DebateGate

Unrepentant North Korea marks "miracle" nuclear test
Tue Oct 9, 2007 10:29am EDT
By Jonathan Thatcher

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Tuesday marked the first anniversary of the nuclear test that made it globally ostracized and the target of painful sanctions by calling it a "great miracle" for all Koreans.

The chest-thumping tone of the article in the Rodong Sinmun daily is unlikely to give much cheer to regional powers who last week announced an agreement with the hermit state to disable the nuclear plant it has used to make material for atomic bombs.

"We cannot forget it. The benevolent leader, with his great sword, made Chosun (Korea) into a strong independent state and handed our 70 million people skies of peace, skies of prosperity, skies of hopes to last forever," it said in a reference to the communist world's only dynastic leader, Kim Jong-il.

The 70 million is the combined population of the two Koreas, divided since the early days of the Cold War.

The article did not explain why those celebrating would include South Koreans, who have been technically at war with the North for half a century and are the main target of its more than one-million-strong army and barrage of missiles.

The test on October 9 last year triggered tough international sanctions which analysts say have hit an already staggering North Korean economy.

But they said fear the North might be close to making an atomic bomb helped restart stalled international talks on persuading the communist state to give up its dreams of being an nuclear weapons power, resulting in an initial agreement early this year with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"The shouts of joy from October... (2006), when we continuously hurrahed General Kim Jong-il the most benevolent leader of the century, will be remembered forever in the 5,000 year history (of Korea). It is truly a great miracle," the article said.

It went on to say that the world had been surprised how North Korea had managed to survive in the face of adversity to become "the most powerful and dignified nation and the strongest and greatest country in the world's history".

Analysts, however, say the decline of North Korean economy -- which has completely missed the economic boom of its neighbors in eastern Asia -- has encouraged its paranoid government more recently to start cooperating more with the outside world.

Last week, Kim Jong-il hosted only the second summit between the two Koreas, though the talks only touched on the issue of the North's denuclearization.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Kim)


? Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Attitudes change as Special Olympics come to China
By John Vause
CNN

SHANGHAI, China (CNN) -- Natalie Williams, a 21-year-old Special Olympics basketball player from Kentucky, says she's never really been treated like a true athletic star. But that was before she came to the Games in China, which has undergone a major change in its treatment of the mentally disabled.

"They are able to accept special needs people in a way that maybe some other countries do not," Williams says.

Last week, organizers rolled out the red carpet for athletes arriving at the Special Olympics in Shanghai, China. Never before in the 39-year history of the Special Olympics has there been such an extravagant, star-studded opening ceremony. And everywhere in this city, there are billboards with the smiling faces of the mentally disabled promoting the Games.

China spent millions ensuring the 7,500 competitors are cared for -- and more importantly accepted. Watch 'This is a highlight to their lives' ?

That's quite a turnaround for a country whose leadership, less than 20 years ago, refused to even acknowledge any of their citizens were intellectually disabled. At the time, former Prime Minister Li Peng was quoted as saying, "Mentally retarded people give birth to idiots."

"There's a long way to go -- there's a long way. But the good news is we're moving," says Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics.

China's transformation is so far mostly from the top down, beginning with no less than President Hu Jintao whose presence at the Opening Ceremony was particularly notable. See photos of the opening ceremony ?

Also notable was the president's visit to one of Shanghai's "Sunshine Homes" this month. The shelters are a direct result of this city winning the rights five years ago to host the Special Olympics. Back then, officials quickly realized their treatment of the city's 70,000 mentally disabled was woefully inadequate.

Now there are 240 Sunshine Homes spread across this sprawling city, caring for about 15,000 of those most in need, like 25-year-old Chen Xiaohan. She still struggles to speak with strangers, but her parents boast of her many achievements since enrolling a year ago.

Xiaohan can make her own bed, walk to school and is learning piano. But more notable, says her father, Chen Zhixiang, is the change in recent years in the way his daughter is treated by neighbors.

