledged that the deal with Iran remains “a sensitive topic,” but said that “we are close to finding a solution,” he was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, at a joint news conference with Rumyantsev in Washington, DC, said Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran remains a concern, AP reported. But, he added, “We had positive discussions.” The two officials have met for three days to discuss energy issues related to the May 23-26 summit in Russia between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russia-Iran deal probably will come up at their talks, which will focus on nuclear weapons reductions and other nonproliferation issues. Rumyantsev repeated Russia's view that the light water nuclear reactor under construction in Iran in an $800 million contract cannot be used to develop material for weapons. The reactor “is not a source of proliferation of nuclear material,” Rumyantsev said, according to RIA Russian news agency. Indeed, in recent weeks, Minatom officials have told Bellona that Russia would maintain consent rights on nuclear fuel sold to the Iranian facility at Bushehr, meaning the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) would be sent back to Russia for storage or reprocessing — an apparent guarantee that the SNF does not pose a nonproliferation danger within Iran. Rumyantsev also said he agreed with his US counterpart to continue negotiations on Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. Such agreement among other things is a precondition for the US to grant Russia permission to import American origin spent nuclear fuel. Minatom plans to import foreign spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage/reprocessing and earn around $20 billion on such operations. The most promising clients, according to the plan, will be Asian countries, which use US origin fuel. Agreement reached on "dirty bombs" Rumyantsev and Abraham announced an agreement on a US-Russia task force to look at better safeguarding low-grade radioactive materials that could be used to fashion a “dirty bomb” — which does not have a nuclear chain reaction but can disperse radiation over a limited area by using conventional explosives, AP said. These non-weapon radiation sources — isotopes used in medicine, construction and, often in Russia, as a power source in remote locations — are “potentially attractive targets for theft” and could be used by terrorists to make a dirty bomb, Abraham said at the joint press conference. Rumyantsev said his government has acted to improve the protection of such radioactive materials. As an example, he cited a recent decision to let Minatom control the disposition of radioactive material used in beacons used for directional lights in remote parts of Russia. According to a Russian government report recently cited in the Washington Post, many of these beacons have not been visited by government staff for years and have fallen prey to scrap metal thieves and the elements. Minatom's new efforts to control the disposition of these devices "shows how serious this issue is and that we're ready to solve it," AP quoted Rumyantsev as saying. The United States has similar problems. Last week, in a letter to Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that about 1,500 such radiation devices have disappeared across the United States over the past five years and that about half are missing. NASA spacecraft to be fuelled with Russian plutonium Abraham also said Thursday that the United States plans to resume purchases of plutonium 238 from Russia for use as a power source in NASA spacecraft. Since 1992, there has been an agreement with Russia to buy the non-weapons grade plutonium, but in recent years none has been bought because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's needs could be met with US supplies, the RIA reported. Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 2 DTE chairman doesn't see more nuclear reactors in near future - 05/12/02 Sunday, May 12, 2002 The Detroit News. By James V. Higgins / The Detroit News In 1979, when Anthony F. Earley Jr. wrote his master's thesis at Notre Dame on how to dispose of nuclear wastes, he figured the nation would solve that problem in just a few years. "The time frame was a little off," the chairman of DTE Energy said with a chuckle the other day. Now, Earley is gratified, and not just academically, that a resolution finally is in sight. The U.S. House last week voted 306-117 in favor of a national nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Approval by the U.S. Senate this summer is judged a little less than certain, but very likely. Science and engineering are solidly in favor of the deep underground site, Earley says. Politics are coming around, prompted by 20 years of technical validation and the reality that the sympathy vote among the states in favor of Yucca Mountain is 49-1. But safe, centralized, permanent disposal of spent fuel probably is not the key to the ultimate fate of nuclear electricity generation in the United States, he says. Along with technology and public sentiment, bare economics will be a decisive factor. Few would know better. In addition to his studies at Notre Dame, Earley served in the U.S. Navy as an officer on nuclear-powered submarines. A lawyer as well as an engineer, he also has worked extensively in licensing and rule-making actions before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And as a top executive of the Long Island Lighting Co., an electric and gas utility in New York, he supervised what is currently one of the most hotly debated issues in nuclear disposal: transportation of wastes on public byways. But intimacy with the issue hasn't made Earley a blind advocate of expanded nuclear power. DTE's Fermi 2 reactor near Monroe has operated effectively in recent years after a spate of problems, and will remain a prime asset for the company's Detroit Edison subsidiary for decades. The technology of nuclear generation continues to improve, and some people believe that public opinion is swinging in favor of nuclear power amid concerns over domestic energy security. Earlier this year, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he favors expanded nuclear generation as part of an overall national energy policy. Up to that point, the department had officially predicted there would be no more nukes. "That has all led to speculation that somebody in the next couple of years is going to order a nuclear plant," Earley said. "The real challenge in my view as to whether people order a new nuclear plant is not technical or political. It's really economic -- can you build these things at a cost that's competitive in a time frame that's reasonable, given the restructured environment in the electric industry." But DTE doesn't see additional nuclear reactors in its future, now that it's likely that Fermi and some 130 other sites around the nation will finally be relieved of their temporary waste storage problems. They're too expensive, Earley said, and the prospect of recovering that investment in a deregulated, market-based utility environment is too uncertain. "If I were to go to my board and say I want to spend a couple of billion dollars and that we may start to get a payoff 10 years from now, they'd throw me out the door," he said. You can reach James V. Higgins at (313) 222-2749 or jhiggins@detnews.com [jhiggins@detnews.com] ***************************************************************** 3 Argentines Protest Against Nuclear Agreement With Australia Xinhuanet 2002-05-12 09:23:55 BUENOS AIRES, May 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Some 3,000 people demonstrated in the capital city on Saturday, protesting against a nuclear agreement signed with Australia, under which Argentina will import radioactive residues. The demonstration was organized by the ecological organization Greenpeace. Protesters gathered to form the word "No" in rejection of the agreement which has been approved by Argentina's Senate, and will have to be ratified by the Lower House of parliament. A source of Greenpeace said the lawmakers in the lower house were not expected to "make the same mistake" as senators did. According to the agreement, the Atomic Research Investigation Center in Ezeiza, 25 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, will import nuclear waste. On April 12, some 2,000 local residents surrounded the laboratory to protest against the agreement. Enditem Copyright © 2000 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 Protesters won’t have their cake or eat it Scotland on Sunday - Scotland - Sunday, 12th May 2002 STEPHEN FRASER DON’T let them eat cake. The man in charge of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine base has cancelled plans to give protesters at the nearby peace camp a cake to celebrate the site’s 20th birthday. Borley told Scotland on Sunday earlier this year he would give protesters a cake for the anniversary in June to demonstrate his acceptance of their right to protest. But sources at the base say Commodore John Borley, the operational director of the Faslane base, has changed his mind about the offer. It is understood his comments led to teasing from colleagues and was regarded in some quarters to have been an unwelcome departure from the Navy’s customary practice of not expressing a view on the presence of the peace camp. One source at the base said: "There is no chance of the camp being sent a cake from the Faslane base. Commodore Borley has changed his mind." A spokesman for the base also said a gift of a cake would be extremely unlikely. "Commodore Borley is still of the view that he would like to mark the passing of the camp’s 20th birthday with a cake, but other priorities make it extremely unlikely that this will happen in practice." The Faslane base is at the centre of rows over the Ministry of Defence’s plans to privatise engineering operations. Staff at Faslane have already staged a one-day strike over the proposals, which would see Ministry of Defence employees at the base transfer to a private company, Babcock. The spokesman said: "Commodore Borley is busy enough at the best of times but now faces the additional task of moving ahead with the complex issues associated with industrial partnering. "His efforts are focused on the concerns of his own workforce and the birthday celebrations of the camp are a very minor issue in comparison." Borley’s offer came as he said he was grateful for the opportunity the camp protests gave him to highlight the contribution made by the naval base to the Scottish economy. He also said efforts by protesters to reach Trident-equipped submarines at the base helped the Navy test its security arrangements. Pat Freeborn, a spokeswoman for the camp which celebrates its 20th birthday on June 12, said: "We are not going to let the fact he won’t give us a cake disrupt our karma. We’ll have a great party regardless of him. "We understand he’s a busy man with all those weapons to look after. There’s no hard feelings." ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 5 Russian Nuke Minister Says US Tensions Easing Over Iranian Nuke Plant Section on international co-operation covering nuclear waste imports to Russia and exports of Russian nuclear technology. MOSCOW - Russia's nuclear energy minister cited progress in easing US concerns about Russian involvement in building a nuclear power plant in Iran on Thursday, the last day of his three-day trip to the United States. Aleksandr Rumyantsev, Russia's nuclear energy minister, does hope the US agrees Iranian NPP poses no threat, but the topic remains to be "sensitive." photo: www.grani.ru Charles Digges, 2002-05-10 12:36 Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's nuclear ministry, Minatom, acknowledged that the deal with Iran remains “a sensitive topic,” but said that “we are close to finding a solution,” he was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, at a joint news conference with Rumyantsev in Washington, DC, said Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran remains a concern, AP reported. But, he added, “We had positive discussions.” The two officials have met for three days to discuss energy issues related to the May 23-26 summit in Russia between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russia-Iran deal probably will come up at their talks, which will focus on nuclear weapons reductions and other nonproliferation issues. Rumyantsev repeated Russia's view that the light water nuclear reactor under construction in Iran in an $800 million contract cannot be used to develop material for weapons. The reactor “is not a source of proliferation of nuclear material,” Rumyantsev said, according to RIA Russian news agency. Indeed, in recent weeks, Minatom officials have told Bellona that Russia would maintain consent rights on nuclear fuel sold to the Iranian facility at Bushehr, meaning the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) would be sent back to Russia for storage or reprocessing — an apparent guarantee that the SNF does not pose a nonproliferation danger within Iran. Rumyantsev also said he agreed with his US counterpart to continue negotiations on Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. Such agreement among other things is a precondition for the US to grant Russia permission to import American origin spent nuclear fuel. Minatom plans to import foreign spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage/reprocessing and earn around $20 billion on such operations. The most promising clients, according to the plan, will be Asian countries, which use US origin fuel. Agreement reached on "dirty bombs" Rumyantsev and Abraham announced an agreement on a US-Russia task force to look at better safeguarding low-grade radioactive materials that could be used to fashion a “dirty bomb” — which does not have a nuclear chain reaction but can disperse radiation over a limited area by using conventional explosives, AP said. These non-weapon radiation sources — isotopes used in medicine, construction and, often in Russia, as a power source in remote locations — are “potentially attractive targets for theft” and could be used by terrorists to make a dirty bomb, Abraham said at the joint press conference. Rumyantsev said his government has acted to improve the protection of such radioactive materials. As an example, he cited a recent decision to let Minatom control the disposition of radioactive material used in beacons used for directional lights in remote parts of Russia. According to a Russian government report recently cited in the Washington Post, many of these beacons have not been visited by government staff for years and have fallen prey to scrap metal thieves and the elements. Minatom's new efforts to control the disposition of these devices "shows how serious this issue is and that we're ready to solve it," AP quoted Rumyantsev as saying. The United States has similar problems. Last week, in a letter to Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that about 1,500 such radiation devices have disappeared across the United States over the past five years and that about half are missing. NASA spacecraft to be fuelled with Russian plutonium Abraham also said Thursday that the United States plans to resume purchases of plutonium 238 from Russia for use as a power source in NASA spacecraft. Since 1992, there has been an agreement with Russia to buy the non-weapons grade plutonium, but in recent years none has been bought because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's needs could be met with US supplies, the RIA reported. Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 6 Atomic Plant Casts a Pall on Paradise May 12, 2002 By THE NEW YORK TIMES SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., May 11 — A Sunday on San Onofre State Beach is a step into the idyllic 1960's Southern California of Gidget movies. Below a low sandstone bluff, a half-mile of cars, many of them classics, line a palm-fringed shore. Around thatched-roof huts, surfers strum ukuleles, grill burgers or prepare to ride the celebrated waves. This vision of paradise almost obscures another vestige of the 1960's rising from the surf a few hundred yards south. There, two nuclear reactors quietly split atoms and churn out 20 percent of Southern California's electricity. It has been like this since the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station opened in 1968. The surfers, campers and residents of San Clemente and other nearby towns have largely accepted the plant as an unobtrusive, if unwelcome, neighbor. But since Sept. 11, security concerns and a proposal for a long-term repository for spent nuclear fuel have raised alarm. "We want to believe San O is safe, and that the palm trees, blue sky and waves are the reality," Steve Netherby said on a recent walk around the plant. "Unfortunately, the reality is a lot more dangerous." Mr. Netherby is a former editor at Field & Stream magazine and co-founder of San Clemente's Coalition for Responsible Ethical and Environmental Decisions. He points out that San Onofre lies amid six miles of popular state beach and south of growing population centers of southern Orange County. A quarter-mile to the east runs Interstate 5 and a coastal rail route. Beyond that sprawls Camp Pendleton, a Marine base. The plant's owner, Southern California Edison, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the plant is safe and secure. At a public meeting, the regional chief of the commission, Kriss Kennedy, said of plant security: "There have been examples in the past where we've been very critical of facility operations, but in this case, San Onofre has done a good job." Yet Mr. Netherby remains skeptical. Despite the presence of guards wielding M-16's, he walks unchallenged through an unsecured parking lot overlooking the site, past several employees. He points out the enormous turbines and transformers, and the functioning Unit 2 and 3 reactors, and what appears to be a hole in the side of the decommissioned Unit 1. He wonders what would happen if a van drove into the lot and a terrorist launched a shoulder-fired missile. "It's a target down there. And that makes all of us here in Southern California a target," Mr. Netherby said. Unit 1 is being demolished at a cost of $600 million. Its site is now proposed for a "dry cask" waste storage system that would hold spent nuclear fuel. A San Onofre spokesman, Ray Golden, said the dry casks offer far greater security and earthquake protection than the system used now, adding: "The spent fuel is moving from a pool, which requires human intervention, electricity and other features, to a completely passive design with no mechanical components. If you painted that scenario, I think most people would say, `Hey, it sounds like you should put it in the passive design.' " Project opponents agree that the dry casks are somewhat safer, but question assertions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that these systems can withstand earthquakes. They also worry that the project would lead to a vast, long-term increase above the several hundred tons of stored waste already on site. Mr. Netherby's group is beginning "an extensive effort" to make residents aware of the security threats at San Onofre, the dangers of stored fuel, and the risks posed by earthquakes and earthquake-spawned tsunami waves. The group is also asking that local towns begin storing potassium iodide pills as a radiation antidote, that Camp Pendleton troops be assigned to San Onofre to augment security, and that a loudspeaker system be placed on area beaches alongside existing sirens. They also want the Federal Aviation Administration to revisit its recent lifting of a 10-mile no-fly zone around the plant. Meanwhile, on the beach the party is in full swing. But it appears that after passing an unattended State Beach guard kiosk and driving to the south end of the beach, the only thing that would prevent an attacker from reaching the sea-wall road fronting the plant is a "no vehicles" sign. Are beachgoers concerned? Daniel Dowden, a San Onofre Surf Club member, points to two recent security breaches at the plant and accidents involving a fire and a construction crane. "It's a plant run by human beings who've made a lot of mistakes already," Mr. Dowden said. "I don't say they're dumber than anybody else, but they're certainly as dumb as the rest of us, and they're going to make mistakes. I'd rather those mistakes be out in the desert somewhere where nobody's around than right here on the beach where we're completely exposed." Paul Strau is a Hawaiian surfer who holds a mini-luau with his friends here every Sunday. "Even with the danger, you still come down to the beach to enjoy the ocean," Mr. Strau said. "It takes your mind off the stresses of the day-to-day world. "But looming right over the bluff is this edifice that says, `I could take all of you out real quickly.' It's scary." New York Times newspaper. ***************************************************************** 7 Doctors Seek Cause of Gulf War Illness Las Vegas SUN May 11, 2002 To veterans it is a cruel mystery: Which of the countless pesticides, pollutants, microbes and poisons they encountered during the Persian Gulf War has left one in seven of them sick with a debilitating and persistent illness? On Capitol Hill it is an outrage: Why, after spending more than $200 million on hundreds of studies, can't the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs determine what pollutant or microbe is causing the panoply of symptoms known as Gulf War illness? Most scientists who have studied the chronic health problems of Gulf War veterans say they have the answers to both questions: There is no environmental toxin or infectious agent to blame. A decade of research overwhelmingly points to another cause - stress. Yet many veterans and their advocates don't believe it. "I know a lot of people who are sick, and stress is not what's killing them," said Stephen L. Robinson, who served in special forces during the Gulf War and now heads an advocacy group for ill veterans. "Stress is the last thing we should be looking at." Part of the problem, many Gulf War illness experts say, is that most people have the wrong idea about stress. Many veterans think experts are telling them their illness is all in their heads, that they are imagining their symptoms. Actually, scientists say, stress causes real, physical problems. Hormones released into the bloodstream when a person is under stress can cause physiological changes that linger long after life returns to normal, harming both nervous and immune systems. Researchers say even the toughest soldier is not invulnerable. "The mind and body are inextricably linked," said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, an epidemiologist who served on a presidential advisory committee that concluded stress caused Gulf War illness. Americans, he said, need to get beyond the false notion that stress-related illnesses are somehow unmanly or shameful. Like a lot of veterans, Robinson remains unpersuaded. Before becoming executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, he worked for two years in the Pentagon office charged with investigating Gulf War illness and "didn't feel good about what I had seen." It appeared to him, he says, that researchers studying the possibility that stress was the cause "had a predetermined outcome in mind." So he has joined many veterans and their advocates, including a handful of scientists, in insisting that more studies be done. Congress has responded by continuing to authorize millions of dollars for research into alternative causes of Gulf War illness - money that many scientists say is wasted. There is often a culture clash when science and politics try to work together. Scientists seek objective truth by collecting data and testing hypotheses. Politicians usually try to make decisions based on their constituents' desires. That veterans deserve to know what is making them sick is not disputed. But what should the government do now that scientific research has produced evidence that leaves many veterans resolutely dissatisfied? Data show that Gulf War veterans are no more likely to die or be hospitalized than their peers who never served in the region. Their rates of cancer and other serious diseases are no higher than expected in 700,000 people of their age and background. The VA did announce in December that Gulf War veterans are twice as likely to suffer from Lou Gehrig's disease as their peers, but many experts question the finding because no scientific paper has been published to back it up. Even if it is borne out, says University of Iowa epidemiologist Dr. Gregory Gray, the Lou Gehrig's disease finding does not topple stress as the most likely cause of Gulf War illness because it applies to only a few dozen people. There could always be a small subset of veterans with a single well-defined disease that was caused by an infectious or toxic exposure during the Gulf War. But that would not explain what is making thousands of other veterans sick. Still, no one disputes that Gulf War illness is real. Researchers have verified that veterans of the Persian Gulf war are more likely to suffer from a range of chronic symptoms including memory and thinking problems, fatigue, joint pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia, headaches and rashes. Marine Capt. David Fournier, for example, has suffered mysterious heart problems and arthritis since serving in the Gulf. "I served in Vietnam too, and I came out of there healthy," he said. "For me to be stricken down with heart failure at 40 years old just did not make sense." Gray, who until recently studied Gulf War illness at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, says "there's no doubt that the Gulf War veterans ... report higher levels of symptoms." But why? In the 11 years since the Gulf War, myriad possibilities besides stress have been advanced, investigated and found wanting. Government, university and independent investigators have looked at pesticides, parasites, insect repellents and pills the troops took to protect themselves from chemical attack. Also examined: Contaminated vaccines, infectious bacteria, depleted uranium ammunition and smoke billowing from oil wells that were set alight by retreating Iraqi troops. Hundreds of scientific papers have been published on potential causes of Gulf War illness. A number of expert panels have examined the evidence. The conclusion: No firm evidence has been found ascribing Gulf War illness to anything other than stress. In 1995, the Pentagon revealed that U.S. troops who destroyed an Iraqi ammunition dump in March 1991 might have been exposed to trace amounts of sarin nerve gas. Initially, some thought this might explain Gulf War illness. However, epidemiologists found that troops who were near the ammunition dump during the weapons destruction were no more likely than other Gulf War veterans to be hospitalized or die in the years following the war. In fact, the estimated 100,000 sufferers of Gulf War illness have no single thing in common except that they all became ill after serving in the same war. Symptoms have been reported by veterans who were stationed thousands of miles apart and who performed widely differing duties. Green Berets who sat in foxholes deep behind Iraqi lines have reported many of the same symptoms as the pilots who flew high above them. This presents a problem for anyone trying to tie Gulf War illness to a specific toxin or microbe. Experts say it would have been virtually impossible for such a wide cross-section of troops to have been exposed to the same thing. The multitude of symptoms veterans report also make it extremely unlikely a toxin or microbe is involved, most experts say. A microbe or toxin would produce one well-defined illness. On the other hand, researchers say, stress is known to produce nearly all the symptoms reported by Gulf War veterans. It has been implicated in cardiovascular disease, immune system disorders, chronic headaches, memory and cognitive problems. Some researchers believe it is the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, two so-called "mystery diseases" that are similar to Gulf War illness. Stress might seem an unlikely cause of Gulf War illness because U.S. troops did not suffer high casualties and most saw little heavy combat. But U.S. forces spent six tense months in the region preparing to invade Iraq, all the while hearing rumors about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons and reports of the military prowess of his elite Republican Guard. Sirens warning of chemical attack repeatedly sent troops scrambling for gas masks. Only later were the warnings found to have been false alarms. Dr. Jeffrey Sartin, a former Air Force physician who says he saw about 400 patients with Gulf War illness, says he always asked them the details of their war experiences. "Many, many times they told me about how on edge they were," said Sartin, who is now an infectious disease specialist at the Gundersen-Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, Wis. Studies show that symptoms of Gulf War illness are most frequently reported by those who had particularly stressful war experiences. For example, researchers from the Oregon Health &Science University reported in December that veterans who sought medical care during the war, who were directly involved in combat or who endured extreme heat during the Gulf War were more likely to report chronic health problems after it ended. Soldiers who served as mortuary workers - regarded as a particularly stressful duty - have also reported significantly more Gulf War illness-type symptoms than other troops, according to a study performed at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. A study published in 2001 by researchers at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Oregon found that those who report Gulf War illness show "highly significant and compelling evidence of psychological distress" based on 11 different tests designed to measure stress. And a recent British study of war pension files going back to 1872 found evidence for ailments similar to Gulf War illness among veterans of every major conflict since the Boer War. "I think there is enough data that stress is a logical explanation," said Dr. Joyce Lashof, a University of California-Berkeley psychiatrist who headed a presidential commission on Gulf War illness during the 1990s. Stress, experts say, can affect different people in different ways. It can wear down the immune system, making the body more vulnerable to infections. Furthermore, hormones such as cortisol and adrenalin, released during stress, can overstimulate the immune system, causing long-lasting problems including headaches, fatigue, joint pain and other problems. "Stress may tilt the balance toward inflammation," said Dr. Andrew H. Miller, director of the Mind-Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta. Treating these problems may require a combination of therapies including anti-inflammatory drugs, physical therapy, counseling and antidepressants. Although most Gulf War illness experts say there is little evidence that large numbers of troops encountered dangerous chemicals or microbes, many veterans and politicians charge the government has willfully ignored the possibility. "They're going to deny it tooth and nail," said Fournier, the retired Marine. He believes an ingredient used in the anthrax vaccine he received before the war caused his heart problems and arthritis. He was unswayed by a National Academy of Sciences study released in March that declared the anthrax vaccine safe and effective. In continuing to approve funds for research into that and other theories, Congress has sometimes circumvented the normal scientific peer review process through which panels of government scientists decide how to allocate federal research money. For example, former Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., now retired, attached $3.4 million to the 1996 defense budget to investigate the theory that Gulf War illness is caused by infectious bacteria. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, has earmarked a total of $10 million in the last two defense budgets to establish an independent research institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center so that the theory on toxic chemicals can continue to be studied. Some congressional skeptics of the stress explanation repeatedly refer to a connection between toxic exposures and Gulf War illness as if there were abundant evidence to support it. At an October 2000 hearing, for example, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. asserted that "there's a pragmatic causal relationship between exposure to these toxic substances and all of these ailments." And Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., demanded during a January hearing that government scientists explain why their research had come up with so few satisfactory answers compared to the work of a few maverick scientists. "There's a recognition that the private sector has been doing a better job than the public sector in getting a handle on this," he said in a recent interview. That sentiment resonates so well in Washington that government researchers have sometimes reluctantly agreed to test treatments they doubt will work. One such study, a $12 million test to determine whether the antibiotic doxycycline can cure Gulf War illness, has just been completed. The test was initiated in response to studies by Garth Nicolson, who runs an independent research laboratory in Huntington Beach, Calif. Nicolson believes that Gulf War illness is caused by a poorly known bacterium called Mycoplasma fermentans. In a 1995 letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, he said that he had cured a number of patients of their infections, and thus their Gulf War illness, by giving them doxycycline. Soon, there were anecdotal reports of several doctors at veterans hospitals successfully treating Gulf War illness patients with doxycycline. Nicolson began testifying before Congress about his work. Dr. John R. Feussner, chief research and development officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, often appeared at the same hearings to rebut Nicolson's approach. Congress chose to fund a definitive doxycycline trial. The results of the study have not been released in a scientific journal, but Feussner indicated in recent congressional testimony that the treatment was ineffective. Nicolson disagrees, claiming that government scientists rigged the study. Although the evidence for stress is strong, the search for alternate explanations is certain to continue. The Clinton administration was often criticized by veterans and their advocates for dismissing veterans' illnesses, but President George W. Bush is perceived as more sympathetic to continuing the research. In January Bush's Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony J. Principi, appointed yet another committee on Gulf War illness. Its job is to advise the government on the direction of future research, and its 12 members, several sources say, were chosen specifically because they reject stress as the cause. "Gulf War veterans have waited too long for answers to many of their questions," Principi said. Dr. Robert Haley, a researcher who thinks Gulf War illness was caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, is among the members. The committee, he said, aims "to solve the problem instead of trying to show that this wasn't anything." This kind of talk exasperates Lashof, whose committee concluded more than five years ago that stress caused Gulf War illness. "Stress has important physiologic effects," Lashof says. "The mind and body are not two separate organisms." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Fallout: Unfinished Business The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, May 12, 2002 Medical scientists know that radiation from nuclear fallout can cause cancer. However, for Utah's downwinders, the people exposed to fallout from above-ground nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s, the interest in the connection between radiation and thyroid tumors is more than scientific. It is a medical question, an ethical question, a personal question. In some cases, it is a matter of life and death. Which is why Congress should provide the roughly $4 million necessary to complete a University of Utah study of thyroid disease in people who as children were exposed to downwind fallout in Washington County in the 1950s. The federal government has a moral obligation, and the results of the study will add to the body of scientific knowledge about the relationship between radiation exposure from fallout and thyroid disease. It is astonishing, in fact, that the Centers for Disease Control would balk at completing this study, and that Utah's Sen. Bob Bennett would have to introduce legislation in Congress to make the funding available. But for 50 years, the federal government has fought taking responsibility for the toll its nuclear weapons program took on Americans, particularly the downwinders in Nevada, Utah and Arizona who were closest to the test blasts. So perhaps the need for this latest congressional fight is not so surprising. Completing the U. study is important because there is a body of data to work from. The above-ground testing occurred between 1951 and 1958. In 1965, after downwinders had raised hell in Congress about cancer deaths, about 4800 children in school grades six through 12 in Utah's Washington County and in Nevada and Arizona were given thyroid examinations. They were tracked until they graduated high school. The U. study would contact as many of these people as can be found today to conduct follow-up examinations for thyroid tumors. The study would alert these people to possible disease. In addition, because these folks were first examined in 1965, and the government has data about their radiation exposure, this latest round of examinations would provide important new information about the relationship between radiation exposure from fallout and thyroid disease. This is one piece of business from the Cold War that the government should not leave unfinished. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 9 Government should reach fair settlement with nuclear workers - Stephen Leonard The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Sunday, May 12, 2002 EDITOR: After World War II, the federal government contracted and subcontracted with companies throughout the country to develop and manufacture components and material for the nuclear weapons program. It is now an acknowledged fact that the government and those agencies and companies engaged in this nuclear industry were negligent in adequately informing and protecting workers against the myriad health risks associated with the production of nuclear material. It has been no surprise then, that many within this workforce have suffered from an inordinate number of debilitating diseases, many resulting in premature death. Many within this population have suffered from untreatable cancers. The evidence in human suffering is conclusive and damnable. It has been a bitter harvest for many of these men and their families. Too many have spent their retirement years battling illness and sickness, while others haven't lived that long. As we look back at the conditions under which these men labored and compare the stringent safety rules and guidelines in place to protect workers today, it is no wonder so many have suffered. Were these men expendable? Was the federal government and the industry it created justified in promoting the production of nuclear weaponry over the protection of the workforce? Are the wives and widows of these men deserving of some sort of redress? After some 50 years, can the government finally address this wrong, which it created? Knowing full well no form of compensation can assuage the pain and loss, it is the hope of the families victimized by this tragedy that the government can and will accept its complicity and strive to reach a fair and equitable settlement. STEPHEN LEONARD Rochester, Ill. ***************************************************************** 10 Western Shoshone protest Yucca Mountain project Las Vegas SUN May 11, 2002 MERCURY, Nev. (AP) - Members of the Western Shoshone tribe gathered at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site Saturday to protest the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Nevada's Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes have staunchly opposed the government's plans to dispose of nuclear waste on their native lands. About 30 Western Shoshone members, nine of whom ran a 250-mile relay from their reservation in central Nevada to the Test Site, were joined by about 100 anti-Yucca Mountain protesters. "My legs were feeling it, but it was spiritual and uplifting," Santiago Lozada of Davis, Calif., said of the relay. "I felt the sorrow of our ancestors." The tribe prayed, sang and danced at a "peace camp" across the highway from the Test Site entrance. The group planned to camp overnight and then on Sunday, anti-Yucca protesters will cross the boundary line of the Test Site. "There are medicine rocks and artifacts on the top of the mountain and in caves," said Johnnie Bobb, tribe spiritual leader from Austin, Nev. "Now we can't even go in there. They keep us out." The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly embraced President Bush's decision to bury tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas. The next showdown will come in the Senate, which must decide by July whether to override a Nevada veto of the project. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Big hike likely in nuclear traffic By DUSTIN BLEIZEFFER Star-Tribune energy reporter GILLETTE - CST - The House's decision this week to approve Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for the nation's radioactive waste poses two dilemmas for Wyoming: a huge increase in nuclear traffic for the state and the philosophical issue of states' rights. It would open Wyoming as one of the top expressways for the expected 77,000 tons of radioactive shipments headed to Yucca Mountain. Wyoming ranks fifth under the "mostly truck" shipping scenario that would call for a total 33,685 separate loads coming through the state, and fourth under the "mostly rail" scenario calling for a total 16,124 railroad loads. "That means there could be one nuclear shipment (in Wyoming) every 10 hours," said Hugh Jackson, policy analyst for the Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy &Environment program. Jackson is a former Casper Star-Tribune editor. Supporting the initiative also overrides a philosophy long held by Wyoming's delegation that the federal government too often rides roughshod over the Western states with little representation in Washington, D.C. Bryan Jacobs, spokesman for Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., said her vote in favor of the plan to develop Yucca Mountain was a difficult decision. Nevada's delegates have long fought -- unsuccessfully so far -- against hosting the nation's radioactive waste much the same way Wyoming's delegation has fought against federal initiatives such as the one to ban snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. "This could very well have been Wyoming," Jacobs said in a phone interview Thursday. "Cubin feels that there is an obligation, however, to the general welfare of the nation," he added. Now that the House has approved the radioactive dump in Nevada, it is up to the Senate to decide. In recent months, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., has spoken in favor of developing Yucca Mountain. Sen Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., is still undecided on the issue, said Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel. "He's still listening to the senators from Nevada to get their side," Knobel said Thursday. Jackson said he believes Wyoming's delegation ought to stand beside its Nevada counterpart in fighting the plan to develop Yucca Mountain. "Wyoming politicians have, for years, made the case that the federal government runs roughshod over states. What the federal government is doing to Nevada right now is the egregious example of that," Jackson said in a phone interview from Las Vegas. One point in the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository issue that has not perplexed Wyoming's delegation is the question of how safe are the truck and railroad transports of radioactive material that will roll through Wyoming to get to Yucca Mountain. Jacobs said Cubin believes opponents to the plan are perpetuating false information about transportation safety, and a relatively good safety record to date can continue through careful planning. "Transportation plans will have to be addressed in detail by (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). Those regulators would have to approve the plans before shipments to Yucca Mountain can begin," Jacobs said. But Jackson said the volume of radioactive shipments to Yucca Mountain would far exceed the volume of past shipments. He said the actual total of all radioactive shipments to date adds up to less than 1 percent of the mileage radioactive materials would have to cover on its way to Yucca Mountain. "They have no experience shipping anywhere near the volume of this stuff that's going to go through Wyoming," Jackson said. ***************************************************************** 12 Yucca: It's crunch time: What can Harry do? Sunday, May 12, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal COLUMN: Steve Sebelius With Wednesday's lopsided, bipartisan, Screw Nevada Again vote in the House of Representatives, the battle over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump now shifts to the Senate. There will be hearings -- at least three -- in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. There will be testimony. The resolution to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto (and thus send nuclear waste to Nevada) will be reported out to the floor. And there will be a vote. Right now, it doesn't look good for the Silver State. But there is one bright spot: U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who's managed to rise in power to become assistant majority leader, the man who controls the flow of legislation on the floor, and who has a strong friendship with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. What could Reid do? If this issue is as vitally important as everyone always says it is, isn't it time to pull out all the stops? Normally, the Senate is the model of polite debate, so it's unlikely Reid and Daschle would throw decorum out the window in order to save Nevada. But it would be fun: Sen. Frank Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, rises to ask that the resolution be brought up for a vote. Daschle, primed by Reid, and mindful of his promise to keep Yucca bottled up, ignores him. "Um, Mr. President? Over here?" Murkowski persists. Says Daschle: "Does anybody hear a strange noise?" But then Murkowski's friend and fellow senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, rises to demand a point of order, to demand a vote to allow Murkowski to be heard. Many other senators, put off by the Reid-Daschle play, are ready to vote against the pair. Daschle ignores Stevens, too. The grumbling starts. "I think there would be civil war if there was an attempt not to recognize (a senator) indefinitely," says one observer. "You'd have all hell break loose on the floor." Moreover, the observer says, you'd lose even your allies, who would worry that the tactics are tossing the Senate into chaos. So perhaps Reid wouldn't want to go that radical, and risk being censured (at best) or expulsion from the Senate (at very worst). Yucca is supposed to be the end-all of battles, but contempt of Congress may be too stiff a penalty. Well, then, perhaps a simple stalling tactic would suffice, the way a basketball team calls time out as the clock winds down in the fourth quarter. Murkowski gets up to call the Yucca resolution, Reid moves to adjourn, instead. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Congress has 90 legislative days to override Guinn's veto, so an adjournment would stop the clock. Alas, there would be a vote on the motion to adjourn, and Reid could easily lose, if there are enough Yucca supporters in the upper house. Well, perhaps there's a way to work within the system to stop Yucca. Reid is, after all, reported to be a master strategist. But as the vote nears, the time for niceties such as courtesy grows short. "Tell you what," Reid could say to the pro-Yucca senator. "This is my political career on the line here. If you go with me, I'll make sure that your constituents love you with all the pork you'll bring home. But if you don't, I'll put a hold on every bill you introduce from now until the end of time. You won't be able to pass a resolution saying apple pie is a good thing." Why not do that? "Who says he's not?" asks Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor. "Every conceivable option is on the table right now." (Well, probably not the old lock-the-Republican-cloakroom-doors-from-the-outside trick, but we know what he meant.) "This is kind of like a roadhouse bar fight," Naylor says. "I think that he's (Reid) a pretty good negotiator." And, we're told, Reid used to be a pretty good boxer, too. But the cracks are showing: Naylor disagrees that a Yucca loss means the end of Reid's political career. Even if Reid loses on the Guinn veto override, Naylor says, the senator can still make mischief for the project in the Senate. "It's not his entire career, because the fight is never over," he says. Is that a sign that Reid knows the vote isn't going to go his way? "There has never been an exit strategy other than winning," Naylor maintains. "There has never been any strategy of capitulation." In that case, there are some arms to twist up on Capitol Hill, senator. And you might want to bring a pair of brass knuckles while you're at it. Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 13 Western Shoshone teams endure six-day trek to show love for contaminated test site land Carl Sampson, 21, of Reno holds a sage smudge bundle Saturday at Peace Camp just outside of the Mercury entrance to the Nevada Test Site. Sampson was one of nine Shoshone runners who traveled on foot from Warm Springs to the gates of the test site. Photo by Amy Beth Bennett. During a sunrise ceremony Saturday at Peace Camp just outside the Mercury entrance to the Nevada Test Site, Johnnie Bobb of Austin pulls a tobacco tie from the leading staff that nine Shoshone runners and walkers carried as they traveled on foot nearly 250 miles from Warm Springs to the test site gates. Photo by Amy Beth Bennett. Sunday, May 12, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Runners protest nuclear toll By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL They set out six days before they arrived Saturday at Peace Camp, encircling on foot a wide expanse of Nevada where for generations their distant grandmothers and grandfathers hunted deer and bighorn sheep and gathered pine nuts, plants and herbs. The Western Shoshone runners who arrived at the camp, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, made the journey to raise awareness about the land they say has been damaged by many years of uninvited nuclear weapons testing. The contamination of groundwater from hundreds of nuclear bomb detonations lurks below sacred areas and is moving through water layers not far from Yucca Mountain, where the government wants to bury the nation's spent nuclear fuel. The 250-mile trek by two teams of runners who left Monday heading in separate directions from Warm Springs in the heart of Nye County, north of the Nevada Test Site, was as Chief Raymond Yowell described it, "a demonstration of the Western Shoshone belief in the land." "These runners are willing to give of their time to bring that belief and understanding out," Yowell said in a telephone interview. "They go for the respect of Mother Earth, to show that storage of high-level nuclear waste is not a good thing." Their arrival kicked off a weekend of planned rallies by anti-nuclear activists, some coming from out of state to mark Mother's Day. Larger demonstrations are expected in October. North of Peace Camp at the test site town of Mercury, security personnel were bracing for nonviolent displays of civil disobedience, Department of Energy officials said, as has been the tradition of the past annual Mother's Day weekend gatherings organized by the Shundahai Network, an international group of activists. "The Bush administration is moving ahead with plans to try and open Yucca Mountain as a national nuclear dump and has instructed the Nevada Test Site to speed up the process (for) DOE resuming full-scale nuclear weapons testing," says a Shundahai Network statement, explaining the reason for this event, dubbed the "Gathering to Celebrate Life" rally. One longtime activist, Kalynda Tilges, nuclear issues coordinator for the statewide environmental group Citizen Alert, said she, too, will travel to Peace Camp today, carrying out her Mother's Day tradition with her 9-year-old son, Chasen Najarian. "This is what I choose to do on my Mother's Day. It's my gift to my children," she said. "It's important for people to keep in mind our history of nuclear testing and the damage that it's done both to humans and the environment." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 14 Hansen Tries To Thwart Utah: N-Site Access The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, May 12, 2002 BY DAN HARRIE THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE SANDY -- Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, pushed through a House bill that might effectively block a high-level nuclear waste storage site proposed in Utah's west desert. The stealth move showed Hansen, a 22-year House veteran scheduled to retire at year's end, still has got a few tricks left in him. He used his clout to quietly place an anti-nuke mechanism in a military authorization bill that designates 500,000 acres of Utah land as wilderness, covering the sprawling Utah Test and Training Range used by fighter pilots stationed at Hill Air Force Base. Sold as a way to protect the military base and range from future encroachment or closure, the measure also contains the obscure provision designed to prevent transportation of nuclear waste to Skull Valley, where the Goshute Band has proposed constructing a temporary storage facility for 44,000 tons of nuclear waste. "That's blocked right now," Hansen announced Saturday at the Republican State Convention. "If the Senate doesn't foul up, we're all right." The provision would designate as wilderness a key transportation corridor believed essential to shipping waste to the proposed storage site. The bill rocketed through the House Armed Services Committee, on which Hansen sits, and passed the full House at 3 a.m. Friday. Utah officials know the provision stands little chance in the Senate, but they will focus on fighting the battle in a conference committee, where the House and Senate work out comprises when different versions of bills pass. Hansen is expected to be appointed a member of the conference committee. The Farmington Republican, working with Gov. Mike Leavitt, deliberately kept quiet about the Skull Valley piece of the legislation. "I didn't want to say anything about it" and tip off Private Fuel Storage (PFS,) the consortium of utilities pushing the Skull Valley proposal as a storage facility for spent fuel rods now stockpiled on-site at nuclear power plants, acknowledged Hansen. PFS learned of the maneuver well after it was launched, and he said its furious lobbying failed to stop the measure. "It was snuck in," said PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin. "There was absolutely no debate, no hearings," she said. "If this had been put through in the normal way legislation is handled there would have been hearings." Martin said she could not say whether the provision, if approved by the Senate, would, indeed, block the nuclear-waste repository. "That was certainly their intent," said Martin. "But I just don't know. I don't want to speculate on what this might do." She said PFS isn't the only opponent of the measure. Many environmental groups are concerned because the bill would "fundamentally change the way those lands are administered and managed," she said. "We're not the only ones watching it. There's a broad spectrum of concern out there." Leavitt denied the anti-nuclear provision in the legislation was a sneak attack. "It was always disclosed," said the governor, who wrote dozens of letters and worked the phones on behalf of the bill. Leavitt will fly Monday to Washington for a full day of White House meetings with Cabinet and senior staff Tuesday in the attempt to get administration buy-in on the measure. "It's in the interests of the administration," he said, stressing portion of the bill preserving the military training range. "This is a major defense asset." Leavitt stopped short of saying the bill, if enacted, would block the nuclear storage plan. But he did say it gives the state another potent weapon in its arsenal against the proposal. "We will argue with intensity that there should be no nuclear waste crossing wilderness areas," he said. "It's a milestone in a long trail. . . . This is just one, but it should not be minimized. It's a big deal." © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 15 In Vegas Politics, All Bets Are Off (washingtonpost.com) By George F. Will Sunday, May 12, 2002; Page B07 LAS VEGAS -- An incumbent is running in Nevada's 1st Congressional District, yet the race resembles one for an open seat. Why? Because it is in this city, which could startle the nation come November. Republicans control the House of Representatives 222-211. There are two independents. The challenger here, city councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald, 38, attracts interest because she participated as Miss Oregon in the 1989 Miss America pageant, and if elected she will be the first African American woman Republican ever to serve in the House. But most important, this race is one of the small number in 2002 -- probably fewer than 40 -- that are truly competitive. Few of those involve incumbents. This is one of the races that will determine who controls the House, and it will turn on small local factors. The incumbent, seeking a third term, is Shelley Berkley, 51. Although the district as configured in 1998 had an even more substantial preponderance of registered Democrats than it now has, she won with just 49 percent of the vote while outspending her rival more than 2 to 1. In 2000 she won 52 to 44, again with a substantial spending advantage. Berkley is a generally centrist Democrat, although very attentive to organized labor. She is an energetic campaigner and prolific fundraiser in a city that is a magnet for contribution-hungry politicians nationwide. Fundraising and other advantages make incumbents difficult to dislodge, especially immediately after redistricting. In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters. But Berkley has not been helped by the redistricting made necessary by the fact that this is the nation's fastest-growing major city -- a city that prints a new phone book twice a year and that needs 12 new schools a year to accommodate 6,000 new residents a month. The portion of northwest Las Vegas that has been put into the redrawn 1st District had 50,000 residents four years ago. Today it has 150,000. Berkley is hardly an incumbent there. Nevada's senior senator, Harry Reid, now in his third term, looms large in Washington -- he is Senate majority whip. But he was first reelected in 1992 with just 51 percent of the vote, and was reelected in 1998 with 48 percent -- by only 428 votes. Why? Because almost everyone starts almost from scratch in every election. Even incumbents quickly become strangers to the constantly churned electorate in a state whose population increased two-thirds in the last decade. The land near Las Vegas Boulevard -- the Strip, home of the casinos -- is a developer's dream, which is why elections of county commissioners can loom larger than elections of U.S. senators. The Strip has 11 of the world's 13 largest hotels (the other two are in Thailand and Malaysia; go figure), which is why the Culinary Union matters so much in endorsing candidates and turning out the vote. The union will support Berkley, but soon it may be distracted by collective bargaining difficulties. This city's current preoccupation is President Bush's decision, capping decades of study, to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of here. Every Nevada politician opposes this, but Bush remains popular. The abiding preoccupation of this city that depends on visitors arriving at McCarran Airport -- this city that lost 20,000 jobs immediately after Sept. 11 -- is attracting businesses to diversify the economy. This and charter schools, which help explain McDonald's support among African American civic leaders who normally support Democrats, are her strongest passions. Poised (a beauty pageant can be spring training for politics), articulate (she has worked as a journalist) and entrepreneurial by conviction (Can you have too many Reagan election posters? Her office is trying), she is a born booster. In this city of perpetual unpacking, voter turnout spikes in presidential election years but sags, particularly among Democrats, when, as this year, there is not even a gubernatorial or Senate race. And in 2000 Berkley ran two points behind Gore's performance in her district. In 32 of the 34 midterm elections since the Civil War, the party holding the presidency has lost House seats. However, Democrats have gained seats in the three elections since their shellacking in 1994, and only three times in the 69 elections since the Civil War has a party gained seats in four consecutive elections. Which pattern will prevail this year depends partly on the fate of a conservative, pro-life African American Republican woman. That is implausible, but not more so than this city exploding across the desert. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 16 Bush PR on new weapons protocol Message to the Senate of the United States For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary May 10, 2002 Message to the Senate of the United States TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES: I submit herewith, for Senate advice and consent to ratification, the Protocol Additional to the Agreement Between the United States of America and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards in the United States of America, with annexes, signed at Vienna June 12, 1998 (the "Additional Protocol"). Adhering to the Additional Protocol will bolster U.S. efforts to strengthen nuclear safeguards and promote the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, which is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign and national security policy. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the world learned the extent of Iraq's clandestine pursuit of an advanced program to develop nuclear weapons. In order to increase the capability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (the "Agency") to detect such programs, the international community negotiated a Model Additional Protocol (the "Model Protocol") to strengthen the Agency's nuclear safeguards system. The Model Protocol is to be used to amend the existing bilateral safeguards agreements of states with the Agency. The Model Protocol is a milestone in U.S. efforts to strengthen the safeguards system of the Agency and thereby to reduce the threat posed by clandestine efforts to develop a nuclear weapon capability. By accepting the Model Protocol, states assume new obligations that will provide far greater transparency for their nuclear activities. Specifically, the Model Protocol strengthens safeguards by requiring states to provide broader declarations to the Agency about their nuclear programs and nuclear-related activities and by expanding the access rights of the Agency. The United States signed the Additional Protocol at Vienna on June 12, 1998. The Additional Protocol is a bilateral treaty that would supplement and amend the Agency verification arrange-ments under the existing Agreement Between the United States of America and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards in the United States of America of November 18, 1977 (the "Voluntary Offer"), which entered into force on December 9, 1980. The Additional Protocol will enter into force when the United States notifies the Agency that the U.S. statutory and constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (the "NPT") requires non-nuclear-weapon states parties to accept Agency safeguards on their nuclear activities. The United States, as a nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT, is not obligated to accept Agency safeguards on its nuclear activities. Nonetheless, it has been the announced policy of the United States since 1967 to permit the application of Agency safeguards to its nuclear facilities -- excluding only those of direct national security significance. The Additional Protocol similarly allows the United States to exclude its application in instances where the United States decides that its application would result in access by the Agency to activities with direct national security significance to the United States or access to locations or information associated with such activities. I am, therefore, confident that the Additional Protocol, given our right to invoke the national security exclusion and to manage access in accordance with established principles for implementing these provisions, can be implemented in a fashion that is fully consistent with U.S. national security. By submitting itself to the same safeguards on all of its civil nuclear activities that non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT are subject to, the United States intends to demon-strate that adherence to the Model Protocol does not place other countries at a commercial disadvantage. The U.S. signature of the Additional Protocol was an important factor in the decisions of many non-nuclear-weapon states to accept the Model Protocol and provided significant impetus toward their early acceptance. I am satisfied that the provisions of the Additional Protocol, given our right to manage access in accordance with Article 7 and established implementation principles, will allow the United States to prevent the dissemination of proliferation-sensitive information and protect proprietary or commercially sensitive information. I also transmit, for the information of the Senate, the report of the Department of State concerning the Additional Protocol, including an article-by-article analysis, a subsidiary arrangement, and a letter the United States has sent to the Agency concerning the Additional Protocol. Additionally, the recommended legislation necessary to implement the Additional Protocol will be submitted separately to the Congress. I believe that the Additional Protocol is in the best interests of the United States. Our acceptance of this agreement will sustain our longstanding record of voluntary acceptance of nuclear safeguards and greatly strengthen our ability to promote universal adoption of the Model Protocol, a central goal of my nuclear nonproliferation policy. Widespread acceptance of the Protocol will contribute significantly to our nonproliferation objectives as well as strengthen U.S., allied, and international security. I, therefore, urge the Senate to give early and favorable consideration to the Additional Protocol, and to give advice and consent to its ratification. GEORGE W. BUSH THE WHITE HOUSE, May 9, 2002. # # # ***************************************************************** 17 Pak had plans to nuke India in 1999 Expressindia.com Press Trust of India London, May 12: The Pakistani army mobilised its nuclear arsenal against India in 1999 - during the Kargil conflict—without the knowledge of its prime minister Nawaz Sharif, The Sunday Times reported quoting a senior White House adviser at that time. In a paper to be published shortly by the university of Pennsylvania, Bruce Riedel, who was a senior adviser to then US president Bill Clinton on India and Pakistan, recalls how the president was told that he faced the most important foreign policy meeting of his career. "There was disturbing information about Pakistan preparing its nuclear arsenal," Riedel writes. According to the report, Riedel and other aides feared that India and Pakistan were heading for a "deadly descent into full-scale conflict, with a danger of nuclear cataclysm". They were also concerned about Osama bin Laden's growing influence in the region. Intelligence experts had told Riedel that the flight times of missiles fired by either side would be as little as three minutes and that "a Pakistani strike on just one Indian city, Mumbai, would kill between 150,000 and 850,000 alone". Riedel, the newspaper said, told Clinton not to reveal his intelligence hand in the opening talks with Sharif, in which the president handed the premier a cartoon that showed Pakistan and India firing nuclear missiles at one another. But in a second discussion, at which Riedel was the only other person present, "Clinton asked Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was. Did Sharif know his military was preparing their missiles?" he writes. While Clinton reminded Sharif how close the US and Soviet Union had come to nuclear war in 1962 over Cuba, Sharif agreed it would be a catastrophe even if a single bomb was dropped. Riedel does not state in the paper how the Americans gathered their intelligence, nor what the mobilisation entailed. But John Pike, director of the Washington-based Global Security Oganisation, said intelligence channels could have become aware of the trucks that carry Pakistan's nuclear missiles being moved from their bases at Sargodha, near Rawalpindi. "One scenario is that missile trucks were picked up parked in a convoy," he said. Clinton drove home the advantage that the intelligence coup had given him, Riedel recalls. "Did Sharif order the Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for action," the prime minister was asked. "Did he realise how crazy that was?" Riedel describes how an "exhausted" Sharif "denied he had ordered the preparation and said he was against that, but worried for his life back in Pakistan". Soon afterwards Sharif, who now lives in exile in Saudi Arabia, signed a document agreeing to pull back his forces from Kargil. If, as Riedel implies, Sharif was kept in the dark about this nuclear programme, he suffered a similar embarrassment to that of his predecessor, Benazir Bhutto, who is said to have asked the CIA for a briefing on Islamabad's nuclear capability because that privilege was denied to her by her own generals. According to the newspaper, a recent report by the CIA—Global Trends 2015—predicts that the threat of nuclear war will remain a serious regional issue for the next 15 years. By next year Pakistan is thought likely to have between 50 and 75 nuclear warheads, while India will have between 75 and 100, the report said. © 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 18 Cold War Book Review: The Bottom Line (washingtonpost.com) 'The Fifty-Year Wound' by Derek Leebaert Reviewed by Joseph S. Nye Jr. Sunday, May 12, 2002; Page BW08 THE FIFTY-YEAR WOUND The True Price of America's Cold War Victory By Derek Leebaert Little, Brown. 750 pp. $29.95 At the turn of the century, Paul Nitze remarked of the Cold War: "We did a goddamn good job." To this comment, Derek Leebaert responds, "Well, yes and no: yes if the overriding emphasis is that civilization survived more or less intact, that the Soviet Union collapsed peacefully, and that most of the world was liberalized along the way; no if we dwell on the indirection, inexcusable ignorance, political intrusions, personal opportunism, and crimes underlying this ultimate victory." Leebaert's lively and opinionated account of the last half-century bravely tries to assess the balance of costs and benefits. The list of Cold War costs is daunting: nearly 100,000 American lives lost in combat (mostly in Korea and Vietnam), and millions of innocent lives lost in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Central America, Angola, Afghanistan, Congo and elsewhere. Vietnam alone cost $882 million in 1976 dollars, and the cost of real military purchases in the four decades after 1948 totaled around $10 trillion. Clean-up of Cold War-related nuclear sites will cost $350 billion and continue until 2045. One hundred and sixty million Americans received at least some fallout exposure between 1953 and 1968 -- causing thousands of thyroid cancers, of which some 10 per cent may be fatal. At home, the 1950s produced McCarthyism. In the 1970s, public confidence in our institutions declined after Vietnam and Watergate, recovered somewhat in the early Reagan years, but declined again after the Iran-contra scandal. Leebaert excoriates "unaccountable officials" and the "sprawling secrecy system" that made it "all too easy to deny, dissemble, or mislead as a matter of course." He reserves special condemnation for the CIA. "No other single government body has blundered so often in so many ways integral to its designated purpose," he writes. In propping up Third World dictators, undercutting elected officials in Iran, Guatemala, Congo and Chile, supporting "the bad against the worse" in Central America in the 1980s, we undercut our own values and tainted our claim to represent the "free world." And of course, the 25,000 non-Afghan Islamic warriors from 30 