"If in the past you looked down on them and now you still look down, it only proves your thinking is bad. Now when our neighbors see her, they're very nice. They ask, 'Chen Xiaohan, how are you today?' There isn't any more discrimination."

The Special Olympics may have been a watershed moment for China's mentally disabled, but perhaps a breakthrough came a few years earlier, when Special Olympian Judy Yang appeared in a splashy spread on the front cover of a mainstream teen-age magazine.

Photogenic and well-spoken, Yang has been an unofficial ambassador of sorts and, after her magazine debut, she noticed a real shift in how the Chinese related to the disabled.

"A lot of people are accepting now. They're willing to be friends, to let their children play with one another, and they can learn from each other as well."

That may be true in China's biggest, richest and most Western city, Shanghai, but in the countryside not much appears to have changed. Intellectually disabled children that are hard to manage are often locked in caged rooms. Humanitarian officials say stories of doctors recommending disabled children be killed at birth are common.

In addition, programs like Sunshine Homes are almost unheard of outside of Shanghai and caring for the almost 13 million intellectually disabled in China remains a major challenge.

Earlier this year, authorities exposed a human trafficking ring selling young men, many of them intellectually disabled, to work in brick kilns.


"Neglect and discrimination is still quite prevalent. People tend to be ashamed of children with disabilities. They tend to hide them away. They tend not to let them have access to schooling or education," says Yin Yin Nwe, the head of UNICEF in China.

But Nwe is optimistic. As China's economy grows, she said she thinks the government will continue to devote more resources to the country's weakest and most vulnerable.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/special.olympics/index.html?eref=googletoolbar 

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets
Firm Says Administration's Handling of Video Ruined Its Spying Efforts

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; Page A01

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.

The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the first new video message from the group's leader in three years. In it, a dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.

Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE's claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the company's methods.

SITE -- an acronym for the Search for International Terrorist Entities -- was established in 2002 with the stated goal of tracking and exposing terrorist groups, according to the company's Web site. Katz, an Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s, has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest.

"We were able to establish sources that provided us with unique and important information into al-Qaeda's hidden world," Katz said. Her company's income is drawn from subscriber fees and contracts.

Katz said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual release.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in scouring terrorists' networks for information and messages, and some have questioned the company's motives and methods, including the claim that its access to al-Qaeda's network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE's decision -- as described by Katz -- to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it with intelligence analysts.

"It is not just about getting the video first," Venzke said. "It is about having the proper methods and procedures in place to make sure that the appropriate intelligence gets to where it needs to go in the intelligence community and elsewhere in order to support ongoing counterterrorism operations."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801817.html?nav=rss_nation/special

October 6, 2007
Boston Jew and West Bank Muslim Build a Temple, and Bridges, in Arkansas
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.

Just before the school year started in August 1971, Bill Feldman steered his Volvo amid the pickup trucks and horse trailers of small-town Arkansas, bound for his first job as a math professor. He was coming to the Bible Belt as a Jew reared in a Boston suburb, a scholar educated in Canada and Europe. To ease the culture shock, an uncle had given him three jars of kosher pickles for the trip.

The same month, 19-year-old Fadil Bayyari boarded the first plane of his life, carrying falafel from his mother for the journey from Tulkarem in the West Bank to Roosevelt University in Chicago. He handed a taxi driver at O?Hare the college?s address and was relieved of a month?s spending money when the cabby took the na?ve newcomer downtown more or less by way of Indiana.

All these decades later, destiny or providence or something has delivered Mr. Feldman and Mr. Bayyari to the same acre of land at the bottom of one of Fayetteville?s many hills. There Mr. Bayyari, now a general contractor, will build the first permanent temple for the Reform Jewish congregation in Fayetteville, of which Mr. Feldman is president. And Mr. Bayyari, a Palestinian-American Muslim, is doing the job at no charge. Without his sacrifice, the congregation probably could not afford the project at all.

?To me, it?s a place of worship,? said Mr. Bayyari, 55. ?In my mind and in my religion, I believe in Judaism as part of Islam. We believe in Abraham. We believe in Moses. In the Koran, there?s lots of talk about Isaac and Joseph. I am always fascinated by this, and I always feel I have a relationship with this faith. And knowing what?s happened in the Middle East, what better way to build bridges??

For Mr. Feldman, the bond with Mr. Bayyari felt especially resonant during Rosh Hashana. One of the Torah readings told of God?s protection of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, after Sarah had banished them as rivals for Abraham?s love. Muslims, of course, trace their lineage back through Ishmael.

?The humanity of it is thrilling,? Mr. Feldman, 62, said of Mr. Bayyari?s gesture. ?We?re thinking not only of our temple but of continuing the relationships with Muslims. We hope to accomplish an understanding. We hope to ultimately bring peace.?

By coincidence, the congregation was named Temple Shalom ? ?peace? in Hebrew and linguistically close to ?salaam? in Arabic ? from the time of its founding in 1981. Now the Web site for its permanent building is atempleofpeace.com, and the congregation has committed to raising a million dollars to endow programs with an emphasis on interfaith efforts. Mr. Bayyari?s decision to forgo payment will save Temple Shalom at least $250,000.

The contractor?s charity reflects factors beyond a shared religious heritage. It also attests to the odyssey of two men and the transformation of this corner of the Ozarks. Mr. Feldman had never expected to stay in Fayetteville, and Mr. Bayyari had never expected to be here at all. And Fayetteville itself has grown and diversified in ways unimaginable when Mr. Feldman came here 36 years ago.

To his own surprise, Mr. Feldman has spent his entire career in the math department at the University of Arkansas, becoming tenured and serving a decade as chairman. He married a local woman, who converted to Judaism, and after a relatively unobservant youth became a member, an officer and even a Hebrew-school teacher in Temple Shalom.

As for Mr. Bayyari, he did not last long at Roosevelt, instead learning the fast-food industry at McDonald?s Hamburger University, running franchises in Los Angeles and Hawaii, then picking up construction skills during four years with a conglomerate in Bahrain. He and his wife decided to move back to the United States to raise a family, and she had fond memories of Arkansas from childhood vacations.

The Boston Jew and the West Bank Muslim experienced similar isolation at the start. A circuit-riding rabbi came through Fayetteville just one Shabbat a month. The nearest synagogue was 60 miles away in Fort Smith, and the closest kosher meat was two and a half hours west in Tulsa. Mr. Bayyari worshiped in rented rooms with a small group of Muslim students from abroad and had to drive 12 hours to Chicago for a halal butcher.

Isolation, though, was not tantamount to prejudice. With his thriving construction business, Mr. Bayyari wound up serving on a regional planning board, joining the Rotary Club and even having an elementary school in nearby Springdale named for him. While he heard one accusatory comment after the Oklahoma City bombing, in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, he received many calls from friends making sure he had not been insulted or attacked.

Partly because it is a university town, partly because it sits 15 miles from Wal-Mart?s world headquarters, Fayetteville itself has grown into a surprisingly cosmopolitan place. Yes, the football fans still scream ?Pig, sooooey!? and, yes, the annual motorcycle rally is called ?Bikes, Blues and BBQ.? But Thai and Mexican restaurants flourish, educational levels stand high in national rankings and magazines like Forbes rate Fayetteville a highly desirable place to live.

With the growth in its membership from about 15 families in 1981 to nearly 60 early this decade, Temple Shalom resolved two years ago to buy or build its own sanctuary, rather than to keep renting space. The congregation?s effort to buy a locally famous home ran into opposition from neighbors, who said they objected to having more traffic in a residential area.

While the city zoning commission was wrestling with the case, Mr. Bayyari heard about it from one of his Rotary Club buddies, Ralph Nesson, a member of Temple Shalom. In solidarity, Mr. Bayyari attended several zoning meetings to support the temple?s plan.

By last fall, Mr. Feldman and other leaders had decided to withdraw the application rather than prolong the controversy. Attention then turned to a plot of land on Sang Road and a prospective capital campaign of $2.2 million. The congregation had a bequest of $500,000 from a member, Miriam Alford, and has been able to raise about $450,000 more, leaving a gap of $1.3 million for construction and programming.