countries whom we helped train in the 1980s came back to haunt us after September 2001. The price of victory also included promises unkept, time wasted, talent misdirected, secrecy imposed and confidence impaired. "Had Americans been able to invest their trillions of dollars elsewhere, not only would the country be richer, but its level of confidence, perhaps of generosity to the world's disadvantaged, would be much greater. Splendid cities of the mind and spirit have been lost -- ones that might have towered in place of missile silos, command centers and barracks." According to Leebaert, "Throughout the Cold War enormous amounts of talent were used for fundamentally unproductive purposes." Well, yes and no. Investing in security does not produce goods and services, but without security they cannot be produced. The Cold War involved many excesses, but how can we be sure what was necessary and what pure waste? Leebaert cites a Harvard Medical School dean who used to warn new students that half of what they were taught would eventually be proved wrong; he just didn't know which half. As Leebaert himself admits, the American people won the Cold War without allowing their society to be militarized. While we often violated our values of freedom and democracy because of what we thought was necessity (or sometimes convenience), there would be less freedom and democracy in the world today had the other side won. Leebaert faces this puzzle several times without really resolving it. But watching him wrestle with it is a good read. Leebaert's account is good at raising hard questions, but less successful as a history of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Reagan are his heroes, and he never misses a chance to criticize Henry Kissinger and George Kennan (whom he terms an "often misguided influence"). Yet one can argue that Kennan's original doctrine of containment is what succeeded in the end. One of the interesting questions about the Cold War is why it did not become World War III, but Leebaert has little to say about this. On the question of why it ended, his account places too much emphasis on personality. President Reagan deserves credit for pressing the Soviets and restoring American confidence, but the deeper cause was the failure of the planned economy and the closed society to cope with the information revolution after 1970. As for the influence of individuals, Gorbachev's well-intentioned but misguided reform efforts speeded up rather than slowed the process of decline. But read this book. Even when you fight it, you will encounter questions worth pondering as we enter another long struggle that mixes military and civilian measures. • Joseph S. Nye Jr. is dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of the recently published "The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 19 Submarines' Secret History Surfaces May 12, 2002 VENTURA COUNTY Navy: Some of the most important U.S. weapons of the Cold War were developed at Point Mugu, but the stories of the crews and systems remain largely untold. By DAVID KELLY, TIMES STAFF WRITER It was 1963 and the U.S. submarine Growler lay silent and deep beneath the black waters of the North Pacific, trying desperately to remain invisible as a Soviet sub prowled nearby. No one made a sound in the cramped confines of the American vessel. An errant rattle or ping could tip off the Soviets, who could send the Growler, its 100 crew members and four nuclear missiles to the bottom of the sea. "Khrushchev had vowed to sink us if he found us," recalled Robert Harmuth of Oxnard, who was aboard the Growler, one of America's first nuclear-armed submarines. "The sub tracked us for 30 minutes, but we don't think he knew what he had on his hands." The Growler, which was just 500 miles off the Kamchatka Peninsula on the far eastern coast of the Soviet Union, dove deep, went under the Soviet sub and escaped. "It was pretty hairy, we put our lives on the line every day," said Harmuth, 66. "It's been overlooked for years because everyone was so hush-hush about the program." The history of America's first nuclear-armed submarines and the missiles they carried remains largely untold. The weapons, tested and developed chiefly at Point Mugu in Ventura County, were among the most secret projects of the Cold War. Using World War II German missile technology, more than a dozen ex-Nazi scientists and a small army of dedicated pilots and submariners, the military devised a primitive but effective sea-based nuclear deterrent that kept the Soviets off balance for years. Black-and-white pictures of the German scientists still adorn the office wall of Max White, former pilot and base historian at Point Mugu. There is Theodor Sterm, Wilfried Hell and Herbert Wagner. The latter designed a missile that sunk an American ship during World War II, killing 2,000 soldiers. "Wagner was actually a very sweet man," said White, 86. "My wife was his secretary." There were accidents and close calls. Missiles exploded on launch pads, planes crashed at test sites on the Channel Islands and submarines cruising close to the Soviet coast were chased by enemy ships or entangled in fishing nets. "Almost everything we did was classified, how everything worked was classified," said 68-year-old Al Thayer of Camarillo, a former fighter pilot assigned to the Regulus program in 1955. "I went at it tooth and nail for seven years. Our tests were trying to prove a submarine could control nuclear weapons to their target and stay submerged." Unlike the underwater-launched Polaris missiles that would follow, the Regulus was a subsonic nuclear cruise missile. It was fired from the decks of ships and submarines, then steered by remote control. The first successful flight was in 1951. Their limited range meant submarines had to be within 500 miles of the target. Many submariners doubted they would survive long after the first launch because of their exposure on the surface for the 15 minutes it took to fire the missile. "We didn't like to think about it, but we knew we were toast," Harmuth said. "It would have only taken minutes for them to be on top of us." The prospective targets were coastal Soviet navy and submarine bases. Though lacking pinpoint accuracy, the missiles' nuclear payload meant they could vaporize installations even if they were a few miles off course. "There were people in the Navy who realized that if you put an atomic weapon on a submarine, you would have the Cold War's ultimate weapon. If you could do that, your opponent would fear making a first strike against you," said Nick Spark, who recently finished a documentary entitled "Regulus: The First Nuclear Missile Submarines." Spark said the five Regulus submarine crews have been almost totally forgotten. "From 1958 to 1964, these subs patrolled off the coast of the Soviet Union," he said. "During the Cuban Missile Crisis, they sat off the Soviet coast on full alert." He said talking to Regulus alumni was like uncorking a champagne bottle. "Many said they couldn't wait to get the film in the mail so they could finally tell their kids what they had done," he said. Before Regulus there was the Loon, an updated copy of the German V-1 rocket lobbed at England during World War II. The first Loon was fired in 1946 from a beach at Point Mugu and crashed just a mile offshore. "In the time I was there, we discovered a new guidance system based on radar," said Pat Murphy, 82, a former sub commander from Santa Barbara who helped direct the Loon project. "Then the Regulus came along, which was a pilotless aircraft that flew at 30,000 feet with a range of 400 or so miles." To minimize expenses, the 33-foot Regulus missile could be landed and reused. Pilots flying beside it would land it via remote control on San Nicolas Island or Edwards Air Force Base. "We had to keep visual contact at all times, even in the clouds," Thayer said. "It was extremely difficult, but when it was operating correctly it was the smoothest thing going. It would go from zero to 240 mph in two seconds." While Thayer flew overhead, life in the submarines below was claustrophobic, hot and dirty. Harmuth, who wrote a book about life on the Regulus submarines, said it wasn't uncommon to go seven weeks without a shower. Patrols, often in rough seas, lasted up to four months and the crew couldn't even see the missiles take off. "You couldn't watch a launch from the submarine because the boosters would suck all the air out of the area and you would suffocate," Harmuth said. "You'd hear this giant 'swoosh.' It was like being in a hot sauna, you'd be drenched in sweat." The Regulus patrols ended in 1964, replaced by subs that carried 16 Polaris missiles with multiple nuclear warheads. It was a quantum leap in technology, solid-state electronics trumping vacuum tubes. David Stumpf, author of "Regulus: The Forgotten Weapon," said the missile laid the groundwork for today's Tomahawk cruise missiles and modern submarines. "I am so glad these guys were alive and could do what they did," he said. "I would like to think I had that kind of right stuff. Everyone I talked to was extremely proud of what they did and I have no doubt they would have taken a missile to the target if ordered to do so." Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 20 U.S. Says Russia Is Preparing Nuclear Tests May 12, 2002 By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON, May 11 — Administration officials have briefed Congress on what they described as disturbing intelligence indicating that Russia is preparing to resume nuclear tests, even as President Bush is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss arms control later this month, government officials said. Selected members of the House and Senate met in small, closed sessions and were told of a new analysis by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, a panel that collects the views of many federal agencies on nuclear issues. Among the members of Congress who received the briefing, the reaction ranged from alarm to skepticism. Some debated whether the intelligence report was a tactic to help clear the way for the United States to resume nuclear testing. Others were so concerned that they drafted legislation this week that would call for access to Russian nuclear sites and allow work on a new generation of American nuclear warheads. The assessment described technical activities on a Russian island above the Arctic Circle that is the equivalent of the American nuclear test range in Nevada, officials said. The pattern of work on the island, Novaya Zemlya, matches known Russian activities in preparation for past nuclear tests, officials said. The briefings to Congress were not the first time the American intelligence agencies had warned of activities on the island, though, and some government analysts have raised questions over the months about whether Russia may already have detonated tiny nuclear devices. Russian officials steadfastly maintain that their nuclear weapons program remains within the constraints of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, but has not been ratified by the Senate. President Bush has said it does not adequately protect the nation's security interests, although the Bush administration continues to honor the test moratorium. Operations to gather intelligence on the Russian nuclear program are among the most sensitive missions undertaken by the United States, and disputes over exactly what is occurring on Novaya Zemlya have divided intelligence analysts and administration officials in past years. Officials insisted that the Congressional briefings had nothing to do with pushing a hard-line agenda ahead of Mr. Bush's meeting with Mr. Putin this month. The timing of the briefings "was coincidental," one administration official said. One member of Congress, who was present at the briefing and remained skeptical of the evidence of Russian testing, said, "The administration seems to want to resume nuclear testing and to develop new nuclear weapons." The only public reference to the briefings came on the floor of the House on Thursday, when Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, made passing reference to the intelligence analysis. Mr. Weldon said the briefing he attended was at the "code word level" of classification, and he said he was so alarmed that he drafted an amendment to the 2003 defense authorization bill. The version of his amendment that passed the House this week would allow the United States to conduct research and conceptual design work on a new class of nuclear warheads. Language was deleted that would allow the United States to resume testing if the government certified that another nation had resumed testing. But in setting up what Mr. Weldon called "an aggressive level of transparency," the amendment would establish a program for Russian scientists to visit the Nevada nuclear test site in exchange for visits by Americans to Novaya Zemlya. "There may be something going on in Russia that we don't understand, that may trouble us — and they may feel the same about something we're doing on our side," Mr. Weldon said in a telephone interview after the vote. "It's best to counter that, and not to recreate feelings that existed in the cold war, but take this opportunity to engage." Mr. Weldon, who described himself as "Russia's best friend but her toughest critic," said he remained deeply concerned that conservative elements in Russia's Defense Ministry, its foreign intelligence service and its atomic energy ministry "want to move us and Russia away from a close dialogue" and might be responsible for the worrisome actions at Novaya Zemlya. Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, said today that the White House would have no comment on intelligence matters. On the question of Russian nuclear testing, he said, "We are concerned that we may not be able to know if any entity were testing in a way designed to avoid detection, and we expect Russia to abide by the testing moratorium it has declared for itself." The intelligence report on Novaya Zemlya was included in a broader briefing to Congress on cooperative programs between the United States and Russia to reduce threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, a project that includes tracking Moscow's compliance with a number of arms control agreements, including the test-ban treaty. When internal administration debates over Russian nuclear testing surfaced previously, just more than a year ago, the director of nuclear weapons development and testing at the Russian atomic energy ministry denied any violation of the comprehensive test ban, a stance repeated by a variety of Russian officials in the intervening months. In an interview in February 2001 with The New York Times, Dr. Nikolai P. Voloshin said that work at Novaya Zemlya was to ensure the reliability of aging warheads, not to develop new weapons. He noted that the test-ban treaty defined no specific "threshold" for a violation, but said simply that nuclear explosions should not occur. "It doesn't specify whether one neutron or two neutrons can be emitted," he said. Advocates of the test-ban treaty pointed out that it had provisions under which the United States could seek to inspect the Russian test site, and they expressed concerns that the briefings for Congress were part of an administration campaign to resume nuclear tests in Nevada. "The Bush administration appears to be slowly but steadily moving in the direction of removing the obstacles preventing a resumption of U.S. testing and developing a rationale for resuming testing," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "While it is clear that this administration has no interest in seeking ratification, it must be careful not to provoke other nuclear states and further alienate allies who support the test ban treaty." The administration's recent assessment of the nation's strategic arsenal, called the Nuclear Posture Review, suggests it may be necessary to resume testing to make new nuclear weapons and to ensure the reliability of existing ones. The Bush administration has no formal plans to resume nuclear testing, but the president has said he does not support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, describing it as not verifiable and not enforceable. Mr. McCormack, the National Security Council spokesman, today repeated administration policy that "the United States has no plans to resume its nuclear testing program." He emphasized that the administration would "continue to observe the nuclear testing moratorium consistent with our right to take measures to ensure stockpile safety and integrity in extraordinary circumstances." Officials at the Departments of Defense, Energy and State, and at the National Security Council have discussed whether President Bush should renounce Mr. Clinton's signature on the test-ban treaty. Just this week, the Bush administration formally renounced American support for the treaty creating an International Criminal Court; that treaty likewise had been signed by Mr. Clinton but was not ratified by the Senate. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 21 House OKs Nuclear Test Site Visits Las Vegas SUN May 11, 2002 WASHINGTON- The House has approved legislation calling for exchange visits between the U.S. nuclear test site in Nevada and Russia's test site on an Arctic archipelago in an effort to promote openness in the face of reported signs Russia may be preparing to resume nuclear testing. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who sponsored the amendment, told the House last week that a classified intelligence briefing for certain members of Congress had included information on possible "new movement in the area of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials." The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday that classified briefings for select House and Senate members included information on a new analysis by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee indicating that Moscow is preparing to resume testing at the Novaya Zemlya testing area. The committee gathers views from different federal agencies on nuclear issues. Weldon said in a statement his amendment was designed to promote safety, security and transparency with Russia by encouraging joint nonproliferation and threat-reduction efforts. The congressman declined on Saturday to discuss specifics of the briefings. However, he told The Associated Press, he had learned "some new information that concerned me that while we should engage Russia ... you also have to understand that there are those in Russia, as well as in this country, who would like to return to the Cold War." He said the purpose of his amendment, which drew bipartisan support, was "not intended to accuse Russia of anything," but rather to promote access to nuclear weapons facilities "unlike anything we've had before." The amendment also reverses a ban on scientific research to develop nuclear weapons that can defeat chemical and biological weapon production and storage facilities. "No president should have their hands tied by outdated laws that stifle research and development into new technologies that will safeguard us in the future," Weldon said. "The fact is, our adversaries are developing chemical and biological weapons that pose a significant threat to America and our allies." The new questions about Russia's nuclear testing come just weeks before President Bush is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a May 23-26 summit in Russia where arms control is on the agenda. Russia has observed a moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing since its last test explosion in October 1990. Moscow has said it would continue to conduct subcritical test blasts that are not prohibited by the international Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because they are necessary to ensure the safety of the country's nuclear arsenal. In subcritical experiments, plutonium is blasted with explosives too weak to set off an atomic explosion. Critics warn that carrying out even limited tests could encourage other countries to conduct full-scale nuclear tests. Russia ratified the test ban treaty in May 2000. The treaty was signed by President Clinton in 1996. Bush has said he does not support the treaty and will not ask the Senate to approve it, but will not violate it. The Weldon proposal was approved 362-53 as an amendment to legislation that passed the House on Friday authorizing $383 billion in national security spending during the 2003 budget year. A House-Senate conference committee will work out differences between differing bills approved by the two chambers. The CIA and State Department had no comment on reports that Russia may be preparing to resume testing. Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, said U.S. officials "are concerned that we may not be able to know if any entity were testing in a way designed to avoid detection, and we expect Russia to abide by the testing moratorium it has declared for itself." McCormack said the Bush administration would "continue to observe the nuclear testing moratorium consistent with our right to take measures to ensure stockpile safety and integrity in extraordinary circumstances." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected Las Vegas SUN May 11, 2002 VIENNA, Austria- The world's nations, spurred on by fears of catastrophic terror attacks, are expected by year's end to put the final touches on a toughened treaty obligating governments to better protect nuclear material from bombmaking terrorists, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency said. Mohamed ElBaradei also said Friday he hopes for an agreement with Washington and Moscow giving his International Atomic Energy Agency responsibility for verifying reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Historically, such reductions have been verified by the two nuclear powers alone. In a third area, ElBaradei said he favors a treaty requiring regulation of radioactive materials, such as cobalt used for cancer therapy, that cannot be made into true nuclear weapons but that terrorists could blow up with explosives - so-called "dirty bombs" - to spread panic. ElBaradei, in an interview, said global attitudes toward nuclear threats have changed since Sept. 11. Just last month, American officials reported that a captured leader of al-Qaida, the group blamed for those attacks, told interrogators it planned to build some kind of nuclear device. "We have seen a new kind of risk we have not seen before, people who would sacrifice their lives in the process of committing an act of violence. We have seen a high degree of sophistication in committing an act of violence," he said. "That necessitated a complete re-evaluation of the (nuclear) security risk." One early result, ElBaradei said, should be an expansion of the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. That treaty set technical standards for protecting plutonium and enriched uranium - the material of nuclear bombs - but only in international transportation. Specialists have been negotiating a major amendment to the treaty that would expand its requirements to also guard such bomb-grade material when it is in civilian use or in storage - at research or power plants, for example - with specified protective structures and security measures. The working group meets again next month, planning to submit a draft document to a full-scale diplomatic conference for approval. "We hope that we'll be successful and complete the exercise by the end of the year," ElBaradei said. He was also hopeful about chances for wrapping up three-way negotiations with the United States and Russia that would allow the agency to check any nuclear bomb material declared excess under arms control agreements. Since its founding almost a half-century ago, the Vienna-based U.N. agency has not played an active role in any kind of review of the nuclear powers' weapons inventories. "We are making some progress," ElBaradei said. "I hope in the not very distant future, we'll have an agreement. That, I think, would be an important breakthrough." He also said he favored "binding norms" - that is, a treaty - to set worldwide standards for the security of cobalt-60, cesium-137, strontium-90 and other radioactive isotopes used in medicine and industry. Such materials could contaminate large areas for long periods if blown up in a terrorist bomb. ElBaradei said negotiating a treaty could take years, however, and for now he would like to see governments commit, less formally, to security guidelines that the agency published last December. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************