So Mr. Bayyari?s offer to work without a fee proved essential. The site is already being leveled and a formal groundbreaking is set for Oct. 14.

Jeremy Hess, the head of Temple Shalom?s building committee, numbers himself among the dazzled.

?In the middle of the Bible Belt, why should Jews and Muslims, two small communities, be working together on this building?? he said. ?We really want a sacred space for everyone. Why God chose us, who knows??

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/06religion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

India steps back from brink of nuclear row
Tue Oct 9, 2007 4:43am EDT
By Palash Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The India government and its communist allies stepped back from the brink on Tuesday, agreeing to meet again this month to resolve a row over a nuclear deal with the United States that threatens to spark a snap election.

"Where is the crisis? There is no crisis. We are meeting again on the 22nd," A.B. Bardhan, chief of the Communist Party of India, one of the main left parties, said after a meeting between the two sides.

A fourth meeting of a joint panel formed to end the face-off between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government and the left had been expected to make little progress, with media saying the angry impasse on Tuesday could pave the way to a vote.

But the fact the two sides would meet again signaled that the communists, whose parliamentary support keeps the ruling coalition in power, would not -- for now -- withdraw their support for the government.

The communists insist the nuclear deal would make India subservient to U.S. interests, but the government seems determined to seal the accord, potentially its biggest foreign policy achievement.

An early election could spark uncertainty in India's financial markets, worried the government could announce populist measures that would widen the fiscal deficit. Investors might also scale back if they felt a vote would produce an unstable coalition.

The deal would be a milestone in India-U.S. relations, not the best of friends during the Cold War. It would allow India to import U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors, despite having tested nuclear weapons and not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The deal has been criticized by many outside India, including by some members of the U.S. Congress, who say the deal unfairly rewards India and undercuts a U.S.-led campaign to curtail nuclear ambitions of nations like Iran.

The crisis still appears headed for a final showdown, with India facing an informal end-October deadline to begin securing clearances from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and others to clinch the deal.

The communists have warned the government against negotiating with the IAEA to place India's civilian nuclear reactors under U.N. safeguards, one of the first steps towards making the deal operational.

Sonia Gandhi, ruling Congress party head and India's most powerful politician, talked with communist party leaders on Monday night in a surprise meeting and said the government wanted to start safeguard negotiations with the IAEA.

That was rejected by the communists, according to media reports, heightening speculation that Tuesday's panel meeting could see the government and the communists openly parting political ways, paving the way for early elections.

That scenario appeared to have been put off, for now.

"We will not let the government fall," Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said after the meeting, holding Bardhan's hand.

MARKET JITTERS

The growing crisis came just as Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, arrived in India on a technical visit to speak at an energy conference, visit a nuclear research facility in Mumbai and meet with Indian nuclear officials.

While the IAEA says his visit is not political, the timing added to tension between the government and the deal's opponents.

Newspapers on Tuesday talked about early general elections, originally scheduled for 2009, being almost inevitable. Morning television shows on Tuesday splashed headlines on their screens of "Nuclear Showdown" and "Will The Government Survive?"

The political crisis reached a flashpoint after Gandhi on Sunday called opponents of the nuclear deal enemies of development in a statement widely seen as hinting she was ready for a snap vote.

That infuriated the communist parties, who issued a joint statement on Monday saying "We need not to surrender our vital interests to America".

The Congress party has already started preparing for early elections, shuffling party leaders and announcing a slew of populist welfare measures to woo poor voters.

After negotiating with the IAEA, India must get clearance from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) that controls global civilian nuclear commerce. Then the deal goes back to the U.S. Congress for a final approval.

A snap election could put the nuclear deal at risk by throwing the country into political limbo, but would not necessarily kill it. The government can still move ahead with the agreement without parliamentary approval.


? Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSDEL1735620071009?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

US Considered Poisons for Assassinations
AP IMPACT: US Explored Potential for Using Radioactive Poisons to Kill 'Important Individuals'
By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON


In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate "important individuals" such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Approved at the highest levels of the Army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military's pursuit of a "new concept of warfare" using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations.

Military historians who have researched the broader radiological warfare program said in interviews that they had never before seen evidence that it included pursuit of an assassination weapon. Targeting public figures in such attacks is not unheard of; just last year an unknown assailant used a tiny amount of radioactive polonium-210 to kill Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.

No targeted individuals are mentioned in references to the assassination weapon in the government documents declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the AP in 1995.

The decades-old records were released recently to the AP, heavily censored by the government to remove specifics about radiological warfare agents and other details. The censorship reflects concern that the potential for using radioactive poisons as a weapon is more than a historic footnote; it is believed to be sought by present-day terrorists bent on attacking U.S. targets.

The documents give no indication whether a radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals was ever used or even developed by the United States. They leave unclear how far the Army project went. One memo from December 1948 outlined the project and another memo that month indicated it was under way. The main sections of several subsequent progress reports in 1949 were removed by censors before release to the AP.

The broader effort on offensive uses of radiological warfare apparently died by about 1954, at least in part because of the Defense Department's conviction that nuclear weapons were a better bet.

Whether the work migrated to another agency such as the CIA is unclear. The project was given final approval in November 1948 and began the following month, just one year after the CIA's creation in 1947.

It was a turbulent time on the international scene. In August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, and two months later Mao Zedong's communists triumphed in China's civil war.

As U.S. scientists developed the atomic bomb during World War II, it was recognized that radioactive agents used or created in the manufacturing process had lethal potential. The government's first public report on the bomb project, published in 1945, noted that radioactive fission products from a uranium-fueled reactor could be extracted and used "like a particularly vicious form of poison gas."

Among the documents released to the AP an Army memo dated Dec. 16, 1948, and labeled secret described a crash program to develop a variety of military uses for radioactive materials. Work on a "subversive weapon for attack of individuals or small groups" was listed as a secondary priority, to be confined to feasibility studies and experiments.

The top priorities listed were:

1 Weapons to contaminate "populated or otherwise critical areas for long periods of time."

2 Munitions combining high explosives with radioactive material "to accomplish physical damage and radioactive contamination simultaneously."

3 Air and-or surface weapons that would spread contamination across an area to be evacuated, thereby rendering it unusable by enemy forces.

The stated goal was to produce a prototype for the No. 1 and No. 2 priority weapons by Dec. 31, 1950.

The 4th ranked priority was "munitions for attack on individuals" using radioactive agents for which there is "no means of therapy."

"This class of munitions is proposed for use by secret agents or subversive units for lethal attacks against small groups of important individuals, e.g., during meetings of civilian or military leaders," it said.

Assassination of foreign figures by agents of the U.S. government was not explicitly outlawed until President Gerald R. Ford signed an executive order in 1976 in response to revelations that the CIA had plotted in the 1960s to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, including by poisoning.

The Dec. 16, 1948, memo said a lethal attack against individuals using radiological material should be done in a way that makes it impossible to trace the U.S. government's involvement, a concept known as "plausible deniability" that is central to U.S. covert actions.

"The source of the munition, the fact that an attack has been made, and the kind of attack should not be determinable, if possible," it said. "The munition should be inconspicuous and readily transportable."

Radioactive agents were thought to be ideal for this use, the document said, because of their high toxicity and the fact that the targeted individuals could not smell, taste or otherwise sense the attack.

"It should be possible, for example, to develop a very small munition which could function unnoticeably and which would set up an invisible, yet highly lethal concentration in a room, with the effects noticeable only well after the time of attack," it said.

"The time for lethal effects could, it is believed, be controlled within limits by the amount of radioactive agent dispersed. The toxicities are such that should relatively high concentrations be required for early lethal effects, on a weight basis, even such concentrations may be found practicable."

Tom Bielefeld, a Harvard physicist who has studied radiological weapons issues, said that while he had never heard of this project, its technical aims sounded feasible.

Bielefeld noted that polonium, the radioactive agent used to kill Litvinenko in November 2006, has just the kind of features that would be suitable for the lethal mission described in the Dec. 16 memo.

Barton Bernstein, a Stanford history professor who has done extensive research on the U.S. military's radiological warfare efforts, said he did not believe this aspect had previously come to light.

"This is one of those items that surprises us but should not shock us, because in the Cold War all kinds of ways of killing people, in all kinds of manners inhumane, barbaric and even worse were periodically contemplated at high levels in the American government in what was seen as a just war against a hated and hateful enemy," Bernstein said.

The project was run by the Army Chemical Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Alden H. Waitt, and supervised by a now-defunct agency called the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. The project's first chief was Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the Army's head of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs. The radiological project was approved by Groves' successor, Maj. Gen. Kenneth D. Nichols.

The released documents were in files of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project held by the National Archives.

Among the officials copied in on the Dec. 16 memo were Herbert Scoville, Jr., then the technical director of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and later the CIA's deputy director for research, and Samuel T. Cohen, a physicist with RAND Corp. who had worked on the Manhattan Project.

The initial go-ahead for the Army to pursue its radiological weapons project was given in May 1948, a point in U.S. history, following the successful use of two atomic bombs against Japan to end World War II, when the military was eager to explore the implications of atomic science for the future of warfare.

In a July 1948 memo outlining the program's intent, before specifics had received final approval, a key focus was on long-lasting contamination of large land areas where residents would be told that unless the areas were abandoned they probably would die from radiation within one to 10 years.

"It is thought that this is a new concept of warfare, with results that cannot be predicted," it said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3704329

Romney, Clinton health care plans similar: experts
Fri Oct 5, 2007 8:52am EDT
By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - When it comes to health care, Republican Mitt Romney loves to take swipes at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

He calls Clinton's plan, which would require every American to have health insurance, "European-style socialized medicine" and derides it as inspired by "European bureaucracies."

Romney is quick to remind supporters of the U.S. senator from New York's dramatic 1993 failure to reform U.S. health care, which many Americans felt overstepped the role of first lady.

Despite all that, experts say Clinton's plan borrows heavily from one Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts, which made the liberal state the first in the United States with near-universal health insurance.

That similarity could be fodder for Romney's rivals vying to be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

"Hillary's plan is just like the Massachusetts plan. There's not a whole lot of difference," said Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was an adviser to Romney on the state's health care reform law.

Like Clinton's plan, the law Romney signed in April 2006 is underpinned by an "individual mandate" compelling people to buy health insurance. Both plans entail subsidies and government regulations. For those in Massachusetts earning less than the federal poverty level of $9,800, free coverage is provided.

Though it was his crowning achievement as governor, Romney has distanced himself from aspects of the law that offend his party's conservative base, including the extent of the government's role. He has proposed a plan that includes federal tax breaks and incentives to states to help the 47 million uninsured Americans afford coverage.

"What works in Massachusetts may not work in Texas," Romney said at a campaign stop in Salt Lake City, Utah.

And he wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, "As governor of Massachusetts, I led the fight for reforms that used free markets and innovation, rather than big-government control, to lower health care costs and cover the uninsured."

RISING COSTS

But health policy experts and independent political analysts dispute that characterization and say Massachusetts' health care costs rose after the law was introduced.

"The plan is much more expensive than it was originally expected. If you have a lot of government mandates, it pushes up the cost," said Sally Pipes, president Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that promotes free-market policies.

State government spending on health care from 2001 to 2007 rose 25 percent in real terms, according to a June report by the New England Healthcare Institute.

The Massachusetts health care law created a new government entity, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, to offer subsidized and unsubsidized polices.

"It could wind up being a point of contention between Rudy Giuliani and Romney in the sense that Giuliani has taken a very different approach to health care, nothing that smacks of government mandates," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist.

"Republican primary voters tend to shy away from anything smacking of government mandates."

Giuliani, a former New York mayor, leads Romney in national polls, but trails Romney in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University, said although Romney's health care law could hurt him with conservatives crucial in the party's nominating process, it could help him in a general election.

"He has to be careful not to distance himself too much from his own accomplishments," he said.

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)


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